han he, and I was really captain myself. I lost her, too, but
it's no reflection on my seamanship. We were drifting four days outside
there in dead calms. Then the nor'wester caught us and drove us on the
lee shore. We made sail and tried to clew off, when the rotten work of
the Tahiti shipwrights became manifest. Our jib-boom and all our head-
stays carried away. Our only chance was to turn and run through the
passage between Florida and Ysabel. And when we were safely through, in
the twilight, where the chart shows fourteen fathoms as the shoalest
water, we smashed on a coral patch. The poor old _Miele_ struck only
once, and then went clear; but it was too much for her, and we just had
time to clear away in the boat when she went down. The German mate was
drowned. We lay all night to a sea-drag, and next morning sighted your
place here."

"I suppose you will go back to Von, now?" Sheldon queried.

"Nothing of the sort. Dad planned to go to the Solomons. I shall look
about for some land and start a small plantation. Do you know any good
land around here? Cheap?"

"By George, you Yankees are remarkable, really remarkable," said Sheldon.
"I should never have dreamed of such a venture."

"Adventure," Joan corrected him.

"That's right--adventure it is. And if you'd gone ashore on Malaita
instead of Guadalcanar you'd have been _kai-kai'd_ long ago, along with
your noble Tahitian sailors."

Joan shuddered.

"To tell the truth," she confessed, "we were very much afraid to land on
Guadalcanar. I read in the 'Sailing Directions' that the natives were
treacherous and hostile. Some day I should like to go to Malaita. Are
there any plantations there?"

"Not one. Not a white trader even."

"Then I shall go over on a recruiting vessel some time."

"Impossible!" Sheldon cried. "It is no place for a woman."

"I shall go just the same," she repeated.

"But no self-respecting woman--"

"Be careful," she warned him. "I shall go some day, and then you may be
sorry for the names you have called me."

CHAPTER VI--TEMPEST

It was the first time Sheldon had been at close quarters with an American
girl, and he would have wondered if all American girls were like Joan
Lackland had he not had wit enough to realize that she was not at all
typical. Her quick mind and changing moods bewildered him, while her
outlook on life was so different from what he conceived a woman's outlook
should be, that he