“We start in an hour in the whale-boat for Guvutu, big brother,” Joan said to him.  “Tell your brothers, all of them, so that they can get ready.  We catch the Upolu for Sydney.  You will all come along, and sail back to the Solomons in the new schooner.  Take your extra shirts and dungarees along.  Plenty cold weather down there.  Now run along, and tell them to hurry.  Leave the guns behind.  Turn them over to Mr. Sheldon.  We won’t need them.”

“If you are really bent upon going—­” Sheldon began.

“That’s settled long ago,” she answered shortly.  “I’m going to pack now.  But I’ll tell you what you can do for me—­issue some tobacco and other stuff they want to my men.”

An hour later the three men had shaken hands with Joan down on the beach.  She gave the signal, and the boat shoved off, six men at the oars, the seventh man for’ard, and Adamu Adam at the steering-sweep.  Joan was standing up in the stern-sheets, reiterating her good-byes—­a slim figure of a woman in the tight-fitting jacket she had worn ashore from the wreck, the long-barrelled Colt’s revolver hanging from the loose belt around her waist, her clear-cut face like a boy’s under the Stetson hat that failed to conceal the heavy masses of hair beneath.

“You’d better get into shelter,” she called to them.  “There’s a big squall coming.  And I hope you’ve got plenty of chain out, Captain Young.  Good-bye!  Good-bye, everybody!”

Her last words came out of the darkness, which wrapped itself solidly about the boat.  Yet they continued to stare into the blackness in the direction in which the boat had disappeared, listening to the steady click of the oars in the rowlocks until it faded away and ceased.

“She is only a girl,” Christian Young said with slow solemnity.  The discovery seemed to have been made on the spur of the moment.  “She is only a girl,” he repeated with greater solemnity.

“A dashed pretty one, and a good traveller,” Tudor laughed.  “She certainly has spunk, eh, Sheldon?”

“Yes, she is brave,” was the reluctant answer for Sheldon did not feel disposed to talk about her.

“That’s the American of it,” Tudor went on.  “Push, and go, and energy, and independence.  What do you think, skipper?”

“I think she is young, very young, only a girl,” replied the captain of the Minerva, continuing to stare into the blackness that hid the sea.

The blackness seemed suddenly to increase in density, and they stumbled up the beach, feeling their way to the gate.

“Watch out for nuts,” Sheldon warned, as the first blast of the squall shrieked through the palms.  They joined hands and staggered up the path, with the ripe cocoanuts thudding in a monstrous rain all around them.  They gained the veranda, where they sat in silence over their whisky, each man staring straight out to sea, where the wildly swinging riding-light of the Minerva could be seen in the lulls of the driving rain.