Beyond the Rim

 

CHAPTER I

THE PINK PEARL

CHALMERS did not go up to the Times office when the Kinau reached Honolulu. He was his own man for the time being and, being only in his middle twenties, vacations held for him too much of enjoyment to be spoiled by visiting the scene of his daily labors. The waterfront man of the afternoon paper met him with a grin.

“Come back for the shipwreck story?” the reporter asked. “It's a bunk. The only chap alive's a Solomon Islander who's half conscious and half pupule (crazy). Can't find out the ship's name or nationality, what she was or where she was bound. Tough luck to spoil your vacation.”

“I'll have to cover it anyway,” said Chalmers. “I'll take the rest of my holiday out yachting. Tell me, who's the Chinaman getting into the taxi with two others—the middle one. Tuan Yuck's his name, the purser told me. But what do you know about him? He's no ordinary Chink.”

“I should say not. Tuan Yuck! He used to be the whole thing in Chinatown, kingpin of the gambling and dope ring, but he got in wrong with his tong, got them mixed up in a wild-goose chase after some buried treasure and he lost out all down the line and ducked for the 'big island.' He must have fixed things up to come back. That was all before your time, Chalmers. Anything stirring on the trip?”

“Not a thing. I'll see you later. Where's the chap that's still living from the wreck?”

“Sailors' Home. If he isn't make (dead) by now. !The story's dead anyway.”

Chalmers determined to cover the story, such as it was, at first hand, to get all there was out of it for his mainland correspondence columns. A wireless message had brought him hurrying back from a holiday trip to the volcano and he wanted to use his own judgment of its news value. He crossed the waterfront, passed through the Fish Market, unheeding the brilliant array of strangely shaped and more strangely colored fish strewn on the stalls like tangible rainbows, and ran up the steps of the Sail ors' Home where the derelicts of the South Seas sunned themselves on the wide porch, and entered the superintendent's office.

The official nodded greetings.

“Thought you were on vacation, Chalmers. Have a good time?”

“So far, thanks. Have you got that chap picked up in the whaleboat by the Lehua. Can I see him?”

“Taroi? He's gone.”

“Gone?”

“It wouldn't have done you much good to see him. He was in bad shape and we couldn't get much out of him. Half stupid from exposure. They were in the boat seventeen days from what we made out of his talk. He was a Solomon Islander from Malayta way, same place Sayers's wahine (woman) came from. She translated for us. He's up at Sayers's place now. They took him away yesterday.”

Chalmers whistled under his breath. Sayers was a newspaper man of shady character who covered sports for the Times. He had lost all caste among his own people by marrying a native woman, one of the tribes alien to the islands that had been imported for labor in the early days of sugar planting. He was an Australian, clever at his work, not to be personally believed or trusted, suspected of too close acquaintanceship with native jockeys and turfmen of uneasy reputation. Chalmers knew him as a fellow-worker and had been in touch with him on yachting events, Chalmers's favorite recreation, and he knew that the list of Sayers's faults did not include an excess of hospitality.

The superintendent grinned understandingly.

“Chap's not expected to live,” he said. “Sayers has taken the funeral off our hands. Going to look him up?”

Chalmers nodded.

“Do you know where he lives?” he asked.

The superintendent grinned again.

“Just where you'd expect him to,” he said. “In Aloha Alley, back of Kawaiahao Church and opposite the brewery. Know it?”

“Yes. What about the wreck—on French Frigate Shoals. Any one gone out there for salvage?”

“No. She must have gone to pieces by this. There was a big kona blowing last week, you know. Nobody particularly interested, you see. There were no papers in the boat; only three dying Kanakas and one crazy one. Probably just a trading schooner. Might have been British or American or Dutch. None of the Consuls have bothered their heads over it. They might be doing the other chap's work. Not much of a story in it, I imagine.”

Chalmers left the place a little dispirited, though still bent on following up the story. It began to look as if there were nothing in it. Sayers's native wife might have taken the man in out of sympathy for a fellow tribesman, but Sayers was not the kind to encourage that sort of thing at his own expense. He decided there was something out of the ordinary back of the Australian's sudden generosity and as he determined to solve the problem his spirits rose again.

ALOHA ALLEY consisted of a double row of primitive bungalows, facing each other across a tangled garden strip of bananas and motley-leaved crotons that skirted a dozen vine-clad royal palms.

The scroll-saw architecture was covered with purple bougainvilleas and orange huapala vines in a riot of violent tropical color. Sayers's dwelling was the second on the right, exactly like the rest, a dozen steps leading to the porch that ran all round the house. The main room extended across the entire front. The windows, like the door, were blinded with green slats, close-shut for coolness.

The whole of Aloha Alley seemed asleep in an afternoon languor. As Chalmers paused outside the door he heard the sound of groans that seemed to be emitted with every breath, a steady plaint for succor that made him open the blinds and step into the darkened room.

Against the farther wall beside a door stood the bed, and beneath the dingy mosquito curtain something writhed and tossed and moaned. As his pupils became adjust ed to the dusk, Chalmers distinguished the figure of a native lying outside the sheets, clad only in a loin-cloth, throwing his head from side to side.

The man's naturally brown face was a grayish hue and twitched continually beneath a frizzly mop of hair, stiffened and dyed a rusty red by constant applications of lime. The place reeked of sickness.

Beyond the door Chalmers heard the loud murmur of two voices, one of which he recognized as Sayers's. The other, a woman's, he set down as his wife's. He was about to knock when his ear caught the monosyllable the fevered man repeated. Chalmers knew a few words of native and this was one universal through all the South Seas—wai (water).

There was a grimy pitcher on a chair beside the bed with a grimier glass beside it. The pitcher was half full of water with halved limes and a pebble of ice afloat in it.

Chalmers sat on the edge of the bed, poured some of the water into the glass, moistened his handkerchief with more, set aside the netting and slipped one arm about the shrunken shoulders of the man, raising him gently. The body was burning up with fever. As he dampened the flaked lips the native's eyes opened and rested on him with an expression half of dislike, half terror, that changed to animal gratitude as Chalmers wiped his lips and set the glass for him to drink. Chalmers mustered up his native, remembering the name he had heard.

“Aloha, Taroi,” he said.

“Tarofa oe,” the man responded huskily, as he made shift to gulp at the liquid. His figure relaxed and Chalmers let him down on the pillow he had reshaken.

It needed no medical expert to tell that the spark of life was at its faintest. A shudder ran through the gaunt figure, the jaw relaxed, then set again with an effort.

The sound of the voices beyond the door was suddenly raised, and a shadow of fear passed over Taroi's face. His claw-like fingers twisted upward to his mop of hair and burrowed in it gropingly. The right hand with something clutched in it reached out, found Chalmers and pressed something hard and round into the white man's palm.

Chalmers looked at it. Even in the dusk of the room he could tell the beauty and purity of the faintly iridescent globule, a pink pearl, perfectly round, the size of a marrow-fat pea. Even as he wondered, Taroi's eyes closed and his hands fell lax on the sheets.

“For Sayers?” asked Chalmers.

As the eyes opened he nodded toward the door. A look of protest widened the native's glance.

“Aore!” (no), he protested.

His right hand closed Chalmers's palm about the gem with feeble fingers of fire. The eyes rolled toward the door, the head shook in a final negation, then the body shuddered, the knees were drawn up, the hands clenched and the jaw fell.

Outside, the banana fronds tapped gently at the window. The voices in the inner room were quiet. A fly buzzed loudly.

Chalmers set down the pearl, straightened the limbs of the dead man, drew the sheet over him and replaced the mosquito netting. As he stood beside the bed, with the gem in the palm of his hand, the door opened, a shaft of sunshine pouring through the gap. Sayers stood on the threshold, his wife behind him, the two staring at Chalmers in an astonishment that held them spellbound.

CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDER

SAYERS spoke first, chewing his words as if his mouth were half full, his eyes half closed in scrunity of Chalmers.

“How long have you been here?” The tone was full of suspicion.

Chalmers put his finger to his lips and motioned with his head toward the bed.

“He's dead,” he said.

The native woman brushed by Sayers with a loud wail of Auwe! The next instant she had thrust them both into the inner room, and shut the door upon them. Chalmers heard the outer door thrown open; another cry of Auwe! Then came the swift scurrying of curious feet upon the porch. In the confusion he slipped the pearl into his vest pocket.

“Let's get out of this,” said Sayers. “She'll attend to it. The whole crowd of them will be howling all over the place in two minutes.”

He led the way through the back door, down a flight of steps and through a gap in the ragged hibiscus hedge to the road. Aloha Alley was wide awake now with all the native excitement of hysteria over death.

“Where do you want to go?” asked Chalmers. “Make it somewhere close by.” He was in no mood to walk far with Sayers at any time and his distaste of the man had heightened with the look of fear the dead man had shown at the sound of his voice. “Isn't there something we can do for him?”

“I'll 'phone the coroner,” said Sayers callously. “She'll handle the rest of it. He came from the same place as she did. Let's go to the Art Saloon. I want to have a talk with you.”

As they went, Sayers surveyed Chalmers with constant side looks of suspicion. Chalmers realized that this was bred of the doubt in Sayers's mind as to how much of his talk with his wife had penetrated the door. This advantage he determined to keep. There was no doubt in his mind now that there was a real story that tied up with Sayers's unusual hospitality to Taroi and the pearl the dying man had given him.

Arrived at the Art Saloon they took one of the private snuggeries and Sayers called for drinks. At his request, the Chinese boy brought two bottles, gin for Sayers and beer for Chalmers.

Native fashion, Sayers drank his liquor neat, avidly, with a desire to get not so much the taste but the kick of the raw spirits. Excess had already trade-marked him. Powerful of build, still of some athletic prowess, his general condition was typified by the white duck suits he wore, constantly renewed by his wife's laundering, yet always limp and crumpled as if he slept in them.

His head, nearly bald, was frizzed with ginger-colored hair, his eyebrows showed faintly and the eyelids were scant in the red rims that framed shifty eyes the color of dishwater. Freckles and blotches covered the skin of face, neck and hands, the latter to the last joint of the stubby fingers. Broken veins showed purple along the lines of his jaw and flecked his nose, which had been battered in boxing contests. His teeth were yellow and distinctly apart behind full lips, half colored by a bristly sandy mustache. He walked and sat with a slouch.

Occasionally he showed flashes of good breeding. His articles, despite their sporting slang, had all the distinctions of an educated man. One quality that showed strangely amid his sordidness was a love of music coupled to an intimate knowledge of the art that had seen him detailed as critic to whatever musical affairs were given that were really worth while.

Chalmers, with the rest who gave any thought to the matter, set him down as the ne'er-do-well of a well-bred Australian family, who had developed the degenerate streak in his nature by self-indulgence, slumping year by year as he lost caste with his own race.

He was game. Chalmers knew that from yachting episodes. But his sporting instincts had deteriorated to shiftiness, though he kept up in talk and writing an appearance of playing square and, as a judge of sporting events, he was eminently an expert.

A love of fair play held Chalmers from a close analysis of the other's faults. There were fifteen years between them, and their thoughts and modes of living held little in common. At present he enjoyed the game he was playing, to outwit Sayers in craftiness and get lie story he was convinced was in existence.

“You didn't tell me how long you were in the room,” said Sayers, elbows on the table, his tumbler in his hand, a quarter full of raw gin, his colorless eyes covertly watching Chalmers' face.

“I hardly know. Several minutes. I heard you talking and was coming through when Taroi called for water. He was in a bad way, as you know, and died practically in my arms.”

“I thought you were on your vacation. Funny I didn't hear you.”

“You were talking pretty loudly.”

Sayers grunted.

“I didn't suppose any one was in my front room, listening.”

Chalmers ignored the suggestion. He took the pearl from his pocket and set it between them on the dark wood of the table. Under the electric lights it seemed to give off a shimmer of iridescence, as the down shows on a peach. Sayers' eyes glittered greedily and his fingers twitched as he reached to take up the gem. Chalmers forestalled him by putting it in his own palm.

“Taroi gave me this,” he said.

“He meant it for me.” Sayers put out his hand.

“He said it was not for you. He was afraid of you. What had you been doing to him, Sayers?”

“Doing! Didn't I take him in from those charity-mongers at the Home and treat him like a white man? I got a doctor for him, my wife waited on him hand and foot and the ungrateful Kanaka dog held out on me. That pearl belongs to me by all rights, Chalmers. I want it.”

He thrust his face across the table, his jaw stuck out, his fists clenched, his eyes narrowed, every inch the bully. Chalmers had no fear of him physically; mentally he felt himself the superior of the two.

“He didn't want you to have it, Sayers. I don't know why he gave it to me except that he knew I was friendly. You must have done something to make him dislike you.”

“I did nothing, I tell you, but look out for him. The beggar didn't want to talk—I may have coaxed him a bit.”

Chalmers mentally glimpsed Sayers urging his wife to bully all he knew out of the dying man, burning up with fever and desire for rest and quiet.

“Who's going to pay for his funeral, I'd like to know?” blurted Sayers. “Who's going to pay for the doctor and his medicine?”

“I fancy you got enough out of him to make it worth your while,” said Chalmers. “But the pearl will pay for his funeral. I'll see to that—and a good one. It must be worth a hundred dollars or so.”

Sayers snorted in disgust.

“A hundred. It's worth five if it's worth a cent. And—” He broke off short. “There's no need to waste expenses on him; it wasn't his pearl.”

“How do you know it wasn't?”

Sayers sat back, emptied his glass, poured himself another measure, emptied that and once more leaned across the table confidentially.

“I don't know how much you know, Chalmers,” he began, “or how much you've guessed. But I've had you in mind already over this affair—there's nothing crooked about it,” he said hastily, as he noted Chalmers' face. “It's a clear open and shut proposition. I don't imagine you want to grind away for the Times all your life, do you?”

“What is it?” asked Chalmers.

“It's your big chance and mine,” answered Sayers. “The chance of a lifetime.”

“Go ahead,” said Chalmers.

“You can navigate, can't you?” asked Sayers.

The question seemed irrelevant, but Chalmers answered it.

“You ought to know,” he said. “I took the Manuahi up to the coast and sailed her down in the trans-Pacific race, trick and trick with Captain McFarland. I passed the Board in San Francisco for the fun of the thing and I hold my ticket. Why?”

“That's where you come in. I've got to have some one who can navigate and one who's interested in the deal,” answered Sayers. “You'll see why, in a minute.”

Chalmers lit his pipe and sat back comfortably. His news sense had justified itself. Already he felt himself crossing the threshold of the commonplace, sure that the story held for him a personal element, subconsciously inclined already to listen favorably to the proposition that Sayers, his voice lowered and full of concentration, was unfolding.

“I WAS at the wharf when the Lehua came in, that trip,” said Sayers. “Honamaku was on board, coming over for the swimming-races next week; but I passed up a talk with him for the story of the wreck. I knew enough of the Solomon dialect to talk to Taroi a bit.

“The others were too near being make to talk, but Taroi had chirped up with the soup and champagne they'd been feeding him. They took him up to the Sailors' Home and the others to the Queen's Hospital. One of 'em died that night and the two others next day. I volunteered to get Faleta—that's my wife—to interpret, and they were glad to let her.

“The Lehua people didn't know much outside of having picked them up, drifting in the Molokai Channel, Taroi trying to signal with an oar he was too weak to lift and the rest in the bottom of the boat, starved and nutty with thirst. No name on the whaleboat, no papers, nothing for identification.”

Chalmers nodded as Sayers poured himself a drink.

“Seventeen days from French Frigate Shoals—four hundred miles,” he comment ed. “They must have been blown down by the trades and then back again in the kona.”

“Here's the part of the story you don't know,” continued Sayers, “aside from what you may have overheard today. Taroi got delirious up at the Home. By the time I had Faleta up there he was talking rot, but I got enough sense out of it to wise her up to listen and keep quiet herself. He was rolling his eyes and chucking himself over the bed with his temperature getting higher all the time, and the doc' told us to come back when he sent for us.

“That was in the evening. Taroi was quiet then and Faleta just translated answers to the questions they put. He wasn't much good at that. Didn't even know the skipper's name—just called him ‘kapitani.' Didn't know where the schooner was built or chartered; naturally enough, he didn't bother his head about it. He'd been hired as extra hand at the last minute to take the place of another Kanaka who got sick. What the hospital super didn't ask for, we didn't tell; and that wasn't all that Taroi talked about by a long shot. He seemed a lot better and they gave us permission to take him to my place—glad to get rid of him. Early this morning he got worse again and—well, you saw him die.”

“What about keeping back information from the authorities, Sayers?” asked Chalmers. “I thought you said there was nothing crooked about this.”

“There isn't. What I found out wouldn't do them any good without what Faleta happened to know. I'm planning to do more than the authorities would. If I told them what Faleta knows they wouldn't thank me for it, even if they acted on it. I'll tell you the yarn in five minutes if you'll listen:

“The schooner was called the Manu. That's South Sea for bird and doesn't tip off where she comes from. There are fifty schooners named Manu in the trading line. I've a notion she was Australian, but I don't know for sure. Anyway, her captain owned her. He had got wind from some native he'd helped out of a hole of an island with a lagoon full of pearl-shell, way off by it self, not on the charts or in the directory. He started out to clean it up in a hurry. You know how that is. As I said, it isn't on the map and it hadn't been touched, but once let a hint of a find like that get out and you've got a government gunboat on top of you, claiming it. The Japs 'll swipe anything and you can't argue with four-inch guns; or else it's the British or the Dutch.

“Anyway it's first come, first served with pearling; and this was a virgin lagoon and rich. They ran into the tail-end of a hurricane making the island, and the schooner got blown 'way out of her latitude and got pretty badly banged up. And they ran short of grub.

“Coming away in the rush they did, they were short on grub and equipment. They didn't dare buy any special stuff before starting. With a fortune lying in the open sea for the first one who grabs it, you can't be too careful not to tip it off. All they had with 'em was one diving outfit and not even a pop-gun on board to make a bluff with, in case they were trailed. And they were.

“A schooner followed 'em and they saw smoke on the horizon the day of the storm that might or might not have been a gunboat; they were 'way off the steamer routes. It threw a scare into the skipper, though he figured the gale would have covered them up.

“They tried out the lagoon. It was a big one—and rich. First day they found a dozen pearls, and Taroi either swiped one of them or found one of his own and tucked it away in that mop of his. It's an old trick. The skipper didn't want to leave the island open and he wanted to make a big clean-up—shell and all. So he decided to stay with his find and sent the schooner kiting up to Honolulu for more equipment, more grub and guns, and ammunition.

“I imagine the mate wasn't the greatest sailor in the world, and anyway he wasn't the first to run afoul of French Frigate Shoals in nasty weather. It must have been a bad smash. You know the rocks shape up at nightfall for all the world like a square-rigger under full sail.

“They went crashing on to the coral with the wind blowing half a gale, and a lee shore at that. The mate got his head crushed in by the gaff falling on it when they struck. Next morning the schooner was still there, what was left of it, and they got the boat that was still in the davits and seaworthy, and started off for nowhere.

“None of them knew where to go, none of 'em had sense enough to save any papers. Seventeen days afterward the Lehua picked 'em up.

“The point is—” Sayers' voice fell to a whisper—“there's the captain alone on the island with four kings' ransoms in pearls, and no chance of getting away—unless some one fetches him, and I'm the only one who knows where he is.”

“The authorities would send after him from here,” said Chalmers. “You don't suppose they'd leave the man to starve?”

Sayers looked at him with scornful amusement.

“No more would I. But they don't know where to go. Taroi couldn't tell 'em. He knew the name of the island, but that wouldn't do 'em any good without the latitude and longitude, for there's a dozen of the same name and I told you it wasn't on the chart. I do know where it is from what Faleta found out.

“If you were a man alone with a fortune in the middle of the sea and some one came along and offered to take you off after your own crowd had been wrecked and killed, wouldn't you be glad to see 'em? Wouldn't it be worth something to you?” He watched Chalmers's face narrowly. “Wouldn't you give anything in reason for expenses and a reward rather than sit there and rot on the chance of some one turning up?

“Mind you, I might take the trip without any thought of reward if I had a ship, but I haven't, and ships and crews cost money. It's only fair to be reimbursed, ain't it? You'd do it gladly, I'll bet!”

Chalmers, looking at Sayers, wondered how far his generosity would take him without hope of gain, but the main argument seemed fair enough. The man would be glad to recompense them. He would, in his place, he decided.

“We'll treat him fair and square,” said Sayers. “There's enough for a dozen men according to what Taroi says, and if that pearl's any criterion of what the rest are, it's our chance to make a fortune and do a good turn.”

“Where's your ship and your money?” asked Chalmers.

The sudden prospect of adventure appealed more to him than that of wealth. This would be getting beyond the rim with a vengeance.

Sayers sat up, relaxing, and poured himself more gin from the now half-empty bottle.

“I'll get the ship and the money. You can put in what's left of the value of that pearl after Taroi's buried. That'll help some. That's your share with your work as navigator,” he said. “It'll take three of us. We don't want to noise this thing about or we'll all lose out. Some one'll suddenly discover the island belongs to the States or they'll just naturally grab it first. We'll keep it close. I've got the location of the island. That's my share. We don't need such a big schooner. A couple of Kanakas for crew should fix it. How much will it take?”

“We can't charter a schooner under five hundred a month for an unknown destination,” said Chalmers. “We could buy one outright for a thousand, probably—one of the firewood fleet might do. But there's the grub and wages, chronometers and other things. Call it a couple of thousand.”

“I've got the man who'll put up the balance of the money and go thirds in the deal. It's too bad Taroi didn't swipe a bigger pearl so we could do this on our own. But the man I've in mind is close-mouthed enough. What do you say?”

“We've got to give this captain a square deal, Sayers,” said Chalmers.

“You're going to have your say in the matter, ain't you? I'm not going to take advantage of the man. We'll settle that matter before we start. Are you game?”

“Who's your third man. Do I know him?”

“He's a Chinaman,” said Sayers; “a top-notcher. He's down and out in a way and he'll snatch at the chance. He'll keep it to himself and he can find the money. I don't suppose you know him.”

“Maybe I do,” Chalmers said quietly. “Is his name Tuan Yuck?”

Sayers looked at him in open, if grudging, astonishment.

“I don't know where you get your dope,” he said. “But that's the man. You know more than I thought you did about the whole affair. But you don't know the whereabouts of the island. I do! Are you on?”

“Have you seen Tuan Yuck yet?”

“Not yet. He was expecting to be back this week from Hawaii.”

“He came over on the Kinau with me. I had a talk with him. See him first and then I'll have time to think it over. You know where my place is?”

Sayers continued to look at Chalmers in wonderment. Hitherto, he told himself, he had underestimated the younger man. After this he would have to accord him a more prominent place in his plans. He got up, unaffected by the gin, save as to his breath and an extra cloudiness of the whites of his eyes.

“You're on,” he said. “You'd be a fool not to come. As soon as we all three shake hands on it, I'll tell you the name and place of the island and we'll get busy. I'm off to hunt up Tuan Yuck. Good-by!”

“I don't like you overmuch,” said Chalmers to himself, after Sayers left, “and I don't believe I'd trust you too far round a corner. But I can't stop you from going on the trip. And if I do go, I've a notion the captain will get a better bargain on account of being taken off. It's a real adventure. It's beyond the rim, all right.”

His blood began to tingle with the excitement of the prospect. To sail the uncharted sea as the master of a stout little craft; to play the part of rescuer to a marooned mariner, to share in a well-earned reward!

Chalmers was twenty-five. Destiny seemed to be dropping gifts into his lap. He refilled his pipe, squared his shoulders unconsciously and smoked on, seeing in the smoke-drift the palms of an ocean oasis rising above the horizon in the morning haze.

CHAPTER III

THE PIN-PRICK ON THE CHART

THE three men so widely apart in appearance and opinion, drawn together by the common interest of the venture, sat about a chart of the South Pacific in Chalmers' quarters. The French windows that led into the garden were closed and the blinds drawn.

Chalmers, flushed with excitement as much as the heat, fidgeted with a pair of dividers. Sayers's forehead was dewed with perspiration, he dabbed at it with his limp handkerchief; his scanty thatch of hair was wet on his scalp. Only Tuan Yuck was impassive to conditions.

“It's agreed then,” said Chalmers, “that the three of us share equally in the net returns that may be made out of this undertaking from any share of pearls and pearling interest that the captain may make over to us for rescuing him.”

“There'll be two sides to that bargain,” said Sayers. “He's not going to give us just what he happens to feel like.”

“Neither are we going to hold him up,” rejoined Chalmers firmly. “It's fair to repay all our expenses and give us a reasonable share, but the man's got to be rescued. That's why I'm in on this. You can't leave a man marooned in mid-ocean on a question of bargaining, Sayers.”

“The matter will surely be adjusted,” intercepted Tuan Yuck in his silky voice. “I am sure we defer to Mr. Chalmers's philanthropic ideas. I suppose a fifth of what the find is estimated to be worth, to be divided between the three of us, would be called reasonable?”

He held Sayers's eyes with his own and the latter nodded.

“A fair show all round is what we want,” said the latter. “Only I'm not in this for my health, Chalmers, nor for the captain's. It's my chance for a stake and I'm going to get all I can. But a fifth ought to make us all fat in the pocketbook. That suits me.”

“And I, Mr. Chalmers,” said Tuan Yuck, “am in the deal primarily for the money it offers. So that's understood. Frankly, while I admire your impulsiveness, from my standpoint it is Quixotic. A man places himself in a false position. I see no reason why I should sacrifice the opportunity his bad move has opened up to me. Life is a good deal like a game of chess. Some of us may be born pawns and others outrank us in opportunity for action, but even a pawn can work its way across the board to supremacy if it is not too self-sacrificing.”

“You talk as if we make our own moves, Tuan Yuck,” said Sayers.

“We do,” said the Chinaman. “That at least, is my philosophy, or part of it. What is yours, Mr. Chalmers?”

“Why, I don't know that I have one.” Chalmers experienced a swift sense of extreme youth in the presence of Tuan Yuck. “To get all there is out of life without hurting anybody else, would about sum it up, I suppose.”

“Change that to 'without getting hurt yourself' and you will find it more practical,” said Tuan Yuck. “Eh, Sayers?”

“Grab it before the other fellow gets it. That's what I've had rubbed into me,” said the Australian. “We'll play fair with the captain, Chalmers. It's only natural to get all we can out of him. So it's all hands round on the deal. Tuan Yuck puts up the money or most of it. Chalmers puts up the pink pearl, and acts as navigator, and I put up the idea and position of the island. No use for papers, I take it. This is a private venture and a gentleman's agreement.”

He looked at Tuan Yuck and the ghost of a grin seemed to flicker across his face. If the Chinaman noticed it, he gave no sign.

“The interests are mutual. All of us need each other,” he said. “Perhaps we need you most of all, Mr. Chalmers, not only to take us there, but to bring us back again.”

“That's right!” exclaimed Sayers, almost with the air of having made a discovery. “So we'll all take a drink to success and call that our signatures. It's understood none of us talks outside?”

“Naturally,” said Tuan Yuck. “We can't trust any one. They might get a faster vessel and get there first.”

“That's fair,” said Chalmers.

Sayers busied himself filling the glasses.

“What do you take, Tuan Yuck?” he asked. “Chalmers, yours is beer, I suppose?”

“Mine also,” said Tuan Yuck. “The universal beverage.”

“Beer for babes, and gin for grown-ups,” answered Sayers, pouring himself a liberal tot of the spirits.

“You'll not find it pay in the long run,” said Tuan Yuck, lifting his glass. “Good luck to all of us!”

They set down their tumblers and Chalmers once more took up his dividers.

“Now then,” he said, “before we talk schooner and outfit, where is the island?”

THE trio stood up, moved by a common impulse which even Tuan Yuck shared. The big hydrographic chart was held down flat by books placed about its edge and Sayers set the shaded oil-lamp so that a broad circle of light irradiated Micronesia and Melanesia.

Sayers took the dividers from Chalmers, and held one leg of the instrument poised above the map.

“Motutabu is the name of it,” he said. “That means the forbidden or tabu'd island, and there are any amount of forbidden islands scattered over the map. Here's one in the New Hebrides, another in the Marshalls and in the Fijis, tabu'd usually on account of some misfortune overtaking the inhabitants or visiting natives. This Motutabu got its name from an epidemic brought on by eating fish, poisonous there, but not in other places. The place has been deserted ever since, though once a colony under an insurgent chief from Malayta lived there. My wife's father was one of them. So was Taroi's. That's how there's no doubt about it being the place.”

