ptain Warfield said: "I was in the _Magpie_
that blow, and we went ashore, all hands and the cook, _Magpie_ and all,
a quarter of a mile into the cocoanuts at the head of Taiohae Bay--and
it a supposedly hurricane-proof harbour."

"Well," Grief continued, "old Parlay got caught in the same blow, and
arrived in Papeete with his hatful of pearls three weeks too late. He'd
had to jack up his schooner and build half a mile of ways before he
could get her back into the sea.

"And in the meantime there was Armande at Papeete. Nobody called on her.
She did, French fashion, make the initial calls on the Governor and the
port doctor. They saw her, but neither of their hen-wives was at home to
her nor returned the call. She was out of caste, without caste, though
she had never dreamed it, and that was the gentle way they broke the
information to her. There was a gay young lieutenant on the French
cruiser. He lost his heart to her, but not his head. You can imagine
the shock to this young woman, refined, beautiful, raised like an
aristocrat, pampered with the best of old France that money could buy.
And you can guess the end." He shrugged his shoulders. "There was a
Japanese servant in the bungalow. He saw it. Said she did it with the
proper spirit of the Samurai. Took a stiletto--no thrust, no drive,
no wild rush for annihilation--took the stiletto, placed the point
carefully against her heart, and with both hands, slowly and steadily,
pressed home.

"Old Parlay arrived after that with his pearls. There was one single one
of them, they say, worth sixty thousand francs. Peter Gee saw it, and
has told me he offered that much for it. The old man went clean off for
a while. They had him strait-jacketed in the Colonial Club two days----"

"His wife's uncle, an old Paumotan, cut him out of the jacket and turned
him loose," the supercargo corroborated.

"And then old Parlay proceeded to eat things up," Grief went on. "Pumped
three bullets into the scalawag of a lieutenant----"

"Who lay in sick bay for three months," Captain Warfield contributed.

"Flung a glass of wine in the Governor's face; fought a duel with the
port doctor; beat up his native servants; wrecked the hospital; broke
two ribs and the collarbone of a man nurse, and escaped; and went down
to his schooner, a gun in each hand, daring the chief of police and all
the gendarmes to arrest him, and sailed for Hikihoho. And they say he's
never left the island since."

T