.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 50663
   :PG.Title: Vaiti of the Islands
   :PG.Released: 2015-12-10
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Beatrice Grimshaw
   :DC.Title: Vaiti of the Islands
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1920
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

====================
VAITI OF THE ISLANDS
====================

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

   .. vspace:: 4

   .. class:: xx-large bold

      VAITI OF THE ISLANDS

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: medium bold

      BY BEATRICE GRIMSHAW

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      LONDON
      GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED
      SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.

   .. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CONTENTS

.. class:: noindent small

   CHAPTER

.. class:: noindent

`Prologue`_

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

I. `The Pearl Lagoon`_
II. `A Race for a Fortune`_
III. `The Flower behind the Ear`_
IV. `The Black Viri`_
V. `A Diamond Web`_
VI. `Marooned`_
VII. `The Turning of the Tables`_
VIII. `The White Man of Nalolo`_
IX. `The Lost Island`_
X. `What came of the Paris Dress`_
XI. `A Dead Man's Revenge`_
XII. `Breaking the Mana`_
XIII. `The Game Played Out`_
XIV. `How the Witch-Doctor got his Money back`_
XV. `The Calamity of Coral Bay`_
XVI. `The Fate of the Lieutenant`_
XVII. `Invaders in Tanna`_
XVIII. `A Cannibal Party`_
XIX. `The Rival Princesses`_
XX. `Queen after all`_





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PROLOGUE`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   VAITI OF THE ISLANDS

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium bold

   PROLOGUE

.. vspace:: 2

It was in the seventies, long ago.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Summer—yet a slow grey dawn, lingering long
in the sky.  August—yet a chilly morning, crisping
the landlocked waters of the bay with cold knife-edges
of foam.  Out at sea, the wild white horses plunging
madly under the whip of the sunrise wind; the bar
beginning to thunder.  Inshore, beneath the green
slope of the castle hill, small angry ripples beating and
fretting the untrampled sand.  Dead rose-leaves from
the gardens floating among the seaweed; a torn bird's-nest,
flung down by the wind, lying on the edge of the
steep cliff pathway....  It was still the time of summer,
yet, too surely, autumn had come.

The sodden leaves lay thick in the bottom of the
boat when the man seized it by the gunwale and ran
it down the beach into the snatching waves....  Oh,
an autumn day indeed, here in wild Caithness, though
summer was still at its fairest in kinder lands.  And
in the heart of the man who was rowing fast through
the angry dawn light, to the tall schooner yacht that
swung and tore at her moorings out in the bay, there
was autumn too, with winter close at hand.

All so long ago! who remembers?

Not the newspapers which, in a day or two after,
shrieked the scandal broadcast, east and west.  Not
the guests of the castle house-party—they are dead, or
old, which is half of death, since then.  Not the Prince
whose dignity had been insulted by the outbreak of a
vulgar card scandal in his very presence—he struck
the titled owner of the house off the list of his intimates
forthwith, and then forgot about it and him.  Not the
colonel of the famous regiment, who found out defalcations
in the funds belonging to the mess, a few days
after, and knew why his most promising young officer
had done the unforgiveable thing—for the Ashanti
spears ended life and memory for him out on the African
plains, before even Piccadilly had made an end of talking.
Not the Royal Yacht Squadron—the reported loss of
the famous *Paquita* at sea, with her disgraced owner
on board, is a tale that even the oldest *habitue* of Cowes
could not tell you to-day....  No one remembers.
When the beautiful white schooner spread her wings
below the castle wall, and beat her way like a frightened
butterfly out to the stormy sea, she sailed away in
silence, and she and hers were known no more.

Yet, but for that stormy day in the Highlands, and
the boat that fled to sea, these tales of far-off lands had
never been told.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PEARL LAGOON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PEARL LAGOON

.. vspace:: 2

"Where's the old man?"

"Old man drunk," replied Vaiti indifferently.  She
had learned to play "The Maiden's Prayer," maltreat
three European languages, and cultivate a waist in her
Tahitian convent school.  But that was five years ago
now, and Vaiti's "papalangi" verbs had dropped from
her quite as soon, and as naturally, as her "Belitani"
stays.

"Why can't he wake up and give us an observation?"
commented the mate indignantly.  "It would be hard
if a man mightn't enjoy himself in port; but we're
four days out now, and he's as bad as ever, lyin' all the
time on the settee like a——"

"You better mind too much what you say my father!"  Vaiti
had set one shapely olive hand on the deck, and
sprung to her feet like a flying-fish making a leap.  She
was taller than the sturdy, red-haired mate, as she
stood up on the poop, her bare feet well apart, her white
muslin loose gown swelling out as she leaned to the roll
of the steamer, and her black-brown eyes, deep-set under
fine brows as straight as a ruler, staring down the blue
eyes of the man.

"Very sorry, I'm sure; no offence meant," said the
mate humbly.  "But we want an observation, and he
ain't no good.  Why, you know as well as me that he'll
be like this, off and on, all the voyage now; we've both
of us seen it before."

Vaiti stamped her bare feet on the deck.

"I know—I know!  I try all the way from Apia
wake him up—no good!  I tell you, Alliti"—the mate's
name, Harris, usually took this form in the pigeon-English
of Polynesia—"this very bad time for him to
get 'quiffy.  Too much bad time.  Never mind.  Get
the sextan'.  I take sun myself."

The mate ran down the companion and into the
cabin, where the captain's six feet two of drunken
ineptitude sprawled over most of the space available
for passing.  He stopped for a moment to look at the
heavy, unconscious face—a handsome face, with the
remains of refinement about it; for Captain Saxon had
been a gentleman once, and his name (which was certainly
not Saxon then) had appeared among the lists of
"members deceased" in the annual reports of all the
best London clubs of the 'seventies....  Why Saxon
died, and why he came to life again in the South Pacific
some years later, is a tale that need not be told, even if
it is guessed.  Many such substantial ghosts roam the
South Seas unexorcised—many a man whose name
adorns a memorial tablet, guarded by weeping marble
angels, on the walls of some ivied English Church, is
busy conferring a peculiar fitness upon the
occupation of those guardian seraphs, down among "The
Islands," where he and the devil may do as they please.

"'Og!" observed the mate, as he passed through
to the captain's cabin, and fetched out the sextant.
"'Alf-caste or quarter-caste, Vaiti's too good a daughter
for him, by the length of the mainmast and the mizzen
together.  She's got all his brains—Lord, how she
learned navigation from him, like a cat lapping up milk,
when she set her mind to it!—and none of his villainy.
At least——"  The mate paused on the companion,
and filled his pipe.

"At least——" he repeated, and broke off the remark
unfinished.

"Sun coming out nice now," he said, handing the
sextant to the girl.  Vaiti made her observation with
the ease of an old sea-captain, and went below to work
it out.  It was true, as Harris said, that she had plenty
of brains, though they did not lie along the lines of
"The Maiden's Prayer" and Dr. Smith's English
Grammar.  And, whatever the legal status of poor
derelict Saxon, or the mate, might be, no one who had
ever climbed the side of the schooner *Sybil* could doubt
the obvious fact that the real commanding officer of
that vessel was Vaiti herself.

"What d'ye make it?" asked the mate, looking over
her shoulder.  Vaiti, always sparing of her words, pointed
to the figures.  Harris whistled.

"Ain't we off our course, just!" he said, drawing
his finger down the chart.

"No," said Vaiti.

"Why, hang it all, Cap"—the girl was accorded the
title, half in fun, half through habit, a good deal oftener
than her father—"we ain't making for the Delgada
reefs, are we?  I don't pretend to be any navigator,
but I do know the course for Papeëte."

"What you think not matter," said Vaiti, rolling
up the chart.  "Make him eight bell.  You go take
wheel; I ki-ki [dinner], then I take him."

"What's the course?" demanded the mate eagerly.

"Nor'-west by west," answered Vaiti, going into her
cabin, and slamming the door against Harris's
open-mouthed questions.

An Aitutaki boy with a chain of red berries in his
hair, and a scarlet and yellow "pareo" (kilt) for all
clothing, brought up the dinner.  Vaiti ate her meal
alone, and then came on deck to take over the wheel,
keeping a determined silence that Harris hardly cared
to break....  And yet—Nor'-west by west, with the
wind fair for distant Papeëte, and the deadly Delgadas
lying about a quarter point off their present course, not
ten miles away!

"She's a hard case, bo'sun," he remarked to that official
as they sat down together.  "She has me fair scared
with the course she's steering; and yet, you may sling
me over the side in a shotted hammock for the sharks'es
ki-ki, if she don't know a lot more than the old man
himself.  Ain't she a daisy, too!  Look at her there
'olding the wheel, as upright as a cocoanut palm, and
as pretty and plump as a—as a——"

"Porker," concluded the bo'sun, pouring an imperial
pint of tea into his mug.

"You ain't got no poetry in you," said the mate
disgustedly.

"Nor nothing else," growled the bo'sun.  "Ain't
you going to help that curry, and give a man something
to put in his own inside after stowing the whale-boat
full of beef and biscuits?"

"The whale-boat?  (That's plenty, bo'sun; I've
got to live as well as you)."

"Ay, biscuits, beef, and water; compass and sextant.
She give the order a while ago."

"What's in the wind now?"

"I don't ask questions, so I'm never told no lies."

"I do, though," said the mate, in a spasm of authority,
deserting his dinner to spring up the companion and
join Vaiti at the wheel.  The bo'sun's mahogany face
broke up into a score of curving wrinkles, and his
shoulders shook a little, as he watched the scene on
deck.  Quite mechanically he transferred the rest of
the curry to his plate, and while clearing the dish with
the precision of a machine, kept an eye on the couple
at the wheel.  He saw Harris ask an eager question,
and repeat it more eagerly.  He saw Vaiti jerk a brief
answer, and the mate speak again.  Then he saw the
girl swing round on her heel, lift one slender hand, and
bring it down across Harris's cheek with an emphasis
that left a crimson mark upon the polished brown.  He
saw the mate take a step forward, and look at the
handsome helmswoman as though he were very much minded
to pay back the correction after the manner of man in
general where a pretty vixen is concerned.  The two
figures stared at each other, eye to eye, for a full minute.
Vaiti's brown eyes, keen as twin swords, never wavered;
her lip was insolent and unrelenting.  The mate's
half-angry, half mischievous expression dissolved into an
embarrassed grin; then he turned tail and hurried down
the hatch.

"She's a tigress in 'uman form," he declared.  "If
the old man—or any other—was to lay 'is little finger
on me—but there! who cares what a scratchin' cat
does?  I'd as soon marry a shark—I would!"

"You've as much chance," granted the bo'sun.

"Talk of sharks!" said the mate, gazing ruefully at
the table and the empty dish.

Some two hours later, a milky gleam on the port bow
attracted the mate's attention as he stood on the poop.
A Kanaka sailor had just taken the wheel, and Vaiti was
below.

"Breakers on the port bow!" sang out Harris.

Vaiti was up in a minute.

"I t'row water on my father's head," she said coolly—"but
no good; he too much sick, he see snake by
and by, I think.  You and Oki carry him into him
cabin, and come back pretty quick.  I see this t'rough
myself."

"See *what*?" demanded the mate, on the last verge
of frenzy.

"Not know myself yet," answered Vaiti, giving one
of her rare laughs.  She seemed in a very good humour
for once.

When the mate came out a little later, and the sailor
went back to the neglected wheel, Vaiti was standing
by the whale-boat, wearing an air of perfect self-possession
and a complete suit of her father's white ducks.
The sight was no novelty to Harris, but it came
upon him now, as usually, with a new shock of admiration.

"Isn't she an outrighter!" he observed to the
unsympathetic bo'sun.

"She certainly is, if outrighter's French for an
undacent young woman," replied that officer sourly.
Harris did not hear him, for the significance of the
morning's mystery had just burst on his mind.  He
had not spent ten years in the Pacific for nothing and
the sight of Tai, a diver from Penrhyn, standing beside
Vaiti, with a water-glass in his hand, spelt "pearl-shell"
to the eyes of the mate as clearly as if the magic
word had been printed in letters three feet long.  Vaiti
flashed her white teeth at him.

"Tai, me, three boys, we go into lagoon," she said.
"Suppose somethings happen, you find course for Apia
written out, cabin table; you take ship back, put
captain in hospital."

"By ——, but you're a corker, Vaiti!" cried Harris
admiringly.  "Where'd you hear anything about the
Delgadas?  No ship goes near them that can help it;
they're a regular ocean cemetery."

"You 'member officer from gun-boat, Apia?"

"Ay!" said Harris.  He did remember the lad, and
the rather inexplicable friendliness shown him by
Saxon and Vaiti during the stay in port of the
*Alligator*.

"He show me photo Delgadas.  *Alligator* he been go
all round him, mark him right for chart, because he all
wrong.  Officer give my father bearings; say plenty talk
and show photo.  He dam fool officer, I think; he not
know that kind place mean pearl-shell, and we not tell
anything."

Harris mounted the rigging, and surveyed the reef
from the main cross-trees.  It was the best part of a
mile away; a creaming circle of foam on the sea's blue
surface, enclosing a pallid spot of green.  Vaiti, who had
followed him, flung one arm round the mast, and, leaning
outwards towards the horizon, surveyed the reef
intently.  Within that ring of foam—the grave of many
a gallant ship that had sailed the fair Pacific as bravely
as their own little schooner—might lie many thousands
of pounds.  The repurchase of the *Sybil*, once Saxon's
sole property, now partly owned by a trading syndicate;
the regaining of her captain's lost position in decent
society—perhaps the realisation of half a hundred
luxurious dreams, dreamed on coral beaches under the
romance-breeding splendours of the tropic moon—all
this, and more, hung on the chances of the next few
hours.

There was silence for the space of a minute or two,
as the man and woman swung between earth and
heaven, staring across the sun-dazzled plain of sea.
Then, in one instant, the dream broke, and the rainbow
fragments of that bubble of glory scattered themselves
east and west.  For across the bar of the level horizon
slipped a small, pointed, pearl-coloured sail, growing as
they watched it, flying past, and heading all too surely
for the Delgadas reef.

Vaiti flung herself round a backstay, and slid down
to the deck, with a word on her lips that would have
justified the bo'sun's recent judgment, could he have
caught it.  Harris followed, swearing fully and freely.
It was evident to both that the newcomer had special
business with the reef as well as themselves; and they
wasted no time, acting in concord, and without dispute,
after a fashion that was new on board the *Sybil*.  Within
half an hour they had reduced the distance between
the ship and the reef to a quarter of a mile; nearer
than that even Vaiti did not care to go, for the weather
looked unsettled, though the wind was off the reef.
The whale-boat, with a picked crew, was lowered, and
sent flying towards the break in the reef, while the
mate, burning to be in her, but conscious that his
duty must keep him on the ship, paced excitedly up and
down the deck, glass in hand, watching the advance of
the stranger ship from time to time.  She was a good
two hours' sail away as yet; and surely first possession
was worth something, even out here in the lawless South
Seas!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A RACE FOR A FORTUNE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   A RACE FOR A FORTUNE

.. vspace:: 2

Before an hour was over, the wind had freshened
considerably, and the mate began to feel anxious for the
safety of the boat, in case he should be obliged to run
for it from the neighbourhood of the treacherous reef.
That Vaiti would return an instant sooner because
of the threatening weather he did not expect, knowing
the dare-devil recklessness of her character too well.
It was certain, however, that he might lose the ship,
and incidentally himself, by waiting too long; and it
was equally certain that Saxon, once recovered, would
put a bullet through his mate's head if Vaiti came to
harm.  And all the time that threatening sail was
growing larger and larger.

It was an unspeakable relief, though no less of a
surprise, when he saw that the boat was actually heading
towards the ship again, the sail up and every oar hard
at work.  He did not remember having seen Tai go
down, in any of his hurried inspections through the glass,
and the time was certainly short.  What did it all
mean?

The meaning became sufficiently clear as soon as the
boat approached the ship, but not through the medium
of eye or ear.  A strong stench of rotting fish struck
the mate's nostrils almost before the boat was within
hail, and instantly enlightened him.  No one who has
ever smelt the terrible smell of the pearl-oyster removed
from its ocean bed, and left to putrefy in a tropical sun,
can mistake the odour.  Harris understood at once that
the strange ship had been there before, and that Vaiti was
bringing back a sample of the last catch, left out to rot
during the vessel's temporary absence.

The *Sybil* was leaping dangerously when the boat came
alongside, but Vaiti snatched at the lowered rope, and
swung herself up over the bulwarks before any of the
native crew.  Tai, following her, brought a sack of
hideously smelling carrion, and dumped it down on the
deck.  The mate's eyes glistened.

"I find great lot lying on reef," said Vaiti, with an
apparent calmness that might have deceived any one
who knew her less accurately than the mate.  "I think
been there two week.  C'lismas Island, he one week
away, good weather.  Papalangi C'lismas Island belong
plenty diving gear.  You see?"

"Rather!" said Harris gloomily.  "Game up, eh?"

"I think you no man at all," spat Vaiti suddenly,
swinging into the cabin.  Harris, not especially put out,
gave a hand to hauling in the boat, remarking to the
bo'sun, who was picking over the heap of decaying
pearl-shell, "Don't know as one could say the same about her,
lump of solid devilment that she is!  But this looks
like the end of all our 'opes, as they say in the plays;
don't it?"

In a minute or two Vaiti appeared again, wearing a
dignified muslin gown with three frills on its tail, and
holding a chart in her hands.  She eyed the horizon
narrowly, and ordered the ship to be put about, a
manoeuvre which headed the *Sybil* straight for the
oncoming sail.  It was now evident that the stranger
ship was a schooner of some eighty or ninety tons,
rather larger than the *Sybil*, and nearly as fast.  No one
on board had the smallest doubt of her mission, even
had that rotting heap of shell not been there to offer
evidence.  Pearl-shell lagoons, with their shell worth
£100 to £200 per ton, and their pearls (if any are found,
which is not always certain) worth a fortune for half a
handful, are the gold mines of the South Sea world;
the very birds of the sea seem at times to carry the news
of such a discovery, and spread it far and wide.

The *Sybil* gathered way, and sped fast towards the
stranger ship.  The sea was blackening and rising, but
there was not very much wind as yet.  Vaiti sat
cross-legged on the deck, studying her chart in the waning
light of the gusty afternoon.  It was some minutes
before she laid it down and stood up to speak, steadying
herself with one hand against the deck-house, for the
schooner was now rolling heavily.

"Alliti," she said, "suppose you got heart one small
fowl inside you, I get captain's Winchester, my levolver,
you and bosun's levolver, and we send that people Davy
Jones, or go ourself, pretty quick.  But you not got heart,
though you big man, and old man he all time sick.  Now,
you listen too much what I tell you.  You run alongside
ship, you go on board.  You say captain sick, no
one take sun, we get off course, nearly wreck on Delgadas.
Then you ask captain give bearings reef, and you look
at him chart too much careful, see if this line mark—here."

She put the point of her small forefinger on the chart
she held, and showed two or three newly-ruled lines in
red ink, enclosing a large space east and south of Samoa.
These were the boundaries of the area lately annexed
by New Zealand, and she was exceedingly anxious to
know if the stranger knew as much about the significance
of that matter as she did.

"Then," she went on, "you ask him if he been Wellington,
say we wanting news——"

"What the (adjective noun) for?" demanded the mate.

"Because I say, pauki!" (pig) flashed Vaiti.  "No!—you
got head of pig, heart of fowl.  You bo'sun, you
know I get you through this all right, suppose you
trusting me—you come here."

Harris, shaking his great shoulders in an easy laugh,
swung down on to the main deck, and began ordering
about the crew.  He had an enormous admiration for
Vaiti, even when she boxed his ears, but he thought her
special peculiarities of character rather a trying obstacle
in the way of his enjoying the easy life beloved of South
Sea mates.

The acidulous bo'sun rose from his seat on deck, holding
out an unclean palm, in the midst of which glittered two
fine pearls.

"I've been through that little lot, and got these, which
do look like biz, ma'am," he observed.  "As to people
havin' fowls' hearts, or pigs' heads, I'm not prepared to
pass judgment.  But I don't own to neither myself,
and if you say it's a fight, a fight it is.  Or if you've got
a better plan in that uncommon level 'ead of yours, I'm
ready to stand by."

"You something like a man," pronounced the
commanding officer in the muslin skirt.  "You listen.
I tell him all again."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



An hour later the bo'sun, very wet and draggled,
climbed over the bulwarks of the *Sybil*, and the schooner
*Margaret Macintyre*, of Sydney, slipped behind into the
falling dusk.

"Said he was thirteen weeks out from Sydney, ma'am,"
reported the ambassador.  "Four weeks out from Apia,
gettin' copra round here and there, and there wasn't
no Wellington news anywhere, as he remembered.  Nice
new chart, with no lines of that kind ruled on it
anywhere.  As to where he got the divin' gear that
was in the cabin, or what kind of copra he reckoned
to pick up on the Delgadas, he didn't say, not bein'
asked."

Vaiti stood still to consider, a beautifully poised black
silhouette against the yellow oblong of the lamp-lit
cabin door.

"I think it all right; he not been near Wellington,"
she pronounced at last.  "Alliti!  How her head?"

"Sou'-west by south," answered the mate from the wheel.

"Keep her so."

"Ay, ay, sir!" laughed the mate.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Every one in the South Pacific knew that the *Sybil*
was a marvel of speed, and that she had not been originally
built for trading, though nobody could tell exactly how
Saxon had acquired such a clipper.  It was a popular
theory that she was a millionaire's yacht from San
Francisco, which he had stolen and subsequently
disguised.  He was known, however, to have possessed her
for more than twenty years, and was now as completely
identified with her as her own mainmast; so that any
doubts as to the honesty of the way by which he might
originally have obtained her were now of a purely
academic nature.

Famous as she was for speed, the record of her passage
from the Delgadas to Wellington fairly astonished the
Islands, when it came to be told.  They had a fair wind
almost all the way, with two or three lively nights when
the little vessel, hard driven under the utmost pressure
of the canvas, piled up the knots like a liner.  Saxon
continued delirious, but was fortunately quiet.  Harris,
and Gray the boatswain, though unenlightened as to
the cause of the *Sybil's* sudden southward flight, fully
understood that the possession of the pearl lagoon
hung in the balance, and worked like half-a-dozen
to supplement the efforts of the scanty Kanaka crew.

Vaiti interfered little with the working of the ship,
but she kept a look-out that hardly left her time for sleep
or food; although the *Sybil*, like most Pacific ships,
was allowed, under ordinary circumstances, to chance
it, day and night.  Hour after hour she sat cross-legged
on deck, watching the unbroken rim of the black horizon,
or paced up and down the poop, silent and grave, in her
lace and muslin fripperies, as a naval officer on the bridge.
What she was looking for no one knew, but during that
wild ten days of foam and smother, cracking sails and
straining sheets, her silent watchfulness infected the
men themselves, and eyes were constantly turned to
scan the empty, seething plain over which they flew.

It was drawing on towards dusk of the tenth day, and
the sky was beginning to light fires of angry copper-purple,
high in the storm-driven west, when Vaiti, of
a sudden, stopped dead in her endless walk, and looked
with lips apart and eyes narrowed deep beneath her
brows over the weather rail.  All this time they had not
sighted a single sail or a solitary funnel.  They had
been well off the track of New Zealand bound ships,
and the Pacific waters are wide.  But now they were
drawing near to Wellington, and there was nothing to
be astonished at in the sight of another sail creeping up
over the horizon, except, indeed, the fact that it was
momentarily growing larger and gaining on the *Sybil*.
There was scarce another schooner afloat from New
Guinea to the Paumotus that could have done as
much.

The mate came up behind Vaiti, and handed her a
glass.  She looked through it, lowered it, raised it, and
looked again with a steady gaze, and suddenly flung it
out of her hand across the deck.

Harris caught it deftly and asked, with the
constitutional calm that alone saved his reason when Vaiti
took over command, "What's to pay now?"

"She got auxiliary," said Vaiti, with a note of agony
in her voice.

"What if she has?  Isn't any vessel free to carry an
auxiliary that can stand the stink of the oil and the
cussedness of the injin?"

"I go see captain," said Vaiti, flashing down the
companion.

Saxon was better to-day, and almost in full possession
of his senses.  Vaiti went to the medicine chest; took
out a hypodermic syringe, filled it with careful accuracy
from a tiny dark blue bottle, and lifted her father's
arm as he lay limp and weak, but mending fast, in his bunk.

"Good girl, take care of your old father," he murmured
in island Maori as she slipped the needle-point painlessly
under the skin, and the powerful drug began to race
through every vein of the inert body.  The effect was
rapid and decisive.  Saxon sat up against his pillows
in five minutes, clear-headed though weak, and asked if
the *Sybil* had not sighted the Delgadas yet.

"Listen, father," said Vaiti, speaking fluently in the
low, soft tongue that the two had used together all
her life—the Maori language Saxon had first learned
from the pretty brown girl, dead this many years, whom
he had stolen from her South Sea island to sail the blue
Pacific at his side in the days of long ago.  "Listen.
There is little time, and we are in great need.  We came
to the reef, and the shell was there truly, but a strange
ship had been before us.  Even as we lay there she
returned from Christmas Island with diving gear.  I
sent Gray on board to look at her chart and find out if
she had been to Wellington; and it seemed that she
had not the new line of annexation marked on the chart,
where New Zealand this year added to herself all that
lay within a certain space of the sea; also she had not
been south of Auckland.  So then, knowing that we,
if we asked the Government, might have the atoll
granted us for twenty years and take possession above
the people of the other ship, I made sail for Wellington;
and we are now but one day away when this ship
appears again, chasing us.  Where the suspicion has
waked in their hearts, or when, is nothing; but that
they have thought and discovered our desire, that is
certain."

"Give the *Sybil* all sail, daughter, and she will leave
the other.  What is this talk?" asked Saxon, raising
himself on his elbow to look out of the glooming circle
of the port.

"But the ship has 'auxiliary,' my father, and she
will have passed out of sight before the morning."

"Oh, she has, has she?" grunted the captain, dropping
back into his native tongue.  "What are you going to
do about it?"

He had noted a glimmer in Vaiti's eye that told him
that she was not yet at the end of her resources.  The
Maori guile and the English daring were united to some
purpose in this strange creature that he had given to the
world.

"I will tell," she said, standing up to her full height.
"But you must give the order, my father, for Alliti
drags on the rein these days.  Let the bale of trawl-net,
and the Manila rope, be taken from the cargo, and let us
cross the bows of this ship, and drop them across her
path.  The keel will run clean, but the screw will foul,
and they will creep like a bird with a broken wing till
daylight.  Then, if the sea has grown less, they will
send down a diver and clear the screws; but we
shall be almost into Wellington, and the lagoon is ours."

"You are worthy to be the daughter of a brave man,"
answered Saxon in Maori, sinking back wearily on his
pillow.  "Go, then; and if we lose the ship, we lose
her; there is great wealth to gain, and a man must die
at one time, if not another.  I am tired.  I will sleep."

Vaiti left him, and hurried back on deck.  The purple
dusk was already beginning to gather, and the green
starboard light of the *Margaret Macintyre* gleamed like
a glow-worm a mile or so behind.  She was drawing
very near; there was no time to lose.

"Alliti!" called Vaiti.  "My father he better; he
send word to take trawl-net and Malila out of hold,
make come across that ship him path, foul him sclew.
Suppose you not afraid, you bring us close, drop net and
Malila."

Harris's hide was thick, but Vaiti knew how to pierce
it when she chose; and the man had courage enough,
in streaks.  Vaiti had hit the mark when she called
him chicken-hearted in fighting, but there was no
manoeuvre of the ship too risky for him to undertake
and carry through with perfect coolness.

"All right, my lady," he nodded.  "Don't forget me
and Gray when it comes to sharing out the swag, that's
all."

The net and the rope were brought up, and the latter
knotted here and there to make a hideous tangle of it.
Then the *Sybil's* lights were put out, even the cabin lamp
being extinguished.  The stars pricked themselves out
in sudden sharpness on the great blue chart of heaven
above, and the waste of dark rolling water all around
grew large and lonely.

You are not to suppose that Saxon's daughter did
not see and feel these things—did not hear the voiceless
talk of the great seas on starry evenings, or feel her mortal
body almost rapt away in the ecstasy of a black midnight
and a shrieking storm; just as you, perhaps, who think
that no one ever shared such experiences with yourself,
may feel.  It is not only the blameless tourist, with his
daily diary, and his books of travel teaching him how
and when to "enthuse," who enjoys the splendid
pageant of the seas.  Vaiti, as the most indulgent
chronicler must confess, had more than a spice of her
father's villainy in her composition, not to speak of
whatever devilry her Maori forebears might have bequeathed
to her.  She was unscrupulous, ruthless, and crafty
as a general rule; she was engaged in a deed of the very
shadiest description to-night—yet, as she stood with
her hands on the wheel, and her eyes on the green
starboard light of the oncoming ship, steering the *Sybil*
to something extremely like certain destruction, she
knew that the Southern Cross was rising, clear and
beautiful, above its gem-like pointers, just ahead; and
that a little sliver of young moon, crystal-silver against
the dark, was slipping up the sky to her left.  The thought
just grazed her mind that this might be the last time
the moon would ever rise over the Pacific for her.  She
smiled a little in the dusk, and steered steadily ahead.
There were no "streaks" in the composition of Vaiti's
spirit.

A short tack to the starboard became necessary.
Harris put the ship about at a lift of Vaiti's hand.  It
grew very dark; a cloud was over the moon, and the
stars were dimmed by driving vapour.  The wind was
increasing; the schooner lay over with its weight, and
the foam gurgled along her clean-ran sides.  Still the
*Margaret Macintyre* came on, stately and unsuspicious,
all sail set, and the beat of the little screw distinctly
audible through the night.

Vaiti signalled again to put the ship about, and as
soon as the great booms had creaked across the deck.
gave over the wheel to Harris.

"Run him just as he head now," she said softly, "and
bring him too much close; so (double adjective) close
to ship he scrape the (qualified) paint off him.  I go do
rest."

Harris, humming "Good-bye, Dolly Gray," took
the wheel over.  If he had any doubts as to Vaiti's
purpose, the vigour of her language would have
dispersed them.  Vaiti never swore unless she was
exceedingly in earnest.

The trawl-net and the tangle of Manila were hanging
over the stern, held up by a single rope.  Vaiti glided
to the rail, holding a sharp knife in her hand—("I
always *did* think she kept one somewhere among her
frilligigs," commented Harris silently, as he caught the
flash of the steel)—and waited, still as a statue.

Presently out of the darkness shot a hail, accompanied
by a perfect constellation of oaths.  Its apparent object
was to ascertain the *Sybil's* reason for steering such a
course.  The *Sybil* answered not a word, but steered
the course some more.

The hail, at the second time of repeating, became a
yell, with a strong note of terror in it.  On came the
*Sybil*, a dim, unlit tower of blackness, taking as much
notice of the shouts as the *Flying Dutchman*.  Those on
board the *Margaret Macintyre* gave themselves up for
lost.  There was even a rush made for one of the boats.
But the threatening shape swept past her bows, so near
that the furious captain could have tossed a biscuit
on board—so near that the *Sybil's* Kanaka crew, thinking
the "papalangi" officers meant to ram the stranger,
uttered war-cries wherein pure delight was mingled with
overjoyed surprise.

It was all over in a minute, and the *Sybil* was well
away on the *Margaret Macintyre's* port side before
the latter vessel discovered, through the medium of a
horrible jar from the engine-room and a powerful odour
of oil, that the screw was badly fouled, leaving them,
like St. Paul with nothing to do but make the best of
circumstances, and "wish that it were day."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



December weather is hot in Wellington, and it was
now close to Christmas.  Perhaps that was why the
senior member of the trading firm that had taken over
part ownership of the *Sybil* for an unpaid debt thought
his eyes were deceived by the glare of the sun when
he saw a white schooner of singularly graceful lines
lying alongside one of the wharves on a date when
her engagements plainly demanded her presence in
Tahiti.

When, however, he met Saxon and his daughter, a
few minutes afterwards, on Lambton Quay, he understood
that his eyes were in excellent order.  So, it soon
appeared, was his tongue.  He was a gentleman of
Scottish extraction, and it hurt him badly to see possible
profits thrown away.

Saxon let him have his say, and merely laughed for
answer.

"Come into the Occidental, and Vaiti and I'll tell you
something worth all the trade that you'd take out of
Papeëte in ten years," he said.  "I'm going to own the
ship again before New Year's Day, and paint this good
old town scarlet as well.  You'll see."

And the man of money-bags, anxious to see, went into
the hotel.

Vaiti, in a fit of perversity, declined to come in.  She
knew only too well that, in Saxon's impecunious
condition, there was no hope of getting their discovery
effectively worked save at a price that would leave very
little change over for the present possessors of the
lagoon—even if the captain had been quite sober, which he
was not.  They had got the grant, and had furthermore
had the satisfaction of noting that, day after day,
Wellington Harbour remained empty of the hardly-used
*Margaret Macintyre*.  It was evident that her
people, whoever they were, had tamely accepted defeat.
There was no standing against a grant from the
Government of New Zealand—no matter how acquired.
But all this did not alter the fact that there was not going
to be a great deal for the *Sybil*, and her captain, and her
captain's daughter—especially the latter.  It was there
that the sting lay.  Vaiti had had dreams—oh, but
dreams! oh, such dreams! before solid common-sense
had brought her down to earth, and made her
realise that Saxon's unlucky state, and the eminently
Scottish firm who held the destinies of the *Sybil* in their
hands, were quite certain to stand in the way of
realisation.  To make a fortune, you must first have one,
generally speaking.  And it was the canny Glasgow men
who had it.

So, because she did not want to hear with her own
ears what she knew very well must take place, she
refused to come into the hotel, and wandered off alone
down the quays, in the warm December sun, which yet
was cool compared to the burning heats of the island
world.  She was dressed in a long, waistless muslin
gown, as usual, but her shady Niué hat and white deck
shoes—not to speak of a pair of kid gloves that caused
her horrible discomfort and a parasol that embarrassed
her extremely—spoke of a respect for certain of the
conventions that might have astonished people who knew,
or thought they knew, Vaiti of the Islands.  Of course,
the loungers on the quays looked admiringly after her—she
would have liked to see them dare to omit that tribute
to her fiery charms—and some of them freely spoke to
her, calling her Mary and Polly, offering her hearts and
drinks and new bonnets, and asking her for kisses or
jobs on the schooner, just as it occurred to them, after
the simple fashion of the sea.  Some of them knew her,
and some of them did not.  It was the latter who asked
for jobs.  The men who did know the *Sybil* and her
"Kapitani" asked for kisses, which they did not expect
to get.  That was safer.

Vaiti, quite accustomed to this sort of demonstration,
and enjoying it in a languid way as she strolled along
under the annoying parasol, covered half a mile or so
of the quay at her own leisurely pace, and then sat down
on a coil of rope in a quiet place, to stare across the water
and think.

She wanted something, and she did not see her way
to get it.

To disentangle the dreams and hopes, wild fancies,
and wilder aspirations of the half-caste mind when that
mind, puzzling and elusive enough to the pure white
in any case, is further complicated with a touch of
genius, would be a task worthy of a whole academy of
science.  This much alone can the necessarily
all-knowing biographer of Vaiti say—that she wanted to
be someone, and wanted it so badly that nothing
else in life seemed worth having, or even existent,
She was a princess of Atiu on her mother's side, and
on her father's (though Saxon's past was as much a
mystery as the origin of the yacht-like *Sybil* herself)
Vaiti felt that she had every right to claim high
standing.

Doubly dowered, therefore, with the instinct of rule,
the actual command of the schooner had fallen into her
capable hands quite naturally.  Left to herself, she
would probably have made the *Sybil* pay in a way
unknown before to the easy-going island world.  But
the useless, dissipated Saxon had to be counted on.  She
liked him in her own way, such as it was, but she despised
him also.  And it was an undoubted fact that he
hampered everything.  This bargain with M'Coy and
Co., for instance—it was useless for her to attempt to
put a finger on it.  Saxon had got drunk the night
before, as soon as the matter of the grant had been
finally decided, at the end of some anxious days of
waiting; and in the morning the numerous "hairs"
that he had taken to restore him had left him in a
condition of hopeless obstinacy and self-sufficiency.  In
such a state he was as certain to be over-reached as a
stranded jelly-fish is certain to be licked up by the
sun.  And this was bitter to Vaiti.

For, sitting there motionless under the parasol (which
was serving a useful purpose at last, in shading her
handsome face from observation and comment by the
passers-by), Vaiti had arrived at something rather like
a conclusion, and a conclusion, too, that was likely to
shape most of her thoughts and acts henceforward.

Money was the thing.

She did not care for money in itself, and none of the
things it could bring really interested her, except pretty
clothes.

But money was importance, money was power; money
was the freedom to do exactly what you wanted, and
make other people do it too.  She did not think it out
in words, like a European.  Pictures passed before her
mind, more vivid by far than the glittering water and
flashing sea-gull wings in front of her bodily eyes.  She
saw captains of great ships, giving orders like kings,
and obeyed by the promptest and smartest of slaves.
She saw owners of big stores entertaining half the
island on their verandahs, paid court to by wandering
beach-combers, going out to ships in beautiful boats
manned by their own uniformed crews, who bent their
backs double at a word.  She saw "Tusitala," of Samoa,
the great English story-teller, living in his splendid
house outside Apia, surrounded by a humble clan of
native followers wearing wonderful lava-lavas of a
foreign stuff they called "tatani" (tartan)—Tusitala,
who was as great a chief as Mataafa himself, and had
spoken to her, Vaiti, as one worthy of all honour....
Her pictures were almost all of the islands, for the
islands were in her blood; but something, too, she
saw of Auckland—the merchant M'Coy, old and so
ugly, and of the commonest birth, yet reverenced like
the greatest of chiefs, because he had money....

The afternoon rays grew blinding hot on the water
as the sun sank down.  The sea-gulls dipped and
screamed.  Steamers glided away from the wharves
with long hooting cries that somehow seemed to embody
all the melancholy of the homeless sea.  Steam cranes
chattered ceaselessly above the yawning holds of
discharging ships.  Behind, the tramcars hummed in the
street, and people hurried up and down.

And at last the western sky began to burn with
sultry red, and Vaiti went home.

Something had taken root in her mind that afternoon
that struck down and shot up, in the days to come, and
led her into ways and places wilder even than the
adventure of the pearl lagoon.  As children string
berries on a straw, so upon the stem that grew from
that seed were strung the strange events that followed,
one by one.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FLOWER BEHIND THE EAR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FLOWER BEHIND THE EAR

.. vspace:: 2

As Vaiti, Cassandra-wise, had prophesied about the
pearl lagoon, so indeed it fell out.

It takes money to exploit even the smallest
discovery of this kind, and the canny M'Coy made the
most of the fact.  Delgadas Reef was too risky a
neighbourhood to be worked by any vessel unprovided with
an auxiliary engine, so a cranky little schooner of some
forty tons, owning a tiny oil engine that sometimes
worked and sometimes did not—more commonly the
latter—was chartered; also a couple of boats for
diving work, and two sets of diving dresses; and a
cheap crew was picked up somewhere, and some poor
provisions laid in.  Everything was done on the most
economical scale possible—yet the Scotchman grumbled
and lamented, and declared he would never see his
money back.  The shares had been fixed at a wickedly
low figure for Saxon and there were, furthermore,
clauses in the agreement concerning expenses which
made that unlucky derelict swear fiercely when he read
them after he was sober.  It was too late to complain
then, however, for he had signed everything he was
asked, under the influence of the good whisky to which
M'Coy—liberal for once—had freely treated him.  Nor
did he get any sympathy from Vaiti.  She merely
laughed when he complained, and told him frankly
that he would have done better to stay in his cabin
and drink there, if he liked, leaving her to finish what
she had begun.

So the pearling ship sailed off, and Saxon, who could
not afford to stay in port, went another voyage.  And
some months later, when he came back, it was to find
that Delgadas Reef was cleaned out.  It had held not
much after all, said the Glasgow man, and shell was
down, and the pearls had been few and off colour.  But
there was enough to pay Saxon's debt and leave him
owner and master of the *Sybil* once more.  And there
might be a few pounds in addition—not much; but
there, he was an honest man, and he would rather ruin
himself than let Saxon and the charming Miss Vaiti
feel they were badly treated.  And if Saxon would
kindly sign this paper releasing him from all further
claims, he would be happy to give over all claim in
the ship.  Otherwise—money was tight, and that
little matter between them had been owing so long
that——

Saxon interrupted with a statement to the effect that
he knew blank well he had been blank well had, and
for the sum of two sanguinary sixpences he would be
prepared to knock Mr. M'Coy's doubly condemned head
off his unpleasantly qualified shoulders—only, luckily
for Mr. M'Coy, he was sick of him and the like of him,
and merely wanted to get out of his way as soon as
he possibly could.  With which concise summing up of
facts he signed the paper, picked up the cheque, and
went out to spend it after his own fashion.  Vaiti
secured half of it at the bank where he cashed it, and
went off with the money done up in her hair, to keep
house by herself on the schooner until her father should
turn up again.  She knew him too well to expect that
that would come about immediately.