“Many of the lagoon fish are poisonous during the breeding season,” said Tuan Yuck. “It is a natural protection against being eaten by bigger fish.”

“Here is Nameless Isle, close to the hundred and seventieth meridian and just under the equator, between the Solomons and the Gilberts,” went on Sayers, “and, almost due south—about four hundred miles, I suppose, Chalmers, is Jesus Island. Motutabu is half-way between the two—just about-here.”

He speared the chart with the sharp point of the dividers while Chalmers and Tuan Yuck bent across the table to look at the mark made in the clear paper of the chart, a spot unknown to the hydrographers, far off the sea routes, a pin-prick that represented to Chalmers adventure, the surge of the sea, the opening up of things worth while; to Tuan Yuck and Sayers the indulgence in many things that neither shared with the other, but which meant ease and comfort to the latter and power to the Chinaman.

“You can take us there?” asked Tuan Yuck, his eyes glowing like polished bronze in firelight.

Chalmers took up his parallel rulers as Sayers gave him back the dividers.

“Easily,” he said. “The latitude should be close to five degrees south. It's east of the hundred and seventieth, between the two islands charted. There should be no trouble about finding it. A straight run from Honolulu almost due southwest, a little longer than that from San Francisco to Honolulu. Call it twenty-three hundred miles.”

“How long will it take?” asked Tuan Yuck. “Three weeks?”

“If we get the schooner I'm figuring on, the Aku—she's carrying algaroba wood from Molokai now, an old boat but in good shape and with good lines—we ought to average eight knots or better. That would mean three weeks. But the trades are uncertain and we've got to figure on spells of light weather. Call it a month.”

Sayers' face lengthened ludicrously.

“A month!” he protested.

“And a week more for outfitting,” added Chalmers. “The Aku is owned by Afong & Company. Tuan Yuck,” he continued, “do you know any of the firm? We should buy her outright for somewhere about a thousand dollars.”

“I can handle that part of it,” said the Chinaman. “And if you will make out your list of stores I'll attend to the financial end of it. The pearl I can sell for at least six hundred dollars.”

“A hundred of it goes for Taroi's funeral,” said Chalmers.

Sayers shrugged his shoulders as Tuan Yuck replied:

“I'll give you that amount in cash now, Mr. Chalmers. How about crew?”

“Sayers can act as mate. We should have a good man to help steer, and at least one more—natives preferred. Do you know anything about sailing, Tuan Yuck.”

“Not a great deal. But I can cook.”

The idea of Tuan Yuck preparing meals struck both Americans as incongruous and they laughed.

“I do not mean it as a joke,” said the Chinaman. “It is the means to an end. You handle the ship. I'll preserve our stomachs. You will not regret the suggestion, gentlemen, and I will give you something else besides Chop Suey and Chow Yuck! If you will honor me at dinner tomorrow night will give you a specimen of my skill. I will have arranged for the schooner by then.”

He counted out five twenty-dollar gold pieces to Chalmers, took the pink pearl and left with Sayers.

Chalmers remained gazing at the map till it changed to a heaving sea and the matting beneath his feet to a lifting deck. He set himself to marking off the course on the chart but paused before he finished. Visions still floated between him and the paper.

“I wouldn't have picked either of my partners on personal preference,” he told himself. “Sayers will bear watching. Both of them, for that matter. I'd like to know more about the inside workings of Tuan Yuck. He is the original Mongolian Sphinx. He might be either a pirate or a philosopher—or both. His eyes are a thousand years old in experience. He made me feel like my first day at kindergarten.”

He yawned, completed his work on the chart and went to dream that his head was a pink pearl and that Tuan Yuck and Sayers were throwing dice for the possession of it, a vision that was not altogether as remote from the truth as nightmares usually are.

CHAPTER IV

THE FORBIDDEN ISLAND

THREE weeks of close contact aboard an eight-ton schooner bring out characteristics and breed intimacies or aversions in swift and unerring fashion. To Chalmers, Tuan Yuck remained a mystery. The man lived absolutely within himself to his own complete satisfaction. He was not unwilling to talk, but his conversation was so pre-eminently born of experience, and so based on selfishness that Chalmers never felt he penetrated the other's screen of self-sufficiency. For Sayers, he felt a growing dislike. The Australian was both slovenly and lazy, and his especial brand of selfishness lacked, somehow, the quality of the Chinaman's.

Sometimes Sayers would show the better streaks of his cosmos. In discussing philosophies with Tuan Yuck, between the three of them, Sayers would show flashes of philosophic brilliancy, born of an education that Chalmers envied, while he wondered at the little permanent result it had against the man's coarser nature. And at times the Australian would bring a zither on deck and invest its strings with a quality that seemed utterly at variance with his character. They had shipped two Hawaiians as crew, a sturdy, good-natured Hercules named Hamaku, and a somewhat stupid, but willing younger man, known only as Tomi, who possessed a high tenor that held qualities many a famous singer would have envied for his higher register.

Some days the wind sulked beneath the horizon, and, after the heat of the day was over, Sayers would play such things as the barcarolle from the “Tales of Hoffmann,” or the sextette from “Lucia,” and then drift into accompaniments for Tomi, singing native meles full of plaintive melody born of coco-palms bending in the trades and surf, crooning lazily to coral reefs.

Then he would discuss the mathematics of harmony with Tuan Yuck, while Chalmers listened with quickening interest as the Chinaman infallibly discounted Occidental methods and accomplishments, and showed the Orient as the very matrix of philosophy and the birthplace of science.

An hour later, Sayers, a bottle of gin before him, would play solitaire until, soddened with liquor, he would stumble to his bunk to sleep away his trick at the wheel, and appear at noon the next day morose and red-eyed until twilight came and his fingers steadied enough to coax a melody from his zither.

With it all, Chalmers's view-point broadened. His vitality, the buoyancy of his youth, and his ardent belief in human impulse and action that were based on real friendliness toward one's fellow man, offset the cynicism of the Chinaman and the more brutal selfishness of the Australian. A sense of responsibility broadened his mental and spiritual shoulders. He was conscious of a link between Tuan Yuck and Sayers that was at variance with his own ideas of fair play, and, almost insensibly, he became the champion of the unknown captain, marooned by Fate, at the mercy of these mercenary rescuers.

His own dreams were those of youth crystallizing to manhood in the crucible of experience. The wide sea spaces, where the horizon seemed the veritable edge of the world, the vagrant clouds drifting across the sky, the starry infinitudes, the touch of the free-roving winds, strengthened the spirit within him.

Chalmers felt that behind the Chinaman's impassive exterior there dwelled absolutely human passions held in check until the owner willed to loose them. The shifting of the brilliant eyes behind the immobile eyelids constantly suggested the pacing of a beast within a cage that might open at any moment.

Meanwhile, as a cook, Tuan Yuck achieved wonders. From a scrawny, sea sick chicken, with a handful of rice and a sprinkling of herbs, he could evolve a curry that, while it wholly satisfied the stomach, seemed, by the sheer savor of the dish, to evoke subtle suggestions of the Orient with all its hidden mysteries of dozing power and knowledge. And yet Chalmers could never lose the thought that, if it suited his purpose, Tuan Yuck would as callously poison the ship's company as he decapitated the chicken that formed the base of his culinary marvel.

He had shaken off the feeling of youth and ignorance with which the Chinaman had first inspired him. Something told him that Tuan Yuck missed the better part of life, had perhaps outlived it in the unknown years of his existence, and he rather pitied than resented him. At the beginning of the trip the Chinaman had produced a chess-board, and challenged both of them, proving them such amateurs before his brilliant, insoluble gambits that they had permanently retired.

Nights, when Sayers shuffled his cards at Canfield and Chalmers wrote up his log and checked his reckonings, Tuan Yuck worked out inscrutable problems on the squares, and at last retired to his cabin, whence the fumes of opium presently came pungently. Chalmers wondered if he sometimes smoked the poppy-seed to escape from his own philosophies.

DAY in, day out, they sailed across the changing ocean without a trail of smoke or the gleam of a sail on the horizon, splitting the angle of the diverging steamer trails that run from Honolulu to Guam, northward, and to the south from Honolulu to Suva and to Apia. Fortune favored them for two weeks with a steady following wind, and then they drifted, a squall sometimes a few miles off, and lifeless, lumpy water all about them, in which dolphins gamboled or chased great schools of flying-fish.

Their way lay through an ocean desert, set only with the scattered isles of Johnston, Jane, San Pedro and Barber, too far off their route for sighting, until they raised the Gilberts and sailed through the group, crossing the Equator and the international date line almost simultaneously as they entered the last quadrangle of their quest.

Chalmers grew daily more certain of some secret understanding between Sayers and Tuan Yuck. The two never seemed to court privacy; there was nothing on which to base his suspicions; but the consciousness deepened that there was something between them in which he had no share. That it in some way was aimed against his own interests or that of the captain, he felt sure, and cautioned himself accordingly.

On the twenty-seventh day the crossing of his Sumner's lines by double observation proved their position to be 171° 47' East, and 4° 30' South. He had checked his nooning and dead reckoning by a stellar altitude record, and was sure of his figures.

“Dawn tomorrow ought to show us Motutabu,” he announced.

Tuan Yuck looked up more quickly than his wont from his chessmen, and Sayers' nervous hands spoiled the stacks of his solitaire layout. Chalmers thought a look passed between them.

“Dawn, eh?” said Sayers. “That's only five hours away. Five hours from——”

He checked himself.

“Freedom,” suggested Tuan Yuck. “We've made better time than we hoped. My compliments to you, Mr. Chalmers, on your navigation.”

Chalmers fancied a tinge of irony in the tone, but he accepted the congratulations.

“Let's make a night of it,” said Sayers. “Tuan, I'll match you drink for drink to see who's the better man of the two. Come on, Chalmers, join the tournament.”

“I have to relieve Tomi,” said Chalmers. “I'll be at the wheel till daylight. Better turn in, Sayers. I'll call you if we sight anything.”

“I'll take your wager if you'll match me pipe for pipe,” said Tuan Yuck, producing his silver-stemmed opium holder. “No? Then you to your vice, I to mine. You'll call me, Mr. Chalmers?”

Chalmers went on deck and took the wheel. The wind filled the sails, sheeted well out. Above the main gaff the Southern Cross hung suspended. The slow hiss of the water, as it seethed from stem to stern and broadened to the wake, the low croon of Tomi somewhere in the bows, produced a soothing hypnosis.

The hours seemed short until the sky shivered, turned from violet to gray, then flushed in radiant, tremulous pink to port. The western sky was pale green, and, above the sealine, like an etching, showed the fronds of a cluster of palms, the land rise of Motutabu.

CHAPTER V

THE DEAD MAN OF MOTUTABU

THE island of Motutabu was shaped like a broad-bladed sickle, the lagoon lying in the crook of the steel with low hills, thickly set with foliage, rising irregularly behind the emerald water patched with purple where the humps of coral came close to the surface. The handle of the sickle showed as a high, precipitous ridge, crowned with the clustering palms that Chalmers had first seen rise above the horizon.

Down the cliff fell a narrow white plume of water. From the tip of the crescent blade to the shoulder handle ran the line of the reef, accented here and there with creaming surf. Up to the barrier the free sea held the rich blue of a peacock's breast.

There was no sign of human life. A few birds wheeled above the hills, and once a flight of gulls scattered over the ridge like blossoms in a gale, and went soaring seaward bent on breakfast.

The dawn wind was fair from the sea, though light. Chalmers hauled in his sheets, dropped foresail and skirted the reef, looking for an opening.

Sayers and Tuan Yuck, the former in a high state of excitement, the latter impassive as ever, both scanned the shore line through binoculars, while Chalmers, setting his feet in the rings of the mainsail and grasping the halyards, mounted to the crotch of the main gaff, resigning the wheel to Hamaku, as he prepared to con the Aku in. His voice came clearly from aloft in the quiet morning air.

“Come up a bit, Hamaku. Little more. Steady. Tomi, come in on your mainsheet. Lend a hand there, Sayers, will you? Keep her up, Hamaku. There's a shore current. Stand by to let go the anchor. Down staysail, Sayers! Smartly. There's a back draft from the point.”

The Aku glided through the reef passage into the broad lagoon, the chain rattled out and the anchor struck, holding bottom in eight fathoms.

“Give her three fathoms of slack, Tomi,” called Chalmers, and slid down the halyards to the deck again.

“Chap must be asleep,” said Sayers. “What the devil's that?”

His exclamation was echoed by cries from Tomi and Hamaku, who threw themselves face down on the deck, lamenting loudly—

“Awwe, ke aitu!” (Alas, the ghosts!)

Even Tuan Yuck had started at the sight, and Chalmers stared in bewilderment. From the shore all about them came blinding flashes of light in rapid succession, as if a battery had suddenly been unmasked.

There was no sound, no sign, only the silent hostility of unwinking flares. Despite himself, Chalmers felt imaginary hair-lifting along his spine. Then, one after the other, the glares were swiftly extinguished.

“What d'ye make of those?” asked Sayers. “Signals?”

Hamaku, still prostrate, broke into a torrent of Hawaiian. Sayers translated.

“He says there are spirits on the island lighting ghost fires.”

The Australian himself seemed to half believe the superstition. A memory of Stevenson's stories of South Sea wizards burning fires that had no visible fuel flashed across Chalmers' recollection.

“Nonsense, Hamaku,” he said. “No pilikia (trouble). Aitu no good along haole (white man).”

The natives raised their heads above the rail and looked fearfully shoreward. Perhaps the Kapitani was right. May be the aitus were afraid of the white man. It might be.

Suddenly they howled again. A secondary line of dazzling lights above the first, back in the hills, broke instantly out in brilliant flame. For two or three minutes they glared, too vivid for eyes to meet, then died away. Tuan Yuck set down his glasses.

“Reflections of some sort, picking up the sun,” he announced. “There were none in the shadow.”

Sayers sighed with visible relief.

“My nerves are in rotten shape,” he said, wiping off the sweat from his forehead.

“Obsidian cliffs, I fancy,” said Tuan Yuck. “Volcanic glass. I've seen something like it before. Nothing like this though.”

The two natives plucked up courage as they sensed the mood of their masters, and the minutes passed without any hostile demonstration from the ghosts or further display of the weird lights. But they absolutely refused to go ashore.

“We'll have to leave them aboard,” said Chalmers. “I suppose we all three want to go. We'd better take our rifles and automatics.”

Sayers came up from below, steadied by his universal stimulant, refusing the coffee that Tuan Yuck prepared and shared with Chalmers.

The two white men pulled ashore with the Chinaman sitting in the stern, a Winchester across his knees. Sayers tugged at his oar, setting a hard pace even for Chalmers, and the whaleboat made rapid progress over the quiet lagoon. They spoke little, and then in whispers as seemed to befit the occasion.

“Chap must be asleep, I fancy,” said Sayers. “We'll be a surprise party. Funny he isn't on the lookout. He must be getting anxious by now over his own outfit.”

“There's a pile of shell over there,” announced Tuan Yuck. “They've done some rotting out. If the wind had been offshore we'd have noticed it before from the smell.”

He leaned over the side of the boat as they neared the beach, a covetous look in his eyes, as he estimated the possible value of the shell that lay undisturbed on the floor of the lagoon, brilliant sea shrubbery waving about the patches, primary-colored fishes darting away as the boat passed over them.

Chalmers' mind was on the marooned captain, sleeping unconscious of his rescuers close at hand. Sayers and Tuan Yuck shared one thought—pearls. That betrayed itself in Sayers' nervous tugs at his oar, and a certain feverish glitter in the Oriental's eyes.

The keel slid softly over the white sand and they sprang out, hauling the boat up the slight incline out of tide reach, their rifles at the carry, hurried with long strides across the beach amid scuttling, rustling land-crabs toward the pandanus and palmetto scrub that shod the hills.

To their right mangroves apparently masked a swamp, and perhaps the exit of a stream. To their left the beach was strewn with irregular masses of coral. They had chosen the only practical landing-place.

With the exception of the faint screams of birds high in the hills, the place seemed invested with a strange silence, that infected them with a feeling of mystery. As they neared the scrub they insensibly slackened their pace.

The quiet was uncanny, utterly at variance with all preconceived ideas of a rescue party. The half-explained incident of the blinding flares still held them to caution. A shout to awaken the supposedly solitary inhabitant might bring a rush of savages or a shower of spears and arrows.

Chalmers, scouting to one side, stopped and beckoned to the Chinaman.

“Here's your volcanic glass,” he said.

He had stopped at a mirror propped against a block of coral, a warped looking-glass, cheaply framed, of the type used for trading purposes. Its surface had caught the rising rays of the sun as they had dropped anchor in the lagoon.

“That's a clever idea,” said Tuan Yuck. “The man knows his South Seas. You saw how it affected our boys. He's set these all about the place on exposed ledges to catch the sun and leave him undisturbed by the natives. They're not particularly friendly in these waters, and there may be other islands nearer than we imagine. I suppose he has them placed so as to catch the sun all the day round. The man has brains.”

Tuan Yuck's masklike face never seemed to change, but a certain quality of hardness entered his glance that indicated his recognition of the brain quality of the captain of the shipwrecked Manu did not have his unqualified approval. It simply meant a harder bargain to drive.

Sayers came hurriedly toward them. “There's a house back in the pandanus!” he cried excitedly. “And a tent behind it. No one in sight, though.”

THEY turned and entered the scrub. The house stood in a little clearing beneath a clump of hala that had been left for shade. It was a cozy portable dwelling, that had evidently been shipped for the purpose in hand. Its original roof was supplemented by a thick thatch of dried palm-leaves for coolness. Just back of it showed a small tent with a fly roof against the heat.

The place looked eminently practical and comfortable, yet it, too, appeared invested with unnatural silence. There is a quality of humanity that links itself with man's habitation in lonely places that is unmistakable. Tent and house seemed alike deserted. Something of mystery the trio could not fathom emanated from the spot, intangible, illogical, but plainly making itself felt.

The natural impulse would have been to shout a welcome, but the three men almost tiptoed to the little veranda. Tuan Yuck noiselessly mounted the steps and knocked on the door softly, then with a vigorous tattoo of his knuckles. There was no answer.

If there had been, it would have startled them as unexpected. The window was draped with a lapa cloth of mulberry bark that did not quite cover it. The Chinaman stooped and looked through the opening. Chalmers and Sayers still stood on the level ground watching him.

“There's a man lying on the bed,” he said, and kept on peering into the room.

Then he straightened up with determination, and the mystery of the occasion seemed to drop from his shoulders.

“Come on,” he said abruptly, opening the unlocked door and leading the way into the house.

The room was one of two, a wooden partition dividing them. It was furnished with a pine bureau, a rough table, two wooden chairs, and a sea-chest under the window. An iron bedstead was in one corner. Clothes hung from hooks, here and there. On the chest a diving-suit was laid.

Tuan Yuck pulled down the tapa from the window and the rays of the early sun entered, irradiating the room, leveling their direct strength upon the bed where the figure of a bearded man lay in the rigidity that unmistakably revealed the hand of death.

CHAPTER VI

LEILA

CHALMERS stopped half way across the room. It was not his first encounter with death. His newspaper experience had divested it of much of its awe and dignity, but to him there seemed something peculiarly tragic about the sudden withdrawal of life from the man they had come so far to rescue. Possibly the dead captain had been alive when Chalmers had announced the schooner's position in Aku's cabin the night before, and had wondered in his last moments where his own schooner was, and if his men would come before the end.

Chalmers' main impulse was that of sympathy for the going-out of the man without a kindly word or friendly hand to minister to his last needs. He forgot the pearls. The long voyage had failed.

Sayers stood by the table, looking at some dishes that held the remnants of a meal. One platter was practically filled with small flat fish, like flounders, that had been fried in meal.

“He didn't die of starvation, that's a cinch,” he announced.

Tuan Yuck wheeled suddenly from the bed he had approached.

“Don't touch any of that food!” he cried sharply. “The man has been poisoned.”

“Poisoned!”

Tuan Yuck nodded.

“By the same thing that killed off the natives,” he said. “The fish in the lagoon. Probably ate them before, a dozen times, without their hurting him.”

They grouped about the bed. A brief look was sufficient. The dead captain's face, where his beard left it uncovered, was blotched with livid purple. So were the hands, one on his breast, one hanging over the edge of the bed at the full length of the arm. The corpse was fully dressed.

“Must have got him right after he ate them,” said Sayers. “I suppose it isn't catching?” he added suspiciously, drawing back a little.

The rare ejaculation that Tuan Yuck used for laughter escaped him.

“You needn't be afraid, Sayers,” he said. “Unless you are scared of his ghost.” Sayers shrugged his shoulders. “His capacity for good or evil will end with his burial.”

“We've got no time to bother with that,” said the Australian. “The Kanakas can bury him. The question is: where are the pearls?”

He commenced to pull the diving paraphernalia from the sea-chest. Chalmers caught his arm.

“The pearls can wait, Sayers,” he said. “We're going to give this man burial, and find out what we can about who he is and where he comes from. Haven't you any sense of decency?”

Sayers turned upon him, his wide-set, yellow teeth showing between his drawn-back lips in a snarl.

“See here, Chalmers,” he said. “You've been boss of this expedition aboard ship so far, but you're not running it from now on. What you need is to use some common sense of your own, and if you haven't got any I'll show you where to head in.”

Chalmers turned to Tuan Yuck. The Chinaman's mouth was stretched in a mirthless grimace, his eyes gleamed in mockery.

“Dead men neither tell tales nor need pearls, my young friend,” he said. “I see no reason for wasting any unnecessary time on this island. The man has made his second blunder, a frequent one, I grant you; he has died too soon.”

Chalmers looked from one to the other. Sayers' snarl had changed to an open grin; Tuan Yuck stood suavely unemotional. The partnership had dissolved, the pretense of fairness was tossed aside. He was aware that they considered him as but one against two, a youngster incomparably their inferior, whose will was but a small matter to be set aside as if of no consequence compared to their own desires.

But he felt no sense of fear or weakness. His jaw set as his will hardened.

“The man is going to be justly treated, alive or dead. His family is to be considered. It is worse to cheat the dead than rob the living. You two promised me fair play when I went into this deal, and I'm going to see that you live up to the bargain.”

His voice revealed the contempt in which he held them, and told of the action that lay behind the words. Sayers' right hand dropped casually toward his hip where the automatic pistol swung at his belt. At an almost imperceptible move of Tuan Yuck's head he arrested the action.

“Time enough to talk of division when we find the pearls,” said the Chinaman. “If you are so desirous of ceremonial, Chalmers, why don't you superintend the funeral arrangements?”

It was the first time Tuan Yuck had dropped the prefix of “Mr.” in addressing Chalmers, and it appeared to the latter as if the man's whole mask had fallen. A film seemed to have cleared from his eyes, and for a moment his soul looked out, sardonic, sinister, utterly selfish. He moved, giving Chalmers a clear view of the table.

Chalmers had paid no attention to the arrangement of the dishes. Now he saw something that first startled, then reassured him.

“There's one point you two seem to have overlooked,” he said with a little ring of triumph in his voice. “This table is set for two. There is some one else on the island.”

Sayers kneeling by the open sea-chest, tossing its contents on the floor, looked up.

“Why don't you go and find them?” he said.

“I am going to,” answered Chalmers.

He swung out of the room, glad to escape from the sordid company it held. Tuan Yuck stood with his hands folded in his loose sleeves, his eyes still sneering. Sayers laughed as Chalmers went out. It was not until he was free of the house that he realized they had shown no surprise at his announcement. It looked as if the secret Sayers and Tuan Yuck had so evidently shared included knowledge of another besides the captain having been left on the island. If that were the case, they evidently held that person of little importance.

“As they do me,” Chalmers finished the thought bitterly.

The resentment he had so often felt in the presence of the Chinaman's inscrutability changed to a determined hostility. He understood that caution was necessary. Until he could find the unknown, they were two against one. The native sailors were not to be counted on, save by the side apparently in power. It would not do to declare war too hastily, he decided.

AS HE approached the tent, the suggestion came suddenly, that whoever had sat at table with the dead captain was probably also poisoned. That would account for the apparent apathy of Tuan Yuck and Sayers.

He hesitated outside the tent. The canvas was in full sunshine. Any one sleeping there must surely have been aroused. Half reluctantly he raised the flap and looked in. There was a cot bed, empty, a camp-stool, a low bureau and a trunk. Chalmers halted as he took in a survey of the interior and drew a sudden breath. On the trunk was a hat of soft white duck, like a man-of-warsman's, but with a quill in it; something that was unmistakably a woman's skirt, and beside it a pair of shoes, workmanlike, but eminently feminine.

A whirl of emotions possessed him. Who was the woman? The captain's wife—if she was not dead? Sayers and the Chinaman would show scant respect for her sex and weakness.

He squared his shoulders with a fresh sense of responsibility. It was no longer merely a question of a dead man's burial and the rights of a dead man's heirs. The woman might be living, suffering.

There was no trace of any one about the clearing, and Chalmers followed a little trail that led across the open toward the hills.

Just within the brush a spring bubbled up in a little basin that had been built up artificially. The path passed it, leading up-hill through a grove of pandanus. Chalmers followed it, coming out on a plateau covered with long grasses. Beyond this the hills, clothed with denser shrubbery from which sandalwood and koa trees sprang thickly, mounted more abruptly.

As Chalmers gazed, a slender figure, clad in white, came out of the forest toward him, knee-high in the waving grasses. Her hair showed radiant in the sun, but her face was pale and the eyes unseeing as the girl came nearer.

Her arms were filled with great, white waxen blossoms and trailing vines. Chalmers caught the heavy, sickly scent of the flowers twenty feet away. They reminded him of a mortuary and he knew they had been gathered for the dead.

At first he thought her blind, so vacant was the gaze of the eyes that were the deep blue of the open sea. Then, suddenly, she saw him standing there. The soul came back into her glance as if recalled from very far away. Her lips parted, the flowers fell to the ground.

One short-sleeved arm was raised toward him in appeal. Brief as the gesture was, Chalmers noticed the blue veins showing faintly beneath the satiny surface, tanned to pale gold.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Her voice held the quality of a linnet's song. The blue eyes were still a little vacant, the lids stained with grief. It seemed as if she were walking in her sleep.

Chalmers stammered a reply, trying to find phrases that would reassure her, all the chivalry of his nature aroused at the sight of her brave helplessness. But his words halted.

“I—why, I—we came to take you away,” he said.

“To take us away? Why did you stay so long? You are a day too late—just a day too late. If you had only hurried—perhaps——”

The life in her eyes died out. Her hands groped toward him. She swayed uncertainly as Chalmers sprang forward and caught her in his arms.

He ran with her to the little spring and bathed her wrists and forehead in the cool water. Her head lay on his knees. In the checkered sunlight her hair was golden-brown and, despite the moisture that turned it to little tendrils on her brow, filled with the iridescence of splintered rainbows. The very ghost of a girl she seemed, Chalmers thought, as she lay slim and pale, her breast barely lifting beneath the white middy blouse she wore.

His manhood warmed at the sight of her utter helplessness. He wondered what relation she was to the dead captain. Probably his daughter, he decided, still working to bring her back to consciousness, already appointing himself her champion. As her protector he felt himself capable of handling a dozen Tuan Yucks, a score of Sayers!

He felt her body relax. A sigh parted her lips to which the color was beginning to return. The upper one drooped in a pendule over the pearly teeth. A faint rose tint came into her cheeks, and long lashes fluttered. A wave of tenderness came over him. He lifted the little hand he had been gently chafing, and raised it to his lips in token of fealty. She shivered a little at the contact and her eyes opened, looking questioningly into his.

There was a slight rustle in the thicket. Chalmers looked up to see Tuan Yuck regarding them, his face expressionless, his eyes inscrutable.

“You have found Miss Denman, I see,” he said. “Our friend Sayers is still looking for—what he will not find in a hurry, I fancy. We are at your service, Miss Denman.”

The girl shrank from him, closer to Chalmers.

“I do not know you,” she faltered. “Where is Butler—and the crew? Did you come in the schooner with them?”

She was trembling violently. Chalmers gently took her arm.

“We'll tell you all about it presently, Miss Denman,” he said. “We are here to help you. Perhaps we had better go down to the house.”

