put his head
above the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was
shaking with excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and
half-jumped around, as if danger threatened his back.

"One of the natives fell overboard," he was saying, in a queer tense
voice. "He couldn't swim."

"Who was it?" the skipper demanded.

"Auiki," was the answer.

"But I say, you know, I heard shots," Bertie said, in trembling
eagerness, for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over
with.

The mate whirled upon him, snarling:

"It's a damned lie. There ain't been a shot fired. The nigger fell
overboard."

Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.

"I--I thought--" Bertie was beginning.

"Shots?" said Captain Hansen, dreamily. "Shots? Did you hear any shots,
Mr. Jacobs?"

"Not a shot," replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:

"Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish
dinner."

Bertie slept that night in the captain's cabin, a tiny stateroom off the
main cabin. The for'ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles.
Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer,
which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite,
and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on the
opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla's
log. Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the
occasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two
boat's crew had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read between
the lines and knew better. He read how the Arla's whale boat had
been bushwhacked at Su'u and had lost three men; of how the skipper
discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire--flesh
purchased by the boat's crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental
discharge of dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat's crew;
of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen
in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger
passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by
dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died--guests,
like himself, on the Arla.

"I say, you know," Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. "I've been
glancing through your log."

The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lyi