ently away, refusing to be
comforted. Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until
the returning Tanus embarked again, and the launch, with jubilant
whistles, led the flotilla back to the man-of-war. It was only when the
ship was out of sight that Jack rose, stretched himself, and breathed
the profound sigh of a man who has endured and has survived the most
terrible experience of a lifetime.

With slow steps, and many expressions of anger and resentment, Fetuao
and he walked through the village, gazing with bitter curiosity at the
ruins that everywhere surrounded them. They made their way to their own
little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit
trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the _taro_,
bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces. In the paddock the cow and calf lay
dead in a pool of blood; of the dairy, half-set in the stream, nothing
remained but some stumps and smoking ashes; under a felled mango tree
they saw the protruding hoofs of Fetuao's mare, Afiola.

Returning with a few bananas they managed to find in the plantation,
they built a fire and roasted them within a few feet of where, that
morning, their house had stood. Though nothing now was left of it but
some charred wood, the place was still home to them. As Fetuao moved
forlornly about, picking up a few trifles that had been dropped or
thrown away by the invaders--a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a
book or two with the covers scorched off--she lifted up a grimy rag and
tossed it, with a little gesture of disdain, at her husband's feet. He
spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had
flown above his house with such confidence in its protection; the flag
which, until then, he had always reverenced.

Jack slowly tore it into pieces.

V

Nothing is stranger than the effect of the same misfortune on different
natures. To Jack, arrested in the full tide of his petty activities, it
was absolutely overwhelming. When everything he possessed was swept
away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him busy and
content, he knew not what to do nor which way to turn. Sunk in apathy,
he spent whole days in dully mourning for what he had lost. He would
have starved had not Fetuao forced him to follow her into the mountains,
where, under her direction, he dug _tamu_ and climbed the trees for wild
chestnuts; while she, with deft hands and a little tangled bunch of
wee