joy of all sailormen, and the pride of the
shipwrights who built her. Even now, after forty years of driving, she
was still the same old _Rattler_, fore-reaching in the same marvellous
manner that compelled sailors to see in order to believe and that
punctuated many an angry discussion with words and blows on the beaches
of all the ports from Valparaiso to Manila Bay.

On this night, close-hauled, her big mainsail preposterously flattened
down, her luffs pulsing emptily on the lift of each smooth swell, she
was sliding an easy four knots through the water on the veriest whisper
of a breeze. For an hour David Grief had been leaning on the rail at the
lee fore-rigging, gazing overside at the steady phosphorescence of her
gait. The faint back-draught from the headsails fanned his cheek and
chest with a wine of coolness, and he was in an ecstasy of appreciation
of the schooner's qualities.

"Eh!--She's a beauty, Taute, a beauty," he said to the Kanaka lookout,
at the same time stroking the teak of the rail with an affectionate
hand.

"Ay, skipper," the Kanaka answered in the rich, big-chested tones of
Polynesia. "Thirty years I know ships, but never like 'this. On Raiatea
we call her _Fanauao_."

"The Dayborn," Grief translated the love-phrase. "Who named her so?"

About to answer, Taute peered ahead with sudden intensity. Grief joined
him in the gaze.

"Land," said Taute.

"Yes; Fuatino," Grief agreed, his eyes still fixed on the spot where
the star-luminous horizon was gouged by a blot of blackness. "It's all
right. I'll tell the captain."

The _Rattler_ slid along until the loom of the island could be seen as
well as sensed, until the sleepy roar of breakers and the blatting of
goats could be heard, until the wind, off the land, was flower-drenched
with perfume.

"If it wasn't a crevice, she could run the passage a night like this,"
Captain Glass remarked regretfully, as he watched the wheel lashed hard
down by the steersman.

The _Rattler_, run off shore a mile, had been hove to to wait until
daylight ere she attempted the perilous entrance to Fuatino. It was a
perfect tropic night, with no hint of rain or squall. For'ard, wherever
their tasks left them, the Raiatea sailors sank down to sleep on deck.
Aft, the captain and mate and Grief spread their beds with similar
languid unconcern. They lay on their blankets, smoking and murmuring
sleepy conjectures about Mataara, the Queen of Fuatino, and about the
lo