She was a child;
he must remember that. He sighed heavily. But why in reasonableness had
such a child been incorporated in such a woman's form?
And as he continued to stare at her hat and think, the hurt he had
received passed away, and he found himself cudgelling his brains for some
way out of the muddle--for some method by which she could remain on
Berande. A chaperone! Why not? He could send to Sydney on the first
steamer for one. He could--
Her trilling laughter smote upon his reverie, and he stepped to the
screen-door, through which he could see her running down the path to the
beach. At her heels ran two of her sailors, Papehara and Mahameme, in
scarlet lava-lavas, with naked sheath-knives gleaming in their belts. It
was another sample of her wilfulness. Despite entreaties and commands,
and warnings of the danger from sharks, she persisted in swimming at any
and all times, and by special preference, it seemed to him, immediately
after eating.
He watched her take the water, diving cleanly, like a boy, from the end
of the little pier; and he watched her strike out with single overhand
stroke, her henchmen swimming a dozen feet on either side. He did not
have much faith in their ability to beat off a hungry man-eater, though
he did believe, implicitly, that their lives would go bravely before hers
in case of an attack.
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