per!"

Between squalls the _Flibberty-Gibbet_ ran in to anchorage, and her
skipper, Pete Oleson (brother to the Oleson of the _Jessie_), ancient,
grizzled, wild-eyed, emaciated by fever, dragged his weary frame up the
veranda steps and collapsed in a steamer-chair. Whisky and soda kept him
going while he made report and turned in his accounts.

"You're rotten with fever," Sheldon said. "Why don't you run down to
Sydney for a blow of decent climate?"

The old skipper shook his head.

"I can't. I've ben in the islands too long. I'd die. The fever comes
out worse down there."

"Kill or cure," Sheldon counselled.

"It's straight kill for me. I tried it three years ago. The cool
weather put me on my back before I landed. They carried me ashore and
into hospital. I was unconscious one stretch for two weeks. After that
the doctors sent me back to the islands--said it was the only thing that
would save me. Well, I'm still alive; but I'm too soaked with fever. A
month in Australia would finish me."

"But what are you going to do?" Sheldon queried. "You can't stay here
until you die."

"That's all that's left to me. I'd like to go back to the old country,
but I couldn't stand it. I'll last longer here, and here I'll stay until
I peg out; but I wish to God I'd never seen the Solomons, that's all."

He declined to sleep ashore, took his orders, and went back on board the
cutter. A lurid sunset was blotted out by the heaviest squall of the
day, and Sheldon watched the whale-boat arrive in the thick of it. As
the spritsail was taken in and the boat headed on to the beach, he was
aware of a distinct hurt at sight of Joan at the steering-oar, standing
erect and swaying her strength to it as she resisted the pressures that
tended to throw the craft broadside in the surf. Her Tahitians leaped
out and rushed the boat high up the beach, and she led her bizarre
following through the gate of the compound.

The first drops of rain were driving like hail-stones, the tall cocoanut
palms were bending and writhing in the grip of the wind, while the thick
cloud-mass of the squall turned the brief tropic twilight abruptly to
night.

Quite unconsciously the brooding anxiety of the afternoon slipped from
Sheldon, and he felt strangely cheered at the sight of her running up the
steps laughing, face flushed, hair flying, her breast heaving from the
violence of her late exertions.

"Lovely, perfectly lovely--Pari-Sulay,"