Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/204

192 hold him up. He saw the officer turn to his "blue jackets," and heard him giving orders; and then, regaining a grip on his thoughts, he realized it was a very excellent thing that he had checked the impulse to ask whether the Petrel was in search of a man from the Four Winds.

Maromi was instructed to rise to the supreme height of his culinary art for the occasion, for this was the first and only luncheon party that had ever been given on Tao Tao, if one excepted the rare occasions when the skipper of some trading schooner, poking her nose among the islands in search of cargo, had come ashore and joined the Trents at their table. Fortunately there were birds aplenty, that had been shot several days before, and under Joan's guidance Maromi had become somewhat of an artist at preparing these delicacies for the table.

Before noon the gig came ashore again, bringing the Commander, the lieutenant, three other officers and a man in mufti, who was introduced as a Mr. Steel.

"He was handed over to us with a broken arm by a trading tramp," the lieutenant explained. "One of the seamen on the tramp had put him into splints as well as he could, and when our doctor took him in hand Steel's temper wasn't a thing to turn loose in polite society. We're carrying him back to civilization out of compassion. His temper's