"The blacks had brought me ashore. I went out of their sight to do what I had to do; and when I came back, after hiding the pearls, I saw them rowing very swiftly toward the schooner. And they looked back at me in a fearful way. I wondered why; and then four black men came down on me from behind, with knives and clubs. "I had a very hard day, that day. They hunted me back and forth through the island--I had not even a knife with me--and I met them here and there, and suffered certain contusions and bruises and minor cuts. Also, I grew very tired of killing them. They were wiry, but they were small, and died easily. So I was glad, when from a point where they had cornered me I saw the little brown girl rowing the big boat toward me. "She was alone. The blacks were afraid to come, I thought. But I found afterward that this was not true. They could not come; for they had tried to seize the schooner and go quickly away from that place, and the little brown girl had drilled them both. She had a knack with the rifle.... "I waded to meet the boat, and she tossed me the gun. I held them off for a little, while we drew away from the shore. But when we were thirty or forty yards off, I heard rifles from the other schooner, firing past us at the blacks in the bush; and the girl stopped rowing. So I turned around and saw that one of the balls from the other schooner had struck her in the back. So I sat there, in the sun, drifting with the wind, and held her in my arms till she coughed and died. "Then I went out to the other schooner and told them they were bad marksmen. They had only been passing by, for copra; and the story I told them was a shocking one. They were much impressed, and they seemed glad to get away. But the blacks were still on shore, so that I could not go back for the pearls; and I worked the schooner out by myself, and shaped a course.... "I came to Tubuai, alone thus, a day before you, Joel." IX For a long time after Mark's story ended, the two brothers sat still in the cabin, puffing at their pipes, thinking.... Mark watched Joel, waiting for the younger man to speak. And Joel's thoughts ranged back, and picked up the tale in the beginning, and followed it through once more.... They were silent for so long that little Priss, in the cabin, drifted from waking dreams to dreams in truth. The pictures Mark's words had conjured up merged with troubled phantasies, and she twisted and cried out softly in her sleep so that Joel went in at last to be sure she was not sick. But while he stood beside her, she passed into quiet and untroubled slumber, and he came back and sat down with Mark again. "You brought the schooner into Tubuai?" he asked. "Aye. Alone. Half a thousand miles. There's a task, Joel." "And left it there?" "Yes." "Why?"