if he had been spoilable my wife would surely have been his
undoing.

The children! He really was the one who showed them the way of
their feet in the world practical. He began by teaching them to
walk. He sat up with them when they were sick. One by one, when
they were scarcely toddlers, he took them down to the lagoon and
made them into amphibians. He taught them more than I ever knew
of the habits of fish and the ways of catching them. In the bush
it was the same thing. At seven, Tom knew more woodcraft than I
ever dreamed existed. At six, Mary went over the Sliding Rock
without a quiver--and I have seen strong men balk at that feat.
And when Frank had just turned six he could bring up shillings
from the bottom in three fathoms.

"My people in Bora Bora do not like heathen; they are all
Christians; and I do not like Bora Bora Christians," he said one
day, when I, with the idea of getting him to spend some of the
money that was rightfully his, had been trying to persuade him to
make a visit to his own island in one of our schooners--a special
voyage that I had hoped to make a record-breaker in the matter of
prodigal expense.

I say one of OUR schooners, though legally, at the time, they
belonged to me. I struggled long with him to enter into
partnership.

"We have been partners from the day the Petite Jeanne went down,"
he said at last. "But if your heart so wishes, then shall we
become partners by the law. I have no work to do, yet are my