The Pearl Fishers

o the camp, and there Schumer set t

rest on the island almost as absorbing as

ms in the Pacific. Bound up in trade he undoubtedly was, but there was all the difference in t

the power that tells in a man's appearance, actions, and speech. Its essence lies

d old ironwork from the wreck, and so on-yet he made the most of it, and did not grumble. He explained the mechanism of the thing when he had[Pg 38] finished.

rs break out over the lagoon, Schumer went on talking, now of t

wide terms as "It was an island south of the Marshalls," or "It was down in the Solomons.

to the islands, new to the sea also. I'd taken passage in a big schooner; two hundred and fifty tons she was, capta

with the old man, the first mate, and two of the hands that co

arded chap, half Irish, quarter Scotch, with a tar brush

beach and let fly. He'd loaded her with a bag of bullets, and[Pg 39] the first shot smashed the boat we'd landed in, smashed the only canoes in the place,

f the leaves we watched what

ll of sharks. They brought up grog and took to dancing on deck. Their object, of course, was to get away with the schooner and all the trade on board, change her name, and make for some port on the South American

ot to sea at once; they chose instead to drink and dance, celebrating

ourse, that would have meant they would have gone below and hid, and then at dark

and we set to and made a raft with the help of some

d pandanus trees, and we made the raft there, and a rotten raft it was; but it se

Not a soul was on deck; they were all in the saloon drinking, and the noise was worse than a tavern on the Barbary Co

now a sheet of stars, and not a sound came but the murmur

l-she had a low freeboard-every man of us. We didn't tro

ix before the smoke of the firing hid them, and then we fired into the smoke and stood by to down them as they came up the companionway. They were plucky, but mad with drink, and they had no arms to speak of.

was burning; dead men were lying everywhere, but no bos'n. He'd taken refuge in the old man's cabin and had barricaded the door, so that I couldn't kick it in

t before we had don

r out of the lagoon, us four, with four Kanakas who joined the ship, and we had go

all trading; one has to fight sometimes fo

umer's part in the recapture of the sc

ou're a sailor, aren't you? At least I made the guess ye

I do not like hard manual labor. As I told you before, it was on the cards that I might have cast my lines in the newspaper world. Books interest me, written books; the world interested[Pg 42] me, and I might have been the corre

hey sat in silen

king and boat sailing and in other ways; but she lived her own life as an animal lives it, thinking her own thoughts, keeping her own counsel, speaking little. There was nothing about her of the childish and the light-hearted that sta

s gone," s

looked

own bad in others. Missionaries civilize them and varnish them over, but there's always the Kanaka underneath; they make Christians of them, but it's only on the outside. Look at that girl-she's only a child, of course, but a missionary has had the handl

thful and helps us al

d deal of use in her way, and she's company of a sort

ed himself, and looked

une in pearls under all that," said he, "

's there," said Flo