ound that told eloquently of the savage beneath the
missionary, and, in another instant was up to the knees in the water
with the coal-scuttle quivering violently. Seizing Zariffa, she
squeezed her almost to the bursting point against her palpitating
breast, while the shark headed seaward in bitter disappointment.

"Don't go so deep agin, Ziffa," said the mother, with a gasp, as she set
her little one down on the sand.

"No, musser," said the obedient child; and she kept on the landward side
of her parent thereafter with demonstrative care.

It may be remarked here that, owing to Waroonga's love for, and
admiration of, white men, Zariffa's native tongue was English--broken,
of course, to the pattern of her parents.

"It was a narrow escape, Betsy," said Marie, solemnised by the incident.

"Yes, thank the Lord," replied the other, continuing to gaze out to sea
long after the cause of her alarm had disappeared.

"Oh! Marie," she added, with a sigh, "when will the dear men come
home?"

The question drove all the playful humour out of poor Marie, and her
eyes filled with sudden tears.

"When, indeed? Oh! Betsy, _my_ man will never come. For Orley and the
others I have little fear, but my Antonio--"

Poor Marie could say no more. Her nature was as quickly, though not as
easily, provoked to deep sorrow as to gaiety. She covered her face with
her hands.

As she did so the eyes of Betsy, which had for some time been fixed on
the horizon, opened to their widest, and her countenance assumed a look
so deeply solemn that it might have lent a touch of dignity even to the
coal-scuttle bonnet, if it had not bordered just a little too closely on
the ridiculous.

"Ho! Marie," she exclaimed in a whisper so deep that her friend looked
up with a startled air; "see! look--a sip."

"A ship--where?" said the other, turning her eager gaze on the horizon.
But she was not so quick-sighted as her companion, and when at length
she succeeded in fixing the object with her eyes, she pronounced it a
gull.

"No 'snot a gull--a sip," retorted Betsy.

"Ask Zariffa. Her eyes are better than ours," suggested Marie.

"Kumeer, Ziffa!" shouted Betsy.

Zariffa came, and, at the first glance, exclaimed. "A sip!"

The news spread in a moment for other and sharper eyes in the village
had already observed the sail, and, ere long, the beach was crowded with
natives.

By that time most of the Ratingans had adopted more or less, chief