dressed her glossy hair and placed therein scarlet hisbiscus flowers;
and to show her returned good temper, she took from her lips the
cigarette she was smoking, and offered it to the grim Pallou.

A month later we all three left Rotoava, and Pallou and Taloi went
ashore at one of the Hervey Group, where I gave him charge of a station
with a small stock of trade, and we sailed away east-ward to Pitcairn
and Easter Islands.


* * * * *


Pallou did a good business, and was well liked; and some seven months
afterwards, when we were at Maga Reva, in the Gambier Group, I got a
letter from him. "Business goes well," he wrote, "but Taloi is ill; I
think she will die. You will find everything square, though, when you
come."

But I was never to see that particular island again, as the firm sent
another vessel in place of ours to get Pallou's produce. When the
captain and the supercargo went ashore, a white trader met them, with a
roll of papers in his hand.

"Pallou's stock-list," he said.

"Why, where is he? gone away?"

"No, he's here still; planted alongside his missus."