nd they
watched till you went ashore, and I got away through the bush, but you
were already ashore."

"You fired that shot?"

"Yes; to warn you. But they were wise and would not shoot back, and it
was my last cartridge."

"Now you, Hare-Lip?" Grief said to the _Valetta's_ cook.

His tale was long and painfully detailed. For a year he had been sailing
out of Tahiti and through the Paumotus on the _Valetta_. Old Dupuy was
owner and captain. On his last cruise he had shipped two strangers in
Tahiti as mate and supercargo. Also, another stranger he carried to be
his agent on Fanriki. Raoul Van Asveld and Carl Lepsius were the names
of the mate and supercargo.

"They are brothers, I know, for I have heard them talk in the dark, on
deck, when they thought no one listened," Hare-Lip explained.

The _Valetta_ cruised through the Low Islands, picking up shell and
pearls at Dupuy's stations. Frans Amundson, the third stranger, relieved
Pierre Gollard at Fanriki. Pierre Gollard came on board to go back to
Tahiti. The natives of Fanriki said he had a quart of pearls to turn
over to Dupuy. The first night out from Fanriki there was shooting
in the cabin. Then the bodies of Dupuy and Pierre Gollard were thrown
overboard. The Tahitian sailors fled to the forecastle. For two days,
with nothing to eat and the _Valetta_ hove to, they remained below. Then
Raoul Van Asveld put poison in the meal he made Hare-Lip cook and carry
for'ard. Half the sailors died.

"He had a rifle pointed at me, master; what could I do?" Hare-Lip
whimpered. "Of the rest, two went up the rigging and were shot. Fanriki
was ten miles away. The others went overboard to swim. They were shot
as they swam. I, only, lived, and the two devils; for me they wanted to
cook for them. That day, with the breeze, they went back to Fanrika and
took on Frans Amundson, for he was one of them."

Then followed Hare-Lip's nightmare experiences as the schooner wandered
on the long reaches to the westward. He was the one living witness and
knew they would have killed him had he not been the cook. At Noumea five
convicts had joined them. Hare-Lip was never permitted ashore at any of
the islands, and Grief was the first outsider to whom he had spoken.

"And now they will kill me," Hare-Lip spluttered, "for they will know
I have told you. Yet am I not all a coward, and I will stay with you,
master, and die with you."

The Goat Man shook his head and stood up.

"Lie here and