e at her hat and think, the hurt he had
received passed away, and he found himself cudgelling his brains for some
way out of the muddle--for some method by which she could remain on
Berande. A chaperone! Why not? He could send to Sydney on the first
steamer for one. He could--

Her trilling laughter smote upon his reverie, and he stepped to the
screen-door, through which he could see her running down the path to the
beach. At her heels ran two of her sailors, Papehara and Mahameme, in
scarlet lava-lavas, with naked sheath-knives gleaming in their belts. It
was another sample of her wilfulness. Despite entreaties and commands,
and warnings of the danger from sharks, she persisted in swimming at any
and all times, and by special preference, it seemed to him, immediately
after eating.

He watched her take the water, diving cleanly, like a boy, from the end
of the little pier; and he watched her strike out with single overhand
stroke, her henchmen swimming a dozen feet on either side. He did not
have much faith in their ability to beat off a hungry man-eater, though
he did believe, implicitly, that their lives would go bravely before hers
in case of an attack.

Straight out they swam, their heads growing smaller and smaller. There
was a slight, restless heave to the sea, and soon the three heads were
disappearing behind it with greater frequency. He strained his eyes to
keep them in sight, and finally fetched the telescope on to the veranda.
A squall was making over from the direction of Florida; but then, she and
her men laughed at squalls and the white choppy sea at such times. She
certainly could swim, he had long since concluded. That came of her
training in Hawaii. But sharks were sharks, and he had known of more
than one good swimmer drowned in a tide-rip.

The squall blackened the sky, beat the ocean white where he had last seen
the three heads, and then blotted out sea and sky and everything with its
deluge of rain. It passed on, and Berande emerged in the bright sunshine
as the three swimmers emerged from the sea. Sheldon slipped inside with
the telescope, and through the screen-door watched her run up the path,
shaking down her hair as she ran, to the fresh-water shower under the
house.

On the veranda that afternoon he broached the proposition of a chaperone
as delicately as he could, explaining the necessity at Berande for such a
body, a housekeeper to run the boys and the storeroom, and perf