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142 The girl was very quiet, but her square little chin showed no sign of submissiveness.

"I mean just what I say, Mr. Keith. If you go in the whale-boat I go too. There is going to be no argument about that."

"You know how suddenly heavy weather comes up in these waters," the man protested. "It is full forty miles there and back. I shouldn't like to have it on my conscience that I had drowned you." "You wouldn't, because if I were drowned you would be too," the girl replied, sticking unflinchingly to her guns. "And if you were drowned I—I'd rather—" She broke off, confusedly.

"Rather what?" he asked with a searching glance at her, and yet feeling a brute.

"Suppose Chester never comes back and you're drowned," she replied, parring, "what sort of a time do you suppose I am going to have by myself on Tao Tao? But that isn't the point. Please understand if you go to Tamba I refuse to be left behind."

The man shrugged his shoulders. As a matter of fact he intensely disliked the idea of going away and leaving her alone, but of two evils he had chosen what he considered to be the lesser.

"Very well," he said, resigned. "We will wait till to-morrow in that case, and see what happens in the meanwhile."