White Fire

the Forelands and Dungeness and Beachy Head faded over the quarter as they ran down Channel. "And it gets more

allest display of the ordinary functions of living should res

t southern ocean in clusters, and strings, and ropes, and solitaires, from the Pelews to Pitcairn, of visib

y to rejoice in the dawnings as the purest and fullest revelations of Nature's exuberant largesse. The sunsets were gorgeous and magnificent beyond compare, but they had i

was giving up much, she was going into outer exile for his sake; the chance might never come again. She should see all that was possible before the fringes fell behind them. And so they had come by way of Suez, and touched at Bombay a

liday grounds in the years to come. But now I am anxious to know what is going

nd heroic endeavour. No single one of them but was ready to lay down his or her life in the cause that lay so close to their hearts, and t

ons satisfied him in every respect, and whose special training supplemented the deficiencies in his own. He is

ciation of his own limitations than Blair himself. He had the fiery heart for the righting of wrongs, and the clear head and strong hand.

ready surgery. But he wanted very much more. And so Charles Evans, a Dev

he wanted very much more. Charles Stuart, M.A., of Edinburgh, had made languages the congenial study of a lifetime which ran to ne

nshire man, marrying Alison Carmichael, daughter of Dr. Carmichael of Edinburgh, and herself a medical student of no mean pretensions, and withal a good-looking, hearty girl, full of energy and spirits; and Stuart, the Scot, had married Mary Coventry, an English girl, daughter of a professor in a Lancashire theological college. She had a great natural apt

nions throughout. But this is the story of Kenneth and Jean Blair, and if these others receive but slight menti

vey played mother-in-law to them all, and kept the whole ship in high good-hum

quiry, had secured a crew after his own heart, every man a C

very man of them. Besides the big white whale-boats at the davits, there were two extra steam-launches in sections in the hold for inter-island w

ards, or set afloat on the sea, were their targets, and they most of them became fair shots. And one day Captain Cathie turned a cask overboard and stuck a white flag in it, and when it had floated almost out of sight he trained the

tain's glass at his eye. "Your hand and eye have not lost their cunn

it. And cutlass drill became as regular a part of the daily rou

he advisability of being prepared. For the very first Sunday night out from New Zealand, Blair, in that quiet, masterful fashion of his, which carried conviction once and for all in

on deck in the gathering darkness, with an occasional sleepy "moo" from the farmyard in the bows, or the shrill squeakings of discontented piglets, and an admonitory grunt from their over-taxed mother, Blair described some of the things he had seen with his own eyes, and others which he had h

essarily the mask for a black heart, our work is futile. That security, by God's help, we intend to bring to them. If we can do it peacefully, I shall be grateful. If force is necessary, force we shall apply. But remember-we are going, not to punish, but to protect. Christ in right

stless sails and jerking masts. But it always blew up again in time, and sent them swinging once more on their way,

alked much, read much, and they all took regular lessons in Samoan, as a foundation for the Polynesian tongues generally, from a native teacher who had been sent over to Sydney to meet them at

, Evans one day suggested that they should all be va

. "Just because we've got a clean bill, and he's got nothi

h so grave a foreboding, that by degrees they came to think he was perhaps right, and that it might be as well to be on the safe side of

ning, in a whisper of concentrated rapture, and the others gazed a

ever in the enchantment of distance till full light of day should disclose possible pitfalls. For in these Southern Seas Nature so

s it, with intent to land there for vegetables and fruit and wat

green and tenderest rose and amber. And these grew and grew and deepened into crimson and gold, with swathes of diaphanous purple as the soft greens strengthened slowly into blue. And as it was above, so it was below, all duplicated in the flawless mirror of the sea. And there, between the upper and the lower glory, lay the enchanted isle gleaming d

ry shade, from the tender tints of the budding palms to the cast-iron crests of the grey-boled giants, and the huddled mixture of the undergrowth. It lost in beaut

island, as Captain Cathie in the bows conned the little ship slowly towar

hree-Ringed Island of Atoa, but he had never been

the wonderful forestry of the branching coral and the gleam of many-coloured shells, and the plac

l early, however, and the village might be round the bend of the island. He carried the Torch in as far as he deemed safe, and the

air, in the voice and manner of

eks of continuous sailing the feel of solid

was not to walk crooked on the ship. I've got so used to walking on the sides of my feet, and

when Aunt Jannet Harvey cumbrously made the close acquaintance of the white beach, she

foot of her first really intimate coco-nut tree, and gazed up the slim spire to the great benignant fr

m sure you could manag

succeed, try, try again,

after armfuls of greenery and trailing vines, and twittering like escaped birds when, now and again, they c

of their surroundings, and Captain Cathie, with a couple of hi

n the island. The very sight of an approaching ship used, in his time, to bring the populati

denly his lips pinched and his brow crumpled, and he gazed ahead with a fixed, angry glare which set

ut of the cleared ground above-that was all. But Cathie's ex

nd jammed the tiller h

lagoon to get the women aboard again. For there might be si

t of the boat's crew, climbed the backbone of the island, who

s, I presume advice. Return fortwit to ship. This place is not good," and when they all turned on him in surprise, th

what's wrong?

man shoo

ed so that his chin wagged visibly. "There is e

oco-palms nodding mournfully in the breeze. Down below the air seemed heavy

ems deserted,

en, we'll turn back I'm afraid it's a poor look-out for fruit and vegetables," and they tram

stopped abruptly with a face as strained as Matti's, but grimmer and whiter, a

ough his teeth, for they had

wind-blown ashes barely covering that which they had mercifully hidden. And among the mounds as they drew near was a sound of rustl

t all before, and the grim white of his face gave place to grim red

w you see it with your own eyes. The place has been swept bare by kidnappers. These died in d

ent forward and bent over it with tight-pinched face for a

it was too late to save the women from some visible knowledge of

and stooped to pick it up, and then screamed aloud and sat down suddenly with a sick, w

t Jannet, and then she saw, a

bodies before, but the sight of a murdered child is a shock to any wo

t, just needing that spur, scrambled up and gripped Mary Stuart by the shoulder an

baby. Alison is seeing to it, but it is quite dead.

d angry, the women's white and pitiful. Alison Evans wept silently now. She had seen more than the others, and th

s a fawning treachery in its very smoothness. The palms behind waved their feathers just as before, but now they were funeral plumes. The very oars no lo

at once," and the anchor chain rattled up hoarsely, and they went slow

d turned to get the ladies away, but I was too late. Did y

d, and they recruit mostly from these outer islands. Before God, capt

, every man of us. S

ey went about their work. For those who had seen had told

matter in a way that went home and confirmed the spirit th

wound up, "and, please God, we

"All the way, sir!" and so on, in t

ally win them over to better ways. Once we can make them see that we care for them, and think of their welfare and not our own, half the battle is won. On the one side we may have to fight-not our own countrymen, I am glad to say. These raiders come mostly from the west coast of South America, and they go to lengths which the Queenslanders rarely do. And, on the other hand, in