ounded by a number of young men and women.

"Come," he said, with drunken hilarity, and speaking in the Ponape
dialect, which is understood by the people of Las Matelotas, "come,
drink with me;" and pouring out some of the liquor he offered it with
swaying hand to the man nearest him; "drink, I tell thee, for when this
bottle is empty then shall I make the white man give me more."

"Bah!" said a tall, dark-skinned girl, whose head was encircled with a
wreath of red and yellow flowers, and who stood with her rounded arms
folded across her bare bosom, "thou dost but boast. How canst thou
_make_ Parma give thee liquor, if, as thou sayest, thou hast no money?
Is he a child to be frightened by loud words--which are but born in
the belly of _that_" and she laughed and pointed contemptuously at the
bottle beside him.

The half-caste looked at her with drunken gravity.

"Who art thou, saucy fool?" he asked, "to so talk to me? Think ye that
I fear any white man? See!" and staggering to his feet he came over to
where she stood, "seest thou this bloodied cut across my face, which was
given me by a white man, when I fought with, three but last night?"

The girl laughed mockingly. "How know I but that last night thou wert
as drunk as thou art now, and fell on the ship's deck and so cut thy
face, and now would make us think that----"

"Nay, Sepe," broke in a lad who sat near, "'tis true, for I was on the
ship and saw this man fight with three others. He does not lie."

"Lie!" and the half-caste, drawing his knife from its sheath, flashed it
before the assembled natives; "nay, no liar am I, neither a boaster;
and by the gods of my mother's land I shall make this Parma give me more
grog to drink before the night comes, else shall this knife eat into his
heart. Come ye all, and see."

And in another minute, followed by the girl Sepe and a dozen or more
men and women, he sallied out into the road, knife in hand, lurching
up against a palm-tree every now and then, and steadying himself with a
drunken oath.

*****

Sitting or standing about Palmer's house were some scores of native
women, who waited for him to awaken from his afternoon's sleep and open
his store so that they might sell him the pearl-shell that the menfolk
had that day taken from the lagoon. But the white man seemed to sleep
long to-day, and when the people saw Letane, his wife, coming from
her evening bathe, they were glad, for they knew she would open her
husb