sing along
to her father's store, to buy goods or sell native produce, would join
her. So, lighting her cigarette with a piece of burning coconut husk
that she brought with, her, she spread the towel she carried upon the
rock and waited, looking sometimes at the opposite side of the channel
to where the path from the village led, and sometimes out to sea.

Somewhat short in stature, the old trader's daughter looked younger than
she was, for she was about twenty--and twenty is an age in those tropic
climes which puts a girl a long way out of girlhood.

No one would ever say that little Ema Swain was beautiful. She certainly
was not. Her freckled face and large mouth "put her out of court,"
as Captain Peters would sometimes say to his mate. (Captain Peters
frequently came to Drummond's, and he and Etna's father would get drunk
on such occasions with uniform regularity.) But wait till you spoke to
her, and then let her eyes meet yours, and you would forget all about
the big mouth and the freckles; and when she smiled it was with such an
innocent sweetness that made a man somehow turn away with a feeling in
his heart that no coarse passion had ever ruffled her gentle bosom.

And her eyes. Ah! so different from those of most Polynesian
half-blooded girls. Theirs, indeed, in most cases, are beautiful eyes;
but there is ever in them a bold and daring challenge to a man they like
that gives the pall of monotony to the brightness of a glance.

Nearly every white man who had ever seen Ema and heard the magical
tones of her voice, or her sweet innocent laugh, was fascinated when
she turned upon him those soft orbs that, beneath the long dark lashes,
looked like diamonds floating in fluid crystal.

I said "nearly every white man," for sometimes men came to Jack Swain's
house whose talk and manner, and unmistakable looks at her, made the
girl's slight figure quiver and tremble with fear, and she would hide
herself away in another room lest her father and brother might guess
the terror that filled her tender bosom. For white-headed Jack was a
passionate old fellow, and would have quickly invited any one who tried
to harm the girl "to come outside"; Jim, her black-haired, morose and
silent brother, would have driven a knife between the offender's ribs.

But the girl's merry, loving disposition would never let her tell her
brother nor her father how she dreaded these visits of some of the rough
traders from the other islands of th