Good-bye. We'll get back in
the morning some time. It's only twelve miles."
When Joan started to return to the house, she was compelled to pass among
the boat-carriers, who lingered on the beach to chatter in queer, ape-
like fashion about the events of the night. They made way for her, but
there came to her, as she was in the midst of them, a feeling of her own
helplessness. There were so many of them. What was to prevent them from
dragging her down if they so willed? Then she remembered that one cry of
hers would fetch Noa Noah and her remaining sailors, each one of whom was
worth a dozen blacks in a struggle. As she opened the gate, one of the
boys stepped up to her. In the darkness she could not make him out.
"What name?" she asked sharply. "What name belong you?"
"Me Aroa," he said.
She remembered him as one of the two sick boys she had nursed at the
hospital. The other one had died.
"Me take 'm plenty fella medicine too much," Aroa was saying.
"Well, and you all right now," she answered.
"Me want 'm tobacco, plenty fella tobacco; me want 'm calico; me want 'm
porpoise teeth; me want 'm one fella belt."
She looked at him humorously, expecting to see a smile, or at least a
grin, on his face. Instead, his face was expressionless.
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