Then, stretching forth his shrunken, sun-browned hand, he whispered softly, "Lolie! Lolie!" The woman kneeling at his side seized the rover's fingers in hers, and with big tears of thankfulness in her eyes, pressed them reassuringly. Little Jim, with a strange lump in his throat, turned his head away quickly, whilst the bosun's mate found a sudden interest in the contemplation of their captive. For some minutes Jack lay quiet, fumbling the woman's small hands in his with a clumsy weakness. The very touch seemed to fill the spent man with renewed life. Tenderly he stroked them, lovingly he caressed them, whilst his brain slowly cleared. Then he was picked up and carried into the shade of the palm-grove, close to where the whaleboat had been hauled up. Here he lay through the long afternoon, slowly regaining his strength, with Loyola, Jim, and Tari by his side. A few yards off sat Hawksley, securely bound to the trunk of the great palm, whilst up and down the beach paced the cowboy and Bill Benson, deliberating as to the fate to be meted out to their prisoner. Broncho, recognising how things were between Jack and Loyola, wished to cut the Gordian knot by the short, decided methods of Arizona. A rope and a good tree was what he advocated for Hawksley. But the bluejacket, used to the stern justice of a British man-of-war, wished to carry the ruffian before a court of law, knowing that he was wanted by every cruiser in the South Seas for illicit blackbirding, girl-stealing, pearl-poaching, and a host of other offences, which up till now had gone unpunished owing to his remarkable slimness and the sailing qualities of his schooner, the _Black Adder_. "But your brass-buttoned British sheriff wouldn't hang him," objected the cowboy. "He'd round him up in some crazy calaboose, an' the next thing we'd hear that the varmint had gone an' jumped the track, an' mebbe come bulgin' in interferin' with my pard Jack's domestic affairs agin. No, siree; thar ain't a shade o' horse-sense in that bill o' fare." "And if we swings the blighter off, it's two Roosians to a heathen Chinee that some fool-head will go an' blow the gaff----" "As how?" demanded Broncho, half-angrily, not liking Benson's insinuation at all. "No offence, governor, no offence," exclaimed the bluejacket; "but we most of us has a bust occasional-like, an' that's the time these here state secrets get blown; and then there's the Kanaka." "Tari's white cl'ar through an' is Jack's dawg. I ain't frettin' he'll stampede our cattle none." "Any'ow, I votes we pospones the execution o' justice till to-morrer," observed the bosun's mate cautiously. "Mebbe the gal oughter have a say." "I guess nit! Gals is shore to make a wrong play when a lynchin' is the game. They're too soft-hearted an' mushy that-away." "What erbout y'r mate?" "Jack's an interested party, an' so is barred from the jury," declared Broncho uneasily.