," and his heart rejoiced, for although not mean he was a
careful man. So he steered his boat seaward, between the seething surf
that boiled and hissed on both sides of the boat passage.

* * * * *

As the boat sailed past the misty line of cloud-capped Upolu, the
trader lifted the girl up beside him and spoke to her. She was not
afraid of him, she said, for many had told her he was a good man, and
not an ULA VALE (scamp), but she wept because now, save her old
grandmother, all her kinsfolk were dead. Even but a day and a half ago
her one brother was killed with her cousin. They were strong men, but
the bullets were swift, and so they died. And their heads had been
shown at Matautu. For that she had grieved and wept and eaten nothing,
and the world was cold and dark to her.

"Poor little devil!" said the trader to himself--"hungry." Then he
opened a locker and found a tin of sardines. Not a scrap of biscuit.
There was plenty of biscuit, though, in the boat, in fifty-pound tins,
but on these mats were spread, where-on his crew were sleeping. He was
about to rouse them when he remembered the old dame's basket of ripe
bread-fruit. He laughed and looked at her. She, too, slept, coiled up
at his feet. But first he opened the sardines and placed them beside
the girl, and motioned her to steer. Her eyes gleamed like diamonds in
the darkness as she answered his glance, and her soft fingers grasped
the tiller. Very quickly, then, he felt among the packages aft till he
came to the basket.

A quick stroke of his knife cut the cinnet that lashed the sides
together. He felt inside. "Only two, after all, but big ones, and no
mistake. Wrapped in cloth, too! I wonder--Hell and Furies! what's
this?"--as his fingers came in contact with something that felt like a
human eye. Drawing his hand quickly back, he fumbled in his pockets for
a match, and struck it. Bread-fruit! No. Two heads with closed eyes and
livid lips blue with the pallor of death, showing their white teeth.
And Salome covered her face and slid down in the bottom of the boat
again, and wept afresh for her cousin and brother, and the boat came up
in the wind, but no one awoke.

* * * * *

The trader was angry. But after he had tied up the basket again he put
the boat on her course once more and called to the girl. She crept
close to him and nestled under his overcoat, for the morning air came
across the sea from the dew-laden forests, and she was chilled. Then
she to