CHAPTER VIITHE TURNING OF THE TABLESShe looked narrowly about the island, hoping to discover the place where the lepers lived. A cluster of small, miserable huts, on the far side of the lagoon, attracted her attention. It seemed not more than half a mile from the spot where she had spent the night. The best fishing grounds she judged, by the look of the shore, to be near the village. She was therefore, no doubt, several miles from their usual haunts.So far, so good. Where was the schooner? It lay to her left about a mile out at sea, close to a small, uninhabited, sandy islet. Vaiti supposed that the men were cutting wood and looking for water. She saw one or two black dots on the shore, recognisable by their blue dungaree clothing, and strained her eyes eagerly to see if the dinghy had been pulled up on the sand, for in this lay her only chance. If they brought the boat up on the beach, to repair her where wood could be had without going to the atoll itself (Vaiti would have wagered that theIkurangidid not carry a splinter outside of the galley fuel), then the schooner would probably stop overnight. In that case she could carry out her plans. Otherwise ... there was always the dynamite.The dinghy was ashore, drawn well up on the beach.She drew a breath of relief, and slid down the tree again. Now she could wait till night with an easy mind.All day she hid in the tangle of young palm and low-growing scrub that clustered about the foot of the loftier trees. Once she saw a couple of the lepers pass by in the distance, evidently looking for something. These had eyes, and she crept closer into the shelter of the scrub till they were gone. Then she came cautiously out, and plucked long sheets of the fine pale-brown natural matting that protects the young shoot of the cocoanut, to cover up her white dress, for the scrub was dangerously thin, in that staring overhead sun. She did not venture down to the sea to fish, but fed upon cocoanuts during the day.Night came at last—night and coolness, with big stars shining in the lagoon, and a gentle breeze stirring among the palms. About midnight, as near as she could guess, Vaiti came out of her shelter and prepared for action.She took off her clothes, and fastened about her waist a petticoat of the dark-coloured cocoanut matting which she had stitched together during the day. So habited, with her olive skin and black hair, she knew that she was invisible in the darkness of the night. She fastened the dynamite, and a box of matches, into the coil of hair on the top of her head, stuck her knife into the waist of her petticoat, and walked down the beach into the warm, dark sea.She knew very well that the outer side of an atoll commonly swarms with sharks, but the risk did not trouble her. There was something a good deal worse to face on the island than any number of sharks. Heading for the distant light of the schooner, she swam through the starry water with the low, dog-like island paddle that can cover such marvellous distances—keeping her head well out, and quietly taking her time.It was a long swim, but it ended at last, and the schooner rose up before her in the water, black and silent, and shifting ever so little upon the swell of the incoming tide. The stars made little trickles of light upon her wet, dark hull. Two boats lay alongside—the dinghy, freshly mended and watertight, and the whaleboat, loaded with wood and cocoanuts. After the slovenly fashion of theIkurangi, they had left the boats until the morning to hoist inboard, seeing that it was dead calm in the lee of the islet.This was more than Vaiti had hoped for, and it made her task easy. She cut the dinghy's painter, got into the boat, and muffled the oars with a strip or two torn from her petticoat. Then she put the dynamite into the whaleboat, cut and attached a good long fuse, set a match to it, and saw that the tiny red spark was steadily eating its way along, before she pulled off from the ship. She towed the whaleboat after her a little way, and then let it go thirty or forty yards from the ship. It was not her desire to wreck the schooner at Vaka Island, and possibly let loose her enemies upon the atoll; rather she wished the ship well out of the way before any disaster should overtake her. The charts would most probably ensure that matter. The destruction of the boat was only intended to secure her own possession of the dinghy.She had scarcely reached the shore before a loud explosion boomed out across the water, and immediately after lights began to stir on board the schooner. Vaiti worked with coolness and speed, knowing that it was not likely, though possible, that any one would swim ashore. From her eyrie in the coco-palm she had noted a deep, narrow creek running up from the lagoon—a mere crack in the coral, but wide enough to admit a small boat, taken in with care. There was just enough light from the stars to enable her to find the place, and run the boat up on the sand at the end, into the heart of a tangle of leaves and creepers that entirely concealed it. For safety's sake, she cut a few more armfuls of trailing