Part 2

He followed as she went before him like a wraith through the green gloom. Now a shaft of moonlight struck her and now in a denser shadow she was almost invisible. Then came a break in the trees and Packard saw before him an amphitheater where, in the moonlight, great blocks of stone lay tumbled and where the steplike tiers of seats were burst apart by tree roots.

Here Kineia stopped and turned, where the ferns grew high amid the bowlders. This was the spot toward which she had been luring Packard for the last two days.

“Once,” said she to Packard in a low voice, “you saw my husband kill a man.”

Packard started. Then he laughed.

“So he has told you?” said he.

“Is it true?”

“As sure as he’s lying there drunk in the house, now, it is true.”

Kineia pondered for a moment.

“What brought you here across the sea to this island to tell me that?” said she mournfully.

“Luck,” said Packard.

“No,” said Kineia with a sudden laugh. “Death!” And she plunged the knife in his throat, the knife that had saved her father, in the hand of Nalia.

He did not die immediately and she waited to make sure, absolutely sure, and as she waited she wept for the man she loved lying there in the house in the grasp of gin. Then when all was over she came back, running like a mother to her child.

Lygon was sleeping peacefully now, with his face buried on his arm. She kissed his hair, left the room, and leaving the house sought the house of Taro.

“Taro,” said Kineia, “the strange captain sat up at our house drinking gin. He wished to go on board his ship. I went to the beach with him and he said he would swim. He was drunk. I tried to stop him, but it was no use. He had not gone more than a few canoe lengths from the shore when a shark took him. He cried once and went down.”

“Waugh,” said Taro, rubbing his eyes. “When the belly of a shark has taken a man there is no use in searching for him late at night. He was a stranger, anyway.”

It was a temperance story that explained a lot of things, among others the prohibition of alcohol on that island by order of Kineia. Lygon, returned to freedom and sobriety and happiness, never knew. Kineia, happy again like a joyous child, never told, and the ferns where the old gods of Utara once held their revels are safe to keep their secret forever.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 20, 1919 issue of The Popular Magazine.]