Meanwhile, there were banks in which she could
deposit her own share, and thus feel herself a step
nearer to her goal—that dim, undefined goal that was
to be reached somehow, some time, through the possession
of the precious bits of paper and coin without
which all pleasant things were impossible.  She did not
decide at once where the money should go, but hid it
in her cabin, and day by day walked the pavements of
Wellington, delighting her eyes with the shop-window
beauties which she had so seldom seen.  Thus came her
undoing.  Vaiti had never heard the saying, "We are
none of us infallible, even the youngest," or she might
have been less certain of herself before it came about,
and less bitter afterwards.

For was it not natural that when Saxon unexpectedly
reappeared at the Constantinople Hotel with a good
deal of his money still left, and sent for Vaiti to join
him and "live like a lady while she could," the
improvident island blood should all unbidden well up and
smother everything else?  Why go on?  There are
shops in Wellington—there are as many ways of getting
fifteen shillings' worth out of a sovereign, and repeating
the process a great deal oftener than one means, as in
any other of the world's big ports....  The end was
that, after ten delirious days of glorious spending.
Captain Saxon and his daughter set sail for Tahiti with
a general cargo, a complete set of empty pockets between
them, and, on the part of Vaiti, a glad remembrance
more than half stifled by angry regret for the cost.  Yet,
and yet, what a lovely thing money was, and what a
pity that one could not both spend and keep it!  If
you did the one, you were happy, but no one thought
anything of you.  If you did the other, everyone paid
court to you, but you didn't get the fun.  Yes, that
was true of money—and of other things.  Girls who
had been brought up at convent schools understood a
lot that the ignorant beach girls didn't....  And, *bon
Dieu!* as they used to say in Papeëte, when the Sisters
couldn't hear—what a headache it gave her to think,
and what a fool she was to do it!

"Ruru!" she called in Maori to a native sleeping
peacefully on the deck.  "Wake up, pig-face, son of a
fruit-bat, and make me kava immediately.  I am
weary."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



It was many weeks after, and the hot season had come
round once more.

The schooner was slamming helplessly about on a
huge glassy swell.  Everything on board that could
rattle, rattled; everything in the cabins that could
break loose and take charge, did so, sending up a
melancholy chorus of crashes with every wallow of the ship.
The great mizzen sail slatted about above the poop,
offering and then instantly withdrawing a promise of
cooling shade, in a manner that was little short of
maddening, seeing that the hour was three o'clock,
and the latitude not four degrees south.  Friday Island
looking like a small blue flower on the rim of a crystal
dish, hovered tantalisingly on the extreme verge of
the horizon, as unattainable as Sydney Heads or
heaven.  For the *Sybil* was becalmed, a week's
from anywhere in particular, and there seemed no
chance of a breeze.

"Lord," said the mate, dropping the marlinspike
with which he was splicing a rope, and mopping his
forehead with his rolled-up sleeve, "I wonder 'ow many
thousand miles we are from an iced beer!"

"Turtle!" said Vaiti, taking a slim brown cigar out
of her mouth, and looking down from her seat on
the top of the deck-house.  "Only nine hundred
and eighty-seven.  You not remember Charley's in Apia?"

"I'd forgotten Samoa," said Harris, in a more cheerful
tone, picking up the marlinspike, and going to work
again, as if revived by Vaiti's arithmetic.

"A miss is as good as a mile, for all me, specially when
it's nine hundred mile," remarked the gloomy boatswain.
"Couldn't you manage to talk about something
rather less 'arrowing to a man's insides?"

"I'd like to know why she's going skull-huntin' to
Friday Island, then," said the mate, casting a cautious
glance at Vaiti, who was scarcely out of ear-shot, up on
the deck-house.

"Trade I can understand," he went on, "and
shell-huntin'—we haven't done too bad all round over that
last little job, and the old man's a sight more sober
since he's owned the ship again.  But skulls—and old
skulls at that—filthy natives' bones that's been lyin'
in the caves since Heaven knows when!  Besides, they
ain't our skulls, however you may look at it——"

"Nor I hope they won't be," said the boatswain
darkly.  "In no way, I mean.  The Friday Islanders
aren't people to ask out to an afternoon tea-party
without you've got your knuckle-duster on underneath
your voylet kid gloves.  And you know what natives
are about their old bones and graves."

"I do.  What I don't know is how she thinks she's
going to make anything out of a proper nasty job like
that."

"Oh, she's on the make, is she!"

"Did you ever know her anything else, bless her?"
asked the mate.  "She wants sixty pounds, havin'
spent all the old man give her out of the shell business
in Wellington, takin' boxes at the theaytres and halls,
and buyin' women's gear, and staying at the Constantinople,
where she wore two new 'ats a day for a week;
and other games of a similar kind.  Pity you was sick,
and not there to see the fun.  I tell you, she made the
town look silly."

"What's the sixty pound for?" asked the boatswain,
chewing fondly on his quid.

Harris giggled explosively, and whispered:

"She wants a Dozey dress!"

"What in ——'s that?  It don't sound respectable,"
virtuously observed the boatswain, who had never heard
of the famous French dressmaker.

"You bet it is, then.  Dozey's a regular bang-up
swell in Paris, who makes the most expensive gownds in
the world, and every one in them parts treats him just
the same as a baronight or a duke.  You can't get so
much as a jumper from him for less than sixty pound,
and Vaiti she says every woman in Papeëte or Aucklan'
or Sydney who saw one of his dresses would spot it
right away, and go and throw herself over the Heads.
She read about his things in a piece in one of them
female papers in the hotel, and she saw an actress
wearin' of one, and she's been layin' out to get one
ever since, somethin' awful.  Seems when a woman in
London, or Paris, or Yarmouth gets a Dozey dress,
and takes to standin' off and on before the others,
who's only got new velveteens with musling frills or
such-like it just makes them other women drag their
anchors and run head-on to the shore.  So Vaiti,
she——"

"Hold on," interrupted the boatswain.  "Why, if
she 'ad one of those gownds, she couldn't bend it on to
her yards, not if it cost a million.  Man alive, she ain't
laid down on the same lines as them Frenchwomen,
anyway."

"You let her alone for that," chuckled Harris.  "But
what beats me is *who* she's going to do with them skulls,
and *how*.  We won't know in a hurry, either, because
she and Pita's fixed it up between them to do the job
alone.  Thank 'eaven for small mercies, says I.  'Er
on the war-path's rather more than I care for; and this
isn't going to be any picnic, if I know anything of
natives."

"Pita!" whistled the boatswain.  "The old man
will 'ave 'is gore before the voyage is out, if Vaiti goes
on like this.  It's Ritter, that fat German trader in
Papeëte, that he's wanting to marry her to; and as
for natives, it's 'ands off for them, if she is 'alf of one
'erself."

"Well, she and Pita was planning it all out in the
fore-top last night.  I heard them, when she thought
I was sleeping on the top of the galley.  And the old
man came out and roared at her like a Marquesas bull
to come down; so down she came, laughing at him,
like the devil she is.  There's no one else on this ship
would laugh, without it was on the wrong side of his
mouth, when the old man gets ratty.  Coming!  All
right!"

The mate jumped to his feet, and answered Vaiti's
sharp hail in person, a deprecating smile spreading like
spilt treacle all over his face as he came up to her, cap
in hand.  Vaiti took her cigar out of her mouth, and
looked at him for a minute without speaking.  The
*Sybil* rolled on the towering swell like a captured beast
trying to beat its brains out against a wall, but Saxon's
Maori daughter stood as steady as the slender main-mast
upon the reeling deck.  Harris smiled more than ever,
and turned the marlinspike about in his hands, looking
a little foolish.

"You wanting Captain Saxon come and lay you out
in the scupper pretty soon?" inquired Vaiti presently.

"Not particular," answered the mate, the smile
sliding slowly off his face.

"Then I think perhaps you keep your mouth more
better shut," said Vaiti, walking off with a contemptuous
swing in the very fall of her laced muslin skirts.  And
Pita of Atiu, as if in defiance of the captain, the mate,
and every one else but his cousin Vaiti, pulled a mouth-organ
out of his shirt and began to play it triumphantly
and frantically, making a noise exactly like the buzzing
of a mad bluebottle on a warm window-pane.  Further,
he plucked a frangipani flower out of the wreath—a good
deal the worse for wear—that hung round his neck,
and stuck the blossom behind his ear.  Now, every one
who has ever been in the Islands knows that these two
actions are significant of courtship.  Pita was courting
Vaiti, as everybody knew—Pita, a mere deck hand,
who had been taken on at wild Atiu, in the Cook Islands,
because he was a relation of Saxon's dead native wife.
Very handsome was Pita, very young and tall and
broad-shouldered, wily and fierce like all the Atiuans,
but smooth and pleasant of countenance.  Were not the
men of Atiu nicknamed "meek-faced Atiuans," even in
the days, only a generation gone, when they were the
cruellest and most warlike of cannibals and pirates?

Needless to say, Captain Saxon, who had always had
"views" for Vaiti, ever since she left the Tahitian
convent school that had given her such fragments of
civilisation as she possessed, did not favour the
compromising attentions of Pita.  As for Vaiti, her father's
prohibitions neither piqued her into noticing the
handsome Atiuan more, nor alarmed her into favouring him
less, than she found agreeable.  At present there was
rather more than less about the matter, because Saxon
was in one of his fits of gloomy depression, and Vaiti
foresaw the usual result.  It was not at all likely that
her father would be able to help her in her forthcoming
raid.  Harris she did not choose to rely on at a pinch;
Gray was old; the crew were far and away too superstitious
to aid in such a sacrilege as she proposed.  There
remained Pita, who, if he was a wild Atiuan, was at
least "misinari" after a fashion, had been educated,
more or less, in Raratonga, and was most certainly in
love with herself....  Yes, Pita would do.

That night, when the second dog-watch had commenced,
and a lew large crystal stars were just beginning
to glimmer through the pink of the ocean sunset, Vaiti
descended to the cabin, looked into Gray and Harris's
berths to make sure that they were both on deck, and
then sat down on the cushioned locker opposite her
father.

"What is it?" asked Saxon, raising his heavy blue
eyes.  He had been sitting with his head propped in
the corner of the cabin, silent as a fish, since the clearing
away of tea an hour before.  You might have thought
him asleep, or, if you knew him intimately, drunk.  He
was neither; but dead and drowned things were rising
up from the black sea caverns of his heart to-night, and
their bones showed white and ghastly upon the desert
shores of his life.  So he sat silent, with his face turned
to the darkening porthole and to the night that was
striding down upon the sea.

Through the port he saw the shining harbour of
Papeëte as it looked a week or two ago—a tall grey
British war-ship lying at anchor, the *Sybil's* dinghy,
small and crank and unclean, creeping up to the
man-of-war's accommodation-ladder, himself, a
weather-scarred, red-faced figure, in a worn duck suit and
bulging shoes, sitting in the boat, and waiting patiently
until the Governor's steam-launch should have passed
in front of him and discharged its freight of visitors.

He saw the captain of the great Queen's ship standing
at the top of the ladder, slight and trig and trim, all
white and gold from top to toe, all smiling self-possession
and cool command.

He saw ladies, immaculately coiffed and daintily shod;
tall, clean, grey-moustached men following them; a
cordial welcome on the deck; a flutter of light drapery
and a glimpse of lounging masculine figures afterwards,
framed by the great open gun-ports of the captain's
cabin in the stern.  They were laughing and talking,
and he could hear the clink of cups and glasses.  After—a
long time after—he could see his own shabby little
boat creeping up to the ladder; the captain, cold and
business-like, and more than a little brusque, speaking
to him on the deck about a certain anchorage in the
Cook Islands group, concerning which he was known to
have information; himself, burningly conscious of his
shoes and his finger-nails, answering shortly and with
some embarrassment, and feeling, of a sudden, very
shabby, very broken, very old....  Was it twenty-five
years, or two thousand, since the Admiral of the Fleet,
and the Prince of Saxe-Brandenburg, with half the
mess of his own regiment, had dined on board his biggest
yacht at Cowes a week before—it—happened? ... Now
a mere commander left him standing on the deck,
and spoke to him like a native or a dog.  Well, what
did it all matter to a dead man?  Was not his name of
those days carved on the family monument in letters
half an inch deep, and was not he, Edward Saxon,
whom nobody knew, out here in the living death of the
farthermost islands, a thousand miles from anywhere? ...

"Father," said Vaiti.

"What is it?" answered Saxon's voice dully, as
befitted a dead man.

"The wind is rising at last," said the girl in Maori,
"We shall be off the island by morning.  Will you, or
will you not, go with me into this cave of death, where
I have told you that I shall find what is worth finding?"

"I have no heart.  I will not."

"Then I and Pita will go," said Vaiti, fixing the
Englishman's blue eyes with her own black, stabbing
and savagely unfathomable, yet set in Saxon's very
own narrow high-bred face.

The captain's dark mood was on him, and he turned
his face to the wall, with a Maori oath consigning Vaiti
and Pita to a cannibal end.

"I go; stay you there," said Vaiti, using the quaintly
courteous native form of farewell, barbed with a little
sneer unknown to the original.  Then she went to her
cabin.  And Saxon turned in his seat, and reached for
the brandy bottle at last.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Handsome Pita had a great awe for Vaiti, for she
was a princess of Atiu by her mother's side.  But she
was beautiful, and he admired her—also he hoped that
her imperious soul harboured one soft spot for him.
It seemed good, on the whole, when they were pulling
the dinghy over the reef next morning, to ask Vaiti
openly where the value of the booty came in—with a
secret hope in the background of securing as much as
possible for a certain very deserving, more or less
Christian youth of Atiu.

Vaiti, her white dress girded up high over her scarlet
pareo, waded through the last yard or two of the emerald
lagoon before she answered.  The boat being safe on
shore, she stood up and looked sharply about her.  They
had chosen a quiet spot at the back of the island for
landing, all the natives being down at the harbour
loading copra.  The weird pandanus trees, standing on
their high wooden stilts at the verge of the shore, the
rustling coco-palms swinging their great fronds far over
the water, the golden and pink-flowered vines trailing
yard on yard of green garlandry over the paper-white sand,
could carry no tales, and they were the only witnesses.

Vaiti looked at Pita up and down, from head to foot,
and Pita gave the flower behind his ear a knowing cock,
and set one hand saucily on his hip.  He knew that he
was the handsomest man in the Cook archipelago, and he
felt that the way his pareo was tied that day was a pure
inspiration.  So he shut up his mouth very tight, and
made play with his burning black eyes as only a South
Sea Islander can, waiting confidently the while for the
information that the whole ship's company of the
*Sybil* could not have extracted from Vaiti in a week.

The girl stepped forward, and with a commanding
finger tapped Pita's biggest dimple, as if he had been
a baby.

"Suppose I tell you, then you know too much, you
plenty frighten, go back to ship," she laughed.

"Speak Maori, high chieftainess!" implored Pita.

"No fee-ah!" answered Saxon's daughter succinctly.
Pita understood at once that Vaiti was unwilling to use
a language that gave free rein to her tongue and his,
and the knowledge elated him.

"Perhaps I tell you," went on Vaiti, watching him
narrowly.  "I think you got heart in belly belong you,
more better than Alliti.  I tell you, you want plenty
heart by-and-by."

"High chieftainess, Vaiti, speak Maori!" was Pita's
answer, linked to an attempted embrace that only fell
short of its main object because Vaiti quite calmly
pulled a seaman's knife out of her dress and laid it edge
upwards across her lips.  Pita, who had learned the
real European kiss during his visits to civilisation, and
wanted very much to show it off, felt disappointed,
although there was a smile behind the blade that almost
out-dazzled the steel.

"Maori!" he persisted, putting his arm round her
waist, with a cool disregard of her well-known readiness
with the knife that won Vaiti's admiration a step
further than before.  She laughed, wavered, and then,
still playing with the keen, bright blade, she lowered it
a little, and spoke in the soft language of the Islands
at last.

It was a fairly long tale that she had to tell.  When
last the *Sybil* had been in the Society Islands, some
weeks before, there had been a German man of science
in the group, collecting native skulls for museums at
home.  The grizzly old gentleman and his pursuits had
not troubled Vaiti's mind particularly until her chief
admirer, Ritter, a Papeëte trader, happened to drop a
remark one day about the amount of money some of
these old skulls were worth.  Vaiti's sharp intelligence
linked on the casual saying at once to certain other
wandering rumours she remembered, and she decided
to find out something more.  She did not ask Ritter,
for he was no talker, even to a handsome girl whom he
admired; and the German was his compatriot, in
any case.  But when the schooner reached Raiatea,
where Professor Spricht was staying, Vaiti drifted off
among the native huts, and squatted for an hour or
two on the mats of the second chief's wife's mother's
cousin's house, smoking a great deal, talking very little,
and listening quietly.  By degrees the house filled up
with interested natives all eager for gossip and chatter;
and to Vaiti, pulling steadily at her cigar, and maintaining
the grave, unsmiling demeanour proper to a princess
of Atiu and a great Belitani chieftain's daughter, the
drawing out of the secret she wanted was as easy as
spinning sinnet out of cocoanut husk.

Nothing is private in the Eastern Pacific, and it was
not long before all the professor's personal affairs were
tossing about like seaweed on the flood of general
gossip—mostly unfit for publication—that surged about
the apparently uninterested ears of the silent, splendid
sea-queen throned on the pile of pandanus mats....
The Siamani (German) had got skulls in Niué, in Uea,
in Mangaia, and was now collecting them about the
Society group....  He was an ugly, grey-snouted pig
to look at, and rooted in the earth like any pig; still,
Taous and Mahina, daughters of Falani, seemed to think
that—(details lost in a heated argument about the
personal characteristics of the ladies)....  Anyhow,
Vekia from the hills said he was going to buy her two
silk dresses from San Francisco when he came back
from Falaite Island; so he was not as mean as he
looked.  Yes, he was going to Falaite Island in a great
hurry; he would not even take time to finish his
pig-rooting in Raiatea, on account of something he had heard
from an old man who had once lived up in Falaite....
What fools the papalangi (whites) were.  Did not every
one in the Islands know about the old, old people that
used to live on Falaite, hundreds of moons before the
days of Tuti (Cook), and how they all died, and nobody
lived there for very, very long, until some people
wandered up from Niué in Tuti's time; and how the skulls
of the old, old people were still there, buried in a cave
that was a hundred miles long, and guarded by as many
devils as would fill twenty war canoes?  Of course,
these things were known, and always had been—but
when would any man of Tahiti or Raiatea have thought
of such folly as travelling more than a thousand miles
to fight the devils and take away the skulls?  What
if they were worth money enough to buy a big schooner,
as the old grey pig had told Vekia when he promised
her those dresses?  Would a whole schooner, loaded
down with dollars, be any good to a man after the devils
had killed him?  Vekia would never get her trade
finery, for all her airs; and Jacky Te Vaka, whose
schooner was to be hired to take the Siamani up to
Falaite, would never come back from such a sacrilegious
journey....  Why could he not wait, and go by
Kapitani Satoni's schooner when she made her yearly
trip by and by?  Every one knew that the *Sipila* was
under a charm, and no harm could come to any one on
board her.  But he would not wait, and just as soon as
Jacky's boat came back from Bora-Bora, next week,
they were to go....  Ahi! and Jacky was such a
handsome man—it was a great pity!

Such was the substance of the information gathered
by Vaiti.  It resulted in her ordering the course of the
ship to be changed, and heading direct for Friday
Island, instead of going down to Auckland.  Friday
Island—out of the way, infertile, uninteresting, and
little known—had been one of Saxon's private preserves
for some years.  He touched there once a year,
purchased all the copra that the little place produced at
his own price, and paid for it in cheap tinned meat,
boxes of damaged biscuit, and tins of imitation salmon
instead of cash.  He seldom went ashore, and certainly
did not waste his time cave-hunting, if he did chance
to set foot on the beach.  Vaiti, with her odd faculty
for acquiring miscellaneous information, had known
since the first time the *Sybil* called that there were great
caves on the island, and that a devil of unusual quality
and size guarded them.  So much might have been
said of a hundred similar islands, however, and she had
not troubled herself about either caves or devils until
the German professor's secret set her on the alert for
something that looked like a dangerous, exciting, and
profitable adventure.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BLACK VIRI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BLACK VIRI

.. vspace:: 2

Moreover, as Harris had said, she had been devoured
with desire of a real Paris dress ever since her stay in
the Wellington hotel.  There had been a famous actress
there at the same time, and all her garments had been
freely paragraphed in the ladies' column of the local
press.  When she swam languidly through the hall of
the Constantinople, shining mystic and wonderful out
of a cloud of rainbow silks and chiffons that had cost
a formidable row of figures in the Rue de la Paix, all
the women caught their breath, looked once, and then
gazed determinedly out of the windows, pretending that
they had noticed nothing.  When she came in to a late
supper, floating in spangled mists and sparkling with
constellations of diamonds, every head was turned her
way, and half the heads—the short-cropped ones—stayed
turned, in more senses than one.  It was a
revelation and a martyrdom to Vaiti.  What were her muslin
frocks and her ten new hats at a whole pound apiece
compared to this?  And the vision of money saved up
faded away for the time being before the vision of one
such frock—only one—belonging to her.  Life could
surely offer nothing more.

Of this, naturally, she said nothing to Pita, merely
relating the matter of the skulls in as few words as
possible.  Pita, for his part, made no comment, but
took a couple of revolvers out of the boat and thrust
one into his belt, handing the other to the girl.  Then
he girded up his pareo—a significant action among
islanders—and felt the handle of his knife to see that it
was loose in the sheath.  There was a large sack in the
boat containing candles and food, and leaving ample
space for other filling later on.  Vaiti tossed it to Pita,
and the two began their walk, barefoot, swift and silent,
casting a quick glance every now and then among the
weirdly stilted stems of the lonely pandanus groves as
they went.

"They are all down with the *Sybil*—it is safer now
than it would be at night," said Pita.  "Vaiti, if we
get these things, and sell them for much money in
Sitani, you and I will leave the *Sybil* when she next
goes to Atiu; and you shall be queen of Atiu and I
shall be king, and we shall eat roast pork and 'uakari'
every day."

"My father would burn the villages and kill the
chiefs, and hang your head on the bowsprit of the ship,"
replied Vaiti conversationally.  "Besides, I like Sitani,
and I will buy myself a wonder dress from Palisi town
there."

"Then we will leave at Sitani, and be great chiefs
there, if these old bones indeed sell for so much money.
And we will buy a little schooner for ourselves, and
you shall be the real captain, and there will be four gold
bands on your sleeve and one on the peak of your cap;
and you shall get a *sitificati* from the chiefs of the great
harbour, and take the schooner out of Sitani Heads
yourself.  And every one shall be afraid of me and you,
and they will say——"

Vaiti had been listening as she swung along, now casting
a glance of approval at the handsome lad while he spoke
cunningly of the schooner she should command, now
shooting out her lip a little, and slashing impatiently
with her knife at the young cocoanut fronds.  Suddenly,
looking very straight ahead, she interrupted.

"Pita, you talk too fast.  There are things you do
not know.  Tell me, is your heart strong within you?"

"It is strong," answered the island Maori.

"Then listen.  There is a devil in the cave."

"I do not believe in devils.  I am misinari, and go
to church five times on Sundays; also I have a black
coat and two boots very nearly the same as each other
to wear on collection days."

"There is a devil all the same; you do not know
everything that is in the world, little Pita," replied
Vaiti.  "There is something bad there.  I do not
believe in native devils, for I am 'papa-langi'; but I
know there is—a thing of some kind—there.  A bad
thing.  A black viri, they say, but I do not understand
that."

"A black viri is nothing.  You and I do not mind
such things.  See—there will perhaps be one in this
rotten wood."  Pita struck and kicked at a mass of
decaying cocoanut wood, and hunted out one of the
great black centipedes that are common in the equatorial
islands.

There is nothing on the bosom of Mother Earth more
loathly than the centipede, and Pita's quarry—nearly
a foot long, as thick as a sausage, scarlet feelers on its
hideous head, and scarlet legs fringing its long lithe
body—was as hideous a specimen as ever jerked itself
lightning-wise across a forest path.  Pita, however,
with swift dexterity, seized the horrible beast by the
neck and tail, holding it so that it could neither bite
nor sting, and lifted it up to his companion.  Vaiti's
eyes dilated ever so little.  She drew her knife and
slashed the creature in two; then, stooping down, she
struck at the flying halves as they ran away in opposite
directions, and cut them up into mincemeat.  Leaving
the red fragments still wriggling in the track amidst an
unsavoury, snaky smell, she stepped swiftly on.

"It is no matter," she said.  "We two shall see what
we shall see.  Keep your heart warm within you."

"And if we come back safe?" cried the impetuous
Pita, catching the girl's warm round arms in his two
sinewy hands, and letting his black eyes gaze into hers.

Vaiti stood very still for a moment, looking out to sea.
The spell of her stillness fell on Pita, and he remained
as if frozen.  Far away the surf hummed on the reef,
and a sea-bird cried.  Above the two beautiful,
motionless young figures the palms rustled endlessly in the
long trade wind.

"... If we come back" ... said Vaiti at last, her
eyes still fixed on the far-off line of the outer sea—"if
we come back—we will go away together, you and I."

She looked so like a witch in a trance (such things are
not unknown even now, in strange Atiu) that Pita's hands
dropped from her arms, and he felt half frightened in
the moment of his triumph.  But Vaiti recalled him to
himself by starting her steady swing again, and saying
with a laugh, as they footed it through the dry,
sun-struck woods side by side:

"I think some day my father will make a parrot cage
to hang a green Atiu parrot in, and it will be made of
your ribs and breast-bone, little Pita—all the same as
my grandfather did in the islands to the man who stole
his wife."

At that moment the woods opened out and the cave
came into view—a velvet-dark blot in the dazzling
glare of greenery that tangled itself about the shoreward
cliffs.

Pita's hand sprang to his revolver, and he uttered an
exclamation of angry surprise.  Beside the cave stood
a tall, brown, naked figure painted like a witch-doctor
and armed with a spear.

"Do not shoot," said Vaiti quickly.  "It will do no
good.  Let me look to him myself."

She walked right up to the native, stood within a
yard of him, and stared at him, in a silence that somehow
managed to express unflattering things.  The man,
stamping the butt of his spear on the ground, turned
away from her and addressed Pita.

"I have nothing to do with this woman of yours,"
he said.  "It is with men I would speak."

"Speak, then, pig-face," said Pita insolently, hoping
to provoke a fight, since the man seemed to be alone.

"Enter if you wish," replied the other.  "We have
sent no fighting-men to hinder you; the way is clear.
Yet if you think the hot sun on the pleasant land is good
to see, and the beating of the warm heart in the living
breast is sweet to feel, go not into our sacred caves, to
lay evil hands upon the holy bones of Falaiti.  Enough."

The man's words were strangely void of heat or anger,
and he held his spear loosely, Vaiti did not suspect an
ambush, for she knew that no native would enter the
cave.  Yet in that moment her quick mind leaped to
the knowledge of some unknown danger threatening
herself and Pita from out the cold-breathing world of
darkness that lay within that rugged arch, and for one
prophetic instant she could smell the very smell of
death.

But Vaiti's courage was of the kind that rises, wave
by wave, the higher for all obstacle, and her spirit swelled
within her to flood-tide in that moment.  She turned
upon the witch-doctor and laughed in his face.  Then
she stretched out her hand, and Pita's leaped into it,
warm and strong, and together they stepped over the
threshold of the cave.

The man outside cursed them, slowly and with relish.

"Shall we not kill him?" asked Pita.

"There is no use," said Vaiti.  "It is plain to me
that all the tribe know, and they trust to the dangers of
the place, whatever these may be.  This island is at
the very end of the world, it is true, and strange things
may happen here."

"Yes, there is nothing that one might not believe
in this place," said Pita, looking back.  Already the
gloom of Hades itself was winding about them, and the
air struck gravelike and cold.  In the distance the mouth
of the cave cast a brief glow of emerald light upon the
dewy ferns and mosses close to the threshold, so that
they shone like the jewelled foliage of some magic forest
in a fairy play.  Then came the dripping roof, the
enormous stalactite buttresses of the cave, dimly edged
with light; the oozing floor, and the lifeless dark.

Vaiti spoke not at all, as they walked side by side
down dark tunnel after dark tunnel, across empty,
thunderous-echoing black halls and archways—their
little candles flitting like fireflies through a dim world
of unconquerable gloom.  Pita, however, was strangely
gay.  He yelled aloud to set the echoes booming in the
black domes above, when they crossed some invisible
great goblin market-place, full of hollow sounds and
half-glimpsed monstrosities.  He sang when the way
along the endless corridors grew tedious, and the glistening
stalactite candelabra succeeded one another, thick
as forest branches, for mile after mile unchanged.  When
the path was barred by inky lakes of unknown depth
and ghastly chill, and the two explorers had to tie their
lights on their heads and swim for it, he pretended to
cry at the cold, and played tricks on Vaiti by slipping
behind her and catching her feet in his teeth.  So they
went on, one in wild spirits, the other silent and grave.
And the hours of the sunny day slipped by dark and
changeless, as they passed farther and farther away
life and light into the cold black depths of the cave.

When it was about noon, as near as they could guess,
Vaiti took the biscuits and tinned meat out of the sack,
and they ate, squatting on the wet floor of the tunnel.
They knew that the journey was a long one, and that
the way could not well be missed, yet they were
beginning to feel a little uneasy now.  Did this cave
go on for ever?

Somehow, the food did not cheer them and when
they rose and went on again they did not talk.  And
now a worse difficulty than any they had yet encountered
suddenly barred the way.  The winding tunnel along
which they were walking turned sharp round a corner,
and then ended to all appearance in nothing.  They
stood at the edge of an empty gulf, black as a starless
sky and of depth unknowable.  Thin trickles of light.
from the candles wavered faintly about its edges, and
showed that the colossal crack had a farther side, but
it was impossible to see what lay beyond, and the depth
below cast back the candle rays as an armoured hull
throws off a rifle bullet.

Pita detached a lump of rock and threw it over the
edge.  Vaiti watched him with sombre eyes.  "There
is no bottom there," she said.  "It goes through the
earth, and out on the other side; that is what I think."

"Children's talk," said Pita, listening intently.
There was an echoing rattle as the stone bounded from
side to side on its way down.  The rattle grew fainter
and fainter, diminished to a sound like the ticking of a
watch, faded to an almost imperceptible vibration, and
then seemed to die out.  Seemed—for although there
was nothing left for the ear to catch, the sharpened
sensory nerves of the body still responded to a faint
tingle, somewhere, somehow, long after the actual sound
had faded away.

"I told you," said Vaiti.  "There is no bottom."  Pita
did not answer; he was measuring the narrowest
part of the gulf with his eye, and estimating the value
of the three short steps of a run that were possible before
taking off.

"It is not two fathoms wide here," he said, throwing
the provision sack across to judge his distance better in
the uncertain light.  Yet, despite the three steps of a
run, there was not an inch to spare when he landed on
the other side, with an effort that strained every muscle
of his powerful young body.

"Can you jump it?" he called to Vaiti—without
any particular anxiety, for the Maori has no nerves,
and he knew what the girl could do aloft on the schooner.

To his astonishment, Vaiti made no answer, but
stood leaning up against the wall of the tunnel, both
hands pressed against her chest.  In a moment more
she was violently sick.

"The smell!" she said presently, turning a ghastly
face towards the light of Pita's candle.

"I smell nothing," said Pita, puzzled.  "The wind
blows your way.  There is perhaps some dead thing
down there."

Vaiti shook her head, and Pita saw that her eyes
seemed to fill half her face as she looked down into
the gulf.  Suddenly she sprang, her white drapery
flying behind her, and landed half a yard behind Pita,
with a leap that drew a cry of wonder from the Atiuan.
"Come, come," she said, taking his hand and fairly
dragging him on.

They had little farther to go.  The tunnel wound
on for perhaps another hundred yards, and then stopped.
They found themselves in a low-roofed circular chamber,
such as is often met with at the end of long underground
passages—a small, insignificant place, roofed with
drooping green stalactites and floored with shapeless,
slimy hummocks of stalagmite.  Numbers of deep
shelves were quarried out in the rocky sides, and in
these lay, row on row, the bare, mouldering skulls
of Falaite's long-ago chiefs—many of them cracked
and split, and not a few fallen into shapeless fragments,
though there were a score or two in excellent condition.
They were curious skulls indeed, had their discoverers
been able to understand them.  In the projecting jaws,
huge canines, strangely high cranium, and oddly
developed ridges near the opening of the ear were the
materials of a problem contradictory and complicated
enough to occupy the wits of a whole college of science.
But Vaiti and Pita saw none of these things.  They
only noted with disappointment, that most of the skulls
had gone to decay—picked out the best of the unbroken
specimens, packed the great sack full of them,
and turned homewards.

"Vaiti," said Pita, as they walked down the rocky
tunnel, and felt the slope of the gulf beginning under
their feet.  "Vaiti, what did you——"

Her face, turned back upon him, slew the still-born
question on his lips.

It was scarce a minute before the chasm gaped in
their path yet again.  The leap was worse on this side,
for the clustered cones of stalagmite did not allow a
fair take-off.  Pita looked calculatingly at the farther
side, very dimly visible in the faint candle-light, and
picked up a fallen stalactite to throw across.

"Do not throw!" said Vaiti, in a breathless whisper.

"Why not?  I can jump better if I hear where it
hits," replied Pita, casting the stone before Vaiti had
time to snatch at his hand.  It fell short, and rolled
down into the chasm with a loud, crashing noise.

"Fool! fool!  Jump quickly!" exclaimed Vaiti,
in the same strained, horrible whisper....  Just for
a second before he sprang, Pita looked down into the
black pit beneath, and it seemed to him that the
darkness shirred and shivered below the farther edge of the
crevasse—that for the fragment of a second something
long, red, whiplike, vibrated high up in the light of the
candles, and then was gone....  There was a sickening
odour in the air—a living smell, not a dead one;
there was a sliding, rustling sound....

"Jump!" shrieked Vaiti.

They leaped through the air as one, but it was only
Vaiti who landed on the farther side.  Behind her, as
she touched the rock, rose a shriek that blasted the
leaden air into red-hot drops of horror—that went on
and on and on, tearing upwards to the vaulted roof
like a rocket fired from the mouth of hell; breaking
at last into a gasping bellow, and snapping off into
grisly silence on the very crest of a long, choking roar,
in which there was nothing left of human.

... Pita had jumped short.  Falling on the far side,
with his legs half over the abyss, he had grasped for an
instant at Vaiti's outstretched hands, and in the very
act had been snatched away—snatched by a long,
ghastly head, armed with poisoned jaws and quivering
red antennas, that shot with the speed of a bullet out
from the depths of the chasm, and back again with its
prey....  The head was a foot long at least, the
horrible winnowing feelers more than a yard, the black
and red body, that just flashed into view for a second,
was as thick as a man's thigh.  It was a nightmare, an
impossibility, and yet ... it was, beyond doubt, the
Black Viri.

For a little while it seemed to Vaiti that she went
mad, and then that the world went out and she died.
A long time after, she found  herself sitting on  the
floor of the tunnel, her head badly bruised and cut
where she had dashed it against the rock, her candle
guttering down towards extinction, her revolver empty
and smelling of powder—she did not remember in the
least how it had become so—and the whole black,
horrible place still and silent as the bottom of the sea.
Pita was gone.  The bag of skulls had disappeared—fallen,
no doubt, into the abyss.  There was not a movement
or a sound, save the whisper of the water—drops
trickling ceaselessly from the roof into the dark pools
upon the ground.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



That evening, when the early starlight was beginning
to shine down upon the creepers veiling the mouth
of the tunnel, Saxon, sober at last, and rushing like a
madman to the cave to find his daughter, met Vaiti
herself coming down the rocks at the entrance, haggard,
trembling, and almost old.  He asked for Pita, and was
answered only by a shuddering gesture of the hands.
Questioning no more, he carried the girl down to the
beach and brought her on board the schooner.  There,
when they had sailed, he left her undisturbed in her
cabin for many days, while they ran steadily southward
to pleasant Auckland and the temperate latitudes,
farther and farther away from lonely, sun-smitten
Falaite.  The story of the day in the cave was known
to him, as to every one on the island, for the
witch-doctor of Falaite had told it far and wide, reserving
only the one interesting fact—how he became possessed
of the information.  And as no one else alive on Falaite
knew that there were two ways of reaching the
skull-chamber, and more than one place where a man could
hide unseen, the witch-doctor's reputation as a prophet
and a clairvoyant was greatly increased; so that he
suffered continually from a happily-acquired indigestion,
and his dogs grew fat on bones of pig and fowl.  And
no one came ever any more into the sacred caves of
Falaite Island.

Saxon declared plumply that he did not believe the
tale, opining rather that the "blanked old wizard
Johnnie had shoved Pita into the hole himself, and
good riddance of bad rubbish, too."

None the less, he was uneasy at Vaiti's rather prolonged
depression, and though he dared not break in upon
her solitude further than to hand her in her meals
and ask her how she felt, now and then, he listened
almost constantly at her state-room door, and gave up
whisky for at least ten days.

About the eleventh day, Te Ai, a young Samoan
A.B., sat upon the main hatch in the pleasant coolness
of the second dog-watch, and sang the farewell song of
sweet Samoa, "Good-bye, my F'lennie"—the song
that plucks so surely at the heartstrings of all who
have ever loved and sailed away among the far-off fairy
islands of the wide South Seas.

   |  "Good-bye, my F'lennie (friend)—o le a o tea,
   |  Efau lau le va'a, o le alii pule i ..."

he sang, beating time with his knees on the hatch....
Then suddenly he stopped, and the little group
of mates and captain on the poop did not see why.

Later on, Harris, his face stiff with suppressed
laughter, knocked at the captain's door.

"Can you oblige me with a piece of sticking-plaster,
sir?" he said.

"Who for?" asked Saxon, reaching for the yellow
roll that lies handy in every shipmaster's cabin about
the peaceful Pacific.

"Te Ai, sir.  He's been knocked down, and his head
got cut against the pump."

"Who did it?" bristled Saxon, ready to uphold his
own peculiar privileges, at once.

"She did, sir," said Harris, nearly choking.  "Te
Ai, he was singin' 'Good-bye, my F'lennie,' on the main
'atch and out she come from the deck cabin like a—like
a nurricane, begging your pardon, sir—and she ups
with a belayin' pin from the rail, an——"

"All right, all right; there's your plaster,"
interrupted Saxon.  "Harris!  Here."

"Yes, sir!"

"Give this to Te Ai."

"Lor' bless you, sir, 'e don't mind; 'e's a——"

"You do what you're told.  Stop.  Where's my
daughter?"

"Walkin' on the poop, sir, uncommon lively, and
looking like dirty weather ahead."

"That's all right," sighed the captain, with an air
of infinite relief.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A DIAMOND WEB`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   A DIAMOND WEB

.. vspace:: 2

It was six o'clock in Apia, and the round sun was
hanging low above the rim of the level sea, like a burning
coal ready to drop down upon a breadth of hyacinth
silk.  The stores were closed along the straggling
beach street, where the sand was white under foot,
and parrakeets tweedled cheerily in the scarlet-flowered
flamboyant trees.  Native dandies, greatly oiled and
dyed, and wearing a bright hibiscus blossom over each
ear, swung past with the inimitable Samoan roll, their
golden brown limbs gay with the red-and-white English
bath-towel that is popular as full dress for steamer
days in the little island capital.  Girls with
high-coiffed yellow heads and pink or green tunics wandered
lazily home to the cool, dark-domed native houses
open all round to the sunset sky.  They went in groups,
and sang as they walked—windy, fitful gusts of strange
island melody, breaking out and dying away like the
evening breeze among the heavy-headed palms.  Smells
of yam and breadfruit, brown from the baking pits, of
fish cooked in green, savoury leaves, and taro spinach
stewed with cocoanut cream, crept out upon the cooling
air.  The long, hot day was done, and Apia rested and ate.

In "Charley's"—the least reputable of Apia's
tavern-hotels—the egregious *table d'hôte* was in full
progress out in the green-shuttered verandah.  Charley
himself, an oily, flashy New Caledonian half-caste,
dressed in striped pyjamas, was eating curried
tin—nature unknown—with a knife and two fingers, at the
head of the table.  A corpse-faced Chinese was shuffling
round with the inevitable Pacific fowl, cut up in a watery
soup.  The table-cloth was of linoleum, the swinging
lamp guttered and smoked, the cutlery was dislocated
and black.  But there was English beer on the bar
counter, and plenty of broken ice; and the whisky
that mounted high in each man's smeary tumbler was
good of its kind.  Charley knew his customers, and
sought first the essential.

Captain Saxon, his schooner safe at anchor outside,
and his copra advantageously sold to an Auckland
agent, sat eating at the table, heavy-faced, a little
intoxicated, and almost absolutely blank in mind.  This
was his nearest approach to happiness, and one that
he enjoyed often enough, for, since thought meant
pain to him, he had managed to acquire a wonderful
agility in avoiding it, and to live for the most
part almost as purely by instinct and impulse as a dog.

