ever, who had drawn up the
agreement, refused to do so, on the grounds that I had a boat already,
and I was too weak and too racked with the damnable pains of fever to
make more than a brief protest against what was certainly a very mean
trick. But I had now sold her to the natives, and old Kaibuka was not
a man to be trifled with. If any supercargo or captain of the firm
endeavoured to claim her as property belonging to Utiroa Station, there
would be such a blazing row that the firm would not forget it--they
could never again land a trader on the island.

I decided to at least take a hundred pounds out of the station
cash--less than a third of the amount due to me. This, with the two
hundred dollars I had received from old Kaibuka, would make seven
hundred dollars--something better than poor little Mrs. Krause's
twenty, I thought with a smile. And I meant that she--if we succeeded in
reaching Guam--should land there with five hundred American dollars, not
Chili or Bolivian half-iron rubbish, but good honest silver.

At noon Mrs. Krause arrived in my old whaleboat, which I had borrowed
from the new owners, and sent away at daylight, and whilst she and
Niabon set to work at copying the books, I, with Tepi, began cutting
out the new suit of sails from a bolt of light but very strong American
twill---just the very stuff for boat sails, as strong as No. 1 canvas
and four times lighter.

That was the first of eight or ten very pleasant days we spent together,
it taking us all that time to complete our preparations; for after the
sails were finished I had to rig the boat anew, caulk her decks, and
make a proper cabin amidships for the two women. This would have
taken me more than another week had it not been for a couple of native
boatbuilders, whom old Kaibuka had sent to me. They were good workmen,
though neither had ever handled such a thing as a plane or saw in
his life--everything was done either with a hatchet or a _toki_--a
plane-iron or a broad chisel lashed to a wooden handle in such a manner
that it was used as an adze.

[Illustration: Two good coatings of red lead 110]

Then I gave her two good coatings of red lead from keel to above
water-line, and above that painted her white. The people from whom I
had bought her told me frankly that she was a poor sailer, and I
quite believed them, for she was altogether too heavily built for her
size--her timbers and planking being of German oak. Her mast, too, had
been