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Show Iiwi olllllffi SYNOPSIS George McAusland was 38 years old when he sailed from America to undertake under-take his post as a missionary in the Fiji . Islands. A crime he had committed in a fit of excitement had shattered all his confidence In himself. He felt forced to avoid pretty Mary Doncaster, who board- I ed the ship at Honolulu. She was en route to visit her parents, who were missionaries on Gtlead Island. Mary was attracted by George's attempts to avoid her. One day George accidentally fell overboard. Mary unhesitatingly dove into the sea to rescue George. George is falling In love with her. When the boat approached her home on Gllead Island, they learned that Mary's parents had both died. George volunteered to take charge of the mission. Faced with the necessity of losing Mary if he left her now, George forced himself to ask her to be his wife. Mary accepted his clumsy proposal, and they left the ship to live In her former home on the island. The scanty dress of the natives shocked George at first, but he soon became reconciled to their customs. Mary discovered dis-covered that Corkran, a sailor friend of George's, had deserted ship to live on the island. He had come there to help George and Mary If they needed him. CHAPTER IV Continued Mary understood as the days passed that George both looked forward for-ward to the whaler's coming and dreaded it When one day Jarambo came in some excitement to call them to see a distant sail, Mary asked quickly whether it was the Venturer. Jarambo said it was not. At dark that night, the schooner was still distant, but at dawn she made in toward the roads. Mary saw that George was uneasy at the sight of this invader. They watched together, standing on the rocks above the landing place; and when the schooner approached the anchorage, an-chorage, Jarambo and the others prepared to launch canoes. But George called them back. "Tell them only Jarambo is to go, Mary," he directed. "Have Jarambo Jaram-bo tell the people aboard the schooner schoon-er not to land here." Mary urged: "Canoes always go off to any ship that comes in, George, and people come ashore." We don't want sailors here on Gilead," he insisted. She knew the message would be a useless one; but she told Jarambo to deliver it. He went off alone and they saw a white man speak to him from the deck of the schooner; and George commented scornfully: "That man's half naked, like a native!" na-tive!" Then the white man yonder dropped down into the canoe, and George said in deep resentment: "He's coming. Go to the house, Mary. I'll meet him here, get rid of him." "Why, don't be silly! I'D stay and welcome him with you." He said: "No, go to the house. If he sees you, he'll want to stay." Mary was absurdly pleased. She smiled. After a while she heard them coming com-ing near, and a strong young voice, laughing, said: "You're damned mysterious! What have you got here, a gold mine? Man, these are hospitable seas. We make all comers welcome. You ought to learn the custom of the country." She soon saw a young man in soiled white trousers, barefoot, naked nak-ed to the waist, his skin bronzed by sun, fine golden hair curled tight on his chest, eyes blue as the sky in the brown of his countenance. He wore Ihe radiance of bounding health; and when he saw her be stopped and cried delightedly: "Oh, ho! No wonder you wanted no callers, Parson!" Then he came forward by her husband's hus-band's side; and George said grudgingly: grudg-ingly: "Mrs. McAusland, this is Mr. Aulgur." The young man grasped her hand. "Fritz Aulgur," he corrected. "Your husband tried to warn me off; but now that I've seen you, you're going to have a lot of company here." CHAPTER V She said uneasily, and watching George: "Won't you come in?" She aslced curiously: "Why will there be others coming?" "Pearls!" he told her. His eyes were bold. "Not but what there'd be a rush anyway if they knew you were here, Mrs. McAusland." She felt George tight with rage beside her. "Pearls!" Fritz repeated. "Black Laurence found shell in the lagoon across the Island, month3 ago. The typhoon caught hirn, ripped his ma;;t3 out; and I picked hirn off vhat wa3 left of hi3 schooner. schoon-er. He had a broken head and died of it; but I pieced together things he said with the prickings on his chart, and figured where he'd been and what he'd found. Hi3 halfbrced supercargo caught me studying the chart and tried to knife me as we were making into harbor. lie rnisscd bis try and dove overboard and got away. I tried to pot