en are suffering through his darned foolishness, and if he
did know it wouldn't trouble him. If you want the real extract of
selfishness you must make a puncture in a scientific guy with a hobby,
and you can get as much as you want."

"Well, I'm going along to see what happens," I said. "If Leith refuses
to accept me I'm going just the same."

Holman gripped my hand--gripped it fiercely, then he left me hurriedly.

I tramped backward and forward as _The Waif_ sailed steadily through the
waves of glittering mercury. A few days before, when I was an occupant
of "The Rathole" in Levuka, life seemed to be empty and cold, but a
wonderful change had come in those few days. Although I had not spoken
to Edith Herndon more than half a dozen times, it appeared to me that it
was those few short conversations that had chased the loneliness and
morbid thoughts from my mind. Her very presence stimulated me in a
manner that I could not express, and as I stared out across the
moon-whitened ocean I started nervously at the thought which had sprung
suddenly into my brain. It was an insane thought, and I tried to laugh
it away. Edith Herndon was as far above me as the moon was above the
waves that were silvered by her beams. I pictured myself lying like a
beachcomber upon the pile of pearl shell when the strange chant of the
Maori and the dead Toni concerning "the way to heaven out of Black
Fernando's hell" had come to my ears, and I blessed the new influence
which had come into my life.

"My way to heaven lies in this direction," I soliloquized, and the
quivering yacht went bounding on as I allowed wild dreams to race
unchecked through my brain.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

THE ISLE OF TEARS

A sleepy Samoan in the main cross-trees screamed a message to the deck
while the pink flush of the tropical dawn was still in the sky, and _The
Waif_ plunged through the water toward the island. One after the other
the members of the expedition came on deck. Leith stumbled up when
Newmarch shouted down the information, and the big brute watched the
tiny spot that came gradually nearer; the Professor danced up like an
adventurous boy, and he gurgled ecstatically as he peeped over the rail;
while the two girls came up arm in arm and looked in silence across the
dawn-reddened waters. Holman's gaze travelled from the island to Leith
and back again to the island as if he was trying to trace a criminal
connection between the two.

As the y