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 away by the wind, for she showed nothing but her sticks as she lay rolling gently to the swell.

Tahuku, who had the instinct of a predatory gull coupled with the eye of a hawk, suddenly laughed:

“She is empty,” said Tahuku, “she has no men on her. It is a dead turtle, Aioma, you have called on us to spear.”

Aioma hit by the same truth ran and roused Dick, who on waking sprang to his feet. He was renewed by sleep and hope, a creature reborn and as he stood with the others he scarcely noticed the ship, his eyes fixed on the light of Karolin.

Poni at the wheel called Le Moan and she came up from below and stood watching whilst the brig, now close to them, showed her nakedness and desolation beneath the burning light of morning.

Old-fashioned, even for these days, high-pooped, heavily sparred and with an up-jutting bowsprit, her hull of a ghastly faded green rolled with a weary movement to the undulations of the swell, revealing now the weed-grown copper of her sheathing, now a glimpse of the deserted deck. There were no boats at the davits and as the current altered her position, giving her a gentle pitch, came a sound faint against the wind, the clapping of her deck-house door.

Aioma turning, ran aft and stood beside Poni at the wheel giving him directions. The canoe-builder, urged by his ancestors and his hatred of the papalagi, had evolved an idea from his active brain and Dick, who had let his eyes wander from the brig to the far-off