e _Umbawa_--one
hundred and forty drowned. He was first officer on the bridge.
Deliberate disobedience to instructions. No wonder they broke him.

"Christian Young has never had any experience with large boats. Besides,
we can't afford to pay him what he's clearing on the _Minerva_.
Sparrowhawk is a good man--to take orders. He has no initiative. He's
an able sailor, but he can't command. I tell you I was nervous all the
time he had charge of the _Flibberty_ at Poonga-Poonga when I had to stay
by the _Martha_."

And so it had gone. No name proposed was satisfactory, and, moreover,
Sheldon had been surprised by the accuracy of her judgments. A dozen
times she almost drove him to the statement that from the showing she
made of Solomon Islands sailors, she was the only person fitted to
command the _Martha_. But each time he restrained himself, while her
pride prevented her from making the suggestion.

"Good whale-boat sailors do not necessarily make good schooner-handlers,"
she replied to one of his arguments. "Besides, the captain of a boat
like the _Martha_ must have a large mind, see things in a large way; he
must have capacity and enterprise."

"But with your Tahitians on board--" Sheldon had begun another argument.

"There won't be any Tahitians on board," she had returned promptly. "My
men stay with me. I never know when I may need them. When I sail, they
sail; when I remain ashore, they remain ashore. I'll find plenty for
them to do right here on the plantation. You've seen them clearing bush,
each of them worth half a dozen of your cannibals."

So it was that Joan stood beside Sheldon and sighed as she watched the
_Martha_ beating out to sea, old Kinross, brought over from Savo, in
command.

"Kinross is an old fossil," she said, with a touch of bitterness in her
voice. "Oh, he'll never wreck her through rashness, rest assured of
that; but he's timid to childishness, and timid skippers lose just as
many vessels as rash ones. Some day, Kinross will lose the _Martha_
because there'll be only one chance and he'll be afraid to take it. I
know his sort. Afraid to take advantage of a proper breeze of wind that
will fetch him in in twenty hours, he'll get caught out in the calm that
follows and spend a whole week in getting in. The _Martha_ will make
money with him, there's no doubt of it; but she won't make near the money
that she would under a competent master."

She paused, and with heighten