the girl that his wife had bought from a bush
town for a musket--because she wanted "something to worry," he used
jokingly to say.

The savage creature took the mat sullenly, went to the far end of the
room, and covered herself up again.

"You're too soft with women," said Rita, scornfully.

"I know I am--with you," he answered, good-naturedly. And then the angry
gleam in the black eyes died away, and she laughed merrily.

*****

Two days had passed. Old Hutton had returned to his station, and
Blackett was returning with a boatload of copra from a village across
the bay. Heavy rain-squalls tore down upon the boat at short intervals,
and Blackett, drenched to the skin, began to feel the first deadly
chills and pains of an attack of island fever. Usually light-hearted, he
now felt angry, and savagely cursed at his crew when the heavily-laden
boat touched and ground against the coral knobs that lay scattered about
her course. It was long past midnight when he reached his station, and,
stepping wearily out of the boat, dragged his aching limbs along the
beach. 'Rita had heard the boat, and Blackett could see that a bright
fire was burning in the thatched, open-sided cook-house, and that 'Rita
herself was there, with a number of native children making coffee.

The quickening agonies of fever were fast seizing him, and, entering the
house and throwing himself on a seat, he felt his brain whirling, and
scarcely noticed that Tubariga, the local chief, was bending over him
anxiously. Then 'Rita came with the steaming coffee, and one quick
glance at Blackett's crouched-up figure told her that the dreaded fever
had seized him at last.

'Rita proved herself what Blackett always called her, "one of the
smartest little women going." With Tubariga's help, she carried him
to the bed, and sent out for some women to come and rub and thump his
aching joints while she dosed him with hot rum and coffee. And then
Blackett asked her what she was doing out in the cook-house. Hadn't she
a cook? Then the suppressed rage of the hot-blooded girl broke out in
a flood of tears. Europuai, the wild bush-girl, had been sulky all the
time he was away, and she had given her a little beating with a bamboo.
And then the black devil had run away, and--here the angry beauty wept
again--she ('Rita) had to go out into a filthy cook-shed to boil water
before a lot of man-eating savages! No one would help her, because they
were all such fools that she a