And thereat he broke into a wild outpour of incoherence that did
not cease until Grief seized him by the shoulders and shook him into
silence.

"I know you," Grief said. "You were cook in the French Hotel at Papeete
two years ago. Everybody called you 'Hare-Lip.'"

The man nodded violently.

"I am now cook of the _Valetta_," he spat and spluttered, his mouth
writhing in a fearful struggle with its defect. "I know you. I saw you
at the hotel. I saw you at Lavina's. I saw you on the _Kittiwake_. I saw
you at the _Mariposa_ wharf. You are Captain Grief, and you will save
me. Those men are devils. They killed Captain Dupuy. Me they made kill
half the crew. Two they shot from the cross-trees. The rest they shot
in the water. I knew them all. They stole the girls from Huahine. They
added to their strength with jail-men from Noumea. They robbed the
traders in the New Hebrides. They killed the trader at Vanikori, and
stole two women there. They----"

But Grief no longer heard. Through the trees, from the direction of
the harbour, came a rattle of rifles, and he started on the run for the
beach. Pirates from Tahiti and convicts from New Caledonia! A pretty
bunch of desperadoes that even now was attacking his schooner. Hare-Lip
followed, still spluttering and spitting his tale of the white devils'
doings.

The rifle-firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but Grief ran
on, perplexed by ominous conjectures, until, in a turn of the path, he
encountered Mauriri running toward him from the beach.

"Big Brother," the Goat Man panted, "I was too late. They have taken
your schooner. Come! For now they will seek for you."

He started back up the path away from the beach.

"Where is Brown?" Grief demanded.

"On the Big Rock. I will tell you afterward. Come now!"

"But my men in the whaleboat?"

Mauriri was in an agony of apprehension.

"They are with the women on the strange schooner. They will not be
killed. I tell you true. The devils want sailors. But you they will
kill. Listen!" From the water, in a cracked tenor voice, came a French
hunting song. "They are landing on the beach. They have taken your
schooner--that I saw. Come!"

III

Careless of his own life and skin, nevertheless David Grief was
possessed of no false hardihood. He knew when to fight and when to run,
and that this was the time for running he had no doubt. Up the path,
past the old men sitting in the shade, past Mataara crouched in the
doorw