vines from the shore, and buried the boat two or three feet deep, so that neither from the sea nor the land could it possibly be seen.As she worked, she could hear shouts and cries, made faint by distance, coming across the water from the schooner. She could imagine the scene that would take place on board when they found themselves boatless. Some of the native crew—not Donahue or the mate; they would never face the sharks—would probably swim ashore to-morrow to investigate. Well, let them!Having finished the concealing of the dinghy, she got into it herself, put on her clothes again, drew the tangled creepers well over her, and went calmly to sleep, secure that no one could find her unless she chose to be found.All the same, she was very cautious about getting up the next morning, and looked carefully between the leaves before she ventured out of her hiding-place. She covered up her light dress with the cocoanut canvas, and then climbed a palm to look about.People were moving hurriedly about the decks of the schooner; something seemed to be going on. As she watched, she saw two natives, clad only in loin-cloths, stand up on the bulwarks, ready to dive. In another moment they had flashed down into the sea, small as ants to sight at that distance, but perfectly clear to Vaiti's sea-trained eyes. Then the dark specks began to make their way across the water. The sun was newly risen, the sea was still a mirror of molten gold, and the tiny black heads stood out sharply on its surface. Vaiti set her teeth as she watched them creeping on. They were island men, of her mother's own race, and they had done her no harm. And ... the longer a vessel lies at anchor in equatorial latitudes, the more certain it is that sharks will gather round her—even if there has been no explosion in the water alongside to kill the fish and collect the tigers of the sea from far and near.Vaiti looked away, and began desperately to count the nuts clustered among the palm-fronds at her feet.... How many were there? Ten—fifteen—twenty——A long, despairing shriek tore across the water. She put her fingers in her ears and buried her face in the leaves. Yet, all the same, she heard a second cry, short and sudden, and quickly ended. There was nothing more. She lifted her face again, her teeth set tight into her lower lip. The two black heads were gone."No one will come ashore to-day," she said, with a shiver. Something seemed to stab her, as she thought of that doctored chart in the schooner's deck cabin. The reefs on the course to South America were hundreds of miles from shore—the ship had no boats—and the native crew must suffer with the villainous captain and mate, if the disaster that she had plotted so carefully should come about.... There would be sharks there, too, when the ship broke up....The crystal-gold of the sea turned dim before Vaiti's eyes. It was only a mist of tears that lay between, but to the girl's excited imagination it seemed like the spreading and darkening stain of blood.Careless of whether she was seen or not, she slid down the tree and rushed into the scrub, where she sat down upon the sand and cried like a mere nervous schoolgirl. The sun was past the zenith when she lifted her head again; the schooner had put out to sea, and lay, a far-off snowy speck, upon the blue horizon.Vaiti stood up, flung back her hair, and cast the trouble from her. She could not afford to grieve over the inevitable now; there was too much to do. The boat had to be prepared and provisioned, and that was not the work of a moment.She husked and opened a number of large cocoanuts, and removed the insides. She then cut a quantity of young palm-leaves, and plaited them into baskets, which she filled with the cocoanut meat. Afterwards she cut down dozens of young green nuts for drinking, husked them to save space, and slung them together in bunches with strips of their own fibre. This done, she hid the provisions in the boat, and set about her own supper, as it was almost dark.Nourishing food she felt she must have, if she was to get through with her enterprise, but she dared not attract attention to herself by going out torch-fishing on the reef. However, there were certain holes in the ground about the roots of the palms that to her experienced eye promised something better than fish.She dug a fire-hole in the gravel at the end of the gully where she had hidden the boat, lined it with stones, and made a fire, looking well to it that no gleam should be visible from above. When the stones were beginning to heat, she took a piece of palms-leaf in her hand, hid herself in the bush, and waited, still as a rock.By-and-by there was a faint scuffling among the roots of the trees, and a shadowy thing began climbing up the trunk of a palm. Vaiti waited till it had disappeared in the crown of the tree, and then climbed after it to a point about ten feet from the top, where she tied her strip of leaf round the trunk and came down again.Thump! thump! Two cocoanuts fell to the earth. The crab (for it was a cocoanut crab of the biggest and fiercest kind) was getting his supper. Now