die of the agonies of thirst in an open boat in mid-Pacific, and partly
because the water had given her strength to remember that Langton had
cursed her when he had stumbled over her to get at the water in the
mat.


* * * * *


She had married him because of his handsome face and dashing manner for
one reason, and because her pious Scotch father, also a Sydney-Tahitian
trading captain, had pointed out to her that Langton had made and was
still making money in the island trade. Her ideal of a happy life was
to have her husband leave the sea and buy an estate either in Tahiti or
Chili. She knew both countries well: the first was her birthplace, and
between there and Valparaiso and Sydney her money-grubbing old father
had traded for years, always carrying with him his one daughter, whose
beauty the old man regarded as a "vara vain thing," but likely to
procure him a "weel-to-do mon" for a son-in-law.

Mrs Langton cared for her husband in a prosaic sort of way, but she
knew no more of his inner nature and latent utter selfishness a year
after her marriage than she had known a year before. Yet, because of
the strain of dark blood in her veins--her mother was a Tahitian
half-caste--she felt the mastery of his savage resolution in the face
of danger in the thirteen days of horror that had elapsed since the
brigantine crashed on an uncharted reef between Pitcairn and Ducie
Islands, and the other boat had parted company with them, taking most
of the provisions and water. And to hard, callous natures such as
Langton's women yield easily and admire--which is better, perhaps, than