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Updated: June 23, 2025
It was six years since Brantley, with his companions in misery, had drifted ashore at lonely Vahitahi in the Paumotu Group, and the kindly-hearted people had gazed with pitying horror upon the dreadful beings that, muttering and gibbering to each other, lay in the bottom of the boat, and pointed with long talon-like fingers to their burnt and bloody thirst-tortured lips.
As Brantley took his seat beside him, Latham said: "I have bad news for you, Brantley. Your sister is on board the brig, and I fear she will not live long. She came down to Tahiti in the MARAMA from Auckland, and offered me a good round sum to bring her to you." "Has she been ill long, Latham?" Latham looked at him curiously. "Didn't you know, Brantley? She's in a rapid consumption."
Clare looked a little crestfallen, but against the decision of his hostess on this important subject what civilized man was ever known to revolt? He took the white muslin in to dinner, and had the satisfaction of finding himself separated by the length of the table from Miss Milbourne. After dinner Mrs. Brantley claimed his attention.
He was apparently glad to see me, and especially to learn that I had been attending the Tuskegee Institute. After leaving the Horton family I went to work in a grocery store, that of a Mrs. Machold, from whom I received $4 a month for my services. I only remained with her a short while. The work I liked best of all, however, was that with the shoe firm of Bearden and Brantley.
"Thou glutton!" said Brantley, good-humouredly, "dost thou think I am like to lose a day so that thou and thy friends may fill thy stomachs with turtle meat?" Rua Manu laughed, and showed his white, even teeth.
Three months after they had drifted ashore, a passing sperm whaler, cruising through the group, took away the two seamen, and then Brantley, after bidding them a silent farewell, had, with bitter despair gnawing at his heart, turned his face away from the ship, and walked back into the palm-shaded village. "I will never go back again," he had said to himself.
"I knew this place well, once," he said, as he pulled out his pipe. "I used to come here when I was sailing one of Brander's vessels out of Tahiti. As we have done now we did then came here for turtle. No natives have lived here for the past forty years. Did you ever hear of Brantley?" "Yes," answered the supercargo, "but he died long ago, did he not?"
He was so full of life of the very joy of living that time six years ago when he sailed from Auckland on that fateful voyage in the DORIS. It was his first voyage as captain, and the ship was his own, and even now he remembers with a curious time-dulled pang the last words of his only sister the Doris after whom he had called his new ship as she had kissed him farewell "I am so glad, Fred, to hear them call you 'Captain Brantley."
Brantley, lazily stretching himself out on a rough mat-covered couch, turned towards her, and watched the slender, supple fingers covered, in Polynesian fashion, with heavy gold rings as they deftly drew out the snow-white strands of the pandanus.
His eyes were on the pavement; he looked pale and careworn; he walked slowly, and was in deep thought. "He is of tougher material than most men, if the heart is not all taken out of him," I said in speaking of him to a mutual friend. "And he is of tougher material," was answered, "that is, of finer material. Brantley is not one of your common men." "Still, there must be something wrong about him.
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