h was the
lagoon entrance _of_ a large, long, and narrow oval of an atoll. The
atoll was shaped as if three atolls, in the course of building, had
collided and coalesced and failed to rear the partition walls. Cocoanut
palms grew in spots on the circle of sand, and there were many gaps
where the sand was too low to the sea for cocoanuts, and through which
could be seen the protected lagoon where the water lay flat like the
ruffled surface of a mirror. Many square miles of water were in the
irregular lagoon, all of which surged out on the ebb through the one
narrow channel. So narrow was the channel, so large the outflow of
water, that the passage was more like the rapids of a river than the
mere tidal entrance to an atoll. The water boiled and whirled and
swirled and drove outward in a white foam of stiff, serrated waves. Each
heave and blow on her bows of the upstanding waves of the current swung
the Malahini off the straight lead and wedged her as with wedges of
steel toward the side of the passage. Part way in she was, when her
closeness to the coral edge compelled her to go about. On the opposite
tack, broadside to the current, she swept seaward with the current's
speed.

"Now's the time for that new and expensive engine of yours," Grief
jeered good-naturedly.

That the engine was a sore point with Captain Warfield was patent. He
had begged and badgered for it, until in the end Grief had given his
consent.

"It will pay for itself yet," the captain retorted, "You wait and
see. It beats insurance and you know the underwriters won't stand for
insurance in the Paumotus."

Grief pointed to a small cutter beating up astern of them on the same
course.

"I'll wager a five-franc piece the little Nuhiva beats us in."

"Sure," Captain Warfield agreed. "She's overpowered. We're like a liner
alongside of her, and we've only got forty horsepower. She's got ten
horse, and she's a little skimming dish. She could skate across the
froth of hell, but just the same she can't buck this current. It's
running ten knots right now."

And at the rate of ten knots, buffeted and jerkily rolled, the
_Malahini_ went out to sea with the tide.

"She'll slacken in half an hour--then we'll make headway," Captain
Warfield said, with an irritation explained by his next words. "He has
no right to call it Parlay. It's down on the admiralty charts, and the
French charts, too, as Hikihoho. Bougainville discovered it and named it
from the nati