Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/31

Rh wildered. "Who are you? Are—are you from a trading steamer?"

"Why—yes, that is, a tramp," the man replied.

Her face cleared.

"The best anchorage is off here," she said, pointing down to the stretch of water between reef and island. Then her eyes fell on his clothing, steaming in the hot sun. "But—but you are wet through," she added. "You never swam ashore!"

"There wasn't anything else to do," he said. "They did not hear me after I fell overboard."

"Where was that?" the girl asked solicitously.

"Away off there," he replied, pointing vaguely: and then, feeling strangely weak, it dawned on him suddenly that he was ravenously hungry.

"Sit down on the veranda," she urged. "You must be starving."

As she turned into the bungalow he heard her giving orders to the house boy in beche-de-mer English, the strange polyglot spoken wherever whites and blacks commingle in the South Seas.

"My word, Maromi, you fetch kai-kai and coffee plenty quick. White marster plenty too much hungry."

Soon the unmistakable sizzle of frying ham set the guest's mouth watering, and the rich aroma of coffee reached his nostrils tantalizingly. It seemed an age, though it was really only a few minutes,