It was perhaps for this reason that he did not notice
anything unusual in the demeanour of that singularly
unknown quantity, Vaiti, his daughter.  And yet
Vaiti—sombre and sparkling in a dress of vaporous
red, with a handful of star stephanotis from the verandah
thrust into the marvellous waves of her hair—was
evidently not quite herself.  She sat a little apart from
the noisy company that sprawled about the table,
looked at no one, ate her food absent-mindedly and
pulled little strips off the decaying oilcloth of the
table-cover with a steady industry that made Charley
wriggle in his seat, although he did not dare to
remonstrate.

Some one else was watching her, if Saxon was not.
A short, stocky man, with burning grey eyes, a fiery
red beard, and a sharp furrow between the eyebrows,
that somehow suggested belaying-pins and rope's ends,
was looking at her every now and then as he noisily
sucked in his soup.  The inspection did not appear to
please him altogether.  He finished his dinner quickly,
took the current glass of whisky in his hand, and
rolled off to the dark end of the verandah, followed by
a grey-haired, greasy-faced mate who had been sitting
beside him.

"Still on for it, cap?" asked the latter, leaning over
the railing with an air of careless ease that contrasted
oddly with his watchful eye.

"Yes, blank asterisk your condemned foolishness,
sure I am on for it!" replied the captain, betraying
his nationality by a slight touch of brogue.

There is no nation that swings so high and so low
between opposite extremes of character as the impetuous
race that is handcuffed, by an odd freak of geography,
to steady, serious England.  Great saints and great
rogues are commoner in Ireland than ordinary people,
and each displays the fullest flavour of his kind.
Donahue, master of the island schooner *Ikurangi*, was, or
had been, Irish; and it was assuredly not the company
of the saints that claimed his membership.

The two spoke together for a little while in level
tones that sounded loud and careless enough, yet
somehow did not carry.  One learns these things by
practice.

"She smells a rat, I'm thinking," said the old mate,
looking critically the while at Charley, as if he were
valuing the half-caste's clothes for pawn.

"Let her.  You and I are apt to be a match for her,
for all that," answered the captain.  He looked at
Charley also.  You would have sworn the two were
discussing him, and rather unfavourably.  Charley
himself shifted in his seat, and showed his magnificent
teeth uncomfortably.

"Think she'll come on board?"

Vaiti was watching them, her chin on her hand.
Her expression was not to be read.

"I'll get her on board all right," answered the
captain, keeping his eyes away from the girl with an
effort.  "You play up, that's all."

"'Jer think you're a match for that weasel in a
woman's skin—you or any of us?"

"I do, then.  Forty's a match for twenty any day
in the year, if the heads of them comes anything near
equal.  Cunnin' as Old Nick she is, but I've been cunnin'
twenty years longer than her."

"You pitched her a good yarn, I'll lay."

"I did that—about the derelick we boarded nor'-east
of the Paumotus, and the Spanish ladies' clothes and
cases of goods that was lying about, and how we took
what there was, includin' of a di'mond necklashe that
was sittin' all its lone on the table in the old man's
cabin (Be minding me, now, or you'll be making mistakes),
and the way a gale riz on us before we was through,
and hurried us back to the *Ikurangi*, so that we lost the
derelick, and didn't see no more of her; and how we
heard in Noumea afterwards that there was like to be
joolery on boord her, so that we're all on to go and find
her again."

"Straight fact up to finding the di'monds, and gory
lyin' after that, I see.  But how d'ye make out the
people that deserted the ship was such fat-headed idiots
as to leave the joolery?"

"Why, they was fat-headed idiots right enough;
they did leave a good lot of saleable stuff, as you and
I knows; and it's only addin' on a bit to say that the
ship had been on fire and made them clear for their
lives, so that they didn't think of the valuables.  There's
the necklashe I have for proof.  And, mind me now,
what we heard was that the people of the ship knows
now that she didn't go down, and will be out after her
themselves when they can raise the cash, so that hurry's
the word."

"How much of that's true?"

"Not a —— bit.  The people was drowned, I allow.
But it hangs well, and don't you go and forget none of
it.  I pitched the yarn that way because of that bit of
pashtry joolery I got hould of in mistake for goods
down Melbourne way....  I misremember if I tould you."

"You did, more nor once, and you was jolly well
served right by her," candidly replied the mate.
"The yarn's all right, I suppose, and the paste
necklace is good business; but where does this Vaiti
come in?"

"Quit lookin' at her, ye —— fool, and give me a
light for me poipe.  Talk easy, can't you....  Why,
she knows more navigation than most men that's got
a master's ticket, and she's as vain of it as a paycock.
And that's how I'll have her.  Always get a woman
t'rough her consate, me boy, especially if her eyes are
too sharp in common.  That'll pull the wool over them
when nothing else will."

"When I was in Callao——" began the mate, with
an evil chuckle.

"Leave Callao be now; you can tell me about her
another time.  Well, you understand about Saxon's
girl, I hope?  She's to navigate us on the trip, because
nayther you nor I knows enough for a cruisin' job like
this, and the old chap himself is pretty general
drunk—that's the way I put it—and shares with what we find,
and the ould divil himself to come along, just for
propriety, and in case of a fight with the owners.  Oh,
a nate yarn, and she shwallowed it down like a cat
atin' butter.  She's comin' on boord to-night, to see
the necklashe and look over the chart I've marked.
She'll not bring ould Saxon, for she's feared of nayther
man nor divil, and I'll bet she thinks to get the bearin's
of the place off of me and chate me out of it after all."

"And how the h—— do you think she's going to
believe that you give the show away before the ship
sails?  Her teeth wasn't cut yesterday, by all we know."

"Faith, and we do know!" muttered the captain,
with a horrible undercurrent of oaths.  "And she'll
know, by —— she will!  I'd slit the throat of her,
if it wasn't for the other bit of divarsion we've
planned."

"Say you've planned," interrupted the mate darkly.
"I call it bad work, whether she was man, woman, or
child; but you're my master."

"And you're a plashter saint, ain't you?" sneered
the captain.  "Let's have no more of your chat; we
know each other a —— sight too well.  As for the
chart, she'll think we don't mean to give it away till
she and her father is under sail with us, but she'll come
on the chance of sneaking it out somehow.  And when
we've got her aboard, why—lave it to me!  Ould
Saxon's hell-cat daughter won't take no more
pearl-shell beds from us or any one else."

"You ain't afraid of her knowing who we are?"

"How would she, then?  The *Ikurangi* isn't the
*Margaret Macintyre*—bad luck to her who brought me
down to such a tub, after ownin' the finest auxiliary
in Auckland!—and she never seen you or me till to-day.
No, it's all right.  That's enough jaw; you go aboard,
and attend to you know what, and then send off the boat
for her and me."

Vaiti, curly classic head on slender hand, still watched
from her corner.

Did she suspect?  There was nothing for suspicion
to lay hold of.  Donahue was one of the acutest villains
under the Southern Cross, and he did not make clumsy
mistakes.  The story of the derelict, of the valuables
abandoned on board, of the necessity for finding the
ship soon and secretly, might have sounded far-fetched
to city-dwelling folk, but out in the wild South Seas
stranger things may happen any day.  The plan was
neat and plausible from every point of view, and Vaiti
had taken the bait readily enough that afternoon.
Yet Donahue felt—as the two walked silently down the
dim, perfumed beach street, all ablow with vagrant
sea winds and wandering wafts of song—that he would
have given a good deal for just one peep into his
handsome companion's mind.

Vaiti walked beside him, looking straight ahead.
Had Donahue's wish been granted, he would have
thought somewhat less of his own acuteness.  She did
suspect.  A man, in her case, would have been
convinced by the reasonable aspect of the whole affair.
Vaiti, being a woman, with sea-anemone tentacles of
instinct floating and tingling all about the steady
centres of reason in her mind, was convinced, and vet
not convinced.  She thought it was all right, yet she
knew it was not—after a woman's way.

In any case, however, it was an adventure, and there
was a mystery to fathom.  So she put on a more
substantial dress than the gauzy draperies she had been
wearing, hung the neatest possible little pearl-handled
Smith and Wesson round her neck, under the swelling
folds of her frock, by means of an innocent-looking thin
gold neck-chain that would snap with a tug; put her
long-bladed knife in her pocket, with the sheath sewn
to the dress, so that a pull would bring out the blade,
and joined Donahue an hour after dinner, on the verandah
steps, confident of her ability to see the thing through,
whatever it might be.

She looked sharply about her, as she stepped over
the low bulwarks of the *Ikurangi* and dropped down
on to the encumbered, untidy deck.  No one about.
Nothing to be seen but a dirty little main deck, with
rusty pumps and a yawning hatch, and a poop that
even in the pallid light just beginning to tremble up
from the rising moon showed neglect of the sacred
ceremony of daily deck-washing.

Now, any decent ship's captain will attend to his
deck-washing, even if he doesn't shave or wash himself
from port to port.  Vaiti did not like that unscrupulous,
dirty poop.  But she was already up on it, and Donahue
was bowing her down the cabin companion, with a jarring
smile and a good deal of over-fluent blarney.  The
cabin was small and smelly; it had an oblong table
in the middle, surrounded by cushioned lockers, and an
open door at the end facing the companion.  This door
evidently opened into Donahue's own cabin, for a rough
wash-stand and a looking-glass, the latter hung high
on the bulkhead, were plainly visible.  There was a
lamp nailed above the glass, and the two together shone
brightly out into the rather ill-lit main cabin.

"What'll you take?" asked Donahue, with his
unpleasant smile.  "I've got some sweet sherry wine,
just the thing for ladies—or wouldn't ye put your lips
to a taste of peach brandy?"

Vaiti shook her head.

"No good drink, suppose talk business," she said.
She would not have swallowed a glass of water on the
*Ikurangi* for a dozen Virot hats.

Donahue had not expected to catch her so easily;
still, he cast a thought of regret to his nicely-doctored
liquors.  She evidently meant what she said—and the
other way Was harder.

"Well, thin, darlin', we'll have a look at the cha-art,"
he observed, producing a roll of paper.  "It's yourself
that can help us t'rough this business—you and the
ould man—better than any one from Calloa to Sydney
if only yez are raisonable about terms."

He spread the chart out on the table, and weighted
it down with a couple of tumblers.

Vaiti, her mind charged full with watchful suspicion,
felt that sudden small, sick thrill that is the forerunner
of the thought—"I wish I hadn't!"  Afterwards,
when she came to think matters over, she knew that it
was because Donahue had made the mistake of bringing
out the chart before the terms had been discussed,
which was an improbable sort of thing to do.  In
such moments, however, one does not think, one only
feels.  Still, the warning was unmistakable, and Vaiti
made as if to rise, intending to plead sudden illness and
get out on deck.  But Donahue, sharp as a snake, saw
the movement, and brought out his trump card at once.

"Sure, I'm a —— fool, I am, to forget the necklashe!
You haven't seen that yet," he said, whipping a stream
of white fire out of his pocket and letting it fall across
the dark wood of the table.  It was a magnificent piece
of paste-work, and had taken in Donahue himself,
some few weeks ago, after a fashion that made him sore
enough to remember.  Vaiti gasped when she saw it,
and laid both her pretty olive hands upon it at once.
Her suspicions were not exactly killed, but they had
for the moment no room to live with the passionate
feeling aroused by the gems.  Donahue, with his
unspeakable experience of the sex, had calculated rightly
when he classified her among the women who would
almost do murder for a diamond....  Such jewels! and
she had never had one in her hand before,
though her eyes had often filled and her heart
ached with hopeless desire before the maddening
glories of the jewellers' windows in Auckland and
Sydney.

She hugged the necklace to her breast like a baby,
she shook it, she danced it in the light....  And
then, was it in woman's nature to refrain from
snapping the clasp about her neck, and feeling the
dear touch of those cold drops and pendants on her
bosom?

"Ah, now, but you're the beauty wit' them little
jokers round your neck!  And the lovely neck you
have, darlin'!" blarneyed Donahue.  He had better
have been silent, for Vaiti, used to admiration of every
kind and degree as to daily bread, felt the falseness
of the tone.  If all other men admired her beauty,
this one did not, though he said so.  His grey,
goat-like eyes looked something more like hate across the
narrow table, under the ill-smelling oily lamp, and Vaiti
saw they did.

Donahue, taught by twenty years of active villainy,
was quick to feel the necessity for the next move.
He went into his own cabin and turned up the
lamp.  The looking-glass shone out brightly under its
rays.

"Come and look at yourself, me beauty," he said;
"and let me ould shavin'-glass see the handsomest girl
in the islands wearin' what she ought to wear every
day of her life, if she'd her rights."

For the moment, Vaiti was not herself.  She was
drunk with the jewels; she was crazed with the desire
to see herself in them.  If heaven and hell had stood
between her and the looking-glass, she was bound
to go to it, and Donahue knew it, as surely as he knew
that the moon would set that night.

Vaiti—still sensing the danger that she would not
heed, through all the intoxication of the jewels—thought,
in a cinematographic flash, that one was safe
before a glass, at all events....  No one could come
up behind you....  Besides, there was the little
revolver, hanging on the chain that would snap with
a tug....

And then, for the space of a full minute, she saw
nothing, knew nothing, lived for nothing but the sight
of her own dark, beautiful face in the glass, lit up into
surpassing loveliness by the scintillating fires about her
neck.  There was no movement in the mirror behind
her.  Donahue sat motionless at the table, and the cabin
was very still.

... The first ecstasy subsided, and she turned her
head a little to see the diamonds twinkle....

Donahue's elbow knocked a glass off the table with
a sharp crash.  Almost at the same instant two powerful
hands closed on each of Vaiti's ankles, and snatched
her feet from under her.  She plucked out the revolver
as she fell, but her hands were caught, whisked behind
her, and securely tied, with a prompt swiftness that
told of frequent experience.  In another minute her
ankles were lashed together, none too gently; she
was carried into a small state-room, thrown down
upon the bunk, and left alone in the dark, with the
slam of the door and snap of the lock resounding in her
ears.

Most women would have screamed.  Vaiti remembered
that they were out in the middle of a wide harbour,
and decided not to risk the infliction of a gag for such
a slight chance of rescue....  Certain ugly scenes on
the *Sybil* rose up before her eyes.  No; decidedly it
was her only policy to keep quiet.

Outside there was the thud of bare feet running
about the deck, the creak of the booms rising on the
masts, the slatting of loose sails—loud orders, long yells
from the native crew, as they pulled and hauled.  The
*Ikurangi* was making sail.

Then sudden silence, slow heeling over of the cabin,
lip-lap of hurrying water along the hull.  They were off.
Where?  God—or the devil—only knew!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MAROONED`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   MAROONED

.. vspace:: 2

There was plenty of time for reflection in the long
days that followed.  The greasy-faced old mate came
in and cut the lashings off Vaiti's ankles and wrists,
a few hours after sailing, and she was left free to move
about the cabin, which offered a promenade of exactly
seven feet by three.  Meals were handed in to her three
times daily—the usual black tea, tinned meat, and
weevily biscuit of second-class island schooners—and
she was not in any way molested, though the door
was always kept locked.  Donahue put in his head once
or twice to look at her, as she sat cross-legged on her
bunk, staring out through the port at the tumbling seas.
He generally had something to say—a jarring, mocking
compliment, or a remark about the time they were
likely to make Sydney Heads—knowing all the time that
Vaiti could estimate the general direction of their
course by the sun, and that there was no southing in it.
If she had ever feared any one, she feared this man—almost.

It was not difficult to understand how the capture
had been brought about.  A man under the bunk,
another under the sofa opposite—her own eyes watching
only the upper part of the cabin as reflected in the
glass—nothing could be simpler or better planned.  The
affair was none the less ugly on that account.  Perhaps
it was only Vaiti's burning anger at her utter rout
and defeat in her own business of plotting and intrigue
that saved her from something very like despair, as
the schooner ploughed steadily on, day after day,
carrying her into the great unknown, farther and farther
away from all who could defend her.  Yet, despairing
or not, Saxon's daughter never lost her courage.  They
had taken her weapons from her as they carried her
into the cabin, but they could not take away her
undaunted spirit.  She waited her time.

As to the meaning of the business, she trusted, again,
to time's enlightenment.  Saxon had many enemies;
so had she.  It would all come out by-and-by.
Meantime, it was clear that no one meant to murder her.
What else might be meant she could not tell, and she
did not care to speculate overmuch.  Under such
circumstances one does best to save one's nerve against
the time it may be wanted.

It was on the twenty-third day out from Apia, bearing,
as far as she could discover, in a north-westerly direction,
that she first noted the approach of land.  Nothing
could be seen from her side of the ship, but she heard
the long, excited cries of the island crew, and the
thundering of their feet, as they began putting the ship
about with unwonted vigour, to a chorus of native
songs.  She strained her eyes eagerly when the ship
came about on the other tack, but the line of the horizon
was unbroken; and it was not for another hour that
she saw, from her low elevation, what the look-out
in the crow's nest had sighted long before—a line of
small black bristles pricking the edge of the horizon
several miles away.

Vaiti knew the sight at once for the palms of a
low atoll island—evidently some barren, sun-smitten
spot close up to the line—and a ready solution of
the whole puzzling affair at once sprang into her mind.

Marooning!

Most people know the meaning of this term; nearly
every one has heard of sailors captured by pirates in
old days, and left on lonely islands, or even deserted
by their own comrades on some isolated spot, with just
enough food and water to save the marooners'
consciences from the guilt of actual murder.  Vaiti knew
both the word and the thing very well-indeed, and she
was almost certain that the *Ikurangi* had gone off the
course on the way to some South American port with
the view of hiding her where she would not easily be
found again.  There are many islands in the wastes
of the vast Pacific where a ship may not pass once in
half a century, and these—unlike the typical "desert"
island of stories—are almost always barren, hungry,
shadeless spots, where Crusoe himself would have been
hard put to it to make a decent living.  The fertile,
mountainous, well-watered isle is never without a
native population, permanent or occasional, and is very
seldom indeed, in these days, without a trader as well,
and a regularly calling schooner.  As for the breadfruit,
oranges, pineapples, the pigs and goats, the sugarcane
and maize of uninhabited islands as known to
fiction, they have no counterpart in real life.  All the
valuable food plants and all useful animals are the
product of importation and cultivation, ancient or
modern.  It follows, that where there are no people
and no ships, there is nothing worth having.

Vaiti knew this very well, and decided that if she was
going to be marooned, she might as well make such
provision as circumstances allowed.  She had hunted
over every inch of the cabin—which seemed to belong
to the mate—during the long days of the voyage, and
she knew exactly what it contained.  From the stores
put away under the bunk she selected a large new sheet,
which she concealed under her dress; a small stock
of needles and thread, a box or two of matches, some
hooks and line, and a stick of dynamite, evidently
meant for some forgotten fishing purpose.  There was
nothing in the shape of a knife, much to her regret;
and there was a good deal of clothing that she would
have liked to carry away; but it would not do to take
more than she could easily conceal.  So she made an
end of her preparations, and sat down to wait once more.

There was no moon that night until very late,
and darkness came down so close on the stroke of
four bells that Vaiti felt sure they were very near the
equator.  No one came near her, and tea seemed to
be unusually late.  The anchor-chain roared home
soon after dark, the ship lay very still, and there was a
good deal of running about on deck.  Vaiti was
confirmed in her anticipations of an uninhabited island
by the fact that no boat was to be heard coming off
from shore.  Not a sound of any kind, indeed, came
from the island, and there were no lights on the beach.
Some one handed her in her tea by-and-by, and a
little later her door was flung open again by the mate.

"Come on out," he said.

Vaiti followed the mate out of the cabin at once,
rather to his surprise.  She had made up her mind
that anything was better than the *Ikurangi*, and she
was looking out sharply for a chance—any chance—of
turning the tables.

It did not look at first as if she were to have one.
The dinghy had been swung out when she got on deck,
and a couple of men were standing ready to lower away.
They were islanders, and she knew that they would
befriend her if they could—indeed, their glances showed
as much—yet what could they do?

Donahue was nowhere visible.  He had planned
this business with some forethought, and he wanted
to have a chance of casting blame on his subordinate
if any inquisitive Government official should incline
to look the matter up later on.  So he stayed down
in his own cabin, pretending to be asleep, and the mate,
rather against his will, had to carry out orders alone.

Just as the boat was ready to lower away, one of
the men let her go with a run, and she struck the water
stern first, with a terrible splash.  The mate, screaming
curses, ran over to the falls and began to abuse the crew.
The dinghy was injured, and they had to haul her up
and swing out the whaleboat instead.

This took some little time, and Vaiti was forgotten
for the moment—a chance that made her heart beat
with eagerness to profit by it.

Two ideas held possession of her—that she must
plan to secure a boat, and that she must manage to do
the *Ikurangi* some sort of mischief.  Was it to be borne
that Donahue should go unpaid?  The blood of a
hundred fierce Island chiefs made answer.

Concerning the boat, she thought she saw a chance.
They were bound to stay a day for wood and water,
and that should furnish an opportunity.  But the other
matter?

If she could only get hold of the ship's papers and
destroy them!  That would be satisfactory.  She knew,
none better, that a ship's papers are her character, her
"marriage-lines" of respectability.  Without them a
vessel is an illegitimate, furtive creature, every man's
hand against her, every official eye turned coldly upon
her.  Vaiti would have liked very well to get hold of
the *Ikurangi's*.

But, careless as Donahue was, the papers were not
to be found in the little deck cabin which he used as
a chart-room.  Vaiti, disappointed, took one of the
charts and began studying the position of the ship,
with a view to finding out the name of the island off
which they were lying.  The chart was almost a blank,
nothing being marked upon its wide expanse but a
number of reefs and two or three atolls—Bilboa Island,
Vaka, Ngamaru—dotted hundreds of miles apart in
a naked waste of white.  Bilboa, an abandoned guano
island, of which she had heard something, seemed to
Vaiti the most likely of the three spots.  Ngamaru,
she knew, had a native population, and about Vaka
she could for the moment remember nothing, although
she knew she had heard something once upon a time.
All this part of the Pacific was far removed from the
*Sybil's* haunts, and indeed from the haunts of any
other ship of which Vaiti had ever heard.

It did not seem to be a healthy place for schooners;
the reefs round both Vaka and Bilboa were many,
and most were marked "Position doubtful."  Donahue
was evidently not familiar with either place, for the
chart was freshly pencilled over with notes and
corrections.  Vaiti's heart leaped up as she looked at the
careless work....  She saw a way.

They were still clearing the lumber out of the whaleboat
on deck.  No one was watching.

Vaiti took a pencil and rubber, and began to do some
artistic alterations on the chart, helped by her
knowledge of seamanship.  In ten minutes she had converted
the innocent piece of parchment into a perfect death-trap,
rolled it up and replaced it, put back the rubber
and pencil, and slipped out again on deck, where she
sat down on a coil of rope and waited.

In another couple of minutes the boat was in the
water, and the mate called rudely to Vaiti.  She came
without a word, covering her face with her dress, and
sobbing bitterly.  She stumbled as she walked; you
would have sworn she was weak, broken in spirit, and
utterly helpless.

If the mate felt any compassion, he did not dare to
show it.  They shoved off, two natives at the oars.
Vaiti, sobbing effectively behind her hands, kept a sharp
look-out with the corner of one eye as they slid across
the dark water, but she could see nothing save a faintly
glimmering line of grey shore, and hear nothing but the
humming of the surf on the reef.

As soon as they reached the shallow water near the
shore, the mate took Vaiti by her arm and roared,
"Out you go!"

Sobbing afresh, in the most natural and convincing
manner in the world, she obeyed....  It was dark, and
the native who rowed bow oar never knew that she
whipped his knife dexterously out of his belt as she
passed him.

"Why are you marooning me?" she wailed, as she
waded through the warm, shallow water towards the
shore.

The mate leaned out of the boat, now fading fast away
into the starry gloom, and shouted as he disappeared:

"To pay for Delgadas Reef and the *Margaret Macintyre*!"

Vaiti, who had reached the shore, almost sat down with
the shock.  So that was it! that was it! The pearl-shell
lagoon out of which she, almost unaided, had
"jockeyed" the schooner *Margaret Macintyre*, some
months before, was bringing in a crop other than pearls—of
which last, indeed, the canny Scot who had financed
the working of the place had had very much the larger
share.

Well, things must be taken as they were found.  The
soft tropic night stirred gently round her.  The stars
were large and golden; they shone in the still lagoon
like little moons.  Palm trees waved somewhere up in
the dusk above, striking their huge rattling vanes together
with the swing of the night-breeze.  It was land, safe,
solid land, and the sand was warm and soft, and Vaiti
was tired.  She walked a little way up the beach,
stretched herself under a pandanus tree, and went to
sleep....

Some hours later she woke, with the dim, mysterious
volcano-glow of the tropic dawn in her eyes, and a curious
feeling of disquiet about her heart.  Still half asleep,
she saw the long grey shore sloping down to the silent
lagoon, the ink-coloured pandanus trees standing up
against the dull orange sky, the leaning stems and stumps
of coco-palms, dark and formless in the shadow.  She
shut her eyes and tried to sleep again.

No use.  That nameless disquiet—now almost fear—still
stirred at her heart.  She opened her eyes once
more, and looked about.  A little more light—the touch
of a glowing finger away in the east—a clearer defining
of the cocoanut stumps, snapped off near their roots in
the last great hurricane....  One of the stumps was
oddly shaped—almost like a human figure.  She could
have fancied it was a rude image of a sitting man, only
that the profile, against the lightening east, was
featureless, and there was nothing to represent the hands.

"I will not be frightened by a rotten cocoanut tree,"
thought Vaiti.  "I will sleep again till it is light.  Am I
not a sea-captain's daughter, and the descendant of
great Island chiefs, and shall I fear the fancies of my own
mind?"

Determinedly she closed her eyes again, and lay very
still.  The dawn wind began to stir; the ripples crisped
upon the beach; the locusts in the trees broke out into
a loud chirr-ing chorus.  And as the day broke silver-clear
upon the shore, Vaiti, still lying on the sand, felt
that some one, in the gathering light, was watching her
as she lay.

Wary as a fox, she opened her dark, keen eyes without
stirring her body ... and looked straight into a face
that was bending almost over her ... a face hooded
by a black cloth that hid the head and brow, and only
left to view ... O God!  O God! what was it?

The thing was featureless.  Nose, eyes, and mouth
were gone.  In the midst of a cavern of unspeakable
ruin the ghastly throat gaped vacant.  Two handless,
rotting stumps of arms waved blindly
about—feeling—feeling....

Could it hear?  Some instinct told the girl that it
could.  Softly as a snake she writhed out of the reach
of those terrible groping arms.

It did hear.  It sprang blindly forward—it snatched.

With one leap Vaiti was on her feet.  Never looking
back, she fled down the open beach, the sand spurting
behind her as she ran.  She heard a dull padding in her
rear at first; it soon grew faint, but she ran on blindly,
long after it had died away—ran, while the sun climbed
over the horizon and cast down handfuls of burning gold
on her uncovered head—ran, while the beach grew
parchment-white and dazzled back the heat into her face like
an open furnace—ran till at last her over-driven body
gave way, and the sand spun round and the sky turned
red before her eyes.  Then only she staggered into the
shade and dropped down upon a green mattress of
convolvulus creeper to rest.

And now, when she had leisure to think and strength
to cast off the haunting horror of that inhuman face,
she knew what Donahue had done.

This was not Bilboa, the uninhabited guano island
that she had feared.  This was infinitely worse—it was
Vaka, the leper isle!

She remembered that she had once heard a dim
rumour of Vaka and its ghastly leper people—the remnant
of a plague-smitten tribe long ago forcibly exiled there
from one of the fierce western groups.  No ships ever
called at this graveyard of the living; it was supposed
that the cocoanuts and fish of the island provided
sufficient food for the people, and no one cared to run the
chance of their stowing away and escaping, especially
as they were known to be both daring and treacherous
on occasion.  Donahue had indeed laid his plans well for
the most hideous revenge that the heart of man or devil
could conceive.  A few weeks or months in this charnel-house
of horrors, where the very air must reek of contagion,
and what would it avail her if, after all, some
stray, storm-driven vessel should rescue the castaway?
Better, then, that she should stay and die among the
other nameless nightmare horrors that walked these
stricken shores.

No!  Vaiti, sitting cross-legged on the netted vines
and staring grimly out to sea, then and there took resolve
that such a fate should not be hers....  Sharks were
uncertain, if you really wanted them; but the stick of
dynamite she had taken from the mate's cabin was safe
and sure.  If she failed in using it for the special purpose
she had planned, she would put it in her mouth and
light the fuse....  There would be no more trouble after
that.  And as for the flies—one did not feel them, of
course, when one was dead.

All the same, she did not mean to die if she could
avoid it, and, as the first step towards helping herself,
she knocked some nuts off a young palm, and took her
breakfast off the refreshing water and juicy meat.  Then
she cut a length of bush rope, looped it round the tallest
palm in sight, and set her feet inside the loop, so that
she could work herself up to the top of the tree,
monkey-on-stick fashion, leaning against the rope.  When she
got into the crown of the palm she knelt among the
leaves, holding on tightly, and looked right and left over
the island.

It was a pure atoll, an irregular circle of feather palms
lying on the sea like a great green garland set afloat.
The inner lagoon was several square miles in extent, but
the land was not more than a few hundred yards wide
at any point, and there was no soil to speak of.  The
palms, the scanty, pale green scrub, the mop-headed
pandanus trees, the trailing creepers, all sprang out of
pure white coral gravel and sand.  The scene was lovely
as only a coral atoll can be—the jewel-green water of the
inner lagoon, shaded with vivid reflections of lilac and
pale turquoise, the stately circled palms, the wide, white
beach enclasping all the island like a frame of purest
pearl, the burning blue of the surrounding sea, all
combined to form a picture bright as fairyland and sparkling
as an enamelled gem set upon a velvet shield.

But Vaiti, while she saw and admired the loveliness
of the scene, also recognised its barrenness as only an
islander could.  No fruit, no roots, little fresh
water—nothing, in fact, but cocoanut and pandanus kernels,
eked out by a little fish....  The lepers must often go
hungry.

The hot day turned suddenly chill as Vaiti recalled
those blind, snatching, handless arms.  They came of a
cannibal race, these Vaka folk.  What if she had not
waked?  What if, wearied as she well might be, she
slept too long and too soundly in the night that was to
come?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TURNING OF THE TABLES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TURNING OF THE TABLES

.. vspace:: 2

She looked narrowly about the island, hoping to discover
the place where the lepers lived.  A cluster of small,
miserable huts, on the far side of the lagoon, attracted
her attention.  It seemed not more than half a mile
from the spot where she had spent the night.  The best
fishing grounds she judged, by the look of the shore, to
be near the village.  She was therefore, no doubt, several
miles from their usual haunts.

So far, so good.  Where was the schooner?  It lay
to her left about a mile out at sea, close to a small,
uninhabited, sandy islet.  Vaiti supposed that the men were
cutting wood and looking for water.  She saw one or
two black dots on the shore, recognisable by their blue
dungaree clothing, and strained her eyes eagerly to see
if the dinghy had been pulled up on the sand, for in
this lay her only chance.  If they brought the boat up
on the beach, to repair her where wood could be had
without going to the atoll itself (Vaiti would have wagered
that the *Ikurangi* did not carry a splinter outside of the
galley fuel), then the schooner would probably stop
overnight.  In that case she could carry out her plans.
Otherwise ... there was always the dynamite.

The dinghy was ashore, drawn well up on the beach.

She drew a breath of relief, and slid down the tree
again.  Now she could wait till night with an easy
mind.

All day she hid in the tangle of young palm and low-growing
scrub that clustered about the foot of the loftier
trees.  Once she saw a couple of the lepers pass by in
the distance, evidently looking for something.  These
had eyes, and she crept closer into the shelter of the
scrub till they were gone.  Then she came cautiously
out, and plucked long sheets of the fine pale-brown
natural matting that protects the young shoot of the
cocoanut, to cover up her white dress, for the scrub was
dangerously thin, in that staring overhead sun.  She did
not venture down to the sea to fish, but fed upon
cocoanuts during the day.

Night came at last—night and coolness, with big stars
shining in the lagoon, and a gentle breeze stirring among
the palms.  About midnight, as near as she could
guess, Vaiti came out of her shelter and prepared for
action.

She took off her clothes, and fastened about her waist
a petticoat of the dark-coloured cocoanut matting which
she had stitched together during the day.  So habited,
with her olive skin and black hair, she knew that she
was invisible in the darkness of the night.  She fastened
the dynamite, and a box of matches, into the coil of
hair on the top of her head, stuck her knife into the
waist of her petticoat, and walked down the beach into
the warm, dark sea.

She knew very well that the outer side of an atoll
commonly swarms with sharks, but the risk did not
trouble her.  There was something a good deal worse to
face on the island than any number of sharks.  Heading
for the distant light of the schooner, she swam through
the starry water with the low, dog-like island paddle that
can cover such marvellous distances—keeping her head
well out, and quietly taking her time.

It was a long swim, but it ended at last, and the
schooner rose up before her in the water, black and silent,
and shifting ever so little upon the swell of the incoming
tide.  The stars made little trickles of light upon her
wet, dark hull.  Two boats lay alongside—the dinghy,
freshly mended and watertight, and the whaleboat,
loaded with wood and cocoanuts.  After the slovenly
fashion of the *Ikurangi*, they had left the boats until the
morning to hoist inboard, seeing that it was dead calm
in the lee of the islet.

This was more than Vaiti had hoped for, and it made
her task easy.  She cut the dinghy's painter, got into
the boat, and muffled the oars with a strip or two torn
from her petticoat.  Then she put the dynamite into
the whaleboat, cut and attached a good long fuse, set
a match to it, and saw that the tiny red spark was steadily
eating its way along, before she pulled off from the ship.
She towed the whaleboat after her a little way, and then
let it go thirty or forty yards from the ship.  It was not
her desire to wreck the schooner at Vaka Island, and
possibly let loose her enemies upon the atoll; rather
she wished the ship well out of the way before any
disaster should overtake her.  The charts would most
probably ensure that matter.  The destruction of the
boat was only intended to secure her own possession of
the dinghy.

She had scarcely reached the shore before a loud
explosion boomed out across the water, and immediately
after lights began to stir on board the schooner.  Vaiti
worked with coolness and speed, knowing that it was
not likely, though possible, that any one would swim
ashore.  From her eyrie in the coco-palm she had noted
a deep, narrow creek running up from the lagoon—a
mere crack in the coral, but wide enough to admit a small
boat, taken in with care.  There was just enough light
from the stars to enable her to find the place, and
run the boat up on the sand at the end, into the heart
of a tangle of leaves and creepers that entirely concealed
it.  For safety's sake, she cut a few more armfuls of
trailing vines from the shore, and buried the boat two
or three feet deep, so that neither from the sea nor the
land could it possibly be seen.

As she worked, she could hear shouts and cries, made
faint by distance, coming across the water from the
schooner.  She could imagine the scene that would take
place on board when they found themselves boatless.
Some of the native crew—not Donahue or the mate;
they would never face the sharks—would probably
swim ashore to-morrow to investigate.  Well, let them!

Having finished the concealing of the dinghy, she got
into it herself, put on her clothes again, drew the tangled
creepers well over her, and went calmly to sleep, secure
that no one could find her unless she chose to be
found.

All the same, she was very cautious about getting up
the next morning, and looked carefully between the
leaves before she ventured out of her hiding-place.  She
covered up her light dress with the cocoanut canvas, and
then climbed a palm to look about.

People were moving hurriedly about the decks of the
schooner; something seemed to be going on.  As she
watched, she saw two natives, clad only in loin-cloths,
stand up on the bulwarks, ready to dive.  In another
moment they had flashed down into the sea, small as
ants to sight at that distance, but perfectly clear to
Vaiti's sea-trained eyes.  Then the dark specks began
to make their way across the water.  The sun was newly
risen, the sea was still a mirror of molten gold, and the
tiny black heads stood out sharply on its surface.  Vaiti
set her teeth as she watched them creeping on.  They
were island men, of her mother's own race, and they had
done her no harm.  And ... the longer a vessel lies
at anchor in equatorial latitudes, the more certain it is
that sharks will gather round her—even if there has been
no explosion in the water alongside to kill the fish and
collect the tigers of the sea from far and near.

Vaiti looked away, and began desperately to count
the nuts clustered among the palm-fronds at her
feet....  How many were there?  Ten—fifteen—twenty——

A long, despairing shriek tore across the water.  She
put her fingers in her ears and buried her face in the
leaves.  Yet, all the same, she heard a second cry,
short and sudden, and quickly ended.  There was
nothing more.  She lifted her face again, her teeth set
tight into her lower lip.  The two black heads were
gone.

"No one will come ashore to-day," she said, with a
shiver.  Something seemed to stab her, as she thought
of that doctored chart in the schooner's deck cabin.
The reefs on the course to South America were hundreds
of miles from shore—the ship had no boats—and the
native crew must suffer with the villainous captain and
mate, if the disaster that she had plotted so carefully
should come about....  There would be sharks there,
too, when the ship broke up....

The crystal-gold of the sea turned dim before Vaiti's
eyes.  It was only a mist of tears that lay between, but
to the girl's excited imagination it seemed like the
spreading and darkening stain of blood.

Careless of whether she was seen or not, she slid down
the tree and rushed into the scrub, where she sat down
upon the sand and cried like a mere nervous schoolgirl.
The sun was past the zenith when she lifted her head
again; the schooner had put out to sea, and lay, a far-off
snowy speck, upon the blue horizon.

Vaiti stood up, flung back her hair, and cast the
trouble from her.  She could not afford to grieve over
the inevitable now; there was too much to do.  The
boat had to be prepared and provisioned, and that was
not the work of a moment.

She husked and opened a number of large cocoanuts,
and removed the insides.  She then cut a quantity of
young palm-leaves, and plaited them into baskets, which
she filled with the cocoanut meat.  Afterwards she cut
down dozens of young green nuts for drinking, husked
them to save space, and slung them together in bunches
with strips of their own fibre.  This done, she hid the
provisions in the boat, and set about her own supper,
as it was almost dark.

Nourishing food she felt she must have, if she was to
get through with her enterprise, but she dared not
attract attention to herself by going out torch-fishing on
the reef.  However, there were certain holes in the
ground about the roots of the palms that to her
experienced eye promised something better than fish.

She dug a fire-hole in the gravel at the end of the gully
where she had hidden the boat, lined it with stones, and
made a fire, looking well to it that no gleam should be
visible from above.  When the stones were beginning to
heat, she took a piece of palms-leaf in her hand, hid herself
in the bush, and waited, still as a rock.

By-and-by there was a faint scuffling among the roots
of the trees, and a shadowy thing began climbing up
the trunk of a palm.  Vaiti waited till it had disappeared
in the crown of the tree, and then climbed after it to a
point about ten feet from the top, where she tied
her strip of leaf round the trunk and came down
again.

Thump! thump!  Two cocoanuts fell to the earth.
The crab (for it was a cocoanut crab of the biggest and
fiercest kind) was getting his supper.  Now he would
come down the tree, rip open the nuts with his formidable
claws, and enjoy the contents.

Slowly he began to back down the palm, his sensitive
tail ready to tell him when he had touched earth and
might safely let go.  And now it was that Vaiti's trap
(a well-known native trick) proved his undoing.  The
belt of dry leaflets round the tree tickled his tail, he
promptly let go, and fell with a crash seventy feet through
air on to the pile of coral lumps that Vaiti had heaped
up at the foot of the tree.

The girl picked him up, badly injured and unable to
use his claws (which were big enough to crack her ankle),
and put an end to him with a clever stroke of her knife.
He proved to be two feet long in the body alone, and of
a fine blue and red colour, as seen in the dim light of the
fire.  She put him on the heated stones, wrapped in
leaves, buried him until cooked, and then enjoyed a hot
supper that an epicure might have envied.

Strengthened by the good food, she worked on late
into the night, catching more crabs, whose meat she
hoped she could dry in the sun, making a rough sail out
of the bed-sheet she had carried away from the schooner,
twisting sinnet plait out of cocoanut husk for ropes,
cutting and trimming a small pandanus for the mast.
She had all her plans laid, and knew what she meant to
do.  Her present position was about five hundred miles
from the Marquesas, and the south-east trades would be
in her favour.  With lines for fishing, a beaker full of
fresh water on board (she had found that in the dinghy
when she took it away), cocoanuts to help out with, and
plenty of crab to dry, she hoped that she might manage
to reach the islands before her strength or her food gave
out.  Greater voyages had been done many a time in
mere canoes, and the dinghy was a large boat of its kind,
strong, well built, and new.  If she failed—well, any
death, any horror that the wide seas could hold was better
than Vaka Island.

All being ready, she lay down and slept till dawn—a
somewhat restless sleep, for it was full of wandering
dreams, and all the dreams took one shape: Donahue's
schooner, snared by the lying chart, rushing helpless
to her end, with the green-eyed tigers of the sea hovering
ever about the reefs, and waiting ... waiting....

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"I don't think the patient can see any one," said the
nurse doubtfully.

The big, yellow-haired sailor took off his hat and
stepped up on to the verandah.  It was a very beautiful
verandah.  You could see most of Suva Bay from it,
and half the tumbled purple peaks of Fiji's wonderful
mountains lying across the harbour.

"If you could stretch a point, ma'am," said the
sailor, "it might be as well for him.  I've got good
news."

