CHAPTER I

It was a song that never before had been sung; once sung, never again would it be heard. Such a song, indeed, as little girls croon to their dolls; half funeral chant, half hymn, sung in a minor key by a girl with a powerfully sweet lyric soprano. The last of the land breeze carried it aft to Gaston Larrieau, the master of the 200-ton auxiliary trading schooner Moorea, where he stood on the top step of the companion, his leonine head and tremendous shoulders showing above the deck-house, as he smoked his first after-breakfast pipe.