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"What better can I do with it? Shoot craps? Play poker with you sharks? Hell, no! Now I really got me something. Know what I'm going to do with it?"

"Bowl?" an irreverent Marine asked.

"No! I'm gonna take this home and hang it right up in my basement. Right in the rumpus room. Right where we have sandwiches and beer!"

"I hope you have a nurse in attendance, buddy, because one look at that grisly and you can serve my beer all over again to somebody else. It will be right on your floor!"

At that moment Cable, too, felt sick. He felt involved in a net of two colors. One was delicate brown, the other the color of dried betel juice. And no matter which way he twisted, he was not free. About this time he stopped writing to his mother.

The next time he saw Bali-ha'i was when Benny took him there on his regular visit. Four things happened. Six canoes set out from Vanicoro this time, and all the owners were dressed in red loin cloths. He slept with Liat again, more passionately than ever before. She gave him a charm she had carved from the strange ivory nut. And Sister Marie Clement stopped him as he went home past the hospital.

"That is an interesting charm," Sister Clement observed. "Is it from the ivory nut? That is a peculiar nut, is it not? Have you seen one? No? Well, stop by a moment." She disappeared into the hospital and produced a small object about the size of a man's fist. It resembled a small pineapple, brown and with a covering like a pine cone. "If you cut this covering off, there is an interior like the matting of a coconut. Inside that there is a fruit, and if you cut that off-it's like potato-you will find this very hard nut. When it dries, it's like ivory, as you can see. It's one of the strange things of the islands." She paused a long time and then asked, "Did Liat give you the charm?"

"Yes, Sister, she did."

"My son," Sister Clement began. "You know what I have to say. I say it only to reinforce your own conscience, for you must already have said it to yourself. What you are doing is no good. It can only bring hurt to you and disgrace to the girl. If life is so urgent, so compelling now, marry one of the lovely French girls who live on this island. Some of them are beautiful. Some are fairly wealthy. Some are surprisingly well educated. And there are Protestants among them, too. If life is so urgent, it must also be important. Do not waste it, I pray you."

Cable could say nothing for a long time. He stood looking at the channel, this time a greenish blue, lovelier than before. Bali-ha'i was in his heart, and the island fought there against the wisdom of the little birdlike woman from Bordeaux. Finally he asked, "What of Liat?"

"I don't know what has passed between you, lieutenant. That is your affair, and God's. But I think I am doing no harm if I say that Liat can marry almost whom she wishes. Many Tonkinese want to marry her, for she is an industrious girl." Sister Clement bit her lip. She knew she should never have praised the girl. She knew Cable would grasp at those words and remember them long after the rest of her sermon had been dismissed. She continued, more carefully, "There is also a planter who wants to marry her. You have probably heard of him. Jacques Benoit. He could give her a good home. It would be a step up in the world for her. And although Jacques drinks a bit, I think he might make, with Liat's help, a good Christian home. Lieutenant, I beg you to think of this."

Cable studied the channel again. The six canoes from Vanicoro were returning to their own side of the greenish water. He hoped that Benny had accepted no more heads. Dry of mouth he turned his gaze to Sister Marie Clement, who was waiting.

"You see, lieutenant?" she said, weighing each word. "I know you have been on Guadalcanal. You are probably a hero, too. I have been patient, hoping that reason would overtake you. We, here on this island and on all of these islands, know that we owe our homes and perhaps our lives to you men who stopped the Japanese. But you owe yourselves something,