f that good Saint Pierre gives you some day a gold 'arp still
you would holler bad luck--bad job!" retorted Captain Jean. "Do I 'ire
you to stand zere and cry about ze luck? Get a boat over, and quicker
zan zat!"

M. Marteau aroused himself sufficiently to take command of the boat's
crew that presently dropped away to investigate....

"It is even as I thought," he called up from the quarter when he
returned with his report. "I told you how it would be, Captain Jean."

"Hey?" cried the captain, bouncing at the rail. "Have you got zose
passengers yet, _enfant de salaud_?"

"I have not," said Marteau in the tone of lugubrious triumph. There was
nothing in the world that could have pleased him quite so much as this
chance to prove Captain Jean the loser on a venture. "We are too late.
Bad luck, bad luck--that calm. What misfortune! They are all dead!"

"Will you mind your business?" shouted the skipper.

"But still, the gentlemen are dead--"

"What is zat to me? All ze better, they will cost nozing to feed."

"But how--"

"Hogsheads, my gar," said Captain Jean paternally. "Zose hogsheads in
the afterhold. Fill them nicely with brine, and zere we are!" And,
having drawn all possible satisfaction from the other's amazement, he
sprang the nub of his joke with a grin. "Ze gentlemen's passage is all
paid, Marteau. Before we left Sydney, Marteau. I contrac' to bring back
three escape' convicts, and so by 'ell I do--in pickle! And now if
you'll kindly get zose passengers aboard like I said an' bozzer less
about ze goddam luck, I be much oblige'. Also, zere is no green on my
eye, Marteau, and you can dam' well smoke it!"

Marteau recovered himself with difficulty in time to recall another
trifling detail. "There is a fourth man on board that raft, Captain
Jean. He is a Canaque--still alive. What shall we do with him?"

"A Canaque?" snapped Captain Jean. "A Canaque! I had no word in my
contrac' about any Canaque.... Leave him zere.... He is only a dam'
nigger. He'll do well enough where he is."

And Captain Jean was right, perfectly right, for while the _Petite
Suzanne_ was taking aboard her grisly cargo the wind freshened from the
west, and just about the time she was shaping away for Australia the
"dam' nigger" spread his own sail of pandanus leaves and twirled his own
helm of niaouli wood and headed the catamaran eastward, back toward New
Caledonia.

Feeling somewhat dry after his exertion, he plucked at random fro