deeply blue beyond the clamouring reef, whose misty spume for ever rose
and fell the livelong day, and showed ghostly white at night.

It was at night time that young Denison, ex-supercargo of the wrecked
brig _Leonora_ first saw the place and took a huge liking to it. And
the memories of the seven happy months he spent there remains with him
still, though he has grown grizzled and respectable now and goes trading
no more.

A white moon stood high in a cloudless sky when he bade farewell to the
good-natured ruffian with whom, until two months previously, he had had
the distinction of serving as supercargo. The village wherein Captain
Bully Hayes and his motley rum-drinking crew had established themselves
was six miles from Leasse, on the shores of the Utwe Harbour, at
the bottom of which lay the once shapely _Leonora_, with her broken
fore-topmast just showing above the water. For reasons that need not
here be mentioned, Denison and the captain had quarrelled, and so the
former was deeply touched and said goodbye with a husky throat when the
burly skipper placed one of his two remaining bottles of gin in his hand
and said he was a "damned young fool to take things up so hotly." So,
without a further word, he swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped
out quickly, fearing that some of the crew (none of whom knew of
his going) might meet him ere he gained the beach and mingle their
tears--for they all loved him well--with the precious bottle of gin.

For nearly an hour he walked along the sandy shore of a narrow and
winding strip of low-lying land, separated from the high and wooded
mainland by a slumbering lagoon, deep in parts but shallow at the south
end where it joined the barrier reef. Here Denison crossed, for the tide
had ebbed, and, gaining the shelving beach on the other side, he saw
before him Mout Leasse village, standing out clearly in the blazing
moonlight against the black edge of the mountain forest, which, higher
up, was wrapped in fleecy mist. It was near to dawn, but, being tired
and sleepy, the ex-supercargo lay down on the soft warm sand, away from
the falling dew of the pendulous palm leaves, and slept till it came.

An hour after daylight he was in the village and being hugged and
embraced by the inhabitants in general and Kusis, the headman, and his
wife and daughter in particular. I have already mentioned that Denison
was very young then; he would not permit such a thing now.

Still, althou