him in the dark, but no go. He'll be back, with his friends, as soon as he can raise the wind; but I came along for a look-see." He stayed an hour, did most of the talking. He had known Mary's father, had touched here once four or five years ago-. "I get around," he said. "I'm apt to drop In almost everywhere, give me time." Mary asked him whether In his travels he had seen the Venturer, He had, three months before. "Ir Honolulu," he said. "Jibe's been all over the lot, was Just about full up." She had next day a message from Corkran, a question; and when George was asleep in the afternoon she walked toward the beach, sure the sailor would be there to meet her. He was, and he asked: "Now, who was the fine young man who visited you, yesterday?" Mary told him, and he listened j'ith a gravity that disturbed her. "Honey fetches the wasps," he commented com-mented soberly when she finished. "There'll be more like him along, or maybe worse. How did himself take it? He was red behind the ears, I'm thinking?" "I'm afraid so." "Aye, like a boy looking on at a game he don't know how to play. Himself takes life the hard, tough way." He looked at her with a curious curi-ous gentleness. "I thought he'd know better by now." She wondered why she found his understanding so full of comfort He was like her own thoughts. "Well, ma'am," he said, "anytime you need me, I'm here, standing by." She went back to the house surprisingly sur-prisingly strengthened. Mary and George almost forgot Aulgur during the days that followed. fol-lowed. Something more imminent and dreadful rose like a cloud to shadow their lives. George seemed now completely healed of the cold which he had caught when he fell overboard; but within a few weeks after they landed on the island, ,w mm He held it toward her in his palm. there were coughs and colds and sneezings all around them. Ieni died, and others too. Mary was deeply distressed; but George professed not to be surprised. "It's always been the same," he insisted. "In the Sandwich Islands the natives have been dying off ever since the first ships touched there. There aren't many births, you know, and a lot of babies are strangled as soon as they're born. Or thrown over the cliffs." "But they Jove the children," she urged jealously. "Almost too much. Not only their own children, but all of them. Don't you notice that children chil-dren are never punished or disciplined disci-plined here, George?" "Yes. They should be. too. Some of them need it." She warned him quickly: "Don't try it. I remember Father saying that they vould never forgive that. I'm almost sure thcre've been some massacres and bad trouble where white people struck a child or something. some-thing. They'd never forgive us if we were unkind to the children." He smiled faintly. "I've no Intention In-tention of doing anything of the sort." He returned to the point. "But the thing is, these Islanders have been dying off for generations. Plagues have killed them off." ' "Nobody was ever sick here when I wa3 little. I remember Father was always proud of It." "They need to learn how to take care of themselves, that's all. We'll have to teach them to build proper houses, to live properly." But the remedy vas not so simple as he thought. After Fritz Aulgur's first visit, the epidemic suddenly extended ex-tended its attack. George labored over the sick with an ardor that seemed visibly to drag the Mesh nIT his bones. He became thin and gaunt with his own efforts. He was a methodical rnnn. He kept a diary, recording every day's events. One clay he said to her: "Mary, thirty-two people have died since we came, in less than four months' time." She saw that he was shaken In his certainties, and his nerves were raw; and she sought to strengthen him in many ways. He began to long for the coining of the Venturer, thought Captain Corr would surely ' have medicines aboard. They forgot the pearls In the lagoon la-goon across the Island, forgot Fritz i ubout three weeks after he sailed i out of the roads, Fritz returned, and he stayed two days. Despite George's protests, he came often i ashore. He showed thern the pearls . he had already found, warm with i life as though they had n pulse of I their own, no that Mary caught her ' breath at sight of them; und Fritz saw how she was stirred, and he told her that a pearl needed to be worn to acquire beauty. She liked Fritz. By contrast with her husband's somber garments, the golden brown on this young man's j bare chest and shoulders was warm I and beautiful. Against her husband's j austere denial of the