“No, no, Jim! What you run such risk for? You go, Jim.” And then, in her trembling fear, their mother's tongue came to her aid, and the agitated girl dragged him back into the house, imploring him in the native language to yield to her wishes.
In another two hours they were sailing down the lagoon in the old trader's whaleboat towards a place of safety, for Utiroa was, they knew, the only spot where a man-of-war would anchor.
But long before they reached the village for which they were bound they saw the great ship slowly change her course and bear away to the westward, and leave the low, sandy island astern.
A long, steady look at her told the sailor eye of Jim Swain that he had nothing to fear, even had she kept on and anchored at Utiroa.
“All right, Em,” he said, with a low laugh, “we had no need to be scared; she's a Britisher. That's the Tagus. I see her 'bout a year ago at Samoa.” And then he hauled the boat to the wind and beat back to his father's place.
And so time went by, and the haunting fear of discovery that for the first year or so after his return to the island had so often made the young half-caste start up in his sleep with a wild alarm in his heart when the cry of “Te Kaibuke!”{*} resounded from village to village, slowly died away.
* “A ship!”
II.
Nearly an hour had passed since the girl had left her father's house, and now, as the sun dipped into the ocean, the flowing tide swept through the narrow channel in little waves of seething foam, and Ema, with one last look at the path on the opposite side, descended to the beach, and throwing off her loose bodice of blue print and her short skirt, tied around her waist a native waist-girdle of yellow grass, and stepped into the cold waters of the channel.