These were Francois, his wife, and their child.  About eight a.m., in the midst of the lagoon, their cutter had capsized in jibbing.  They got her righted, and though she was still full of water put the child on board.  The mainsail had been carried away, but the jib still drew her sluggishly along, and Francois and the woman swam astern and worked the rudder with their hands.  The cold was cruel; the fatigue, as time went on, became excessive; and in that preserve of sharks, fear hunted them.  Again and again, Francois, the half-breed, would have desisted and gone down; but the woman, whole blood of an amphibious race, still supported him with cheerful words.  I am reminded of a woman of Hawaii who swam with her husband, I dare not say how many miles, in a high sea, and came ashore at last with his dead body in her arms.  It was about five in the evening, after nine hours’ swimming, that Francois and his wife reached land at Rotoava.  The gallant fight was won, and instantly the more childish side of native character appears.  They had supped, and told and retold their story, dripping as they came; the flesh of the woman, whom Mrs. Stevenson helped to shift, was cold as stone; and Francois, having changed to a dry cotton shirt and trousers, passed the remainder of the evening on my floor and between open doorways, in a thorough draught.  Yet Francois, the son of a French father, speaks excellent French himself and seems intelligent.

It was our first idea that the catechist, true to his evangelical vocation, was clothing the naked from his superfluity.  Then it came out that Francois was but dealing with his own.  The clothes were his, so was the chest, so was the house.  Francois was in fact the landlord.  Yet you observe he had hung back on the verandah while Taniera tried his ’prentice hand upon the locks:  and even now, when his true character appeared, the only use he made of the estate was to leave the clothes of his family drying on the fence.  Taniera was still the friend of the house, still fed the poultry, still came about us on his daily visits, Francois, during the remainder of his stay, holding bashfully aloof.  And there was stranger matter.  Since Francois had lost the whole load of his cutter, the half ton of copra, an axe, bowls, knives, and clothes—­ since he had in a manner to begin the world again, and his necessary flour was not yet bought or paid for—­I proposed to advance him what he needed on the rent.  To my enduring amazement he refused, and the reason he gave—­if that can be called a reason which but darkens counsel—­was that Taniera was his friend.  His friend, you observe; not his creditor.  I inquired into that, and was assured that Taniera, an exile in a strange isle, might possibly be in debt himself, but certainly was no man’s creditor.