"It was a tame affair," remarked my uncle, when he had answered our first rapid questions, but your cave is certainly a curious place. We had no difficulty in finding the entrance. I led the way in, with Fatu, Ofai, and a couple of others close behind. Whew! That's a bit of a swim before you can come up to blow! I had warned the men to make no noise; it was possible that Rairi might have clung to the six-shooter I had seen at his belt, and good ammunition is almost waterproof. Presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I made out the idol and the heathen altar, and then, on the ledge a little to one side, the huddled figure of a man. It was Rairi--his eyes were open and he had been watching us all the time. He's a plucky scoundrel; when I was standing over him wondering why he had not moved, he shook his head and grinned at me as he made an effort to hold up his right arm, blackened and horribly swollen out of shape. 'I glad you come!' he said in a weak voice. He was burning with fever. "Then he told me what had happened. Swimming across the lagoon in the dark, he had run squarely on a patch of the purple coral, the poisonous kind that cuts like a razor-edge. He managed to get to the cave before the wounds stiffened, but next morning, when daylight began to appear through the cranny in the rock, he realized that it was all up with him unless help came. Both legs and his right arm are frightfully infected--I'm not sure that we can pull him through. Well, if he dies, it will save the Government from supporting him in jail! The pearls were in the pocket of his dungarees--he handed them to me of his own accord. We had the deuce of a time getting him out to the boat; he'd have been drowned if Fatu hadn't been along!" XIII TAHITI There is little more to tell of our days at Iriatai. For a fortnight, while I lay bored and convalescent in a steamer-chair, the diving went on. Then each man's share of the shell was laid out for my uncle's inspection, sacked, weighed, and loaded in the Tara's hold. There were a hundred and twenty tons of it, of a quality unknown in the lagoons of the Eastern Pacific, and Uncle Harry was jubilant over our good luck. His safe held a little fortune in pearls, and the divers had others they were keeping to sell on their own account. A day came at last when the village on the islet was dismantled; when the people crowded our decks, noisy and gay with the joy of being homeward-bound; when the Tara, deeply laden, turned her sharp bows toward the pass, away from the anchorage which had been our home so long.