ch touched at the
island, and this amount enabled him to leave Arorai, and begin trading
elsewhere--in the great atoll of Butaritari, where owing to his
possessing a good boat, sturdy health, and great pluck and resolution,
his circumstances so mended that he came to look on the incident of the
fire as the best thing that could have happened.

In appearance these two men were like nearly all the people of the
Kingsmill Group--dark-skinned, strongly built, and with a certain
fierceness of visage, born of their warlike and quarrelsome nature, and
which never leaves them, even in their old age. The elder of the two,
whose native name was Binoke, but who had been given the nickname of
"Tommy Topsail-tie," had this facial characteristic to a great degree,
and was, in addition, of a somewhat morbid and sullen disposition,
disliking all strangers. But he was yet the veriest slave to Flemming's
children, who tyrannised over him most mercilessly, for young as they
were, they knew that his savage heart had nothing in it but adoration
and affection for both them and their parents. Nobal, the younger man,
who also had a nickname--"Jack Waterwitch" (taken from a colonial
whaler in which he had once sailed) was of a more genial nature, and
had constituted himself the especial guardian and playmate of the little
girl Medora, who spoke his native tongue as well as himself; while Tommy
Topsail-tie was more attached, if it were possible, to Flemming's eldest
boy Robert, than to any other member of the family.

After two or three years' successful trading in the northern islands of
the Kingsmill Group, Flemming had sold out his trading interests very
satisfactorily, and, always eager to go further afield, had sailed for
the Paumotu Group, choosing Anaa as his home, for he thought he should
like the people, and do very well as a trader, for the island was but a
few days' sail from Tahiti in the Society Group, where there was always
a good market for his produce, and where he could replenish his stock of
trade goods from the great mercantile firm of Brander--in those days the
Whiteleys of the South and Eastern Pacific.

One afternoon, about six o'clock, when work at the trading station had
ceased for the day, and the store door had been shut and locked by Mrs.
Flemming, the trader was seated on his shady verandah, smoking a cigar
and listening to the prattle of his little daughter, when his two boys
raced up to him from the beach, and noi