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 for dead away there on Levua; bitterly did he repent his temerity in coming into Karolin lagoon and his stupidity in trying to shoot it up.

Sometimes, long ago, he had amused himself by imagining what might be the worst fate of a man at sea, shipwreck, slow starvation, death from thirst, from sharks, from fire. He had never imagined anything like his present position, never imagined himself in the hands of two women of the Islands, whose children he had been instrumental in murdering, two women who were taking him off to a desolate beach to do with him as they pleased. He could tell the approach of the beach by the face of Nanu and the outcries of Ona. Sometimes Ona would give his body a kick to emphasize what she was saying, which was Greek to Rantan. So sharp was her voice, so run together the words, that her speech was like a sword inscribed with unintelligible threats.

Now Nanu was half standing up, Ona was hauling the sail, the paddles were flashing, the sands close. They brought the stem of the canoe on to the shelving sand, and, on the bump and shudder, dropping their paddles, they jumped clear, seized gunnel and outrigger and beached her high and dry.

Then seizing their victim by the feet and the shoulders, they lifted him from the canoe and threw him on to the sand. He fell on his face, they turned him on his back and then left him, running about here and there and making preparations for their work.

The tide was running out and the wind, that had