another drink,
Hutton. If the Dutch firm's schooner shows up this month I'll clear out
of this accursed hole. I hate the place, and so does my woman." He
used the term "woman" instead of wife purely out of deference to Island
custom; but Hutton noticed it.

"Ain't she really your wife?" he asked inquisitively.

"No--yes--what the devil does it matter to you?" And Blackett, whose
patience had quite worn out, filled the glasses, and passed one to his
visitor, who uncouthly apologised. Then the two shook hands and laughed.

*****

The night was close and sultry, and Cerita was lying on the cane-framed
bed, fanning herself languidly. The man was leaning, with his face
turned from her, against the open window, and looking out into the
jungle blackness that encompassed the house. He was thinking of Hutton's
query, "Ain't she really your wife?" His wife! No; but she would be yet.
He would leave this infernal island, where one never knew when he might
get a poisoned arrow or spear into him. He was making money here, yes;
but money wasn't worth dying for. And 'Rita was more than money to him.
She had been the best little woman in the world to him--for all her
furious temper.

"Yes, he would leave these blackguardly Solomons, with their hordes of
savage cannibals,... and go back to the eastward again,... and Sydney,
too. He could easily stow her away in some quiet house while he went and
saw his people." And so Blackett thought and smoked away till 'Rita's
voice startled him.

*****

"Give me a match, Harry: I want to smoke. I can't sleep, it's so hot,
and my arm is tired fanning, and the screen is full of mosquitoes. That
devil of a girl--where is she?"

"There!" said Blackett, pointing to beneath the bed, where Europuai, his
wife's attendant, lay rolled up in a mat.

"The black beast!"--and the half-blood rose from the bed, throwing the
mosquito-net angrily aside--"and I thought she was sleeping near the
Aoba woman, the wife of that drunken old Hutton," and, stooping down
so that her black hair fell like a mantle over her bare shoulders, she
seized the short, woolly head of the sleeper and dragged her out.

Blackett laughed. "Easy, 'Rita, easy! You'll frighten her so that she'll
clear out from us. Let her take her mat over there in the corner. Give
the poor devil a chance. She's terrified of old Hutton, so sneaked in
here to hide. She's only a wild bushy"--and he looked compassionately at
the almost nude figure of