and pulled. And
in the tug of war she lost her leg, below the knee, he said. I gave him
a stock of antiseptics. She'll pull through, I fancy."

"Ugh--the filthy beasts," Joan gulped shudderingly. "I hate them! I
hate them!"

"And yet you go diving among sharks," Sheldon chided.

"They're only fish-sharks. And as long as there are plenty of fish there
is no danger. It is only when they're famished that they're liable to
take a bite."

Sheldon shuddered inwardly at the swift vision that arose of the dainty
flesh of her in a shark's many-toothed maw.

"I wish you wouldn't, just the same," he said slowly. "You acknowledge
there is a risk."

"But that's half the fun of it," she cried.

A trite platitude about his not caring to lose her was on his lips, but
he refrained from uttering it. Another conclusion he had arrived at was
that she was not to be nagged. Continual, or even occasional, reminders
of his feeling for her would constitute a tactical error of no mean
dimensions.

"Some for the book of verse, some for the simple life, and some for the
shark's belly," he laughed grimly, then added: "Just the same, I wish I
could swim as well as you. Maybe it would beget confidence such as you
have."

"Do you know, I think it would be nice to be married to a man such as you
seem to be becoming," she remarked, with one of her abrupt changes that
always astounded him. "I should think you could be trained into a very
good husband--you know, not one of the domineering kind, but one who
considered his wife was just as much an individual as himself and just as
much a free agent. Really, you know, I think you are improving."

She laughed and rode away, leaving him greatly cast down. If he had
thought there had been one bit of coyness in her words, one feminine
flutter, one womanly attempt at deliberate lure and encouragement, he
would have been elated. But he knew absolutely that it was the boy, and
not the woman, who had so daringly spoken.

Joan rode on among the avenues of young cocoanut-palms, saw a hornbill,
followed it in its erratic flights to the high forest on the edge of the
plantation, heard the cooing of wild pigeons and located them in the
deeper woods, followed the fresh trail of a wild pig for a distance,
circled back, and took the narrow path for the bungalow that ran through
twenty acres of uncleared cane. The grass was waist-high and higher, and
as she rode along she remembered that Gogoomy