If only she could tell what things might be in store for her, would she not, herself, prefer death, an honorable death, at the friendly hands of a tenderhearted fellow-countryman, to the unspeakable insults of these man-eating Polynesians?
If only he had the courage to release her by one blow, as she lay there, from the coming ill! But he hadn't; he hadn't.

Even on board the Australasian he had been vaguely aware that he was getting very fond of that pretty little Miss Ellis.

And now that he sat there, after that desperate struggle for life with the pounding waves, mounting guard over her through the livelong night, his own heart told him plainly, in tones he could not disobey, he loved her too well to dare what he thought best in the end for her.
Still, even so, he was brave enough to feel he must never let the very worst of all befall her.

He bethought him, in his doubt and agony, of how his uncle, Major Thurstan, during the great Indian mutiny, had held his lonely bungalow, with his wife and daughter by his side, for three long hours against a howling mob of native insurgents; and how, when further resistance was hopeless, and that great black wave of angry humanity burst in upon them at last, the brave soldier had drawn his revolver, shot his wife and daughter with unerring aim, to prevent their falling alive into the hands of the natives, and then blown his own brains out with his last remaining cartridge.

As his uncle had done at Jhansi, thirty years before, so he himself would do on that nameless Pacific island--for he didn't know even now on what shore he had landed.