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Her tone and words were Tippy's own as she made this announcement. "End of what?" asked Richard. "And what's a stroke?" Half an hour earlier Georgina could not have answered his question, but she explained now with the air of one who has had a lifetime of experience. It was Mrs. Triplett's fund she was drawing on, however, and old Jeremy's.

And then I realized that it was the chuckling of water under the Kawa's counter as manned by the intrepid Triplett she merrily footed it over the wrinkled sea. Once more the "Kawa" foots the sea. Triplett's observations and our assistance. The death of the compass-plant. Lost! An orgy of desperation. Oblivion and excess. The "Kawa" brings us home. Our reception in Papeete.

She did her sums that, way, too, after she had learned to count the sails in the harbor, the gulls feeding at ebb-tide, and the great granite blocks which formed the break-water. Mrs. Triplett's time for lessons was when Georgina was following her about the house.

The gleam of its freshly-polished sides caught Georgina's attention an instant before she was lifted out, and it was impressed on her memory still more deeply by being put into her own hands afterwards as she sat in Mrs. Triplett's lap. Once more her tiny finger's tip was made to trace the letters engraved around the rim, as she was told about her great-great aunt and what was expected of her.

Again the chill of dismay and apprehension which I had felt before in Triplett's presence ran up and down my spine. It was beginning to dawn upon me that Triplett was planning a get-away. "My God!" I cried, "take that thing away! What you trying to do, Triplett? Hook us up to civilization with all its deviltry and disease and damned conventions?

Never shall I forget the day she suddenly popped up close alongside and playfully tossed a magnificent pearl into Triplett's lap. But, as I say, I did not feel at ease. Perhaps it was my experience with the wak-waks, perhaps, however, I anticipate. Our merriest jaunts were nearer home. Most memorable of all was our first trip to the mountain, that gorgeous pile on the center of the lagoon.

At times we lost consciousness at times we were sick at times, both. I remember standing on Triplett's face and peering out through a salt-glazed port-hole at a world of waterspouts, as thick as forest trees, dancing, melting, crashing upon us. I sank back. This was the end ...

Instructed by Triplett, we paved the highway to the lagoon with cocoanuts. Our wives and friends thinking it was a game, assisted us. If they had known it was work they would, of course, have knocked off immediately. And then the promised storm broke and I saw Triplett's plan. It was such a storm as this, undoubtedly, that had struck us on July 4th.

Triplett's part in the painful scene which he was recalling, he heard her voice, and looking up, saw that she had come back into the room, and was standing by the window. "There's Justin's wife now, Mr. Darcy, coming up the beach. Poor child, she didn't get her letter. I can tell she's disappointed from the way she walks along as if she could hardly push against the wind."

The men's faces were calm, almost benign, and as far as I could see unarmed except for long, sharply pointed bundles of leaves which they carried under their arms. Their tattooing was the finest I have ever seen. At this moment, however, my observations were concluded by Triplett's suddenly wheeling and saying sharply, "Traprock! ... target practice!"