“Yes,” she assented, then started back. “Wait,” she said. “Where are my flowers? I must get my flowers. They are for my father.”

“They are just a little way back,” said Chalmers. “Shall I get them?”

“No!” They went back along the trail together and gathered up the blooms.

“Thank you,” she said. “My name is Leila Denman.”

“And mine, Bruce Chalmers,” he answered.

“I don't quite understand,” she went on. “You say you came here to help me, and I should be very grateful—but—” her eyes filled with tears and she caught her under lip between her teeth—“I have tried to be brave,” she went on, her voice tremulous, “but I could do nothing alone. I could not—even—bury him.”

Chalmers longed to take her into his arms and comfort her as one would a child. Her broken phrases called up the horror of her situation, alone with her dead father, forced, in with her frail strength, to plan crude, helpless methods of disposing of the body. It was horrible. He marveled at the spirit that had kept her from madness.

“It will be all right now, Miss Denman,” he said, conscious of the poverty of his phrase. “We will do all we can. We came to rescue your father. We—I—did not know you were here.”

As he spoke the suspicion came to him that Tuan Yuck and Sayers had been aware of her presence from the first.

CHAPTER VII

CHALMERS HAS A CLOSE CALL

THE burial of the dead sea-captain took place at night beneath a blaze of stars. Tuan Yuck cajoled Hamaku and Tomi ashore by explaining to them the mystery of the flashing mirrors, and a grave was dug in the deep soil of the first ridge of the hills.

The rude coffin was interred before Chalmers called the bereaved girl from the tent to which she had taken her sorrow after performing the last few personal offices for the dead that she had insisted on carrying out with her own hands. As they reached the grave beside which two great fires were leaping, sending out the incense of burning sandalwood, the Hawaiians tossed into the pit fragrant masses of wood orchids and maile vine, then stepped back into the shadows. Suddenly Tomi's sweet tenor chanted softly a native lament to the chords of Sayers' zither.

It was theatrical but somehow it did not seem bizarre. The night-wind waved the palm crests like funeral plumes and set the long grasses shivering on the ridge. The reef below them sighed faintly; beyond, the sea ran out in lonely leagues to where it blended with the starry sky. They seemed very remote from all the world and very close to the things that lie beyond it.

Chalmers stood beside the weeping girl in a silence full of sympathy but embarrassed for lack of words. Across the grave Tuan Yuck in his Oriental, priestlike robes was a mystic figure in the swift alternations of flame and shadow. It was he who had planned the obsequies and had persuaded Sayers into at least an outward show of sympathy. Yet Chalmers felt instinctively that all his deferential courtesy toward the girl covered some hidden purpose of his own to accomplish which it was necessary to win her confidence.

As the music ended Tuan Yuck stepped to the other side of Leila Denman.

“Your philosophies and mine, Miss Denman,” he said in his silken voice, “hold many minor differences, but in one main matter they agree—that there is no death. And I think your father, like Robert Louis Stevenson, would choose such a place as this for the last sleep. You remember:

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.”

The girl turned to him gratefully.

“Thank you,” she said, “and thank you for him, too.”

She took his arm and he led her down the ridge. Sayers came forward and joined Chalmers.

“The Chink's a wonder, isn't he?” he said. “You've got to hand it to him. A bit too smart for my way of thinking. We've got to keep our weather eyes open, Chalmers, or he'll get the best of us.”

There was a quality in Sayers's voice that suggested that the Australian's admiration for Tuan Yuck was not unalloyed with envy. Chalmers determined to foster any spark of ill-will that existed. It might reduce the odds later on if any issue arose over his determination to protect the girl's interests.

“He likes to play the leader,” he prompted.

“And he'd like to get a leader's share,” said Sayers who had been drinking and whose voice was husky. “You and I have got to stick to each other, Chalmers,” he went on. “White against yellow, you know. He's a sly one. A regular Mongolian Mephistopheles, he is.”

They had been watching the natives pile a cairn of loose lava boulders above the dead and now they moved on down the hill.

“The girl's a wonder,” said Sayers. “Did you notice her skin, Chalmers? Put pearls around that throat of hers and you couldn't see 'em, they'd match that close. And her figure!” His tongue clucked suddenly. “A man might do worse—eh? A beauty like that, fortune or no fortune!”

The reek of gin was on the Australian's breath and Chalmers turned away to conceal his disgust. They had crossed the clearing. Tuan Yuck and Leila Denman were standing by the veranda of the little house. The light of two lanterns showed her face wan and tired. But she held it proudly erect. As they came up she turned to them.

“I don't know what to say to you all,” she said. “You've been—just wonderful.”

She choked back a sob and stretched out her hand to each of them. Chalmers bit his lip in restraint as Sayers held it while he gazed at her appraisingly.

She turned to him.

“Good night, Mr. Chalmers,” she said. “You have been very kind and thoughtful.”

Chalmers, who had felt himself a blunderer all day as he tried to express his sympathy in ways that would not jar her sensitiveness, stammered something in reply. He fancied he felt a faint pressure return his handclasp. He watched her go into her tent, saw it faintly illumined through the trees and followed Tuan Yuck into the little house.

SAYERS had already established himself at the little table with his deck of cards and a bottle of gin. He looked up from arranging his layout at Canfield as the others entered.

“Going to stay ashore tonight, Chalmers?” he asked. “I am. I've staked out the cot in the next room. I've no fancy for that. You're welcome to it.” He jerked his head in the direction of the bed in which the captain had died.

“There's a hammock on the veranda,” replied Chalmers. “I'll use that.”

“Going to play sentinel over the lady, eh? All right, you watch me and I'll watch you. She's the best pearl on the island, and so far she's the only one in sight. Some figure, Chalmers. I envy you!”

He broke off, checked by the look in Chalmers' eyes.

“You needn't look at me as if you wanted to murder me, son,” he said. “You needn't be jealous of me. I'm a married man. Hang it, I'll lend you my zither to serenade her if you think it'll help you any.”

Tuan Yuck interrupted.

“I shall sleep on the schooner,” he said silkily. “I prefer my own cabin. And let me recommend to you both the maxim that sex and business do not go together.”

“You're a cold-blooded squid,” said Sayers as the Chinaman went out.

For the first time the Australian showed the effects of liquor. His blotched face was crimsoned, the muddy whites of his eyes transfused with blood, and the veins on his temples stood out in painful relief.

“Listen, you young Puritan,” he said, pouring some liquor into a cup and pushing it across the table to Chalmers, “have a drink for once. Drink to the lady, and no offense meant. An' good luck to you. 'Member what I said? A man might do worse. 'Member what else I said about that slit-eyed yellow devil that's just gone out. He don't pull any wool over my eyes with his smooth tricks.”

He drained his own cup and took up his cards, shuffling them in nervous fingers, oblivious of the other's presence.

Chalmers left him, glad to breathe the outer air. He walked down to the edge of the water. The light in Leila's tent was out, he noticed. The lamp in Tuan Yuck's cabin showed like a baleful eye. Back in the dead man's room he heard Sayers singing in maudlin mood:

“Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss within the cup,
And I'll not ask for wine.”

He strode the full length of the lagoon, responsibility heavy upon him and, taking advantage of the low tide, rounded a promontory that jutted out from the precipitous cliff that formed the handle of the is land's sickle formation. He clambered over the scattered rocks at the end of the cape and jumped on to the wet beach.

Instantly he sank halfway to his knees, the sand holding him in a vise, while something tugged at him as if some buried monster was trying to pull him down. He had leaped into a quicksand. Instantly he flung himself forward, spreading his arms wide, flat on the surface as he felt himself buried almost to the hips.

The treacherous sand sucked at his finger-tips. Try as he would he could not free either of his legs. He battled ceaselessly, fighting off the panic that attacked him. As well as he could he raised his head and shouted. The cliff echoed it, a few startled seabirds rose screaming but, even as he called, he knew the uselessness of it. The schooner was too far away, almost half a mile from shore, and he had walked nearly two miles from the landing-place. His only help lay with himself and already he felt that he was weakening, the insidious steady pull of the sand winning its victory inch by inch.

Every effort only worked against him. At last he lay exhausted, his cheek against the sand. Above him the Southern Cross burned in a sky of velvet. The tide was at the slack. Presently it would turn, and long before morning, if the sand had not buried him, the water would act as his shroud. He could hear the ripples lapping as if they were chuckling at his predicament.

Leila would be left to the scant mercy of Tuan Yuck and Sayers. Tuan Yuck, who had said that “dead men neither told tales nor needed pearls,” and Sayers, who had leered as he talked of the skin of her throat. And he would be as helpless as the dead captain lying in his grave on the ridge.

He lay quiet for a while, summoning all his energies. His body slowly sank into the treacherous surface. Once more he raised his head and shouted, only to hear the echo from the cliff and the cries of the protesting birds.

He turned his head shoreward. The rock he had jumped from was not very far away. Seaweed fringed its base. By a supreme effort he threw himself in its direction, twisting his body at the waist and struggling to free his legs from the steady suction of the sand. Cramped until rupture seemed imminent, his fingers just touched the fronds of the seaweed—and no more.

Fight as he might he could not gain a hand-grasp. And the pain of his position was paralyzing him below the waist.

His clawing fingers sank deep, his head dropped and the grit entered his lips. He had come to the end of his struggle. The sand clogged his nostrils and his hands twitched convulsively, burying themselves.

They struck something solid beneath the sand—the surface of a submerged rock. Hope marshaled the retreating remnants of his will and strength.

Groping while he raised his body, he found a crevice and wedged his fingers into it. The rock was only a few inches below the surface; his forearms rested on it. He gained an inch, two inches; at the expense of agony, three inches. One more and he clutched a stout stem of kelp weed. It was slippery but it held, and he got a second hand-grip.

In five minutes he had dragged himself clear, crawling to the top of the rock. He lay there exhausted for a while, then sat up to chafe his numbed legs. Far off, the tiny light in Tuan Yuck's cabin winked and went out.

Midway along the tall cliff the waterfall streamed down like a silken scarf in the wind. At the base of the precipice low feathery vegetation grew luxuriantly. The sand was dotted with clumps of lava. Close to shore it was probably firm, but Chalmers was in no mood for further adventure. At the cliff's end a high buttress of rock ran out into deep water. At flood tide the place was shut off from the rest of the island. At all but low tide the quicksand made it unapproachable.

As he rested, Chalmers reviewed the situation. He had cheated the quicksand, but the human odds were still against him. The death of Captain Denman had complicated matters.

He had anticipated Tuan Yuck and Sayers driving a hard bargain with the skipper, but at least it would have been two men against two for fair play. He felt certain that his own ideas of chivalry were not shared by either of his partners. The Chinaman had frankly said that sex and business were incompatible. Sayers regarded womanhood only from the coarser standpoint. The best thing would be, he decided, to wait until Tuan Yuck showed his hand, which he would undoubtedly when the pearls materialized.

The pearls! Chalmers chafed at his own stupidity. That was the reason of Tuan Yuck's kindliness to the girl and his persuasion of Sayers into a semblance of respect for the dead. They wanted to find out where the pearls were before they uncovered their real motives. And as soon as they did, he must be ready to act.

He freed himself from the useless labyrinth of conjecture. He would need all his wits about him on the morrow, and perhaps his strength. Every muscle in his body ached as he made his way back to the house. The lamp still burned above Sayers' head where he had fallen asleep amid the scattered cards.

There was a canvas hammock slung at one end of the veranda and Chalmers rolled into it. Almost instantly he was asleep, and for the first time a girl's face filled his dreams, the face of Leila Denman.

CHAPTER VIII

TUAN YUCK DROPS HIS MASK

CHALMERS awoke before sunrise, with stiffened limbs still aching from the struggle in the quicksand. He had turned in all standing and he now surveyed himself ruefully. Drying sand dripped from him like water, and his usually natty appearance was changed to that of a beachcomber sadly down on his luck.

A glance through the window showed Sayers still asprawl over the table. The flap of Leila Denman's tent was closed. He resolved to swim off to the schooner and secure fresh clothing, coming back in the whaleboat with Tuan Yuck.

He walked to the edge of the water, took off his belt and laid it with the automatic in its holster on a ledge of rocks. Then he stripped and swam out through the cool water with long, luxurious strokes, his tired muscles relaxing, and hauled himself up to the bows by the bobstay.

As he went toward the cabin, he saw Hamaku and Tomi by the taffrail busily plucking the last of the schooner's chickens. The natives responded to his greeting in a surly fashion they had developed of late.

Chalmers took no notice of it.

“Bimeby you bring chicken along shore for breakfast,” he said.

Hamaku muttered something and Tomi laughed. Chalmers took the men up smartly.

“What was that?” he demanded.

“Big Boss speak you eat along schooner this morning,” replied Hamaku, a spice of impudence in tone and look.

“What Big Boss? You sabe plenty I your boss?”

“Tuan Yuck he speak you boss along ship maybe. He boss along land. We along land now.”

Chalmers looked at the man. The native's eyes shifted.

“Tuan Yuck he plenty big kahuna (wizard),” he said, half surly, half apologetic.

Chalmers forebore to press the point. It was evident that Tuan Yuck had impressed the natives with his own power through the most effective medium, their superstition. But he determined that Leila Denman, at least, should not come aboard the schooner until matters were satisfactorily arranged.

“You fetch me two, three pail fresh water,” he said.

The natives obeyed and sluiced the brine from his skin. He went below to his own cabin, opposite the Chinaman's, and put on fresh underwear, clean duck trousers and a shirt. Then he fished out a pair of shoes, slipped them on and went into the main cabin.

Tuan Yuck's door opened and the Oriental came out, fully dressed. He expressed no surprise at Chalmers' appearance, beyond the slightest lift of his eyebrows at the latter's spruceness.

THEY rowed ashore in silence, and Chalmers retrieved his belt and pistol. As they walked up the beach, Leila Denman came toward them. Her face was pale, despite its golden weather-tan, but her eyes were clear and steady with only the faint trace of weeping about their long-lashed rims.

She greeted them cordially with perfect self-possession, with something almost boyish in her erectness and the way she gave to each her cool, slim hand.

“I don't know, Miss Denman,” said Tuan Yuck, “whether Mr. Chalmers has told you that I am the chef of this expedition, but such is the case. And if you will breakfast with us aboard the schooner I can promise you broiled chicken and some excellent coffee. Perhaps you will give us some Motutabu papayas in exchange?”

Chalmers, standing beside him, caught the girl's glance and slightly shook his head.

“I am not so lacking in hospitality,” she answered, accepting the cue without hesitation. “Though I must admit the chicken sounds tempting. I have almost forgotten what one looks like.”

Chalmers, watching Tuan Yuck, thought he saw disappointment in the Oriental's eyes. But it did not show in his voice as he replied.

“That will be delightful. But you must let us provide the chickens.” He turned and gave an order in Hawaiian to the natives, who started for the boat.

A hoarse shout stopped them. Sayers, sodden with liquor, unkempt and morose, slouched off the veranda and joined them. Leila bestowed an involuntary look upon his uncouth figure in the crumpled, dingy ducks, that made the Australian flush and mutter something about changing his clothes before he shambled down the beach and went off to the schooner.

The meal was served out-of-doors at a table placed under the hala trees. Leila Denman sat at one end, facing Tuan Yuck, with Chalmers at her right, opposite Sayers. The Australian gave evidence that his principal mission to the schooner had been to satisfy his appetite for liquor. He ate nothing, but sat with his hairy fingers beating a nervous tattoo on the table.

The Chinaman waited for the Hawaiians. to clear away before he spoke. The quality of the Oriental's mood showed in his glances. His face was bland as ever, but his eyes held the hardness of orbs of polished metal. A sinister sternness seemed to emanate from the man as hidden flame or ice might make itself manifest.

To Chalmers the morning was rife with a prescience of malignancy that pressed on him even as the air. He sat with his mind alert, his nerves tense for action, waiting for the move that should determine what that action was to be.

“In the matter of leaving the island, Miss Denman,” said Tuan Yuck at last. “Is there any particular place you want to go—Sydney, for example, or Honolulu?”

He spoke with grave courtesy, but to Chalmers, question and tone alike were tinged with mockery.

“I hardly know,” she answered. “I have practically no relatives.” Chalmers saw a swift glitter in Tuan Yuck's eyes. “I have no mother—we were quite alone, father and I.”

Sayers' tongue clucked suddenly and his restless fingers pressed on the table till the tips whitened.

“You should consider that you are quite an heiress,” went on the Chinaman, “that is, if the character of the shell already rotted out is any criterion, the lagoon should hold a fortune. The shells on the beach are typical pearl oysters. Aside, of course, from what your father found already?”

The inflection of the speech made it a question. Leila answered it readily.

“He found a great many,” she said. “Some of them I believe are very valuable, though I am no judge.”

Sayers's dull eyes sparkled. The glitter in Tuan Yuck's gaze intensified.

“Ah!” he said, simply but the ejaculation was far from colorless. “I should like to see them. I may be able to give you some idea of what they are really worth.”

The girl got up from the table and went into her tent before Chalmers could prevent her. Sayers's glance followed her greedily, his jaw was thrust forward. The veins on his forehead seemed to writhe, and his big stumpy-fingered hands worked as if they already clutched the gems. Tuan Yuck sat immobile, his glittering eyes the only sign of life in the masklike face. Chalmers leaned forward speaking in a low voice.

“There is to be no bargaining,” he said firmly. “Her heritage is all that is left her. You know our agreement?”

Tuan Yuck turned his baleful eyes toward the speaker. The shadow of a smile, or a sneer, flitted across his face.

“What agreement?” demanded Sayers hoarsely.

“You called it a gentlemen's agreement, Sayers,” said Chalmers. “At all events I intend to see it carried out. We are not going to rob the dead or cheat the living while I can prevent it.”

Sayers's retort was stopped by the reappearance of the girl, bearing a shallow wooden bowl. The Australian's tongue showed between his teeth like a panting dog's, his face was patched with purple, his eyes bloodshot, gazing on the calabash as if hypnotized.

Leila Denman set the polished bowl of native wood on the table before Tuan Yuck. It seemed to be nearly full of a milky opalescence. Sayers stood up and looked at it. He gave a bellow of disappointment.

“Those ain't all?” he demanded.

The girl looked up with surprise at the rudeness of his tone.

“These are only the seeds and baroques,” she said. “I always carry the real pearls here to keep them in good condition.”

She put her hand into the opening of her middy blouse and pulled up from her breast a bag of soft leather, untying the narrow silk ribbon that suspended it from her neck. About the collar of her blouse she wore a black silk handkerchief. This she unfastened and spread out on the table. On to it she poured out from the bag a number of shimmering globules that shone with satiny luster as they rolled a little way here and there and settled into groups.

Chalmers, who knew little of pearls, held his breath at the beauty of the nacreous mass of varying color, silver and rose and azure. The sunshine checkered the table-top with gold, and in it the pearls seemed to be alive, so vivid was the iridescence. A few were small, the majority larger than the pink pearl of Taroi. At least a dozen were the size of husked hazel-nuts and two, almost perfectly matched for size and shape, were as big as marbles, glorified, transcendent marbles, rosy-silver of hue with a bloom that seemed almost fuzzy in its refraction.

Tuan Yuck's eyes blazed. Sayers, his hands gripping the table, rocked gently to and fro as he stood licking his feverish lips with the tip of his tongue.

“There are fifty-nine of them,” said Leila Denman. “They are beautiful, aren't they?”

TUAN YUCK, with fingers that trembled ever so slightly, drew the black square of silk with its precious contents slowly toward him. Sayers, breathing hard, followed every inch of the Chinaman's movements with fascinated avarice as Tuan Yuck delicately turned over the pearls with his pointed fingers.

“It is hard to fix values,” he said. “All these are exceptionally well shaped and they are wonderfully alive, owing to your plan of keeping them close to your body, Miss Denman. These pearls—” he set apart six of the gems—“are easily worth twenty-five hundred apiece. There are ten at least worth much more than that. This matched pair I have never seen equaled. Their value is only to be estimated after they get in the market. I might miss the price they'll fetch by thousands. Roughly speaking I do not believe I am exaggerating by saying that the lot should represent between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand dollars.”

Leila Denman's face matched the palest of the pearls despite her tan. Chalmers gasped. Sayers moistened his dry lips with his tongue before he could speak in a voice that squeaked ludicrously.

“And the lagoon!” he ejaculated.

Tuan Yuck lifted his shoulders in a non-committal shrug.

“These may have come from an exceptionally rich patch,” he said. His voice had lost its silkiness and sounded sharply vibrant. “Pearl oysters are sick oysters and the sickness often runs in colonies or patches. The lagoon may yield as many more like these, or less. Or it may hold pearls to almost fabulous values, like the lagoon of Faleita where Nacre Williams harvested over four million dollars before he stripped it. Lagoons are lotteries.”

He replaced the pearls gently, one by one, in the little bag and placed it on top of the seed pearls in the calabash in the center of the table.

“You are a very rich young woman, Miss Denman,” he said.

The girl set a hand to her heart.

“It seems so unfair,” she said. “Father risked his life for them. If it was not for them he would be alive. All that money, and none of it of use to help him.”

“Pearls ain't much good on a desert island,” said Sayers, looking hungrily at the bowl with its precious contents. “They ain't pills, you know.”

Leila Denman looked at him but he seemed unconscious of his grossness. The man had coarsened rapidly in the last few hours. He laughed at what he esteemed a witticism.

“They wouldn't have been good for anything except to play marbles on the beach with, miss,” he went on. “I'll warrant you'd be glad to trade 'em for a home trip.”

Chalmers set his jaw, clenching his fists till the nails scored his palms. The pieces were being set on the board.

“Put your pearls away, Miss Denman,” he said.

She reached for the bag but drew back her hand as Sayers clapped his big palm over the top of the calabash.

“Hold on a minute,” he said. “There's no use beating about the bush. When your schooner got wrecked, miss, and all hands lost, I was the only one who found out where you and your father were stranded—lost in the middle of the ocean. You'd both of you have rotted if it hadn't been for me. I got up this expedition and Tuan Yuck there financed it. Young Galahad there,” he nodded at Chalmers, “was navigator. We were all in the deal. And it wasn't a pleasure trip. It cost money and we expect returns on the investment.”

“That seems only fair,” said the girl, trembling a little as she sensed the growing excitement. “How much do you want?”

“The expenses have been about two thousand dollars,” broke in Chalmers. “The schooner can be resold for something. Give these men five thousand apiece for their investment returns, as they call them, and that will end it.”

Sayers laughed loudly. Tuan Yuck's eyes danced behind their slitted lids like a mocking devil's. He said nothing, content while Sayers played his game.

“And you?” asked the girl, turning to Chalmers.

“I want nothing,” he answered.

“To —— with you!” cried Sayers. “Because you are stuck on a pretty face do you think our brains are addled? This is a business proposition. It's all—or nothing!”

Chalmers' hand dropped to the grip of his automatic. Leila Denman looked at Tuan Yuck sitting opposite to her, bland, motionless, his cold glittering eyes the only signs of life or interest.

“You see,” he answered her look, “our impulses are entirely mercenary. Chalmers has suffered a change of heart, quite natural at his age.”

“You promised fair treatment and no bargaining!” cried Chalmers hotly.

Tuan Yuck emitted a derisive sound like a goat's bleat.

“You are still very young,” he answered.

“We're wasting time,” said Sayers. “I want to get at that lagoon. When we're through with that you two can get a free passage home, or you can stay behind and play Adam and Eve for all we care. Meanwhile I'll take care of these.”

He lifted the bag in his left hand as Chalmers sprang to his feet, leveling his pistol at Sayers' head. The Australian drew simultaneously and fired as Chalmers pressed the trigger.

There was only one shot. The action of Chalmers' automatic had been choked by the quicksand. He heard the bark of Sayers's gun and felt the heat of the flame from the barrel as he vaulted across the table and crashed into the startled Australian. His swift leap had disconcerted Sayers's none-too-steady aim, and the bullet had gone wild.

Chalmers rushed his man who was still staggering from the impact. Sayers fired again wildly and in the same fraction of a second Chalmers' right smashed viciously up and landed on the Australian's jaw, straightening him for a second before he began to sag like a half-filled sack of meal and pitched forward senseless under the table.

The girl stood wide-eyed. The table was strewn with the scattered seed pearls and baroques, but the bag of pearls had vanished. Tuan Yuck stood at the other end of the table imperturbable, his arms folded. It was not his policy to interfere while others played his game, and the elimination of Chalmers or Sayers, or both of them, fitted in with the moves of his opening play.

“Have you got them?” asked Chalmers.

She shook her bead, looking at Tuan Yuck.

Chalmers whirled. The Oriental's elbow twitched and Chalmers flung himself upon him, pinning his arms to his sides and grappling for the gun concealed in the long sleeves, twisting him round and bending him over the table until it seemed as if the Chinaman's back must break.

Tuan Yuck struggled fiercely but silently. Writhing, he snapped at Chalmers with his teeth like a mad dog, frothing at the lips, his eyes glaring, the mask of his face distorted with rage and pain. The pressure of his spine against the table-edge beneath Chalmers' weight paralyzed his nerve centers. His body collapsed beneath Chalmers's weight, his arms grew limp and the automatic fell to the ground.

“Give me that gun, Miss Denman,” panted Chalmers.

The girl came swiftly to his side, knelt and picked it up. She was trembling, but she controlled her weakness and thrust the pistol into Chalmers' groping hand.

“I've got the pearls, too,” she said. “They fell out of his sleeve.”

Tuan Yuck, as his cracking spine got relief, suddenly shouted aloud in Hawaiian. Chalmers clamped his left hand over his mouth and rammed the automatic's muzzle viciously under the Chinaman's armpit.

“I'll kill you, cheerfully,” he said, “if you don't keep quiet.”

Tuan Yuck knew that he meant it. “Let me up,” he whispered. “You've broken my back.”

“Put up your hands!”

Tuan Yuck obeyed with a groan as Chalmers suffered him to stand up. His eyes gleamed as he straightened. Leila Denman cried out in swift alarm—

“The Kanakas!”

Chalmers, grinding the pistol-muzzle into Tuan Yuck's ribs, heard the soft pad of running feet on the firm sand behind him. It was Hamaku and Tomi coming to the rescue of the Big Boss.

“Tell them to stop,” he said to Tuan Yuck. “In English! Quick!”

The Chinaman sullenly obeyed. The natives halted half-way down the beach.

“Tell them to go back—down to the water. Watch them, Miss Denman.”

“They're going,” she reported.

“All right. Now, do you think you can get me Sayers's gun? Take off his belt.”

The girl was behind him and he did not see the strained look on her face nor the effort with which she pulled herself together. The loss of her father, the disclosure of the intentions of Tuan Yuck and Sayers, culminating with the swift turmoil of the last few minutes, had taxed her strength to the utmost. She did not trust herself to answer, but knelt beside Sayers, prostrate under the table, unfastened his belt and dragged it from beneath his body. He moaned a little, and she hurried back to where Chalmers still held the pistol against the Chinaman's body.

“He's coming to,” she said.

“Quickly then,” he answered, unconscious of everything but the need of haste. “Take the pistol out of the holster. Put down your arms,” he commanded Tuan Yuck. “Now give me the belt, Miss Denman. Hold the gun against him. Arms close to your sides, Tuan Yuck. Now, Miss Denman, I'm going to strap him up. Remember he wouldn't hesitate to kill us. Fire if he makes a move. Can you do it?”

“Yes.”

She bit her lips in the attempt to steady her voice. Chalmers cast a swift glance at her. Her face was deadly white, but her chin was uptilted and her eyes narrowed with determination. He swiftly ran Sayers' belt about the Chinaman's body, cinching it until the leather sank into the flesh.

“That holds him,” he said triumphantly. “Now for the legs.” He used his own belt to truss the other's ankles and leaned Tuan Yuck helplessly against a tree. “That's all over,” said Chalmers. “Now for Sayers. Bravo for you, Miss Denman.”

Even as he spoke the girl swayed, her eyes closed, the pistol dropped from her hand and she swooned. Chalmers caught her about the waist as she fell. Under the table Sayers was dragging himself up to his knees. Down the beach Hamaku and Tomi had jumped into the whaleboat and were pulling furiously for the schooner.

Chalmers thought rapidly. Hampered with the unconscious girl, the odds were against him. The rifles they had brought ashore the day before were still in the house, but there were more aboard the schooner. If Hamaku had gone for them they might be picked off at long range unless they sought cover.

