he supercargo nodded. "That was fifteen years ago, and he's never
budged."

"And added to his pearls," said the captain. "He's a blithering old
lunatic. Makes my flesh creep. He's a regular Finn."

"What's that?" Mulhall inquired.

"Bosses the weather--that's what the natives believe, at any rate. Ask
Tai-Hotauri there. Hey, Tai-Hotauri! what you think old Parlay do along
weather?"

"Just the same one big weather devil," came the Kanaka's answer. "I
know. He want big blow, he make big blow. He want no wind, no wind
come."

"A regular old Warlock," said Mulhall.

"No good luck them pearl," Tai-Hotauri blurted out, rolling his head
ominously. "He say he sell. Plenty schooner come. Then he make big
hurricane, everybody finish, you see. All native men say so."

"It's hurricane season now," Captain War-field laughed morosely.
"They're not far wrong. It's making for something right now, and I'd
feel better if the _Malahini_ was a thousand miles away from here."

"He is a bit mad," Grief concluded. "I've tried to get his point of
view. It's--well, it's mixed. For eighteen years he'd centred everything
on Armande. Half the time he believes she's still alive, not yet come
back from France. That's one of the reasons he held on to the pearls.
And all the time he hates white men. He never forgets they killed her,
though a great deal of the time he forgets she's dead. Hello! Where's
your wind?"

The sails bellied emptily overhead, and Captain Warfield grunted his
disgust. Intolerable as the heat had been, in the absence of wind it
was almost overpowering. The sweat oozed out on all their faces, and now
one, and again another, drew deep breaths, involuntarily questing for
more air.

"Here she comes again--an eight point haul! Boom-tackles across! Jump!"

The Kanakas sprang to the captain's orders, and for five minutes the
schooner laid directly into the passage and even gained on the current.
Again the breeze fell flat, then puffed from the old quarter, compelling
a shift back of sheets and tackles.

"Here comes the _Nuhiva_" Grief said. "She's got her engine on. Look at
her skim."

"All ready?" the captain asked the engineer, a Portuguese half-caste,
whose head and shoulders protruded from the small hatch just for'ard of
the cabin, and who wiped the sweat from his face with a bunch of greasy
waste.

"Sure," he replied.

"Then let her go."

The engineer disappeared into his den, and a moment later the exhaust
m