"About his daughter?" asked the nurse.  She, like
every one else in Suva, was deeply interested in this
especial patient's story.  He had come to Suva in his
own schooner, the *Sybil*, several weeks before, furious
with rage and despair at the loss of his daughter, and
eager to demand assistance from the High Commissioner
of the Western Pacific, although it seemed by no means
clear in what manner Her Majesty's representative could
aid him.  Before the matter had even been discussed,
however, he had fallen seriously ill of sunstroke and
excitement combined, and had been sent to hospital,
with rather a bad chance of recovery.  He was just
turning the corner now, and the nurse—who could not
but admire his rather weather-beaten good looks and
romantic history—regarded him as her most interesting
patient.

"Yes, it's about his daughter," answered the sailor.
"I'm the mate of the *Sybil*, ma'am; Harris is my name.
Perhaps you'd kindly read this."

He held out a long slip of printed paper, containing
a *résumé* of the cables for the day—Suva's substitute
for a daily paper.

The nurse took it, and read:

"The missing daughter of Edward Saxon, owner and
master of the trading schooner *Sybil*, has at last
reappeared.  Her fate has excited much interest and
conjecture all over the Pacific.  She arrived in Sydney
yesterday on board the cable-ship *Clotho*, by which
she was picked up on the 2nd instant, in an open boat,
alone, and two hundred miles from any land.  She had
experienced bad weather, and was much exhausted
for want of food, but declared herself capable, if it had
been necessary, of reaching the nearest island group
unaided.  She had been carried away, as was surmised,
by the captain of the island schooner *Ikurangi*, who
marooned her on a remote leper island, Vaka, and then
sailed for South America.  Revenge for the loss of a
pearl-shell bed of disputed ownership is said to have been
the motive of this unparalleled outrage."

"He shall have it at once," said the nurse cordially.
"It'll do him more good than our medicines."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The story was a popular one in the hospital for months
after, and it had not been quite forgotten when, towards
the close of the hot season, a Sydney paper furnished
the last chapter of the tale.  Saxon's late nurse read it
aloud to the others at afternoon tea, and they all agreed
(not knowing how Vaiti's fingers had cogged the dice of
chance) that it was a wonderful Providence and a real
judgment.  The item read:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center

   "THE LAST OF AN OCEAN ROMANCE.

.. vspace:: 1

"News comes via Tahiti from Nukahiva, Marquesas
Islands, of the arrival of a shipwrecked crew on a raft,
six weeks ago.  They were the survivors of a disaster
that destroyed the notorious schooner *Ikurangi* whose
master, it will be remembered, kidnapped and marooned
the daughter of a British captain some months ago.  The
schooner, after leaving the island, sailed for Callao, but
was wrecked on an uncharted reef three days east of
Vaka, and went to pieces.  The crew escaped on a raft,
and underwent great suffering in their efforts to reach
land.  The captain and mate were drowned."

.. vspace:: 2

"And serve them right, too!" said the audience.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WHITE MAN OF NALOLO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WHITE MAN OF NALOLO

.. vspace:: 2

"By Jove! it's a white man," said Saxon, checking
like a pointer on the threshold of the low dark doorway.

"Certainly.  Very pleased to meet you," observed
the figure on the mats.  It was sitting cross-legged, clad
only in a waist-cloth, and the house was a Fijian
chief-house in a mountain village three days' journey from the
nearest white settlement—but the thing squatted on
the mats was undoubtedly white, and—English?  Well,
no; Saxon thought no.  The phrase was American in
flavour.  He stepped across the threshold, and came a
little way in, relieved in mind.  When you have been
dead and buried among the islands for a quarter of a
century it is much pleasanter not to run the risk of
meeting other ghosts (with university accents, tea-coloured
families, and a preference for modest retirement on
steamer days) who may possibly have been alive together
with you before...

Before....  The word means much in that vast
Pacific world, sepulchre of so many lost hopes and
forgotten lives.  We do not, in the Islands, cultivate
curiosity as a virtue, since it would be likely to bring
rather more than virtue's own reward after it.  We do
not ask cross questions, because the crooked answers
might involve questions of another sort.  And when
overfed, sanguineous passengers from smart liners
happen along and tell us, as a new and excellent joke,
that the proper formula for receiving an introduction
in the Islands is: "Glad to meet you, Mr. So-and-so;
what were you called *before*?" we smile an acid smile,
and pretend we are amused....

Saxon was very tired, having walked thirty miles
that day, and very hungry, being out of luck, and more
or less on the tramp.  But I think, tired as he was, he
would have found another village to rest in if the derelict
white on the mats had spoken with the shibboleth of his
own class and country.

As things were, the look of the house pleased him,
and he came in and folded himself up on the mats.  The
other man noted that he selected a "tabu kaisi" mat
(a kind strictly forbidden to all but chiefs or whites),
and that he looked hopefully towards the kava bowl.

"Not the first time you've stopped under a pandanus
roof, I guess?" he remarked.

"No," said Saxon.  "Whose house is this?"

"Mine," said the stranger.  "Make yourself at home."

It was a handsome chief-house of the best Fijian
type, forty feet from mats to ridge-pole, the walls
covered with beautifully inlaid and interwoven reeds,
the roof bound together with exquisite sinnet work in
artistic patterns, of red, black, and yellow, and towering
up into a dark, cool cavern of pleasant gloom.  The
floor was overlaid with fine parquetry of split bamboo
at the "kasii" or common-folk end, and piled deep
with fine mats in the "chief" part.  A Fijian bed, ten
feet wide and three feet high, ran like a dais right across
the end of the house.  It was covered by mats prettily
fringed with coloured parrot feathers.  There were three
great doors, east, west, and south, each framing in its
dark-set opening a different picture of surpassing
loveliness.  Nalolo town (its name is on the map of Fiji, but
it reads otherwise) stands very high on the sheer crest
of a pointed green hill that is just like the enchanted
hill in the pictures of a fairy tale.  There is a little
round green lawn on the top, and all about it stand the
high, pointed beehive houses of the town, each perched
on its own tiny mound like a toy on a stand.  Sloped
cocoanut logs run up to the doors of the houses, and
quaintly coloured crotons cluster about them.  In the
deep, soft grass golden eggs from the guava trees lie
tumbled about among fallen stars of orange and lemon
blossom, and everywhere the red hibiscus shakes its
splendid bells in the soft hill-winds.  About the foot
of the peak a wide blue river wanders, singing all day
long; and from every door of every house, high perched
above the cloudy valleys and hyacinth hill ranges, one
can see pictures, and pictures, and pictures almost too
lovely to be true.  There are not two places in the world
like Nalolo.

The White Man of Nalolo, however, was only interested
in the fact that the river provided excellent crayfish;
and that taro grew very well indeed on the slopes below
the town.  He had once been young, but he was not
young now, and did not matter any longer.  Therefore
he had become particular about his dinner and indifferent
to scenery.  I will not tell you the story of the White
Man of Nalolo, or why he, of all men, rebelled so fiercely
against the common lot of "not mattering any more,"
that he came away to the wilds of the Pacific and the
highlands of Fiji, and never went back again, because,
like many true stories, it cannot be believed, and therefore
had better not be told.  Besides, this is the story
of Saxon and his daughter.

Saxon was down on his luck.  He had a charter for
the *Sybil*, but she was not able to undertake it at present,
for, trying to pilot her into Suva harbour himself, he had
contrived to run her on a reef, and damaged her so
seriously that she was at present careened on the beach
in front of the local boat-builder's, undergoing repairs.
The builder, knowing something of Saxon's reputation,
had insisted on cash in advance, and the captain, in
consequence, found himself so nearly out of funds that
he was unable to stay in Suva pending the repairs to
his ship.  He had therefore started with Vaiti for the
interior of the great island of Viti Levu, intending to
live on the real hospitality of the natives for a few weeks,
and tramp from village to village.

He explained something of this as he sat on the mats
enjoying the grateful coolness of the house.  The other
man nodded gravely, watching the door.  He offered
a curious contrast to the Englishman's coarse red fairness,
being lean, sundried, and grizzled, with expressionless,
boot-buttoned eyes, and a straggling "goatee" beard
that dated his exile from America back to long-ago days.

"Where's your daughter?" he asked.

"Coming.  She stopped to tidy up at the river."

The doorway was darkened at that moment by Vaiti
herself, balancing lightly up the cocoanut log to the
threshold.  She wore a white tunic over a scarlet
"pareo," her wavy curls, sparkling with the water of
the stream, fell loose upon her shoulders; her lips were
as red as the freshly-plucked pomegranate blossom behind
her ear.  Something like life stirred in the boot-button
eyes of the White Man of Nalolo as he looked at her.

"Afi!" he called to a Fijian woman who was sleeping
on the mats at the "kaisi" end of the house, "go and
hurry the girls with the supper, and make tea for the
marama (lady).  Quick!"

Then he turned to Saxon.

"Stay here as long as you like, both of you," he said.
"Let her sit there sometimes, where I can see her and
fancy....  I'll show you something."

He rose slowly and stiffly, and limped across to a
Chinese camphorwood box that stood in the corner.
In a minute he returned with a faded photograph in a
gaudy frame.

"My daughter," he said.  "The only child I ever
had.  She was Afi's.  She died a long time ago.  Afi's
a chief woman: she was as handsome as Andi Thakombau
when she was young, and the girl took after her.  Your
girl's mother was chief too, I guess.  Do you see any
likeness?"

Vaiti and her father craned over the photograph.
The pretty half-caste girl, was certainly like the
stately, slender creature who gazed at her pictured
face, though the fire and spirit of Vaiti's expression
were wanting.

"I'm growing old," went on the White Man.  "I've
no children.  Stay a bit.  I'll be glad to have you."

"Thank you; delighted, I'm sure," drawled Saxon,
with a pathetic resurrection of his long-forgotten "grand
manner," And so it was settled.

Vaiti, listening and thinking as usual, with her chin
in her slender fingers, approved of what she heard, and
smiled very pleasantly at her host.  It seemed to her
that he could be very useful just now.

The four weeks that followed after glided away
agreeably enough in the silent hills.  Nothing happened;
no one came or went—the Fijians, men and women,
went out to the yam and taro fields in the morning, and
returned in the afternoon; and after dark there would
be long, monotonous chanting, and interminable sitting
dances, on the mats inside the high-roofed houses.  Saxon
stupefied himself with kava most of the time, in the
absence of stronger drink, and almost got himself clubbed
once or twice on account of his too impulsive admiration
for the beauties of the village.  His host, however, was
no censor of morals, and troubled very little about him.
On Sundays the Fijians dressed themselves in their
brightest cottons, stuck up their hair in huge halos, and
went five times to church, under the auspices of the
native Wesleyan teacher; while Saxon and his host
smoked, slept, drank kava, and played cards.  The
village provided plenty of yam and taro, kumara,
cocoanut, and fish; and there was tea and sugar in
the Chinese box, and now and then the White Man
killed a pig or a fowl.  It was very pleasant on the
whole.

In a month's time, however, Saxon girded up his loins
to leave this mountain Capua and descend to Suva once
more.  The *Sybil* would be ready, and his charter to
convey ornamental Fiji woods to San Francisco would
not wait.

They said good-bye to their host, and walked a mile
or two across the river-flats below the town before either
spoke.  Then Vaiti put her hand into her sash, and drew
out something small and shining.

"See, father, what the White Man gave me, because
I was like his daughter," she said.

Saxon took the object, and turned it over in his fingers.
It was a small seal, shaped like an eagle standing on a
rock.  The eagle was gold, the rock amethyst.

"A pretty thing, but not worth more than two or
three pounds," he said.

Then he turned it over and looked at the device.
There was a curious crest on the face of the seal—a wolf
with a crescent moon in his jaws; underneath, a motto
in a strange foreign character.

Saxon's red complexion paled as he examined the crest.
In other days and scenes, among ice-bound rivers and
grim mediæval fortress-castles, he had seen that crest
light up the crimson panes of old armorial windows—had
read the motto underneath—"What I have, I hold"—of
nights when he and the wildest young nobles of the
Russian court were dining together under the splendid
roof of one of Moscow's greatest banqueting halls.  For
a moment he felt the keen cold air of the ice-bound streets
blow sharp on his cheek; heard the jingle of the sleigh-bells,
drawing up before the marble steps where the
yellow lamplight streamed out across the snow.
The fancy faded, swift as a passing lantern picture that
flashes out for a moment and then sweeps away into
darkness.  He saw the burning sky and the crackling
palms again, felt the furnace-heated wind, and knew that
it was all over long ago, and that he was ruined, exiled,
and old.  Yet there remained a thread of indefinite
recollection, a suggestion of something half-remembered,
that was not all unconnected with the present day.
What was the story belonging to that crest—the story
that the whole world knew?

"Where did the fellow get the thing?" he asked his
daughter.

Vaiti told him.

The White Man of Nalolo, it seemed, was one of the
numerous South Sea wanderers who believe in the
existence of various undiscovered islands, hidden here
and there in the vast, untravelled wastes of sea that lie
off the track of ships.  Thirty years before, there had
been wondering rumours of an island of this kind, touched
at once by a ship that no one could name, found to be
uninhabited, and never revisited; indeed, no one was
sure where it was within a few hundred miles.  Years
went by, and the White Man, who had always taken a
special interest in the story, found himself
shipwrecked—the sole survivor of a boatful of castaways—on the
very island itself.  But fortune was unkind, for the
morning after his arrival, when he was trying to sail
round the island, a sudden storm blew him out to sea
again, and he had drifted for many days, and all but
perished, in spite of the fish and nuts he had obtained
from the island, before a mission schooner happened to
see him and pick him up.  He had examined most of
the island while ashore, and had seen no inhabitants
or traces of cultivation.  Nevertheless he had always
been convinced that there was something mysterious
about the place, for two reasons.  One was the presence
of common house-flies, which he had never seen far away
from the haunts of human beings.  The other was the
discovery of an amethyst seal, lying under a stone on the
shore.  It was dirty and discoloured, but he did not think
so small and heavy an object could have been washed
up on the shore from a wreck.

Where mystery is in the air, most men's minds turn
naturally to thoughts of hidden treasure, and the White
Man of Nalolo had ever since cherished a hope that there
was treasure on the island.  For several years he had
fully intended to go and look—some day—but as he
could only guess at the latitude and longitude, and as
he had little money to spare, he never succeeded either
in hunting the place up himself or in persuading any one
else to do so.  Now he was old and half-crippled, and
did not care any more about anything; so he wanted
Vaiti, who reminded him so much of his dead daughter,
to have the seal.  It was a pretty thing, and perhaps
it would make her think sometimes of the poor old White
Man of Nalolo.

Saxon listened attentively to the story, and heaved
a sigh of disappointment at the end.

"There's nothing in it, my girl," he said.  "No proof
of treasure there, eh?"

"No; no treasure," said Vaiti, looking at the ground
as she walked.

"What then?" asked Saxon curiously.  He saw she
had something in reserve.

Vaiti suddenly flamed out in eloquent Maori.

"What then, my father?  Am I one who sees through
men's heads, that I can tell what was in the mind of you
as you looked at the jewel, and turned yellow and green
like a parrot, only to see it?  What then?  I do not
know.  I walk in the dark, and the light is in your hand,
not in mine.  As for you, you have made your brain dull
with the brandy and the kava, so that you cannot see
at all.  What then?  Tell me yourself, for I do not know.
I know only that there is something to be told."

"Don't be rough on your poor old father," said Saxon
pathetically.  "I'd have knocked the stuffing out of
any man who said half as much, but I spoil you, by Gad,
I do.  I don't know—I can't think, somehow or other.
But there was a story about the Vasilieffs—the johnnies
who had that crest—people I used to stay with when I
went to——"

He broke off, smashed a spider-lily bloom with his
stick, and began afresh.

"Junia Vasilieff—what was it she did?  Big princes
they were, and much too close to the throne to be safe
company....  Junia Vasili—I have it!  Yes—the end
of the story was in the Sydney papers, time you were a
little kid.  I remember.  They were to have married
her to the Czarewitch, just to make things safe.  Her
claim to the throne was big enough to have started a
revolution any day, if it had been asserted....  Poor
little Junia!—only sixteen when I knew—when the
marriage was talked of—and such golden hair as she
had!  She hated the whole thing; courts and ceremony
weren't in her line.  But she was a gentle little creature,
and I never thought she'd have had the spirit to do as
she did."

He turned the seal over in his fingers, as if reading the
past from its glittering surface.

"There was a young lieutenant of Hussars, a Pole—you
don't know what that is, but the Russians don't
like them, I can tell you—a noble, but a very small one;
not fit to black Junia's boots, according to their notions.
Well, he bolted with her.  It was in the Sydney papers,
time I was in the Solomons; the paper came up to
Guadalcanar....  She must have been twenty then;
just the year the marriage to the Czarewitch was to have
come off....  They bolted—cleared out—never seen
again.  All Russia on the boil about it; no one knew
but what they'd hatch up plots against the throne, she
having a better claim than any one else, if it hadn't
been for the law against empresses.  The secret police
were after them for years, but they were never traced,
though most people knew Russia'd give a pretty penny
to know where they were——"

"O man with the head of a fruit-bat, do you not see?"
interrupted Vaiti at this juncture.  "They hid on that
island—they may be there still.  It is worth a hundred
treasures!"

"The Pole was a great traveller, and had a sort of a
little yacht," said Saxon thoughtfully.  "It might be
true, of course—if there is an island, and if the Nalolo
Johnnie had any idea of where it was, and if nobody
found them out and split years ago.  Plenty of 'ifs.'"

"I think him all-right good enough," averred Vaiti,
returning to English and prose.  "By'n-by we finish
F'lisco, then we go see, me and you."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LOST ISLAND`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LOST ISLAND

.. vspace:: 2

Some two or three months later, the schooner
might have been seen, like a white-winged butterfly lost
at sea, beating up and down before a solitary, low,
green island lying far east of the lonely Paumotus.
Vaiti, sitting on the top of the deck-house, was examining
the land through a glass.  The native crew were all on
deck; also Harris and Gray, the mate and bo'sun.
Captain Saxon was not to be seen.

"The old man always do get squiffy at the wrong
time, don't he?" commented Harris, rather gleefully.

Gray spat over the rail for reply.

"You're ratty because you don't know nothing,
ain't you?" he said.

"Do you?" asked the mate curiously.  Harris had
not much notion of the dignity of his office, and dearly
loved a gossip at all times.

"More nor you, havin' eyes and ears that's of use to
me occasionally," replied the bo'sun dryly.

Harris considered.

"I'll give you my grey shirt to tell," he said
persuasively.  "There's sure to be something up."

"'Ow much does we ever get out of it when there
is?" asked Gray sourly.  "I could do with that shirt
very well, though.  There ain't much to tell, except
that the old man he thought there was an island
hereabouts not marked on the chart that nobody knew
about; and Vaiti she allowed that was all —— rot,
because, says she, this part's been surveyed, and though
the Admiralty surveys isn't the for-ever-'n-ever-Amen
dead certainties the little brassbound officers thinks
them, still they don't leave whole islands out on the
loose without a collar and a name round their necks, so
to say.  So, says she, let me work out the length of time
they ran before the hurricane, says she, and the d'rection
of the wind, which the old boy remembered right enough,
says she; and then look it up on the chart, and I'll be
blowed, says she, if you don't find something for a guide
like.  So by-and-by she looks, and says she, ''Ere's
something; 'ere's a reef marked P.D., and it is P.D.,'
says she, 'for you and I knows there's nothin' there,'
she says.  'But we'll look a bit more to the north'ard,'
she says, 'where it's right off the' track of ships, and
maybe we'll find somethin' and maybe we won't,' she
says.  'But I think,' she says, 'that somewheres not
too far off from that P.D. reef we'll maybe get a sight
of what we're lookin' for,' she says, 'because sometimes
reefs is put down for bigger things by mistake,' she says,
'especially if you 'aven't been to see.'  Then she comes
on deck, and I makes myself scarce, for it ain't healthy
on this ship to listen at no cabin skylights, not if she
knows you're there."

"Well, whatever the game is, I don't suppose it'll
line our little insides any fatter, bo'sun.  We don't
count on this ship anything like as we ought to when
there's shares goin'.  I wonder that I stick to her, I do!
Old man as drunk as a lord half the time—me doin' his
work as well as my own—a blessed she-cat running the
blooming show——"

"Ready about!" sang Vaiti from the deck-house,
and the mate and bo'sun sprang across the deck.  There
was something about the orders of the "she-cat" that
enforced a smartness on the *Sybil* rare on an island
schooner, even when heavy-fisted Saxon was not about.

Half an hour later, Vaiti had rowed herself ashore,
curtly declining Harris's polite offers of assistance, and
had landed on the beach.  As she did not know who she
might be going to see, she had provided for all emergencies.
Her revolver was in her pocket, and she wore a flowing
sacque of lace-trimmed white silk that made her feel she
was fit to meet any Russian princess, if such were indeed
on the island.  It was a gratifying thought that the said
princess, if she had been a celebrated beauty, must now
be well into the forties, and consequently beneath all
contempt as a rival belle.

Her father's absence did not trouble her.  He had a
nasty trick of starting a drinking bout just when he
was most needed—in fact, it was the one point in
Saxon's character on which you could absolutely rely.
Vaiti, therefore, had grown used to doing without him,
and rather liked to have a perfectly free hand.

She had fully grasped the bearings of the case.  There
was possibly a very great chief's daughter from Europe,
with a rather insignificant chief who had stolen her
away, living there in hiding.  The people of her country
would pay a great deal to know where she was and
bring her back.  Or, if there seemed any lack of safety
about this proceeding (Vaiti had long ago learned that
her father was not fond of putting himself within the
reach of principalities and powers of any kind), the
couple themselves must be made to pay for silence.
It was all very simple.

The fact that the island was supposed to be uninhabited
did not trouble her.  She meant to investigate
that matter after her own fashion.

She walked all round it first of all.  It took her about
an hour.  There was a nice, white, sandy beach, with
straggling bush behind it.  There were a good many
cocoanuts—all young ones—also a large number of
broken trunks, apparently snapped off by a hurricane.

This set Vaiti thinking.  It seemed to her that the
damage was rather too universal and even to be natural.
Yet why should any sane human cut short all his
full-grown cocoanuts?

She crossed the island twice at the ends, noting
everything with a keen and wary eye.  Fairly good soil;
nothing growing on it, however, but low scrub and a
few berries.  In the centre of the island the scrub
thickened into dense bush, impenetrable without an
axe.  No sign of life anywhere.

Vaiti stamped her foot.  Was it possible she had
been mistaken?  Was this indeed just what it seemed,
a commonplace, infertile, useless, little mid-ocean islet,
let alone because it was worth nothing, and incorrectly
described as a reef because no one had ever troubled
to examine it?  Things began to look like it.

And yet ... she thought—she did not quite know
what, but she was very sure that she did not want to
leave the island just yet.  She would at least climb a
tall tree and take a general survey before she gave
it up.

Nothing simpler—but there was no such tree.

All the palms were young, or broken off short; all the
pandanus trees were in the same condition.  There was
no rock, no commanding height.  She could not get a
view.

Vaiti's cheek flushed crimson under its olive brown.
The spark was struck at last!

Somebody had cut short those trees—to prevent
anyone from climbing up and overlooking the island.
The encircling reef would not allow any ship to approach
close enough for a look-out at the mast-head to see over
the island, except in a very general way.  There was
something to conceal.  What, and where?

Only one answer was possible.  The mass of apparently
virgin bush in the centre of the island—several acres in
extent—was the only spot where a cat could have
concealed itself.  The scent was growing hot.

With sparkling eyes Vaiti began to circle the wood,
watching narrowly for the smallest trace of a pathway.
The branches were interlocked and knitted together as
only tropical bush can be.  Many were set with huge
thorns; all were laced and twined with bush ropes and
lianas of every kind.

Nothing larger than a rat could have won its way
through such a rampart.  Vaiti walked swiftly on and
on, striking the bushes now and then with a stick, to
make sure that there were no loose masses of stuff
masking a concealed entrance, and keeping a sharp
eye for traces of footsteps....  It was with a
heart-sinking shock that she found herself once more beside
the low white coral rock that had marked the commencement
of her journey, and realised that she had
been all round, and that there was most certainly no
opening.

The sun was slipping down the heavens now.  She
had been exploring half the day, but she was not beaten
yet.  The unexpected difficulties she had met with only
sharpened her determination to enter the thicket at all
costs.  Harris, suffering acutely, as usual, from
suppressed curiosity, was nearly driven mad by the sight
of the "she-cat" suddenly reappearing on the ship,
picking up an axe, and departing as silently as she had
come, with a countenance that did not invite questions.
She had taken off her smart silk dress, and was in her
chemise and petticoat, arms and feet bare, and waist
girdled with a sash into which she had stuck her revolver.
She dropped the axe into her boat, rowed silently away,
and disappeared on the other side of the island.

The sun was still some distance above the sea when
she let the axe slip from her torn, scratched, and aching
hands, and stood at last, tired but triumphant, in the
heart of the mysterious island's mystery.  She had won
her way, with the woodcraft that was in her island
blood, through the dense belt of bush, hacking and
slashing here, stooping and writhing there, until the
light began to show through the tangled stems in front,
and a few swift strokes cleared the way into the open.
Yes! there was a space in the centre, after all—a
clearing over an acre in extent.  There was grass here,
and a few overgrown bananas, and a tangle of yam and
pumpkin vines.  Passion fruit ran in a tangle of wild
luxuriance over the inner wall of the thicket;
pine-apples rotted on the ground and fig-trees spread their
wide leaves unchecked and unpruned....  In the middle
of all was a house—a one-storied little bungalow,
iron-roofed, with a tank to catch the rain.  There was a
long, low store behind it, and something that looked
like a pig-sty, and something that might have been a
fowl-run.  But....

But everything was rotten, ruined, overgrown, hardly
to be distinguished in the thick tangle of vegetation
that had overflowed the little retreat like a great green
wave let loose upon a low-lying shore.  Vaiti knew what
she was going to see before she had reached the door
of the bungalow—a rotten floor, with green vines
shooting up between the crevices, and bush rats scuffling
and squeaking under the boards—a rusted iron roof,
where pink convolvulus bloom peeped in under the
rafters, and lizards sunned themselves in the airy blue
furniture unglued and decayed fast sinking into one
common mass of ruin—door aslant, and thresholds
sunken.  Everywhere silence, emptiness, decay.  There
needed no explanation of the vanished pathway.

The Maori blood owns strange instincts.  Again Vaiti
knew what she was going to see before it came—knew,
and walked straight over to a certain corner of the
enclosure, as if she had been there before....  It was
under a scarlet-flowered hibiscus tree that she found
it—a long, low grave, fenced round with a wall of coral
slabs, so that the overflowing bush had surged less
thickly here, and one could see that there was something
lying on the mound, only half hidden by creeping
vines—something long and white and slender.

Vaiti dragged away the creepers....  Yes, it was a
skeleton, bare and fleshless, with bony fingers and black,
empty eyes.  There was a splintered gap in one temple,
and close to one of the hands lay a mass of rusted steel
that had once been a revolver.

On a flat white stone, standing at the head of the
grave, a long inscription had been carved with infinite
care in three different languages.  Two of them Vaiti
did not understand, but the third was English.  She
pulled the growing ferns off the stone, and, wiping its
surface, read:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   "Here is buried Junia, of the race of Vasilieff.
   Died 20th June, 1889.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   "Here is buried Anton, son of Junia Vasilieff
   and her husband, Alexis, Baron Varsovi,
   Born 20th June, died 21st June,
   1889.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   "Here rests Alexis, Baron Varsovi.  Into the
   unknown thou didst follow me: into the
   Great Unknown I follow thee.
   Reunited 21st June, 1889."

.. vspace:: 2

Vaiti, descendant of cannibal chiefs and lawless
soldiers, more than half a pirate herself, and hard of
nature as a beautiful flinty coral flower, was yet at
bottom a woman after all.  What passed in the breast
of this dark, wild daughter of the southern seas, as she
stood above the strange, sad record of loves and lives
unknown, cannot be told.  But in a little while, with
some dim recollection of the long-ago, gentle, pious days
of her convent school, she knelt down beside tie lonely
grave, and, crossing herself, said something as near to
a prayer as she could remember.  Then, still kneeling,
she cut and tied two sticks into the form of a cross,
and set them upright in the earth of the mound.  The
sun was slanting low and red across the grave as she
turned away.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"What'd she give you?" asked Harris eagerly, as
the bo'sun stepped across the gang-plank on to the
quay.  The lights of San Francisco were blazing all
about, the cars roared past, there was a piano-organ
jangling joyously at the corner.

"Fifty dollars for the two of us," said Gray, his acid
face sweetened with unwonted smiles.

"Crikey!  Honest men is riz in the market at last!
What in h—— can she have got herself?"

"Might as well arst me what she got it for.  Don't
know, and don't care, so long as we've got the makings
of a spree like this out of it.  I see her comin' out of
the Rooshian Consulate this mornin' lookin' like as if
some one 'ad been standin' treat to her."

"You know she don't touch anything."

"I'm speaking figuryative; she looked that sort of
way.  And coming' back to the ship, she says to the
old man, she says: 'Why, dad, better dead than alive!'
she says.  And he laughs."

"Don't sound 'olesome," observed Harris thoughtfully.

"Now, don't you get to thinkin', for you ain't built
that way, and you'll do yourself a mischief," said the
boatswain warningly.  "And let's be thankful to
'eaven for all its mercies, say I, that we've got such a
nice, warm, dry, convenient night for to go and get
drunk in."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WHAT CAME OF THE PARIS DRESS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   WHAT CAME OF THE PARIS DRESS

.. vspace:: 2

The effects of Saxon's illness in Fiji were a long time
in wearing off.  It was many weeks after Vaiti had come
back to the *Sybil*, flushed with importance and with
the lionising she had received on the cable-ship—many
weeks after the voyage to the unknown island and the
visit to San Francisco—that he took ill again; not very
seriously, but badly enough to prevent his going to sea.
Of course, the time was an awkward one.  They were
off Niué, and there was copra waiting to be taken to
Raratonga for the steamer—copra which would certainly
be secured by some other schooner if Saxon did not
take it at the promised date.  Neither Harris nor Gray
knew enough to be trusted with the ship, and he did
not much care about letting Vaiti sail her—not because
he doubted his fiery daughter's ability or desire, but
because, rash as he was himself at times, he knew her
to be still worse.  He had seen her run the *Sybil* in the
trough of the very last swell alongside a barrier reef for
miles, sailing all the time so close to the wind that the
shifting of a single point would have meant destruction.
He had heard her raving about the deck in half a gale
as they swept up to the iron-bound coast of Niué,
abusing Harris in the strongest of beach talk because
he had not another main topsail in the locker to replace
the two that had just carried away one after the other
and battered themselves to ribbons—the principal
ground of her complaint being apparently the fact that
she considered herself labouring under a social
disadvantage of the most mortifying kind because the
schooner was obliged to come up to Niué for the very
first time without all sails set.  He had seen her perform
tricks of steering, getting in and out of Avarua in
Raratonga (a perfect death-trap of a port at times, as
all old islanders know), that "fairly gave him the
jim-jams," to use his own phraseology....  No, on
the whole he thought he would rather miss that fright
than lie idle in the trader's house at Avatele, and think
daily and nightly of the cranky though light-heeled
*Sybil* out upon the high seas in Vaiti's sole command.

This being so, it was natural and inevitable that Vaiti
should set her heart upon going and carry out her
desire.  She did not make any trouble about the matter;
neither was she at all unkind to the invalided owner of
the ship.  On the contrary, she paid the trader's wife
more than that kindly woman wanted, to take good
care of her father while she should be away, bought him
everything decent to eat that the island contained
(which was saying very little), indulgently presented
him with a demijohn of whisky, and then informed him,
in the coolest manner in the world, that the copra was
all loaded, the stores and water on board, and the
schooner ready to sail next day, under her command.

Saxon swore at large first of all, then stormed at
Vaiti, and finally began a pathetic lament over his own
helpless position and the heartlessness of his only child.
Vaiti, sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed, smoked
a big cigar through it all and looked out of the window.
When he stopped at last, fairly run out, she laughed
and handed him a weed out of her own case and a match.

"You take'm that, no speak nonsense.  You know
me, what?" she demanded; and Saxon, who was not
in reality nearly as ill as he thought himself, laughed,
and allowed himself to be won over.

Having gained her point, Vaiti went off again to the
schooner through the wonderful pink dusk that wraps
a South Sea island at sunset, and left the captain to hold
commune with his demijohn and sleep.

As she walked down to the shore, she heard a sound
of laughing and the rustle of many dresses among the
palms close at hand.  Now in Niué it is an important
matter that brings people out of evenings, because,
although the island has been Christianised long ago,
like all the rest of the Eastern Pacific, it still suffers from
a perfect plague of heathen ghosts that no amount of
Sunday church-goings and week-day pious exercises
seem to affect in the least.  So the natives are afraid
to go out of their houses after sunset, lest uncanny
things should rise out of the forest to spring upon the
wayfarer's back unseen and choke him.  This Vaiti
knew, so she suspected something of interest in the little
crowd, and turned aside to look.  If she had not, there
had been no story to tell about Niué and the happenings
there.

She saw a curious scene, so nearly hidden by the
growing dark that no one but an island resident could
have taken in its full significance.  A group of islanders,
men and women stood round the door of a big white
concrete house with a pandanus roof—the finest native
house in the village.  They seemed to be waiting for
something—something both amusing and exciting, to
judge by the explosions of giggles that continually burst
through the dusk.

Presently the door of the house swung open with
considerable violence, and a large mat was thrown out
by an invisible hand.  Then the door was slammed,
and the giggles redoubled.  Within the house now
sounded something very like a struggle.  There were
loud sobs and cries of a shrill, theatrical kind, scuffling.
banging, and a dragging sound.

"Tck, tck, tck," went the tongues of the outsiders
delightedly.  The interesting moment was at hand.

It came without warning.  The door burst open with
still more violence than before, and out upon the mat
was shot by some invisible agency a very solid young
woman in a white loose gown, weeping somewhat
mechanically, but with much effect.  She fairly rolled
over with the force of the shock that had ejected her,
and before she could pick herself up the door was closed
once more with a slam that shook the whole house.
Then the waiting group rushed upon her with cries of
joy, and bore her away in their midst, singing as they
went.

"A wedding," said Vaiti to herself.  "It must be
Mata's; that is their house.  And it will be a big
wedding, too.  I did not know that it was to be so
soon."

She fell into a fit of musing as she wandered
shorewards among the leaning palms....  The palms of
Niué sweep downwards to the gleaming sea like a band
of lovely maidens hurrying with sweet impatience to
meet their lovers on the coral shore.  Of a moonlight
night, when all things are possible, and nothing seems
too wonderful in an air that itself is wonder, it needs
but little for those white, slender stems, and tossing,
plumy crowns, poised high above the shadowy beach
they curve to meet, to change themselves into South
Sea dryads of a new and lovely race, and rush down,
at long last, upon the calling sea, where Tangaroa, the
king of ocean, has his dwelling.  Under the palms of
Niué, when the blazing white moon has risen so high
in the heavens that a perfect star of jetty shadow is
rayed about the base of every tree—when the wandering
sea winds are held close by the breathless spell of
midnight and nothing wakes on all the lonely shore but the
long, long song of the droning coral reef—under the
wonderful palms of Niué, loveliest and strangest of all
the islands in that dreamy world of "perilous seas and
fairylands forlorn"—nothing is too strange to be true,
no fancy too wild to hold, when the moon is up and the
palms are alone with the sea....

Was Vaiti thinking of visionary palm-maidens and
sea-foam kings as she went down the winding path to
the bay, through a wondrous afterglow of russet-rose
laced through with opal moonrays?  Perhaps—or of
kindred fancies.  I who knew her cannot say, for no
one ever knew her altogether.  It is more likely,
however, that less poetic thoughts were in her mind just
then.  The scene she had witnessed in the palm-grove
was the usual ceremony that takes place in Niué the
night before a wedding, when the friends of the
bridegroom come to the house of the bride's parents, and
the latter go through the symbolical form of casting her
out and closing the door, so that the bridegroom's people
may take her over and guard her until the wedding
morning.  Vaiti liked a wedding above all things (next
to a funeral), and the hint of great doings on the morrow,
offered by the ceremony she had witnessed, decided her
to stay another day.  Why not?  The copra was
loaded, and no rivals were in sight.  Besides, she had
a motive for staying—the strongest possible motive.
She wanted to wear her Paris dress.

Yes, it had been acquired at last.  That day in San
Francisco, when she had come out of the Russian
Consulate with more money in her pocket than any one
of her adventures had ever brought before, she had been
able to restrain herself no longer.  And thereafter, in
Madame Retaillaud's elegant and exclusive Parisian
emporium, replete with the choicest imported wares
(I quote the lady's own description of her goods), there
took place a scene that is remembered to the present
day by those of Madame Retaillaud's young ladies who
survived the earthquake year.

Vaiti, dressed in one of her waistless muslin gowns,
with a broad-leafed island hat on her head, a long-bladed
sheath-knife stuck quite visibly in the breast
of her dress, and her wavy hair falling loose over her
shoulders, stalked into the shop among the smartly-gowned
San Francisco ladies who were turning over
Madame's stock, and demanded to see—

"One dress belong Palisi, pretty dam quick."

They are used to all sorts of strange nationalities along
the water-front in San Francisco, but not, as a rule, in
the milliners' and modistes' well-bred establishments.
Vaiti concentrated the whole attention of the place upon
herself at a single stroke.  She did not care about that
in the least, but Madame's hesitation stung her, and she
pulled out a thick wad of notes.

"Look 'em alive, my hearties!" she ordered
impatiently in her quarter-deck voice.  "Lay aft here
with that goods.  I want um Palisi model, all sort."

The customers were nearly in hysterics by this time,
and the assistants were all a-giggle.  Madame herself,
however, grasped the situation in a twinkling, and
frowned down the girls.  Whoever and whatever this
pirate queen might be, she certainly had money, and
Madame would have welcomed Lucrezia Borgia or the
Witch of Endor, under like circumstances, as pleasantly
as an Anglo-American duchess.

"Perhaps Madame will come into a private room.
Madame would like, no doubt, to look at our most
exclusive goods, and we do not bring them into the
outer shop," she said in her most honeyed voice.  And
the door of the lift closed upon the pair.

What Vaiti underwent in that fitting-room in the
course of getting into Madame's latest model promenade
gown, built for a typical French figure, will never be
told.  Early in the proceedings a message came down
to the showroom for the strongest pair of Paris corsets
in stock, and a little later Madame herself, very red and
overheated, ran down to select a fresh silk lace.

"Ah, but she has courage, that one!" she declared,
as the lift received her again.  "Never, no,
never!—jamais de la vie! ..."

The lift went up.

It was almost an hour before a wonderful vision sailed
slowly through the show-room and out into the street—slowly,
not alone for pride, but also because it could
scarcely move or draw its breath.  The vision, as
described in the receipted bill that went with it, was
made up of the following elements:

"One promenade costume (model, Doucet & Cie.)
composed of chiffon velours, couleur poussière de roses,
inlet with motifs of point d'Alençon, hand-embroidered
with lilies of the valley in French paste.  Mounted on
chiffon bleu-de-ciel, with full volants edged lace and
chiffon ruching.  Made over foundation of glacé silk,
couleur citron d'or.

"One set silk underclothing to match.

"One Corset Ecraseur, patent laces.

"One pair bronze promenade shoes, Louis XV. heels,
extra height.  Stockings to match.

"One parasol composed peau-de-soie rose fanée and
chiffon bleu-de-ciel."

To which may be added—one young woman, suffering
horrible agony and quite intoxicated with happiness.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



It was this marvellous possession that Vaiti yearned
to show off at the wedding.  She had not had a chance
to wear it since the day when she had walked through
the streets of San Francisco, with an admiring and
amused crowd at her rear, and found it quite impossible
to get on board the schooner, when she reached the water
front, until she took off her voluminous skirt and handed
it up over the side—afterwards climbing the rope-ladder
in a storm of applause and a pink silk petticoat.
Now the occasion for getting full value out of the
wonderful thing had come at last, and she could not—no,
she really could not—miss it.

Rather late next morning, when the bride and
bridegroom—the former in a gorgeous gown of yellow curtain
muslin, the latter in a thick tweed suit from Auckland
that caused him to stream at every pore—were sitting
on opposite sides of the little white church, enthroned
on chairs all by themselves, and listening decorously to
a long preliminary address from the native pastor—Vaiti
swept in, and at once brought the ceremony to a
momentary pause.  The pastor stopped in his address
and gaped, the women exclaimed audibly, the bridegroom
fixed his eyes on the apparition and sighed in a manner
that the bride evidently resented as a personal slight,
for she grew still darker in the face than nature had made
her, and stared penknives and scissors at Vaiti.  Wild
titters of delight swept indecorously through the church.
The entry was indeed a success—the native pastor
found it necessary to address his flock directly, and to
tell them that they would undoubtedly all go to hell
if they did not behave better in church, before order
was restored.

It is not necessary to relate at length how Mata and
Ivi were made one, how they walked out of the church
nonchalantly by different doors, and were subsequently
so deeply interested in the killing of the pigs for the
marriage feast, and the preparing of the various cooking-pots,
that they did not meet again all afternoon.  It
was a commonplace wedding enough, and this history
is not interested in it, other than as it concerned the
affairs of Vaiti.  These, indeed, were fairly notable.

