white skin myself when I was a kiddie," said the
skipper, with a twinkle in his bloodshot eyes.

But Neilson paid no attention to him. He was telling his story now and
interruption made him impatient.

"And his face was just as beautiful as his body. He had large blue eyes,
very dark, so that some say they were black, and unlike most red-haired
people he had dark eyebrows and long dark lashes. His features were
perfectly regular and his mouth was like a scarlet wound. He was
twenty."

On these words the Swede stopped with a certain sense of the dramatic.
He took a sip of whisky.

"He was unique. There never was anyone more beautiful. There was no more
reason for him than for a wonderful blossom to flower on a wild plant.
He was a happy accident of nature."

"One day he landed at that cove into which you must have put this
morning. He was an American sailor, and he had deserted from a
man-of-war in Apia. He had induced some good-humoured native to give him
a passage on a cutter that happened to be sailing from Apia to Safoto,
and he had been put ashore here in a dugout. I do not know why he
deserted. Perhaps life on a man-of-war with its restrictions irked him,
perhaps he was in trouble, and perhaps it was the South Seas and these
romantic islands that got into his bones. Every now and then they take a
man strangely, and he finds himself like a fly in a spider's web. It may
be that there was a softness of fibre in him, and these green hills with
their soft airs, this blue sea, took the northern strength from him as
Delilah took the Nazarite's. Anyhow, he wanted to hide himself, and he
thought he would be safe in this secluded nook till his ship had sailed
from Samoa."

"There was a native hut at the cove and as he stood there, wondering
where exactly he should turn his steps, a young girl came out and
invited him to enter. He knew scarcely two words of the native tongue
and she as little English. But he understood well enough what her smiles
meant, and her pretty gestures, and he followed her. He sat down on a
mat and she gave him slices of pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red
only from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met
her, and she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how
exquisite she was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the
rich colour. She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of
her race, and large eyes like pools of still water under the palm t