He lowered the girl gently to the ground and picked up his own pistol from beside the table, as Sayers got waveringly to his feet and lunged toward him. Sidestep ping, he brought the butt of the automatic down on the top of the Australian's head. Blood spurted and Sayers fell like a log.

Chalmers thrust all the guns into the bosom of his shirt and stooped to pick up the girl once more. Tuan Yuck still leaned helplessly against the tree, his eyes malignant as a shark's. The thought came into Chalmers' brain to kill both him and Sayers and make an end of it. For a second he hesitated.

A bullet came whining through the little grove high above his head. Hamaku had remembered the other rifles and was firing from the deck of the schooner. Another shot came lower but wide and to the right. With the girl in his arms Chalmers ran to the house, the bullets trailing him, sped up the veranda steps and into the house where he laid Leila on the bed.

The Winchesters were leaning against the bureau. He pumped a cartridge into the lever of one of them and knelt by the door to aim. Hamaku had jumped into the boat and was crouching in the bows while Tomi rowed for the shore.

Guessing at the range, Chalmers fired. The bullet hit the water and ricochetted, skipping over the surface close to the boat.

Hamaku replied and the shot smashed the window of the house, thudding into the wall above the girl and going on through the frail woodwork. Chalmers wondered at the native's skill, then remembered he had been a member of the Hawaiian National Guard. The flimsy house was only a protection in the way it might hide them from his aim.

He took the senseless girl from the bed and carried her into the next room and put her on the floor for safety. Back at the door again, he found the boat had landed under the cover of some rocks between which Hamaku and Tomi were now crawling toward the clearing.

CHAPTER IX

CHECK FOR TUAN YUCK

THE minutes passed in a silence that was ominous. The trunks of the hala trees, though neither big nor thickly set, yet afforded a cover that made accurate shooting difficult. The beach itself, while fairly open from the front of the house to the water, was strewn with masses of lava and coral rock, behind which a whole company might advance in open order and never expose themselves.

Once the natives succeeded in getting in touch with Tuan Yuck and Sayers, the odds would be four to one; three to one actually, as far as firearms were concerned. They had brought six Winchesters on the trip besides the three automatics. These last, one out of commission until it could be cleaned of the sand, were in Chalmers' possession with three of the rifles. But his supply of cartridges was limited. And, if the others attacked simultaneously on three sides, they could riddle the house with every chance of at least crippling the girl and himself.

One hope lay in the smash over the head he had given the Australian with the pistol. He hoped he had put him seriously out of commission.

Either of them, he thought, would have had no compunction in killing him in cold blood. They had tried to. It would not have been murder if he had retaliated in kind. But the girl might not have so considered it. He wondered how much she thought him tarred with the same brush as the others. Their plan of getting money for the rescue, even on a compromise basis of reward, appeared to him now entirely too mercenary for him to have ever considered. That was the reason why Tuan Yuck and Sayers, reading him aright, had concealed their knowledge of the girl, fearing he would be overscrupulous.

They had used him as a catspaw. He burned with resentment at the thought. They had treated him as a youngster, but from now on they would find him a different person to deal with.

If only he could get on even terms! The Hawaiians were evidently under Tuan Yuck's control. That the Chinaman was absolutely treacherous was assured. He believed that the Oriental's crafty brain held a determination to ultimately take the entire treasure for himself after he had used, first Chalmers, and now Sayers to secure it.

Chalmers watched with every sense alert. He did not dare leave the doorway lest the natives should make a successful rush across the open to liberate Tuan Yuck. And all this time the girl lay unconscious. He was not afraid for her life, save from a stray bullet, understanding the exhaustion under which she had broken down, but it seemed heartless to make no attempt to revive her. Yet she was safer as she was, he concluded, listening for a sound from the other room.

It was oppressively hot. The perspiration ran off his forehead into his eyes. His palms were slippery on the rifle stock, and his thin clothes, saturated in spots with moisture, stuck to him unpleasantly. It was not yet noon, but a thermometer on the door-jamb registered 110°. There was a vague mistiness in the air that grayed the usually vivid shadows of the trees, and the sunshine seemed to have lost its brightness, though not its power for heat.

Two shots came together, wide-angled from his right. One plowed a furrow across the planking of the veranda in front of where he crouched. The other, doubtless fired by Tomi, had either hit a tree or gone wild.

He could see nothing, but the location of the firing bothered him. It meant that the two natives were working round to the back of the house. There was plenty of brush there to conceal them and no windows for outlook. It meant also that they were not going to risk themselves across the space in front.

There was a side window in the other room and he went swiftly to it, hoping for the chance of a lucky shot. His blood was up and he had no compunctions about firing to kill at the men who, from sheer lust of gain, were willing to shoot the girl and himself in cold blood. He was equally determined that they should not lay a finger on the girl's inheritance as long as he could prevent it. He wondered, grimly, what Tuan Yuck had promised Hamaku and Tomi.

Leila Denman stirred as he crossed the room, opened her eyes and looked dazedly about her. As she caught sight of Chalmers, kneeling beside the window, rifle in hand, terror joined the nausea that swept over her. For the moment all the events that had brought her to this pass were blotted out.

“Who are you?” she asked, staring at him. “Where is my father?”

She raised herself on one elbow as Chalmers turned toward her. A bullet suddenly sent the lower pane of glass shivering to the floor.

“Lie down flat!” he commanded. “It's all right, Miss Denman, please do as I tell you.”

He caught sight of a brown figure bounding from a clump of coral to the undergrowth and fired hastily through the broken window. The bushes waved and rustled and he realized with a swift qualm of apprehension that he had missed and that Tuan Yuck would soon be released and their refuge made untenable.

While he hesitated, desperately seeking for some plan of action, the girl sat up, despite his protest, and then got to her feet.

“I'm all right now,” she said. “I remember everything. They are firing at us. Give me a gun. I can shoot, too. The cowards!”

He looked at her in surprised admiration. The color had come back to her cheeks and lips and the sparkle to her eyes. Mouth and chin were set, every line of her lithe figure expressed determination.

“You must not expose yourself,” he said.

She flashed him a look.

“I am not going to faint again,” she answered. “I despise myself for it. And I am not going to let you do all the fighting. Give me the gun I took from that man.”

A bullet came from the left, straight through outer wall and partition, humming between them where they stood.

“That's Tuan Yuck,” said Chalmers.

The girl neither blanched nor wavered, even when a second missile came from the opposite direction and the upper half of the window tinkled on the floor. They were surrounded. The shell of the portable house was powerless to protect them. With three rifles pumping their contents, the place would soon be like a sieve. It seemed a miracle to Chalmers that neither of them had been hit. The situation was desperate, almost hopeless.

He swept the girl back into a corner.

“Listen,” he said. “We're in hard case. But there's a way out. They are after the pearls. If we give them up——”

She stamped her foot.

“Give me something to help fight with!” she cried. “I wouldn't give them up if they were a handful of pebbles. What good would it do. I'd rather be dead than trust myself to them. They are brutes, both of them. Give me a gun.”

The room darkened visibly. The daylight had given way to the gloom that precedes an eclipse. Through the door the sky back of the trees was a deep blue-black.

“Chalmers!”

It was Tuan Yuck's voice, speaking from the back of the house, clearly audible through the flimsy walls. It has a vibrant quality that was chilling in its utter lack of human attribute.

“It's no use, Chalmers,” the voice went on. It was impossible to distinctly locate it and Chalmers, his finger on the trigger, cursed inarticulately at his impotence. “Force majeure rules, Chalmers. We'll give the girl and you passage to where you can get in touch with Honolulu or Sydney. But we want the pearls!”

“No!”

The girl's voice rang out shrilly before Chalmers could formulate an answer.

“As you like.” Tuan Yuck's voice retained its even pitch. “Perhaps you'll think better of it presently. Bring up those dry palm-boughs, Tomi.”

THEY were going to bum them out. The house would flame like a torch.

“No you won't!” The new voice was hard and rough. It was Sayers, recovered from the blow on his thick skull, furious at his defeat and eager for revenge. “You can fill that young fool's carcass full of lead if you like and I'll help you. But I want the girl.”

“You heard,” said Leila in a tense whisper. The room was dusky with the weird midday half-light. Chalmers could hardly distinguish her features. “Where are the pistols? I may need one—for myself.”

Apparently powerless, Chalmers felt like an animal as the jaws of the trap clip home. The world seemed out of joint when chicanery and avarice held them at their mercy. It was not for himself he cared. He would have wished nothing better at the moment than to have rushed out and gone down fighting, content if he could win his way to hand grips.

But Leila! A picture flashed before him of her helpless in the power of Sayers. He slipped noiselessly into the other room and brought back the pistols. One was for the girl, one for himself when they came to close quarters at the last. And one of the three was the automatic that had failed him before. It would not do to make a blunder now.

“I'll give you one minute to make up your minds,” called Tuan Yuck.

“You can't hide behind a girl's skirts, Chalmers!”

That was Sayers. Leila snatched one of the pistols and fired through the wall in the direction of the sound. Chalmers tried one of the remaining guns. The action resisted his pull and he tossed the weapon aside, gripping the other. He contemplated a swift dash for the boat. They might successfully run the gantlet and perhaps gain the schooner.

“Hamaku! Tomi!”

“Ai.”

That hope faded as the native answered the Chinaman. Both Kanakas were posted close to the veranda.

“Have you got the pearls?” he whispered. “Perhaps we can make better terms.”

“They are here,” she answered. Chalmers could barely see the movement of her hand to her breast. “They would not keep any terms. They are no better than wild beasts.”

He groaned as he acknowledged the truth of her reply. Resistance was useless. They were lost unless a miracle intervened in their favor.

“Time's up,” called Tuan Yuck.

The twilight turned to dark as blackness rushed up from the sea and behind the hills, shutting out the sickly sun and enveloping the sky from horizon to zenith in a pall of ebony. A bolt of lightning fell athwart the sky and the rooms blazed blue. A terrific peal of thunder crashed immediately overhead with deafening oppression, there was a sudden rushing in the trees and the tropical torrent broke loose, the rain falling in sheets that battered down the foliage and pounded on the corrugated roof with increasing fury.

Tons of water descended. The earth was covered almost momentarily with a hissing torrent. The thunder seemed to peal incessantly and flash after flash ripped the ebony curtain of the saturated clouds. The lagoon was lashed into torment under the heavy drops and the shrubbery beaten down and stripped of its leaves.

The two stood awed before the rage of the elements as the artillery of the thunder roared, reechoing among the hills, while flash after flash wrapped the scene in a weird, sudden brilliance, then left it black as the pit. Between the peals, the rain fell with an uproar that forbade all attempts at speech. She had set her hand upon his arm and the little fingers clutched hard but did not tremble.

The fury of the storm increased until it seemed as if nothing could resist its violence, certainly nothing human could think of anything but shelter from the battery of the rain. The thought that the besiegers might attempt entrance sent Chalmers to the open door with ready rifle. Leila followed him.

In the blackness they could not see the rain, but they heard the battering smash of it above their heads and the hissing splash with which it fell into the ground that was unable to drain off the vehemence of the flood.

A streak of fire ran down the sky seaward and seemed to fuse into a coruscating mass that made them shield their eyes, but not before they had discerned four figures, drenched, half-drowned and bowed double, close to the waters edge. The downpour had driven them to the schooner for shelter. There was no danger to the ship in the lack of wind, and even the greed of Tuan Yuck and Sayers was not proof against that pitiless drenching.

Chalmers cupped his hand close to Leila's ear.

“They are trying to find the boat,” he called. “We've won.”

She shook her head.

“God won for us,” she said as he bent to catch the words.

Chalmers smiled grimly. Not that he failed to respect either her reverence or the Power that had intervened in their favor, but Tuan Yuck's philosophies came into his mind.

He would call it “an unfortunate coincidence,” he thought.

Coincidence or miracle, it had effectually called check to the crafty Oriental's game.

CHAPTER X

SAFETY HAVEN

IT RAINED all the long afternoon.

The thunder and lightning died away after half an hour that seemed five times as long, but the steady downpour continued until night merged with the somber darkness of the day. Chalmers lit the lamp in one room while they remained in the other, but no shot came from the schooner.

He prepared an impromptu meal from canned goods that were stored in the inner room.

He found some tins of salmon and sardines but Leila asked him to put them back.

“I shall never see fish again without a shudder,” she said.

Chalmers set them aside, blaming himself for his lack of thought.

“You see I cooked that last meal,” she said. “We had eaten those same fish many times before. Father—” her voice wavered—“was very fond of them but I had grown tired of them. He coaxed me to eat some but I refused, and then——”

She broke down and Chalmers sat dumbly awkward. Her head was on her arms as she sobbed and he reached over and put his hand on one of hers. She turned it palm upward and let it lie in his like a child seeking consolation.

“Let me cry,” she said. “It will do me good. I don't mind crying before you.”

Chalmers felt strangely warmed. The little speech showed how she appraised him.

“I am glad,” he said softly, and her fingers closed about his.

Presently she sat up and smiled at him while she wiped her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. “It helped—lots. You won't think me a baby?”

All the protectiveness in Chalmers mingled with the admiration he had for her beauty and her bravery, a feeling that, had he had time or inclination for analysis, would have amazed him with the vigor of its far-reaching growth.

“A baby!” he exclaimed. “I think you are a—a wonder,” he concluded somewhat lamely.

Leila Denman, being a woman, read the look in his eyes that he himself was unconscious of, even as she supplied the ardent nature of the word he had checked on his lips. She smiled at him again, not wistfully this time, but with the spirit that prompted it so blending with his own that for the moment he forgot time and place, the peril they were in, everything but the girl with her red lips parted, her blue eyes now violet between the long lashes with a light in them that challenged every element of his manhood, her hair beneath the lamp like peacock-copper matrix in the sun.

So, while the rain poured pitilessly down upon the sodden, protesting ground, they talked through the long afternoon—she with tales of her paldom with her father and their life together in the South Seas; he of his work as a newspaperman.

“I have always wanted to get out of it,” said Chalmers. “My first job was in San Francisco on a daily. The city editor was my father's best friend until dad died——”

Leila slipped her hand into his in sympathy with the loss that seemed to bring them closer, and the touch sent the blood tingling to his finger-tips and he felt the pull at his heart from the swift flooding of his veins.

“He told me one day I would never make a newspaperman,” he went on frankly. “Said I lacked the instinct and doubted if I would ever get the knack, and congratulated me on it. I didn't see it that way as it was the only thing I could do, but he said he wished he was out of it. Said if he was my age he'd quit it if he had to drive a hack.

“Get out of it son,” he told me. “It's a rotten game. You have to stand by and see your best friend knifed one day, and a man you know is a blackguard, praised to the skies the next. We are like flies in a saucer we think is the world, half muddled, half intoxicated over some stale beer we think is news. Get out beyond the rim of the saucer while you're young and husky. Do things; don't write about what other people do.”

“I think I should have liked him,” said Leila softly, “and then?”

Chalmers gave a wary glance into the veil of driving rain.

“Then,” he laughed, “he offered me the chance of a newspaper job in Honolulu. I couldn't see how that shaped up with his argument, but he said it didn't call for a real, first class metropolitan reporter, but carried a good salary and that Honolulu was close to the rim of the saucer anyhow. So I went. The work was easy and, with the correspondence for mainland papers, the pay was good. I came back in the middle of my vacation to cover the story of a shipwrecked crew——”

“Our schooner?”

“Yes.” And Chalmers told the story of Taroi and his partnership with Sayers and Tuan Yuck. “And so,” he said, “that is how I came here.”

“Beyond the rim,” she concluded.

Chalmers looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock.

“It's time to get busy,” he said. “I'm going to offset any interruptions.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, by figuring out what we have to take. All that's most necessary. It's quite a walk and we won't be able to take many trips.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“I'm going to take a little swim out to the schooner and put their ferry system out of commission.”

“You mean you're going to steal their boat?”

“I don't know yet whether I can do that. It depends on conditions. But I'll promise to run no real risk.”

He expected a protest, reluctant as he was himself to leaving her alone while he ran a hazard that he purposely made the least of. But she put an eager hand upon his arm.

“Let me go with you,” she said. “I can swim like a fish. Really. And there's my bathing suit in my tent. Let me, please. I can help, I know, if it's only to keep my eyes open. There's no danger for me. I could swim all the way under water easily.”

But Chalmers was adamant. His plan held dangers that he was not willing to have her share unnecessarily.

“You can be more help doing what I asked you to,” he said.

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” she saluted in mock humility.

Chalmers was seized with a sudden desire to tell her how adorable she was, but there was serious work on hand and he merely registered the picture she made, adding to a gallery in his brain already better stocked with the same subject than he was aware of.

With the fatty part of some canned meat he carefully greased every inch of an automatic and slung it round his neck by a lanyard improvised from twine.

“It's a bit of a handicap,” he said, “but it may come in handy. Now for a knife.”

His own sheath-knife he had left behind when he stripped it with his pistol-holster from the belt before he bound Tuan Yuck. Leila took one down from a shelf and gave it to him.

“It was father's,” she said. “Here's a belt. I wish you'd let me come along.”

“I wish you'd have a list of what we need to take by the time I come back,” he parried, as he greased the blade of the knife and tested its keenness. “I'm going to carry this in my teeth like a pirate,” he said laughing. “Au revoir.”

Leila watched him as the rain and dark enveloped him and turned back into the room with a sigh that was not altogether unhappy. She took counsel with herself concerning the lightening of her grief and, reasoning, blushed; blamed herself for lack of loyalty to her father in forgetting her grief; blamed herself again for lack of loyalty to Chalmers and his sympathy and so, womanwise, set aside the argument by getting things together for the trip to the cliff.

CHALMERS could hardly tell where the beach ended and the lagoon began. The ground was a foot deep with water racing from the hills and augmented by the rain. The latter was slackening perceptibly and he lost no time getting into deep water.

The surface of the lagoon was pitted with tiny spouting fountains beneath the fall of the heavy drops. They beat a tattoo on his head as he swam steadily out in the direction of the unseen schooner, nearly half a mile from shore.

The sky was black and starless. He seemed to be swimming in a black globe half filled with ink. There was no sign of the vessel and he began to wonder whether, in the dark, he was not swimming in a circle, when, close ahead, a dull light broke through the mist.

Paddling cautiously he made out the loom of the schooner, bows to the ebb tide. The whale-boat trailed alongside, its painter fast to the foremast stays, its hull directly beneath the port-hole from which came the light.

It was open. The vertical rain fell past it without entrance. Out of it came an acrid, pungent odor, beaten down toward the water by the rain. Chalmers recognized it as opium. He had already recognized the cabin as Tuan Yuck's. He wondered whether the Chinaman was under the influence of the drug. If he was, and Sayers drunk, he might board the schooner, overawe Hamaku and Tomi. …

“Your methods are too crude Sayers.”

Tuan Yuck was awake and Sayers at least sober enough to be talked to. Chalmers clasped the stern of the whale-boat, drew up his knees, kicked vigorously downward and climbed like a cat into the boat.

“Yours are too —— slow to suit me,” Sayers was saying as Chalmers crouched quietly down below the open port, straining to hear every word above the patter of the rain. Even as he listened he felt the down pour lessening. There was little time to waste, but the next sentence arrested him.

“You'll find them surer in the end, Sayers.”

The silky tone seemed to hold a menace that the Australian missed or ignored.

“Well my way is going to be your way, tonight,” he answered truculently. “D'ye think I'm going to stand being hammered over the head by that young cub without a comeback. And you, trussed up like a prize turkey for basting! A wise-looking bird you were.” He broke into discordant laughter.

“The rain's slacking up now,” he went on. “Listen to it on the deck. We ran off like a couple of drowning rats. But we're going to finish this affair before I sleep. We'll cut that young gamecock's comb and his throat into the bargain to stop his crowing. I'm not the one to be made a fool of by a half-baked man and a girl. If you're too yellow for the job——”

Some gesture or expression of Tuan Yuck's must have halted him, Chalmers fancied.

“Yes my friend, what then?” The Chinaman's voice almost purred.

“No offense, Tuan Yuck. But what's the use of shilly-shallying. There's four of us, ain't there? We can go ashore and settle the whole thing. You can handle the Kanakas. I'm going to sleep with my share of those pearls under my pillow tonight. And Chalmers'll sleep in the sand. There's a million or more in the lagoon, you say. We can clean that up and none the wiser. Dead men tell no tales. You said that yourself. We'll leave the mirrors on the island and it'll be Motutabu to the end of the time. As for the girl——”

He broke off again.

“As for the girl?” repeated Tuan Yuck quietly, with peculiar emphasis.

“Why—ha, ha! That's a good one. You don't mean to tell me you—” The sentence ended in the discordant laugh. “I'll tell you what we'll do about the girl,” he said gaspingly. “We'll gamble for her!” But you'll have to roll your sleeves up when you deal the cards. Come on, the rain's quit. Let's turn out the Kanakas.”

CHALMERS glanced at the port-hole above him in the wish that he could reach it and settle the matter with his greased automatic, there and then. But it was impossible. The rain had suddenly dwindled to a scanty sprinkle.

The cloud curtain was rolling up to the north like a great awning and the stars were showing through the frazzle of its rack. He had meant at first to row the boat ashore under cover of the rain and hide it in the mangroves. But with the passing of the storm he would undoubtedly be seen even if the noise of the oars passed notice. And under their fire he would infallibly be killed or desperately wounded before he half-way reached the shore.

He drew out the case-knife and swiftly severed the painter. Then with both hands he tugged at the plug. The bottom boards were already afloat with rainwater and, as the boat slowly drifted sternward with the ebb, the water from the lagoon gushed in. Chalmers slid over the side, tilting the gunwale before he let go and shipping water enough to make the boat commence to settle as it sluggishly followed the current.

He heard Sayers calling for Hamaku and Tomi and blessed the reason that still kept them in the forepeak. The Australian's curses died away as Chalmers filled his lungs and, with a glance to sight the lamp where Leila was working over the preparations for their exodus, swam hard underwater shoreward.

When he came up he turned gently on his back, cautiously paddled till his head was toward the beach, dropped his legs and raised his head ever so slightly, still stroking against the ebb with his arms.

Sayers was on deck swearing at one of the natives who held a lantern aloft. Chalmers chuckled as he thought of the severed line that had been found. Against the white of the reef surf he could distinguish the rim of the whale-boat almost awash. It disappeared as a shout came from Sayers and some one dived from the stern of the schooner.

Chalmers turned on his chest again and once more swam under water, repeating the process until he felt the sand. He had swum to his left and crawled out on the beach close to the rocks at the side of the landing.

Half-way to cover he was discovered by the eyes watching for him. The ping of a bullet on the lava warned him, and he dived into a sand lane between the rocks, safe from the futile shots that followed him.

Bent double, he hurried up the beach, keeping well covered and shouting to Leila to put out the lamp that might be a target for a random shot. It was extinguished and the house was lost against the background of the hills.

Leila was waiting for him at the foot of the steps and he warmed to the anxiety in her voice.

“I was afraid they'd killed you,” she said.

“Not this time, nor the next,” he replied jauntily with a boyish ring to his voice. “But I've sunk their old whale-boat and they'll have a fine time getting it up again. Only I've left my shoes down there and those rocks cut like the devil.”

She murmured her sympathy. Chalmers laughed.

“I can get you a pair of dad's,” she said. “They'll be better than nothing.”

“That's all right, Leila!”

She did not resent the name but caught at his hand as they crouched down by the steps.

“They'll stop firing soon,” he said. “Tuan Yuck won't waste cartridges. He knows we've won this trick.”

“Won't they swim ashore?” she asked.

“Tuan Yuck can't. The main boom caught him one day and he nearly drowned before Hamaku got to him. Sayers always gets cramps. That's one thing we can bless his drinking for. The Kanakas won't tackle it alone. They think we had that storm made to order.”

“It's a wonder they didn't hit you. I was terribly frightened.”

“Were you?” He pressed the hand he still held. “They didn't see me till I landed. I swam under water. The only thing I worried about was a shark.”

“A shark! They never come in the smaller lagoons. Dad said they are afraid of getting trapped by the tide.”

“Don't they?”

There was something in the way Chalmers said it that made the girl look at him in the dim light the stars gave in the clearing.

“Was that the reason you didn't want me to go?” she asked.

“One of 'em,” he answered, feeling rather foolish. “Did you get any things together? We must make a start. We'll keep in the brush and along the edge of the mangroves. Then there are rocks to the point that will cover us.”

AT THREE o'clock Leila Denman collapsed. She had been limping uncomplainingly for the last half hour.

Chalmers, packing double burdens, was almost played out. “There's a lot more I'd have liked to have brought,” he said, “but I doubt if we could make another trip before dawn.”

Leila, lying flat on the sand, her head pillowed on the crook of one arm, gave a weary little sigh. “I can hardly move,” she confessed. We can get along with what we've got, can't we?”

“I think so,” said Chalmers and went prospecting.

“Here's a cave for you with a nice smooth sandy floor,” he said. And another for me right next door. That bedding from the house is dry. I'll fix it for you.”

“Good night, Leila,” he called presently after she had crept wearily into her cliff dwelling.

“There's no danger,” he went on to assure her. “Sleep tight. The lagoon here is too shallow for the schooner. It'll take them all morning to get that boat up, if they're lucky. Tide's coming in and it's all hunky-dory. Everything's safe in our little haven. Let's name it 'Safety Haven.' That's the ticket.”

There was no answer.

“Poor kidlets, she's tuckered out,” he told himself remorsefully. “And I'm wide awake.” Even as he formed the thought he yawned. “Not so wide awake after all,” he concluded. “Good night, Leila,” he said aloud softly.

The repetition of her name roused her.

“Good night,” she said.

“All comfy?”

“Yes, thank you. Good night, Bruce.”

And, with that music to accompany his dreams, Chalmers too fell asleep.

CHAPTER XI

MONGOLIAN MAGIC

THE TRADITIONAL pair of strange bulldogs had little more in common than Tuan Yuck and Sayers aboard the schooner next morning. While the Chinaman showed no outward signs of irritation he was chagrined at the success of Chalmers in cutting off their shore communication.

Sayers openly growled and barked and vowed to get even. His head seemed split apart and the liquor he absorbed increased the aggravation until he vented his ill-temper upon everything in sight, glowering with bloodshot eyes and cursing the Kanakas as they hurried out of the way of his wrath, and finally spilling his spite against the armor of Tuan Yuck's impenetrability.

“A nice mess,” he growled. “The only boat we've got gone to the bottom and hell and all ahead to get it up, if we can do it at all. It's all very well for you to sit there sneering at me like an ivory Buddha in a bazaar. It was no fault of mine! I'll tell you flat to your face that I don't like your attitude, Tuan Yuck, with your 'wiser than thou' smile. I didn't sink the boat, did I? I wasn't to blame for it any more than you, was I? Then don't look so —— superior about it, because for two pins I'd change the look on your face and make the change permanent.”

He had advanced his head with its undershot jaw and glaring eyes close to Tuan Yuck's across the cabin table, set with his own untasted breakfast and the Oriental's emptied dishes. Tuan Yuck did not move a muscle, the narrow eyelids were partly closed and behind them the dark eyes sparkled like a snake's, never moving from those of Sayers.

The Australian's bullying speech was mostly braggadocio, spoken not only to relieve his feelings but to reassure himself. He was conscious both of an increasing distrust of Tuan Yuck, and of a certain fear that was gradually growing within him and strengthening a conviction that before the trip was ended the two of them would come to open warfare. This belief was born of his own half-planned determination to possess himself of the Chinaman's share of the pearls—once they obtained them—and an instinctive, prophetic knowledge that Tuan Yuck held the same intent.

It was with a strong effort that he checked his outburst. His nerves were jumping with the reaction of the liquor and he knew that physically he would collapse after one fierce spurt of energy. How much strength there was in Tuan Yuck's frame he did not know; it was the enigma of the man, bodily and mentally, that controlled while it enraged him. Besides there were yet the pearls to gain and the contents of the lagoon to reap. He could not handle the situation single-handed and he could not count upon the natives. How much they were under the Oriental's control he was presently to learn, but he already sensed that any act on his part would range them against him—unless he could catch Tuan Yuck unawares and single-handed—when the time was ripe.

