en, out of thy love for me and our child, let
me come also. Then, if evil befall thee, let us perish together."

Brantley raised his hand and pointed to the bowed and weeping figure.
Some women came and lifted her up. Then taking the tender face between
his rough hands, he bent his head to hers, sprang into the boat, and
was gone.

* * * * *

II

With ten tons of shell snugly stowed in her hold, the little Tamariki
was heading back for Vahitahi after barely two months' absence.
Brantley, as he leant over the rail and watched the swirl and eddy of
the creamy phosphorescence that hissed and bubbled under the vessel's
stern, felt well satisfied.

It was the hour of dawn, and the native at the tiller sang, as the
stars began to pale before the red flush that tinged the sky to
windward, a low chant of farewell to Fetuaho, the star of the morning,
and then he called to Brantley, who to all his crew was always
"Paranili," and never "Kapeni [Captain]," and pointed with his naked,
tattooed arm away to leeward, where the low outlines of an island began
to show.

"Look, Paranili, that is Tatakoto, the place I have told thee of, where
the turtle makes the white beach to look black. Would it not be well
for us to take some home to Vahitahi?"

"Thou glutton!" said Brantley, good-humouredly, "dost thou think I am
like to lose a day so that thou and thy friends may fill thy stomachs
with turtle meat?"

Rua Manu laughed, and showed his white, even teeth. "Nay, Paranili, not
for that alone; but it is a great place, that Tatakoto, and thou hast
never landed there to look, and Luita hath said that some day she would
ask thee to take her there; for, though she was born at Vahitahi, her
blood is that of the people of Tatakoto, who have long since lain
silent in the MARAES."

* * * * *

Brantley had often heard her speak of it, this solitary spot in the
wide Pacific, and now, as he looked at the pretty, verdure-clad island
against the weather shore of which the thundering rollers burst with a
muffled roar, he was surprised at its length and extent, and decided to
pay it a visit some day.

"Not now, Rua," he said to the steersman, "but it shall be soon. Are
there many coconuts there?"

"Many? May I perish, but the trees are as the sand of the sea, and the
nuts lie thick upon the ground. AI-E-EH! and the robber crabs are in
thousands, and fat; and the sea-birds' eggs!"

"Glutton again! Be content. In a little while we and as