back, dragged and tugged harder than ever at the thin cotton of the
girl's garment. He expected praise for what he had done, but when
Skipper merely told him to let go, he obeyed with the realization that
this lurking, fear-struck creature was somehow different, and must be
treated differently, from other lurking creatures.

Fear-struck she was, as it is given to few humans to be and still live.
Van Horn called her his parcel of trouble, and he was anxious to be rid
of the parcel, without, however, the utter annihilation of the parcel. It
was this annihilation which he had saved her from when he bought her in
even exchange for a fat pig.

Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen years old, no
delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she had been
consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain
Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was the central figure
in a lugubrious procession on the banks of the Balebuli River.

Anything but a beauty--had been his appraisal when he halted the
procession for a pow-wow. Lean from sickness, her skin mangy with the
dry scales of the disease called _bukua_, she was tied hand and foot and,
like a pig, slung from a stout pole that rested on the shoulders of the
bearers, who intended to dine off of her. Too hopeless to expect mercy,
she made no appeal for help, though the horrible fear that possessed her
was eloquent in her wild-staring eyes.

In the universal beche-de-mer English, Captain Van Horn had learned that
she was not regarded with relish by her companions, and that they were on
their way to stake her out up to her neck in the running water of the
Balebuli. But first, before they staked her, their plan was to dislocate