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 theSybilfor 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-usedMargaret 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 theSybil, 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 theSybilin 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 theSybiland 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-likeSybilherself) 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 theSybilpay 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 IIITHE FLOWER BEHIND THE EARAs 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 theSybilonce 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 theSybilwas 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 iswhoshe's going to do with them skulls, andhow. 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. TheSybilrolled 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, theSybil'sdinghy, 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.* * * * *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 theSybilcould 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 theSybilhad 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 theSipilawas 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 theSybilcalled 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.CHAPTER IVTHE BLACK VIRIMoreover, 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 theSybil—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 theSybilwhen 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 asitificatifrom 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.
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 theSybilfor 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-usedMargaret 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 theSybil, 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 theSybilin 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 theSybiland 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-likeSybilherself) 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 theSybilpay 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 theSybilonce 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 theSybilwas 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 iswhoshe's going to do with them skulls, andhow. 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. TheSybilrolled 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, theSybil'sdinghy, 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.
* * * * *
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 theSybilcould 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 theSybilhad 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 theSipilawas 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 theSybilcalled 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.
CHAPTER IV
THE BLACK VIRI
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 theSybil—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 theSybilwhen 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 asitificatifrom 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.