OF THE SOUTH SEAS 255 



"You are an old-timer here now," he began, "and 

 I 've got to go away on the schooner to the Paumotus 

 to-morrow. Drop in at Tahia's shack once in a while 

 and cheer her up. She lives back of the Catholic mis- 

 sion, and she 's pretty sick." 



Tahia was desperately ill, I thought. She was thin, 

 the color of the yellow wax candles of the high altar, 

 and her straight nose, with expanded nostrils, and hard, 

 almost savage mouth, features carved as with the stone 

 chisel of her ancient tribe, conjured up the profile of 

 Nenehofra, an Egyptian princess whose mummy I had 

 seen. She was stern, silent, resigned to her fate, as are 

 these races who know the inexorable will of the gods. 



"Is she your girl?" I asked Ormsby. 



He colored slightly. 



"I suppose so, and the baby will be mine if it 's ever 

 born. At any rate, I 'm going to stick to her while 

 she 's in this fix. I '11 tell you on the square, I 'm not 

 gone on her ; but she had a lover, an Australian I knew, 

 and he was good to her, but he got the consumption and 

 could n't work. Maybe he came here with it. They 

 had n't a shilling, and Tahia built a hut in the hills up 

 there near where the nature men live, and put him in it, 

 and she fed and cared for him. She went to the moun- 

 tains for feis, she came down here to the reef to fish, and 

 she found eggs and breadfruit in other people's gardens. 

 She kept him alive, the Lord knows how, until he could 

 secure money from Sydney to go home and die. Now, 

 she 's got the con from him, I suppose, and it would be a 

 shabby trick to leave her when she 's dying and will be 

 a mother in two months, according to Doctor Cassiou !" 