The man's mind was like a stagnant gutter, never flushed, holding all the impurities that came to it and breeding more. The thought of being the possessor of unlimited wealth inflamed his selfishness with plans of debaucheries that included a circuit of the world and an orgy of wine, women and song, a vague mixture of intoxication that was a blend of the satisfaction of the vices one part of him wanted to wallow in, and a revel in the hearing of music and the operas that the remnant of his spiritual consciousness craved.

He reached out a trembling hand to refill his glass and knocked over the square-faced bottle of gin. Tuan Yuck caught it with a swift movement before it spilled and set it upright.

“That's your main trouble, Sayers,” he said quietly, as he set it down. “If we are going to pull together in this thing we both of us need all our wits.”

“What about your dope pills?” sneered Sayers.

“I use opium to quiet my nerves,” said Tuan Yuck evenly, “not to set them on edge. Did you ever notice that it did me any harm?”

Sayers' half-muddled brain caught the logic of the retort. The Chinaman was right. He needed all his wits, not so much for joint action as to remain on even terms with his partner.

“You're right,” he said, hesitating, with the bottle-neck clinking against his tumbler, “but I can't chuck it altogether—not right away.” And he gulped down the liquor.

The hint of a smile passed over Tuan Yuck's countenance and faded.

“I didn't mean to do that,” he said. “I only counseled moderation,” he went on with eyes that mocked the Australian's endeavor to pull himself together. “When I said last night your methods were crude, I meant that you drink too much and forget to eat. You spilled the fat on the fire when you made a grab at those pearls——”

“While you were wasting time in words. The thing had to come to a head. What was the use in beating about the bush?”

“If we had promised everything and the girl had come on board, would it have been any harder to have eventually got what we wanted?” asked Tuan Yuck quietly. “Now, we have a fight on our hands and, so far, they have got a little the best of it.”

Sayers looked at him in resentful appreciation.

So that had been Tuan Yuck's plan—to get the girl and the pearls aboard; to let Chalmers navigate until they were close enough to their destination to dispense with his services, and then. …

“You're a better pirate than I am,” he said grudgingly. “Why didn't you tip me off to your scheme?”

Tuan Yuck showed his teeth in a blank smile at the compliment.

“It seemed the obvious move,” he answered. “I imagined you figured it out the same way.”

Sayers pushed back the bottle and started to get up, holding his head in both hands as he did so.

“I've got to cut out the booze,” he muttered.

Tuan Yuck, watching him, chuckled internally. The Oriental was a firm believer in the axiom that lookers-on see most of the game. His policy was to wait until the right moment, and then usurping the board, make the move that left him the ultimate conqueror.

“I can give you something for that headache,” he said. “And presently you can eat something.”

Sayers' bloodshot eyes viewed him suspiciously as he disappeared to his cabin, emerging with a lacquered box in his hand nearly full of greenish-gray tablets. Tuan Yuck placed two in the Australian's half-reluctant palm, and, with a quizzical look, that showed how well he read the other's thoughts, put one into his own mouth.

“The Mongolian equivalent for hasheesh,” he said. “Let it dissolve on your tongue.”

Even as the pastils liquefied, Sayers felt their soothing effect. His head cleared as if by magic, his nerves steadied, and his pulses began to beat with a regularity that soon invigorated him.

“You're a wizard!” he exclaimed. “There's a fortune in those, Tuan Yuck! 'Morning After' tablets. Worth their weight in gold. And you could charge that much for 'em and get away with it.”

“They cost more than that,” Tuan Yuck answered dryly. “And as they are the most insidious of drug composites, they are likely to form a habit that is decidedly expensive and dangerous.”

Sayers looked covetously at the little box.

“It's great stuff,” he said. “I feel fit. Hanged if I haven't got the beginning of an appetite already. If I can get some food into my system presently I'll be in fine shape. Now the first thing to do is to get that boat up. That's going to be some job. I wish I had Chalmers by the neck and could make him do it. We'll have to make Hamaku dive and get a rope on to it. Then we can rig a line at the end of the main gaff and swing the spar out so as to get a fairly up-and-down haul, and snake her up with the capstan. We can do that as we lie without getting up anchor, and making sail on this flood-tide and trying to moor dead over the boat.”

Tuan Yuck eyed him curiously.

“How good a sailor are you, Sayers?” he asked.

“Good enough to handle this schooner in everything outside of navigation,” he boasted, feeling the increasing exhilaration of the drugs he had swallowed. “I can sail her as close as Chalmers any day in the week.”

“Ah! You could make Nameless Isle at a pinch?”

“That's easy. Or to the Solomons for that matter. Just sail sou'west. You couldn't miss 'em. If the winds were steady I could come close to sailing all the way back, following up the course Chalmers laid out coming down. Yes—sir. Oh, Hamaku!” he called up the companionway. “You can handle him better than I can,” he said to Tuan Yuck. “Tell him what we want.”

Tuan Yuck explained, talking Hawaiian fluently, as did Sayers. Hamaku shook his head.

“I am no diver,” he said. “I could not swim down to six fathoms with a rope and fasten it. My lungs are not big enough. And there is no height from which to dive.”

“You can carry weights,” said Sayers. “Put the line under your arms, Hamaku. You can take the chicken-coop or a grating for a raft, and paddle it out over the boat.”

The Kanaka continued to protest. Both he and his fellow were still cowed by the storm, and the second win of Chalmers in sinking the boat. It was their disposition to always be with the victors.

“I am no diver,” he repeated sullenly.

“Hamaku!” Tuan Yuck's voice held a vibrant note of command. Hamaku shifted on his feet, his head hanging.

“Look at me!” commanded the Chinaman sharply.

The silky tone sounded like the snap of a whiplash. The native lifted his eyes with evident reluctance, caught the challenge of the gaze that held his own and mastered it while the stronger spirit of the Oriental took possession of the Hawaiian's. For a moment Hamaku's will resisted, then his dwindling protests of “Aole! Aole! (No! No!) stopped in midbreath, and he stood like a well trained servant waiting for orders, as impassive as his master.

It was the first time Sayers had witnessed a demonstration of Tuan Yuck's control of the natives. It was the first time he had ever seen hypnosis at close range, and he was inclined to be skeptical.

“Will he do anything you tell him to now?” he asked.

“Anything I will tell him to.”

“Going to keep him in the trance while he dives?”

“No. He'll be a better judge of what should be done than I can be. But he thinks I can control him at any minute.”

“Then it's bunkum?”

“Not at all. I'm going to speak aloud what I will him to do, so you can judge for yourself. Tuan Yuck tore a loose leaf from the end of Chalmers's carefully kept log-book and folded it into a narrow strip.

“Pick up this dagger, Hamaku,” he said in a low voice. “You are afraid of Mr. Sayers. This will protect you. You can kill him with it if you hate him enough. See, he is asleep. Now you are not afraid of him any longer. Creep up on him. Be careful. Make no noise. Now! Strike!”

The Australian, with a fascination touched with awe, saw the emotions change on Hamaku's face from fear to convulsed hatred, then to cunning as, clutching the paper, he inched towards him. As the Hawaiian raised his arm for the blow, Sayers, despite himself, threw up his own arm in defense and clutched the descending wrist.

Tuan Yuck shouted a sharp command, and clapped his hands. Animation returned to Hamaku's eyes and confusion left him shamefaced, as Sayers, feeling almost as foolish, let go his wrist, and the mock weapon fluttered down.

“What have I done?” asked the native.

“Nothing. Go and get ready for the dive.”

Hamaku left, cringing as he passed near Tuan Yuck.

“I thought you had to make passes or use something to dazzle them,” said Sayers, trying to affect a nonchalance that he was far from feeling.

“Not always, with a good subject. The stronger will is sufficient. I might have to with you. Shall I try?”

Tuan Yuck's eyes mocked Sayers', as their glances met. The Australian doggedly endured the power that seemed to pour from the Chinaman's darkly glittering orbs until he felt a sudden desire to yield in answer to the imperative statement that rang in his brain in one repeated sentence:

“You are not so strong as I am. You are not so strong as I am.”

He passed his hand across his forehead, summoning all his will to throw off its oppression, and his vision cleared. The room had been gradually filling with a mist out of which shone two points of light. Now he knew that these were Tuan Yuck's eyes, still mocking, and that the mist was the hallucination of his own brain.

“I'm going to rig up that tackle,” he said shortly, rousing himself.

As he went on deck, still conscious of the Oriental's jeering gaze, he resolved to find some way of offsetting the latter's influence over Hamaku and Tomi. The prospect of having a knife stuck between his ribs at the will of Tuan Yuck was not a reassuring

“I've got to go slow on the booze,” he told himself again, “and when I sleep it'll be behind a locked door or a long way from Mr. Yuck. I think I'll stay ashore nights after this, though I suppose I needn't worry till we've got our hands on something worth letting blood over; and then, my worthy Confucian, you'll find more than one can play that game.”

CHAPTER XII

SAYERS FINDS A WEAPON

HAMAKU achieved a raft with a wooden grating. To this he attached a spare halyard, coiling the slack and making a loop of the loose end to slip over his neck and beneath one arm. He freighted the little craft with two pigs of cast-iron ballast, took one of the oars that had floated out of the boat when it sank, and which he had recovered with the bottom-boards the night before, and paddled off to where they had seen the whale-boat vanish. The schooner lay between him and the shore as a bulwark for possible bullets, but he worked quickly.

He soon located it in the clear lagoon, lying on a patch of sand between the live coral. Sitting on the edge of his raft, he adjusted the line for smooth uncoiling, weighted himself with a pig of iron in each hand, and, as the grating tilted, slid gently down to the bottom, the line snaking off the float above him.

It was well over two minutes before his head bobbed up with a triumphant grin of white teeth.

“Hiki no!” (All right!) he called, and swam back to the schooner, towing the grating with the halyard fastened to it. Climbing aboard, he spliced it to the spare line Sayers had reeved through a block at the end of the main gaff, running down the spar through the throat-halyard block to another at the foot of the mast and so forward.

The two natives set their strength to the bars of the little capstan, the line tautened at an obtuse angle, and the whale-boat came slowly to the surface, then above it, while Hamaku ran out on the main boom and, as the water spilled, handled the slackened line until the boat once more rode on the water, and communication with the shore was reestablished.

Tuan Yuck had been busy with the binoculars. He noticed the removal of the tent, and picked out its furniture still standing amid the trees. The mounting sun sucked up the moisture that the overladen earth had been unable to carry off. Leaves that had drooped beneath the downpour revived, and everywhere the wet surfaces reflected the light, so that the magic mirrors were hardly noticeable. A steamy mist hung over the mangrove swamp.

Nowhere could the Chinaman gain a hint of the whereabouts of Chalmers and the girl, though he was certain they had broken camp. Landing was dangerous until they were discovered. Tuan Yuck's policies called for the making of ambuscades, not attacking them.

At Sayers's suggestion, Tomi climbed to the main spreaders for a wider view. He had hardly reached his perch before he called down to them that he saw smoke at the foot of the cliff. From the deck it was not to be distinguished from the mist above the mangroves.

Sayers looked at the mast and grunted. With the sails furled there were no rings to serve for foothold. Tomi had gone up it like a cat, planting his bare feet against the mast and grasping the halyards.

“I can't make that,” he said, “and I'm too heavy to haul. We could get you up easy enough, Tuan Yuck?”

“Why not?” assented the Chinaman. “I'll chance a stray shot.”

The throat halyards were cast loose, a loop made in them for Tuan Yuck's foot, and, with Hamaku and Sayers hauling, Tuan Yuck, steadying himself by the peak halyard, was readily lifted to the side of Tomi, where he focused his glass on Safety Haven.

The height enabled him to look over the cape and see a portion of the beach, ending in the farther promontory. It was high tide, and he was quick to appreciate the value of the place as a base of defense. The glass revealed the steep, flinty sides of the nearer headland, impossible to climb, and the masses of rock on the beach beyond from behind which an attacking party could be driven off without exposure. There was no sign of an encampment save where, close to the foot of the waterfall, a thread of smoke proclaimed the presence of a fire, masked by boulders and the verdure at the foot of the cliff.

“Our friend, Chalmers, possesses more military strategy than I gave him credit for,” he said to Sayers when he regained the deck. “He seemed to have chosen a good place for defense. I'd like to get a closer look at it. I wonder how they are off for supplies. They've got plenty of water.”

“They'd pot us if we took the boat,” said Sayers. “Let Hamaku swim in. He may be able to sneak up between the rocks and get a look at them, and a line on how they are fixed for grub.”

Hamaku took his instructions willingly enough, reassured of Tuan Yuck's power to compel ultimate obedience, and slipped quietly over the side for the long swim that meant nothing to his aquatic prowess. Sayers watched him start, then announced his intention of eating breakfast.

“I'm going to fill up on a square meal,” he announced. “First time I've felt like touching food for three days, thanks to your pills.”

Tuan Yuck looked at him curiously as he went below with more of vigor and purpose than he had shown for many days. The Oriental's shoulders lifted in the barest suggestion of a shrug as he went to the rail and trained his glasses on Hamaku's steady progress.

The sound of a shot and its echo from the cliff brought Sayers on deck.

“Did they get him?” He asked, hurrying to where Tuan Yuck stood gazing through the binoculars.

“I think not. I told him to look out and dive at the flash. I lost sight of him in the dazzle on the water just now. He's probably swimming underneath—there he is.”

Sayers took the glasses and picked up Hamaku's head, like a seal's, close in by the cape, before the native dived again.

IN HALF an hour Hamaku was aboard, unhurt but excited and eager for commendation.

“They saw me,” he said. “Just a little way the other side of the point. I did not see them—only the flash of the gun. So I dived quick and swam under water. There is fresh water off the point,” he went on, proud of his knowledge. “I felt it cooler as I swam through. Then I tasted, and I knew for sure. Plenty of fresh water coming up from the bottom, just off the point. That means a quicksand when the tide is low.”

“They're in there. That's the main point,” commented Tuan Yuck. “And if it's hard for us to get at them, it's just as hard for them to get out. You're a good boy, Hamaku.”

The native beamed with pleasure.

“Yes, Hamaku, you're all right,” seconded Sayers. “Well, we can work the lagoon for pearls and starve them out at the same time. Which reminds me I haven't finished my breakfast.”

He went below, beckoning Hamaku to follow. In the cabin he poured out a generous measure of gin.

“That was a long swim, Hamaku,” he said. “You did well. Take this.”

The Hawaiian's eyes glistened as he took the glass.

“Thank you,” he said in native, and tossed down the raw spirits with gusto.

“Have another?” asked Sayers, with the bottle ready tilted.

Hamaku beamed in gratitude at the unexpected access to the liquor he loved. It's warmth spread over his body, and he looked at the Australian as a starving dog might look at a man who tosses him a meaty bone, a glance that held readiness to serve, almost affection.

“This is just between you and me, Hamaku,” warned Sayers, as the Kanaka set down the glass. “You understand?” He tossed his head upward meaningly.

Hamaku nodded.

“I tell my tongue not to speak,” he said, and went on deck, carefully avoiding any proximity to Tuan Yuck.

Sayers smiled. He had found a weapon to offset Tuan Yuck's power over the natives.

“He can't keep 'em hypnotized all the time,” he muttered. “Lucky I brought plenty of gin along. There's nothing they won't do for that.” From force of habit he poured himself a drink, hesitated, then swallowed it. “Can't do any harm on a full stomach,” he told himself. “But I mustn't let it get the better of me.”

At which speech, Tuan Yuck, could he have heard it, would have smiled.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LAUNCH IN THE MANGROVES

THE sun, streaming in through the bushes that fringed the mouth of Chalmer's cave, awakened him. His eyelids felt as if they were filled with a mixture of glue and sand, and each joint protested against coordinate action. He had packed every pound he could carry on the trips from the clearing, and he was still sore from the quicksand. But his mind, once roused, was speedily alert, and forced his sluggish limbs to action.

He picked up a rifle and, stepping cautiously, not to disturb the sleeping girl, made his way toward the headland that divided Safety Haven from the main beach and lagoon. The tide was washing the end of the cape, covering the quicksand and the scattered rocks as he sought for some place to climb the barrier, and get a glimpse of the enemy's operations.

The lava ridge was less steep on the side of Safety Haven, and he managed to pick a trail to the top. He had brought the glasses of the dead captain from the house, and with their aid he easily marked the cautious steps of Hamaku and Tomi, moving carefully on the schooner's decks, so as not to disturb their masters below.

“They haven't turned out yet,” he commented. “That gives us an hour or so before they'll bother their heads about us.”

He left his rifle in a shady crevice of the lava, where it would be handy when he re turned for later observation and, unencumbered, swiftly climbed down to the beach again after one comprehensive view of their little dominion. There was driftwood among the rocks and he picked some of it up, still soaked with the rain, and set it to dry in the sun for a fire.

On his way back to the caves he made a hasty visit to certain rock-masses he had noted from the top of the ridge. Despite the almost boyish frankness of Leila Denman, he realized the delicacy of the situation, if they were forced to live in the intimate contact their quarters demanded; and he wanted to spare the girl's sensitiveness as much as possible. Presently he found what he wanted, a series of rocky rooms, high-walled, open to the sky, indeed—which meant nothing in that climate and season—all connecting, two of them floored with sand and shells, the largest of the latter broken, but many perfect and exquisitely tinted.

The third chamber was reached by natural rocky steps, leading to the rim of a lava bowl some ten feet in diameter, nearly filled with sea water, crystal clear and green as an emerald. A ledge of rock ran part way 'round the interior of the basin, an ideal platform for a bather.

Chalmers, smiling at his own folly, whimsically looked for the sea naiad who should, by rights, have inhabited the pool. All the rocks showed traces of wave action; the outer entrance to the rock chambers was an arch.

All signs pointed to the fact that Motutabu had once held a higher sea level. The beach of Safety Haven had undoubtedly long been exposed to the wash of ruder waves than the quiet ripples of the narrow lagoon that rimmed it now, though the sharp uneroded spine of the headland seemed of later origin.

Chalmers was in no mind for geological problems. He was delighted with his find of a complete suite of rooms which would insure absolute privacy for Leila Denman. The problem of their defense and existence, ever present as it was with him, was constantly disturbed by thoughts of the girl, remembrances of some turn of her head, the intonation of her voice, the color of her hair, her eyes, her lips, the piquant pendule in the upper one. He caught himself whistling softly, and thinking the words:

“And dark blue is her ee.”

He checked himself with an embarrassed laugh.

“Anybody would think I was in love,” he said aloud. A friendly gull, perched on a near-by rock, cocked a black eye at him, stretched its wings in a suggestive imitation of a yawn, and flapped away as if disgusted, with a throaty squawk of disdain that sounded exactly like—

“You are.”

The resemblance was so startling that Chalmers called after the bird:

“What did you say? I wonder if I am,” he asked himself.

The broaching of the subject, like the sounding of a dominant chord, seemed to set a hundred suggestions and instincts vibrating in harmony with the suggestion. The visions of her, mute in his arms, refusing to give up the pearls to Tuan Yuck, fighting with him pluckily against the odds, came to him in swift succession. He felt again the pull at his heart that had come at the touch of her fingers closing on his, and then flushed at his own foolishness.

“She's got no eyes for you, my boy,” he muttered. “And if she had you've no right to think of her. If we get out of this muddle she'll be worth a quarter of a million, to say nothing of the pearls in the lagoon.”

“I'll bet I'm a sight,” he added, not altogether irrelevantly, as he passed his hand over his sprouting beard and looked ruefully at his besmeared ducks. “I'll have to make another trip to the schooner if it's only for a razor—not to mention other things.”

All thoughts of Leila vanished from his mind as he confronted their necessities. Their supply of food was limited, aside from fish, which Leila would only touch as a last necessity, but his chief fear was lack of ammunition. He had only the cartridges that were left in the chambers of the rifles and the automatics. Tuan Yuck would be sure to think of that sooner or later, and, in the meantime, threatened attacks must be warded off.

“Good morning, Sir Sober Face.”

He rounded a pile of rocks to meet Leila, her bright hair coiled, a flush in her cheeks, and her eyes alight with friendly greeting.

“I thought you were still asleep,” she said gaily. “So I've gone about my duties on tiptoe. Look. Here's our kitchen, with a shelf just the right height for a pantry, and here's our dining-room. I've stocked the pantry, filled the kettle from the waterfall, and all I need is dry wood.”

“That's easily supplied,” said Chalmers, falling into her mood, “and if you go with me I'll show you a suite of rooms with boudoir, sun-parlor and private bath that I've taken an option on in your name. There was an impudent mermaid in possession, but I made faces at her, and she flapped her tail at me and ran—I mean swam.”

So, talking nonsense, forgetting for the moment, with the privilege of golden youth, their present perils, Chalmers showed her what he called in jest, “Number One, Beach Avenue.”

As Leila Denman finished looking delightedly about the place that Chalmers had found for her, she turned to him and held out her hand.

“I want to thank you, Mr. Chalmers,” she said. “You've been more than kind. I—I can't tell you just what it means to me. When I think of how friendless, how defenseless I might have been, and all you have done for me—of your thoughtfulness—I wish I could reciprocate it. I do appreciate it.”

Her eyes dewed with grateful tears, and Chalmers, stopping himself on the point of some such idiotic declaration that “one smile of hers was worth a lifetime of toil in her behalf,” felt his own moisten and a lump come into his throat.

“I haven't done anything,” he said as soon as speech was easy. “Nothing that I wouldn't have done for my own sister—or any one else's.”

“Why, then I'll have to adopt you as my brother,” she said.

His face fell involuntarily, and her's brightened, such being the way of a man with a maid, and vice versa. Then she laughed.

“Where's the firewood?” she asked.

Chalmers flushed guiltily. They were back to the caves already.

“Hurry up,” she called gaily as he turned away. “Call at the grocery store and get some eggs—brother!”

There was a mocking emphasis on the “brother” that he did not altogether object to. It showed she was not altogether in earnest about the relation, he thought. Then Fortune favored him. Close to where he had set the driftwood in the sun he saw some telltale furrows in the sand. He had seen similar ones before on the quiet beaches beyond Pearl Harbor, on Oahu, and he swiftly utilized a piece of wood as a spade, and carefully upturned a dozen globular objects of a dingy white, covered with leathery skin—turtle's eggs, not to be despised as an auxiliary to an island menu, and an assurance of future sustenance.

Breakfast was a meal where happiness attended appetite, and it was not until the shrinking shadows warned Chalmers time was speeding, that he resumed his full measure of responsibility.

“I want you to keep in your rock-rooms or your cave,” he said, “until I come back.”

“Why can't I come with you?”

“I don't believe there will be anything interesting on hand,” he answered. “Only a nasty climb which I have made before.”

“Very well, ungallant one,” she pouted, then changed, noting the gravity of his face. “You'll promise to let me know if it looks interesting or if I can help?” she asked.

“Surely.”

He climbed the wall of the cape once more and watched the hauling aboard of the sunken whale-boat. He was tempted to try a shot, but the sun was in his eyes. Gazing against it he failed to see the approach of Hamaku until the native had actually passed the headland and was heading shoreward for the little beach. He cautiously leveled his Winchester and sighted until the bead on the muzzle of the rifle dropped into the notch of the hindsight and aligned with the black dot of the Kanaka's head. His finger instinctively pressed the trigger until the last ounce of resistance was reached.

Then mercy reasoned with the will to kill and he aimed ahead. The bullet splashed close enough to send Hamaku plunging down like a porpoise, and swimming beneath the surface back toward the schooner. From above, Chalmers could see the motion of his body, purple in the green shoal water, wriggling like an eel.

“He'll warn them that we're on the look out,” he told himself. “I can watch the rocks at low tide. There'll be a moon soon of nights by the time the ebb shifts 'round to daylight, and then I'll have to make a boom of palm-trunks. At present I'll sleep afternoons while Leila plays watchwoman, and keep sentry nights myself.”

A call came to him, and he saw the girl running across the beach toward the cape. He waved at her in assurance of his safety, and climbed down to meet her.

“You're not hurt?” she asked breathlessly. “I heard the shot.”

“Not I,” he protested, and told her what he had seen. “They'll not trouble us for a while,” he asserted. “We'll have to keep a smart lookout, that's all.”

“I can do my share?”

He nodded. She was looking at him in a way that made him a little uncertain of what he was saying or doing.

“Steady, boy,” he muttered. “Steady. You're on duty—on honor.”

She saw his lips move, and her face blanched as she stretched out eager hands.

“You are hurt?” she declared. “What did you say? I couldn't hear you.”

“I was talking to myself,” he returned, vexed at his indiscretion. “Just foolishness.”

“Oh!” she said, and her eyes lost their anxiety for another expression, less intimate, yet full of understanding.

“You are invited to my beach boudoir,” she said, “to discuss the situation, and decide upon the division of watches.”

“They'll try to take us unawares, I imagine,” he told her when they had settled themselves. “Failing that, they'll probably go ahead and clean up the lagoon of pearls. Then they may try and navigate the schooner somewhere themselves—Sayers thinks he knows more than he really does about sailing—or they'll make some sort of an offer to us.”

“Which we'll not accept.”

“I don't know about that.”

“We can't trust them. You know that.”

“I wouldn't if there was any other way of getting you off the island. We can insist upon terms for our own protection.”

“But there is another way,” she said, while Chalmers stared open-eyed. “We brought two whale-boats on our schooner. One of them had an engine in it and a mast and sail, and father kept it for our use. After the natives landed here the first time Dad hid it in the mangroves near where we came when we moved to Safety Haven. It's there now, with several cans of gasoline!”

“That's fine,” said Chalmers. “I'm sorry it's in their territory. I hope they don't take it into their heads to go nosing in the mangroves and find it.”

“I don't think they could,” she answered. “Dad dragged it up the creek and off to one side. It's covered with vines, and a lot of those have sprouted. I could hardly see it when he pointed it out to me.”

CHAPTER XIV

SAYERS GOES PEARLING

CHALMERS and the girl sat snugly ensconced in a niche on the edge of the ridge, watching the whale-boat put out for shore, all four of the schooner's occupants aboard. Save for some broken branches unnoticed in the general wealth of foliage, there was no trace of the storm, except that perhaps the air held more of coolness and the atmosphere more of clarity, so that the whole island appeared to have had it's face washed, and to be basking in the sunshine.

Peaceful as the scene was, it held all the elements of tragedy. Death, under the long grasses on the hill, love in the pocket of the lava ridge, greed and murder and lust in the boat on the lagoon.

“It would be easy enough to pick them off from here,” said Chalmers half in earnest, cuddling the stock of the rifle that lay beside him.

Leila shrank away from him a trifle, doubt and consternation in her eyes.

“You wouldn't murder them?” she asked.

“No, I suppose I wouldn't,” he answered. “That's the worst of it. They'd pot us without a scruple. Fighting fair with men of their caliber is handicapping yourself pretty heavily. I wonder what they're up to now?”

Sayers and Tuan Yuck, each carrying a rifle, were walking up the beach towards the clearing; Hamaku, also armed, remaining at the boat with Tomi. Leila focused the glasses upon them as they disappeared in the house for a few moments, and came out again bearing what looked like clothes.

“It's father's diving suit,” she said.

“Then they are going to let us alone for a while and go after the pearls in the lagoon,” said Chalmers. “I wanted to bring that suit along the worst way last night, but I left it to the last on account of its bulk. If I was either Sayers or Tuan Yuck I'd hate to have to be dependent on the other's hand on the air supply.”

“It is a patent suit,” said Leila. “It has a compressed-air cylinder you fill with that rotary pump Sayers is carrying. It supplies air for thirty minutes after it's charged up to capacity. It's a bit complicated. I fancy they'll have some trouble with it.”

“It looks as if they are having it now,” he said, watching the two figures in consultation, presently joined by the natives. “They seem to be scrapping as to who's going to put it on. It'll have to be one of them. They'll never get the natives to trust themselves inside that gear. Sayers loses the toss,” he announced. “Wonder if he's going to waste time and air wading in from shallow water.”

“Dad used to go in by the rocks where the shell is. They go down like steps. When the natives landed here he was under water. I was in the house working, and I didn't see them till the big double canoe sailed into the lagoon. I didn't know what to do. There were fifty of them, at least, armed with spears and bows, big men, smeared with paint, horrible looking savages. And there was Dad, unconscious of it all, liable to come up any minute in the middle of them.

