MAROONED!
wind dropped suddenly. Dave and the Kanaka had about three miles to row to the beach, and both were utterly exhausted by the time the dory grounded.
Tempest, who, naturally, had feared they were both blown out to sea, lectured the pair of them in a fatherly fashion.
"And as for you, Jim," he said, turning to the Kanaka, "I should have thought you had more sense than to take such chances with an off-shore wind like that blowing. If you had n't got back with the dory I'd have pulled your ears off."
Jim grinned.
"Sea she no tell me about her fool tricks," he replied in his curious polyglot English picked up partly from the cosmopolitan crowds in stokeholds and partly in the Philippines.
The Kanaka was by no means an unwelcome member of the party. He had intelligence of an unusual order for his kind and displayed great ingenuity on occasions. What his age was neither
213
