"Take this - and this - and this - " till suddenly her arms fell.

She had seen the ensign dipped in response, and next moment the
point below hid the hull of the brig from her view. Then she

turned away from the balustrade, and, passing slowly before the
door of her father's room with her eyelids lowered, and an

enigmatic expression on her face, she disappeared behind the
curtain.

But instead of going along the passage, she remained concealed and
very still on the other side to watch what would happen. For some

time the broad, furnished verandah remained empty. Then the door
of old Nelson's room came open suddenly, and Heemskirk staggered

out. His hair was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his unshaven face
looked very dark. He gazed wildly about, saw his cap on a table,

snatched it up, and made for the stairs quietly, but with a
strange, tottering gait, like the last effort of waning strength.

Shortly after his head had sunk below the level of the floor, Freya
came out from behind the curtain, with compressed, scheming lips,

and no softness at all in her luminous eyes. He could not be
allowed to sneak off scot free. Never - never! She was excited,

she tingled all over, she had tasted blood! He must be made to
understand that she had been aware of having been watched; he must

know that he had been seen slinking off shamefully. But to run to
the front rail and shout after him would have been childish, crude

- undignified. And to shout - what? What word? What phrase? No;
it was impossible. Then how? . . . She frowned, discovered it,

dashed at the piano, which had stood open all night, and made the
rosewood monster growl savagery in an irritated bass. She struck

chords as if firing shots after that straddling, broad figure in
ample white trousers and a dark uniform jacket with gold shoulder-

straps, and then she pursued him with the same thing she had played
the evening before - a modern, fierce piece of love music which had

been tried more than once against the thunderstorms of the group.
She accentuated its rhythm with triumphantmalice, so absorbed in

her purpose that she did not notice the presence of her father,
who, wearing an old threadbare ulster of a check pattern over his

sleeping suit, had run out from the back verandah to inquire the
reason of this untimelyperformance. He stared at her.

"What on earth? . . . Freya!" His voice was nearly drowned by the
piano. "What's become of the lieutenant?" he shouted.

She looked up at him as if her soul were lost in her music, with
unseeing eyes.

"Gone."
"Wha-a-t? . . . Where?"

She shook her head lightly" target="_blank" title="ad.轻微地；细长的">slightly, and went on playing louder than
before. Old Nelson's innocentlyanxious gaze starting from the

open door of his room, explored the whole place high and low, as if
the lieutenant were something small which might have been crawling

on the floor or clinging to a wall. But a shrillwhistle coming
somewhere from below pierced the ample volume of sound rolling out

of the piano in great, vibrating waves. The lieutenant was down at
the cove, whistling for the boat to come and take him off to his

ship. And he seemed to be in a terrific hurry, too, for he
whistled again almost directly, waited for a moment, and then sent

out a long, interminable, shrill call as distressful to hear as
though he had shrieked without drawingbreath. Freya ceased

playing suddenly.
"Going on board," said old Nelson, perturbed by the event. "What

could have made him clear out so early? Queer chap. Devilishly
touchy, too! I shouldn't wonder if it was your conduct last night

that hurt his feelings? I noticed you, Freya. You as well as
laughed in his face, while he was suffering agonies from neuralgia.

It isn't the way to get yourself liked. He's offended with you."
Freya's hands now reposed passive on the keys; she bowed her fair

head, feeling a sudden discontent, a nervous lassitude, as though
she had passed through some exhausting crisis. Old Nelson (or

Nielsen), looking aggrieved, was revolving matters of policy in his
bald head.

"I think it would be right for me to go on board just to inquire,
some time this morning," he declared fussily. "Why don't they

bring me my morning tea? Do you hear, Freya? You have astonished
me, I must say. I didn't think a young girl could be so unfeeling.

And the lieutenant thinks himself a friend of ours, too! What?
No? Well, he calls himself a friend, and that's something to a

person in my position. Certainly! Oh, yes, I must go on board."
"Must you?" murmured Freya listlessly; then added, in her thought:

"Poor man!"
CHAPTER V

In respect of the next seven weeks, all that is necessary to say
is, first, that old Nelson (or Nielsen) failed in paying his

politic call. The Neptun gunboat of H.M. the King of the
Netherlands, commanded by an outraged and infuriated lieutenant,

left the cove at an unexpectedly early hour. When Freya's father
came down to the shore, after seeing his precious crop of tobacco

spread out properly in the sun, she was already steaming round the
point. Old Nelson regretted the circumstance for many days.

"Now, I don't know in what disposition the man went away," he
lamented to his hard daughter. He was amazed at her hardness. He

was almost frightened by her indifference.
Next, it must be recorded that the same day the gunboat Neptun,

steering east, passed the brig Bonito becalmed in sight of
Carimata, with her head to the eastward, too. Her captain, Jasper

Allen, giving himself up consciously to a tender, possessive
reverie of his Freya, did not get out of his long chair on the poop

to look at the Neptun which passed so close that the smoke belching
out suddenly from her short black funnel rolled between the masts

of the Bonito, obscuring for a moment the sunlit whiteness of her
sails, consecrated to the service of love. Jasper did not even

turn his head for a glance. But Heemskirk, on the bridge, had
gazed long and earnestly at the brig from the distance, gripping

hard the brass rail in front of him, till, the two ships closing,
he lost all confidence in himself, and retreating to the chartroom,

pulled the door to with a crash. There, his brows knitted, his
mouth drawn on one side in sardonic meditation, he sat through many

still hours - a sort of Prometheus in the bonds of unholy desire,
having his very vitals torn by the beak and claws of humiliated

passion.
That species of fowl is not to be shooed off as easily as a

chicken. Fooled, cheated, deceived, led on, outraged, mocked at -
beak and claws! A sinister bird! The lieutenant had no mind to

become the talk of the Archipelago, as the naval officer who had
had his face slapped by a girl. Was it possible that she really

loved that rascally trader? He tried not to think, but, worse than
thoughts, definite impressions beset him in his retreat. He saw

her - a vision plain, close to, detailed, plastic, coloured,
lighted up - he saw her hanging round the neck of that fellow. And

he shut his eyes, only to discover that this was no remedy. Then a
piano began to play near by, very plainly; and he put his fingers

to his ears with no better effect. It was not to be borne - not in
solitude. He bolted out of the chartroom, and talked of

indifferent things somewhat wildly with the officer of the watch on
the bridge, to the mocking accompaniment of a ghostly piano.

The last thing to be recorded is that Lieutenant Heemskirk instead
of pursuing his course towards Ternate, where he was expected, went

out of his way to call at Makassar, where no one was looking for
his arrival. Once there, he gave certain explanations and laid a

certain proposal before the governor, or some other authority, and
obtained permission to do what he thought fit in these matters.

Thereupon the Neptun, giving up Ternate altogether, steamed north
in view of the mountainous coast of Celebes, and then crossing the

broad straits took up her station on the low coast of virgin
forests, inviolate and mute, in waters phosphorescent at night;

deep blue in daytime with gleaming green patches over the submerged
reefs. For days the Neptun could be seen moving smoothly up and

down the sombre face of the shore, or hanging about with a watchful
air near the silvery breaks of broad estuaries, under the great

luminous sky never softened, never veiled, and flooding the earth
with the everlastingsunshine of the tropics - that sunshine which,