For with Vaiti pride very literally brought about a
fall that day.

She had had a terrible time getting into her dress, and
the whole ship's company had shared in the trouble.
First, the native A.B.'s had to fetch her a big looking-glass
from the nearest trader's, and secure it to the
bulkhead of her cabin.  Then the cook had to deliver
up all the hot water in the galley—at seven bells, with
dinner just coming on!—and the boatswain must needs
broach the cargo for some special scented soap.  Matters
were only beginning, however.  When the dress was
disinterred from its many wrappings and finally put on
it became immediately apparent that the bodice could
not possibly be made to meet.  Perhaps the coming of
the bread-fruit season had caused the young lady's
waist to expand—perhaps the practised art of Madame
Retaillaud had exceeded anything that a mere amateur
could compass in the way of lacing.  At any rate, it
was not till Vaiti had passed her corset laces out through
the port and ordered two of the strongest sailors to tail
on to them—not till Harris, agonising with laughter,
had directed this novel evolution from the poop for at
least five delirious minutes, during which Vaiti several
times thought she was dying, but remained none the
less determined to die rather than give in, that the
deed was accomplished at last, and the "Kapitani" of
*Sybil* was enabled to look at herself in the glass and
know heavenly certainty that she was the best
dressed woman in the Pacific at that instant, whoever
saw or did not see.

The natural result of all this was that in the very
hour of her triumph she fainted dead away in the
church, for the first time in her life, and had to be
carried out.

The ceremony was just over by now, and the bride,
still burning with jealousy of the woman who had dared
to eclipse her on her wedding day, was among the first
of those who crowded round like bees going after honey,
to stare at the beautiful creature lying senseless on the
sunburnt grass.  The bridegroom had sped away hot-foot
in the direction of the village, whence certain
enticing yells indicated that the pig-slaughter was now
going on; but Mata was not a bit appeased by his
indifference to the visitor.  That dress—and oh, how
wonderful it was!—still rankled in her soul.

Mata was a teacher's daughter, and she knew something
of white people's lore.  A brilliant thought darted into
her mind as she pressed and struggled in the crowd
about the deathly form on the grass....

"Ai, ai! she is surely dead!" wailed the people.
"Ai! the-great chieftainess will rise no more!"

"Daughters of a turtle!" said Mata contemptuously.
"I will show you if she is dead.  It is nothing at all but
that she is vain, and wanted to make herself a middle
like the 'papalangi' women, who all look like stinging
hornets.  Give me a knife, someone."

A knife was given, and Mata, with horrid joy, half
lifted Vaiti and slipped the keen point into the back of
the dress.

Rip went the silk with a hideous splitting noise, and
the delicate underwear swelled out through the opening
like a bush lily bursting its sheath.  Mata felt for
the stay-lace, and cut that too.  The tension on the
bodice increased frightfully—the seams gaped and
strained....

"She will die, I think, if I do not cut it off," said
Mata hastily, feeling Vaiti reviving under her hand, and
anxious to finish her work.  Two more cuts of the knife
did it.  The Paris dress was, speaking sartorially, no
more; the owner, lying on the ground, was opening her
eyes to the outrage that had been done; and Mata,
shrieking with malign laughter, was fleeing wildly through
the palms in the direction of the pig-killing, peace in her
heart again.

Peace was very far indeed from Vaiti's heart when
she revived and found out what had been done.  The
crowd drew away from her in fear when they saw her
flashing eyes and set, furious mouth, though she said
never a word.  Confronted by that Medusa-head, they
were almost too terrified to find words; but one or two
stammered out a hasty explanation that freed the
present company from blame by inculpating Mata.

Vaiti did not doubt it—she had seen the bride's face
during the ceremony.  Still silent, but flashing looks of
sheet-lightning all about her, she drew together her
garments as best she could, and walked off in the direction
of the ship.  As she did so, a little ugly man with red
hair slipped out from behind the trees, and looked
narrowly at her retreating figure.

"It is the white man from the bush!" cried the
girls.  "White man of ours, why did you not come
down for the wedding?"

"Because I didn't, my little dears," replied the
newcomer in English, still looking after Vaiti.  He stood
well in the shade, and did not make himself unnecessarily
conspicuous.

"That's a fine girl, that Mata," he added by and by.
"A smart girl.  I should like to know Mata."

Vaiti put off her going for yet another day.  She had
business to attend to.

It was very simple business, and it was characterised
by the directness that attended all the proceedings of
Saxon's daughter.  She merely went up to the bride's
new home, that was so handsomely stocked with trade
goods and imported furniture, while the wedding party
were making merry in the village after dark, and set
fire to it with a torch in about a dozen places.  It was
very dry weather, and there was a strong wind.

There was scarce a stick of the cottage left when she
marched into the village with a blazing torch in her
hand, and calmly told the assembled revellers what
she had done.  Then she left them, seething in a tumult
of excitement that almost drowned the hysteric screams
of Mata, and went to bed and to sleep with a quiet
mind, ready for an early start next morning.

The men came on board late and very drunk, but
they did come.  They were afraid of Vaiti, and so was
Harris, who would very well have liked to extend his
revels in the village for another twelve hours, but did
not dare to do so.  He thought, as he stumbled into his
bunk, that the sounds proceeding from the forecastle
were a good deal odder than usual—he could almost
have sworn that there was one person, if not several,
crying in there.  But he had good reason for mistrusting
the evidence of his senses just then, so he flung himself
down and went to sleep.




.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A DEAD MAN'S REVENGE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   A DEAD MAN'S REVENGE

.. vspace:: 2

When one is well on the right side of five-and-twenty,
with a good ship underfoot, a fair breeze setting steadily
from the right quarter, and a pleasant goal ahead, it is
hard to be unhappy.  Vaiti's sense of bereavement at
the loss of her cherished dress faded considerably before
the *Sybil* had fairly cleared the land, and was gone
altogether by the next day.  She had done what she felt
to be the right thing by Mata; the score was even.
Vaiti did not like loose ends of any kind, and she had
not left any behind her.  She smiled as she thought of
it, and paused in her official-looking walk across and
across the poop, to revile a native A.B. for leaving the
end of a halyard trailing on deck.

"You d—— lazy nigger," she said.  "What sort
ship you thinking you stop?  You thinking one mud
scow" (*Mud cow* was her pronunciation), "one pig-boat,
one canoe belong dam man-eating Solomon boy?  I
teaching you some other thing pretty quick.  Suppose
you no flemish-coil that halyard, keep him coil all-a-time,
I let 'em daylight inside that black hide belong you,
knock 'em two ugly eye into one."

She plucked a belaying-pin out of the rail and sent it
flying at the sailor's ear.  Vaiti was a straight thrower,
but the crew seldom failed to dodge; they had every
opportunity of becoming proficient.  On this occasion,
however, the sailor made not the least attempt to escape,
and the pin struck him fair and square at the angle of
the jaw, and knocked him over.  He was hurt, but not
stunned, and sat up immediately on the deck, gazing at
the tall white figure on the poop with lack-lustre eyes
that scarcely seemed to comprehend what they saw.

"Bring 'em that pin," commanded Vaiti, still in what
stood for English with her.  She never addressed the
crew in the tongue that was native to both.

The man crept slowly aft, and handed it to her.  She
motioned to him to replace it neatly in the rail, and
then pointed to the trailing halyard.  It did not escape
her, as the sailor made his way down to the main deck,
that there were tears in his large black eyes, and that
his pareo was tied with a carelessness unusual among
Polynesians, and significant of trouble and depression
when seen.  But she put the one down to the swelled
and reddening bruise that marked all one side of his face
and the other to the orgies of the previous night.  If
the men chose to make brutes of themselves on bush-beer,
they need not expect that she was going to slacken
their work for them on that account.  No, not if she
broke the head of every man in the ship.  She was
not Saxon's daughter for nothing, as they very well knew.

It was small wonder that Vaiti was not popular with crews.

She went on pacing the deck, in the joyous crystal-clear
sunlight of the sea.  The trade wind ran through
the sky like a warm, blue river, the rigging sang, the sails
drew steadily.  It was a good day, a happy day, a
pleasant day to be alive.  The girl felt pleased with
the world.  She took the wheel from the sailor who
held it, for the sheer pleasure of feeling the flying vessel
answer to the touch of her own light hand.  All the
force and fury of those roaring sails overhead seemed to
concentrate itself here in her fingers, as the power of a
great dynamo passes through a single wire.  It was
almost as if she drove the ship herself.  The *Sybil*
went as steady as an albatross; once or twice the
spokes fairly shook in her hands.

"The wheel is laughing to-day," she said in Maori,
using the island sailor's expression.

Dinner-time came round soon, and she descended
to eat with Harris alone.  Saxon himself did not
particularly care whether he dined with his bo'sun or not,
if it happened to be convenient to leave Harris on
deck; but Vaiti would have run the ship as strictly
as a man-of-war at all times, if she could have had her
way.  Indeed, she would have liked to dine in solitary
state, like the captain of a cruiser, had she not had too
much good sense to fly in the face of merchant service
custom by excluding the mate.

As things were, she graciously condescended to order
Harris down to the cabin with her, and they discussed
together the inevitable curried tin of Pacific cookery.
It was wonderfully light and bright in the little cabin,
which was large for the size of the ship, and had plenty
of berth and locker space, besides its neatly fitted trade
shelves.  The bulkheads were painted white picked out
with blue (they were satinwood and bird's-eye maple
underneath the paint, a thing which had astonished
and perplexed more than one ship's carpenter in the
past quarter of a century), and there was a pretty
bird's-nest fern in a basket hanging from the skylight, and the
seats were covered with the neatest thing in blue and
white trade prints that Auckland could produce.  Vaiti's
taste was evident everywhere, and Vaiti herself, hair
freshly combed and held back with a bright ribbon, laces
and frills dainty and immaculate as ever, looked, as she
demurely poured out tea (you will seldom find the teapot
absent from the table of a colonial ship), quite the last
sort of person by whom a native A.B. might expect
to be knocked into the scuppers.  Yet, truth to tell,
the unlicked Harris, wolfing his food at the opposite
side of the table, was very much better liked by the crew,
even though he was heavy-handed enough at times;
and he certainly understood more about the five A.B.'s
and one ordinary seaman who inhabited the forecastle
than did Vaiti, who was half one of themselves, and
therefore thought them beneath consideration as a rule.

Of this fact he proceeded to give an illustration when
the curry and the tea and the fried bananas were almost
done, and nobody's dinner could be spoilt by unpleasant
news.

"Think you're in for a good time, don't you, Cap?"
he said.

Vaiti, the economical of words, merely nodded.  But
her face spoke for her.

Harris was never quite sure whether he liked Vaiti
in an uncomfortable, indefinite way, or heartily hated
her.  To-day the balance perhaps inclined in the latter
direction.  He watched her face with some interest
as he said:

"That's where you spoils yourself, Cap.  You ain't.
And if you want my advice, which you never do, I'd
tell you that the sooner you 'bouts ship and back to
Niué the better."

Vaiti bit slowly through the piece of bread she was
eating and deliberately chewed it, eyeing the mate all
the time, before she condescended to answer.

"Mph!" was all she said at last.  She had never
studied diplomacy, but she knew how much more you
learn in general by letting the other person lead the
conversation than by talking yourself.  And it occurred
to her that Harris wanted to make himself important
by hinting and patronising over some ship business
which might, or might not, be in his department.  Well,
let him.  She would not give him a lead.

Harris, on his part, got angry at once, and blurted
out what he had meant to keep a good deal longer.

"Oh, very well," he said.  "You can do just as
you likes, of course, but where you'll find yourself
when it comes to a question of mutiny, that's another
two-and-six.  Musling curtains on the ports, and white
table-cloths, and ropes all flemish-coiled on deck is
going to help you a lot then, ain't they?  And if ever
I've seen signs of trouble in a crew, I seen them to-day,
and you knows it—ma'am."

The last word came with a jerk, screwed out, as it
were, by an ominous flash of Vaiti's eye.

Vaiti herself was thinking very quickly indeed, but
you would not have imagined it if you had seen her
slowly scooping out the inside of a mummy-apple, and
as slowly eating it.  She was obliged to acknowledge
to herself, now Harris had spoken, that there had been
something unusual about the demeanour of more than
one of the men since their departure yesterday.  But
mutiny?  Nonsense!  Indigestion from too much pork,
more likely.  She did not believe for an instant that any
crew once handled by her father and herself would have
an ounce of mutiny left in the lot, if you ran them
through a stamp-mill and assayed the result three times
over.

So she merely remarked, between spoonfuls:

"You talk plenty nonsense.  You keep those men
work, they no squeak.  Suppose you finish eat, you go
tell Gray he come down ki-ki."

"All right!" said Harris meaningly, trying to make
an effective and tragic exit.  He was really not at all
easy in his mind, and Vaiti's attitude did nothing to
relieve his apprehension of what might be about to
follow.  The men had never dragged on the rein as
they had done these two days past, and he felt it in his
bones that there was more than met the eye in the
matter.

Vaiti, for her part, was so much incensed by the tone
of his remonstrance that she would not even listen to
the conviction which began to force itself upon her own
mind, next day, that there was really something astray.
Luck in general seemed to have deserted them.  With
a fair wind the schooner should have made the run to
Raratonga in three days, but on the afternoon of the
second day a dead calm had fallen, and they lay helpless
in the trough of the sea by four o'clock, three hundred
miles from anywhere.

"All-a-time I saying no good trust those trade winds,
when that (adjective) Cook Islands be near," sighed
Vaiti, scanning the horizon vainly right and left.  Like
a true sailor, she was generally cross in a calm.

"I wish we was out of this, ma'am, I do," remarked
Gray, who was busy spinning sinnet at her feet on the
deck.  For some odd reason, the sour old bo'sun generally
found her more approachable than the others.

"Why?" asked Vaiti, almost amiably.

"Because, ma'am, of that, for one thing.  And hothers."

He pointed forward, and Vaiti saw what she had
not noticed before, the ship's carpenter, a powerful
young Mangaian, lying flat on the foc'sle head and
obviously weeping.

"They've been at that game, one and another, off
and on, ma'am, all to-day," he said.  "And you know
yourself 'ow we've been put to it to get the work out of
them.  Darned if I knows what monkey tricks they's
up to, but I allow we're liable to understand all about
it before very long, for that sea-lawyer of a fellow,
Shalli, he's bin speechifyin' down in the foc'sle 'alf
of this watch, like a bloomin' 'Yde Park sosherlist,
he has."

Vaiti glanced at her watch.

"Make him eight bell," she ordered, scanning the
foc'sle hatch.

"Ay, ay, ma'am," said Gray readily, passing on the order.

The watch below were prompt enough about turning
out, but Shalli the forlorn could not, it seemed, find
energy enough to get up and turn in.  Instead, he beat
his curly head upon the planks and began to sob.  Vaiti
took no notice of him whatever, but just strolled
nonchalantly for a minute into her cabin, and reappeared
with a slight projection in the bosom of her muslin
dress that had not been there before.  Harris and Gray
looked at each other significantly, and the former cast
a swift glance about the vacant horizon.  No, not a
shred of sail, not a trail of smoke.  Only the glancing
flying-fish, and the oily, glittering swell, and the hard,
pale, empty sky.

The men, who had all been standing in a bunch by
the hatch, now signalled to Shalli, who put off the rest
of his weeping to a more convenient season, and got
upon his feet.  Then the six began advancing slowly
and uncertainly to the break of the poop.  They were a
good-looking crew in their way, all Eastern Pacific men,
with bright eyes and well-featured brown faces, and
their dress—the brilliant red or yellow "pareo" of
the islands, gaily figured with enormous white flowers,
and the bright cotton shirt or coloured jersey—lent a
distinctly operatic air to the little scene.  Vaiti and
her officers, however (like Molière's *bourgeois* who had
talked prose all his life without knowing it), had lived
in the midst of picturesque and extraordinary things
most of their lives, and therefore took no interest, as
a rule, in anything save the sternest practicalities.

And it was stern enough in all conscience, this fact
with which they were confronted.  The men were
mutinous, beyond doubt.

Vaiti's mind rapidly ran over all possible causes
for the trouble, even while Shalli was stepping forward
and opening his mouth to speak.  It could not be rough
treatment, because, as a matter of fact, the men were
no worse handled on the *Sybil* than on most other
island schooners, and an occasional knock-down blow
is not the sort of thing that a Pacific native will
seriously resent.  It could not be any objection to go
to Raratonga—the crew were mostly Cook Islanders
themselves, and glad of a chance of seeing their homes.
Nor could it be dislike to her command, for a chief
rank counts tremendously among Polynesians; and
islanders who were ruled at home by a queen of her
family would be most unlikely to strike against the
authority of one of the Makea race, unless for some
very grave cause.  It was, of course, possible that they
had planned to seize the schooner and run off with it....
She put her hand up to her bosom, and played
with the laces that lay over that hard substance under
the dress....

But Shalli was speaking now, in answer to her sharp
query as to what they wanted there.

He had a good deal to say, and he said it with flashing
eyes and much eloquence, using his slender, pointed,
brown fingers a good deal to emphasise his remarks,
and turning dramatically from his mates to Vaiti,
and back to his mates again.  Harris listened anxiously,
catching only a stray word here and there, for his
knowledge of Maori was confined to the few phrases
used in running the ship.  Shalli was certainly saying
that somebody was going to die—that somebody had
got to die, and immediately—to judge by the emphasis
with which he spoke....  The mate was, as Vaiti had
once told him, rather chicken-hearted underneath his
great bulk and strength.  He felt himself turning
chilly, for all the burning sky.  What the devil did that
fiend of a Vaiti mean by standing there listening as
calmly as if they were paying her compliments on her
eyes?  Perhaps there was no particular trouble after
all; but her demeanour was no guarantee, for she would
have looked like that if they had all been on the verge
of drowning, or burning, or hanging together, any day
of the week.

Gray, on the other hand, did not trouble to try and
make out anything, but cut a large quid and chewed
it at leisure, idly looking on.  He did not know if the
men meant mutiny or not, and he did not particularly
care.  They were three whites against six niggers,
and there were firearms on their side.  And he had seen
mutinies in his time beside which any little amusement
that could be got up by half a dozen amiable Cook
Islanders would seem a mere Sunday-school tea-party.
Let them mutiny if they liked.  It would not mean
the interruption of the work for half a watch.

And Shalli went on talking as if he never would stop,
and the *Sybil* rolled ceaselessly on the idle swell, and
the useless sails slapped rhythmically upon the mast.
And Vaiti, standing on the poop above the group
of men on the main-deck, listened with an unmoved
countenance until quite the end of Shalli's long
speech.

When he had finished he turned his face away, and
instantly began to weep.  And the five other men,
exactly as if a tap had been turned on, also began to
weep at the same moment, howling loudly and lifting
their hands to heaven.

"If this isn't a bloomin' mutiny, it's a bloomin'
lunatic asylum," declared Harris quite inaudibly in
the midst of the hideous noise from the main-deck.
It is not a common thing, even in that world where all
things are possible, the wide, strange Pacific Ocean,
to see a whole ship's company shedding tears in concert
on a calm and peaceful afternoon, with nothing more
alarming in sight than a handsome young woman in
an expensively pretty frock.

"Ow-ow-ow!" went Shalli, getting quite beyond
his own control.

"Ey-ah, eyah!" screamed a plump lad from Aitutaki,
fluttering his hands like frantic pigeons.

"For God's sake, Vaiti, tell us what's up," called
Harris, sending his bull-like tones through the confusion.

And then Vaiti spoke, shrieking at the top of her voice
in order to be heard.  Her face, its hard calm broken
up at last, was black with rage, and she had pulled out
her revolver, and was holding it in her hand, though,
strange to say, none of the men took the least notice of it.

"That ——, —— witch-man belong Niué, he curse
them, they say they die!" she screamed.  "By'n-by
I cut him liver out!"

"What witch-man?" bellowed Harris.  "Don't
understand.  That white bloke—him with the red hair
and the scar on his nose—who dresses native, and lives
native up in the bush?  Saw him lookin' at you like as
if he'd like to knife you, from behind Mata's house."

"No, pig-head! no white man got 'mana' for make
die that way," shrieked Vaiti, shaking her revolver
without effect at the men.  "Niué witch-man.  What
man you mean?  I not see——"

But she did see at that moment, and to Harris's
utter dismay she dropped the revolver on the deck and
flung her skirt over her head.

"My Gord! she's mad now," cried Harris.  The
crew paid not the least attention, but continued to
weep with lungs of brass.  The mate's head went round.
He felt as if he was going out of his senses, too.  Gray,
who seemed to be the only normal person left on board,
went up to Vaiti and plucked her dress off her face.

"Now, ma'am, keep 'er 'ead to wind," he remonstrated.
"What's got 'old of the Capting?  Blest if
we ever saw you afraid before."

Vaiti turned on him like a tigress.

"You think me frighten, you parrot-face, bal'-head,
humpback pig-monkey!  Think some more those thing,
and I shoot some hole in you lie-making tongue, learn
you talk to me.  I tell you——"

The hubbub on deck was calming down a little now,
and subsiding into lost and homeless wails.  It was
possible to make oneself heard.

"I tell you, that thing Alliti see 'long Niué, he one
dead man.  Captain schooner *Ikurangi*—same I making
tart [chart] all wrong, so he go drown, he and him mate.
You think it good thing one dead man he go walk along
Niué, looking me?"

"A cat may look at a king," said Harris, who had
realised that no fighting was afoot, and therefore was
very brave just now.  "Besides, that red-head man
wasn't no ghost—he borrowed a pouchful of tobacco
off of me, and never paid it back."

"What sort that man?" demanded Vaiti.  "He
small, all same Gray, he ugly all same you, got red hair,
cut 'long him nose, tooth all break?"

"That's him," agreed Harris.

Vaiti took a turn across the deck, and fell silent,
angrily chewing a lock of her hair.  The horrid vision
of Donahue risen from his ocean grave, and wandering
about the islands as a malignant ghost, bent on avenging
his death, had struck her as such a fancy could only strike
an islander, and almost paralysed her active mind.
Now she realised that it was merely a case of mistaken
newspaper report, and that Donahue had somehow
escaped from the wreck of his schooner, and was once
more roaming the islands in the flesh—at the very lowest
ebb of fortune, it was evident, but probably none the
less dangerous for that.  She was quite certain that he
was in some way at the bottom of this business of
cursing the crew, although no doubt the witch-doctor
and Mata had been intermediary.  And it was no trifle.
Sheer mutiny she would have much preferred.

"Wot's it all about?" asked Gray, who had not
been so long in the islands as the mate.  "Wot's the
odds if a lot of bally niggers thinks they've been cursed?
Seems to me anythin' the witch-doctor could do wouldn't
be likely to harm a crew that's been salted by our old
man in the cursin' way.  There ain't no witch-what-d'ye-call-'em
about the islands that can lay over 'im
for language."

"Oh, shut up!  You don't know anything about it,"
said Harris with irritation.

"Suppose you tells me," suggested Gray, tucking
another quid into his cheek, and looking dispassionately
at the crew, who were now lying on deck rolling about
with the motion of the vessel, and looking half dead
already.  "Doesn't seem as if we was goin' to have
much bother with that lot....  And you gettin' as
white at the gills as a flounder, thinkin' they was goin'
to take charge.  Go 'ome and learn a ladies' dancin'-class,
Mr. 'Arris; you ain't fit to 'andle men."

"I'll handle you if——" Harris was beginning
roughly, when Vaiti, whose temper had been badly
ruffled by the events of the last half-hour, stepped across
the deck and delivered two stinging blows, one on
Harris's right ear and one on Gray's left.

"You take'm that," she said.  "Alliti, you speak
bo'sun about Maori 'mana.'  Glay, you lemember
Alliti mate, no give cheek."

"Want to know if I've got any left for myself, before
I start givin' it away," observed the bo'sun ruefully,
rubbing his face.  "But better be slapped nor neglected
by a pretty girl, hany day, says I."

Vaiti did not smile, but leaned over the rail, and
began staring at the crew.  She was in no mood for
flattery.

"Well, if you want to know, it's like this," said
Harris.  "These native blokes, they thinks some of
their chiefs has got what they call 'mana.'"

"Wot's that mean?"

"Pretty near any thin', take it by and large, but
one meanin's all we want, and that's the notion they
have that these chiefs can sort of blast 'em with a
curse, so's they'll go away and die.  Like as if I was a
chief, and you was a common man, same as you are,
anyhow, and I was to say, 'Gray, you go off out of this
and die next Thursday at four bells in the afternoon
watch.'  And you says to me, says you, 'Ay, ay, sir,'
says you."

"Blowed if I would," ejaculated the bo'sun.

"Yes, you would, you chump, because you'd be a
bloomin' native, and they always does.  So off you'd
go, and when Thursday come you'd lie down and die
at four bells, wherever you happened to be."

"Wot of?"

"Nothin'—you'd run down like a watch—sort of
'stop short never to go again' business, like the
grandfather's clock—and when you was dead you'd stay
dead.  That's all."

"And I never 'eard worse rot in all me days," said
the bo'sun disgustedly.  "Think I'm going to believe all
that?"

"Who cares what you believes or what you don't?"
demanded Harris, "You'll —— well see all about it
soon enough.  Vaiti she says they says Mata went to
the witch-doctor, who they're as much afraid of as any
chief in Niué, for all they're by way of bein' Christian, and
he cursed them up and down and inside and out, worst
style, and says they're all to die by sunset, to-night.
And if I knows anything of natives they'll do it.  I'll
lay you, we got to work the ship up to Raratonga
ourselves—if we ever get there.  Of all the low-down,
mean skinks that ever walked, them natives are the
worst.  They haven't a blessed scrap of consideration
in them for anyone but themselves.  Here we are with
every man-jack of these fellows got an advance on his
wages, and they says they're going to die!  Die!  I've
no patience with them.  I do hate selfishness and
meanness."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BREAKING THE MANA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   BREAKING THE MANA

.. vspace:: 2

Vaiti all this time had been steadily watching the
men as they lay about on the main-deck in various
attitudes of limp resignation.  One or two—notably the
emotional Shalli—were already beginning to look ill.
Matters looked badly enough for the *Sybil*.  It was in
the hurricane season, and signs were not wanting that
the calm would break up with energy when it did
break.  If the crew persisted in their dying, other
people who had not been in any way subjected to the
witch-doctor's operations might find it incumbent on
them to die too.  She did not for a moment doubt
the Niuéan's power to slay.  Had she not more than
once seen the queen, who was her own cousin, politely
dismiss some offender with the significant remark,
"I wish I may never see you again after to-morrow"
(for the queen was always courteous, and would never
have used the crude terms of a Niuéan witch-doctor);
and had not every one on the island known that with
the next evening's sunset the wretch would lay him
down and die as surely as the dark would fall?  These
men were doomed, and the ship would miss the steamer
and the cargo would not be sold, and possibly the
schooner would be lost in the blow that was creeping
up, and none of them would ever go home any more.

Thus the native side of Vaiti spoke.  But now the
white side woke up and demanded its innings too.
Was it endurable that the red-headed rat of a Donahue
(for she was as certain that he had been at the bottom
of the matter as only a woman with no direct evidence
to go on can be) should win the last move in the deadly
game they had been playing this year and more.
Was she to get into difficulties, and perhaps lose the
ship, the very first time that she had taken off the *Sybil*
all alone?  The fact that such a disaster would include
the losing of herself did not trouble, as it did not console,
her.  She would leave her reputation behind her, and
people, when they spoke of Vaiti of the Islands, would
say——

No, they wouldn't, and they shouldn't.  The white
blood was up now.  It was impossible to prevent the
"mana" from working.  Well, let it be.  She would
do the impossible.  She had done the impossible before,
in many ways; it was the only sort of thing really
very well worth doing, in the opinion of Vaiti of the
Islands.

Whatever was to be done must be done quickly.
The storm was not far away, and the *Sybil* was rolling
in the trough of the increasing swell with every rag of
sail set.

"What you goin' to do?" asked Harris hopelessly,
as he saw her move.  "Give them medicine?  It
ain't any good."

"Yes, give 'em medicine—you and Gray, you giving
it plenty by'n-by," said Vaiti calmly, beckoning the two
men over to her.  The crew continued to lie on the deck,
giving no sign of life but an occasional groan.  The wind
was beginning to cry a little among the rigging, just
whimpering, like a chidden child.  A glassy tinkling of
foam sounded about the keel.  The sun was almost down.

"You listen me," said the girl, her handsome,
hawk-like features looking curiously sombre in the orange
light.  "I speak those men in Maori.  I tell them some
thing—thing not belong 'papalangi.'  You no
understan'.  Wait."

Then, with a look on her face that the white men
had never seen there before, and were never to see
again, she stepped swiftly down the ladder, crossed
the main-deck, and stood in the midst of the prostrate
crew.

As though struck themselves by a spell, Harris and
Gray remained motionless on the poop, only swaying
with the unconscious movement of the sailor to the roll
of his ship, while they watched with fascinated eyes
the scene upon the lower deck.  The crew at first lay
still as logs, while Vaiti stood and looked at them—only
looked.  Presently they began to open their eyes
and roll over, and the weeping, which had apparently
ceased, began again.

Then Vaiti, suddenly flinging her arms high above
her head, with her light muslin dress fluttering in the
wind and all her magnificent hair falling to her knees,
burst into such a flood of speech as made the two
hard-bitten Englishmen on the poop open eyes of stolid
amaze.  There is no language in the world so full of
eloquent possibilities as the Maori tongue—even in the
somewhat debased and altered type that is current
among the islands.  And, hidden away somewhere in
the strange nature of this strange thing in woman's
shape, there was more than a touch of the true witch
wildness and fire.

"Lord!" said Harris, in a tone of awe.  "She's the
devil himself!"

She looked it, as she stood there in that livid light,
her arms stretched high to heaven, her voice—was there
ever a voice so full of passion, prophecy, command?—ringing
out, now high, now low, now in tones vibrating
with some subtle suggestion of horror that caused even
the uncomprehending whites upon the poop to feel a
cold shudder about the region of the spine.  Upon the
crew the effect was marvellous, yet, from Gray's and
Harris's point of view, unsatisfactory as well.  The
limp figures sat up, it was true, wept afresh, and even
rose to their feet before long; but it was only to rush
wildly up and down the heaving deck, driven, it seemed,
by the sting of an agony greater than any they had
suffered yet.  Above the loose sails thundered and the
wind wailed wickedly.

Gray, at a motion from the mate, went to the idle
wheel and grasped the spokes.  The *Sybil* would want
watching soon.

"Strike me pink if this isn't the craziest ship's
company outside a lunertic asylum from Yokohama to
the 'Orn," muttered the bo'sun to himself.  "Now,
what the 'ell is *that*?  Ho, Jemmy Gray, why don't
you look for a berth as a bally stoker in a bally Red Sea
liner, or a supercargo on a Chinese pirate junk, and
'ave a quiet life at your age?  Here, Mr. 'Arris, you
going to let 'er shoot 'erself before your heyes?"

Vaiti had plucked out her revolver again, but instead
of threatening the crew with it, she was holding it close
to her own curly head, all the time pouring forth a
river of eloquent Maori, strongly charged with adjurations
and threats.  It needed no translation to understand
so much, not to see the abject if inexplicable
terror of the crew, who cowered and howled in an
extremity of distress every time she raised the pistol to
her head.

"Vaiti, Vaiti!  What're you doing, Cap?" yelled
Harris.  "You'll shoot yourself!  Are you crazy?
What are you givin' 'em, for Cord's sake?"

Vaiti turned round, and cried angrily at him:

"Hold 'm tongue!  You no leave me myself, very
quick I shooting you.  I tell those men I great chief,
no one can take 'um curse away, but can come 'long
all those men myself, suppose they die—go Raratonga
when 'um night come, an' all those man soul he running
quick, quick, all a-cold, 'long those mountains top
Raratonga where 'um dead man he go to jumping-off
place.  A—a—h!  I put one bullet in head belong me,
very quick, suppose those men they got dam cheek go
an' die.  I coming, very dead, very angry, I go 'long
that soul, all a-time; no let 'um rest, no let 'um see
woman fliend, die long time ago—I take big club belong
chief, make 'um run, cry, all-a-time—no sleep, no eat,
no lie down!  A—a—h! no go heaven, no go hell,
all-a-time, for ever'n ever, Amen.  I pay him out for
going die!"

She stormed through the brief speech like a hot-season
squall, and instantly returned to the natives.
Harris, struck dumb by the entirely unprecedented
nature of the situation, could find no vent for his feelings
save in plucking off his cap and casting it under his feet.
She was threatening the crew that she would kill herself
if they died; follow them to the land of shades (the
entrance to which was popularly supposed to be over
the edge of a certain desolate, far-up mountain precipice
in Raratonga), and make it so hot for them in the
"otherwhere" that they would certainly wish they
hadn't dared to die....  What on earth was a man to
do in a ship commanded by a thing—he could not call
it a woman—that talked like that—with night coming
on, too, and something very like a bad blow unpleasantly
near?

Vaiti did not leave him long in doubt as to what he
was to do.  The crew, driven previously to the verge
of frenzy by her gruesome threats, became entirely
frantic during the eloquent peroration that followed
her address to Harris.  They ran up and down the deck;
they shrieked, they prayed, they besought.  Vaiti, with
the eye of a hunter watching a quarry almost driven to
bay, kept a keen look-out through all her fiery eloquence,
and just at the moment when the men seamed driven
to the highest point of human endurance, turned to the
mate with a triumphant cry.

"Now, Alliti! he all right by'n-by: I no shoot
myself, I think.  You and bo'sun you get rope's end very
quick, give 'um order shorten sail, make 'um go.  I
think he go; he too much plenty frighten die 'long me."

"Too much plenty frighten" the men were indeed.
The threat that Vaiti had made—for the carrying out
of which they doubted neither her ability nor her will,
any more than she did herself—was so much more potent
than the curse of the witch-doctor that the terror of
the one paled before the terror of the other.  For the
moment, they felt that they might not be able to live,
but they certainly must not die; and it was right in
the middle of this illogical state of mind that the mate
and bo'sun came in with their rope's ends and settled
the matter once for all.  An hour ago, red-hot irons
only would have moved them to hurry up with their
dying.  Now a couple of ropes' ends, laid about among
the six with a will, drove them howling up the masts
and out along the yards, where, with Gray and Harris
still after them, and Vaiti threatening from below,
they succeeded in getting the sails stowed and the vessel
snug in very little over the ordinary time.  The blow
that followed kept all hands busy the night through,
but it came from the right quarter, and the *Sybil* fled
before it at such a speed that morning found her only
half a day's run from Raratonga, with the wind quieting
down to a pleasant breeze, the schooner uninjured, and
the crew as cheerful and busy as they had ever been
in their lives.

Vaiti caught the steamer, sold her copra, and saw it
on the wharf ready to load.  Then she went back to
the schooner, and waited till the last of the men
returned.

"Suppose you like go die now, plenty time for you,"
she said.  "Plenty good sailor-man stop Raratonga.
You go 'long die; I no want."

The men looked at her sheepishly, and Shalli, the
spokesman, scratched his head and surveyed a heap of
tributary pigs, fowls, and fruit that lay on the deck of
the schooner before he answered.  The crew had many
relations about Raratonga, and the relations had done
them very well this trip.

"Many thanks, great chieftainess," he said at last,
in his own tongue.  "We are much obliged to you, but
we have changed our minds, and now we do not ever
mean to die at all."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GAME PLAYED OUT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GAME PLAYED OUT

.. vspace:: 2

Every one in the trader's had gone to bed, and Vaiti,
barefoot and dressed in dark cotton, had just got out
of her room by the window, and was gliding noiselessly
down the back verandah.

The moon was down, and the thick darkness under
the trees of the village covered her safely as she slipped
along at the backs of the little white, palm-thatched
houses.  It was not at all likely that any native would
be about in the middle of the night, but one could never
reckon on white men, of whom there were several in
the little town—and Vaiti, being engaged as usual on
"urgent private affairs," did not want any inquiries.

She got away from the village without remark, and
then struck into one of the narrow grass roads penetrating
the bush.  Everything was asleep.  The little green
parrots were hidden deep under heavy leaves, each
with its noisy head tucked under its wing.  The lizards
that had been darting and flickering all day long about
the path now slept, chill as little stones, among the roots
of the trees.  There was a cold, dewy smell in the air,
and the palm-tree plumes were motionless as drawings
in Indian ink against the violet gloom of the sky.  Very
far away the immemorial music of the reef beat softly
in the dark.

Vaiti girded her dress high, and walked swiftly.  She
had a long way to go, and she wanted to be back in her
neat, white, mosquito-curtained bed, sleeping the sleep
of the innocent, before the trader's wife should come in
with her morning cup of tea.  Vaiti was a past mistress
in the art of avoiding useless comment.

Three miles, five miles, seven miles....  It was
right at the other side of the island, past mile after mile
of tangled bush, acre after acre of sparsely planted,
rocky, open ground, grove after grove of tall, plumy
cocoanut, heavy with fruit.  Oranges grew by the track
here and there; broad green banners of banana leaf
blotted out whole sections of the stars, and slim, quaint
mummy-apple trees stood up among the prickly coral
rocks.  Vaiti had no time to stop, but she snatched a
little refreshment on her way from time to time, as the
wayfarer may always do in the kindly South Sea climate.

She struck at last into a narrow track leading off
the main pathway—so small that in the dusk of the
starry night it must have been invisible save for a mass
of pointed rocks that stood up just beside the overgrown
entrance and made a landmark.  Afterwards came a mile
or two of tangled walking among clumps of pink and
scarlet and yellow hibiscus, all reduced to a common
blackness by the levelling night, and through thorny
lemon-trees, and over rocky knolls where there was
scarce footing for a goat....  A lonely God-forsaken
region this; not a village, nor even the gleam of a
solitary white-washed hut.  What had the "Kapitani"
of the *Sybil* to do with such a place?

Vaiti knew very well indeed what she had to do.  She
had gathered in the town that the mysterious white
man who "lived native" in the bush had his dwelling
about this lonely neighbourhood.  It was very well
known to her, and she meant to find the man's
dwelling-place, and see him with her own eyes before...

Well, that was still to come.

It took her rather longer than she had expected, but
she did at last succeed in finding the tumble-down little
palm-leaf shanty, built against the side of a rock, that
she had heard described.  It was a miserable place,
so far as her cat-like eyes could judge it in the purple
gloom, not more than three or four yards long, and
looking like nothing so much as a heap of dead leaves
and rubbish piled against the rock.  She trod noiselessly
round its three sides, and listened here and there.
The door, as she ascertained by feeling, was a heavy mat
hung up from the eaves, and it was tightly fastened across
the opening.  There was a faint sound of slow, heavy
breathing from within.  The man was evidently asleep.

Vaiti climbed up on the rock above the hut, and pulled
away a piece of the loose grey coral of which it was
composed.  Then, sheltering herself behind a clump
of hibiscus growing in a cleft, she raised her voice in
a fearful squealing cry, exactly reproducing the yell
of a wild pig wandering in the bush at night.  At the
same time she cast a lump of coral with all her strength
down the side of the big rock, whence it landed with a
crash in the middle of a mass of brushwood, burying
itself completely.

The double noise, as she had anticipated, brought
out the owner of the hut, very cross and sleepy, clad
only in a pareo, and angrily anxious for the safety of
his patch of yams.  He carried a torch in his hand,
made of blazing candlenuts strung on a stick ("Must
have run out every bit of credit at the stores," thought
Vaiti parenthetically), and he was, beyond all shadow
of doubt, against all common probability, the
red-haired master of the *Ikurangi*.

If looks could ever blast, those black eyes behind
the hibiscus boughs would have slain him where he
stood.  Vaiti quivered with rage as she watched him
shambling sleepily about, looking, with his long, matted
red hair, bloated, evil face, and half naked body, infinitely
lower than any coloured native on the island....  He
had not prospered since he escaped the wreck of the
*Ikurangi*—how or where she did not care to know.
He looked as if he had been living on the natives
and half drinking himself to death, as was indeed the case.

But Vaiti was not in the least mollified by his
unprosperous case.  In her opinion, he ought to have been
dead long ago.  There could be no peace of mind for
her while he was still drifting about the Pacific, ever
on the alert to do her an evil turn.  She was not equal
to actual murder, and, in any case, Niué was a
British-owned island, with a resident Commissioner and a
regular nest of missionaries, where you had to be very
careful of what you did.  But if any accident—a safe,
convenient accident—should befall him by-and-by,
why, it would certainly be an advantage to the *Sybil*
and her owners.  Well, that might come about, and
without introducing Saxon into it either.  In such a
delicate matter Saxon's interference would very likely
have acted much as a charge of dynamite might act
in the destruction of a wasps' nest—something more
than the wasps would probably come to grief.