flesh, this Fritz Aulgur by his frank acceptance of it seemed to shine. She asked curiously: curi-ously: "How long have you been living so, sailing around alone? Aren't you lonesome, sometimes?" He chuckled. "Lonesome? Now, it would need a woman to think that, always so sure a man must have some woman forever by him." His ' eyes clouded, seeming to look past j her; and he shook his head. "No, ; the sea's company. The sea and the wind. Yes, they're company enough for a man. Too much for I some men, maybe, like a heady j wine. If you've seen many men in their liquor and how could you ever, to be sure? you'll know what I mean." George made a resentful sound; but Mary urged, deeply interested: "No, I haven't, of course. So what do you mean?" Fritz smiled. "Why, only that some men are better drunk than so- 1 ber, and some are better sober than drunk. It's the same with the sea. I One man will be made by it, and another spoiled. Liquor, and the ' wrong woman, and a long voyage , will each strip the trimmings off a . man. I've seen more than one that j was fine to look at start oft on a long cruise with his head high, and come home . . ." He hesitated, quoted then: " 'Lean, rent, and beg-gar'd beg-gar'd by the strumpet wind!' " And j he chuckled and said: "Only the ; man that wrote that did not j mean the wind by itself. It was the sea he meant. A woman even a bad one is mild and easy enough j till something stirs her up; and when I she's roused, it's the woman who's ' dangerous, not the thing that roused her. It's the strumpet sea that tears a man and strips him and peels him down till you can see j what's in him. The wind no more , than rouses up the strumpet sea." j Mary nodded thoughtfully; but George spoke, in angry interruption. "You like the taste of an ugly word, i Aulgur, to keep repeating it." Fritz said amiably: "It's a good word all the same. Parson. It means what it says." Nevertheless he tempered tem-pered his remarks thereafter; and as though he began to be sorry for George, he treated him from that hour with gentleness. Only when on the third day, the storm having passed, he was about to deport, George woke a moment's flare of anger in him. Aulgur wished to give Mary one of his pearls. "For your hospitality," he said. "With my thanks! Wear it. A pearl needs wearing, to make it completely beautiful." He held it toward her in his palm; but before she could move. George by her side struck down that open hand with a violent gesture. The pearl did not fall, because Fritz closed his fingers on it; and he looked at George with narrowed eyes. He said through teeth that were white and even and firm: "Don't do that again, my friend. Parson or no parson!" j George retorted: "Then don't you Insult Mrs. McAusland." ' Aulgur laughed briefly and not mirthfully. "Now, you know," he decided, "it strikes me you're the one who insulted her." He met Mary's eyes and laughed again, i "You'll have to get used to visitors, Parson," he predicted In a grim amusement. "There'll be others coming; and some of them if you can believe It even blacker villains than I." j When he was gone, when they turned back up the path. Mary asked gravely: "George, need you have done that?" He demanded: "Did you want the pearl?" "I could have declined It with some courtesy." ."I won't have such men here!" he cried. "Staring at you, giving , you things!" Mary urged wearily: "What use is that, George? The world's full of men. We can't always live alone! No one can." He went ahead of her in silence, not replying. She thought, following him up the path: He's half-sick half-sick himself, with worry over all the poor sick people here. I must be patient, pa-tient, try to help him. must be kind. Jarambo posted men as George commanded, high on the peaks that walled the island across with a barrier bar-rier almost impassable, to watch Aulgur's schooner in the lagoon and report her movements;- and they sent regular news of her, but tho news was reassuring She lay peacefully peace-fully at anchor In the lagoon, and her boats went off every day, and men were diving. Mary and George paid as the doyi passed, less and less attention to these monotonous bulletins; for they had a nearer trouble. The Island had become a place of death; death that struck ot random, without discrimination. dis-crimination. They forgot Aulgur Ir, fighting a hopeless, weary bntllj here, going to and fro among tin maddeningly submissive Islanders. They were afoot all day, and theil nights were broken. George was ex-1 ex-1 haunted In body, und his spirit too wore thin. (TO HE CONTINUED) |