of the village, through garden and sand strip, and that brought her
finally, all unseen, to the wall of a large house, to a post, to a
slatted gallery aglow inside with lamps, and to her second discovery....

"Curse your black soul!" a voice was saying, with heavy, slow brutality,
"when I tell you to drink--you drink! D'y' hear?"

"No can do, Mahrster," came the faltering response, in the broken _beche
de mer_ that is the token of the white man's domination in the islands.
"That fella rum taboo 'long me altogether."

"What do I care for your taboo? _Drink!_"

Fell an interval of silence.

"Drink again--drink hearty!"

Captain Hull Gregson sat leaning forward by the side of his living-room
table, shoving down the length of it a glass that brimmed and sparkled
redly. On his knee, in a fist like a ham, he balanced a black bottle.
His jutted jaw took a line with the outthrust arm, with the lowering
brow, as if the whole implacable force and will of the man were so
projected.

And at the end, facing him, stood Motauri--a different, a sadly
different Motauri. A Motauri not in the least the joyous woodland faun
in his attitude now. His proud crest was lowered, stripped of its
wreath; his magnificent muscles drooped. He stood humbly, with chest
collapsed, on shuffling feet, as became an inferior. He drew the back of
his hand across his lips and eyed the white man furtively....

"That's better," grunted Gregson, and leaned back to set the bottle on
the table amid a litter of odds and ends, books, papers, a revolver, a
tarred tiller-rope with a roseknot. "Perhaps that'll loosen your
tongue. First time I ever seen your breed hold off the stuff. But then,
you're one of these independent lads, ain't you? Old chief stock, you
call yourself. Plenty wild Kanaka, you.... Plenty bold, bad fella
you--hey?"

"No, Mahrster," said Motauri, deprecating.

Gregson regarded him with a hard smile.

"And now you're going to tell me why you tried to sneak a boat at this
hour o' night."

"Me like'm go fish," said Motauri.

"You've said that a dozen times, and it's no better. It don't pass. Go
fish? Go soak your black head! What are you up to, hey? Come now--tell."

Motauri made no answer, and the other controlled himself. Behind his
dark mask the big trader was under the empire of some powerful emotion.
His hands clenched and opened again, trembling a little. His face shone
like wet leather. But it was in a tone oddly detached, mu