tepped out from their houses of thatch, and greeted each other as they
hurried seaward for their morning bathe--the men among the swirl and
wash of the breaking surf, and the women and children along the sandy
beach in front of the village.

Out upon the point of black and jagged reef that stretched northward
from the entrance to the harbour was the figure of a young boy who
bathed by himself. He was the son of the one white man on Strong's
Island, whose isolated dwelling lay almost within hail of him.

The father of the boy was one of those mysterious wanderers who, in the
days of sixty years or so ago, were common enough on many of the islands
of the North Pacific. Without any material means, save a bag of silver
dollars, he had, accompanied by his son, landed at Lela Harbour on
Strong's Island from a passing ship, and Charlik, the king of the
island, although at first resenting the intrusion of a poor white man
among his people, had consented to let him remain on being told by the
captain of the ship that the stranger was a skilful cooper, and could
also build a boat. It so happened that many of the casks in which the
king stored his coconut-oil were leaking, and no one on the island could
repair them; and the white man soon gave the native king proof of his
craft by producing from his bag some of a cooper's tools, and going
into the great oil shed that was close by. Here, with some hundreds
of natives watching him keenly, he worked for half an hour, while his
half-caste son sat upon the beach utterly unnoticed by any one, and
regarded with unfavourable looks by the island children, from the mere
fact of their having learned that his mother had been a native of a
strange island--that to them was sufficient cause for suspicion, if not
hostility.

Presently the king himself, attended by his mother, came to the oil
shed, looked in, and called out to the white man to cease his work.

"Look you, white man," he said in English. "You can stop. Mend and make
my casks for me, and some day build me a boat; but send away the son of
the woman from the south lands. We of Kusaie (Strong's Island) will have
no strangers here."

The white man's answer was quick and to the point. He would not send
his child away; either the boy remained with him on shore or they both
returned to the ship and sought out some other island.

"Good," said Charlik with cold assent, and turning to his people he
commanded them to provide a house for t