he brown women called out a word
or two of greeting to the child, and smiled and beckoned her to
leave her father for an instant and take the fruit or piece of cooked
breadfruit that they held out to her with their brown hands. But only
a solemn shake of the little head, and then she and the taciturn,
bronzed-faced man went by, the child's tiny fingers grasping his tanned
and roughened hand as they walked across the narrow island towards the
sound of the muffled thunder of the surf on the outer ocean beach.

*****

Here, with the little one perched beside him and looking wonderingly
into his grave, impassive face, the white man would sit for long hours
staring moodily out upon the tumbling breakers as they reared and fell
upon the black, grim shelves of the reef.

Sometimes, as he sat with his chin resting on his hand, and the red glow
of his pipe sending now and again a fitful gleam of light across the
rugged lines of his face, the girl would get quietly down from the
moss-grown coral boulder on which she rested by his side, and stepping
down to the short, steep beach, play with childish solemnity with such
pebbles and light shells as lay within the reach of her little hands.
Perhaps, if the tide was heavy and at its flood, and a breaker heavier
than the rest breached shorewards in a white wall of seething foam, and
crashed and rattled together the loose coral slabs that marked the line
of high-water mark, the silent, dreaming man would spring to his feet
with a loud warning call. And the little one, answering his deep tones
with her soft, sweet treble, would spring back to her father's side, and
nestling her tender form against his gaunt frame, lay her cheek against
his, and say, in the soft Tokelau tongue, "'Twas a great wave, my
father!"

"Aye," he would answer, as he placed an arm round the child and gazed at
her for a moment, "'twas a great wave truly, _taka taina_,{*} and thou
art so small, that if it but touched thy feet thou wouldst be swept
away like as a leaf in a strong wind. So stay thee here beside me, sweet
one," and again his face would turn seaward, and the silence of the
night, save for the soughing of the wind and the cry of the surf, fall
upon them again.

* "Little one of my heart."

Thus the first hours of the island night would pass, till a glare of
light flashed upon the blackness of the sea beyond the snow-line of
surf, as the canoes from Matakatea would round the point, each one wi