oon,
a smart whaleboat, manned by a crew of half-naked natives of Pleasant
Island, came alongside, and an old white-haired man of past sixty
stepped on deck. He was accompanied by a fair-skinned, dark-haired girl
of about twenty. The boatswain conducted them aft to where Carr, now
shaking with a violent attack of ague, was lying.

"My dear boy," cried the old man, kneeling beside the trader, and
looking into his face with intense sympathy. "I am so glad to meet you
again, though sorry to see you so ill."

Carr, with chattering teeth, held out an icy-cold hand.

"How are you, Remington? And you, Tessa? I'll be all right in another
ten minutes, and then we can talk."

Tessa Remington slipped down on the deck into a sitting posture beside
him, and placed her soft, warm hand on his forehead.

"Don't talk any more just now, Mr. Carr. There, let me tuck you in
properly," and she wrapped the rugs more closely around him. "I know
exactly what to do, don't I, father?"

CHAPTER II

From his boyhood Harvey Carr had been a wanderer among the islands of
the Southern Seas. Before he was sixteen his father, who was owner and
master of a Hobart Town whaleship, had perished at sea in one of the
ship's boats after the loss of his vessel upon an uncharted reef in the
South Pacific. And though another sixteen years had almost passed since
that dreadful time of agony and hunger, and thirst and madness, when men
looked at each other with a horrid meaning in their wolfish eyes, the
boy had never forgotten his dying father's words, spoken to the lad when
the grey shadow of the end had deepened upon the old seaman's rugged
face--

"I'm done for, Harvey. Try to keep up the men's courage. Rain will fall
before morning. I know it is coming, though I shall never feel it. Stick
to your two little sisters, boy; you must be their mainstay when I am
gone. Lead a clean life, Harvey. You can do it if you think of your
dead mother and of me.... And tell the men to stick steady to an
east-southeast course. They'll feel fresh and strong when the rain
comes. Drop me over the side the moment I'm gone, lad, won't you? Don't
let any one of them touch me. Goodbye, my son."

Those awful days of horror had helped to strengthen Harvey Carr's
natural resolution and steadfastness of purpose in life. When the
famished and hideous-looking survivors of the crew of the _City of Hope_
were picked up two days later the orphaned sailor lad made a vow to
de