“While I was looking some of them jumped out on to the beach and suddenly they shouted. The crowd broke, and I could see Dad coming slowly out of the water all wet and shiny, the metal gleaming on the helmet, and the two great eyes goggling, like a sea monster. It was weird. To the savages it must have been terrible. Dad kept on rising, walking up the rocks, and, just as he left the water and started toward them they could stand it no longer. Some of them were on their knees, but they jumped up with the rest, scurried into the canoe, and paddled off in terror.

“Dad told me afterwards he saw they were frightened from the first. He said they probably took him for Maui, their great god, who lived in the sea and built their islands. He was afraid that I would show up somewhere and dispel the idea that he was superhuman, or they'd see the boat. After that he kept the launch hidden and arranged the mirrors. They never came near the island after that, though we used to see them sometimes far out at sea. Dear old Dad!”

She set her chin in the hollow of one hand and gazed pensively toward the ridge that held her father's grave. Chalmers, not wishing to intrude upon her grief, sat silently watching the investment of Sayers with the diving equipment, over the handling of which there still seemed to be considerable discussion.

Finally, Hamaku left the rest and ran along the rocks at the edge of the lagoon, looking searchingly into the water. He shouted, and the little group joined him, Sayers lumbering along in the center. At the rocks the Australian sat down, his feet swinging over the water, adjusted the necessary weights, and put on the lead-soled shoes. Then he knelt and lowered himself awkwardly backwards, disappearing gradually below the surface. Tuan Yuck and the two natives got into the boat and paddled slowly toward the place where Sayers had submerged, the Chinaman peering over the side.

“Directing him and keeping tab on him at the same time,” thought Chalmers. “That's some scheme for supervising pearl fishing. I wonder what their luck is going to be?”

Leila touched him on his arm.

“Look!” she said tensely, pressing the binoculars into his hands. “There—far out where the clouds end.”

WHERE a pearly mass of trade-wind cumulus showed its sharply defined curves against the blue, Chalmers saw a sail that gleamed for a moment like gold in the sunlight. In the field of the powerful glasses it showed as a double canoe, joined by a high platform, outrigged on either side and driven by a great square sail of fine matting.

The canoes were filled with paddlers, and dark forms lounged on the deck. As he watched, the war-craft grew larger and came swiftly on before the wind. Then it swung around, the canoemen churning the sea into foam as they paddled and backed water to assist the maneuver. The big sail was lowered and quickly raised again and the great canoe raced off on the opposite tack, gradually disappearing until it was only a speck on the water.

“It's lucky they didn't come in close enough to sight the schooner's masts,” he said, “or they might have been tempted to investigate. A crowd like that would be a nasty lot to tackle. I suppose they saw the reflections of the higher mirrors and it scared them off. There comes Sayers out of the water. Tuan Yuck doesn't seem to fancy the shell he's brought up.”

The boat had been beached as Sayers emerged and emptied from a net bag on the sand the oysters he had found. Tuan Yuck kicked them with an emphasis that was contemptuous even at that distance. He picked up a shell and showed it to the Australian, apparently giving him a lecture on the subject of pearl oysters.

“He's picked out the wrong kind,” said Leila. “It's always a distorted, crumpled shell that holds a pearl. The smooth, symmetrical ones never hold anything larger than seeds. He is going to try again.”

Sayers picked up the bag and the air-cylinder was recharged. This time he sat astride of the boat's bow and let himself drop to the bottom on a signal from Tuan Yuck.

“Perhaps there are no more rich patches in the lagoon,” said Leila. “It often happens that way. It would serve them right.”

“It wouldn't suit us best just now,” said Chalmers. “We've got a fine position, but——”

“But what? Won't you tell me exactly what you think of the situation? Please.”

He looked at her calm face, the unwavering eyes and steady hands.

“All right,” he said. “That's only fair. Let's thrash it out together.

“We've got to look at it from both sides. As they figure it, it's a question of us having the pearls and they the schooner. The lagoon is a side issue. They've seen what you carry in that bag.” He nodded toward the black ribbon about her neck, nearly concealed by her blouse. “They think sooner or later we'll capitulate and give up the pearls for a passage. Or they may starve us out. Or they may try and rush us. They want the pearls first and last, hook or crook. And they care very little what happens to us.

“We've got the launch, unknown to them as long as they don't find it. That's to our advantage. It's good for a long voyage, barring storms. So we can eliminate the schooner. We don't want it. If we had it we could hardly handle it without help. But they are going to watch us as closely as we keep tab on them. It's a good deal of a deadlock. My best hope is to take them by surprise or that they start a quarrel between the two of them. The most serious thing is lack of ammunition. I've got to get hold of that somehow—and soon. But we'll manage somehow, don't you worry?”

Leila Denman smiled back at him. She was beginning to appraise him, and ranked him far higher than he dreamed. Through all the whirl of events since his arrival she had been inclined to look upon him as frank, impetuous, generous, courageous, but, after all, a good deal of a boy. Now as she noted the set of his lean jaw, the gray of his eyes, like hardened steel, while he calculated their chances and faced them, she felt an absolute sense of protection, and recognized him not as merely manly, but a man, in every stalwart seventy-two inches of him.

His unshaven beard furred his sunburned face, his duck clothes were rumpled, torn and grimed, but they did not hide the well muscled strength of his broad shoulders nor the litheness of the waist above the narrow hips. Altogether Leila found him very good to look upon. She made a permanent decision in favor of aquiline noses and straight hair, dark brown and closely trimmed to the well-shaped skull.

“That's the way he must always wear it,” she told herself, then, noting his steady glance, blushed, afraid he might have read her thoughts.

Suddenly the lava ridge upon which they were perched vibrated and swung beneath them. The crests of the hills seemed to waver. The still water of the lagoon flowed like a splintered mirror. A rasping, grinding sound as of thunder came from the interior of the island. A myriad birds rose and wheeled, screaming.

The boat below them made frantically for the schooner, looking, with its out spread moving oars, like some frightened water-bug. The schooner plunged at its cable like a startled horse at the halter-rope and brought up rocking in the troubled water. The whole place seemed to move as the clear sky above them pitched, and for a second the sea-line tilted as one sees it through a ship's porthole. Then came the grinding noise again with a rasping jar as if the island had been adrift and suddenly had ran aground.

Leila had naturally stretched out both arms to Chalmers in her terror, and he, as instinctively, had enfolded her in his own.

“It's all over now,” he said, holding her for a moment longer while she still trembled.

Her head was on his breast and the fragrance of her hair filled his nostrils and left them spoiled for all other perfumes.

“It's silly of me, isn't it,” she said as he released her. “But that was my very first earthquake and one seems so utterly helpless. Thank you!”

She blushed again while her eyes pleaded with him to ignore her confusion.

“Look there, Leila,” he said pointing to the lagoon.

A strange figure, gleaming with the water that ran from the harness it wore, the sun making bursts of radiance on the metal of his helmet, Sayers broke from the water, stumbling clumsily to the sand where, anchored by his weighted boots, he stood swaying, shaking his fists at the boat and raving impotently while he strove to unfasten his helmet.

It was a ludicrous sight and Chalmers guffawed outright, the girl joining in the laugh and forgetting her own fright.

“It must have given him a rare scare under the water,” said Chalmers at last.

“He'll not want to go pearling again in a hurry,” suggested the girl.

Chalmers' face lost all traces of laughter. The tremor was likely to force matters to an issue all around. The natives would believe this a fresh proof that Motutabu was bewitched, and that might lead to a decision to leave the island, which would infallibly be prefaced by a determined attempt to get the pearls.

Ammunition was a prime necessity. He must devise some means of securing it. He was not greatly alarmed about the earthquake, unless it should be repeated. The island was evidently of volcanic origin and might have been affected by a main disturbance a thousand miles or more away.

Nor was he discouraged at the odds against him. Chalmers was essentially human. He had enough of the true gambler in him to enjoy the game the more as his stake diminished. Any fool could ride a winning horse, he believed, and he possessed another attribute that stood him in good stead, an increasing desire to fight back harder and harder as the contest grew more difficult.

On the beach, Sayers was showing that he was made of sterner stuff than Chalmers had credited him with. As the boat came back for him, he succeeded in freeing himself of his helmet and at the same time his opinion of Tuan Yuck's desertion of him.

“So you are a yellow cur after all,” he shouted, “a sneaking, cowardly Mongolian mongrel. Thought I was dead and hoped it too, I suppose. You low-lived, Oriental hound!”

His language grew more livid at Tuan Yuck's imperturbability.

“The water was safer than the land, my friend,” said the Oriental suavely. “If we had tried to jump out on the beach we should likely have broken our legs. Anyway, we could not help you until we saw you. Also the boys were frightened at first, but I have convinced them that this is nothing more than happens in Hawaii every month. If you do not want to go down again I will put on the suit, though, as I warned you, I can not go very deep on account of my heart.”

The logic of the speech was good, but Sayers, convinced that Tuan Yuck had meant to desert him, could not recognize it. The incident renewed the determination he had made to stay ashore nights and let Tuan Yuck go off to the schooner. But he said nothing of that thought for the moment.

“I didn't say I was going to quit, did I?” he growled. I didn't forget to bring up my haul, either. Look at those. Are they any better?”

Tuan Yuck toed over the oysters and shook his head.

“Not worth opening, Sayers. A baroque or two, perhaps. Even that is doubtful. Good for shell only. We'll have to try another patch.”

Later in the afternoon Chalmers saw the boat take Tuan Yuck off to the schooner, leaving Sayers, now freed from his diving-garb, on the beach. The boat returned in a little while and the two natives carried up some stores and set them down on the sand. The Kanakas started to leave, but Sayers detained them and they went up to the clearing, coming back with material from which they started a fire blazing in the dusk.

A case was broached and a bottle passed round. Tomi's voice was lifted up in song and the others joined in. The Australian took up his zither that had been brought in the boat and soon native songs of questionable delicacy were being roared out.

Here was Chalmers' opportunity. Sayers and the natives, between the attractions of the gin and the singing, were evidently ashore for a night of it. Tuan Yuck would be on the schooner alone, and sooner or later must succumb to the seduction of his opium pipe.

A voice called to him out of the darkness below him:

“Dinner is served, Sir Sentinel. Look out you don't fall coming down.”

“What is the program for tonight?” she asked presently. “Why so serious and silent? Who takes the dog-watch? And, if I do, am I supposed to bark at all intruders?”

“I'm going to swim off to the schooner tonight,” he said. “Sayers and the boys are ashore and Tuan Yuck will be in poppy-land. I'm going to build a raft after dinner and I'm going to bring back some ammunition and a lot of other things, including a razor.”

“All right,” she said. “What time do you start?”

“I'll have to go just before the end of the ebb and come back on the flood.”

“And that means?”

“About midnight.”

“I'll be ready.”

“There's no need for you to stay up.”

“Indeed there is. I'm going with you.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE RAID ON THE SCHOONER

THE raft was laden to its full capacity as Chalmers descended into the cabin for his last trip. He had built it so that the deck rode high above the water, and he blessed its buoyancy as he lowered the things he selected, slung in a bag improvised from his oilskin coat, to Leila, who stowed them deftly on the float.

The cartridges he had found in their original stowage under a locker seat and these he took first. Then followed canned goods from another locker, the bulk of his personal belongings—including the razor—the schooner's log, the case of charts, the chronometer, his sextant, and, last of all, the compass, which he unscrewed from the binnacle post.

It was not his intention to leave the schooner destitute of steerage implements. Now that he knew of the launch in the mangroves, it was his first desire that Sayers would muster up enough cocksureness to take the schooner under his command, providing they could be persuaded to give up the pearls as too difficult to procure, content perhaps with what they found in the lagoon.

But there was a spare compass in the cabin and he wanted the more reliable instrument. He took the automatic on its lanyard from his neck and lowered it to Leila, together with the electric torch. As he prepared to slip over the side and rejoin her, elated at the success of the raid, he remembered Tuan Yuck's rifle. To secure it would be to reduce the enemy's efficiency by one third. He had taken all the spare loads for the Winchesters save what might be carried in their belts.

“Just a minute,” he called down to the waiting girl, hardly discernible beneath the curve of the bows, her face a dim gray oval looking up at him with eyes that held the sparkle of the reflected stars that spangled the water all about her. “Never mind the torch!”

He remembered where the rifle stood when he had first noticed it and determined to take it. As he reached carefully for it in the velvety blackness, he fancied he heard a faint hissing, sputtering sound, like a noisy fuse.

He stopped, every movement arrested, intent upon the strange sound. Suddenly his spine tingled and he knew that he was not alone in the cabin. His senses, almost supernaturally alert, telegraphed to his brain that a door had been opened, ever so softly, behind him—the door of Tuan Yuck's cabin. He crouched rapidly, circling about in the same motion. He heard the swift intake of a breath, the swish of an arm in a silken covering above his head and, grappling for his foe, found only vacancy.

Which side of him the Oriental stood he could not tell. The cabin was in pitchy darkness through which his sight strained helplessly. How Tuan Yuck was armed he could only guess. The rifle was useless in this kind of mêlée and he reached for his knife. Instantly two hands that seemed made of steel clutched at his wrist and twisted skin and flesh in opposite directions. In the swift agony of the attack his tortured tendons were momentarily paralyzed and the knife fell tinkling to the floor.

He heard the scuff of Tuan Yuck's foot as the weapon was kicked away at the same instant that he managed to tear himself free, and groped for his opponent's arms. They writhed from his grasp with a vigor that astounded him. In his first struggle with the Oriental, in the clearing, he had been surprised at the other's wiry strength where he had expected flaccidity. But then he had held him pinioned and now the Chinaman was taking the offensive. He pursued Tuan Yuck, bumping against the fixed table in the center of the cabin, unable to obtain more than the briefest grip on the arms that warded him off so effectually.

The uncanny presentiment came to him that the Oriental's eyes possessed the faculty of seeing in the dark. The next second he was sure of it. The steely hands caught him again, one at the right wrist, the other high up, pressing a nerve that left the arm numb and helpless. A swiftly thrown-up knee was applied to his elbow, an instant more and his arm would have been broken, but Chalmers kicked out viciously in a wide circle and swept Tuan Yuck's legs from under him.

Both crashed to the ground together. Chalmers was amazed at the tiger-like ferocity with which Tuan Yuck strained against his hold and the claw-like grip that tore at his muscles, fighting always to reach his throat. The thought flashed that this fury must be born of opium and would diminish.

He held his own as they writhed on the floor of the cabin, waiting for the right time to exert all his strength in one explosive impulse. The moment came and he rolled uppermost, his fingers feeling for the other's throat. As they twisted, Tuan Yuck's head struck the post of the table with a thud, his form suddenly grew limp and his struggling arms fell outstretched on the floor.

As Chalmers instinctively relaxed his hold, Tuan Yuck's chest heaved upward and his whole body came to sudden life. The crafty Oriental had seized upon the sounding but comparatively harmless blow as a ruse. His right arm eluded Chalmers's swift pounce and twisted upward like a snake. Chalmers brought his left knee down hard upon the other's right biceps, striving to keep his poise upon the writhing form, but the action was too late.

Tuan Yuck had found the knife, perhaps his cat-like eyes had seen it! The blade slashed Chalmers's shoulder. He could hear the squeak of the steel against his collar-bone. By some miracle of luck the plunging point was diverted in the scuffle and the blow was only a glancing one.

With the shock of the wound Chalmers's fury outmatched that of Tuan Yuck.

“You yellow devil!” he exploded pantingly as he held the other's wrists in his clutch at last, squatting upon his chest, each knee in the hollow between the Chinaman's upper and forearms. The warm blood that ran down his left arm angered him. He held but one desire—to gain possession of the knife and drive it home, the primal instinct of a man fighting for his life.

Tuan Yuck's teeth gritted and the reek of his opium-tainted breath came upward as he spat in Chalmers's face. He flinched at the nastiness of it and the Chinaman with one mighty effort set his foot against a locker and, so braced, upset Chalmers's balance, smashing the latter's head against a locker.

Now their positions were reversed though Chalmers still held the other's wrists in a vise-like grip, dizzy as he was from the blow and the loss of blood. Already he felt a faintness growing upon him as Tuan Yuck pressed his advantage. His grasp was almost automatic now, and it was the hand of the arm that was wounded that resisted the tug of the Chinaman's right wrist to be free and deal the fatal blow.

Hitherto he had thought of nothing but the fight. It had taken only a minute or two of swift, strenuous struggle in the dark and there had been no time to consider other matters. Now, as he lay prone, his strength ebbing, the thought of Leila waiting in the water outside, only a few feet away, maddened him to fresh effort. Tuan Yuck met it with a cackling laugh.

“Yellow devil, am I?” he said. “I'll send you to a white man's hell, you young fool.”

Chalmers's fingers seemed nerveless. He could no longer fill his lungs beneath his opponent's weight.

THERE was a swift pattering on deck, a rush of feet down the companionway, a circle of brilliant light that searched the gloom and caught the blade of Tuan Yuck's knife as the Oriental plucked his wrist free at last and started the lunge that would end the fight.

The sudden glare from behind startled him but did not halt the blow. Swiftly as it descended, the girl was quicker and the tube of the lamp came down clubwise, the heavy bull's-eye of the lens striking the base of Tuan Yuck's skull with all the force her strong young arm could muster.

Tuan Yuck pitched forward, his head striking the floor beyond Chalmers's shoulder, the knife driven into the floor of the cabin, where it snapped off short. The ray of the lamp went out with the blow and Leila's efforts failed to relight it.

Chalmers, roused from his swooning condition by the torch ray and his recognition of Leila, struggled to free himself from the incubus of Tuan Yuck's weight. Leila, kneeling on the floor, assisted him to rise.

“Quick!” she said. “Tuan Yuck has signaled ashore. They are coming in the boat!”

She gave her strength to him as his will fought its way back to full consciousness and supported him with her shoulder as he staggered up the companionway and across the deck to the rail. A confused shouting came over the water. The fresh air helped to revive Chalmers and the emergency rallied his forces, though his head ached furiously.

“Are you badly hurt?” Leila asked anxiously.

His forearm rested on her shoulder, one of her slender arms was about his waist. He braced himself to stand without her aid.

“I'm all right,” he said. “Come on, we've got to be getting out of this. We might hold them off, I suppose; but we don't want their old schooner.”

He essayed a laugh and hurried forward, reeling a little as he went.

“You're bleeding,” she said with a half-checked sob.

The revelation of her tenderness did more for him than any surgery.

“It's only a surface slash,” he said. “The salt water will help, and we can patch it up when we get back. There's nothing serious. I got a whack on the head that did the most damage.”

He proved it by straddling the rail and, hanging to it by his uninjured arm, slipping into the water. Leila was there before him, ready to aid. The salt water smarted, but it acted both as a tonic and as an astringent and he reached the raft easily enough.

“You'll have to cast it adrift,” he said. “Pull the loose end.”

She tugged at the slipknot, the rope fell with a little splash and the raft began to fall away from the schooner, the flood-tide bearing it back toward the cape and Safety Haven.

Inshore, there was splashing and confusion, the shouting of orders by Sayers and the drunken babble of the two natives. Spurts of pale flame flashed up as their oars beat the phosphorescent water in an effort to get the whale-boat straightened out for the schooner.

Chalmers floated full length, his right hand on the raft for support. Beside him Leila, with a steady scissors stroke of her legs, drove the raft onward, aided by the tide.

All their attention centered on their own craft, the Australian and his Kanaka aids failed to see the raft, succeeding at last clumsily in getting the whale-boat in line for the schooner, Sayers cursing loudly at every inefficient stroke and the natives answering him in the coarse familiarity of mutual drunkenness.

The flood was strengthening and the raft was soon beyond the headland and in the home waters of Safety Haven. They found bottom off their starting point and stood upright. An indistinct murmur from the schooner barely reached them.

“How do you feel?” asked Leila. “Can you walk up to the caves?”

“I'm not even wobbly any more,” he answered, not with absolute truth. “I've stopped bleeding. But I'd better stay down here to repel boarders in case they try to start something. You might fetch down a rifle. We'll want to stop them at long range.”

“I'll bring two,” she answered, “and something to dress that wound.”

Grateful for the chance to more completely pull himself together, Chalmers sat on the beach, his back against a rock. Aside from a little light-headedness he felt fairly fit. The slash from Tuan Yuck had evidently severed no important veins nor arteries and, though his shoulder was stiffening, he felt no severe pain.

“Flesh wound, I guess,” he soliloquized. “Pretty lucky for our side. The darling!” He closed his eyes and saw again the ray of the torch, the flare of it on Leila's face as she raised her arm for the blow. “The darling!” he said again, more loudly.

Leila, coming quietly and swiftly down the beach, lantern in hand, heard it. Her heart bounded and she kissed her hand to him in the darkness.

“Did you call?” she asked.

“Me? Why, no,” he answered.

Her lips silently formed two syllables that by daylight might have been recognized as “stu-pid” though coupled with a smile that robbed them of any sting.

“Here are the rifles,” she said. “And now, if you'll sit still, I'll dress your wound.”

She set the lantern on a rock and cut his sleeveless vest away with the scissors she had brought. The blood had not stiffened owing to the soaking of the return swim, and the wound showed clean-lipped and pale. With strips of plaster she dexterously strapped the edges together and applied a cooling salve, above which she laid a pad of cotton and bound the shoulder up with a broad bandage.

“I brought our surgical kit along last night,” she said. “The salve is wonderful. It's made from native herbs. If you don't have to use your arm any more tonight that cut will be healing up by tomorrow. Really, it's not very deep.”

“I thought it wasn't,” he said. “I used my arm after it happened and I knew there was nothing very much the matter outside of the loss of a little blood. And that won't hurt me. Tell me, how did you arrive on time to give our Oriental friend that most prodigious swat in exactly the right place?”

“I didn't know where I hit him,” she said. “I struck blindly. You had just left me. I had the torch still in one hand when something made me look along the ship's side and I saw Tuan Yuck's head stuck out of his porthole looking forward toward me. It disappeared and I pushed the raft under the bows, hoping he had not seen me. Then his arm was thrust out. There was some sort of a torch in his hand that broke out into a crimson flame.”

“A Coston signal,” said Chalmers. “That's what I heard sputtering. He must have taken them in his cabin for emergencies. Go on!”

“As soon as it started to flare I slipped my finger through the ring on the torch, reached up for the stay with that hand and drew myself up out of sight. They were shouting on the beach and I knew they'd be on board in a few moments, so I managed to scramble over the bows some how, with the torch still in my hand, and started to warn you.

“I heard you scuffling in the cabin. I didn't know what else to do—I'd left the pistol on the raft, like a ninny—so I went down into the cabin and flashed the light on, and when I saw you underneath and covered with blood I—I struck at the back of his head. I wish I'd killed him!” she ended passionately, her eyes blazing in the lantern light; then she bowed her head on her knees and sobbed.

Chalmers looked at her helplessly. He wanted to gather her into his arms and comfort her, but reached over and patted her shoulder instead.

“Don't cry,” he said.

She lifted her head and looked at him as if he had struck her. Then she bounded to her feet.

“Perhaps I did kill him,” she cried. “I hope so. I hate him. I hate all men!”

Astounded into silence and inaction Chalmers saw her disappear up the beach.

“I wonder what I've done?” he asked himself, not knowing that his sin was one of omission, not commission.

He sat there a little wearily, his rifle across his knees, watching the point. There was no sound from the schooner, the night seemed very quiet after the excitement of the fight and he was very lonely.

There was a light step at his side, felt rather than heard, and he turned his head to see Leila. She had discarded her bathing-suit and wore her linen skirt and middy blouse, with her hair braided in long plaits that hung over her shoulders and bosom. In her hands she carried two mugs of steaming liquid.

“I left the soup kettle on the ashes when we started,” she said demurely. “This will do you a world of good. I brought one for myself, so we can drink it together.”

The aroma of the thick soup was supremely grateful. The draught heartened him. He marveled at the swift change in the girl's demeanor and wondered how many Leilas there were in the one dainty body. But, acquiring wisdom, however tardily, he said nothing.

“That soup has made me drowsy instead of waking me up,” he said. “I've got to keep awake, you know. And we've got to haul up that raft.”

He yawned prodigiously.

“I'll pull up the raft,” she said. “You've got to rest your arm. It will be easy on the rising tide.”

When she came back he was asleep under the influence of the veronal she had mixed with his soup. She smiled, lifted his head gently and pillowed it on her lap, then, with the rifles handy, leaned back against the rock and kept watch until long after dawn.

CHAPTER XVII

SAYERS MAKES A PROPOSITION

CHALMERS was furious with himself when he awoke and saw Leila's tired face and the eyes that had purple shadows beneath them, and he was even disposed to be indignant with her when she confessed that she had drugged him.

“Suppose they had tackled us?” he asked.

“I only gave you five grains,” she said. “I could have awakened you easily enough. You simply had to get some rest. You are the mainstay of the camp, you know.” She smiled at him wearily as he helped her with his sound arm stiffly to get up. “How are you feeling?”

“Bully! And I've got the appetite of a shark. If you'll help me pack some of these canned things up to the caves, we'll get breakfast and then you'll turn in and get some sleep. That salve is wonderful. I can use my arm, and my shoulder only feels a bit stiff.”

“You'll wear that arm in a sling, sir,” she said with a pretty show of authority. “I'll fix one for you as soon as I've dressed your wound.”

“That isn't a wound,” he protested. “That's only a scratch. I'll bet it isn't a circumstance to the way Tuan Yuck's head feels this morning. Mine's stopped buzzing, thank Heaven. I wonder what their next move will be? Did you see any signs of them?”

“Neither sight nor sound.”

“Well, we've got all the spare ammunition. That shoe that pinched is on their foot now.

“What did you do with your pearls last night?” he asked later, as they ate their breakfast.

“I buried them in the cave. I've got them on now.” She pointed to the ribbon about her neck. “If dad hadn't worked so hard to get them and planned what they were going to mean for me, I'd give them up if they'd only go away and give us a chance to follow later. I'm a little afraid of this island after that earthquake.”

“No use worrying about that,” he said. “What did your father plan for you with the pearls?”

“Oh—we were going to travel lots. And then he wanted me to have clothes, I suppose, and all the things a girl wants.”

“Humph!”

Chalmers set down his mug of coffee and gazed gloomily in front of him. Leila looked at him for a moment, her eyes tender.

“Don't be silly,” she said softly.

As he looked up she blushed scarlet, jumped up and ran to her cave. She paused at the entrance and spoke over her shoulder.

“I'm going to sleep for a while,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”

Chalmers's shoulder hurt more than he had acknowledged to Leila but the native ointment really possessed great curative qualities and the slash when it was dressed showed every sign of healing by first intention. But he managed to sprawl his way up to the lookout.

The beach was deserted. So, to all appearances, was the schooner. The whale boat trailed alongside, the oars sticking up from between the thwarts as they had been left by the natives overnight. Through the glasses he made out the ashes of Sayers's beach fire, with empty gin bottles scattered here and there in the sand.

“Headache of more than one sort aboard the schooner this morning, I fancy,” he told himself. “They are not likely to disturb us for a while, at least.”

He clambered down again and busied himself removing the cartridges and the rest of the load on the raft up to his cave, where he stored them with satisfaction, burying the shells in the sand. Working with only one hand, the morning was well gone by the time he had finished the task.

Leila came out from her cave soon afternoon, refreshed from her sleep, smiled at him and passed to her rock apartments, returning presently fresh from a dip in the mermaid's pool, her golden-brown hair streaming down to her waist, full of rainbow iridescence.

She perched on a rock beside him.

“You don't mind if I let it hang down while it dries?” she asked him.

“No, I don't mind,” answered Chalmers dryly.

She looked at him quickly, as if trying to read his mood.

“You look all fagged out,” she declared. “And I'm feeling fresh and rested. Nothing's happened?”

“Not yet. I think they are all glad to lay off for a while. You must have given our friend Tuan Yuck a pretty hard smash. He's not the sort to put off trying to get even. Sayers and the crew will probably sleep all day. We're tolerably safe as long as we keep a good lookout. We may run a little shy on the menu, but we won't starve. All we have to do is to watch the front door. And that reminds me, did you notice the alarm-clock I lowered down to you in the first load for the raft?”

“I did. And I was afraid the thing would go off. I could just imagine it ringing away and I turned the alarm switch off, though the clock wasn't going. What's it for?”

“For our watches. It won't do for either of us to watch all night and be sleepy all day. We can split the night up into tricks. It isn't dark until seven and the days are getting longer. We'll make the first watch from dark until midnight, then midnight to four in the morning, and a short trick from four until daylight. We can make up lost sleep in the afternoons.”

