OF THE SOUTH SEAS 105 



drowned any minute, and I myself said to the Lord — I 

 was a chorister once — that if I had done anything wrong 

 in my life, I was sorry — " 



"But you knew you had?" I interposed. 



"Of course I did, but I was n't going to rub it in on 

 myself in that fix. I knew He knew all about me. My 

 father was a curate in Devon. Well, we pulled through 

 all right, because here I am, and the copra 's on the dock. 

 What do you think — the wind died away completely, and 

 we had to sweep in to Papeete." 



I touched his glass with mine. He was very ingen- 

 uous, a four-square man. 



"Did the prayers have anything to do with your pull- 

 ing through and saving the copra?" I questioned, curi- 

 ous. 



"I don't know. I did n't make any fixed promises. 

 I was bloody well scared, and I meant what I said about 

 being sorry. But that 's all gone. Let 's drink this up 

 and have another. Joseph !" 



HSlas! the waterspout did not harm my twin half so 

 much as the rum-spout, which soon had him three sheets 

 in the wind and his rudder unmanageable. When I 

 went down the rue de Rivoli that night to the Cercle 

 Militaire, he had drifted into the Cocoanut House, and 

 was sitting on a fallen tree telling of the storm to a 

 woman in a scarlet gown with a hibiscus-blossom in her 

 hair. I got him by the arm, and with an expressed de- 

 sire to know more of the details of the escape, steered 

 him to the Annexe, where he -had a rooan. 



A good sort was Dixon. He had in the Paumotus a 

 little store, a dark mother-girl of Raiaroa who waited 

 for him, and a new baby. He had been only a year in 



