s as he addressed me.

"Do you know that nigger you rescued?" he asked.

"Toni?"

"Yes."

"What about him?"

"You did your heroic stunt for nothing," he remarked. "The fool can't be
found, so I guess he went overboard in the night."

The news came as a shock to me. Toni's last question that he had put as
he clung to the wheel with Soma had flashed through my mind several
times through the night. He had asked it in a manner that insinuated
that I might be interested in the reasons why Big Jacky, his companion
on the wharf at Levuka, wished the whereabouts of the white waterfall to
remain a secret, and now his disappearance blocked my inquiries. I felt
annoyed with myself for not listening to what the Fijian had to say at
the moment he confessed that he had lied, and then the face of the
listening Soma came up before my mental eye. Soma was a person that I
was beginning to cordially dislike.

I turned to Newmarch and fired a question at him.

"Do you think he was helped overboard?"

"Why, no," he said slowly. "Why do you think that?"

"Oh, nothing," I replied. "I thought his narrow escape of the morning
would have made him careful."

It was a few hours after this conversation that I had my first chance
of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment we had run into the
disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I
hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage
which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as
she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the
wind like the whips of invisible devils.

"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.

"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as _The Waif_ took
a header. "We've weathered the worst of it and we're still sound. The
storm centre has slipped away to the north, and we can count ourselves
out of the ruction for the present."

Her shapely hand clutched my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the
back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the
hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the
companion. Leith's bass voice rose above the noise of the waves, and
there was an angry note in it.

"This isn't a nice place for you, Miss Edith!" he cried.

The girl half turned her head, looked at him for a second, then without
any intimation that she had heard what he said, she turned again toward
me and started to cross-ex