smile, and from her pretty mouth bubbled the
sweetest laughter a man could hear.

"Not my taughter," replied Tahuna, as his wife approached, "but this my
_wahine_, what you call wife."

The Maori woman was smiling the generous smile of her race.

"You're a brave crowd," said the captain. "My crew and I owe you our
lives. My prejudice against colour is shaken--I'm not sure that it'll
ever recover the shock you've given it. A man may sail round the world
a dozen times, an' there's still something he's got to learn. I never
would ha' believed a man, let alone a woman, could ha' swum in such a
sea. An' you're Natives of the country?--a fine race, a fine race." As
they stood, talking, rain had commenced to drive in from the sea. The
captain surveyed the miserable scene for a moment or two; then he
said, "I think, chief, that if you're ready we'll get these men under
shelter." And so, some supported by their dusky friends, and some
carried in blankets, the crew of _The Mersey Witch_, drenched and cold,
but saved from the sea, were conveyed to the huts of the _pa_.

CHAPTER III.

The Pilot's Daughter.

She came out of the creeper-covered house into a garden of roses, and
stood with her hand on a green garden-seat; herself a rosebud bursting
into perfection.

Below her were gravelled walks and terraced flower-beds, cut out of the
hill-side on which the quaint, gabled house stood; her fragrant, small
domain carefully secreted behind a tall, clipped hedge, over the top of
which she could see from where she stood the long sweep of the road
which led down to the port of Timber Town.

She was dressed in a plain, blue, cotton blouse and skirt; her not
over-tall figure swelling plumply beneath their starched folds. Her hair
was of a nondescript brown, beautified by a glint of gold, so that her
uncovered head looked bright in the sunlight. Her face was such as may
be seen any day in the villages which nestle beneath the Sussex Downs,
under whose shadow she was born; her forehead was broad and white; her
eyes blue; her cheeks the colour of the blush roses in her garden; her
mouth small, with lips coloured pink like a shell on the beach. As she
stood, gazing down the road, shading her eyes with her little hand, and
displaying the roundness and whiteness of her arm to the inquisitive
eyes of nothing more lascivious than the flowers, a girl on horseback
drew up at the gate, and called, "Cooee!"

She was tall and brown, d