had been kept shut to prevent the natives
from assembling and peering in--suddenly, at the door, there was heard a
faint, faint knock. The concertina stopped. Fritz, the Dutchman, said
"Hoosh!" and raised his pipe for silence. The knock was repeated. Quiet
descended on the Land We Live In. Larry looked up from his bottles, and
in a rough and belligerent voice called out, "Come in!"

The invitation was hesitatingly obeyed, and there stood Daisy Kirke on
the threshold, a sweet, faltering figure, with her guard, boots and all,
lined up in the roadway. Hardly a soul in the room knew there was a
little white girl on the island; and the sight of Daisy, with the red
ribbon in her hair, her dimity frock, her long stockings and pinafore,
was as startling as it was unexpected.

"Howdy-do, evver'body?" said she.

There was an embarrassed silence.

"I know you better than you do me," went on Daisy confidentially,
proving it with her forefinger. "That's Tommy, the cabin boy; and
yonder's Mr. Mathison, the beach-comber; and you"--indicating a giant of
a man with an aquiline nose and a square-cut beard--"you are Mr. Bob
Fletcher, the ringleader!"

A giggle of subdued merriment ran round the room. An instinctive respect
kept it within bounds, or perhaps it was Bob Fletcher's fierce and
warning look that cowed any incipient rowdyism. The brawny mutineer set
her on his knee, and, in a voice harshened by thirty years' service
before the mast, asked her deferentially if she fancied a glass of
syrup?

"No, thank you," said Daisy politely; and then, addressing everybody in
general, "papa and mamma's gone to Tarawa!"

"Now, if that ain't too bad!" put in Bob sympathetically.

"And so it just occurred to me," went on Daisy, "to do something nice to
surprise them when they came back."

A profound silence greeted this remark. The devil's love of holy water
is a craving compared to the amount of love lost between a South Sea
missionary and the rough white element that mocks his labors at every
turn. It was the custom of the Lord Dundonalds, moreover, to hoot the
Rev. Walter Kirke whenever they met him. It was a recollection of this
that made the present situation so piquant and humorous.

"Besides, it seems too bad," continued Daisy, "that the natives should
have such a fuss made over them, while all you white gentlemen are left
out in the cold. It must look queer to Dod, and I don't believe He likes
it!"

"Everything for the nigger