of the
weather side of the island.

For a quarter of a mile or so the two men walked on till the widest
part of the island was reached. Here, under the shadow of some giant
PUKA trees, the old skipper stopped and sat down on a roughly hewn slab
of coral, the remains of one of those MARAE or heathen temples that are
to be found almost anywhere in the islands of Eastern Polynesia.

"I knew this place well, once," he said, as he pulled out his pipe. "I
used to come here when I was sailing one of Brander's vessels out of
Tahiti. As we have done now we did then--came here for turtle. No
natives have lived here for the past forty years. Did you ever hear of
Brantley?"

"Yes," answered the supercargo, "but he died long ago, did he not?"

"Aye, he died here, and his wife and sister too. They all lie here in
this old MARAE."

And then he told the story of Brantley.

* * * * *

I

It was six years since Brantley, with his companions in misery, had
drifted ashore at lonely Vahitahi in the Paumotu Group, and the
kindly-hearted people had gazed with pitying horror upon the dreadful
beings that, muttering and gibbering to each other, lay in the bottom
of the boat, and pointed with long talon-like fingers to their burnt
and bloody thirst-tortured lips.

* * * * *

And now as he sits in the doorway of his thatched house, and gazes
dreamily out upon the long curve of creamy beach and wind-swayed line
of palms that fringe the leeward side of his island home, Brantley
passes a brown hand slowly up and down his sun-bronzed cheek, and
thinks of the past.

He was so full of life--of the very joy of living--that time six years
ago when he sailed from Auckland on that fateful voyage in the DORIS.
It was his first voyage as captain, and the ship was his own, and even
now he remembers with a curious time-dulled pang the last words of his
only sister--the Doris after whom he had called his new ship--as she
had kissed him farewell--"I am so glad, Fred, to hear them call you
'Captain Brantley.'"

And the voyage--the wild feverish desire to make a record passage to
'Frisco and back; the earnest words of poor old white-headed Lutton,
the mate, "not to carry on so at night going through the Paumotu
Group"; that awful midnight crash when the DORIS ran hopelessly into
the wild boil of roaring surf on Tuanake Reef; the white, despairing
faces of five of his men, who, with curses in their eyes upon his
folly, were swept out of sight int