tons of copra for my girls'
school; and he'll have to apologize, too, and swear on a shark's head to
behave for a year."

"We can't all have such intrepid little wives," said Kirke, putting his
arm fondly about her. Experience had shown him that in native questions
she was always as good as her word, and it was with a kind of proud
humility he conceded her the place he was so much less able himself to
fill. He had not the faintest apprehensions about the Tarawa matter. Ada
would bring the king to heel in fifteen minutes, and in twenty there
would be the dawn of a new peace, with stately apologies, gifts of
turtle and bonito hooks, endless and troublesomely idiomatic
compliments, and incidentally a little friction with the Titcombes, who
would certainly resent being saved so easily.

No, Kirke wasn't afraid of Karaitch. Ada would settle Karaitch out of
hand. What he dreaded was that twenty miles of water under the noonday
sun, and the problem of Daisy--Daisy, their little girl of eight, who
was playing so contentedly on the floor with the presents Santa Claus
had just brought her.

"Oh, Walter, I can't let Daisy go again!" cried Mrs. Kirke. "Last time
she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn't really herself for
weeks and weeks afterwards."

Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head
and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby
seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical
slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a
darling little chair!

"But leave her?" questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand.
"And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows
to-day what deviltry and carousing?"

Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.

"Twenty miles over there--three hours," she said at last; "an hour to
straighten out the king--four hours; three back, makes seven. That means
being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care
of her, and then I'll get Peter to send down an armed guard."

Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever,
whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a
constitutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He
distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king's guard, felt a profound
apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged
together in Rick's old boatshed, and were numerous enough to def