the fitful moonlight into a myriad sparkles. Somewhere beyond those dark clouds lay Koiau, encircled by shining waters. The over-sea breeze blowing shoreward seemed almost to bear with it the spicy perfumes of the isle, strange intoxicating odours which maddened her for home. On the beach below beat the surf, as at this moment it beat on the coral reefs beyond the lagoon. As a bird, her soul flew on the wings of fancy to the radiant isle of her birth--to the cocoa-palm groves and banana plantations. Wild music, wilder dances, far-stretching spaces of silver sand, forests glowing with tropical blossom, the dusky women twining hibiscus flowers for coronals, and the great chiefs holding counsel in the "pure" (house) of the gods. Tera dreamed dreams; she saw visions; and still behind her drawled and droned the nasal harmonies of those colourless worshippers who adored an unknown god.
Suddenly a warm clasp was laid upon her wrist, and Tera awoke from her ecstasy to find a fair Saxon face close to her own. With a quiet little sigh of pleasure she nestled into the breast of the man.
"Jack," she murmured softly, "O'ia fe gwa te ofal."
"Put it in English, Tera," said Jack, slipping his arm round the girl; "I never could get my tongue round that Kanaka lingo."
She hid her face on his shoulder with a blush. "It means, 'I love you,'" she said.
"Why then, Tera, Kanaka talk is very good talk. Let me hear more of it. But not here. The piety folk will soon be out, and their psalm-singing doesn't step well with our love-making."
"Aué," sighed Tera, christened Bithiah; "they make me dull and sad, these songs. Let us go." She moved along the brow of the hill, leaning on the sailor's arm.
Jack Finland was Farmer Carwell's nephew; a smart, alert second mate on board a coasting tramp. He should have shipped on a better boat, but Tera lived at Grimleigh, and Grimleigh was a port of call. He had sailed among the islands of Eden below Capricorn: he knew the looks of a coral atoll, and the beauty of the women who wandered on the South Sea beaches. After a prolonged stay in the islands, a fit of home-sickness had brought him back to the grimy port whence he had set sail many years before. Here he had seen Tera exiled from her Southern paradise, and here, with the impetuosity of a sailor, he had declared his love. That she returned it was natural enough; for Jack Finland was as splendid a young man as ever set foot ashore to beguile the hearts of maidens. Tera, with her inherent love for physical beauty, had surrendered at once to his wooing.
"But I fear we may not marry," she said, as they strolled along. "My guardian--this Mr. Johnson--wishes that I should be his wife."
"He wishes what he won't get, then, Tera. You wouldn't throw yourself away on an ugly devil-dodger like him? No, my dear, you shall marry me; and we will go to the South Seas for our honeymoon."
"With you, Jack!--ah, how I should love that! At Koiau my father is a great chief. He will admit you to our family; he will place his tabu on you; and when Buli goes into the darkness we shall rule, my dear." The girl sighed, and tightened her clasp on Jack's arm. "But this thing cannot be. My father has sent Korah Brand Misi" [missionary] "to carry me back to Koiau."
"But you won't go, Tera?"
"I must. Jack. If I do not, Mr. Johnson will make me his wife."
"I'll wring his neck first."
"Ah!" Tera's eyes gleamed with a savage light. "If we were in my land you could do that; but here"--she shrugged her shoulders--"they would lock you in prison. No, Jack, here you must not kill."
"Worse luck," grumbled Finland, whose wanderings had made a barbarian of him; "still, you ain't going to marry Johnson."
"Oh no! I shall buy him if I can. Listen, Jack. When I left Koiau, my father gave me pearls to sell here. But I have never sold them--oh no! I had no need to sell them. Mr. Johnson is poor--he wants money--I will give those pearls to him if he lets me go free."
"Then this missionary chap will collar you, Tera; and I don't take much stock in that lot."
"If I go with Misi, you come also, Jack. In Koiau we may marry."
"In Koiau your father may make you marry some big chief," said Jack, wisely, "and I should be left out in the cold."
Before Tera could protest that she would be nobody's wife save his, Johnson appeared, hurrying towards them with an angry look on his face. In the silver moonlight he could see the lovers plainly, and their attitude sent a thrill of rage through his heart.
"Bithiah," he said harshly, "this is not an hour for you to be out. Come! My mother is waiting for us."
"Tera is free to come and go as she pleases," struck in Finland, hotly.
Johnson turned on him with restrained passion.
"You call her by a heathen name; you think of her as a heathen girl. Oh, I know you, Mr. Finland, you beach-comber."
Finland, full of rage at the contemptuous word, would have struck the minister, but Tera flung herself between them.
"No, no, I must go!" she said, and flung a last word and look at Jack. "Toë fua" [farewell] said she, and walked away with Johnson.
CHAPTER II
PEARLS OF PRICE
Tera and her guardian walked home in silence, Johnson, whose love for the girl bordered on a frenzy, could not, as yet, trust himself to remark on her conduct in meeting Finland. On her side, Tera, having for Johnson something of the awe a pupil feels for his schoolmaster, did not dare to bring down an avalanche of anger by so much as one rash word. But this attitude was, as may be guessed, the calm before the storm. When Tera reached the house she would have gone supperless to bed, if only to avert high words; but the man, wrought beyond endurance, beckoned her into his study, and there the storm broke--as violent as any hurricane of the girl's native clime.
"This cannot go on," said Johnson, striving to speak calmly; "you must see for yourself--this cannot go on."
The girl, seated in a chair beyond the circle of light thrown by the reading-lamp, said nothing. With clasped hands and head raised, like a serpent's crest, she watched her guardian striding to and fro, vainly trying to moderate his anger. So had she seen countrymen of her own fighting the primeval elements of man. Religion, civilization, the restraint learned by experience, all were gone: and Johnson had got down to the rock-bed of his character, there to find that the centre of his being, like that of the earth, was raging fire. Tormented by the seven devils of rejected love, he hardly noticed that the girl made no comment upon his despairing outcry.
"That you, a baptized Christian, should leave the temple of God to dally with a profane Belial!" he raged. "Are you not ashamed to have converse with such an one? Finland is a mocker, a deceiver, a lover of strong drink; yet you dare trust yourself with him. Bithiah you are named; would that I could call you Candace."
Tera drew her well-marked brows together. "I have done no wrong," she said bravely; "lies are told of Jack: lies which I do not believe. He is tall and beautiful and good. I love him!"
Johnson looked as though he could have struck her; and only remembrance of his calling prevented his seizing her with a rough grasp. However, he restrained himself, beat down his anger, and spoke on.
"Bithiah!" said he, in a quiet voice, "you deceive yourself in this. You are attracted only by the appearance of this man, and you do not see how bad, how cruel he is. I should be false to my trust did I permit you to become his wife. As your guardian, I have power from your father, and that power shall be exercised for your good. I forbid you to see Finland again."
"No!" said Tera, and set her mouth firmly.
"You defy me?"
"Yes!"
"Then I shall have nothing more to do with you. You shall go back to Koiau with Brand." He hesitated. "It will be a happy day for me when I see the last of you," he added abruptly.
Tera said nothing, but looking on his white face,