ading enthusiastically, Tiha
jumping with every thrust to the imminent danger of dropping the stones.
At their heels trooped the children of the village and all the village
dogs, whooping and yelping with excitement.

"Long time you fella Tiha no sit 'm along canoe," Aora bawled to the
victim and set Bashti cackling again.

At an unusually urgent prod, Tiha dropped a stone and was duly goaded
while she sank to her knees and with one arm scooped it in against her
side, regained her feet, and waddled on.

Once, in stark mutiny at so much pain, she deliberately stopped and
addressed her tormentor.

"Me cross along you too much," she told Wiwau. "Bime by, close--"

But she never completed the threat. A warmly administered prod broke
through her stoicism and started her tottering along.

The shouting of the rabble ebbed away as the queer race ran on toward the
beach. But in a few minutes it could be heard flooding back, this time
Wiwau panting with the weight of coral stone and Tiha, a-smart with what
she had endured, trying more than to even the score.

Opposite Bashti, Wiwau lost one of the stones, and, in the effort to
recover it, lost the other, which rolled a dozen feet away from the
first. Tiha became a whirlwind of avenging fury. And all Somo went
wild. Bashti held his lean sides with merriment while tears of purest
joy ran down his prodigiously wrinkled cheeks.

And when all was over, quoth Bashti to his people: "Thus shall all women
fight when they desire over much to fight."

Only he did not say it in this way. Nor did he say it in the Somo
tongue. What he did say was in beche-de-mer, and his words were:

"Any fella Mary he like 'm fight, all fella Mary along Somo fight 'm this
fella way."

CHAPTER XV

For some time after the conclusion of the race, Bashti stood talking with
his head men, Agno among them. Lenerengo was similarly engaged with
several old cronies. As Jerry lay off to one side where she had
forgotten him, the wild-dog he had bullied on the _Arangi_ came up and
sniffed at him. At first he sniffed at a distance, ready for instant
flight. Then he drew cautiously closer. Jerry watched him with
smouldering eyes. At the moment wild-dog's nose touched him, he uttered
a warning growl. Wild-dog sprang back and whirled away in headlong
flight for a score of yards before he learned that he was not pursued.

Again he came back cautiously, as it was the instinct in him to stal