Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/135

128 Then dropping down, she placed the child safely in the bottom of the canoe, and, seizing the paddle, made her way with vigorous strokes to the shore.

"Now the fat's in the fire!" It was the same lad spoke who had told me of the captain's native wife the night we left Sydney.

"There'll be the devil to pay you see," he continued.

And he was right; there was the devil to pay before morning.

We found afterwards that the captain's wife had taken a bayonet out of the stand of arms in the after-cabin and wrenched the lock off the door. She came up on deck in a towering rage and demanded to be put ashore.

Poor Mr. Chris pointed out to her that he could not get the longboat out, the only one left, and that however much as he wished to please her he could not do what she wanted.

She seized the glasses, and sat down in her chair watching the shore. It so chanced that the woman with the canoe had just reached the beach, where the captain stood in a group of natives, evidently bargaining with them about a lot of copra piled up to be shipped.

The native woman snatched up the child and rushed with him to the captain, throwing her arms about him. He looked for a moment towards the schooner, and then taking up the child marched off into the undergrowth, which on all these islands comes almost down to the water's edge.

The captain's wife lowered the glasses, stood up rigidly for a moment, and then crossing to Mr. Chris, she hissed at him—

"Chris, if you don't revenge me on that man—you need never speak to me again."

"Oh! for God's sake—"

"Remember—Never! never!! so help me, God; I mean it!"