r the trees. But before they gained the shelter, three times
the sand kicked into puffs ahead of them. Then they dove into the green
safety of the jungle.

Grief watched the _Willi-Waw_ haul up close, go out the passage, then
slack its sheets as it headed south with the wind abeam. As it went out
of sight past the point he could see the topsail being broken out. One
of the Gooma boys, a black, nearly fifty years of age, hideously marred
and scarred by skin diseases and old wounds, looked up into his face and
grinned.

"My word," the boy commented, "that fella skipper too much cross along
you."

Grief laughed, and led the way back across the sand to the canoe.

III

How many millions David Grief was worth no man in the Solomons knew, for
his holdings and ventures were everywhere in the great South Pacific.
From Samoa to New Guinea and even to the north of the Line his
plantations were scattered. He possessed pearling concessions in the
Paumotus. Though his name did not appear, he was in truth the German
company that traded in the French Marquesas. His trading stations were
in strings in all the groups, and his vessels that operated them were
many. He owned atolls so remote and tiny that his smallest schooners and
ketches visited the solitary agents but once a year.

In Sydney, on Castlereagh Street, his offices occupied three floors.
But he was rarely in those offices. He preferred always to be on the go
amongst the islands, nosing out new investments, inspecting and shaking
up old ones, and rubbing shoulders with fun and adventure in a thousand
strange guises. He bought the wreck of the great steamship _Gavonne_
for a song, and in salving it achieved the impossible and cleaned up a
quarter of a million. In the Louisiades he planted the first commercial
rubber, and in Bora-Bora he ripped out the South Sea cotton and put the
jolly islanders at the work of planting cacao. It was he who took the
deserted island of Lallu-Ka, colonized it with Polynesians from the
Ontong-Java Atoll, and planted four thousand acres to cocoanuts. And it
was he who reconciled the warring chief-stocks of Tahiti and swung the
great deal of the phosphate island of Hikihu.

His own vessels recruited his contract labour. They brought Santa
Cruz boys to the New Hebrides, New Hebrides boys to the Banks, and the
head-hunting cannibals of Malaita to the plantations of New Georgia.
From Tonga to the Gilberts and on to the far Louisiades his