he would come down the tree, rip open the nuts with his formidable claws, and enjoy the contents.Slowly he began to back down the palm, his sensitive tail ready to tell him when he had touched earth and might safely let go. And now it was that Vaiti's trap (a well-known native trick) proved his undoing. The belt of dry leaflets round the tree tickled his tail, he promptly let go, and fell with a crash seventy feet through air on to the pile of coral lumps that Vaiti had heaped up at the foot of the tree.The girl picked him up, badly injured and unable to use his claws (which were big enough to crack her ankle), and put an end to him with a clever stroke of her knife. He proved to be two feet long in the body alone, and of a fine blue and red colour, as seen in the dim light of the fire. She put him on the heated stones, wrapped in leaves, buried him until cooked, and then enjoyed a hot supper that an epicure might have envied.Strengthened by the good food, she worked on late into the night, catching more crabs, whose meat she hoped she could dry in the sun, making a rough sail out of the bed-sheet she had carried away from the schooner, twisting sinnet plait out of cocoanut husk for ropes, cutting and trimming a small pandanus for the mast. She had all her plans laid, and knew what she meant to do. Her present position was about five hundred miles from the Marquesas, and the south-east trades would be in her favour. With lines for fishing, a beaker full of fresh water on board (she had found that in the dinghy when she took it away), cocoanuts to help out with, and plenty of crab to dry, she hoped that she might manage to reach the islands before her strength or her food gave out. Greater voyages had been done many a time in mere canoes, and the dinghy was a large boat of its kind, strong, well built, and new. If she failed—well, any death, any horror that the wide seas could hold was better than Vaka Island.All being ready, she lay down and slept till dawn—a somewhat restless sleep, for it was full of wandering dreams, and all the dreams took one shape: Donahue's schooner, snared by the lying chart, rushing helpless to her end, with the green-eyed tigers of the sea hovering ever about the reefs, and waiting ... waiting....* * * * *"I don't think the patient can see any one," said the nurse doubtfully.The big, yellow-haired sailor took off his hat and stepped up on to the verandah. It was a very beautiful verandah. You could see most of Suva Bay from it, and half the tumbled purple peaks of Fiji's wonderful mountains lying across the harbour."If you could stretch a point, ma'am," said the sailor, "it might be as well for him. I've got good news.""About his daughter?" asked the nurse. She, like every one else in Suva, was deeply interested in this especial patient's story. He had come to Suva in his own schooner, theSybil, several weeks before, furious with rage and despair at the loss of his daughter, and eager to demand assistance from the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, although it seemed by no means clear in what manner Her Majesty's representative could aid him. Before the matter had even been discussed, however, he had fallen seriously ill of sunstroke and excitement combined, and had been sent to hospital, with rather a bad chance of recovery. He was just turning the corner now, and the nurse—who could not but admire his rather weather-beaten good looks and romantic history—regarded him as her most interesting patient."Yes, it's about his daughter," answered the sailor. "I'm the mate of theSybil, ma'am; Harris is my name. Perhaps you'd kindly read this."He held out a long slip of printed paper, containing arésuméof the cables for the day—Suva's substitute for a daily paper.The nurse took it, and read:"The missing daughter of Edward Saxon, owner and master of the trading schoonerSybil, has at last reappeared. Her fate has excited much interest and conjecture all over the Pacific. She arrived in Sydney yesterday on board the cable-shipClotho, by which she was picked up on the 2nd instant, in an open boat, alone, and two hundred miles from any land. She had experienced bad weather, and was much exhausted for want of food, but declared herself capable, if it had been necessary, of reaching the nearest island group unaided. She had been carried away, as was surmised, by the captain of the island schoonerIkurangi, who marooned her on a remote leper island, Vaka, and then sailed for South America. Revenge for the loss of a pearl-shell bed of disputed ownership is said to have been the motive of this unparalleled outrage.""He shall have it at once," said the nurse cordially. "It'll do him more good than our medicines."