iness and
voyagings, he liked to meet people from the Islands, and, indeed, kept
open house to them; so both he and Mrs. Lambert made him welcome.

The captain of the schooner was a man of a type common enough in the
South Seas, rough, good-humoured, and coarsely handsome.

After dinner the two men sat over their whisky and talked and smoked.
Mrs. Lambert, always an invalid, had gone to her room, but Loise, book
in hand, lay on a sofa and seemed to read. But she did not read, she
listened. She had caught a word or two uttered by the dark-faced,
black-bearded skipper--words that filled her with vague memories of long
ago. And soon she heard names--names of men, white and brown, whom she
had known in that distant, almost forgotten and savage childhood.

*****

When the seaman rose to leave and extended his tanned, sinewy hand to
the beautiful "Miss Lambert," and gazed with undisguised admiration into
her face, he little thought that she longed to say, "Stay and let me
hear more." But she was conventional enough to know better than that,
and that her adopted parents would be genuinely shocked to see her
anything more than distantly friendly with such a man as a common
trading captain--even though that man had once been one of Lambert's
most trusted men. Still, as she raised her eyes to his, she murmured
softly, "We will be glad to see you again, Captain Lemaire." And the
dark-faced seaman gave her a subtle, answering glance.

*****

All that night she lay awake--awake to the child memories of the life
that until now had slumbered within her. From her opened bedroom window
she could see the dulled blaze of the city's lights, and hear ever and
anon the hoarse and warning roar of a steamer's whistle. She raised
herself and looked out upon the waters of the harbour. A huge,
black mass was moving slowly seaward, showing only her masthead and
side-lights--some ocean tramp bound northward. Again the boom of the
whistle sounded, and then, by the quickened thumping of the propeller,
the girl, knew that the tramp had rounded the point and was heading for
the open sea.

*****

She lay back again on the pillow and tried to sleep. Why couldn't she
sleep, she wondered. She closed her eyes. The branches of the pine that
grew close to her window rustled and shook to a passing breath of wind,
and her eyes opened again. How strangely, though, it sounded to-night,
and how her heart was thumping! Again the white lids drooped and hal