*VAITI OF THE ISLANDS*
*BY BEATRICE GRIMSHAW*
LONDON
GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED
SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.
*CONTENTS*
CHAPTER
Prologue
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
*VAITI OF THE ISLANDS*
*PROLOGUE*
It was in the seventies, long ago.
* * * * *
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.
*CHAPTER I*
*THE PEARL LAGOON*
“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!
*CHAPTER II*
*A RACE FOR A FORTUNE*
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.”
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.”
* * * * *
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.
*CHAPTER III*
*THE FLOWER BEHIND THE EAR*
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.”
* * * * *
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!”