She waited until the ugly creature had rolled back
into his cottage and shut the make-shift door.  Then she
slipped down from the rock once more, and began
the second part of her errand.  Neither then, nor at
any other time, did she trouble to find out the manner
of Donahue's escape.  If she had, she would have heard
that he had been picked up by a native canoe, floating
about on a piece of wreck the day after the disaster
that destroyed the *Ikurangi*, and that, he had spent a
good many months on a neighbouring island before a
stray schooner had consented to accept his watch for
passage money and convey him as far as Niué—the
only place near their course where a penniless
beachcomber would have been allowed to land.  As things
were, he was more or less smuggled off, and thought
best to take refuge in the bush at once.  The moneyless
adventurer is not encouraged in islands belonging to
the British Crown.

It is easy, therefore, to understand why Donahue,
living under an assumed name in the far interior of
the island, had not been recognised, and was not likely
to be, by any one save the person whom his presence
most concerned.  His malice against Vaiti had by no
means evaporated with the events that took place on
Vaka.  He did not, as it happened, suspect her of having
actually caused the loss of the *Ikurangi*, but he was of a
darkly superstitious nature, and laid down his ill-luck,
first, last, and all through, to the fact of her influence.
She had been a "Jonah" of the worst kind to him, and
he would have been very glad indeed to serve her any ill
turn of any kind that might be possible.  But only the
small piece of spite compassed through Mata had, so far,
lain within his power.

Vaiti had still a mile or two to go, and it was waxing
very late, or rather, early.  She almost ran along the
winding rocky path, following it as easily as if broad
day or full moon had surrounded her instead of star-lit
dark.  Now the sound of the sea, unheard for the last
hour, broke out again, and a cold salt breath from the
beach cut through the heavy perfume of the forest track.
In another minute she was out of the wood and fairly
running down a sloping, sandy track that led to a little
white house standing alone on the shore....  She
laughed as she ran—it was such a soft, clear night, and
the sea called so pleasantly down in the dark, and she
did so dearly love an adventure—especially when all
the world imagined her to be sleeping quietly in her
mosquito-netted bed.

There was no secrecy about this matter apparently.
The house had a good wooden door, and she rapped
loudly on it with a stone, calling at the same time,
"Sona!  Sona!  Wake up!"

There was a brief interval, in which the rollers tore
at the beach and the palms swung and crashed overhead,
uninterrupted by other sound.  Sona was evidently
asleep.  She struck loudly on the door again.  This
time some one answered in a drowsy voice, and a slow,
shuffling foot came to the door.  The hinges creaked,
and in another minute a small, bent, feeble figure appeared
on the threshold.

"Tck! tck!" it clucked.  "Is there magic in
the air, and have I grown fifty years younger, that the
lovely maidens come to my door in the starlight once
more?  Is it my beauty that has struck you to the
heart, chieftainess Vaiti; or do you want a charm
to catch the love of some one less deserving than
myself?"

A fit of coughing interrupted him; he crept out to
the open air, and clung to the door-post, shaking all over
with the violence of the paroxysm.  There was more
light here, down by the foaming rollers; one could see,
if one had been walking half the night in the dark bush,
that the man was very small and hairy, very decrepit,
and very, very old.  Indeed, the personal appearance of
Sona, solitary recluse of the Avarangi beach, good
Nonconformist Christian on Sundays, and heathen
witch-doctor out of business hours, was a very important
item of his stock-in-trade.  He looked his part to
perfection, and knew it.  His very name was a piece of
business, even though, rightly pronounced and written.
it was that of the godly man of Nineveh.  When Shark-Tooth
of Avarangi had consented, largely for reasons of
policy, to join the mission fold a good many years
before—the last straggling heathens on the island having
been then "brought in" by the exertions of a determined
and energetic missionary—he had selected the
name of Jonah for his baptismal title solely because, so
far as he could ascertain, the original bearer of the name
was proverbial for bringing bad luck to his enemies—and
that was the sort of reputation that Shark-Tooth
especially coveted.

Vaiti had not met him before, but she knew him well
by reputation, and was very sure that he knew all he
cared to know—probably a good deal—about her.
It was, she thought, a case for going straight to the point,
so she went very straight indeed.

"Let me in, Sona," she said in his own tongue.  "I
want to talk with you, and I want to buy you; for you
and I are wise people, and I know that there is nothing
that may not be bought."

"Crah—crah—crah!" cackled Sona, in a feeble
old man's laugh, tacking a joke to the end of it that
might well have raised a blush on Vaiti's cheek if she
had been capable of such a weakness.  He led the way
into the house, still cackling, lit an ill-smelling kerosene
lamp, and sank down upon the mats, a mere heap of
crumpled cotton clothes, old bones, and ancient wickedness.

Vaiti pulled out her cigar-case, tossed the old creature
a cigar, which he clutched at eagerly, and lit one for
herself.  Then she squatted down on the mats, her back
against the wall, and puffed for a minute or two in
silence.  Old Sona watched her eagerly with his glassy
little eyes.  He saw that she was not angry at the part
he had played in the late unpleasant occurrence upon the
schooner, or at least that she did not mean to resent it.
He had heard all about the strange happenings of the
voyage, and was a good deal awed at the power of the
woman who had actually broken the spell of his curse—in
which, be it observed, he believed most fully himself,
with excellent reasons for doing so.  And he was really
very anxious to know what she wanted now, and
especially what he was going to make by it.

Vaiti pulled at her cigar vigorously for a minute to
make it draw well, and then, with a leisurely puff,
remarked in Sona's own tongue:

"Mata gave you a gold ring to curse my sailors
that they should die—all the village knows of it, so
you need not deny it, old man with the face of a scavenger-crab.
Was it not foolish of you to set yourself against
Vaiti, the great sea-princess—very foolish to run into
danger, and for so little?"

"Yes, yes, so little," repeated Sona, in a kind of
wail.

"Now I come to buy you for myself," went on Vaiti,
puffing between words (she smoked like most women,
very hard and fast).  "I buy like a great chief's daughter,
and you shall feed and drink well for a long time if you
are faithful to me.  If not, I shall split you open with
my knife as one splits open a fish on the beach, and
leave you out on the strand, so that the crabs may come
and eat you before you are dead.  That is what I shall
do to you."

"I belong to the high chieftainess, soul and liver,"
quavered Sona nervously.  Vaiti, hardly looking at
him, pulled something out of her dress and flung it
down carelessly on the mat between the two.  Sona's
eyes glittered, for he heard the chink of gold.

"Take it, old pig of the woods," said Vaiti
contemptuously, and he clutched eagerly at the little
parcel of rag.  It contained a roll of gold coins.  Sona,
panting with mingled delight and fear lest his visitor
should change her mind, scuttled away to some hiding-hole
in an inner room, and concealed the packet with
breathless haste.  Then he returned to the lamp-lit
room, where Vaiti sat smoking and waiting.

"I am yours, high chieftainess; I am yours," he
repeated, rubbing his hands together and cackling.

"What is this thing they tell about a devil that
stays upon the road to Mua, and comes out at night-time?"
asked Vaiti carelessly, looking over Sona's
head at the wall.

Sona shut up his eyes very tight, and shook his shaggy
little head from side to side.

"If you ask the good misinari doctor, he will tell
you," he answered.  "As for me, I have nothing to do with
devils.  I am a very old man, and I want to go to heaven.

"You will go to-night, old scorpion-head, if you do
not tell me everything I want to know," remarked
Vaiti.  Her tone was pleasant, but there was a flavour
of something else below the pleasantness that caused
Sona, literally and figuratively, to sit up.

"I tell, I tell, high chieftainess," he stammered
eagerly.  "The thing is known to all the people on the
island—even the white people.  It happened only last
year, and it is as true as the Good Book.  It was the
foolish man from Mua way, whom they called a
witch-doctor—and every one knows that such a thing does not
exist, high chieftainess; but they said he was that thing,
and he said so himself, because he was proud and mad.
Now, we all know that there are many devils on Niué,
and that the misinaris never were able to drive them
all away.  And there is a very bad devil on that road
to Mua, right where the six palm-trees stand up by
themselves among the graves.  It is powerless in the
day, but at night there is no Niué man who would dare
to go there.  Sometimes the white traders will ride
past the place coming home in the dark, but it is a true
thing that their horses will often shy and bolt when
they come near to the home of the devil, and no man
can say why; indeed, the devils, for the most part, do
not have power over the 'papalangi.'

"So this witch-doctor, as he called himself, said that
he did not fear the devil, and he would go and stay the
night among the graves, thinking that because of that
all the people in the island would believe in him, and
give him many pigs and yams for fear of his 'mana.'  So
he went to the devil-place, and all night he stayed,
but in the morning he did not come back at all.  And
by-and-by all the people of his village went together
to look for him.  And they found him lying on the
road, all dead, and his face was black and his body
twisted up.  So the people brought him to the misinari
doctor, and he said that he could not make him alive
again.  And the traders said, 'What is the kind of this
death?  We do not know it, though we are white men
and know everything.'  But the misinari doctor did
not know.  And they buried him, and that is all, high
chieftainess."

Vaiti smoked thoughtfully.  She had heard something
of the tale before, and Sona's story did not vary from
the version that was generally current about the island.
She thought, on the whole, that she believed in it.
There was no doubt that many of the white people gave
it credit, though a few of them declared the man must
have died in a drunken fit.  A paper in Australia had
published an account of the mysterious incident, and
the spiritualistic set in Sydney were so deeply interested
in it that a letter of inquiry from a psychical research
society had been sent up to the island, inquiring into
the matter.  But it happened that the trader to whom
the letter was addressed had committed suicide a good
many months earlier, and excellent onions and pumpkins
(much appreciated by his successor) were growing green
upon his grave by the time the letter reached the island.
So the inquiry was never answered.

Yes, on the whole, Vaiti thought she believed the
story.  That a similar result would follow in the case of
a "papalangi" (white man) who followed the deceased
magician's example she did not, however, believe.
She thought it very likely, however, that mischief of
one kind or another would result....  And if the worst
should chance to come about....

Vaiti took another cigar.

"What does your misinari say?" she asked.  "He
is not the right sort of misinari, it is true, but still,
he should know more about devils than the traders."

"Our good misinari was not here when it happened,"
replied Sona in a pious tone.  "It was the doctor
misinari.  Our own good misinari says that devils
cannot do harm to any but bad men."

Vaiti reflected, her eyes on the floor.  She really
had some respect, in an odd, upside-down kind of way,
for missionary opinion.  It is bred in the bone with the
younger generation of Eastern Pacific islanders.

Donahue was certainly a very bad man.  She did not
think she had ever met any one much worse.  Perhaps
the badness, balanced against the whiteness, might
swing down the scale.  At any rate....

"Hear me, Sona!" she said, in a voice of command.
"I have bought you to-night, and you belong to me.
There will be more to pay by-and-by if you do as I tell
you.  But I would warn you to be careful, for you will
not find it pleasant lying on the shore down there, with
your inside hanging out like a gutted fish, and the crabs
coming running to eat you before you are dead, as you
will if you make any mistakes.  Listen, then, very
carefully."

"I listen, I listen!" cried Sona.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOW THE WITCH-DOCTOR GOT HIS MONEY BACK`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOW THE WITCH-DOCTOR GOT HIS MONEY BACK

.. vspace:: 2

When the trader's wife came in next morning with
Vaiti's cup of tea, she was touched to see how deeply
her pretty lodger was sleeping.

"Poor young dear," said the good woman, "lying
there so sweet and innocent, sleeping like a baby!
It's only the good heart that rests like that.  I don't
believe a word of the silly lies they tell about her.  Here,
dear, wake up," she called gently.  "Your good papa
is ever so much better this morning, and looking for
you to come in.  And it is Sunday morning, and a nice
cool day."

"Thank you, Mrs. Smith," said Vaiti politely, broad
awake at once.  "May I asking you one little hot
water?  I like get up and go to turch."

Church, attended for reasons religious or otherwise,
was not one of the amusements patronised by the
nameless white man of the bush.  Indeed, his amusements,
such as they were, were so far confined to the
native villages of the interior that very few of the other
whites had seen him.  He was not good for trade,
having no money and possessing no credit—that was all
they knew, or for the most part wanted to know, about
him.

There was all the more astonishment, therefore, in
the shanty owned by the Mua trader, away up in the
bush, when the unknown man walked into the store
that Sunday night, and demanded some tobacco, at the
same time showing a sovereign he held in his hand.  He
was dressed in a pitiful mass of rags, none too clean,
but he looked well pleased with himself, and was more
than half drunk.  Fortune had apparently found him
out at last.

The Mua trader was an honest man, but he did not
see why he should not have a share in anything good
that happened to be available about that lonely and
unprofitable district.  So he welcomed the stranger in
with much cordiality, and asked him to stop for supper.

The newcomer had no objection in the world to come
in and share the trader's good tinned meats and new
yeast bread, and he made himself very much at home
without pressing.  The trader, who had a private
store of consolation in his own back kitchen, plied the
spirits freely.  He was curious, and he believed in the
old saw of "Wine in, truth out."  A couple of friends
who had ridden over from Alofi, the capital, and were
equally curious about the derelict's sudden access to
fortune, did their disinterested best to help, and the
bottle went merrily round.  The Niué traders are a
sober, decent set of people enough, but Donahue had
mixed with them so little that he did not know this,
and consequently was not put on his guard by the unusual
conviviality.  Indeed, he was by no means the same
active, crafty villain who had set that successful snare
of the diamond necklace in Apia many months ago.  A
white man cannot "live native" without going downhill
very fast, and Donahue was nearly at the bottom.

So he drank, and laughed, and told evil tales, and grew
quarrelsome, and pathetic, and finally affectionate and
confidential, in well-defined stages, while all the time
the other men kept sober, or nearly so.  The Mua
trader in particular hardly touched his glass.  But
Donahue, once so wary, never saw, and chattered on.

Before midnight the trader had sold him some gay
calico for the native' girls, and a little tinned meat and
flour, and half-a-dozen various trifles that brought
the score up to about a pound.  Here the guest came
to a pause and fingered his coin.

"Oh, well, if that's all you have, you won't get any
more goods to-night.  Thanks," said the trader, putting
out his hand.

The visitor, however, declined to hand over the money.
He would pay to-morrow, he said.  He was not going
to leave himself without money again—not if he knew
it—and he would have lots to-morrow: and if the trader
wouldn't send up the goods without the cash to-night,
why, he might keep his condemned rubbish, and his
customer would go elsewhere.

Rather than lose the order, the other gave in, and
sent a boy away with the stuff.  It would always be
easy to bully him out of it afterwards, he thought, and
there was no arguing with a drunken man's whim.

Then he set himself, in company with all the rest, to
find out where the money had come from.

Donahue, who by now was far gone, responded
readily.  It was the silly old chap who lived down on
Avarangi beach, he said; an old fool who was an uncle
of a girl who was a friend of his.  The old chap had a
notion that there were some Spanish doubloons hidden
somewhere on the island, but in a place he was afraid
to touch, so he had forked out a good British sovereign,
and offered it to Donahue to go in his place, and share
the money with him.  Donahue was to keep the earnest
money for his trouble, if nothing came of it, and if
anything did turn up he was to take half.  So he was
going, that very night—the sooner the better.  Natives
were—well, natives; but as for him, he was afraid of
nothing.

"Thasser-sort-er-man I am," he finished thickly,
looking round for applause.

He did not get it.  The traders one and all burst
out laughing.  The story of the doubloons, they told
him, was a very old one in the island, and only the
newest of new chums thought of believing it.  It was
quite true that the natives, who were perfect magpies
for hoarding, did possess among them a certain number
of doubloons, which came from God-knows-where—for
the coinage used in the island was British—and true
also that the trader would get a doubloon from one of
them every now and then in the course of business,
always with some mystery attached to it, and some
reluctance to part with the coin.  But the Resident
Commissioner, who knew the island pretty well, and the
missionary too, had long been certain that the store was
merely the remains of some ship-wrecking raid of past
days, about which the Niuéans were now ashamed to
speak.  They were great misers, and it would like enough
be another generation before all the hoarded coins
had come to light and passed through the traders'
hands.  But hidden treasure in Niué!  Pf!  If old
Sona had been giving away money, he must be either
going mad with age or (more likely) up to something.
He was the cutest old fox on Niué, and that was saying
something.  Why, when he had come into that very store
to buy a darning-needle a few hours ago (what a man
who lived in a waist-cloth and nothing else wanted
with a darning-needle he hadn't explained), it had
been all the trader could do to prevent his picking up
half-a-dozen odds and ends.  That was what he was
like if one ever took an eye off him; and he wouldn't
even pay for the needle, either, till the trader had
threatened to hammer him unless he forked out.  Take
his word for it, if Sona had been giving away money,
he meant to have it back—somehow.  And the treasure
was poppy-cock.

Donahue had now passed into the quarrelsome stage,
and he rose with tipsy dignity from his seat.

"I considdle you no gennlemen," he said scornfully.
"For half a Chile dorrer I'd" ... He mentioned
what he would do, in gross and in detail, to the assembled
company for the small sum mentioned.

"Kick the dirty brute out," said the Alofi trader
disgustedly.  "It's easy to see what sort of company
that carrion has kept."

Donahue was gone, however—gone with surprising
agility, and lurching rapidly up the forest pathway
towards his house.  His legs were always the last thing
to fail him.

He knew very well that he had had too much, and
when he reached his hut he proceeded to sober himself
by dipping his head repeatedly in a bucket of water.
Then he brewed himself a powerful jorum of black tea,
drank it, and set off considerably sobered.

It was a long way to the clump of palms, and he
stumbled badly now and then as he went over the
graves that lay thick about the edges of the path.
Burial along the high-road is very popular in Niué,
where they like to keep an eye on their dead and see
that they are lying quiet in their graves—a thing that
no one considers at all a matter of course.  Some of
the graves that Donahue passed had felt hats laid upon
them; others had plates, bowls, bottles of hair-oil,
fans—all to amuse the ghost and keep it quiet; and one
or two looked ghostly enough to scare a nervous person
as it was, with the wraith-like mosquito curtains
thoughtfully suspended over the tomb by mourning and anxious
relatives.  Every grave was completed by a solid mass
of concrete, weighing anything from several hundredweight
to a ton.  It was not the fault of any Niuéan
if his dead relatives "walked."

Donahue as he went chuckled to himself at the
thought of his keenness in over-reaching the old
witch-doctor.  He had used him for his own purposes through
the girl Mata before, and though that had not worked
out too well, it was the witch-doctor who bore the
discredit, not he.  He would use him again now, and in
another way.  It was in the daytime that Sona had
arranged to meet him at the palm-tree clump.  At night,
he said, it would be certain death; and even in daylight
no one would linger there who could help it.  He at
least would never dare to disturb the big tomb in which
the money was hidden and call down the anger of the
devils on himself, unless he had a white man with him
who feared nothing.  So next morning, very early, the
white man who was so brave would meet him, and they
would open the big, cracked tomb together—the tomb
that no Niuéan had ever dared to lay a finger on before,
though there were one or two besides himself who
suspected that it was just there the mysterious foreign
coins had come from years ago, and that there were a
good many left.

Thus the witch-doctor.  And Donahue had assented
eagerly, and gone off with his earnest money.  And,
on arriving at his hut, he had looked out an old axe
that he possessed, and cleaned up his lamp, and begged
a drop of oil from the nearest native house.  For he
meant to go that very night, and take everything there
was for himself.  Who was to prove it?

Which was just the course of action that Sona had
calculated very confidently on his taking.

It poured furiously in an hour or two, for it was in
the hot season, and the great rains were out.  Donahue
could not light his lamp when he came to the clump
of palms, which he knew well enough to recognise almost
in the pitch dark.  It thundered soon after, and the
sky was split from pole to pole by corpse-blue flashes of
lightning.  In one of these, Donahue, feeling about
the cracks of the tomb, thought he saw something
moving against the gloom of the bush near at hand.
It made his throat turn dry, for all the wet, and he felt
his hair prickle curiously.  But he went on groping.
Another flash ripped up the sky; it was a smaller one,
but for one horrible moment he thought he had been
struck, for something stinging streaked across his face
and gave him an ugly thrill.  But it passed immediately,
and he began groping again—groping with both hands,
in a frantic hurry, trying to make out the best place to
apply the axe—tearing and grasping and scuffling like
some deadly graveyard mole, breathless, with beads of
warm sweat coursing down his face through the streams
of chilly rain....  He was fighting—fighting he knew
not what and knew not why—but he was fighting,
for all that, fighting hard, with the stone falling away
from his nerveless hands, and the breath in his body
sinking down under some nightmare oppression, and
the sound of the thunder now almost continuous, blending
itself with another and far louder sound that was
battering madly in his ears.  He was fighting
with——  Christ!—it was Death!

The thunder passed, as tropic storms do pass, suddenly
and completely.  The dawn shot up in the east, wet
and red, and cast long, black, ghostly shadows, set
shaking by an icy wind, low down upon the
palm-trunks and the grave.  But Donahue did not want
the light.  The axe lay untouched beside him; and
he lay over the tomb, dead.  And his face was black
and his body was all contorted.

It was barely daylight yet when something small
and slow crept out of the bush, and began hunting
carefully near the corpse.  It could not find what it
wanted, seemingly, and this distressed it, for it whimpered
pitifully in a thin old voice, and looked long before
it desisted.  Then it put its claws into the dead man's
pockets, and hunted through them, before it finally
disappeared down the road.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The Mua trader was at his door when a howling
procession of natives came into the village, carrying the
white man's corpse to his home.  The Alofi trader,
who had found the body, stepped aside to speak.  After
the tale of the finding had been told, the Mua trader
asked slowly:

"Did you think of searching his pockets?  A dead
man's a dead man—and I'd not be sorry to have the
money he owed me, for the natives will have taken the
goods by this time."

"They were empty when I found him.  Queer, for
I was the first to see him," said the other.  "I found
this thing on the road close by, though.  Do you
recognise it?"

It was the trader's darning-needle, stuck neatly into
the end of a tiny, arrow-like reed, and stained at the
point with some dark sticky stuff.

The Mua trader took it in his hand, smelt it and looked
at it closely.  Then he walked to his kitchen, and,
watched by the Alofi trader, threw the thing into the
fire.

"That's what I think of it," he said.  "My boy, I
traded in the worst of the Solomons for three years.
I'm the only man on the island that knows that thing,
bar one—and he was a plantation hand in the Solomons,
in the black-birding days.  There's no wanderers like
the Nuié men."

"Do you think——" began the other.

"I think," said the Mua trader, "that old Sona has
got his money back."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The schooner *Sybil* had no reason for staying longer
in Niué, for the business of the ship was done, and the
captain was quite well again.  A picture of perfect
beauty the *Sybil* made, as she stood out of Alofi roads
in the golden afternoon, every sail set and every inch
of cloth straining to the merry breeze.  Niué was sorry
to part with Vaiti, for she had interested the island
considerably, and her beauty had, as usual, won her more
admiration than her temper deserved.  Every one, on
parting, expressed a courteous wish to see the *Sybil* and
her owners again.

For all that, and all that, the schooner came back
no more.  Vaiti had won the game at last, but she never
willingly mentioned Niué again.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CALAMITY OF CORAL BAY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CALAMITY OF CORAL BAY

.. vspace:: 2

The wide, still waters of Coral Bay were turning glassy
pink under the sunset afterglow.  The *Sybil's* boat,
rowing rapidly towards the schooner, left as it went
a long, ugly flaw upon the stainless crystal of the
sea.  It was very still, and the night was coming
down.

Even in that uncertain twilight the colour of the boat
as it cut through the pale-hued water stood out strange
and sinister.  Most boats are white in tropic seas: the
*Sybil's* had always been snowy as her own graceful hull.
Now they were vivid scarlet, and the ship herself had a
wide band of scarlet round her counter and flew a scarlet
flag at her masthead.

Any islander could have told you at a glance what
these things meant.  The schooner was "recruiting"—conveying
natives from the wild cannibal islands of
the New Hebrides to the Queensland sugar plantations.
Ten pounds a head was paid for the men on their arrival,
and it was politely supposed that these ignorant heathen
had one and all been duly engaged under a contract
to serve three years, at a wage of five pounds a year.
How much they understood of contracts, times, and
wages—where and what they thought Australia might
be—and what were the means employed to get them on
board the ship, nobody asked.  Saxon was not the man
to answer, if any one had.

Why he had temporarily deserted the pleasant, peaceful
islands of the Eastern Pacific, and gone "black-birding"
in the wild and wicked and fever-smitten groups of the
West, was Saxon's own affair.  Doubtless he had his
reasons; possibly they were satisfactory.  But there is
reason to believe that about Apia and Papeëte at this
time he was characterised as a (double-adjectived)
liar, and an (impolite expression) villain, who was running
away because it was (adverbially) unsafe for him to
stay and risk his (past participled) neck among (adjective)
men.  This is not the history of Captain Saxon; at
least, not all of it—from such a recital as that may the
eleven thousand virgins of Saint Mudie, and the Blessed
Young Person of Sixteen, deliver us!  It must therefore
be enough to say that, for sufficient reasons,
he decided to shift his headquarters to the New
Hebrides, and immediately did so, leaving behind him
certain unsettled scores with which this tale has nothing
to do.

He was not new to the islands or the natives, having
been one of the most notorious of the sandal-wood traders
in years gone by.  The sandal-wood was gone, and
of the money he had made by it not even the memory
remained.  But there was still something in the labour
trade, and Saxon liked the lawless atmosphere of the
place.

Vaiti remembered the islands well, though she had
only been there as a child, and she was glad to have the
excitement of the change.  When the recruiting boat
left the schooner (guarded by a companion, full of armed
men) and drew up on the beach to negotiate with the
islanders, she always sat in the stern, with a very smart
little Winchester rifle across her knees, and took
command, if her father was not there.  Very often he was
not; for the New Hebrideans have long memories,
and there was many a spot where Saxon had run up
so many bad, black scores in the sandal-wood days that
he could not hope for success—or safety, if he had
minded that—in going ashore.  Harris usually took
command of the covering boat, a post of comparative
security that suited him very well, while the dauntless
Vaiti managed all the real business, and seldom came
back with an empty bag.

They had good luck, on the whole, and not many
narrow escapes.  Coasting round the notorious island
of Mallicolo, or Malekula, they succeeded in obtaining
about forty natives in a week or two.  Saxon was well
pleased, and began to count up his profits.  Also he
began to drink again.

Then it was that trouble came, as trouble generally
does, out of a fair-seeming sky.

Half-a-dozen natives had been given up to the missionaries
on the far side of Malekula, to hand over to the
British gunboat *Alligator*, which at that time was
cruising about the islands, intent on punishing the
Malekulans for a more than usually atrocious murder of
whites.  The tribes to whom the culprits belonged had
taken fright, and were anxious to save themselves at
any cost.  The missionaries, when asked by them,
consented to take charge of the prisoners, but refused to
keep them any longer than could possibly be helped,
since they did not consider themselves judges or gaolers.
At this point the *Sybil* turned up, and the missionaries,
hearing she was bound for Parrot Harbour, where the
*Alligator* was certain to call, put the men on board,
and engaged Saxon to hand them over to the Parrot
Harbour mission, receiving from the missionaries there
the price of their passage, which the man-of-war would
doubtless refund.

Saxon, understanding that he had not to meet the
*Alligator*, undertook the job at a rather excessive rate,
and brought the prisoners over as agreed.  But, finding
that the Parrot Harbour mission refused to pay the
passage money until the man-of-war arrived, he went
into a towering rage and abused everybody.  Wait for
the *Alligator*?  Not he!  He had something else to
do, and he wouldn't have any condemned gunboat
that ever sailed the sanguinary waters of the Pacific
poking her nose into any of his business.  He had been
promised the money as soon as he arrived, and the money
or its equivalent he meant to have or know the reason
why.  Off he went, with much more whisky in his brain
than was compatible with sober judgment—off out to
sea again, taking with him the whole six prisoners,
and openly declaring his intention either to hold them
for ransom or run them down to the Queensland
plantations, as seemed most convenient.

Next day the *Alligator* appeared, and her commander
was informed of the occurrence.  Saxon, master of a
miserable labour schooner, had run off with prisoners
of war belonging to a British gunboat, defied the Imperial
Government, and offered open disrespect to the Crown!
The commander, an iron-faced, flinty-eyed disciplinarian
of the toughest school, and a first-class pepper-pot into
the bargain, nearly choked with rage and indignation.
Out went the *Alligator* again, full steam ahead, making
the captain's dainty suite of cabins tremble like an
ill-set jelly in the stern as the ship forged along at thirteen
knots an hour, blackening the crystal sky with trails
of smoke, and looking implacably about for the offending
*Sybil*.  That delinquent of the high seas was farther
off than might have been supposed.  The wind, though
light, was in her favour, and she had managed to get
round the far end of the island, and down the other side
to Coral Bay, eighty miles off, before the *Alligator* came
up with her, late in the afternoon.  Once caught, her
shrift was short.  The prisoners were at once transferred;
Saxon was arrested and taken, still half drunk,
on board the man-of-war, and his ship was confiscated,
"just to learn him," as Gray (who had viewed his
captain's proceedings with sour and silent disapproval
throughout) was heard to remark, not without a little
I-told-you-so satisfaction.

And so it came about that Vaiti, returning with
the boat from an unsuccessful recruiting expedition,
and not in the best of humours to begin with,
was met on her arrival with extremely unpleasant
news.

"We're took, cap'n; we're took, ma'am!" shouted
Gray over the bulwarks, as the boat nosed along the
side of the schooner.  He added a rapid account of
the calamity, in which he was careful to suppress his
personal feelings of triumph.

The smart young lieutenant who had been left in
charge of the ship came and looked down at the boat.
He wanted to know what sort of person it might be
who was addressed with this extraordinary hail.  He
had been under the impression that the "captain"
of the *Sybil* had been left two hours ago—sullen,
swearing, and not at all sober—in the cells of
H.M.S. *Alligator*.

What he saw was a red-painted boat, manned by four
stalwart native seamen, and steered by an extremely
handsome, olive-faced young woman, who looked up
at him with eyes that seemed to dart black lightning
under their beautifully drawn brows as she listened to the
boatswain's story.  She wore a dainty, lacy white
muslin frock, and carried a Winchester rifle in her
lap.

Second Lieutenant Tempest, who had been cursing
his luck up to that moment, suddenly became reconciled
to the uninteresting job in which he was engaged.  It is
just conceivable that his commander might have selected
another officer to perform the duty if he had been aware
of its possible alleviations; for Mr. Tempest was
notoriously given to scrapes with a *soupçon* of petticoat
in them, and had already imperilled his career more
than once after this fashion.  But Commander the
Hon. Francis St. John Raleigh had not seen "Captain"
Vaiti; so he sent Mr. Tempest to take possession of the
*Sybil*, and slept the sleep of the well-conscienced and
well-dined, that evening, in his velvet armchair....  It
might have seemed somewhat less perfectly stuffed to
him, had his dreams been concerned with what was
happening a few hundred yards away.

Mr. Tempest, smiling like the godmother beast of
his own ship, offered his hand to the sullen beauty as she
swung herself up the *Sybil's* side.  Vaiti tossed it
indignantly away, favoured him with another black-lightning
glance that reduced his susceptible sailor
heart to pulp, and stalked aft like an offended Cleopatra.
Tempest, persistently following, poured out explanations,
apologies, smiles, consolations, promises.  Vaiti
began to think that civility might possibly avail her
something, and began to melt by carefully calculated
degrees.  Before very long she was sitting on the main
hatch, with Tempest beside her, holding her hand
unreproved and continuing his consolations.  The
commander was very angry, no doubt, but he was a
good sort at bottom, and perhaps he would not really
seize the ship.  She would be sent to Fiji, no doubt,
and Saxon might possibly be imprisoned, but it would
all come out all right, trust him!  And he would
take very good care of the *Sybil* and her charming
"captain."

Vaiti, still smiling sweetly, dug her nails into wood
of the hatch at her side.  Underneath all this verbiage
she foresaw the reality of serious trouble.  Why had
her father been such a fool?  What could be done to
save the ship?  There seemed no way of helping Saxon
himself.  If the commander proved implacable, to
prison he must go.  Well, that would not break any
bones; but the loss of the *Sybil*—if such a disaster was
indeed possible—must be averted at any cost.  She did
not believe Mr. Tempest's smiling assertion.  The
commander had threatened to confiscate the ship, and
most probably he would.  At any rate, the risk was
too great to face.  The schooner must not be taken to Fiji.

The wily brain was hard at work, as she sat on the
hatch, listening, with a gentle smile and soft, downcast,
maidenly eyes, to Tempest's love-making, and answering
now and then in her pretty Polynesian "pigeon-English"—so
much simpler and less grotesque than the *bêche-de-mer*
talk of the Melanesian Islands....  If he could be
got out of the way, and the marines suddenly
overpowered, the schooner might slip off round the corner
of the headland in the dark, and get nearly a hundred
miles away before daylight, with the steady wind that
was blowing outside the glassy, landlocked harbour of
Coral Bay.  There was just enough air stirring at this
farthest point to allow her to get out, and once off, she
could show her heels in a way that would astonish
even a British gunboat.  Of course, the latter would
easily overhaul her in an open chase, but Vaiti did not
propose any such folly.  There was many a perilous
inlet and passage among those dangerous, ill-surveyed
islands where the *Sybil* could safely go, but where the
*Alligator* could not venture.  Let them only gain a day,
and who was to say whither they had flown into the
wide wastes of the Pacific?  Once beyond pursuit,
paint and other disguises would so alter the ship that
no one could identify her; her name could be changed,
and the *Mary Ann* or the *Nautilus* would innocently
sail the seas formerly polluted by the presence
of the naughty *Sybil*....  It was certainly worth
trying.

As for Tempest, she had a plan concocted to get rid
of him almost as soon as the matter entered her mind.
She left him, by and by, solacing himself with fresh
turtle steak and excellent champagne in the cabin for
the loss of his own dinner, while she went into the bows
with Harris and Gray, and rapidly explained her plans.
The marines had been accommodated with eatables
and drinkables after their own hearts, on the cover of the
main hatch, and were too much engaged to notice
anything in the thick darkness that was now lying
heavily on Coral Bay.

Vaiti's plan was simple and effective.  Tempest was
to be enticed into leaving his duty and going ashore—she
would see to that.  Four of the New Hebridean
crew, stripped of their ship clothes, and attired in their
aboriginal paint and plumes, were to be concealed on
the beach.  They would capture him, and carry him
off to a bush village near the coast, where the people
were not ill disposed to the whites, and leave him there,
scared no doubt, but safe until the morning, when he
would be let go.  Vaiti would come back to the ship as
soon as the capture was effected, and the four native
sailors would hurry down from the village as quickly
as possible.  Meantime, it would be easy for Harris
to drug the marines' drink and make them helpless.
They would be set adrift in one of the boats, as soon as
the schooner was clear of the land, so that they should
tell no tales.  With good luck, everything should be
over, and the *Sybil* far out to sea, in less than a couple
of hours.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Of the disgrace of Lieutenant Tempest—of his temptation,
his struggle, and his fall—there is no need to tell
at length.  The decline of a British officer from duty
and honour—his desertion of a post which every
professional instinct should have compelled him to keep
is not a happy subject, as (fortunately) it is not a common
one.  Vaiti, in brief, invited the officer to leave the ship
unguarded, and slip ashore with her, to sup at a
neighbouring trader's shanty, where she said there would be
drink and dancing, and every kind of fun.  There was
no such place, but Tempest did not know that; and if
he had known, he might not have cared.  Half-crazed
with love and champagne, he thought only of the beautiful
half-caste girl, and was ready to follow her to the
mouth of hell, if she had asked him.  The dinghy was
got out softly and cautiously, and, with muffled oars,
they slipped away unheard.  So far out of his mind
was the lieutenant that he did not even note the
disappearance of his men, who were all lying, very ably and
completely Shanghai'ed, in the hold.

In less than half an hour Vaiti came back, swimming
the stretch of black water that lay between the *Sybil*
and the shore, to leave the boat ready for the men.
Dripping, sparkling, and laughing, she stood up in the
dim light of the deck lantern and told the mate and
boatswain how the capture had been managed.  Tempest,
with a sack over his head and his hands and feet bound
to a pole, was at that moment being carried up in the
dark to the bush village.  The inhabitants of the place
were to have ten pounds' worth of trade goods promised
them to keep him there all night and let him escape
in the morning, when they themselves would go off
and hide in the impenetrable forests until the man-of-war
had sailed away again.  In half an hour or so the
four natives would be back on board, and they would
all sail away round the headland, and leave no evidence
of any kind to connect the *Sybil* with this last
unpardonable outrage; for Tempest could not but suppose that
the natives who so neatly bagged him as he was philandering
along the dark beach with the innocent Vaiti were
ordinary hill tribesmen.  And, in any case, his sacred
person would be taken good care of.

"Then he ain't to be damaged, the little darlin'?"
inquired Harris.  The question was not an idle one.
Every one on board the schooner knew that Vaiti was
capable of ugly things at her worst.

The girl laughed—a low, gurgling laugh.

"No.  No kill him, no hurt him.  I not like," she
said, tossing back her wet, wavy hair, with a coquettish
gesture that told Harris the woman in Vaiti was fully
awake that night, despite the rough and ready adventure
on which she was engaged.  Harris was no fool, if he
was something unsteady in character, and more or less
he admired Vaiti himself, which tended to sharpen his
sight.

"Good job the dandy leftenant *is* out of the way,"
he growled as Vaiti disappeared into the cabin to
change.  "'Twouldn't take much for 'er to get fancyin'
his silly face, after all, and then the fat would be in the
fire."

"Well, if you hask me, I don't like none of the 'ole
thing from beginnin' to hend," declared the bo'sun,
jamming a wad of tobacco viciously into his pipe.  "Not
the keepin' of the bloomin' niggers, not again runnin'
to Coral Bay, nor again this business.  Wy?  Because
I don't, and because it make me smell dirty weather.
Give us a light."

Overhead the stars in the velvet sky began to twinkle
here and there as the breeze rose and the clouds melted
away.  An odour of hot, wet jungle drifted out across
the bay from the invisible land, and a locust with a
rattle exactly like a policeman's whistle burred loudly
among the trees.  It might have been half an hour, and it
might have been more, before something else became
audible—something that sounded like a frightened
wailing on the shore.

"A—wé!  A—a—wé!"

Vaiti came out of her cabin and stood on deck,
listening intently.

The sound went on.

"A—wé!  A—wé!  A—wa—wé!"

Harris, watching Vaiti's face in the light of the
lantern, saw it change and harden, but she said nothing.
There was another sound now—a dinghy shoving off
from the beach and the rattle of carelessly handled oars.

"What's the —— fools makin' such a —— row
for?" asked Gray.  "They'll 'ave the *Halligator* on
to us."

Still Vaiti said nothing, but stood like a statue on
the deck, listening and looking into the darkness.

The boat rammed the *Sybil* in another minute with a
shock that made her quiver, and then drifted aimlessly
along her sides.  Three brown naked figures lifted up
their arms from below, and cried despairingly:

"Kapitani!  Kapitani!  A—wé!  A—wé!"

"Get those fellows on board, too much quick, and
bring him cabin," ordered Vaiti.  Harris and Gray
hauled them in with small ceremony, and dumped them
down the companion into the cabin, where they stood
in the light of the lamp, painted, feather-bedecked
creatures, fierce enough in appearance, but in reality
abjectly frightened and a-shiver.

"What thing you been do?" demanded Vaiti sharply.
"Where you make other sailor-man?  What you do
Tempesi?"

One of the men was beginning his wail again.  She
seized him by the shoulder, pulled a pistol from among
her draperies, and shook it in his face.  The man,
with a yell of terror, twisted himself out of her hold.
Harris, who was rather frightened at her demeanour,
got him away, forced a dram of spirits into his mouth,
and tried to extract the terrified creature's story from
him by degrees.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FATE OF THE LIEUTENANT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FATE OF THE LIEUTENANT

.. vspace:: 2

It was not a gratifying tale.  Half a mile from the beach,
the captors had been overtaken by a party of wild
hillmen from Ranaar, one of the worst of the inland
cannibal towns, and had been set upon fiercely in the
dark.  Aki, one of their own party, had been clubbed,
and his body carried off.  The other natives had escaped.
As for the lieutenant, the Ranaar men had seized on
him with cries of joy, exclaiming that now indeed they
had a chance of "making themselves strong" before all
Malekula.  Then they had carried him away, slung
on a pole between two men, and the *Sybil's* people,
half dead with fright, had run down to the beach again;
and here they were, begging the Kapitani to have mercy
on them, for indeed it was not their fault, and no one
could have known that the Ranaar men would venture
so near the coast.

Vaiti, Harris, and Gray all looked grave at this
recital.  They knew only too well what was implied
by the phrase "making strong," and what virtues
the hill tribes of Malekula ascribed to the eating of
white man's flesh.  The rude play of the capture had
turned into most serious earnest, and Tempest's life
was worth just so many hours as it might take the
cannibals to reach their mountain stronghold and go
through the preliminary ceremonies of the feast.  No more.

