He was a huge brute, fully six feet tall, and he was the possessor of two of the strongest-looking hands I had ever seen.  They were claws, that’s what they were.  The great fingers were slightly crooked, as if waiting, like the tentacles of an octopus, for something to get in their grip.  The body was heavy, and, in a manner that I cannot explain, it made me think of animals that lived and died in long past ages.  The big brute looked so capable of making an inexcusable attack that one’s primitive instincts warned one to keep in a state of readiness for the onslaught that seemed imminent.

But it was the face that was specially unattractive.  It was a sallow, flat face, and the strange eyes did nothing to lighten it.  They were dead, lustreless eyes.  They had a coldness in them that reminded me of the icicle eyes of the crocodile, and, curiously, I associated that reptile’s notions of fair warfare with Leith as I looked at him.  That sullen face, with the eyes that would never brighten at a tale of daring, or dim from a story of pathos, belonged to a man who would imitate crocodile tactics by lying quiet till his prey was within striking distance.

“What is all this about the white waterfall?” he repeated, after the crooked fingers had dropped my hand.

“Oh, it’s something that happened to Mr. Verslun,” replied Miss Barbara.

“Where?” asked Leith.

“On the wharf over there,” I answered coldly, nodding toward the structure as I spoke.  “It’s really nothing important though, and I related it solely for Miss Herndon’s amusement.”

“But Toni?” he growled, turning toward the two girls.

“Oh, Toni puts forward an alibi,” laughed the youngest sister.  “He asserts that he was in the boat when the incident happened and he persists in saying that he knows nothing about the matter.”

Leith again turned toward me, and his brows straightened as he looked me in the eyes.  “Can’t you tell the story over again?” he asked.

“I’d rather not,” I said, somewhat rudely.  “I’m tired of it.  It was really only a small happening that I am afraid I expanded a little in an endeavour to thrill Miss Herndon, and the story is now her personal property.”

“But the bare facts?” he growled.

“There are no bare facts,” I replied.  “I covered them with fiction, and I think Miss Herndon is going to copyright the whole.”

He took the remark as a direct refusal on my part to give him an outline of the affair to satisfy his curiosity, and I felt elated at noting the sudden glint of anger that appeared in the lustreless eyes.

The two girls stood silent for a moment while Leith and I surveyed each other without speaking, then a Tahitian boy broke the awkward silence by informing me that the captain wished to see me in the cabin, and I hurriedly excused myself to the sisters and went below.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III