r there are many half-castes in the eight islands of the
group--he had sought her out, in the hope that she would be pleased to
hear the sound of her native tongue again, and perhaps return with him
to her native land.

Nearly a year passed before Big Harry, with his daughter Fetu, sailed
into the placid waters of Nukufetau Lagoon, and of the glad meeting of
those four happy souls there is no need to tell.

A QUESTION OF PRECEDENCE

Denison, the supercargo of the _Indiana_ was always reproaching
Packenham, the skipper, for getting the ship into trouble by his
inconsiderate and effusive good-nature--"blind stupidity," Denison
called it. And whenever Packenham did bring trouble upon himself or the
ship's company by some fresh act of glaring idiotcy, he would excuse
himself by saying that it wouldn't have happened if Nerida had been with
him that trip. Nerida was Packenham's half-caste Portuguese wife. She
was a very small woman, but kept her six-foot husband in a state of
placid subjection and also out of much mischief whenever she made a
cruise in the _Indiana_. Therefore Denison loved her as a sister, and
forgave her many things because of this. Certainly she was a bit of a
trial sometimes to every living soul on board the brig, but then all
skippers' wives are that, even when pure white. And Nerida's doings
would make a book worth reading--especially by married women with
gadabout husbands like Packenham. But on this occasion Nerida was not
aboard, and Denison looked for trouble.

*****

For four days and nights the little _Indiana_ had leapt and spun along,
before a steady southerly gale, rolling like a drunken thing a-down the
for'ard slopes of mountain seas, and struggling gamely up again with
flattened canvas from out the windless trough; a bright, hot sun had
shone upon her swashing decks from its slow rosy dawn to its quick
setting of fiery crimson and blazing gold; and at night a big white moon
lit up an opal sky, and silvered the hissing froth and smoky spume that
curled in foaming ridges from beneath her clean-cut bows.

The brig was bound from Auckland to Samoa and the islands of the
north-west, and carried a cargo of trade goods for the white traders who
hoisted the _Indiana's_ house-flag in front of their thatched dwellings.
Packenham thought a good deal of this flag--it bore the letters R. P. in
red in a yellow square on a blue ground--until one day Hammerfeld, the
German supercargo of the _Is