There was silence for a minute or two, while the
schooner rolled gently on the swell of the incoming
tide, and the smoky kerosene light flickered to and fro
upon the strange, wild scene: Vaiti's beautiful, angry
head standing out above the weather-beaten faces of
the two English sailors, the three naked New Hebrideans,
squalid and monkey-faced, cowering before her; the
remnants of Tempest's dinner, some one's greasy pack
of cards, and a couple of Saxon's empty whisky bottles
decorating the table.  The natives were badly frightened
still.  They did not understand that the Kapitani's
plans had been entangled beyond all hope of setting
right by this disaster, or that the *Alligator* must have
been alarmed by their noisy return; but Vaiti's
countenance was enough to warn any one who had ever seen
the unpleasant things that happened at times on board
the *Sybil* that hurricane weather was ahead.  But
before she had time to speak again, a loud hail from
outside made every one look towards the deck.  In
another moment the first lieutenant of the *Alligator*
had framed his smart white and gold personality in the
dark oblong of the companion, and demanded, loudly,
and authoritatively, to know where Mr. Tempest was,
where the marines were, and what the deuce was the
meaning of all this.

Vaiti, motioning aside the mate and bo'sun, swept
to the front and spoke straight out.

"All your sailor, he too much drunk, sleep 'long hold.
Tempesi, he been go shore.  Men belong Ranaar, they
catch him, take him away.  Pretty dam quick they eat him."

"Great Scott!" said the officer.  Facts were falling
very thick and fast, and there were evidently more
facts behind them which for the present he felt
obliged—most reluctantly—to neglect.  People think quickly
in the navy, and Lieutenant Darcy realised instantly
that this strange, wild, handsome creature was speaking
the truth, and that it must be acted on without delay.

He stepped out on deck, and gave certain orders to
his men.  A sharp little midshipman and half the boat's
crew followed him on board, and planted themselves
about the ship.  The rest remained in the boat.

"This officer will stay here and take charge, and you
will come with me to the *Alligator*," said the lieutenant,
addressing Vaiti.

"Yes, I speak captain.  Very good you let me see
him quick," said the girl imperiously; and the
lieutenant, guessing that there was more still to be told,
hurried the boat away.

He delivered his report to the commander, and
concluded by saying that the girl was in waiting, and had,
in his opinion, something more to say about the matter.

"Bring her in," said the commander shortly.  The
gravity of the affair had darkened his face a trifle, but
he made no comment.  It was not a time for talk.

Vaiti entered with the light step and carriage of the
woman who wears neither shoes nor stays, and stood
silently before the commander, fixing his hard grey
eyes with her inscrutable dark stare.

"You can sit down," said the officer.  "I want to
ask you some questions."

Vaiti drew herself up a little higher.

"No time for sit," she said curtly.  "Suppose you
no want Tempesi ki-ki [eaten] pretty quick, you listen me."

"Young woman!" began Commander the Hon. Francis
St. John Raleigh sternly.

"I tell you, no time talk!" interrupted Vaiti.  "I
savvy all right you very big sea-chief; I savvy my
father been made bad work, made bad work myself.
Let him go all-a-same that; by-'n-by we talk those
thing.  Now you listen me."

"All right; sit down," said the officer in a more
conciliatory tone.  Vaiti sat, and leaning across the
table with her chin in one slender hand, and her eyes
blazing out from under the mass of damp waves on her
forehead, she said her say.

"You no savvy Malekula man; I savvy plenty.
Suppose you do what I telling you, Tempesi he come
back, I think.  Suppose not, Tempesi he eat.  Ranaar,
he ten, eleven mile up 'long bush, plenty bad way.
You take some sailor; he go too much sof', too much
quiet, all-a-same cat.  Time we coming along Ranaar,
one half-mile, sailor he all stop.  I go myself Ranaar.
Maybe I get Tempesi; we coming back to sailor, go
home all right."

"Oh, nonsense! how are you going to get him, if
the men can't?" demanded the commander.  He
saw that he had a remarkable personality to deal with
in this strange half-caste beauty, but he did not
comprehend her very clearly, and he thought she was
"gassing" a little.

Vaiti frowned.

"I tell you, you no savvy Malekula," she said scornfully.
"Sailor belong you, all the man hear him when
he walk 'long bush.  Ranaar man he hear; he run away."

"Well, so long as we rescue Mr. Tempest——"

"No you talk, I say; you listen, you Kapitani with
um wooden face!" spat Vaiti.

The lieutenant turned his head away, and choked a
little in his pocket-handkerchief.  The commander
stared, then burst out laughing.

"Go on, you she-cat," he said.

"Ranaar man he run away; very good.  He leave
Tempesi; very good.  No want Tempesi tell some tale,
so he leave him dead.  Break him head, all same pig,
very quick, then run away.  Now what you think?"

"I think you are a very plucky young lady, and that
you have something more to say about it," replied the
commander politely.

"Very good.  Suppose I going 'long bush; savvy
plenty the way.  I been 'long Ranaar recruit; savvy
all-a-road.  No walking all same white man, walking
all same one snake, all same one mice.  No white man
he walk that way.  I come up Ranaar, all-a-dark,
I stop 'long one small place; see the man he dance, he
sing, he make ki-ki.  Bushman, he plenty frighten
something he no savvy.  Savvy gun, dynamite, but
no savvy big blue-light signal thing you got 'long ship.
I take one, two blue-light thing; I throw.  Bushman
he think one big devil stop, no think man-of-war come;
run away too much dam quick, not stop kill Tempesi.
By'n-by he coming back, but I cut rope before he come.
I bring Tempesi 'long me, 'long sailor-man; we go back
quick.  Tempesi all right.  Savvy?"

"Yes, I do savvy; seems a neat plan, on the whole.
But what's going to happen to you if they catch you?"

"Eat," said Vaiti succinctly.  "Now you listen me.
I no do all this thing for nothing, see?"

"H'm; yes, I do see.  How much do you want?"

"Two thing," said Vaiti, eyeing him narrowly.
"One.  My father say he plenty sorry, no do any more
bad thing.  You let him go, let schooner go."

"Well—yes, I'll promise that," answered the
commander rather stiffly.  The girl was taking her life in
her hand to serve the interests of the British Crown,
and it was not a time to stick at trifles, or, indeed,
larger things.

"Two," went on Vaiti.  "Tempesi he seen leave
ship, go 'long shore with me.  You tell him all right,
you no punish."

"Oh, by Jove! that's too much," snapped out the
commander.  "No, Miss—Miss What's-your-name, I
can't promise any such thing.  I can't have you or
any one else interfering with the discipline of my ship.
Mr. Tempest's conduct is a very serious matter, and
he must take the consequences, by Gad he must, if he
comes back alive to take them."

Vaiti had had a good deal to do with men-of-war,
and their officers, during the course of the schooner's
many wanderings.  She did not need to be told that
Tempest's career might be ended, and his life disgraced,
if naval justice took its course.  A few hours ago she
would not have cared.  But Mr. Tempest, like all men
notorious for getting into scrapes with a petticoat at
the bottom of them, had a "way with him," and it
happened to be a way that appealed to this daughter
of the Islands more than she would have cared to allow.
Besides, it was not her custom to give in to a defeat.

"All right," she said calmly.  "I savvy all thing
about Englis' officer.  Tempesi he no like court-mars'al,
make break, make longshoreman, all the people laugh.
Tempesi, he like die, I think.  All right.  I let him.
Good night."

The commander held out his hand.

"Good night," he said politely.  "Mr. Darcy, you will
see about getting a native guide who can show the way to
Ranaar, at once.  We will do our best to surprise them."

A low, sarcastic laugh came from Vaiti.

"You wooden-faced Kapitani, you think you savvy
Malekula!" she said.  "Where you get guide?"

Mr. Darcy did know a little about the New Hebrides,
and he saw that they were beaten.

"She's right, sir," he said.  "Take my word for it,
no native would dare to guide you.  There's no mission
here; they're a very bad lot, and all at war."

It was a bitter moment for the commander, but he
surrendered like a gentleman.

"You've got the best of me, Miss—Miss Saxon,"
he said.  "Very well.  You have my promise.
Mr. Tempest shall be pardoned, if we get him back alive.
You know nothing about this matter, you will remember,
Mr. Darcy.  Miss Saxon, you're a very brave young
lady, and I wish I had met you in circumstances of
which I could more honestly approve."

"No one need tell me," he said afterwards, "that
that old vagabond we had in the cells wasn't a gentleman
once.  It comes out in the girl; blood will tell, even in
a half-caste.  But Providence ought rightly to have
a down on the man who is responsible for any one of
them, for there seems no right place for them, either in
heaven or earth."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Neither the bluejackets of the *Alligator*, nor the
officer appointed to command the column, ever forgot
that night's march through the mountain bush of
Malekula.  The air was like hot water, and not a breath
of wind was stirring.  The track was but a few inches
wide, and as slippery as butter, so that the men slid
and fell continually when struggling up the endless
sides of the innumerable gullies.  Mosquitoes settled in
bloodthirsty hordes upon their faces and hands, roots
tripped them up, saw-edged reeds slapped them in the
eyes, and thorny tangles of bush-lawyers fished for and
successfully hooked them.  At any moment a huge
soft-nosed bullet, cruel as a shell, might come singing
out of the darkness; or a poisoned arrow, freighted with
sure and agonising death, might whirr across their
path.  When the officer in command, irritated by the
stumbling and falling of the men, ordered them to
remove their boots and march barefoot, Vaiti told him
that nothing of the kind must be done, for poisoned
spear-heads were in all probability set here and there
in unsuspected places, ready to pierce the unwary foot.
She herself seemed invulnerable and untiring; she led
the column at a pace that caused more than one to fall
out, and never hesitated nor faltered through all the
three hours of the worst and most intricate march that
the *Alligator* men had ever known.

At last she told the officer to call a halt, and on no
account to make the slightest noise or advance his men
until he should see a blue light burning about half a mile
ahead.  Then she vanished into the darkness, lithe and
noiseless as a lizard, and silence, dead and oppressive,
settled down upon the bush.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Lieutenant Tempest was a man and a British sailor,
and he was not afraid of death.  But he thought there
might be pleasanter ways of dying than that which
actually stared him in the face.

Memory plays strange tricks when the dark is closing
down about her doors.  Lying there on the damp
earth, bound hand and foot to a pole, with the hideous
howls of the cannibal dancers in his ears and the glare
of the cooking-pits in his eyes.  Tempest could think of
nothing but a fragment of verse out of a half-forgotten
poem read somewhere long ago:

.. vspace:: 1

..

   |  "It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts.
   |  But only—how did you die?"

.. vspace:: 2

How was he dying?  Not as an English officer might
gladly die in the cause of his country and in loyal
obedience to orders.  Not even as a man, with a sword
in his hand, facing the foe.  He was dying an unfaithful
servant, false to his trust, and suffering because of
that falseness, as a slaughtered brute struck down with
a club like a bullock, and afterwards....

The red remains of the luckless Aki, jointed and piled
in a ghastly heap, told the rest.

Tempest did not look at that ugly pile any more than
he could help.  He wanted all the nerve he could muster
for he was haunted by a deadly fear that he might cry
out for mercy when it came to the last, and he did not
want to add cowardice to the tale of his many
shortcomings.  If he could have died here as a prisoner of
war—as a captured scout, a fighting enemy, taken in a
skirmish—the death, hideous as it was, would have
been honourable, and his pride of country would have
upheld him.  But it seemed as if his courage had
nothing to stand on now, and he was almost—almost, but,
thank God! not quite—afraid.

The Malekulans had been dancing for full two hours,
ever since they had brought him to the valley and flung
him down upon the ground.  In the middle of the open
village square were three huge idols, carved out of
entire tree-trunks set upright.  They had black, empty
sockets for eyes; their mouths were curved upwards into
a ghastly wrinkled grin, and their tongues hung
mockingly out.  On the head of each was perched a huge
black wooden bird, with beak bent down and gloomy
wings outspread—the very spirit of Nightmare herself.
Round and round these devilish things, in the red glow
of the fires, danced the cannibals ceaselessly and
untiringly, fleeing with heads down and outspread hands,
wheeling and turning, circling with measured steps; and
all the time the huge hollow idols, beaten with heavy
clubs "to make the spirits speak," thundered death
and doom.  It was plainly a religious ceremony which
must be fully enacted down to the last detail; but
Tempest thought, as clearly as he could think in such a
place and at such a time, that it could not last much
longer.

"A fellow ought to say his prayers," he thought;
but the thunder of the drums and the wild, shrieking
song of the dancers bewildered him, and his swollen
wrists and ankles hurt him so much as almost to confuse
his mind....  What could he say?  Only one prayer
remained clear in the turmoil of his brain—just the
old, old prayer that he had prayed at his mother's
knee.  Well, it would serve—and up above he hoped
they'd understand how sorry he was ... for lots of
things....

"Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy
name.  Thy kingdom come...."

It was coming, indeed!  The dance had stopped.

"Thy will be done...."

What came next?  He could not remember—and
the savages were advancing across the square.

"Forgive us our trespasses ... and lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil...."

It was *now*!  The women were hiding themselves in
the houses, and two of the men, armed with clubs, were
stepping forward.

He was only conscious of one feeling—joy that he
had the courage to look the cannibals in the face as
they advanced, and meet his fate "game."  He hardly
knew that he was still praying—

"... For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and
the glory...."

Death!

It came with a blaze of light—a sound as of a wild,
deep shout and the rushing of many waters—then——

Was this the end?  Was it indeed death?  He had
felt nothing—but a man does not feel the blow that
kills—and his eyes were so dazzled with a strange, blue
glory that he could not see....  The rushing sound
continued; it was like the thunder of hundreds of
flying feet....  The light burst forth again, and yet
again, and then died away, and there was a great
silence.  Tempest saw the hideous faces of the idols
standing out in the empty square, and began to
understand.  He was not dead—but something had
happened.  What was it?  He tried to break loose and sit
up so as to see all round.

"Stop um little bit," said a voice, and some one drew
a sharp knife across the lashings that bound his limbs,
and lifted him into a sitting position.

The blinding light had almost died away now, and he
could see the whole square.  There was no one in it.
The cannibals were gone, and the beautiful half-caste
girl who had brought about his downfall—innocently,
as Tempest of course supposed—was squatting beside
him and putting a flask to his lips.

"Drink a little bit whisky," she said.  "Good
whisky; he make strong.  No good stop here, you
Belitani sailor-man; more better we go away too much
quick."

The spirit cleared Tempest's head and put some life
into his limbs.  Vaiti poked him unceremoniously in
the ribs as soon as she saw that he was reviving.

"Show um leg there, lively!" she ordered, dragging
him by the arms.  Rather to his surprise, Tempest found
that he could walk, once on his feet.  He wasted no
time in getting away, after Vaiti's brief explanation
of the blue-light stratagem, and the probable return of
his enemies before very long.  At something as near a
run as his cramped limbs would allow, he followed
her down the pathway that led away from the village—narrow,
wet, and dark as a wolf's gullet—and into the
comparative security of the bush, towards the advancing
relief column from the *Alligator*.

It would have been no more than fitting if Vaiti,
like a true heroine of romance, had vanished silently
into the forest when they encountered the man-of-war's
men, leaving Tempest to "turn to thank his preserver,"
and "find that she had disappeared."  But Vaiti,
as it happened, was born under the Southern Cross,
where the poetry of the footlights does not flourish.
So she gave the men her company on the way down
as a matter of course, asked the officer in command for a
cigar, smoked it and accepted half a dozen more out
of his case, and made herself wonderfully pleasant—for
Vaiti.  She had further driven Tempest to distraction
by starting a flirtation with a handsome petty
officer, eaten up two emergency rations, "borrowed"
some one's gold tie-pin, and very soundly boxed the
ears of a leading seaman who tried to kiss her in the
dark, before the long roll of the surf on the barrier reef,
and the welcome glimmer of the *Alligator's* riding lights,
told the tired-out party that they were safe back again.
Then, like the mysterious heroine, at last she disappeared,
and slipped off to the *Sybil* in a native canoe, for the
reason that she did not want to be seen on board the
man-of-war in a very untidy and dirty dress, without
any flowers in her hair, or fresh scent on her laces.
Tempest had found time to "thank his preserver" on
the way down, haltingly enough; but the preserver,
instead of accepting his thanks after the fashion he
would have preferred, had laughed wildly and somewhat
wickedly, and gone on walking right in the middle of
the column, without a glance to spare for him....
Still—he thought he knew women—and....  Time
would show.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The rest of the wardroom did not envy Mr. Tempest
his interview with the commander.  It took place
immediately after his return to the ship, and he came
out from it with a countenance of entire inexpressiveness
and extreme whiteness.  One sentence—the last—was
unavoidably heard by the lieutenant who followed
immediately after Tempest, to deliver his report.

"Finally, Mr. Tempest—this Miss—a—Saxon—has
risked her life to save your life and reputation.  I think
there is only one way in which you can repay her—by
never seeing her again."

Tempest's answer was inaudible.  But—he never did.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`INVADERS IN TANNA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   INVADERS IN TANNA

.. vspace:: 2

"What a beautiful girl!  Is she one of the heathens,
I wonder?" said Lady Victoria Jenkins, leaning on the
rail of her yacht.

The *Alcyone* floated on a sea of living silver.  The
coral reefs forty feet before her keel showed like a
pavement of pale turquoise in the searching splendour
of the tropic moon.  Close at hand loomed the dark
woods and cliffs of Tanna, and above them, blotting out
half the crystal broidery of the stars, rose the cone of
the great volcano, crowned by a canopy of fire.  So, in
the days of Bougainville and of Cook, stood this
southward sentinel of the wild New Hebrides, a pillar of
cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  So it stands
yet, its deathless fires unquenched, its awful voice
breaking the forest silences hour by hour—as the dead
and gone discoverers of these distant lands saw and
heard it long ago, and as those who follow us will find
it in the days to come, when we and our thoughts and
hopes, and adventures and loves are but a whisper in the
homeless winds and a handful of dust blowing about
on long-forgotten graves.

There are few volcanoes in the southern hemisphere
more famous, and none less frequently visited, than
the fiery cone of Tanna.  The island lies thousands of
miles away from everywhere, and the inhabitants are
known to be almost all heathen, cannibal, and hostile
to whites, although the expression of their hostility
has been kept considerably in check of late years.  But
Lady Victoria Jenkins, daughter of the late Earl of
Wessex, and wife of Mr. Abel Jenkins ("Jenkins's
Perfect Pills"), is well known as a romanticist and a
lover of all things unusual and strange.  Mr. Abel
Jenkins's income is only exceeded by that of two other
commoners in England, and Mr. Abel Jenkins's ugliness
and ill-temper are not exceeded by the ugliness and
ill-temper of any one known to polite society.  If the
reader will piece these detached facts together, and
consider them, he will readily understand why Lady
Victoria was enjoying a tour round the world in her
celebrated steam-yacht, the *Alcyone*, why she had
come to look at Tanna, and why, including a good deal
of miscellaneous company, the travelling party somehow
was not miscellaneous enough to include Lady Victoria's
husband.

The yacht had come in that afternoon after a
somewhat stormy voyage from Sydney ("They call it the
Pacific Ocean," said Lady Victoria plaintively, "instead
of which, I have not really enjoyed a meal since we
cleared the Heads"), and had instantly, by the mere
fact of her dropping anchor in Sulphur Bay, denuded
the whole seaboard of its population.  This was because
the conscience of Tanna is never quite clear, and the
Tannese, struck by the conviction of sin, thought the
*Alcyone* was a man-of-war.  Only two kinds of ships
were known to the islands, outside trading schooners:
British and French warships, and the lazy little monthly
steamers from Sydney, which strolled round the group
once a month, picking up copra, and conveying missionaries
and traders about.  The *Alcyone* was not a schooner;
she was certainly not the well-known "B.P." steamer;
therefore she must be some new variety of man-of-war.
As it happened, there was a little matter of a murdered
trader on the conscience of Tanna just at that time—he
had been very annoying, but a British man-of-war
is prejudiced about these affairs.  So the Tannese of
the coast, like the modest violet of the poem, concealed
their drooping heads in the shady vales of the interior,
and coyly hid from view.  Like the modest violet,
too—only with a difference—you might, if you wished,
have located them by their——  But no; this is a
polite history, and the Tannese are a very impolite
people.  Let us change carriages.

Vaiti and her father, who had come up from Queensland
with an empty ship and a full money-bag, and
were just starting a fresh recruiting trip, regarded the
appearance of the yacht with hearty disgust.  What
were the good old islands coming to if this sort of thing
was to be permitted?  Not a bushman would come
near the beach as long as the *Alcyone* stayed, and the
sprinkling of mission natives who were not afraid of
the yacht were worse than useless, for they neither
recruited nor encouraged their heathen friends to do so.
Besides, the airs and graces of the *Alcyone* were sickening.
Late dinner with low dresses and jewels; piano tinkling
all the evening; clothes that looked as if they had been
run hot on to the wearers, as icing is run on to a cake;
sparkling glass and brasswork all over the ship, and
dainty brass signal cannons, pretty as toys, and a little
funnel all cream-colour and blue, and great sails white
as trade-wind clouds, and a hull that sat the water like
a beautiful sea-bird settled down to rest—all these
unnecessary and disgusting affectations made a smart
schooner like the *Sybil* look no better than a mud-scow
in a marsh, for all that she was the beauty of the South
Seas and the most famous ocean adventuress from
'Frisco to Hobart Town.  Besides, Saxon would not
stir out of his cabin while the yacht was there, having
developed the lumbago that always attacked him
whenever English society folk loomed on the horizon—Vaiti
knew that lumbago!—and he might really have
been of use about Sulphur Bay, where, for a wonder, no
one had any old scores against him.

It was all most abominable, thought the "Kapitani,"
and she cast an unfriendly glance on the luxurious
*Alcyone*, as her boat shot past the yacht in the moonlight,
returning from a fruitless hunt along the coast for any
stray bushman who might have heard the recruiting
signal—a stick or two of dynamite set afloat on a board
and exploded—and come down to the coast.

Lady Victoria's comment on the "beautiful girl"
did not soften her in the least, coupled as it was with
the unspeakable assumption that she was "a heathen."  Probably
she was, in one sense, having long ago given
up all but the merest rags of religion, but it was not the
accusation of moral deficiencies that galled her: it
was the idea that she, Vaiti, daughter of a great
Polynesian princess and a white sea-captain, should have
been "evened" to the black, monkey-like, naked hags
of Tanna.  The resentful spirit of the half-caste burned
hot within her as she steered the boat through the moonlit
water.  She could see Lady Victoria and her friends, a
brilliant flower-show of coloured dresses and sparkling
gems, leaning over the rail, and watching her as
impersonally as if she were a porpoise or a shark.  She
could catch their comments, loudly and carelessly
spoken.

"I suppose she is one of them.  But she looks quite
nice.  See her pretty dress.  She is quite decently
clothed, isn't she?"

"I wonder is she a cannibal?  She does not look
dangerous.  I would like to ask her on board, and give
her some tea and cake, and things of that kind, and talk
to her.  Just to try and reform her from their own
horrible food, you know," said Lady Victoria angelically.

"That would be so dear of you," chimed in her special
sycophant and foil, a plain and elderly young woman
who knew when her bread was buttered on both sides,
and why.

But here the rowers—urged by a signal from Vaiti
who thought she had heard about as much as she could
stand without exploding—gave way vigorously, and
pulled the boat out of earshot.

That was not a happy evening for any one on board
the *Sybil*.  Vaiti would not give out any grog for supper
though it was a settled custom on the ship; would not
have singing in the cabin, gloomed like a hurricane sky
over the mate and boatswain's sociable game of cards
until Gray, out of pure nervousness, dropped a greasy
ace upon his knee, and was thereupon accused by Harris
of cheating, and coarsely threatened by him with an
operation usually confined to sufferers from appendicitis.
At this Vaiti rose and walked out of the cabin with the
air of a convent-bred princess who had never so much as
heard a jibbing donkey "confounded"; and went to sit
on deck near the wheel, where she stayed so long, smoking
so many thin black cigars, that every one but the night
watchman turned in and left her, and only the dead,
dark hour of two o'clock, when the spongy heat of the
island night stiffens for a while into fever-bringing chill,
shook her out of her sulks and into her cabin.

When Vaiti sulked it was usually observed that things
happened before very long.  But on this occasion the
exception seemed to rule.  The disgusting yacht stayed
all the next day, and the *Sybil* lay quietly at anchor on
the other side of the bay.  Some of the yacht people
went ashore in the afternoon, and roamed timorously
about the beach, wondering at the hot springs and tasting
everything in the way of fruit they happened to see.
(It was nearly all inedible, but none of it, by a fortunate
chance, happened to be poisonous.)  Lady Victoria was
disappointed with her day on the whole.  The natives
from the mission, who had officiously attended them all
day long, were unromantically clothed, clean, and
English-speaking.  The wild savages did not appear;
and there were one or two other mishaps of an entirely
unromantic kind.

"How did you enjoy it, darling?" asked the plain
young woman of Lady Victoria, when the daring
pioneers returned.

Mr. Jenkins's partner shook out her soiled tussore
silk disgustedly.

"It was untidy and ugly and nasty," she declared;
"and when I sat down under a great pineapple tree all
covered with fruit, and said that I was realising one of
my dreams, Jack de Coverley laughed at me, and said it
was only a pandamn-us, or something else profane, and
that pineapples grew on the ground.  And when we
started to walk among the palms, and I was saying that
I had always dreamed of wandering softly by a coral
strand and seeing the cocoanuts drop into my hands,
something as big as a horse's head suddenly thundered
down like a bombshell from a hundred feet high, and
buried itself in the sand at my feet with such a fearful
shock that I jumped a yard away and screamed like
anything!  So then the missionary came out, and said
he wondered I wasn't killed; and if you'll believe me,
it was nothing but a horrible nut!  And the coral
strand was pretty enough, all over little bits of branching
coral stuff; but why doesn't anyone ever tell you that
coral strands burn all the skin off your nose and blacken
you into a nigger?  We're going up the volcano
tomorrow—the missionary says it's quite safe—and I'm
sure I hope it's true, but one never knows.  Darling,
if I die, see that the new Lafayette photo is sent to the
papers—not on any account the other; and I like
Latin crosses on graves, I think; Carrara marble, very
thick, and just one short text, something nice, like
'They were lovely and pleasant in their lives'—you
know."

... "'And in death they were not divided,'"
finished the plain young woman with mechanical piety....
"Darling! dearest! what have I said?  What is
the matter?"

"Now you *have* done it!" roared Mr. de Coverley,
who was rather a well-bred, but sometimes rather a
vulgar young man.  "Not divided!  Oh, great Scott!
Oh, my eye!  Oh, I'll die of laughing!  Hold me up!
Never mind, Vic; I'll see you aren't divided, or cooked
either—trust to me!"

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Vaiti was still in a speechless state of sulks when she
started off the next morning into the interior, to recruit
on her own account.  It was not a very safe thing to
do, but the bushmen would not come down to the coast,
and the *Sybil* could not hang out indefinitely, since the
doubtful character of her methods had given the French
and English Commissioners of the islands a nasty habit
of asking questions about her.  Saxon, who had
relinquished his lumbago to go off into the hills at a safe
distance from the yacht, wanted to make his daughter
accompany him; but Vaiti simply laughed at him, and
departed with a guide seduced from the mission towards
a village lying a mile or two above the volcano.  She
preferred the glory of working on her own account, and
besides, it doubled the chances of recruits.

She knew the Tannese nature well, so she dressed
herself for her part in a robe of scarlet sateen, with
liberal necklaces of different coloured trade beads, and
stuck a couple of tomahawks in her sash, besides an
ornamented sheath-knife.  Across her splendid young
bosom she slung an incongruous-looking bandolier of
cartridges, designed apparently for the slaughter of
elephants; and a smart magazine rifle, carried over her
shoulder, completed the outfit.  All these valuables,
though designed to assist her plans by suggesting the
enormous store of desirable goods possessed by the
recruiters, were almost as likely to assist her to a sudden
and unprovided end, by reason of the natives' covetousness.
She took her chance of this, however; Vaiti was
used to taking chances.  It is easier than most people
suppose to take the risk of being killed every day of your
life.  In the strange places of the earth, where such
things are a common happening, men do not look upon
the inevitable end after the pursy, secretive,
never-mention-it fashion of Peckham and Brixton.  Death is
just death in the earth's wild places—yours to-day,
mine to-morrow—a thing to walk with shoulder to
shoulder, to meet face to face at noonday; in any case,
to make no bones of it until it makes bones of you; and
after that circumstances will keep you from complaining
if you feel like it.

It was a long, hot walk up to the village.  A "walk"
is mostly a scramble about the uncleared New Hebrides,
where roads are mere foot-wide cracks and canyons in
the dense forest growth, and level ground apparently
does not exist.  Besides, a bandolier of cartridges and
an assortment of small arms are rather heavy jewellery
for such a climate.  Vaiti, however, possessed the
enviable gift of never looking, or apparently feeling, hot
or tired; and she swung along at an unvarying pace that
caused the unlawfully enticed mission native, who had
waxed fat and lazy, to regret his enticement and wish
himself back in the mission school writing copies, instead
of slaving up and down precipitous gullies in the rear of
a woman-devil who did not know what it was to want a
rest.

At long last, however, the reedwork fence of the village
came in sight, and they entered the open square, shaded
by an immense banyan tree and surrounded by low,
ugly huts, all roof and no wall, like all the mountain
villages of Tanna.  There were sentries perched up in
the trees outside the gate, and others squatted on the
ground at every entrance, their rifles ready in the crook
of the elbow.  Within, the dusty tan-coloured square,
quivering under the pitiless fire of the white-hot sky, was
all alive with moving figures—ugly women in brief
grass skirts humped out into swaying bustles; young
boys with murderous little faces, and full-sized rifles;
wild-looking men, with thick hair twined into myriads
of tiny strings ending in a great bush on the shoulders,
stripes of scarlet paint on their faces, and no clothing save
their native impudence and a cartridge belt—all seething
about in a very bee-hive of excitement and alarm.  As
for the rifle-barrels, they were bobbing about like
piano-jumpers all over the square, and every weapon was cocked
and loaded.

Vaiti saw at a glance that they were expecting an
attack, and picking out a native who could speak English,
asked what the trouble was.  The man replied that they
feared the little man-of-war down below, but that they
were entirely innocent.  Questioned further, they said
naïvely that they had never eaten a white man, and that
none of them were low cannibals in any case.  Vaiti,
who had not heard of this little affair before, saw her
chance.

"No good you speak alonga that fellow way," she
said, using the *bêche-de-mer* talk that some of the Tannese
understood; for Vaiti, like many half-castes, could
handle almost any dialect or corruption of a dialect,
though she could not speak decent English or French.
"I savvy plenty, you eatum one fellow white man.
By'n by, big fellow man-of-war come, shoot you all-a-same
one pig, all-a-same one blind box [flying fox],
burn altogether house belong you.  Very good you
come alonga Saxon ship, go Queensland; then you all right."

"No eatum," persisted the man (who was the professional
talking-man or orator of the village), with a
coy smile.

Vaiti's nose was keen, and she had already guessed
something by its aid.  She marched straight across the
square into a little yam-house, and pointed to a small
parcel done up in green banana-leaf and tied with
cocoanut sinnet.  Five toes and an instep protruded
from one end.  The game had been well hung, as the
Tannaman likes it to be, and there was no mistaking the
fact of its presence in any sense.

The talking-man giggled like a school-girl caught
consuming surreptitious chocolates.

"Eatum jus' little-fellow bit," he allowed, with a
bad-child chuckle.  The other men took up the laugh,
and the village resounded with a roar like the bellowing
of a herd of bulls.

Vaiti, seeing her advantage, stepped out into the
square and began to talk, marching to and fro in Tannese
fashion as she spoke.  The sun cast dancing spangles
on her many-coloured beads as she moved, and threw
back darts of fire from her heavy bandolier.  One arm
emphasised her remarks with sweeping gesture; in the
other the tall rifle pounded the earth with its stock,
marking the points of her discourse.  The fat, stolid
mission native watched her with staring eyes and open
mouth, and the chiefs gloomed at her under sullen
savage brows, evidently impressed, but restive.

The sum of her discourse was that they and their
women would do well to come down with her to the
schooner, recruit at once, and fly to a land of safety
where men-of-war never came, where Tanna people
reclined all day under the shade of banyan and banana,
picked a little cane for their employers occasionally,
lived upon tinned meat and sugared tea, and eventually
returned loaded with riches in the shape of rifles,
cartridges, cotton, and knives.  There was a good deal
more of the same highly-coloured stuff.  This was old
business to the people of the *Sybil*.

The talking-man, also strutting backwards and
forwards, Tanna fashion, in a kind of continual country
dance with the glittering vision from the ship, answered
now and then.  It was very well to talk about recruiting,
and perhaps some of them might go if they got lots of
tinned salmon and "bisketti" to eat before they went on
board, and promise of rifles to be paid the tribe when
the bargain was complete.  But they did not believe
that the new ship was not a little man-of war, and until
she was gone they would not go down to the coast—no,
not even to bathe, although they had all decided to
have a bath soon, for the weather was hot and their
skins were like the bark of trees, and it was now about
ten moons since they had had their last bath.

At this Vaiti's eyes lit up, for she suddenly saw a plan,
a plan which might give her a score of recruits, drive
the objectionable yacht out of Sulphur Bay, and pay off
every rankling insult inflicted by the *Alcyone* and her
people.  But the savages were watching her, so she
veiled her eyes with her long lashes, and replied
carelessly:

"All that very good.  To-morrow, small-fellow
man-of-war he go 'way; then you coming longa schooner.
To-day, what name [why?] you no go wash big water
'long place one-fellow-fire stop?  Very good place that.
Suppose you going, I come up from schooner, bring
plenty-plenty tucker.  Plenty-plenty bulimacow [beef],
bisketti, tucker belong white man, cost ten rifle.  All the
Tannaman he eat; by'n-by he stop lie down, he break, so
much he eat."

This tempting picture had its effect, backed up by a
few presents of beads and cartridges.  The Tannamen
agreed that the plain below the burning mountain,
where a wide, stagnant lake spread out its dull expanse,
would do for a bathing place, short of the impossible
shore, and they chuckled with joyous anticipation of
the feast.  They also agreed, rather doubtfully, to
embark as soon as the "man-of-war" was gone; and it
seemed evident that a fair number would at least come
down and negotiate on board the schooner after which—well,
the *Sybil's* smart heels would do the rest.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A CANNIBAL PARTY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A CANNIBAL PARTY

.. vspace:: 2

Vaiti went off to get ready the feast, telling the natives
that they might follow her before long, as everything
would be ready soon; and they might trust her, the
great Kapitani, that it would be a feast such as no
Tannaman, not even of those who had served in
Queensland, had ever witnessed in his wildest dreams.

The mission native being a rather weak-kneed convert,
and anxious to enjoy a good heathen gossip with his old
companions, wanted very much to stay on in the village.
But that was just what Vaiti did not want, so she drove
him out in front of her like a fat and nervous sheep,
hastening his movements all the way down with
occasional reminders from the butt of her rifle.  He had
given her certain information about a picnic at the foot
of the volcano, arranged by the people of the yacht for
that afternoon, and she did not want him to share his
news with the men of the village and cause them, perhaps,
to put two and two together where he himself had failed
to do so.  She despatched him therefore to his own
town on the coast, and saw that he went, before herself
turning off in the direction of the track that led to the
volcano.

Near to the lake there lies a curious little valley with
a soft, clean flooring of black volcanic sand and sheltering
walls of green pandanus.  Here, shaded from the burning
heat, yet close to the volcano plain, was the only possible
place for the picnickers to enjoy their meal.  Beyond
lay only a lurid plateau of red and yellow lava beds,
curdled and coiled as they had flowed down from the
crater lip long ago; a desert of black ash and sand,
and a dark, wicked, smoking, rumbling cone in the
centre of all.  Not a native would have climbed the
cone for all the goods in the *Sybil's* hold; it was the
mouth of hell, they said, and full of devils of every kind.
But they were not afraid of the valley below, within
safe limits, and even if they had been, the feast and the
bathe after it were attractive enough to conquer a little
nervousness.

As Vaiti had anticipated, there were several picnic
baskets stowed under a tree in the valley, and a big
wine hamper as well.  Four mission natives, who had
acted as guides and carried up the provisions, were
lying on their stomachs in the shade, smoking and
talking.

It was essential to get them out of the way, and time
was short.  Vaiti did not waste any unnecessary words.
She simply pointed her rifle at the men and told them to
clear.  They cleared, howling, and she was left alone.

With quick, neat hands she unpacked the hampers,
spread the cloth, and laid out the food.  It was a goodly
display—hams and tongues and fowls, cold meats, pies,
cakes, tarts, fruits, and tinned dainties of every kind.
There was plenty of champagne, also a supply of whisky
and soda.  She set all the bottles in a row, and looked
with satisfaction upon the glittering array.  Then she
went up to the edge of the plain and looked at the
crater.  No one was yet in sight.  The exploring
party at that moment were on the other side of the cone,
standing on the black lip of an appalling gulf eight
hundred feet deep and half a mile across; looking down,
awe-struck and amazed, upon colossal fire fountains that
uplifted their gory spray three hundred feet in the air,
and listening to the heart-shaking thunders of the
volcano's awful voice, as from time to time that terrifying
note of illimitable force and fury made the whole plain
tremble and echoed far out to sea....  It was indeed
no wonder that the ignorant Tannamen feared to ascend
the cone.

Vaiti sat down at the edge of the plain, and watched
till she saw a number of many-coloured dots creeping
down the black pyramid in its centre.  Then she suddenly
lay down upon the ashy ground, and writhed with silent
laughter.  People were in the habit of saying that Vaiti
had no more sense of humour than the jibboom of her
father's ship.  They might have modified that
judgment, could they have seen her now.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Lady Victoria Jenkins had enjoyed her morning
very much indeed.  She had dressed for the ascent in
a mountaineering costume that combined equal
suggestions of "Carmen" and the Alpine Club, and gave
great opportunities to her ankles.  She had been helped
up the cone by four devoted admirers, all at once, and
had come down it at a wild running slide, ably braked by
two strong hands of two or three others who wanted to
have their turn.  The other women had trodden on their
skirts, and torn them, burned and cut their foolish boots,
and also got unbecomingly hot and out of breath,
because there was not nearly one man apiece to help them
up, after Lady Victoria had annexed all the best.  It
must be allowed that the men were the weak point
of the *Alcyone's* travelling party.  Mr. de Coverley and
his set were "dear boys" and charming companions, no
doubt, but they were not quite as manly as some of
the ladies.  Lady Vic and her companions did not
attract the best sort of men, as a rule.

They were all very hungry when they reached the
plain, and thirsty with a thirst unknown outside the
tropics.  All the way across the baking black sand and
the tinkling lava beds, "one fair vision ever fled" before
the eyes of the party—vision of gold-necked champagne
bottles lying coolly embedded in icebaskets; of
topaz-coloured jellies, trembling on silver dishes; of flaky,
savoury pies, and delicate cold meats, and crisp green
salads concocted as only the hand of the *Alcyone's* *chef*
could concoct them.

It seemed as if that plain would never end, but it did
end at last, and a green fringe of pandanus announced
the beginning of the bush.  The elderly young lady and
most of the others were making excellent time ahead,
and they reached the verge of the plain some little while
before Lady Victoria and Mr. de Coverley came to it.
The latter pair, as it happened, were really not thinking
very much about their lunch, because a still more
interesting matter absorbed their attention.

"Not understood!" Mr. de Coverley was saying
bitterly.  "And so we die and go down to the
grave—not understood!  The pathos of it!"

"We are never understood," sighed Lady Victoria,
patting the side waves of her "transformation" to
see that it was on straight.  "We women, especially.
And those who should understand us best of all are so
often——"

"Exactly—so they are.  But, Lady Victoria—Victoria!—there
are some who are different; there are
men, rare souls, who——"

"What in Heaven's name is the matter?" interrupted
the misunderstood one, stopping dead in her
tracks (literally, for the sand was deep) and staring at
the edge of the bush.

From the valley below the plain had just risen a long,
loud shriek, followed by another and another, and then
by a burst of laughter that sounded scarcely human.
The other members of the party had disappeared, but it
was clear that something had happened.

"Good God, the savages!" exclaimed Lady Victoria;
and she began to run.  Let it be stated, for the credit
of her race and name, that she ran towards the sound.
As for Mr. de Coverley....

But this story is not about Mr. de Coverley.  If it
were, it would be interesting to tell why the Sydney
steamer that called at Sulphur Bay two days later found
an unexpected passenger waiting at the trader's, and why
Lady Victoria and Mr. Abel Jenkins, of Jenkins's Perfect
Pills, became eventually reconciled and lived the life
of a model couple.  As things are, it must be enough to
state that Mr. Jack de Coverley turned and ran away at
the sound of the shouts—ran right across the plain into
the bush at the other side—ran as far as he could get, and
did not come back at all—and thereby ran once and for
ever out of the life of the lady whom he "understood."

Lady Victoria, speeding in the opposite direction,
reached the edge of the little valley in a very few minutes,
and, looking over, beheld what was certainly the strangest
sight she had encountered in all her varied life.

