ore of the island, they saw Big Harry mount halfway
up the mizzen lower rigging. He waved his broad leaf hat to them three
times, and then soon, although they could see the upper canvas of the
ship showing now and then above the palms, they saw him no more.

*****

Seven months had come and gone, and every day, when the great red sun
sank behind the thick line of palms that studded the western shore of
Nukufetau, Fetu and Vailele would run to a tall and slender _fau_ tree
that grew on their mother's land, and cut on its dark brown bark a broad
notch.

"See," said Vailele to her sister on this day, "there are now twenty and
one marks" (they were in tens) "and that maketh of days two hundred and
ten."

"Aue!" said the quiet Fetu. "Cut thou a fresh one above. One hundred and
fifty and five more notches must there be cut in the tree before Hari,
our father, cometh back; for in the white men's year there are, so he
hath told me, three hundred and sixty and five days."

"O-la!" and Vailele laughed. "Then soon must we get something to stand
on to reach high up. But yet, it may be that our father will come before
the year is dead."

Fetu nodded her dark head, and then, hand in hand, the two girls walked
back to their mother's house through the deepening gloom that had fallen
upon the palm grove.

*****

Ten miles away, creeping up to the land under shortened canvas, were a
barque and a brig. No lights showed upon their decks, for theirs was
an evil and cruel mission, and the black-bearded, olive-skinned men
who crowded her decks spoke in whispers, lest the sound of their voices
might perhaps fall upon the ears of natives out catching flying fish in
their canoes.

Closer and closer the ships edged in to the land, and then, as they
opened out the long white stretch of beach that fringed the lee of the
island, they hove-to till daylight.

But if there were no lights on deck there were plenty below, and in the
barque's roomy cabin a number of men were sitting and talking together
over liquor and cigars. They were a fierce, truculent-looking lot, and
talked in Spanish, and every man carried a brace of revolvers in his
belt. All round the cabin were numbers of rifles and carbines and
cutlasses; and, indeed, the dark faces of the men, and the profusion of
arms that was everywhere shown, made them look like a band of pirates,
bent upon some present enterprise. Pirates they were not; but they were
perhaps as bad, for both