ebuan, leaving Mrs. Tracey
to "keep house," as she called it, on the little island, and look over
the treasures brought to her from the ship.

Late in the afternoon the hunters returned with their spoil--three
gaunt, fierce-looking wild pigs; and then after a meal had been cooked
and eaten, the white man and woman bade each other good-bye for another
week.

[1] A gigantic species of the tuber called "taro" by the Polynesians
(_Arum esculentum_).

CHAPTER X.

A REPENTANCE.

More than three months had passed away, and the shapely hull of the
_Mahina_ was eighteen inches deeper in the water than when she first
anchored in the lagoon. During all this time fine weather had
prevailed, and the boats had been constantly at work, the crew,
however, being given plenty of liberty to rest and refresh themselves,
by wandering about the nearer islands--fishing, pig-hunting, and
bird-catching, or lying about, smoking or sleeping day or night, upon
the matted floors of the houses of the little native village nestling
under the grove of breadfruit-trees.

But whilst matters in regard to the pearling operations had gone on
without interruption, there had been several collisions between
Warner's Solomon Islanders and Barry's men, and worse followed.

One day a diver named Harry, a fine, stalwart young man, belonging to
Arorai, one of the Gilbert Islands, was found lying dead on the inner
reef of the lagoon. He had gone out crayfishing the previous night,
and should have returned long before daylight, but his absence was not
noticed until Barry called to his men to turn to and man the boats for
the day's work.

Billy Onotoa--the native who had been stabbed by the Greek--at once
asserted that Harry had been killed by Warner's men.

"Choose well thy words, Tiban of Onotoa," said Barry sternly,
addressing Billy by his native name and in his native tongue; "how dost
thou know that this man hath been slain by the man-eaters?"

"Come and see," replied Billy quietly.

The dead man lay upon his back on a mat in one of the houses, and
turning the body over, Billy Onotoa beckoned to the white man to draw
near.

"Place thy hand here and feel his backbone," he said; "see, it is
broken in the middle. And it hath been broken by a club such as the
'man-eaters' use, for there is the mark of the blow on the skin, and
the bruised flesh. This man was stooping, and an unseen enemy sprang
upon him from behind and broke his back w