l during our stay on the island, and then
we set to and washed down decks, made everything snug, and went ashore
for breakfast, well satisfied with our work, and with the fact that the
boat was six inches higher out of the Water.

The islet, though small, was unusually fertile for so low-lying a
spot--it being in no part more than fifteen feet above high-water
mark--for in addition to the inevitable coco-palms, which grew thickly
from the water's edge, there were hundreds of fine trees, among them
being some noble and imposing jack-fruits, whose broad, bright green
branches were almost level with the crowns of the palm-trees, their
roots embedded in a rich, soft, black soil, formed by the fallen leaves
of hundreds of years, mixed with decayed coral detritus.

Niabon had spread the mats in a shady spot, and we all made a simple but
hearty breakfast of grilled fowls, biscuit, and young coco-nuts. Then
we lit our pipes and cigarettes of the good, strong black tobacco, and
watched a shoal of fish leaping and playing about the boat, which, with
loose, pendant cable, lay floating on a sea as smooth and as shining as
a polished mirror.

The island, so Niabon told me, had not been inhabited for a great number
of years, though it was occasionally visited by natives for the purpose
of collecting the ripe coco-nuts, and turning them into oil, and
sometimes the white traders, living on Apaian, would stop there when
they were on their way to Tarawa and Maiana Lagoons. The name of the
island, she said, was Te Mata Toto ("The Bloody Eye"). "Why such a
name?" I asked. "I will tell you some other time," she replied; "not
now, because I do not want Tepi to hear me talking about the place. With
Tematau it would not matter, for although he knows the story, he is not
a Tarawa man, and has nothing of which he need be afraid."

We sat talking together for some little time, and as I looked at Lucia
I could not but wonder at the marvellous manner in which she was
recovering her health and strength. Her pallor, once so very manifest,
had disappeared, as well as her languid step, and at this moment she was
merrily reproving Tepi for smoking a pipe so old and dirty and so short
in the stem that it was burning his nose.

The big man grinned, and said it was a lucky pipe. For when it was
white, new, and long, and he was smoking it for the first time, he, with
two other men, was fishing from a canoe, it fell from his mouth into
the sea, and befo