sily asked him permission to take
the smallest of the boats (a ship's dinghy) and go fishing outside the
reef until the morning. They had just heard some natives crying out
that a vast shoal of _tau tau_--a large salmonlike fish, greatly prized
throughout the South Seas--had made their appearance, and already some
canoes were being got ready.

"Who is going with you, boys?" asked Flemming, looking at their
deeply-bronzed, healthy faces--so like his own, though his hair had now
begun to grizzle about his sunburnt temples.

"Jack and Tom, and two Anaa men," they replied, "they sent us to ask you
if they could come. They have finished the new roof for the oil-shed,
and want to go very badly. Say 'yes,' father."

"All right boys. You may go. Tell your mother to give you plenty to eat
to take with you--for it's only six o'clock, and I suppose you won't be
home till daylight."

The delighted boys tore into the house to get their fishing tackle,
whilst their mother, telling them to make less clamour, filled an empty
box with biscuit, bread, and tinned meats enough for the party of
six, and in less than ten minutes they were off again, shouting their
goodbyes as they raced through the gate, followed by a native woman
carrying the heavy box of food.

Martin Flemming turned to his wife with a smile lighting up his somewhat
sombre face.

"We shall have a quiet house to-night, Kaiulani," he said, calling her
by her Hawaiian name.

"Which will be a treat for us, Martin. Those boys really make more noise
every day. And do you know what they have done now?"

He shook his head.

"They have a live hawkbill turtle in their room--quite a large one,
for I could scarcely move it--and have painted its back in five or six
colours. And they feed it on live fish; the room smells horribly."

Flemming laughed. "I thought I could smell fresh paint about the house
yesterday. Never mind, 'Lani. It won't hurt the turtle."

CHAPTER II

At seven o'clock on the following morning the boys had not returned,
and Martin Flemming, just as his wife brought him his cup of coffee, was
saying that they probably were still fishing, when he heard a sound that
made him spring to his feet--the long, hoarse, bellowing note of a conch
shell, repeated three times.

"That's a call to arms!" he cried, "what does it mean, I wonder. Ah,
there is another sounding, too, from the far end of the village. I must
go and see what is the matter."

Scarcely