ed colour and sparkling eyes gazed seaward
at the schooner.

"My! but she is a witch! Look at her eating up the water, and there's no
wind to speak of. She's not got ordinary white metal either. It's man-
of-war copper, every inch of it. I had them polish it with cocoanut
husks when she was careened at Poonga-Poonga. She was a seal-hunter
before this gold expedition got her. And seal-hunters had to sail.
They've run away from second class Russian cruisers more than once up
there off Siberia.

"Honestly, if I'd dreamed of the chance waiting for me at Guvutu when I
bought her for less than three hundred dollars, I'd never have gone
partners with you. And in that case I'd be sailing her right now."

The justice of her contention came abruptly home to Sheldon. What she
had done she would have done just the same if she had not been his
partner. And in the saving of the _Martha_ he had played no part. Single-
handed, unadvised, in the teeth of the laughter of Guvutu and of the
competition of men like Morgan and Raff, she had gone into the adventure
and brought it through to success.

"You make me feel like a big man who has robbed a small child of a
lolly," he said with sudden contrition.

"And the small child is crying for it." She looked at him, and he noted
that her lip was slightly trembling and that her eyes were moist. It was
the boy all over, he thought; the boy crying for the wee bit boat with
which to play. And yet it was a woman, too. What a maze of
contradiction she was! And he wondered, had she been all woman and no
boy, if he would have loved her in just the same way. Then it rushed in
upon his consciousness that he really loved her for what she was, for all
the boy in her and all the rest of her--for the total of her that would
have been a different total in direct proportion to any differing of the
parts of her.

"But the small child won't cry any more for it," she was saying. "This
is the last sob. Some day, if Kinross doesn't lose her, you'll turn her
over to your partner, I know. And I won't nag you any more. Only I do
hope you know how I feel. It isn't as if I'd merely bought the _Martha_,
or merely built her. I saved her. I took her off the reef. I saved her
from the grave of the sea when fifty-five pounds was considered a big
risk. She is mine, peculiarly mine. Without me she wouldn't exist. That
big nor'wester would have finished her the first three hours it blew. And
t