At daylight we saw Taplin and his wife go off in the ALIDA'S boat. They
waved their hands to us in farewell as the boat pulled past the brig,
and then the schooner hove-up anchor, and with all sail set, stood away
down to the north-west passage of the lagoon.

A year or so afterward we were on a trading voyage to the islands of
the Tubuai Group, and were lying becalmed, in company with a New
Bedford whaler. Her skipper came on board the brig, and we started
talking of Taplin, whom the whale-ship captain knew.

"Didn't you hear?" he said. "The ALIDA never showed up again. 'Turned
turtle,' I suppose, somewhere in the islands, like all those slashing,
over-masted, 'Frisco-built schooners do, sooner or later."

"Poor Taplin," said Warren, "I thought somehow we would never see him
again."


* * * * *


Five years had passed. Honest old Warren, fiery-tempered and
true-hearted, had long since died of fever in the Solomons, and I was
supercargo with a smart young American skipper in the brigantine
PALESTINE, when we one day sailed along the weather-side of a tiny
little atoll in the Caroline Islands.

The PALESTINE was leaking, and Packenham, tempted by the easy passage
into the beautiful lagoon, decided to run inside and discharge our
cargo of copra to get at the leak.