"I saw her first," he replied. "I was having a Doctor Funk when I
looked toward the pass, and saw at once that it was a queer one."

The shipwrecked trio shook themselves like dogs out of the water. They
were stiff in the legs. The two rowers smiled, and when I handed each
of them a cigar, they grinned, but one said:

"After we've e't. Our holds are empty. We've come thirty-six hundred
miles in that dinghy."

"I'm captain N.P. Benson of the schooner El Dorado." vouchsafed the
third. "Where's the American Counsul?"

I led them a few hundred feet to the office of Dentist Williams,
who was acting as consul for the United States. He had a keen love of
adventure, and twenty years in the tropics had not dimmed his interest
in the marvelous sea. He left his patient and closeted himself with
the trio, while I returned to their boat to inspect it more closely.

All the workers and loafers of the waterfront were about it, but
Goeltz would let none enter it, he believing it might be needed
untouched as evidence of some sort. There are no wharf thieves and
no fences in Tahiti, so there was no danger of loss, and, really,
there was nothing worth stealing but the boat itself.

Captain Benson and his companions hastened from the dentist's to
Lovaina's, where they were given a table on the veranda alone. They
remained an hour secluded after Iromea and Atupu had piled their
table with dishes. They drank quarts of coffee, and ate a beefsteak
each, dozens of eggs, and many slices of fried ham, with scores of