Round about the elaborately-laid luncheon were
squatting a dozen or so of naked brown savages, painted,
feathered, and slashed with ornamental scars.  A few
women, clad only in a six-inch fringe of grass, stood
behind them, eyeing the eatables eagerly, but not daring
to touch them while their masters fed.  The talking-man,
a big, hulking savage with a huge bush of hair, and a
match-box stuck in each ear-lobe, had buried his face
in the savoury interior of a boned turkey, and was
gnawing out the stuffing.  The principal chief, one
hand in a dish of Spanish cream and the other in a
chicken curry, was casting double supplies into his
mouth with the regularity of a patent feed-machine.
A fat young fighting man, with nose and forehead
painted scarlet, and white ashes in his hair, had tucked
a ham under one arm, and was sitting on a peach pie,
with intent to secure as many good things as possible,
while he hastily worried large mouthfuls off the
forequarter of lamb he was holding in both hands.  Another
man was drinking mint sauce out of the silver sauceboat
with horrible grimaces; his neighbour, having
captured a handful of maraschino jelly, fast melting
in the sun, was industriously rubbing it on his hair;
and a grizzly old fellow, with a monkey-like face, was
half-choking himself over a soufflé, which he was trying
to swallow case and all.  The necks of the champagne
bottles were all knocked off, and from engraved
wine-cases, empty entrée-dishes, and dredged-out tins the
savages were drinking Lady Victoria's excellent wines
with every appearance of satisfaction.  Between mouthfuls
they stopped to look at the party from the yacht,
and to roar with laughter at their evident fright.  Too
terrified even to run away, the voyagers, in their dainty
frocks and smart white suits, stood huddling together
for protection, the women crying, the men looking rather
white and foolish, for every Tannaman had a loaded rifle
slung to his side, and there was not so much as a saloon
pistol among the whites.  A few yards off Vaiti stood,
regarding the whole scene with an expressionless
countenance that covered a good deal of quiet enjoyment.
She knew, if the visitors did not, that the cannibal
bushmen were really not at all a bad lot of fellows when
you knew them, and that the yacht party, against whom
they had no grudge, were perfectly safe.  In fact, the
Tannamen merely thought these oddly-behaved whites
were a new party of missionaries, and were quite ready
to be civil to them, since they thought all the mission
people harmless, if eccentric.

But the true inwardness of the situation not being
apparent, the *Alcyone's* guests were very frightened indeed.

"P-perhaps if we go away very quietly, they won't
f-follow us," said a wealthy young stockbroker, who had
retained a little presence of mind, though his teeth were
chattering in his head.

"Oh, let us!  Victoria, save me!  Oh, what shall
we do?" wailed the elderly young lady, rushing up the
bank and flinging her arms round the mistress of the
violated feast.  Lady Victoria, though white as her own
Belfast linen collar, kept her head fairly well.  She saw
that Vaiti was not one of the invaders, and called to
her.  "Do you speak English?  What are we to do?
Will they kill us?" she asked.

Vaiti walked over to her with the bearing of a stage
duchess, and favoured her with a fashionable high
handshake that was the one thing wanting to complete the
insanity of the whole impossible scene.  A new idea
had suddenly struck her—a fresh spark of mischief was
lit.  With an immovable countenance she replied:

"No kill you, I think.  Suppose you want go 'way all
right by'n-by, very good I think you sit down, eatum
dinner alonga those fellow—then they think you all
right, let you go home, no kill."

"Oh, Victoria, anything to please them!" sobbed
the elderly young lady.

"Yes—a—I think we'd better do anything we can to
get into their good graces, since we're not armed,"
submitted the stockbroker.

Vaiti exchanged a few words with the Tannese.  She
explained that these white people had come a long way,
and were very hungry.  The Melanesian has not many
virtues, but hospitality is certainly one of them; and a
man who may be planning to dine off you himself
tomorrow will certainly not refuse you half of his own
leaf of yams to-day.  The Tannese were delighted at the
chance of sharing their good fortune with the white
chiefs, even in spite of the latter's extremely silly
manners, and they beckoned to them at once to come and
sit down.

Thereafter took place a scene incapable of description
by mortal pen.  The chief took his head out of the turkey,
chewed off a leg, and grinningly handed it to Lady
Victoria.  The young warrior got off the pie,
disembowelled it with one scoop of the hand that had not
known water "for ten moons," and laid its interior in
the elderly young lady's lap.  Another knowingly
poured out a champagne glass of Worcester sauce and
handed it to the stockbroker, while the much-bitten
lump of mutton that was at that moment circling
from mouth to mouth, native-fashion, was hospitably
passed on to all the whites.  Driven by fear, they tried
to swallow something; choked in the effort, made
futile remarks to each other, laughed nervous laughs,
and all the time watched with eyes of utmost apprehension
the dusky hosts who were thus entertaining them
with their own audaciously ravished goods.  And above
the crazy party the burning Tanna sun beat down, and
the great volcano-cone far across the plain smoked and
thundered.

It had been Vaiti's design to dismiss them in peace
by and by, assured that their compliance had saved their
lives, and anxious to make steam out of Sulphur Bay as
soon as was reasonably possible.  Fate, however,
reserved a more dramatic ending to the entertainment,
And it was "all along of" that talking-man.

The cannibal native is invariably shy of displaying
his tastes before whites, since people who do not share
the "point of view" are so frequently prejudiced.
Therefore the talking-man did not open a certain small
green parcel tied up with sinnet string, which he had
brought down with him from the mountain village.
A feast in the hand is worth two in the pandanus-bush,
thought the talking-man, so he brought his *bonne bouche*
with him for dessert and said nothing about it.  And
thereby came the end.

For Lady Victoria, unable to swallow the clawed and
chewed morsels pressed upon her by dirt-encrusted
hands, began to hunt despairingly about for something
that she could really eat, so that she should not offend
the dangerous monsters who surrounded her.

"Isn't there anything clean to be had?" she asked
the stockbroker anxiously.  "I can't eat—and yet we
must!  What are we to do?"

The stockbroker, who had once been to Honolulu,
and thought he knew something about native foods,
spied the packet of green banana-leaf, and reached out
for it.

"This'll be some of their own boiled yam," he said.
"Natives always do it up like this.  You can eat it all
right if you scrape it with a knife.  Allow me."

Before the talking-man could stretch out his filthy
claw to stop him, the Englishman had cut the sinnet
string, the parcel had burst open, and right into the
middle of a half-demolished chicken pie fell a large
white foot, cut off at the ankle, nicely browned across
the instep and all crackled on the toes.

There was a wild shriek from the women, a splutter
of horrified exclamations from the men, a boiling up of
white petticoats like to the breaking of a wave on a
pebbly shore, and then nothing but a diminishing string
of rapidly trotting figures, each woman hand in hand with
a man who was dragging her along far away, farther and
farther, down the long, black, sandy path into the bush.
Then ... they were gone.

Vaiti stood on the bank to look after them, and
laughed quietly.

"Now I think we keep Sulphur Bay all our own self,"
she said.

As for the Tannamen, they rolled on the ground with
laughter, and then picked the dainty morsel out of the
chicken pie and ate it up.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE RIVAL PRINCESSES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE RIVAL PRINCESSES

.. vspace:: 2

It was full mid-day when the schooner *Sybil* dropped
anchor off Liali Island.  The hot season was at its
height.  The long, white coral strand blazed in the sun,
the moated lagoon was raw emerald, the waveless outer
sea blue fire.  Beyond the beach stretched a green,
grassy lawn, dotted with quaintly-shaped Norfolk pines,
tall palms, and feather-tressed ironwood trees; and
against its enamelled background rose a palace like a
picture in a fairy-tale—white, long-windowed,
lofty-towered, and crowned with a crimson flag set below a
gilded vane.

Vaiti, standing on the break of the poop, with the
inevitable cigar between her fingers, looked critically
at the island, and liked it well.  A mere little matter
of kidnapping somebody's indentured labourers—the
sort of thing that any gentleman with an extensive
island practice might easily find himself obliged to
do—had brought about her father's expulsion from the New
Hebrides labour trade, and obliged him to seek new fields
for the activities of the notorious and naughty *Sybil*.
Saxon himself was virtuously indignant, Vaiti not
particularly sorry.  She was getting tired of the gloomy
feverish New Hebrides and their ugly savages.  The
Eastern Pacific was her heart's home after all,
semi-Polynesian as she was; and even the wild excitement
of the cruel western isles could not hold her away very
long.  So when Saxon was wavering between the advantages
of strictly illegal gun-running in the Solomons
and honest trading about the Liali group (which had just
wrecked its native schooner, and was open to employ a
successor), Vaiti's influence went for once on the side of
peace and virtue, and the course was set for Liali.  The
group was new to both father and daughter, but was
none the less attractive on that account, since all over
the wide island world the *Sybil* and her owners were best
loved and most warmly welcomed where they were least
known.

The Liali group, as many people in the Southern
hemisphere agree, offers the nearest possible approach
to comic opera known off the actual stage.  Liali itself,
the chief island, is as pretty as a toy-box, and quite
extraordinarily theatrical in appearance.  Its handsome,
merry, brown people wear the most picturesque costume
in the Pacific—a knee-length kilt of fine cashmere,
girded by a deep sash of pure silk, and worn with a silken
or cashmere shirt or a graceful sleeveless tunic, according
to sex—all in the most vivid of sea- and flower-colour.
Liali is civilised after a fashion.  It goes barefoot and
barelegged, sits on mats, lives in reed-woven houses
devoid of furniture, worships a sacred lizard on the sly,
and sometimes breaks out openly into club-fights and
devil-dances.  But it has a king, and a palace and a
Parliament, a brass band, and quite a number of very
active Nonconformist churches, run by white missionaries,
who find that "labouring" among the well-off
and amiable Lialians is a task in which the meritorious
martyrdom of missionary life can be combined with
quite a number of pleasant alleviations.

Nothing in Liali is entirely what it seems.  The palace,
when one comes close to it, is perceived to be built
of painted wood, like a "practicable" scene in a theatre.
The Parliament never passes any laws, because the
Lords, who are chiefs, always on principle throw out
every bill introduced by the vulgar Commons, just to
"teach" them.  The Prime Minister is oftener in prison
for *lése majestè* than out of it, and several Chancellors
of the Exchequer have been transported to the Colonies
for theft.  But there is a real throne in the palace, all
crimson velvet and gilt wood, and a wonderful gold
crown (the verdigris is cleaned off it with a wad of
cocoanut husks by the Chief Equerry every Saturday
afternoon), and when the King goes out in state he wears
a purple velvet train, held up by two pages in tights
and plumes, and a marvellous ermined robe, all exactly
like the Savoy Theatre in the consulship of Gilbert and
Sullivan.  On occasions not of state he sits cross-legged
upon the palace parquet, clad in a shirt and a
kilt, and plays *écarté* with his native guards.

There are a few colonial traders in Liali, and a dozen
or so of the English "legion that never was listed"—just
such as one finds in all the odd corners of the
Pacific—talkative, plausible, thin and nervous, given to avoid
home topics and discourse with awful fluency upon
small local politics; hospitable, restless and lazy, and
usually married more or less to some dark beauty of the
islands, who has grown as fat as a feather bed and spends
a fortune on store muslins.

These, as a matter of course, took possession of the
*Sybil's* people at once, hardly waiting for the schooner to
cast anchor before they were alongside with their boats.
Saxon and Vaiti were swept ashore immediately, and
begged to make their home in half-a-dozen different
houses.  With a fine sense of the fitting, Saxon selected
Bob Peter's public-house, misnamed hotel, and
immediately held a *levée* in the bar, wearing his smartest
Auckland suit (not paid for, and not likely to be) and
looking, with his heavy, old-fashioned cavalry moustache,
blonde-grey hair, and well set-up though rather bloated
figure, quite like a somewhat seedy Milor on his travels.
(And, as a matter of fact....  But that was Saxon's
long-buried secret, and must not be told.)

Vaiti, splendidly attired in a flowing island robe of
yellow silk, with a gold chain twisted through her misty
black hair, sat in the midst of a court of her own, and
drank expensive pink lemonade to her soul's content.
She was revelling in the sights, the sounds, the smells of
the dear eastern islands once more.  She had a necklace
of perfumed red berries round her neck, and white
"tieré" flowers behind each ear, and the well-remembered
scent almost intoxicated her.  Outside she
could hear the boom of a dancing-chant, broken by
interludes of clapping; and from the very next house, a big
native reed-built structure, came now and then in the
quieter moments the sonorous voice of a Lialian man
calling out the names at a kava-drinking.

The double soul that is the curse of the half-caste
surged within the girl....  This, this, this, and all
it meant—how she loved it!  And yet, the wild, fierce
life of the western islands; the chance, the risk, the
strong wine of danger, adventure, power!  The two
natures of the soldier of fortune and the sensuous island
princess who had given her birth, fought together in
her heart....  If one could eat one's cake and have it!
If one could sleep all day, crowned with flowers, under
the singing casuarina trees, and yet be the daring
sea-queen, the "Kapitani" of the *Sybil*, if only...

Vaiti shook herself impatiently in her hammock
chair, and asked for ginger beer with sugar in it.  She
hated thinking, and felt as if she were going mad when
the half-white brain in her pretty dusky head took a
strange fit of sober industry.  Swift, instinctive plotting
and planning were one thing, deliberate reflection quite
another....  Ugh! she must be sick....  And for
once the temperate Vaiti said yes to the inevitable offer
of "a stick in it," as her ginger beer was handed to her
by an eager admirer.

The "sickness" passed away, and she began to listen
and watch in her old fashion, smiling all the time to the
compliments and sweet sayings that were being poured
into her ears.  A trader was telling her father all about
the latest dynastic crisis in the monarchy, and Saxon
was not even pretending to listen.  The affairs of
"niggers" never interested him, unless there was a
question of immediate profit ahead.

"You see," said the trader, "King Napoleon Timothy
Te Paea III., which is his full title, wants for to get
married.  He's thirty, and there's no heir.  And there
being just the two Lialian princesses that wasn't his
sisters—Mahina and Litia—what does he do but go and
propose to both of them, and, of course, gets snapped up
like winkin' by the two.  It's no small potatoes being
Queen of Liali, mind you.  Te Paea gets lots of money
out of the fruit, and copra taxes, and then the Crown
lands is half the island, there's presents besides.  And
he's a real king if he is coffee-coloured—why, the kings
of Liali goes back hundreds of years before Captain Cook,
and he was in Henry Eighth's time, wasn't he?  And if
you was to see the pink satin chairs in the throne-room,
and the phonographs, and musical-boxes, and albums,
and lookin'-glasses, and the lovely wax flowers in cases,
and real hand-painted oil pictures—ah! it's a good
job, is Te Paea's, and either Mahina or Litia's going to
be a very lucky girl.  What he'd like, you see, is to marry
both of them, same as his old grandfather—only he
married nine, he did.  But the King's a Methody, good
as they make them—when he don't forget, or want a
spree—and of course the missionaries won't hear of his
havin' two queens.  And, says he, Mahina's real fat;
there's nothing mean about Mahina; she fills the eye,
says he, and that's what a Lialian likes, for they don't
hold with any sort of stinginess, says he.  But Litia, he
says, has eyes like the buttons on his Auckland boots,
they're so round and black and bright, says he, and
she walks for all the world like a lovely young mutton-bird,
says he.  And what's a king to do, with both the
girls' relations fighting and squabbling over him like
land-crabs fighting over a bit of fish, and he himself
liking them both, and the girls clean mad for
him—because, you see, Te Paea he's a handsome fellow, and
when he's got his military uniform on, and all his orders
and medals what he drew out himself on paper, and got
made in Sydney, he's a fancy man, he is.  The wedding's
to be in three weeks, and the invites is being printed
down in Auckland all in silver, with a blank to write the
bride's name in—and the House of Lords has bought
the bride's dress for her, which is what the Kings says
it's their right to do, according to custom,—and no
one knows which he's going to marry, and no more
does he.  And it's my belief that there'll be war over it,
before all's said and done, for Mahina's people say they'll
burn down every village belonging to Litia's tribe, and
Litia's folks say they'll kill Mahina's people's cattle and
cut up their gardens.  That's the way things are, and you
may take my word it's a pretty kettle of fish."

"What are you giving for copra at present?" asked
Saxon, yawning unrestrainedly.  And the conversation
turned at once to the inevitable trading "shop."

A few days afterwards the *Sybil* spread her wings and
started for Waiwai, the outermost of the Liali islands.
She was to make the whole round of the group afterwards,
and might not be back for some weeks, so that it seemed
likely that Saxon would miss the festivities of the King's
wedding.  This Vaiti declared was no reason why she
should miss them, and she insisted on being left behind.
Saxon was not too well pleased, for if he had a remnant
of conscience left, it was connected with the care of his
daughter, and he did not quite care about leaving her
alone in a group to which they were both strangers.  But
Vaiti promised to behave like a saint, and furthermore
said that she would stay with one of the married traders,
and not in the native villages.  She also added that she
meant to stay anyhow, and that it was no use making
a fuss.

So the *Sybil* sailed away out of Liali harbour, and
became a little pearl-coloured pinhead on the blue
horizon, and then melted quite away.  And Vaiti went
to the tin-roofed shanty belonging to Neumann, the fat
German trader, who had married a Lialian wife, and was
received with the unquestioning hospitality of the
islands.

Nobody, among either whites or natives, could talk
of anything but the King's matrimonial affairs.
Mahina and Litia both appeared in Neumann's parlour
more than once, sat on the floor, drank black tea with a
handful of sugar in it, and related their several woes at
length.  They did not come together, except once, when
Litia, walking in unexpectedly, found Mahina there,
crying into her teacup, and telling Neumann's wife that
the King had given Litia a beautiful chemise, all trimmed
with lace, only the day before, and that in consequence
she considered him a monster and a perjured villain,
although she knew perfectly well that he meant nothing
whatever by it.  What was a chemise?  He had sent
her two pounds of stick tobacco the Sunday before last.
She would show Litia yet that the King was her King,
and nobody else's.

Litia, entering at this point, wasted no words, but
simply buried her hands in Mahina's curly black masses
of hair, and dragged her, shrieking, across the floor.
Neumann interfered, and parted them; but Mahina
flew at Litia immediately after, ripped open her dress
with one clutch, and disclosed the royal gift chastely
embracing Litia's lovely form.  With a howl of anger,
the rival seized the chemise in both hands; there was a
scuffle, a scream, a rending noise, and Litia stood up in
the middle of the room, a gold-bronze statue, shedding
tears of rage, while Mahina, running out on to the
verandah, tore the offending garment into strips and
rags, and cast them upon the road.  Litia, rushing out
after her, stood upon the steps clad with wrath as with
a garment (and with extremely little else), explaining
her wrongs to an interested and sympathetic native
crowd, until the Methodist missionary happened to come
by, and told her that unless she went in and dressed
herself at once, she might safely count upon eventually
finding herself in a place where dress would be very
much at a discount ... or words to that effect.  So
Litia went in, and Mahina went away, escorted by a
strong cousinly "tail"; and afterwards Neumann,
enveloped in oracular clouds of smoke, remarked sleepily
that the princesses were the greatest nuisance on the
island, and that he believed the King would run away
from the whole set if he could, for he was "by-nearly
mad-driven on account of their so-tiresome ways, and
feared-himself to choose, because the one that he not
married had would cause to make war by her people
against the one he married should."

During the whole of the fight, Vaiti remained
perfectly unmoved on a cane lounge in the corner of the
room, uninterruptedly puffing rings of blue smoke at
the ceiling.  Not a detail had escaped her, all the same,
nor did she miss a word of Neumann's remarks.  And
they made her think.

In the afternoon, the dull thud of galloping hoofs
along the grass street made Mrs. Neumann run to the
door.  She called loudly to Vaiti to come.

"It is the King," she said.

A small victoria, drawn by two spirited blacks, was
tearing up the street.  Seated alone in it was an
extraordinary and notable figure—Napoleon Timothy Te
Paea III., King of Liali.  He was six feet four inches in
height, and over eighteen stone in weight.  He wore
a scarlet cloth uniform coat, blazing with gold, and his
heavy, handsome brown face, with its weak, small mouth,
and black eyes almost too large and soft for a man, was
shaded by a white sun helmet with a wide gold band.

He drove furiously, looking neither to right nor to left,
and, passing the house like a gorgeous whirlwind, was
instantly lost in the casuarina forest beyond.

"That is the King, then?" said Vaiti.  The Lialian
language came almost as easily to her as her own, being
only one of the dialects of the great Maori tongue that
covers a good two-thirds of the island world.

"Yes," said Neumann's wife, "that is the King.
And very little any of us have seen of him lately.  He
is afraid of the trouble he has got himself into; he shuts
himself up all the time, and sees no one but his guards,
and just sends a present now and then, first to one girl
then to the other.  And when he drives to take the air,
he flies along like that, so that no one can stop and speak
to him.  He is terribly shy of strangers; I think it was
because the *Sipila* was here that he did not come out at
all last week."

"Is it such a very good thing for the princess he will
marry?" asked Vaiti, playing with a yellow alamanda
flower.

"Very, very good indeed," replied the Lialian
impressively.  "She will have a gold crown to wear on
her head, and sit on a red velvet and gold throne beside
the King, and have the most beautiful satin dresses from
Sydney, and all her chemises will have lace and ribbons
on them.  And as soon as the King buys another
schooner for himself and Liali, she will travel in it with
him whenever she likes, for sometimes he will go to
Samoa, to stay with King Malietoa, or he will sail a whole
week to Mbau in Fiji, and then Princess Thakombau and
the Prince of Kandavu make feasts and dances for
him, and the Kovana [governor] gives a real 'papalangi'
dinner for him, with champagne and a band.  And as
for what she will have to eat at home, it is past telling,
for in the palace there is no count whatever made of
tinned salmon and biscuit, and she may have a sackful
of sugar at every meal, and a whole roast pig every day.
She may eat till she falls asleep, and then wake up to
eat.  Ah, it is a good thing for the princess who marries
the King, whichever she may be!"

"I think you will be thirsty if you talk so much,"
said Vaiti rather rudely.  "I am thirsty myself with
only listening to you.  Go and make some kava for me."

Mrs. Neumann, who had been rather proud to have
Vaiti staying with her—since her rank as a princess of
Atiu counted for a good deal among the island races—began
to dislike her visitor soon after this, and to wish
her well away.  Vaiti was not an angel in the house at
the best of times, and she did not trouble to make
herself pleasant just then.  Indeed, one would almost have
thought she was trying to pick a quarrel.  And, as
that sort of effort rarely goes unrewarded, it is not
astonishing to learn that the quarrel came before long—a
bitter, loud-tongued dispute that left Mrs. Neumann
sobbing in a fat, frightened heap on the floor, and
Vaiti, silent but stormy, packing up her camphorwood
box to depart.

Neumann, being afraid of Saxon's possible anger,
tried to keep her, but she laughed in his face, and went
on packing.  There was an empty native house—little
more than a palm-leaf hut, once tenanted by a Chinese
trader—standing by the road about halfway through
the great casuarina forest; a lonely, ramshackle place,
used and wanted by nobody.  There and there only
Vaiti would go, taking mats and cooking pots with
her, to stay until her father came back.  When some
of the islanders betrayed meddlesome curiosity as to
her motives, and the missionaries declared they scented
scandal, Vaiti silenced and terrified the one, and
convinced the others that she was hopelessly beyond the
pale, by giving out that she was something of a witch,
and meant to go into the forest to gather and prepare
certain powerful charms.  These, she said, would injure
only her enemies, but were altogether powerless to hurt
anyone who spoke well of her.  In consequence, the
evil tongues of Liali received a sudden check.

Furthermore, Vaiti, neglecting the half-castes and
the whites, began with considerable art to make herself
popular among the natives.  She dressed herself Liali
fashion, and arranged her hair after the island modes.
She joined in all their interminable boating journeys and
picnics, and was never tired of sitting cross-legged on
the ground, waving her arms and head in time with
a hundred others, and chanting Lialian songs that lasted
an afternoon apiece.  After dark, she was often to be
seen out on the reef, with a torch and a fishing spear
making an exhibition of piscatorial skill that astonished
even the Lialians themselves.  When there was an
unmissionary dance in some big chief-house, Vaiti was
always there, decked with wreaths and flower necklaces,
and polished with cocoanut oil, turning the heads of
all the young men by the grace of her dancing, and
winning the astonished approval of the women by the
cool reserve with which she received every advance of
a sentimental nature.  Both Mahina and Litia took
jealous fancies to her—thus acquiring yet one more
cause of mutual dissension—and separately poured all
their woes into her ear.  She was wonderfully sympathetic,
and urged each one on to assert her rights and stand
no nonsense; insomuch that before very long the island
was fairly ringing with what Litia's people meant
to do to Mahina's, and what Mahina's would certainly
do to Litia's, in the event of the King selecting one or
the other.

Somebody about this time—it was never ascertained
who—spread a report that Captain Saxon of the *Sybil*
had a number of trade rifles on board his ship, and several
cases of cartridges.  The talk began to take a more
dangerous turn.  The schooner would not be back till
the wedding was over, it was said, but let the winning
party look out for themselves when she did come!  The
Lialians, under missionary rule, had been peaceful and
law-abiding people for almost a whole generation; but
they had not yet forgotten that they were once the
masters of the Pacific, and that of all the warlike island
races, none had been such fighters as they....  The
older men began to snuff battle in the air, walked about
with their chests flung out, and told bloodthirsty ancient
stories to the younger Lialians.  The women sang war
songs at the evening gatherings in the chief-houses, and
Mahina and Litia began to go about followed by bands
of eager partisans.  Liali was certainly warming up.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`QUEEN AFTER ALL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   QUEEN AFTER ALL

.. vspace:: 2

News of all these things came duly to the King through
his faithful spies, and his Majesty Napoleon Timothy Te
Paea III. went nearly frantic.  He actually began to lose
weight—a consummation that all the skill of his European
court doctor had hitherto failed to bring about—and
day by day he drove more wildly behind his famous
blacks, covering mile after mile of lonely forest roads
at a pace that brought the horses home all in a lather
and the yellow satin cushions grimed with dust.  The
wedding approached within ten days: the triumphal
arches were being erected; the Queen Consort's throne
came back from the carpenter, freshly gilded and
upholstered; and the band were hard at work practising
the strange conglomeration of shrieks and wails that
make up the Lialian National Anthem.  The bride's
dress, provided, according to usage, by the House of
Lords, arrived at the palace in a palm-leaf basket.
It was a very gorgeous affair—a long, loose robe of orange
satin, embroidered in scarlet by a few of the cleverest
mission-school girls—and it was of a usefully indefinite
size, since the difference between the massive Mahina
and the waspish little Litia was almost as great as the
difference (of another kind) between their respective
parties.  The silver-printed invitations for the white
people and the chiefs—"To be present at the wedding
of His Majesty King Napoleon Timothy Te Paea III. with
Princess——," came up by a whale-ship from
Auckland, and so did the wedding cake, largely plaster of
Paris.  And still the wretched King, lashed by the
scourge of his own light-hearted follies, sent pacificating
presents to both girls, and put off the dire decision.

It was about this time that any wayfarer passing
through the casuarina forest "might have observed"
a light in Vaiti's cottage late one night.  There was no
one to observe, however, for the wood was supposed to
be devil-haunted, and no native ever passed through
it save in broad daylight.  When it grew toward sunset
the only Lialian who would brave its dangers so far as to
rush across it in the red evening light was the King
himself, who had been educated in Sydney, and did
not believe in devils—much.  The forest road was the
shortest way home from his usual circular drive, and he
frequently passed by the cottage just before sunset,
driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and looking neither
to right nor to left.  He had never noticed Vaiti as he
passed, for she was always within the house, looking out
between the cracks of the palm-leaves, where she could
see without being seen.

This evening, long after the King had passed by and
the dark had come down, Vaiti sat on the floor of the
hut, looking very thoughtful, as she turned out the
contents of her big camphorwood box by the light of a
ship's hurricane lantern.  She was all alone, as usual,
and smoking, also as usual.  There was no sound in
the solitary little house but the sighing of the wind in
the casuarina trees and the steady puff of the girl's cigar.
Papers, letters, packets of lace, odd bits of jewellery,
silk dresses, pistols, knives, collections of rope and twine,
laced underclothing, cartridges, feathers, shells, cigars,
pearl-inlaid boxes, revareva plumes, and a miscellaneous
collection of odds and ends garnered from all the four
corners of the South Seas, strewed the floor, and the box
was still half full.  By-and-by she came upon what she
wanted—a roll of stuff done up in waxed paper.  She
unfastened it, and let the contents fall out across the mats
under the rays of the lantern.  It was a web of pure
gold tissue, bright as a summer sunrise and fine as a
fairy's wing—an exquisite piece of stuff, which she had
acquired from a Chinese trader in Honolulu by means
none too scrupulous, and hoarded away for years.

Vaiti looked at it thoughtfully, and then opened a
little tortoise-shell and silver box, and spilled its
contents—a shower of photographs—into her lap.  They were
an exceedingly various collection—naval, military,
British, French, native and half-caste—but most were
men, and many were young and handsome.  Perhaps
the best-looking of the collection was that of a young
English naval officer, signed across the corner
"R. Tempest," with a Sydney address, and "Must it be
good-bye?" written in tiny letters under the signature.
Vaiti took the picture in her hand, and looked at it
so long and earnestly that her cigar went out while she
gazed.  She lit another, put down the photograph, and
sat smoking and thinking for quite a long time....  The
world was still all before her ... and the whaling ship
had said that another vessel was almost sure to touch, on
her way to Sydney next week.

Once in Vaiti's many-coloured history a
looking-glass had proved her undoing.  It was a looking-glass
that proved her salvation now, at the parting of the
ways.  For, as she sat thinking, a brilliant picture
caught her eye—her own proud, lovely head, crowned
regally with a wreath of flowers, reflected in the mirror
inside the lid of the box.  She smiled, stretched out
her hand—letting the photograph fall unnoticed to the
floor from her lap—and placed a fold of the golden tissue
across her head....  Yes, it looked quite like a
crown—a Queen Consort's crown ... the glass gave back a
truly royal picture.

Vaiti's cheeks flushed as she looked.  She could
hardly turn away.  But the golden fold slipped off her
hair, and the queenly picture was gone.

She shut the box, and with set lips took a match, lit
it, and set fire to the photograph.  It burned very slowly,
and the flame seemed to lick sympathetically round her
own heart as it crawled about the handsome, debonair,
but sensual face, lit up, and then put out, the laughing
eyes, crackled through the curly hair and the white
naval cap, and at last reduced the whole bright picture
to a little pile of feathery black ash—dead, dead, dead!

Vaiti dropped the charred fragments from her hands,
and then put her head down upon the mats and lay very
still....

When morning broke through the narrow door of
the hut, the rays of the rising sun fell upon the figure
of a girl with a cold, expressionless face, sitting upon the
threshold, hard at work with needle and thread.  Upon
her lap lay a pile of golden gauze.

That afternoon the King drove late in the forest.
The sun was near setting, and the rays were slanting long
and low among the red trunks of the gloomy casuarina
trees, when the spirited blacks came galloping up to the
cottage.  Every day they had passed it by, a still,
brown nest in the shadows, where nothing moved,
but this evening, as they reached the spot, something
caused them to check and shy, and the King, splendid
driver as he was, had some difficulty in pulling them in.
When he had succeeded, he glanced at the object that
had caused their fright, and saw a vision startling
enough to astonish even himself.

A stranger girl of exceeding beauty stood in the
midst of the forest clearing.  She was dressed in a robe
of magnificent golden tissue, from which the level rays
of the westering sun sparkled back in a halo of almost
supernatural glory.  On her head was a wreath of blood-red
hibiscus flowers, and her exquisite right arm, bare
except for a twisted chain of gold, held up an island
kava cup of carved cocoanut shell.  When she saw that
the King observed her, she sank on her knees, bent her
neck, and raised the cup higher in both hands above her
head.

It was an invitation, and one that no Lialian could
possibly have refused, for the drink brewed from the
kava root, and the ceremonies connected with the
brewing, tasting, and giving round, are almost a religion
in those islands, and many a man, in the old wild days,
has died for the insult of putting aside the proffered
cup.  Therefore the King descended at once, tied his
horses to a tree, and advanced to take the cup from the
hands of this unknown woman who understood royal
etiquette so well.  It was his Majesty's right to have
his kava, and indeed all his food and drink, proffered
in this especial attitude; but half-castes and whites
were sometimes careless enough to forget the honour.

He drank the great bowlful at a draught, as a king
should, and, sending the cup with a twirl to the ground,
according to etiquette, cast a side glance at the beautiful
cup-bearer.  He hated strangers and distrusted foreigners,
still...

"Will you not come in and rest, O Great Chief?"
asked Vaiti in Lialian.

"Who are you?" said the King, still looking half
away—but only half.

"Princess of Atiu, and daughter of the great English
sea-captain Saxon," replied Vaiti, drawing herself up
to her full height, and looking him straight in the eyes.
The King met the look full this time, and thought that
Litia's eyes, Lialian though she was, were not so bright
by half.  And if Mahina was fatter—as she certainly
was—she never had such hair, or such a coral-red mouth.
And what a magnificent dress the magnificent creature
wore!

He knew at once who Vaiti was, when she mentioned
her rank in Atiu, for the chocolate-coloured island
kings and queens understand each other's complicated
genealogies quite as clearly as do their white compeers
on the other side of the world—and though Atiu was a
broken, half-depopulated place, annexed to the British
Crown, its chiefs were of ancient lineage and high repute.
Napoleon Timothy Te Paea III. hesitated a moment—stretched
out his hand—withdrew it—then stretched
it out again, and graciously offered it to Vaiti, as to
an equal in blood.

Vaiti, glowing with gratification, yet had the happy
intuition of dropping on one knee and kissing the royal
hand, European fashion.  The King understood it, and
swelled with pleasure, remembering how Mahina had had
the impudence to chuck him under the chin when he
bestowed a gracious salute upon her inferior lips, and
how Litia had objected altogether to get off her horse
when he was passing by, as Lialian royal customs
enjoined upon all riders ... What a nuisance they
had both grown to be, crying and battering at the
palace gates, fighting over his gifts, getting up trouble
among their relatives—trouble that he now began to
fear might become so serious as to bring down the
interference of the British Crown.  And every Pacific monarch
knew what was the inevitable next move, when that game
had once begun!  Good-bye to his kingship, if once the
British Lion laid a claw on Lialia.

"Will you not come in and rest, Great Chief?" said
the humble voice of the stranger again.  And the King,
still shy and distrustful, and looking at Vaiti only out of
the corners of his eyes, did condescend to come in.

And the next day he rested again, and the day after
that.  It was astonishing how easily driving seemed to
tire his Majesty at this period.  And all the time the
wedding preparations went forward, while Mahina and
Litia, with their respective factions, grew more and more
jealous of each other, and more and more enraged.

But there came a day at last, four days from the
wedding, when the King declared that he would make
his final choice on the evening before the marriage day,
and would send a herald on that night to proclaim it
through the capital.

Ruru, the royal herald, who had never before had a
chance to exercise his office or wear his uniform, was
extremely pleased.  He got out his finery at once—a
Beefeater cap and tabard of crimson silk, worn with a
large silk sash, and bare legs—and began a dress
rehearsal that lasted, with intervals for food and sleep,
until the evening of the proclamation.  At sunset he
went up to the palace, received the paper that
contained the message, and strutting like a turkey, came out
on to the open green in front, where at least a thousand
Lialians—half of them Litia's friends, and half of them
Mahina's—were collected.  Mahina and Litia themselves,
each defiantly dressed in all the bridal finery
she could muster, stood in the forefront of the crowd,
exchanging looks of death and hatred.  It had come to
this with the two women now, that either would have
cheerfully died a death of slow torture, if by so doing
only she could have prevented the other from winning.
That she might miss the glories of the throne was not
the prominent thought in Litia's mind—only that
Mahina might secure them and triumph over her; and
the self-same fancy agitated the ample breast of her
rival, as the two stood in the cool twilight, within
sound of the breakers on the reef, waiting with choking
anxiety for Ruru's words.

"People of Liali!" read the herald impressively,
striking an attitude, with one bare leg advanced: "His
Majesty King Napoleon Timothy Te Paea III. of
Liali, being sovereign by right divine, and the Lord's
Anointed, also High Chief of all the Liali Islands as
descendant of the Sacred Lizard, has decided to marry,
according to the custom of his forefathers, and give the
land of Liali an heir to our mighty crown.  The wedding
will take place in the mission church to-morrow, at noon
and there will be a collection afterwards for expenses!
If anyone comes drunk to church, or puts nothing in
the plate, he will be turned out.  His Majesty hereby
announces that, in order to save war and dissension
among his loyal subjects, and to teach some princesses
to pay him proper respect, he has decided to give the
honour of his hand to Princess Vaiti, daughter of Princess
Rangi of Atiu, deceased, and Captain Saxon, of the
schooner *Sybil*.  God save the King, and you are all to
go home without making a row."

It was a fine proclamation, but assuredly the order
in the last clause asked too much of Lialian humanity.
No one attempted to obey it.  The news was received
first in a dead silence of amazement, and then by a storm
of shrieks, howls, questions, a wild trampling and rushing
to and fro, and, last of all, by a Homeric roar of
laughter.  The Lialian possesses a rough but reliable
sense of humour, practical joking being his especial
delight; and it suddenly dawned upon the populace
of Liali that the King had played the most stupendous
practical joke upon them ever known in the history of
the islands.  Therefore these light-hearted children of
the sun, instead of raiding the palace in two separate
factions, lay down and rolled upon the grass, or held
helplessly on to one another, roaring with laughter.
The utter disconcerting of Mahina and Litia, now that
all party feeling was removed from the matter, further
appealed to them as a jest of the finest sort, and
witticisms that would have made a trooper blush were hurled
upon the disconsolate maidens from all sides.  Some
few there were who frowned at the triumph of a foreigner
and a stranger; but Vaiti's arts had succeeded in making
her popular, and the malcontents were borne down by
the roar of public amusement and assent.  Vaiti herself,
safely hidden in the Methodist mission house, listened
to the laughter far off, and felt well pleased.  She had
not been very sure how matters might go, and had
therefore, at a bold stroke, won the favour of the Church
by approaching the missionary, and assuring him of the
extreme purity of her Methodism (she was, if anything,
a pure heathen) and, in confidence, of the honour awaiting
her.  The reverend gentleman, who had long sat on
thorns by reason of the power of the Seventh Day
Adventist, Christian Science, and Original Shaker
missions in the islands, received her with delight, and
handed her over to the care of his wife, who shortly
afterwards informed him that the new light of the Church
was, in her opinion, a "perfect minx"—but that she
supposed it was as well, under the circumstances, to
make to herself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,
as the Bible enjoined, and remain on intimate
visiting terms with the palace.  So Vaiti spent the
fateful evening under the secure protection of the
Church itself, and claimed the same creditable patronage
for the day of the wedding.

What of Mahina and Litia?  The disappointed
princesses, when the proclamation was read out, turned
and stared at each other like tigresses robbed of a meal.
Neither was going to be Queen of Liali—neither was
going to scratch her rival's eyes out, and root up her hair,
for the crime of securing the coveted honour.  The very
bottom of the world had dropped out—what was to
follow?

For a moment they continued to stare, each scanning
the other's face under a new light—the light of common
feeling.  Litia remembered that she and Mahina had
been brought up almost as sisters in the palace of the
late Queen.  Mahina recalled the time when she had
almost died of measles, and Litia had nursed her through.
They were both deceived, both deserted, and the friends
of one could never crow offensively over the other now.
The thought was mingled bitter-sweet, and the two
burst out crying, and dropped into each other's arms,
simultaneously vowing threats of vengeance against the
treacherous interloper, which—unbacked by their
war-like following of friends—they knew very well they
would never be able to execute.  And the crowd dispersed
as the sun went down.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The *Sybil* made better time than was expected, after
all.  Her white sails lifted against the blue, from behind
the nearest island, just as the royal wedding party
commenced its gorgeous procession to the church.  Before
the ceremony was ended, the schooner had made the
harbour and Saxon was ashore.  He came upon an
utterly deserted town, and saw not a human being
until he was halfway up to the church, outside of which
he perceived an immense crowd, unable to enter.  Under
a tree by the wayside sat one of the English traders
who had failed to get a place.  He greeted Saxon
uproariously, and asked him if this wasn't a proper go.

"What?" asked Saxon.  "Which is he marrying?"

"Oh, crikey! he doesn't know!" roared the trader—and
fell back against the tree, suffocating with laughter,
and utterly declining to explain.

Saxon, cursing him for a silly fool, tramped on towards
the church.  The procession was coming out now, and
he wanted to see the show, for though he might call the
coffee-coloured Lialians niggers, he quite understood the
position of King Napoleon Timothy Te Paea III., and
the importance to all the islands of his choice.

He got upon a bank to see the better, fixed his
long-sighted sailor eyes upon the chapel door, and saw a
glittering vision emerge into the sunlight, amidst the
cries and cheers of the people.  That was the King, in
a gorgeous uniform, with his crown on his head and a
long velvet mantle sweeping behind him ... and at
his left hand stepped a tall, stately, slender figure, also
crowned, and dazzlingly dressed all in glittering gold....
Not Mahina, certainly; not Litia either—Who was
it, then?  It could never be—but it was—Vaiti!

Saxon staggered off the bank, sat down, jumped up
again, and clapped his hands.

"By ——, if it isn't like her, through and through!"
he cried.  "By ——, I'm proud of her!  Queen of
Liali!  Queen of Liali!  But——"

He stopped, and shook his head with a knowing
laugh.  He was not very sober.

"But—God help the King!" he said.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center

   THE END

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center small

   PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND ECCLES.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::