be a big man in the Paumotus, but Fred Brantley would be
nobody in Sydney--only a common merchant skipper who had made money in
the islands.... And perhaps Doris is married."

* * * * *

So he thought and talked to himself, listening the while to the soft
symphony of the swaying palm-tops and the subdued murmur of the surf as
the rollers crashed on the distant line of reef away to leeward. Of
late these fleeting visions of the outside world--that quick, busy
world, whose memories, save for those of Doris, were all but dead to
him--had become more frequent; but the calm, placid happiness of his
existence, and that strange, fatal glamour that for ever enwraps the
minds of those who wander in the islands of the sunlit sea--as the old
Spanish navigators called Polynesia--had woven its spell too strongly
over his nature to be broken. And now, as the murmur of women's voices
caused him to turn his head to the shady end of the verandah, the dark,
dreamy eyes of Luita, who with her women attendants sat there playing
with her child, looked out at him from beneath their long lashes, and
told him his captivity was complete.

* * * * *

A week afterwards the people of Vahitahi were clustered on the beach
putting supplies of native food in the schooner's boat. That night he
was to sail again for the pearling grounds at Matahiva lagoon, and
would be away three months.

One by one the people bade him adieu, and then stood apart while he
said farewell to Luita.

"E MAHINA TOLU [Only three months], little one," he said, "why such a
gloomy face?"

The girl shook her head, and her mouth twitched. "But the MITI [dream],
Paranili--the MITI of my mother. She is wise in the things that are
hidden; for she is one of those who believe in the old gods of
Vahitahi.... And there are many here of the new LOTU [Faith, i.e.
Christianity] who yet believe in the old gods. And, see, she has dreamed
of this unknown evil to thee twice; and twice have the voices of those who
are silent in the MARAE called to me in the night, and said: 'He must not
go; he must not go.'"

Knowing well how the old superstitious taint ran riot in the
imaginative native mind, Brantley did not attempt to reason, but sought
to gently disengage her hands from his arm.

She dropped on the sand at his feet and clasped his knees, and a long,
wailing note of grief rang out--

"AUE! AUE! my husband! if it so be that thou dost not heed the voices
that call in the night, th