en he shook his
head. "No, Lamington. I appreciate your kindness, but cannot accept it.
I've been here two years now, and Alberti, the principal local chief,
thinks no end of me; and he's a deuced fine fellow, and has been as good
as ten fathers to me. And I've business matters to attend to as well."

*****

Lamington pressed him no further. "Lucky devil," he thought. "I suppose
he'll clear out in the trading schooner to Sydney, next week; be there
long before us any way, and I'll find them well over the first stage of
married infatuation when I see him next."

Another hour's chat of old times and old shipmates in the _Challenger_
and Lamington, with his honest, clean-shaven face looking into the
quiet, impassive features of the ex-officer, had gripped his hand and
gone, and Hilliard went over to the house of Alberti, the chief,
to drink _kava_--and see the old French priest. From there, an hour
afterward, he saw the cruiser with wet, shining sides dip into the
long roll of the ocean swell, as with the smoke pouring from her yellow
funnel she was lost to sight rounding the point.

*****

Said the son of Alberti to Lela, the innocent-faced girl with the
dancing, starlike eyes and red lips, as they stood watching the last
curling rings of the steamer's smoke--"And so that is why I knew much of
what the _papalagi_ from the man-of-war said to your Iliati; Alberti, my
father, has taught me much of your man's tongue. # And, look thou, Lela
the Cunning, Iliati hath a wife in his own country!"

"Pah!"--and she shook her long, wavy locks composedly, and then plucked
a scarlet hibiscus flower to stick in front of one of her pretty little
ears--"what does that matter to me, fathead? I am she here; and when
Iliati goeth away to her she will be me there. But he loveth me more
than any other on Rotumah, and hath told me that where he goeth I shall
go also. And who knoweth but that if I have a son he may marry me?
Then shalt thou see such a wedding-feast as only rich people give. And
listen--for why should I not tell thee: 'Tis well to starve thyself now,
for it may be to-morrow, for look! fathead, there goeth the priest into
thy father's house, and Iliati is already there."

A TALE OF A MASK

Lannigan, who lived on Motukoe, was in debt to his firm. This was partly
due to his fondness for trade gin and partly because Bully Hayes had
called at the island a month or so back and the genial Bully and he had
played a game