"They gets inside Uturoa about midnight. 'Jump out,' says the Frenchman
to Taloi as soon as the boat touches the beach; but the girl wouldn't,
but ties herself up around Pallou and squeals. 'Sakker!' says the
Frenchy, and he grabs her by the hair and tries to tear her away.
''Ere, stop that,' says Pallou; 'the girl ain't willin',' an' he pushes
Frenchy away. 'Sakker!' again, and Frenchy whips out his pistol and
nearly blows Pallou's face off'n him; and then, afore he knows how it
was done, Ted sends his knife chunk home into the other fellow's
throat. The two native sailors runned away ashore, and Pallou and Taloi
takes the oars and pulls out again until they drops. Then a breeze
comes along, and they up stick and sails away and gets clear o' the
group, and brings up, after a lot of sufferin', at Rurutu. And ever
since then there's been a French gunboat a-lookin' for Pallou, and he's
been hidin' at Apatiki for nigh on a twelvemonth, and has come over
here now to see if, when your ship comes back, you can't give him and
his missus a passage away somewhere to the westward, out o' the run of
that there gunboat, the VAUDREUIL."


* * * * *


I promised I would "work it" with the captain, and Pallou put out his
brawny hand--the hand that "drove it home into Frenchy's throat"--and
grasped mine in silence. Then he lifted his jacket and showed me his
money-belt, filled.

"I don't want money," I said. "If you have told me the whole story, I
would help any man in such a fix as you." And then Taloi, fresh from
her bath, came in and sat down on the mat, whilst fat Lucia combed and