utu, big brother," Joan
said to him. "Tell your brothers, all of them, so that they can get
ready. We catch the _Upolu_ for Sydney. You will all come along, and
sail back to the Solomons in the new schooner. Take your extra shirts
and dungarees along. Plenty cold weather down there. Now run along, and
tell them to hurry. Leave the guns behind. Turn them over to Mr.
Sheldon. We won't need them."

"If you are really bent upon going--" Sheldon began.

"That's settled long ago," she answered shortly. "I'm going to pack now.
But I'll tell you what you can do for me--issue some tobacco and other
stuff they want to my men."

An hour later the three men had shaken hands with Joan down on the beach.
She gave the signal, and the boat shoved off, six men at the oars, the
seventh man for'ard, and Adamu Adam at the steering-sweep. Joan was
standing up in the stern-sheets, reiterating her good-byes--a slim figure
of a woman in the tight-fitting jacket she had worn ashore from the
wreck, the long-barrelled Colt's revolver hanging from the loose belt
around her waist, her clear-cut face like a boy's under the Stetson hat
that failed to conceal the heavy masses of hair beneath.

"You'd better get into shelter," she called to them. "There's a big
squall coming. And I hope you've got plenty of chain out, Captain Young.
Good-bye! Good-bye, everybody!"

Her last words came out of the darkness, which wrapped itself solidly
about the boat. Yet they continued to stare into the blackness in the
direction in which the boat had disappeared, listening to the steady
click of the oars in the rowlocks until it faded away and ceased.

"She is only a girl," Christian Young said with slow solemnity. The
discovery seemed to have been made on the spur of the moment. "She is
only a girl," he repeated with greater solemnity.

"A dashed pretty one, and a good traveller," Tudor laughed. "She
certainly has spunk, eh, Sheldon?"

"Yes, she is brave," was the reluctant answer for Sheldon did not feel
disposed to talk about her.

"That's the American of it," Tudor went on. "Push, and go, and energy,
and independence. What do you think, skipper?"

"I think she is young, very young, only a girl," replied the captain of
the _Minerva_, continuing to stare into the blackness that hid the sea.

The blackness seemed suddenly to increase in density, and they stumbled
up the beach, feeling their way to the gate.

"Watch out for nuts," Shel