I heard from Marama how the affair began. Fatu and the engineer ate their meals forward with the men, old friends and natives like themselves, with whom there was no occasion to enforce strict discipline. Pahuri, the little Rarotongan engineer, was the oldest man and the recognized story-teller of the crew. He had seen many strange parts of the world, and no doubt, like other story-tellers I have known, he was quite ready to describe other places he had never seen. No matter how often the story had been told, nor how obviously embellished by a resourceful imagination, the men always listened eagerly when Pahuri began his tale. Rairi, the half-caste cook, was the only skeptic of the lot, and his comment on the engineer's accounts of Sydney and Wellington and Singapore, coupled with his own white blood and pretense of superiority, caused daily friction between the two. There was soup on the day of the trouble, scalding-hot soup, carried to the forecastle by Rairi's own hands, and a plate of it, poured down the engineer's neck when the Tara gave a sudden violent lurch, brought Pahuri raging to his feet. Rairi was Paumotan on the native side; to a man of his kind no epithet could have been more offensive than the engineer's angry: "_Uri Paumotu!_--Paumotan dog!" But the mate's presence tied his hands and he retired sullenly to the galley, trembling with rage. The sequel came late that night. Pahuri had been working on his engine and he came on deck, a little after midnight, for a breath of air. He was leaning on the rail by the shrouds when strong hands seized his throat and he heard a fierce whisper in his ear:-- "Ah!--Pig of a Rarotongan!" Pahuri was a wiry little man and he struggled frantically in the other's grasp, for he realized at once that the cook intended to strangle him into silence and heave him overboard. He twisted his body about, gripped the shrouds like a monkey, doubled up his knees and drove both heels into Rairi's stomach. The cook relaxed his hands for a moment with a grunt of pain, and Pahuri managed to give a stifled shout. But the half-caste's fingers tightened once more, and the engineer felt his senses leaving him. His hands fell from the shrouds to which he had clung, his body was lifted to the height of the rail, and he thought numbly that the end was near. Then, suddenly as he had been seized, he was dropped to the deck, where he lay gasping for a time before he realized what had occurred. The giant mate was standing over him, gazing down with an expression of concern. There was a waning moon, and by its light Pahuri saw that Fatu held the cook with one huge outstretched hand, the thumb and fingers sunk in the half-caste's corded neck. He held him easily as one lifts a puppy by the scruff. "What is this?" the mate asked mildly, in his soft deep voice. "Has this man tried to do you harm?"