ch passed across them to the main rigging, and saw
what he saw, a brown hand and arm, muscular and wet, being joined from
overside by a second brown hand and arm. A head followed, thatched with
long elfin locks, and then a face, with roguish black eyes, lined with
the marks of wildwood's laughter.

"My God!" Brown breathed. "It's a faun--a sea-faun."

"It's the Goat Man," said Glass.

"It is Mauriri," said Grief. "He is my own blood brother by sacred
plight of native custom. His name is mine, and mine is his."

Broad brown shoulders and a magnificent chest rose above the rail, and,
with what seemed effortless ease, the whole grand body followed over
the rail and noiselessly trod the deck. Brown, who might have been other
things than the mate of an island schooner, was enchanted. All that he
had ever gleaned from the books proclaimed indubitably the faun-likeness
of this visitant of the deep. "But a sad faun," was the young man's
judgment, as the golden-brown woods god strode forward to where David
Grief sat up with outstretched hand.

"David," said David Grief.

"Mauriri, Big Brother," said Mauriri.

And thereafter, in the custom of men who have pledged blood brotherhood,
each called the other, not by the other's name, but by his own. Also,
they talked in the Polynesian tongue of Fuatino, and Brown could only
sit and guess.

"A long swim to say _talofa_," Grief said, as the other sat and streamed
water on the deck.

"Many days and nights have I watched for your coming, Big Brother,"
Mauriri replied. "I have sat on the Big Rock, where the dynamite
is kept, of which I have been made keeper. I saw you come up to the
entrance and run back into darkness. I knew you waited till morning, and
I followed. Great trouble has come upon us. Mataara has cried these many
days for your coming. She is an old woman, and Motauri is dead, and she
is sad."

"Did he marry Naumoo?" Grief asked, after he had shaken his head and
sighed by the custom.

"Yes. In the end they ran to live with the goats, till Mataara forgave,
when they returned to live with her in the Big House. But he is now
dead, and Naumoo soon will die. Great is our trouble, Big Brother. Tori
is dead, and Tati-Tori, and Petoo, and Nari, and Pilsach, and others."

"Pilsach, too!" Grief exclaimed. "Has there been a sickness?"

"There has been much killing. Listen, Big Brother, Three weeks ago a
strange schooner came. From the Big Rock I saw her topsails above the