s crew got out and walked about the smouldering remains of the
village, seeking for curios which had escaped the fire, pausing awhile
to look at a large mound of sand, under which lay seven of the natives
killed by the landing-party on the preceding day. Then, satisfied that
there was nothing to be had, the coxswain grumblingly ordered the men
back to the boat, which pushed off and returned to the ship.

The wild, naked creature lying upon the boulder saw the boat pull off
with a sigh of satisfaction. There was, under the ashes of his house,
and buried still further under the soil, a 50-lb. beef barrel filled
with Chilian and Mexican dollars. And he had feared that the bluejackets
might rake about the ashes and find it.

He rose and stepped down the jagged boulder to where, at the base,
the thick carpet of dead leaves, fallen from the giant trees which
encompassed it, silenced even the tread of his naked feet. Seated
against the bole of a many-buttressed _vi_-tree was a native woman,
whose right arm, shattered by a bullet and bound up in the spathe of a
coconut-palm, was suspended from her neck by a strip of soft bark. She
looked at him inquiringly.

"A boat has come ashore," he said in the native tongue, "but none of the
white men are seeking for my money."

"Thy money!" The woman's eyes blazed with a deadly fury. "What is thy
money to me? Is thy money more to us than the blood of our child? O,
thou coward heart!"

Grasping his Snider by the tip of the barrel the man looked at his wife
with sullen, dulled ferocity.

"I am no coward, Nuta. Thou dost not understand. I wish to save the
money, but I wish for revenge as well. Yet what can I do? I am but one
man, and have but one cartridge left."

* * * * *

This naked, sun-tanned being was one of the most desperate and
blood-stained beachcombers that had ever cursed the fair isles of the
South Pacific, and in those days there were many, notably on Pleasant
Island and in the Gilbert Group. Put ashore at Nitendi from a Hobart
Town whaler for mutinous conduct, he had disassociated himself for ever
from civilisation. Perhaps the convict strain in his blood had something
to do with his vicious nature, for both his father and mother had "left
their country for their country's good," and his early training had been
given him under the shadow of the gallows and within the swishing sound
of the "cat" as it lacerated the backs of the wretched beings doomed to
suffer under t