nies of all but himself.

In a few weeks, and while the brig was thrashing her way back to Samoa
against the south-east trades, Ridan regained his health and strength
and became a favourite with all on board, white and brown. He was quite
six feet in height, with a bright yellow skin, bronzed by the sun;
and his straight features and long black hair were of the true
Malayo-Polynesian type. From the back of his neck two broad stripes of
bright blue tattooing ran down the whole length of his muscular back,
and thence curved outwards and downwards along the back of his thighs
and terminated at each heel. No one on the _Iserbrook_ had ever seen
similar tattooing, and many were the conjectures as to Ridan's native
place. One word, however, he constantly repeated, 'Oneata,' and then
would point to the north-west. But no one knew of such a place, though
many did of an Oneaka, far to the south-east--an island of the Gilbert
Group near the Equator.

The weeks passed, and at last Ridan looked with wondering eyes upon the
strange houses of the white men in Apia harbour. By-and-by boats
came off to the ship, and the three hundred and odd brown-skinned and
black-skinned people from the Solomons and the Admiralties and the
countless islands about New Britain and New Ireland were taken ashore
to work on the plantations at Vailele and Mulifanua, and Ridan alone was
left. He was glad of this, for the white men on board had been kind to
him, and he began to hope that he would be taken back to Oneata. But
that night he was brought ashore by the captain to a house where many
white men were sitting together, smoking and drinking. They all looked
curiously at him and addressed him in many island tongues, and Ridan
smiled and shook his head and said, 'Me Ridan; me Oneata.'

'Leave him with me, Kuehne,' said Burton to the captain of the brig.
'He's the best and biggest man of the lot you've brought this trip. I'll
marry him to one of my wife's servants, and he'll live in clover down at
Mulifanua.'

So early next morning Rfdan was put in a boat with many other new
'boys,' and he smiled with joy, thinking he was going back to the
ship--and Oneata. But when the boat sailed round Mulinu's Point, and the
spars of the _Iserbrook_ were suddenly hidden by the intervening line of
palm trees, a cry of terror burst from him, and he sprang overboard.
He was soon caught, though he dived and swam like a fish. And then two
wild-eyed Gilbert Islanders hel