bare chest, and flowers in his tawny hair, the handsome boy
was seated in a hammock. With her head against his knee, a beautiful
girl was looking up into his face, one hand locked in his. In that land
of pretty women she was the one that outshone them all--Tehea, the
sister of the king, for whose sweet favor every man on board had sought
in vain. And here she was, with her long hair loosened and her eyes
swimming with love, looking up at the lad who had given name and honor
to win her heart. The pair were hardly more than children; and Brady, a
sentimentalist of forty, with red hair, sighed as he peeped through the
eaves and thought of his own dear girl at home.

Garrard laid down the pipe he had been smoking, and, in happy
unconsciousness of any audience but the woman at his feet, began to
sing. His voice had always been his greatest charm, and the means of
gaining him the friendship of men much older than himself. It had won
Hadow; it had won Francis. There was not a blue-jacket on board the
_Dauntless_ but whose eyes had moistened under the spell of Jack's clear
tenor. No one could render with such delicacy, purity, and sentiment
those ballads, now so old-fashioned, that used to solace our seafaring
fathers in the fifties.

Jack lay back in the hammock, and with wonderful tenderness and feeling
sang "Afton Water," repeating the last verse several times over. It was
plain that something in it, some phrase or line, had deeply moved him,
for he suddenly bent over and laid his face in his hands, shaking with a
strange emotion. Tehea rose, and throwing her arms round his neck and
forcing away his hands, pressed her lips to his wet eyes. Even as she
did so Brady gave the signal for the whole party to move round to the
entrance. He passed through first, the others close behind him. Jack
leaped to his feet, white and speechless, his wide-open eyes those of an
animal at bay. Brady, Winterslea, Stanbury-Jones, Hotham, Hatch, the
familiar faces, daunted him like the sight of ghosts. Friends no longer,
they were now avengers, with the right to track him down and kill him.

[Illustration: "Jack leaped to his feet, white and speechless."]

"Jack!" cried Brady in a stifled voice.

The lad took a step back. The girl moaned, and tried to run between
Hatch and Stanbury-Jones. The old seaman caught and shook her like a
dog, tearing away the whistle she put to her lips and dashing it on the
floor. Jack put up his hand and snatched a