“You'll let me do my share, as you promised?”

“Surely. We'll alternate. I'll take the first and last tricks tonight and tomorrow morning—and tomorrow it's your turn. The alarm-clock is for the one who's sleeping. One of us must be on the beach or up on the headland all the time. Daytimes there's little danger of surprise.”

“Then you'll turn in for a nap now, while I keep a lookout?”

“I will,” he consented. “I am tired. You're the best kind of a partner, Leila. Fire, if anything shows up. We can afford the cartridges now, thank Heaven.”

She flushed with pleasure, picked up a rifle and went down to the lagoon.

CHALMERS was roused out of a sound sleep by the signal, sounding like an explosion to his sleepy ears. He jumped up, wincing as he forgot to favor his damaged shoulder, and raced down the sand between the rocks, pistol in hand. At first he could not see Leila, and his heart sank within him at the thought that she had been surprised or surrounded. Then he heard her calling to him from the aerie on the headland.

“There's a boat putting off from the schooner and heading this way,” she called down to him. “The natives are rowing and Sayers is steering. He's got a white flag on a pole. They stopped when I fired in the air, but they are coming on slowly.”

Chalmers considered rapidly.

“It can't do any harm to see what they are up to,” he said. “Better come down, Leila. We'll wait for them on the beach.”

She climbed down lightly and stood by his side. In a few minutes the whale-boat showed, rowing slowly past the cape. The lagoon between there and the reef was barely fifty yards across. Chalmers challenged them.

“Way enough there,” he cried. “Keep your oars in the water. Don't come in too close. Sayers, put your hands up! Cover him, Leila.”

She lifted her rifle obediently. The natives, backing water, held the boat almost motionless as Sayers held up his arms.

“Don't shoot, Miss,” he grinned. “This is a peace mission. Flag of truce, you know.”

“You keep your hands up, just the same, Sayers,” commanded Chalmers. “You boys row in till you touch bottom. You'll have to wade ashore, Sayers. I'm taking no chances. Don't put down your hands till I tell you, and the first one who takes his hands off those oars gets a hole through him.”

The Kanakas rowed carefully into the shallows and the Australian got out awkwardly into the water, his hands above his head.

“I'm not armed, Chalmers,” he said. “I'm trusting you.”

“I'm not trusting you,” retorted Chalmers sternly. “Come on up on the beach. That's close enough. You boys back off and row up and down slowly till we call for you. No monkey business.”

A look at his face convinced Hamaku and Tomi that strict obedience was a very urgent necessity and they followed out his instructions, rowing gingerly up and down a short distance from shore, the whites of their eyes showing ludicrously as they watched the rifle that the girl handled with grim precision.

“Turn around, Sayers.”

As the Australian showed his shoulders, Chalmers walked up to him, placed the muzzle of his pistol in the small of his back with a convincing firmness and, taking his left arm from the sling, felt for any weapons the other might carry.

“Honor bright,” said Sayers. “I'm playing fair. Glad your arm isn't entirely out of commission. You put Tuan Yuck properly on the shelf. Walloped him with that light-stick of yours, didn't you? I found it smashed after we got there and got a lamp going. Can I put these down now? Thanks. If you don't mind, I'll take a seat.”

He settled himself comfortably on a rock.

“Don't mind if I smoke a cigarette, do you? I've got the makings.” He started to roll one, but the tobacco shook out of the paper in his nerveless hands. “I don't suppose you've got a drink, have you? There's a bottle in the boat.”

“It can stay there,” said Chalmers shortly. “What's the idea, Sayers?”

The Australian leered evilly, and there was a malicious gleam in his bloodshot eyes.

“Visitors not welcome, eh?” he said. “I don't know that I blame you any.”

Chalmers took a step toward him.

“No offense!” Sayers hastened to say deprecatingly. “You mistake my meaning. Now this is what I've come for.”

He had bunglingly achieved a cigarette at last and now lit it, crossing his legs, blowing out a cloud of smoke, and looking keenly at Chalmers.

“You don't like Tuan Yuck and you don't like me. That's granted,” he commenced. “You don't think we've got anything in common, but there's one thing we both agree upon—neither of us have any use for Tuan Yuck.”

He paused to notice the effect of his words. Leila called a crisp word of warning to the natives who had slowed up in their rowing, evidently trying to listen.

“You work well together, you two,” went on Sayers. “I'll say that for your side. We don't. If I'd known you were so close to murdering that Chink last night I'm —— if I'd have tried to help him. I suppose, though, the two of you would have stolen the schooner if we hadn't come off. I see you took most everything you could lay your hands on as it was.” His eyes roved to the raft on the beach close by.

“I've got to hand it to you, Chalmers,” he said half grudgingly. “You're smarter than I gave you credit for. That's where I was a fool. I ought to have tied up with you instead of with Tuan Yuck long ago. That's all right,” he deprecated as he caught the look in Chalmers's eyes. “We may get together yet.

“Tuan Yuck's a crook,” he went on. “He'd double-cross the devil and come close to getting away with it. He's for Tuan Yuck first, last and all the time. He's tried to turn the Kanakas against me. As it is I daren't let 'em out of my sight or he'll hypnotize 'em. And I wouldn't trust myself on that schooner with him for sour apples.

“Now see here, Chalmers.” He leaned forward, trying to speak convincingly. “You've got Tuan Yuck sized up. You couldn't believe anything he promised. You've made a fool of him into the bargain. He's crazy mad to get even. His head is so stiff from that wallop he can't move it. And those eyes of his ain't pleasant company at the best of times. Now you can trust me because I've got to trust you. I'll give you the best of it.

“I don't believe there's any more rich shell in that lagoon. I brought up a dozen samples from different patches yesterday and they were all blanks. I don't give a solitary whoop if there's a million in there. I want to get shut of Tuan Yuck, and off this island. If you want to come back to the lagoon later, well and good. The girl's got plenty to pay all expenses and set us all three up.

“Now here's my proposition. Split the pearls into three shares. That means one for me and two for you if you play your cards right. Hold on! No offense, I tell you. I'm just using my eyes. A blind man could see she's in love with you—and ought to be after all you've done for her.”

“Go on,” said Chalmers grimly.

“Now don't go to getting huffy, Chalmers. I'm talking sense. I deserve something. I started the trip. The girl would have died here if we hadn't come. I supplied the information, didn't I?”

“What do you propose to do with Tuan Yuck?”

“Do with him? Do what you like with him. Feed him to the sharks. Leave him here to make faces at himself in the mirrors if you're tender-hearted about hurting him. You take up my proposition and I'll attend to Tuan Yuck. I know what he'd do to me if he got the chance.

“I could sail the schooner back to the Gilberts at a pinch,” he went on, his face smoothing from the convulsed snarl it had worn when he was speaking of Tuan Yuck. “But you've got the pearls and you've fixed yourself properly to keep 'em. I don't want to go empty-handed. Tuan Yuck'll do both of us dirt. You know that. Now you and me and the girl can fix it up nicely. You can't leave here without the schooner. Now what do you say?”

Chalmers said nothing but motioned toward the boat.

“I'm too high, am I?” asked" Sayers. “Then cut my share in half. You can land me anywhere you want to where I can get in touch with the outside and go on. Don't be a fool. Say the word and I'll agree to turn over Tuan Yuck. He's doped with opium now in his cabin.”

“Call the boat in, Leila,” said Chalmers.

“Hold on, now. The girl's got some say in the matter. Do the fair thing, miss,” said Sayers as the girl came within easy earshot. “Make it your own terms. I leave it to you.”

“I wouldn't give you one of those pearls if I never left the island alive,” said Leila, looking at him with utter contempt in her eyes.

“You see, Sayers,” said Chalmers. “There's your boat.”

“I see all right,” said the Australian, his face vicious with the sudden hate that flared into it. “It'd please both of you better to stay here honeymooning, I suppose.”

Leila shrank back.

“One more word like that, Sayers, and I'll put a bullet through your head as you stand.” Chalmers's finger was on the trigger as he spoke.

“All right, then. I'll go. Remember, I gave you a fair chance on your own terms.” He waded out to the waiting boat and stepped in.

“You'll keep your hands up until you've passed the cape,” said Chalmers.

Sayers spat venomously into the water.

“I'll come back,” he said. “I give you warning. And you won't see me coming till I've got the drop on you.”

Chalmers laughed.

“Pull away, boys,” he said. “Smartly now. Don't drop your oars by any mistake.”

The whale-boat swiftly surged down the lagoon, the oars bending under the tug of the demoralized Kanakas, anxious to get clear of the trouble. As it passed out of sight Chalmers turned to Leila. She was leaning on the rifle, shivering as if cold.

“Don't let anything that blackguard said affect you, Leila,” he said.

She looked at him with eyes that were cold with rage.

“Why didn't you kill the beast?” she asked, and ran swiftly from him up the beach.

Chalmers followed slowly, perplexed and unhappy, wondering a little why he had not done as she suggested. The man was not fit to live. If he had only been armed!

Ahead of him Leila turned into the archway of her rock house and flung herself face down on the sand. He hesitated, then went on slowly to the caves.

He dismissed the threat of Sayers's last words as idle, but the Australian had brought up more clearly than ever the delicacy of the situation of Leila and himself. Now, he thought, there would be another barrier between them, and he made up his mind to be more circumspect than ever in word and deed.

“Something will have to break soon,” he told himself, “with Sayers and Tuan Yuck at odds. I suppose the next thing will be overtures from Tuan Yuck.”

CHAPTER XVIII

THE COUNTER CHECK

AN HOUR from midnight Chalmers heard the sound of oars and saw from his station on the lava ridge the blur of the whale-boat crossing the lagoon, its progress punctuated by the little spatters of phosphorescence where the oars dipped. The moon was down and it was hard to distinguish figures even through the night-glasses, but he counted four that landed the boat and went up the beach toward the house.

A light appeared in the window. In about fifteen minutes the two natives returned to the boat, lit a fire and disposed themselves to sleep.

Sayers and Tuan Yuck remained in the house. Evidently there was to be no recurrence of last night's debauch. Before long the window was darkened. The enemy was disposed of for the night.

Presently he heard the distant tinkle of the alarm-clock in Leila's cave and hastened down to meet her. He would gladly have eliminated her from the night watching, but he knew that she was happier in doing it, and his own chance to secure a fair measure of sleep increased the element of safety.

He saw the lantern dancing over the sand and between the rocks like a will-o'-the-wisp, though to himself he called it a love-light. She met him with her eyes wide open and sparkling with excitement.

“Twelve o'clock and all's well,” he chanted.

“Including your shoulder?” she asked.

“Nearly. It's just sore from hurrying up to heal. I can use my arm well enough. They are asleep, or at least they've turned in for the night. Take the glasses and watch our front door. No need to climb the cliff. Where's the clock?”

“In your cave entrance, set for four o'clock. You are not to be late, sir. I still have my beauty sleep coming to me.”

“I think you've had it,” he said involuntarily.

Leila applauded with softly clapping palms.

“You're improving,” she called after him in a low voice as he strode off, vexed with himself at having crossed the line of neutrality he had set.

The faithful clock awakened him and he sent her back to bed. The stars were still bright, but the mysterious stir of dawn, so prescient in even the loneliest of deserts, was in the air. Imperceptibly the constellations paled and the deep purple of the sky faded. He clambered to the lookout once again. This day, he felt sure, would see some crisis in their affairs, and he wanted to be forehanded.

A light shone in the house. About the dull embers of the fire he could make out the prostrate figures of the Kanakas. They stirred as the man who sleeps in the open always does with the coming of dawn, still half-conscious, then sat up, stretching and rubbing their eyes as a call sounded from the house.

It was Tuan Yuck's voice. He came out, followed by Sayers. In the still morning Chalmers could hear the latter grumbling. The horizon to the east was turning olive-green, with the suggestion of orange beginning to tinge it below the rim of the sea. The golden stars were now white points of light that trembled and disappeared in rapid succession.

The four men busied themselves about the boat and Chalmers picked up his rifle, alert for any advance. The orange turned to salmon color. Little clouds, high up, suddenly flamed to rose. Birds awoke, chirping in the hills. The sun was due.

Sayers was putting on the diving-suit and Chalmers, reassured, set down his rifle. They were going pearling before breakfast. Apparently they had determined to make a thorough prospect of the lagoon. That might mean that they were inclined to give up the attempt for the pearls that Leila held, if they found anything worth while in the fresh shell.

Chalmers had doubted whether Sayers's overtures had been made in good faith, inclined to suspect that it had been a ruse of Tuan Yuck's to get them away from their base. Now the pearling maneuvers puzzled him. It was not like Tuan Yuck to forego a speedy revenge, he thought, and yet the Oriental's infinite capacity for biding his time was hard to estimate.

The boat put off; Sayers, equipped for diving, astride the bows, Tuan Yuck steering, the natives rowing. They proceeded obliquely toward the outer reef, reaching it at a point nearly opposite the lagoon. Tuan Yuck appeared to be giving final directions for Sayers's guidance.

Tomi, at bow oar, handed the Australian an implement that Chalmers guessed was for the purpose of loosening the oysters from their bed. He took it and slipped into the water, hung for a moment by his hands, and disappeared just as the sun showed an arc of red gold above the sea-line and then shot up as if propelled, a dazzling disk of brightness. The bird-chorus swelled. Early gulls wheeled out to sea. It was day.

The boat came back to the beach and landed Tuan Yuck, then returned to the lagoon and drifted, as the Kanakas began to eat. Tuan Yuck walked up the beach to the house. They were breakfasting after all. Sayers, Chalmers reasoned, had probably taken his usual morning's meal out of a glass and bottle. There would be no attack on Safety Haven that morning.

Chalmers went noiselessly up to the caves, intent upon lighting the fire and preparing breakfast while the girl slept. He went to the waterfall and let the cool water cascade upon his head, then filled the kettle.

Fearing that the crackle of the burning twigs might disturb Leila, he made the fire away from the usual place, choosing a spot close to the cliff wall between some fallen boulders. Above him the precipice lifted sheer. Seaward the lagoon was hidden by rocks, but with Sayers exploring the bottom for oysters and Tuan Yuck doubtless busy emulating his own example of getting breakfast, he had no present fear of interruption. He piled the twigs, struck a match and soon the preliminary smoke of his fire went streaming up the face of the cliff.

If he had followed its ascent he might have marked a yellow face with eyes cruelly intent upon him shining in it like candles through the eyeholes of a mask. Tuan Yuck was lying prone upon a slope that edged the cliff, sprawling at the peril of his life, his feet hooked into a crevice of the rock, his hands taloned about some scrubby growths, straining his neck like a venomous snake about to strike.

Chalmers opened a jar of sliced bacon that he had commandeered from the schooner on their raid, humming a tune below his breath.

Turtle eggs and bacon, coffee and ship's biscuit, a jar of marmalade to follow! He smiled as he thought of Leila's delight at the unexpected tribute to her frankly keen appetite.

ON THE cliff, Tuan Yuck edged back from the verge and looked at his rifle regretfully. The angle of fire made it useless unless Chalmers ventured away from the face of the precipice. Tuan Yuck's clothing was torn. The climb had been a hard one.

Sayers would not have attempted it, but the Chinaman had believed it feasible and chose it as his part of the attack which was to raise the siege. The excitement of trying the lagoon bed for pearls had put off his attempting it so far, though he had carefully sized up the possibilities of the climb from the deck of the schooner through bin oculars.

Now he was here, and for the present, impotent. His eye caught a boulder lying almost loose in its bed near the beginning of the slope. He tested it with his arms, then his shoulders, cautiously. It resisted. Using the butt of his rifle he pried at it again. It shifted a trifle and he smiled evilly. Then his eyes roved seaward. Something was disturbing the water in the narrow lagoon of Safety Haven.

Tuan Yuck squatted on his haunches complacently, as a yellow toad watching for flies. Some one else, as usual, was going to play his game.

The still surface of the lagoon broke silently as a gleaming object appeared, the diving helmet of Sayers. The Australian's shoulders showed, then his body as he advanced, bent from the waist, wading out of the water. In one hand he held the implement which Chalmers had noticed.

He had walked unseen along the bed of the lagoon from the point where he had slid from the boat near the outer reef, perhaps a quarter of a mile of submarine progress, safely hidden beneath an average of eight fathoms. Now he was masked by the maze of boulders from any casual gaze of Chalmers or the girl.

Sayers sat on a low ledge by the water's edge and took off his rubber gauntlets, then his helmet, taking deep breaths. His face was scarlet. It was slow work over the uneven bottom and he had nearly exhausted his supply of air in his endeavor to get as far up the lagoon as possible. He looked cliffward and saw Tuan Yuck, who waved his arms and motioned downward to where the unconscious Chalmers tended his fire.

Sayers wagged one hand in reply and divested himself of the rest of his suit and his heavy shoes. Then he severed the tightly bound cords that wrapped an oilskin coat about the object he had brought ashore and disclosed a rifle. He worked the lever, opening the slide gently to make sure of a cartridge ready for action.

Barefooted and bareheaded, clad in a singlet and trousers, he sprawled full length on the sand and writhed up between the rocks like the reptile he was, carrying the rifle clear of the sand, lifting his head cautiously now and then to take his directions from Tuan Yuck, who stood far enough back to avoid any risk of Chalmers catching sight of him, semaphoring a signal for murder to the Australian.

Chalmers poured the superfluous grease from the frying-pan and set the bacon on some hot ashes. Breakfast was ready.

He stood up to call Leila, looking toward the mouth of her cave, and found her already standing in the entrance, her face frozen into an expression of fear and horror, the rising sun full in her eyes that stared through the blinding rays at something behind Chalmers—a cruel face, blotched with debauchery, the cheek cuddling to a gunstock, an arm stretched across the top of a rock to steady the aim, the rest of the body hidden behind the lava barrier.

“Toss up your hands, —— you! Up with 'em. Don't you stir out of that cave, missy, or I'll spatter his brains against the cliff.”

Chalmers turned his head, raising his arms. The tone of the Australian's voice warned him that the threat was not an empty one. Raging inwardly, but impotent, he faced Sayers's taunting face.

“I told you you wouldn't see me when I came,” sneered Sayers with a derisive chuckle. “I suppose you thought you had all the brains, as well as all the virtue, eh! Well, now I've got you where I want you. Too good to associate with me, are you, you and your innocent-faced charmer? Keep your eyes up, too!” he snarled as Chalmers's glance shifted to the rifle slanted against the cliff. “So! Well, I'm going to send you where, if you're as holy as you pretend, you'll be twanging a harp inside of the next minute. Say your prayers, you —— hypocrite, for I've got the drop on you. Don't you move, missy—ah!”

The girl had raised her arm. She held a hand-mirror and the level sun-rays concentrated in its field. The quicksilver flung them back into the bloodshot eyes of Sayers. Dazzled, he flung a hand up in protection.

“Quick, Bruce, the rifle!” shrilled the girl.

Chalmers stooped swiftly. Above, Tuan Yuck, hearing the outcry, pried at the boulder with his riflestock. It left its bed sluggishly, slid down the first slope, braked by the crumbling tufa, and fell, striking Chalmers high upon the shoulders. He crumbled beneath the blow, dropped, the earth whirling, a fiery rush of comets before his eyes, and lay prone, the boulder beside his senseless, prostrate form.

CHALMERS came slowly to his senses, his mind, groping through a fog of pain, slowly connecting with the sluggish nerve-centers. He was lying in the sand, his lips gritty with it, salty with his own blood.

Memory asserted itself and he strove to rise. His body from the waist up seemed rigid. His neck when he tried to raise his head burned with agony. But Leila's last cry communicated itself to his rousing faculties, and he persisted, lifting himself on his forearms and looking about him with eyes that gradually regained their function.

The long shadows of the rocks had retreated half their length as he grasped at the rough surface of the lava and dragged himself to his feet. The realization of what had happened came back in a rush while he stood swaying, his dull glance searching for the girl and then for his enemy.

Somewhere in his brain-cells lurked the registration of a shot. He looked for his rifle. It was gone, and his fumbling glance could not find the handle of his automatic in his belt. His wound had reopened and his shirt was drenched with blood. He tried to call to Leila, but his parched throat failed him and there was an intolerable pain where his neck set into his spine.

With his teeth set into his lower lip to prevent his jaw from sagging, he tottered like a drunken man among the rocks, supporting himself by their friendly sides, pistol in hand.

The beach was vacant. A huddled heap of white lay at the water's edge, a burnished mass spread out beside it like seaweed—or hair. With an inarticulate cry he staggered toward it and fell on his knees beside the unconscious form of Leila.

There were dull marks about her neck, upcurved between the dimpled chin and the huddled bundle of her body. There was a crimson ring about it where the neck ribbon that had held the bag of pearls had been rudely torn away.

With a hoarse cry of rage strangely blended with tenderness Chalmers gathered her up in his arms, strong for the moment in his fury at the brute who had mishandled her.

Her head fell back, the eyes closed, the long masses of golden-brown hair trailing to the sand. With the last remnants of his strength he bore her to the caves, stumbling at every step, and set her down upon the sand, falling over her on his hands and knees. He chafed her wrists and beat upon her palms, hoarsely calling her name. Then the sky descended upon him like a pall and he fainted.

CHAPTER XIX

LEILA LOSES HER PEARLS

WHEN he opened his eyes again it was to find Leila bending over him, his head raised in her arms, the pungent smell of brandy assailing his nostrils. He suffered a few burning drops to pass between his lips and swallowed them with difficulty.

It was cool and dark with a light shining somewhere on Leila's face. As she raised his head on her arm and begged him to drink again, he saw bright specks against a field of ebony and realized they were stars. The sting of the brandy in his throat reached his stomach and a delicious warmth spread through him.

“Where am I?” he asked, knowing it was his own voice that spoke, but not recognizing its feeble, faraway tone.

“Thank God,” she said, and something warm fell on his upturned face, followed by another drop—Leila's tears.

“Don't cry,” he muttered. “I'm all right.” The shrill clarion of the alarm-clock sounded. “It's my watch,” he said. “I must get up, Leila. They may be coming any minute now.”

He took the cup from her in trembling hands and drained it, memory and strength returning.

“Have they gone?” he asked, sitting up with a violent effort. “Get me a rifle.”

“Oh, lie down,” she said. “Lie down and rest. They've gone. Everything's all right now—now you've come back again.”

Her voice quavered and dissolved in tears. He slipped a feeble arm about her.

“Come, Leila, dearest girl,” he said. “I'm not hurt. See! Don't cry! Don't cry. I'm fine—just a bit wobbly.” He forced a laugh. “Have they really gone? What's happened?”

She got to her knees beside him.

“You must rest,” she said. “Wait.”

She brought a roll of something soft and placed it under his head.

“It's rotten to be a girl,” she said. “To cry like a fool.”

“I'm glad you are,” he whispered.

She set a cool palm on his lips and he kissed it. She withdrew it, not very quickly.

“You mustn't talk,” she said. “I'm going to get you some soup.”

But her face glowed as though the lantern-light had been suddenly quadrupled.

“Did they get the pearls?” he asked.

“Yes. Hush!”

She was back in a moment, blowing on a cup of soup, tasting it with puckered lips to test the heat while he lay quiescent, looking at her contentedly. The pearls were gone! In spite of everything, the loss soothed him and brought new vigor to his veins. The barrier was down! Then came the revulsion.

“It was my fault,” he said.

“It was not,” she protested fiercely. “Tuan Yuck threw down a rock from the cliff. It struck you as you stooped for a rifle. But you must not talk. Take this.”

He suffered himself to be fed, spoonful by spoonful, satisfied to have her minister to him. When the cup was ended, he sat up despite her remonstrance.

“I'm fine now,” he said. “I'll take some more of that if you have any. My shoulders and neck are stiff, but there's a whole lot of life in me yet.”

“Don't sit up, please,” she said, slipping her arm about him. “Oh, are you sure you are strong enough? Here's some more broth.”

He watched her as she flitted out of the cave and back again.

“Now then,” he said, as he finished the second cup, “tell me.”

There were hollows under her eyes; he saw faint shadows of them in her cheeks.

“Tell me,” he repeated. “Are you sure they're gone?”

“Sure,” she answered. “In the schooner. I saw it sailing away.”

“They've gone!”

He sat up of his own accord, invigorated at the news.

She brought a box and set it back of him, wadding it with the improvised pillow.

“You drink some of that soup,” he ordered; “with some brandy in it. Now!”

She smiled at the assertion in his tone.

“Aye, aye, sir,” she answered.

“When the rock hit you,” she said presently, “I forgot Sayers and ran toward you. He—Sayers—jumped over the rock and rushed at me. I dodged, thinking perhaps I could get at the rifle, but I was half stupid, thinking you were dead, and he cut me off. His face was horrible. I ran the only way I could, toward the beach, with him after me. If you're going to grit your teeth and get excited,” she interrupted herself, “I'll stop talking.”

Chalmers relaxed and reached out his hand to grasp hers as she extended it.

“I don't remember what he said,” she went on, and Chalmers, seeing by her averted eyes that she lied, reregistered the vow he had already sworn; “but he caught up with me at the water's edge and spun me around with his hand on my shoulder. He put his arms about me and lifted me. I beat at his face and scratched it, but he laughed and crushed me against him. Then I bit him—ugh!” she brushed her free hand across her lips. “He swore at me and started to carry me out into the water. The boat with the natives in it was coming toward us.

“Some one shouted from the cliff—Tuan Yuck. I couldn't hear what he said, but Sayers stopped and turned round. Then Tuan Yuck called again—something about 'leave the girl.' Sayers shouted back. His face was bloody where I had scored it and all asnarl with rage. He swore at Tuan Yuck, and the Chinaman stood up on the edge of the cliff pointing one arm at us, and his voice sounded like a trumpet.”

“I wonder why he interfered?” said Chalmers. “What did he say the last time?”

“It wasn't complimentary.” Leila smiled at Chalmers, who sat with both fists clenched, the bone of his jaw showing white through the flesh. “But it saved me, or what followed did, though I don't know why he did it. Sayers hesitated for a moment, and a shot plunged into the water beside us. Tuan Yuck stood with his rifle to his shoulder. Sayers cursed again and tore the ribbon from my throat. I hit up at him, and he struck at me——”

“—— him!” said Chalmers. “When I catch up with him I'll kill him with my bare hands.”

Leila looked at him with a little thrill of primeval ecstasy. Here was a man who had fought for her, who would kill for her. An ancient strain of savagery surged up within her, the glory of the pristine woman for the protecting male. Then civilization conquered.

“I hope we never see him again,” she said with a shudder. “That was all I knew,” she went on presently, “till I came to, outside the caves with you by me. The pearls were gone.”

It was Chalmers's turn to tell what he knew. He made short work of it.

“And then?” he asked.

“I tried to revive you, but I couldn't. And I was afraid. I was afraid you were going to die. I didn't know how badly you were hurt. I was afraid they would come back. I went to the fall for fresh water after a while, and I saw the schooner standing out to sea, close to the reef, with the natives hauling on the foresail.

“I fell on my knees and thanked God for our deliverance and—” she lowered her voice to a tremulous whisper, dulcet to his ears with its tenderness—“I prayed you might be spared. When I came back you moaned, and presently you went to sleep. Then I knew my prayer was answered.”

Chalmers's eyes softened. His hand sought hers. “God bless you, dear,” he said.

They sat for a little while in silence.

“Last night,” she said after a pause, “I was most afraid of all. There was a terrible earthquake. It kept on, shock after shock, for a long time. The clock stopped. I was afraid the cave would fall in on us. And when it was light, this morning, I saw that part of the big cape—not the one we watched from—had fallen into the sea. And there's a big split in the cliff behind us. The waterfall has almost stopped flowing and I believe the whole island has sunk. The waves came almost up to my rock chambers at high tide and the pool you found for me is full right to the brim.”

“A tidal wave,” said Chalmers.

“I looked at the pool again this afternoon when you were quietly asleep, and it hadn't gone down.”

“Poor Leila! You must have been terribly afraid.”

“I was,” she smiled rather wanly. “But I'm not now. Only it's so terribly hot I'm afraid it isn't all over.”

Chalmers pressed her hand.

“It is hot,” he said. “But I'm feverish. You must be, too. What time is it?”

She looked at the clock.

“Half-past three,” she announced. “It will soon be morning.”

“Why did you set the alarm?”

“I was so sleepy,” she confessed shamefacedly, “and I wanted to wake every little while, so I set it.”

She swayed wearily and he put his sound arm about her.

“You darling!” he whispered.

She murmured something in return and put up her head to his. Her mouth drooped pitifully, appealingly. Her eyes were wistful, her glance seemed to melt into his, and their lips met.

With a little sigh of absolute comfort she nestled close to him and closed her eyes. He held her tightly, with a savage desire to shield her from all perils, and in a little while her soft breathing told him she was asleep.

Chalmers gradually shifted his position and presently she lay with her body relaxed, her head on his breast, content to know that he had taken up once more the rôle of protector.

He felt ineffably tender to her, weary as he was. The moments passed, marked by the comfortable ticking of the clock, and soon he himself was asleep beside her. In his dreams, made more real by her presence, he passed with her—always with her—far beyond the rim of ordinary things into a fairyland of perpetual youth and happiness.

It was dark when he opened his eyes again. The air was oppressive on his lungs. The dream had turned to a nightmare of them alone on a turbulent ocean, tossed by the waves.

The nightmare was a reality. The solid earth rocked beneath them. Leila was wide awake, clinging to him in terror. He sat up in the blackness and his hand struck the upset lantern. The glass burnt him. It had only just gone out. Leila's arms were about him.

“An earthquake,” she gasped. “I can't breathe. I'm stifling.”

“Matches?” he asked.

“By the lantern.”

His groping hand found the box. He struck a match that seemed to burn dimly, and relit the lantern. The clock was still going. It was six o'clock—daylight.

Filled with swift dread he arose and held the light above his head. The front of the cave was filled with débris. The cliff had fallen in upon them and blocked their exit. Another tremor threw him headlong, close to where Leila crouched in terror, crying:

“Bruce! Bruce! Where are you? I am so afraid!”

CHAPTER XX

THE LAST OF MOTUTABU

CHALMERS stood up, holding the lantern at arm's length.

“Why, this is my cave!” he said, surprise in his voice.

“Yes,” she answered. “It was the nearer to where you fell. I couldn't lift you. I had hard work getting you here, out of the sun.”

“Why, then we can get out of this yet,” he said, “unless——”

He began to dig with his hands at the sand.

“Ah!” he cried in a relieved tone, “here they are. I buried them in case they might raid us sometime.”

He brought up the extra cartridges for the rifles and automatics.

“I suppose they took the Winchesters,” he said, “while you were senseless. Sayers wouldn't leave them lying around. He knew we had them, and the automatics. But he didn't find these shells. And there's the rifle I left on top of the ridge. He probably overlooked that.”

While he spoke he worked at the smaller calibered cartridges for the pistols, wrenching at the bullets with his back teeth and twisting feverishly to get them free with his fingers, emptying out the powder on to his neckerchief.

“I can do that,” said Leila, reaching for a shell.

“No, you can't,” he answered. “I'm not going to open all of them. There isn't time. My knife's on the schooner, confound it. It broke off, anyway. Give me that saucepan.”

She handed him the pot in which she had brought his broth. He smashed it against the rocky side of the cave and wrenched off the handle.

“Dig a hole with this where you can find loose earth,” he said. “Near the bottom of the opening, if you can. You can clear it out with that spoon. Make it as deep as possible. I'm going to try and blast a way out! There isn't air enough in here to waste time.”

She set to work diligently, scraping and rasping at the fallen débris. Presently she exclaimed. Her crude tool had broken through into a cavity. She enlarged the hole with the iron spoon and thrust in her arm.

“There's quite a big space here,” she said, “but it's all hard rock beyond.”

“Never mind. That's more than I hoped for,” he replied.

He had moistened half of the powder he had obtained with the soup that remained in the pot and smeared the thick paste heavily upon a long strip torn from the handkerchief. Then he half filled the pot with rifle cartridges and packed sand tightly about them.

“The handle,” he said.

Leila passed it to him. It was hollow. He straightened out as best he could the end flattened by the girl's digging, ran his fuse through it, made a space between the cartridges and set into it the stiff cardboard case that had contained the bullets for the pistols. Into this he poured the rest of his powder, carefully placed the end of the fuse into it, ran the tube of the handle down to the top of the case, repiled cartridges closely about it and filled the pot to the brim with sand, ramming it down hard so that the handle projected from it with the other end of the fuse showing loose.

He attacked the opening she had made until it was large enough to pass the pot through to the space she had found, and packed that as tightly as he could with sand and small fragments of rock. The extreme end of the handle he left clear and trailed the remainder of the fuse through a little trench he scraped and bridged over with the thin wood from the boxes which had held the Winchester shells.

With the sweat streaming from him in the close atmosphere of the cave, he filled in the tunnel compactly. Only the extreme end of the fuse now showed dangling from the opening of the groove, the rest leading back to the pot holding the larger shells.

“It's a poor bomb at the best,” he said, “but it is the best we can do. Come back here, Leila!”

She followed him to the rear of the cave where it turned sharply to the right and ended.

“We'll stand here,” he said. “I don't know which way those bullets may fly. I don't know, Leila, exactly what is going to happen. It may bring down more rock and bury us absolutely, but it's the only chance. I hope the fuse works. I haven't made a spit-devil like that since I was a kid.”

He tried to speak lightly, but his tone carried the tension he felt.

“Stay here,” he told her. “Don't move till I join you. There's no danger.”

She had caught at his arm. He gently but firmly released it and hurried back to the fuse, lighting it with a match.

It sputtered, almost died out, then spat sparks bravely. He bounded back to the cave end and stood in front of her, pressing her back against the rock.

He could feel her quick breath on his neck, her heart pounding against him. He reached back both hands and found hers. She gripped them hard.

So they stood silently for what seemed an hour of tense waiting. Chalmers groaned.

“It's gone out,” he said. “I'll have to try it again.”

The air was hot as well as scant and their lungs burned as they labored. Leila's grasp loosened and her body grew limp against Chalmers.

There was a roar, a concussion of the air that hurled them flat to the back of their rocky alcove and a sound of falling fragments thudding on the sand and against the sides of the cave. The place was full of the salty tang of exploded powder.

CHALMERS leaped out into the main cave. Light poured through a jagged hole at the mouth and fresh air stirred the vapor of the powder-smoke. He tore at the opening, eagerly yet carefully, lest he disturb some key-rock of the pile and close the way to liberty once more. The bomb had done its work well and he was soon able to enlarge the aperture enough for exit.

He crawled through, found another pot and raced to the fall for water. There was only a thread left of the cascade, but he half filled the vessel and hurried back with it to where Leila lay at the end of the cave. The dash of it in her face revived her, and his assurance of the success of their mine roused her to her feet to follow him out to the free world once more.

Even on the beach the air was overwarm. The sky was the color of a tarnished copper bowl, the sun fogged to a tawny blue, rayless and dull. As they stood leaning against the face of the cliff, weak with effort and the foul air of the cave, the ground rocked beneath their feet. A harsh rasping thunder sounded from the hills, the farther headland wavered in its outline and a great mass of it tore apart and fell into the sea.

Leila gasped in terror.

“Come on!” cried Chalmers. “We've got to get out of this!”

He caught her hand, and started to run toward the water when a second shock threw them on their faces. It lasted longer than the first, with a recurrence of the grinding thunder in the hills.

He got to his knees. The seas were mounting beyond the reef, high crestless waves of oily brown that rolled across the coral barrier and sent the lagoon water surging far up the sand. Behind them the cliff had split apart showing a raw wedge where protruding rocks quivered and crashed down upon each other in a cloud of red dust.

Then the tremor ended. Thousands of birds wheeled shrieking and squawking above them. The sullen sea slid greasily over the reef and claimed another fathom of beach.

“Come, Leila,” he called.

She crouched on the sand with her face buried in her hands. He shook her roughly by the shoulder.

“Come on. I can't carry you. We've got to swim round and get to that launch.”

His intentional rudeness roused her. She raised a face blanched with terror, reproach in her eyes.

“The island is sinking,” she said. “We can't escape.”

“Nonsense,” he answered, though his own secret fear matched hers. “Don't be a coward, Leila.”

The words stung her like the blow of a whip and she sprang to her feet.

“What am I to do?” she asked, her eyes resolute.

“Swim round the point. Get the boat back here, load it with what we most need, and make for the open sea.”

She nodded comprehension and splashed into the lagoon ahead of him, loosening her outer skirt as she went. The back of Chalmers's neck was stiff, but his shoulder had ceased to trouble him and the danger called out all his reserves of strength. Leila reached shore first, racing into the mangroves.

“Here it is,” she called, tearing at a thick growth of vines and disclosing the outlines of a twenty-foot whaleboat, stanchly built, covered with canvas. Chalmers, joining her, stripped off the covering.

“Gasoline?” he questioned.

“In drums,” she said. “Four of them, back of you.”

He freed them from the tangled growth and rolled them away from the boat. The keel was set in the sand and he rocked at it until it loosened.

They slid and dragged the boat over the sand to where a stream ran sluggishly among the mangroves, launching it at last. Then they returned for the gasoline, rolling down the drums and tipping the boat to get them inboard.

There was a water breaker in the stern and Chalmers submerged it in the creek to fill it, first scooping up the water to be sure it was fresh. The creek was shallow and they waded beside their craft, dragging it over the little bar where the stream entered the lagoon and tumbling into the boat as they reached the deeper water.

“Can you row? There's no time to fuss with the engine.”

Leila nodded and seized an oar, keeping time to Chalmers's stroke. Well out in the lagoon, rowing furiously back to their own beach, the boat shuddered the length of its keel as if it had struck a shoal, yet kept its momentum. The roar came once more from the interior. The side of a hill wavered, the dense forest glided downward and vanished in a valley, leaving a scar of brown earth where once it had waved in tropical luxuriance. A blind breaker lifted them shoreward, while they tugged to bring the boat bow on, and rolled high up the beach. A second followed and they rode it. The shock was over.

They ran the boat well up the beach, sprang out and hauled it higher for safety from the threatening waves. Already the water was far above the regular boundary of high tide and this should have been the ebb.

They raced up to the caves and swiftly gathered up stores and a few clothes, stowing them away in the boat with frantic speed. Three trips they made, fearful every second of the return of the earthquake.

“That's all,” said Chalmers. “I'll get the chronometer and compass. They are in my cave. Stay by the boat.”

In the cavern the sight of the unused cartridges reminded him of the Winchester in the lookout. He did not know what perils might be ahead of them and determined to secure it. He gathered up the shells and took them along with the instruments.

“I'm going to get the rifle,” he said.

“I'll get it!” cried Leila.

She started to run for the cliff, determinedly forgetful of her fear, bent upon proving to him that she was not a coward.

“Come back!”

As Chalmers called, a wave advanced far beyond its predecessors, clutched at, the boat and threatened to set it adrift. He jumped to steady it and Leila was already clambering up the headland before he had it under control. A minute more and she was down again, climbing with the grace and freedom of a young chamois.

“Here it is,” she said breathlessly, “and the glasses.”

They rowed hard for the reef-opening across the troubled lagoon, indistinguishable now from the outside sea save where the great waves suddenly reared themselves as they reached the wall of the reef. There was nothing to mark the passage, but Chalmers knew the bearings that the earthquake had mercifully spared, and, keeping a tall palm on the first ridge in line with a notch in the farthest hills, they cleared the lagoon and fought their way to the open sea.

A steady wind blew from the land and Chalmers determined to take advantage of it. The engine, installed beneath a roughly built-in but practical and weather-proof hood, needed more time to connect than they had then to spare, so he resolved to set up the mast that lay in the open cockpit by the exposed shaft of the screw, a lugsail rolled about it.

“Can you take both oars and keep our head to the sea?” he asked Leila.

“Easily,” she answered and he passed her his oar, going forward with the mast where he stepped it through the forward thwart and stayed it to the gunwales and hoisted the leg-o'-mutton sail, first reefing it as the wind was appreciably strengthening.

His back was to the girl as he worked, her face, while she tugged at the heavy oars, toward the island.

The breeze caught the sail and filled it. The boat leaped to its impulse and Chalmers prepared to go aft and steer. They were free at last, in a well-built boat that, with careful handling, was well fitted for open sea-work, barring a gale.

Leila uttered a cry and he turned. Above Motutabu a cloud of birds still circled, loath to leave, afraid to stay. Beneath them, as he gazed, the outline of the island changed, the hills crumbled and fell in, the sea seemed to be dashing upon the lower ridges. He sprang aft.

“Ship your oars!” he cried, and as the girl obeyed he seized one of them with which to steer.

The rudder was still unshipped but he knew their danger. Motutabu was sinking into the sea and its disappearance would be inevitably followed by a local storm. Leila covered her eyes.

“It's gone!” she said.

Chalmers knew that her terror was augmented by the memory of her father's grave, once on the hilltop, now beneath the waves. But their peril was too imminent for words.

The waves rose all about them in sudden confusion, tumbling angrily at cross purposes and gradually assuming the circular motion of a whirlpool. A furious wind blew out of where the island had gone down. He blessed the forethought that had made him reef the little sail, striving to prevent the steering oar from being torn from his grasp, and to keep the boat from being drawn into the vortex. They were on the verge of the circle and, aided by the great gusts of wind the little craft fought gallantly up the oily crests, tipped with greasy spume, and down the shifting hollows, where the wind failed for the moment.

At length the mad turmoil of the sea gave place to a regular succession of waves, running strong and high but holding little menace to the buoyant whaleboat. The breeze that had blown them due east from the island gave way to a steady northeast trade and Chalmers hauled their course, sailing as close to the wind as the boat would point.

Giving over the steering oar to Leila for a while, with instructions how to keep it set against the seas, he shipped the rudder and tiller. He had belayed the sail forward; now he ran its sheet aft over the engine housing to where he could handle it from the stem.

“Now we are shipshape,” he announced. “If the sea goes down presently we'll overhaul the engine. I'm afraid I'm not much of an expert at it. Are you, Leila?”

“I know something about it. I've run it,” she answered apathetically.

Her eyes were darkly circled, but she smiled pluckily back at him.

“Thank you for calling me names, when I funked things on the beach,” she said. “I am a coward, you know.”

Chalmers flushed.

“I apologize,” he said. “And I think you are far braver than I am.”

“Then we're even. Where are we going?”

“I think we'd better make the Gilberts. Byron Island, perhaps. That's British. What speed can we make?”

“A little over ten knots.”

“Bully! We'll get there in a little over two days, after we get the engine going, if the gasoline holds out. Meanwhile if you'll take the tiller, I'll stow our grub and stuff.”

He put away the things in shipshape order and arranged the boat canvas covering so as to turn the engine housing into a cabin. There was plenty of space in the double-ended craft, open save for wooden hood built before and above the engine and the voyage of five hundred miles did not seem so formidable. He set up his compass, arranged his sextant chronometer and then unrolled a chart upon the engine hood to confirm their position before dark.

“We've no log but we can get along without that,” he said, as he resumed the tiller. “The Ellice Group is nearer than the Gilberts, perhaps, but I think we'd better tackle the latter. Look at the sunset, Leila. It's like the flare from a volcano. Perhaps it is. There must have been some great disturbance somewhere. Motutabu didn't sink of its own weight.

He talked lightly, hoping to divert her. She smiled faintly at him as she sat drooping on a thwart. It was a frightful position for her, he realized, orphaned, absolutely alone, save for a friend of a few days, racked by her sorrows and the trials they had gone through, dependent upon him for safety and comfort. It was not the moment for love-making nor did he think of it, feeling himself powerless to console her.

“I've fixed up a sort of cabin for you,” he said. “Don't you think you'd better lie down for a while. We'll get something to eat presently.

She started to obey listlessly.

“You'll call me for my turn at the rudder,” she asked.

“As soon as the sea goes down enough,” he said. “It's tricky work in the dark. Try and sleep a little.”

She disappeared behind the canvas curtain. Chalmers sat at the tiller, nodding for sleep and shaking his head fiercely to keep awake, tired in every ounce of him. But he remembered the night that she had put the veronal in his broth and watched for him and shook off his drowsiness.

The flaming sky in the west, metallic in its radiance as fire reflected from copper, died down, the seas lessened and a star or two came out. Behind the canvas he could hear Leila sobbing softly.

In a little while weariness had conquered her grief and Chalmers sat alone by the tiller holding the whale-boat to her course away from sunken Motutabu with its pearl lagoon and the grave of the man who discovered it, his eyelids weighted with sleep but his heart stout within him as becomes one who has faced perils and mastered them, not merely for his own sake, but another's.

CHAPTER XXI

ENGINE TROUBLE

LEILA came aft a little after midnight.

“I'm a pig,” she said, “sleeping all this time. But it's done me a world of good aside from making me thoroughly ashamed of myself. How it's cleared up! The stars are wonderful, and I can read the compass by the moon. What's my course, Captain Chalmers?”

The few hours rest had given her a grip on her courage once again and she was her old audacious self.

“Turn in, skipper,” she said. “I'll call you at eight bells. You'll have to trust me. We left the poor old alarm-clock behind in the hurry.”

He found some clothes arranged to pad the bottom boards and with his head on the same pillow she had used, still fragrant with her hair, floated off into restful unconsciousness.

They had breakfast when she called him and then started to overhaul their engine. Finally adjusted and oiled from a supply they discovered in one of the drums, they filled the gasoline tank, primed it, and Chalmers, practically his own man again, heaved on the fly-wheel. There was a spatter and a buzz and then—inaction. They tried again and again, applying all their mutual knowledge without results, while the boat rocked gently on a breezeless sea.

At last, spattered and smeared with grease, they looked at each other in sympathetic disgust. Leila wrinkled her brows.

“The batteries are all right, we've got a good spark, the cylinders are clean, carbureter's in shape, gasoline I know was strained before it went in the drums. It's just sheer perverseness. It was always like that. It would run like a clock for days and then when you most wanted it, sulk till it got to feeling better.”

Chalmers laughed.

“Don't make faces at it,” he said. “You look demoniacal with those smuts on your cheeks and chin. Give it a rest.”

“You have a large one on your nose,” she answered. “I'm not going to give in to the beast.”

He straightened up, cramped from stooping over the engine. Then he reached quietly for the binoculars. The field showed him a double canoe, its mat sail flapping above the platform deck that swarmed with men, paddles flashing as the men in the canoes forced the craft along toward them.

“I wonder if they got blown out of their island,” he asked himself, “or if it sunk under them like ours. They don't seem particularly friendly. Let's hope it's curiosity, though I don't like the armory. And not wind enough to fill a fan. We're still in the woods.”

The canoe was coming up rapidly, the natives brandishing their spears. Chalmers picked up his Winchester, filled the chamber and spilled a lot of cartridges where they would be handy. Leila turned at the rattle they made.

“Your friends the savages,” he said. “It seems we are not out of our troubles. But I'll handle them. I'm not going to let them get within arrow range if I can help it. You've got your hands full with that engine. Coax it. If you can get it to running we can laugh at them. At present we look over-easy.”

He sighted, resting the barrel on the gunwale, crouching well down, and fired. The bullet went high through the sail but he depressed his muzzle and the next sang true. One of the savages on the platform tossed up his arms and fell into the sea, while the others yelled and brandished their weapons. A score of arrows whizzed toward the whale boat but fell short half-way.

Three men were down now but the canoe came on. Fire as he might, they would reach them, with overwhelming numbers, within a minute or two. He began trying to pick off the paddlers, but every time he paused to refill the magazine the gap between them closed ominously.

The barrel burned his fingers. Behind him he sensed Leila throwing over the wheel, repriming the stubborn cylinders, while she talked to the engine as if it were a refractory child. Twice she got a response that failed as soon as it had raised hope.

The arrows were coming thick now, feathering the sides of the boat, singing over him as he crouched.

“Lucky they haven't sense enough to try a dropping shot,” he muttered. “Wonder if they're poisoned. Ah! I got you.”

A tall Micronesian, bushy-haired, tinkling with brass armlets, who appeared to be the leader, spun about and fell from the deck into one of the canoes. There was instant confusion and the craft halted while Chalmers pumped shot after shot into the mass of them. Then they came on again, only fifty yards away. The air filled with their imprecations.

JUST then the engine coughed, snorted, coughed again, and settled down into a steady puttera-pattera that was music to Chalmers's ears. The screw churned the water and the whale-boat lurched ahead.

“Keep back there!” he called to Leila. “We'll be out of it in a minute.”

He cautiously crawled aft and tossed the loop of a sheet about the tiller to steady it. A howl of rage came from the Micronesians. They plied their paddles at double speed and for a few seconds held their own while the bowmen sped their arrows. But the relenting engine warmed to its work and the whale-boat was soon out of range.

Chalmers gave them a few parting shots.

“Want to try your hand?” he asked Leila jestingly. “Careful with those arrows, they may be poisoned. There's the start of a nice collection for a museum. I'm sorry I ever abused you,” he apologized to the engine with a mock bow. “You're all your sales-agent ever claimed for you. Listen to that ragtime purr, Leila. Puttera-pattera, my name's Pat. Catch it? Go ahead Pat, and patter along to Byron Island.”

Leila laughed at his nonsense as he wanted her to.

“You're much too ridiculous for dignity,” she said.

“Do you prefer me dignified?”

“Sometimes I was quite afraid of you on the island at times, when you ordered me about like a cabin-boy.”

“I was afraid of you, too,” he confessed.

“Not now?”

“Not now. You're not an heiress any longer.”

“Oh!”

“I shouldn't joke about your losing the pearls, Leila, though I'm afraid the chances are slim of ever seeing them again. Do you feel very badly about losing them?”

She looked him squarely in the eyes. Her own held a twinkle, almost an invitation.

“No,” she answered. “I'm really rather glad.”

Looking at him while she slowly and adorably reddened, she saw his eyes change to a stare of incredulity.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It seems incredible,” he said, “but it's the schooner. And she's headed this way, as much as the wind will let her. She's hardly got steerageway. There's something wrong aboard of her. The sheets are hauled in and there's no one at the wheel, apparently. Give me the glasses.

“There's some one now in the bows. It's Hamaku. He's waving a cloth. There's Tomi, beside him. They don't know who we are.”

“You'll not go near them?”

“I'll go near enough to find out what's up. They wouldn't be coming back for nothing. There must be something that's upset your calculations. I've got a score to even with Sayers. Your pearls are aboard.”

“I told you I didn't want them. Don't go near them.”

“You lost the pearls through my fault, Leila. I should have thought of that diving-suit. It's not going to be my fault if you don't get them back again.”

He spoke with decision. It was his duty, as he considered it, to recover Leila's fortune, and he tingled at the hope of getting his eyes on Sayers. Leila sat silent as he steered the launch toward the schooner. As they neared it he called out to Hamaku.

The native started as he heard his name, spoke to Tomi, peered at the launch from under his hand and sprang into the water from the bowsprit, swimming swiftly toward them.

“Eh, Kapitani,” he said as his fingers clutched the gunwale. “Eyah, Kapitani, plenty pilikea aboard.”

“Climb in,” ordered Chalmers.

The dripping Hamaker came lithely overside and sat on the thwart his skipper indicated. His face was drawn and gray instead of its usual healthy brown, and his body twitched.

“Now then,” said Chalmers. “Out with it.”

“Sayasi (Sayers), he make (dead). Tuan Yuck he nearly make, too. One, two night ago they play cards together for pearl. Last night Tuan Yuck he win—everything. Sayasi he laugh and call for gin. I bring. Sayasi he say, 'All right, you too smart for me.' Then very quick he pull out gun and shoot Tuan Yuck. Big Boss he fall on floor and not move. Sayasi he got up and laugh some more. Then he take big drink of gin. Me, I keep back where he not see me. So then Sayasi he kneel along Tuan Yuck on floor and he say, 'Last man he laugh more loud.' Tuan Yuck open his eyes and say, 'Yes, —— you.' He strike at Sayasi with knife quick like that, all same cat. Knife he cut Sayasi all through stomach. He make, right away. Too much blood he lose.

“Tuan Yuck he no can move his legs. He make me pick him up and put him in cabin. He no eat. All the time smoke lele pipe. Very soon I think he die. So I frighten. I try make boat go along back Motutabu.”

Chalmers looked at the native searchingly. It was evident he was telling the truth. He restarted the engine and ran alongside the schooner. Tomi came to the side, his eyes bulging with terror.

“God bless it, you come Kapitani,” he said. “Too much pilikea.”

“Up you swarm, Hamaku,” commanded Chalmers, “and get out the “side-ladder. You'll stay here for a few minutes, won't you please?” he asked Leila.

“Yes,” she answered, pale at the mental picture of Sayers lying in his own blood on the cabin floor, much as she hated him.

The two natives under Chalmers' orders rolled the stiffened form into canvas and sewed it into a rude sacking. This they weighed with ballast and carried it up the companionway, where they slid it quietly into the sea from the opposite rail to which the launch lay. Then they cleared up the cabin while Chalmers went for Leila. The door of Tuan Yuck's room was closed.

When he came down with the girl, Chalmers, armed with the automatic that he had picked up on the cabin floor close to the dead body, opened Tuan Yuck's door.

The Chinaman lay in his bunk, smoking. His skin had the look of dirty wax; his glittering eyes seemed to have lost their luster.

“Ah!” he said as Chalmers entered. “So you have the last trick after all. Our Australian friend got me with his pistol, the same one you hold, I fancy. I'm done for, Chalmers. You couldn't do anything for me if you would. The spine's injured. I'm partly paralyzed. More every hour. I can just raise my arms to smoke. It's a good vice. It helps.”

“Where are the pearls?” asked Chalmers.

“So mercenary! Where are they? Ask me after I'm dead, Chalmers. I won't tell you while I'm alive.”

His eyes held a mocking light.

“Are you there, Miss Denman,” he called. “I did you a good turn once when I made Sayers leave you behind. I did it selfishly. I didn't want to be bothered with a woman. You see I figured on winning out from Sayers. It was clumsy of me to lose. Now do me a favor in return. Leave me alone until the end. It won't be long.”

“We will, if you tell us where the pearls are,” said Chalmers.

A smile that was half sneer broke the mask of Tuan Yuck's face. His voice had grown feebler.

“I've hidden them, Chalmers. They're aboard. But I don't think you'll find them, even though you search me after I am dead. But if you look in the right place you'll find them.”

His eyes held an impenetrable enigma as he puffed at his metal pipe with its bamboo stem and jade mouthpiece. His eyes closed. Only the movement of his chest and the curl of the acrid smoke that issued from his lips showed life was still in his body.

Chalmers hesitated. He could not torture a dying man. Leila set a hand on his arm.

“Come away,” she said. “We do not care about the pearls.”

Half an hour later Hamaku came hurriedly on deck.

“Kapitani, you come quick,” he said.

Tuan Yuck was dead in his bunk, his jaw fallen. A lacquered box lay on the counterpane between his nerveless fingers.

“I hear noise,” said Hamaker. “I come in quick. He try to swallow pearl. I think he choke. Look!”

He put his fingers into the dead man's mouth and drew out half a dozen of the pearls. The rest were in the box and spilled upon the covering of the bunk. Tuan Yuck's last trick had failed him.

THE wind was fair and the schooner sailed as if eager to leave latitudes that had held so much of danger and distress. Leila, in reaction from the terrific strain to which she had been subjected, kept closely to the cabin Chalmers overhauled for her.

He himself was glad of long lazy hours in the sunshine, drowsing off the consequences of his own ordeal. His shoulder had healed almost completely, thanks to the magic of Leila's ointment, and the stiffness and pain at the base of his neck disappeared as the great bruise made by the falling boulder took on all the colors of a dying dolphin.

On the afternoon of the third day, Leila, a little languid, but smiling, faced him on deck. In her hand she held the little lacquered box.

“I want you to take half these pearls,” she said and frowned as Chalmers shook his head.

“I insist. You've saved them time and time again. If you don't, I swear, I'll toss them overboard this minute.”

He temporized but the girl was determined. She walked to the rail and held her hand with the box in its palm above the water.

“Promise,” she said.

Her eyes looked at him tenderly, inviting ly, wistfully. They held a hundred variants of the one theme in their liquid depths. And in those depths Chalmers' last remnants of pride dissolved.

“I'll take them,” he said, “but I'll give them back to you again.”

She stepped backward, her face changing.

“Why?” she faltered.

“As a wedding-present, sweetheart,” he whispered.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article
 Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the 
Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.