of coarse grass.... And I remember
singing, at times...."

He looked toward Joel, eyes suddenly flaming. "Eh, Joel, I tell you I was
not three pagans, but six, in those days. The thing's clear beyond your
guessing, Joel. But it was big. An immense thing. I was back at the
beginning of the world, with food, and drink, and my woman.... It was
big, I tell you. Big!"

His eyes clouded--he fell silent, and so at last went on again. "I was
asleep one night, tossing in my sleep. And something woke me. And I laid
my hand on the spot beside me where the little brown girl used to lie,
and she was gone. So I got up, unsteadily. There were rifles snapping in
the night; and there were screams. And I heard a white man's black curse;
and the slap of a blow of flesh on flesh. And the screams.

"So I went that way; and the sounds retreated before me, until I came
out, unsteadily, upon the open beach. There was no moon, that night; and
the water of the lagoon was shot with fire. And there was a boat, pulling
away from the beach, with screaming in it.

"I swam after the boat for a long time, for I thought I had heard the
voice of the little brown girl. The water was full of fire. When I lifted
my arms, the fire ran down them in streams and drops. And sometimes I
forgot what I was about, and stopped to laugh at these drops of fire. But
in the end, I always swam on. I remember once I thought the little brown
girl swam beside me, and I tried to throw my arm about her, and she
wrenched away, and she burned me like a brand. I found, afterwards, what
that was. My breast and sides were rasped and raw where a shark's rough
skin had scraped them. I've wondered, Joel, why the beast did not take
me....

"But he did not; for I bumped at last into the boat, and climbed into it,
and it was empty. But I saw a rope at the end of it, and I pulled the
rope, and came to the schooner's stern, and climbed aboard her."

His voice was ringing, exultantly and proudly. "I swung aboard," he said.
"And I stumbled over fighting bodies on the deck, astern there. And some
one cried out, in the waist of her; and I knew it was the little brown
girl. So I left those struggling bodies at the stern, for they were not
my concern; and I went forward to the waist. And I found her there.

"A fat man had her. She was fighting him; and he did not see me. And I
put my fingers quietly into his neck, from behind; and when he no longer
kicked back at me, and no longer tore a