Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/303

Rh "Good luck go with you," said Chester, as he went down with them to the star-lit beach. "Here are the pearls we've found to-day, Keith, and the seeds also. I leave the sale of 'em entirely to your discretion."

From a pocket he took a small wooden box with a metal clasp. This he handed to Joan.

"It's the best I can do for you as a wedding present, sis," he said. "Now be off, the pair of you, and come back making a noise like two bloated capitalists, because I hope to have hauled a lot of our wealth up by then."

Joan lifted the lid of the box. Nestling under a wad of cotton wool were the two pearls that had been lost and found again, the pearls that had inspired Chester to perseverance.

An ebony-hued Kanaka held the wheel and cast an occasional eye aloft at the taut sails. Forward, another black lay on the deck, head propped up on elbows, staring out over the limitless Pacific, and wondering what had happened to a brown-eyed girl far away whom he had promised to return to some day. That could not be for another season, because there was yet a full year for his contract with big Marster Trent to run. He marvelled vaguely at the freakish notions of white men in taking the Kestrel to the white man's country such a distance away. He understood that they would not be