nxious to be fed that one could almost
see into the very crops of the owners. They were Koko's children. In
another year each of those ugly downy things would, if permitted to
live, be a beautiful sapphire-coloured bird with a few dove-coloured
tail feathers, coral beak, and bright, intelligent eyes. A few days ago
each of these things was imprisoned in a pale green egg. A month ago
they were nowhere.

Something hit Dick on the cheek. It was the mother bird returned with
food for the young ones. Dick drew his head aside, and she proceeded
without more ado to fill their crops.

CHAPTER XI

THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE

Months passed away. Only one bird remained in the branches of the artu:
Koko's children and mate had vanished, but he remained. The breadfruit
leaves had turned from green to pale gold and darkest amber, and now
the new green leaves were being presented to the spring.

Dick, who had a complete chart of the lagoon in his head, and knew all
the soundings and best fishing places, the locality of the stinging
coral, and the places where you could wade right across at low
tide--Dick, one morning, was gathering his things together for a
fishing expedition. The place he was going to lay some two and a half
miles away across the island, and as the road was bad he was going
alone.

Emmeline had been passing a new thread through the beads of the
necklace she sometimes wore. This necklace had a history. In the
shallows not far away, Dick had found a bed of shell-fish; wading out
at low tide, he had taken some of them out to examine. They were
oysters. The first one he opened, so disgusting did its appearance seem
to him, might have been the last, only that under the beard of the
thing lay a pearl. It was about twice the size of a large pea, and so
lustrous that even he could not but admire its beauty, though quite
unconscious of its value.

He flung the unopened oysters down, and took the thing to Emmeline.
Next day, returning by chance to the same spot, he found the oysters he
had cast down all dead and open in the sun. He examined them, and
found another pearl embedded in one of them. Then he collected nearly a
bushel of the oysters, and left them to die and open. The idea had
occurred to him of making a necklace for his companion. She had one
made of shells, he intended to make her one of pearls.

It took a long time, but it was something to do. He pierced them with a
big needle, and at the end of