"Hurry up, old dark-skin!"--this to the faded Marie. Uttering merely the word "Hog!" she drew the cork. I had to drink some, and every hour or so Tom would say it was very hot, and open yet another bottle. At last I escaped the beer by nearly dying, and then the kind old fellow hurried away in his boat to Apatiki--another island of the group--and came back with some bottles of claret, bought from the French trader there. With him came two visitors--a big half-caste of middle age, and his wife, a girl of twenty or there-about. This was Edward Pallou and his wife Taloi.
* * * * *
I was in the house when Tom returned, enjoying a long-denied smoke. Pallou and his wife entered and greeted me. The man was a fine, well-set-up fellow, wiry and muscular, with deep-set eyes, and bearing across his
