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Updated: May 25, 2025
A hawk-bill turtle, huge, black, and misshapen, slid out from beneath the dark ledge of the reef, and swam slowly across the pool, and then, between the masts, sank to the bottom. "'Twas six years ago," said Nerida, as we raised our heads. That night, as the PALESTINE sped noiselessly before the trade wind to the westward she told me, in the old Funafuti tongue, the tragedy of the ALIDA.
So then he got Nerida to sew another half turn in red to the loop of the P, and thereby made it into a B. "That'll do fine," he said to Denison. "Bob Packenham' instead of 'Robert Packenham, eh?" "Ye-s," answered, Denison thoughtfully, "I daresay it will be all right."
With wondering, timid eyes, she came, and for a moment or two looked doubtingly upwards into the brown, handsome face of the skipper, and then nestled beside him. For a minute or so the ticking of the cabin clock broke the silence, ere I ventured to ask the one question uppermost in my mind. "Nerida, how and where did Taplin die?"
And Nerida's doings would make a book worth reading especially by married women with gadabout husbands like Packenham. But on this occasion Nerida was not aboard, and Denison looked for trouble.
I'll fix the doors and windows for you myself," and he winked slily at the teacher's daughter, who returned it as promptly as any Christian maiden, knowing that Nerida wasn't on board, and that she had nothing to fear. "I wish to goodness that fellow hadn't come aboard," grumbled Denison to Packenham, after the missionary and his daughter had gone ashore.
She looks thirty now, and her face is thin and drawn but I don't say all for love of Taplin." "That will all wear off by and by," said the skipper confidently. "Yes," I thought, "and she won't be a widow long." Next morning Nerida had an hour or two among the prints and muslin in the trade-room, and there was something of the old beauty about her when she sat down to breakfast with us.
Perhaps it's because it's not pleasant to see white men landing at a quiet island like this with revolvers slung to their waists under their pyjamas; looks a bit too much like Bully Hayes' style for me," and then his tone of cool banter suddenly changed to that of studied insolence. "I say, Motley, I was talking about you just now to Taplin AND Nerida. Do you want to know what I was saying?
Help us for they mean evil to thee and Nerida. He with the yellow moustache wants her for his wife. "There were quick, fierce words, and then my husband struck Motley on the head with his pistol and felled him, and then pointed it at the mate and the captain, and made them untie the men, and called to the two Tafito sailors who were in the boat to let her tow astern till morning.
"Aye," assented old Humphreys, "there isn't one of 'em but what is the two ends and bight of a scoundrel; and that supercargo with the yaller moustache and womany hands is the worst of the lot. I wonder if he's aboard this trip? I don't let him inside my house; I've got too many daughters, and they all think him a fine man." Nerida, Taplin's wife, came out to us from an inner room.
We were to sail at noon. The leak had been stopped, and Packenham was in high good-humour. "Nerida," I inquired unthinkingly, "do you know what became of the ALIDA? She never turned up again." "Yes," she answered; "she is here, at the bottom of the lagoon. Will you come and look at her?" After breakfast we lowered the dingy, the captain and I pulling.
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