ly rose up, and with the strength of madness, placing
her arms around the stiffened form of little Tarita, she sprang over the
side and sank with her.

Ninia, stretching her arms out piteously, bowed her head, and lay down
to die.

*****

She was aroused from her stupor by the cries of a vast flock of sea
birds, and, opening her eyes, she saw that the canoe was surrounded by
thousands upon thousands of bonita that leaped and sported and splashed
about almost within arm's length of her. They were pursuing a shoal of
small fish called _atuli_, and these every now and then darted under the
canoe for protection. Sometimes, as the hungry bonita pressed them hard,
they would leap out of the water, hundreds together, and then the sea
birds would swoop down and seize them ere they fell back into the sea.

Ninia, trembling with excitement and the hope of life, watched
eagerly. Presently she heard a curious, rippling noise, and then a
rapidly-repeated tapping on the outrigger side of the canoe.

Oh! the joy of it; the water was black with a mass of _atuli_ crowded
together on the surface, and frightened and exhausted.

She thrust her hands in among them and threw handsful after handsful
into the canoe, and then her dreadful thirst and hunger made her cease,
and, taking fish after fish, she bit into them with her sharp teeth, and
assuaged both hunger and thirst.

As she tore ravenously at the _atuli_ the sky became overcast, and while
the bonitas splashed and jumped around her, and the birds cried shrilly
overhead, the blessed rain began to fall, at first in heavy drops, and
then in a steady downpour.

Taking off her thick grass girdle, she rolled it up into a tight coil
and placed it across the bottom of the canoe, about two feet from the
bows, so as to form a dam; and then, lying face downwards, she drank
and drank till satisfied. Then she counted the _atuli_. There were over
forty.

All that day the rain squalls continued, and then the wind settled and
blew steadily from the east, and Ninia kept the canoe right before it.

That night she slept but little. A wild hope had sprung up in her heart
that she might reach the island of Ponape, which she knew was not many
days' sail from Pingelap. Indeed, she had once heard her father and
Sralik talking about going there in the whaleboat to sell turtle-shell
to the white traders there.

But she did not know that the current and trade wind were setting the
canoe quickly awa