thousand years ago.

Over this land bridge, mayhap, ventured the Caucasian people, the
dominant blood in Polynesia to-day, and when the continent fell from
the sight of sun and stars save in those spots now the mountainous
islands like Tahiti and the Marquesas, the survivors were isolated
for untold centuries.

Here in these islands the brothers of our long-forgotten ancestors
have lived and bred since the Stone Age, cut off from the main
stream of mankind's development. Here they have kept the childhood
customs of our white race, savage and wild, amid their primitive and
savage life. Here, three centuries ago, they were discovered by the
peoples of the great world, and, rudely encountering a civilization
they did not build, they are dying here. With their passing vanishes
the last living link with our own pre-historic past. And I was to see
it, before it disappears forever.

CHAPTER II

The trade-room of the _Morning Star_; Lying Bill Pincher;
M. L'Hermier des Plantes, future governor of the Marquesas;
story of McHenry and the little native boy, His Dog.

"Come 'ave a drink!" Captain Pincher called from the cabin, and
leaving the spray-swept deck where the rain drummed on the canvas
awning I went down the four steps into the narrow cabin-house.

The cabin, about twenty feet long, had a tiny semi-private room for
Captain Pincher, and four berths ranged about a table. Here, grouped
around a demijohn of rum, I found Captain Pincher with my three
fellow-passengers; McHenry and Gedge, the traders, and M. L'Hermier
des Plantes, a young officer of the French colonial army, bound to
the Marquesas to be their governor.

The captain was telling the story of the wreck in which he had lost
his former ship. He had tied up to a reef for a game of cards with a
like-minded skipper, who berthed beside him. The wind changed while
they slept. Captain Pincher awoke to find his schooner breaking her
backs on the coral rocks.

"Oo can say wot the blooming wind will do?" he said, thumping the
table with his glass. "There was Willy's schooner tied up next to me,
and 'e got a slant and slid away, while my boat busts 'er sides open
on the reef, The 'ole blooming atoll was 'eaped with the blooming
cargo. Willy 'ad luck; I 'ad 'ell. It's all an 'azard."

He had not found his aitches since he left Liverpool, thirty years
earlier, nor dropped his silly expletives. A gray-haired, red-faced,
laughing man, stockily built, mild mann