raised in a spot lonelier or lovelier. We
chose for our camp the shelter of a _moto_ tree, one of the most
lordly of all the growths of these islands. Not ten of them were
left in all the Marquesas, said Le Brunnec as I admired its towering
column and magnificent spread of foliage. "The whites who used the
axe in these isles would have made firewood of the ark of the
covenant."

We made a fire before our tent and cooked a wild chicken he had shot,
which, with pilot-biscuit and Bordeaux wine, made an excellent dinner.
Darkness closed around us while we ate, the wide plateau stretched
about us, mysterious in the light of the moon, and the night was
cool and pleasant. We lay in lazy comfort, enjoying the fresh light
air of that altitude and smoking "John's" mixture from Los Angeles,
till sleepiness spilled the tobacco. Our numbed senses scarcely let
us drag our mats into the tent before unconsciousness claimed us.

I was wakened by the blood-chilling howls of a wolf-pack in full cry,
and a shout from Le Brunnec, "The dogs!"

He stood by the open flap of the tent, a black silhouette of man and
gun. When I had clutched my own rifle and reached his side I saw in
the moonlight a score of huge white beasts, some tangled in a
snarling heap over the remains of our supper, others crouching on
their haunches in a ring, facing us. One of them sprang as Le
Brunnec fired, and its hot breath fanned my face before my own
finger pressed the trigger.

The two wounded brutes struggled on the ground until a second shot
finished them, and the rest made off to a little distance, where Le
Brunnec kept them with an occasional shot while I brought up the
terrified ponies, snorting and plunging. More wood thrown on the
coals spread a circle of firelight about us, and Le Brunnec and I
took turns in standing guard until morning, while the white dogs sat
like sheeted ghosts around us and made the night hideous with howls.
One or the other of us must have dozed, for during the night the
beasts dragged away the two dead and picked their bones.

These, Le Brunnec said, were the sons and daughters of dogs once
friendly to humanity, and like the wild cats we had seen, they bore
mute testimony to the numbers of people who once lived on this
plateau.

When dawn came the mountain rats were scurrying about the meadows,
but the dogs had gone afar, leaving only the two heaps of bones and
the wreckage of all outside the tent to tell of their foray. The