"Why," said O'Shea, with mocking jocularity, "that's a left-handed
welcome, Sera."

"Aye," said the girl with the White Man's blood, "my right hand is for
this"--and the knife sank home into Malia's yellow bosom. "A cold bosom
for you to-night, Macy O'Shea," she laughed, as the value of a tun of
oil and a bag of Chilian dollars gasped out its life upon the matted
floor.



II


The native drum was beating. As the blood-quickening boom reverberated
through the village, the natives came out from their huts and gathered
around the House of the Old Men, where, with bound hands and feet,
Sera, the White Man's wife, sat, with her back to one of the
centre-posts. And opposite her, sitting like a native on a mat of
KAPAU, was the burly figure of O'Shea, with the demon of disappointed
passion eating away his reason, and a mist of blood swimming before his
eyes.

The people all detested her, especially the soft-voiced, slender-framed
women. In that one thing savages resemble Christians--the deadly hatred
with which some women hate those of their sex whom they know to be
better and more pure than themselves. So the matter was decided
quickly. Mesi--so they called O'Shea--should have justice. If he
thought death, let it be death for this woman who had let out the blood