ath to all,
for every now and then a leaping sea would again fill the boat to the
thwarts.

And then suddenly, amid the crashing sound of the thundering rollers on
the reef, Ridan raised his voice in an awful shriek.

'_Quick! Pulu, quick!_ Some shark hav' come. Get in, get in first,' he
said in his broken English. And as he spoke he grasped the gunwale
with both hands and raised his head and broad shoulders high out of the
water, and a bubbling, groan-like sound issued from his lips.

In an instant the big Samoan swung himself into the boat, and Von Hammer
called to Ridan to get in also.

'Nay, oh, white man!' he answered, in a strange choking voice, 'let me
stay here and hold to the boat. We are not yet safe from the reef. But
paddle, paddle... quickly!'

In another minute or two the boat was out of danger, and then Ridan's
voice was heard.

'Lift me in,' he said quietly, 'my strength is spent.'

The two Savage Islanders sprang to his aid, drew him up over the side,
and tumbled him into the boat. Then, without a further look, they seized
their paddles and plunged them into the water. Ridan lay in a huddled-up
heap on the bottom boards.

'Exhausted, poor devil!' said Von Hammer to himself, bending down and
peering at the motionless figure through the darkness. Then something
warm flowed over his naked foot as the boat rolled, and he looked closer
at Ridan, and--

'Oh, my God!' burst from him--both of Ridan's legs were gone--bitten off
just above the knees.

Twenty minutes later, as the boat came alongside the _Mindora_, Ridan
'the devil' died in the arms of the man who had once given him a drink.

A MEMORY OF 'THE SYSTEM'

CHAPTER I

The house in which I lived from my birth till I was twelve years of age
stood on the green-grassed slopes of a treeless bluff which overlooked
the blue waters of the sunlit Pacific. Except for a cluster of five or
six little weatherboard cottages perched on the verge of the headland,
half a mile away, and occupied by the crew of the Government pilot boat,
there were no other dwellings near, for the 'town,' as it was called,
lay out of sight, on the low, flat banks of a tidal river, whose upper
waters were the haunt and breeding places of the black swan, the wild
duck and the pelican.

My father was the principal civil official in the place, which was
called Bar Harbour, one of the smaller penal settlements in Australia,
founded for what were called 'the bette