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.
* * * * *
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.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*THE FATE OF THE LIEUTENANT*
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.”
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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: