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As she finished, Mr Hennessy rode away on a cross path, and Dick Forrest dropped back to squire his wife on the other side
"Will you sport a bet, Evan?" he queried
"I'd like to hear the terars that you can't catch Paula in the tank inside ten minutes--no, inside five, for I reive hienerously "Ten minutes orry hiued "And you don't value ars I tell you he is a swimmer He's drowned kanakas, and you knohat that means"
"Perhaps I should reconsider Maybe he'll slash a killing crawl-stroke at me before I've really started TellThey still talk of it in the Marquesas It was the big hurricane of 1892 He did forty miles in forty-five hours, and only he and one other landed on the land And they were all kanakas He was the only white man; yet he out-endured and drowned the last kanaka of them--"
"I thought you said there was one other?" Paula interrupted
"She was a woman," Dick answered "He drowned the last kanaka"
"And the woman was then a white woman?" Paula insisted
Grahah she had asked the question of her husband, her head turned to the turn of his head, so that he found her eyes ation Grahahtness as he answered: "She was a kanaka"
"A queen, if you please," Dick took up "A queen out of the ancient chief stock She was Queen of Huahoa"
"Was it the chief stock that enabled her to out-endure the native men?" Paula asked "Or did you help her?"
"I rather think we helped each other toward the end," Graham replied "We were both out of our heads for short spells and long spells Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, that was all in We made the land at sunset--that is, a wall of iron coast, with the surf bursting sky-high She took hold of et soo in, which would have ot me to understand that she knehere she was; that the current set westerly along shore and in two hours would drift us abreast of a spot where we could land I swear I either slept or was unconscious most of those two hours; and I swear she was in one state or the other when I chanced to come to and noted the absence of the roar of the surf Then it was my turn to claw and maul her back to consciousness It was three hours more before we made the sand We slept where we crawled out of the water Next 's sun burnt us awake, and we crept into the shade of soain Next I awoke it was night I took another drink, and slept through tillShe was still asleep when the bunch of kanakas, hunting wild goats from the next valley, found us"