* * * * *The story was a popular one in the hospital for months after, and it had not been quite forgotten when, towards the close of the hot season, a Sydney paper furnished the last chapter of the tale. Saxon's late nurse read it aloud to the others at afternoon tea, and they all agreed (not knowing how Vaiti's fingers had cogged the dice of chance) that it was a wonderful Providence and a real judgment. The item read:"THE LAST OF AN OCEAN ROMANCE."News comes via Tahiti from Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands, of the arrival of a shipwrecked crew on a raft, six weeks ago. They were the survivors of a disaster that destroyed the notorious schoonerIkurangiwhose master, it will be remembered, kidnapped and marooned the daughter of a British captain some months ago. The schooner, after leaving the island, sailed for Callao, but was wrecked on an uncharted reef three days east of Vaka, and went to pieces. The crew escaped on a raft, and underwent great suffering in their efforts to reach land. The captain and mate were drowned.""And serve them right, too!" said the audience.CHAPTER VIIITHE WHITE MAN OF NALOLO"By Jove! it's a white man," said Saxon, checking like a pointer on the threshold of the low dark doorway."Certainly. Very pleased to meet you," observed the figure on the mats. It was sitting cross-legged, clad only in a waist-cloth, and the house was a Fijian chief-house in a mountain village three days' journey from the nearest white settlement—but the thing squatted on the mats was undoubtedly white, and—English? Well, no; Saxon thought no. The phrase was American in flavour. He stepped across the threshold, and came a little way in, relieved in mind. When you have been dead and buried among the islands for a quarter of a century it is much pleasanter not to run the risk of meeting other ghosts (with university accents, tea-coloured families, and a preference for modest retirement on steamer days) who may possibly have been alive together with you before...Before.... The word means much in that vast Pacific world, sepulchre of so many lost hopes and forgotten lives. We do not, in the Islands, cultivate curiosity as a virtue, since it would be likely to bring rather more than virtue's own reward after it. We do not ask cross questions, because the crooked answers might involve questions of another sort. And when overfed, sanguineous passengers from smart liners happen along and tell us, as a new and excellent joke, that the proper formula for receiving an introduction in the Islands is: "Glad to meet you, Mr. So-and-so; what were you calledbefore?" we smile an acid smile, and pretend we are amused....Saxon was very tired, having walked thirty miles that day, and very hungry, being out of luck, and more or less on the tramp. But I think, tired as he was, he would have found another village to rest in if the derelict white on the mats had spoken with the shibboleth of his own class and country.As things were, the look of the house pleased him, and he came in and folded himself up on the mats. The other man noted that he selected a "tabu kaisi" mat (a kind strictly forbidden to all but chiefs or whites), and that he looked hopefully towards the kava bowl."Not the first time you've stopped under a pandanus roof, I guess?" he remarked."No," said Saxon. "Whose house is this?""Mine," said the stranger. "Make yourself at home."It was a handsome chief-house of the best Fijian type, forty feet from mats to ridge-pole, the walls covered with beautifully inlaid and interwoven reeds, the roof bound together with exquisite sinnet work in artistic patterns, of red, black, and yellow, and towering up into a dark, cool cavern of pleasant gloom. The floor was overlaid with fine parquetry of split bamboo at the "kasii" or common-folk end, and piled deep with fine mats in the "chief" part. A Fijian bed, ten feet wide and three feet high, ran like a dais right across the end of the house. It was covered by mats prettily fringed with coloured parrot feathers. There were three great doors, east, west, and south, each framing in its dark-set opening a different picture of surpassing loveliness. Nalolo town (its name is on the map of Fiji, but it reads otherwise) stands very high on the sheer crest of a pointed green hill that is just like the enchanted hill in the pictures of a fairy tale. There is a little round green lawn on the top, and all about it stand the high, pointed beehive houses of the town, each perched on its own tiny mound like a toy on a stand. Sloped cocoanut logs run up to the doors of the houses, and quaintly coloured crotons cluster about them. In the deep, soft grass golden eggs from the guava trees lie tumbled about among fallen stars of orange and lemon blossom, and everywhere the red hibiscus shakes its splendid bells in the soft hill-winds. About the foot of the peak a wide blue river wanders, singing all day long; and from every door of every house, high perched above the cloudy valleys and hyacinth hill ranges, one can see pictures, and pictures, and pictures almost too lovely to be true. There are not two places in the world like Nalolo.The White Man of Nalolo, however, was only interested in the fact that the river provided excellent crayfish; and that taro grew very well indeed on the slopes below the town. He had once been young, but he was not young now, and did not matter any longer. Therefore he had become particular about his dinner and indifferent to scenery. I will not tell you the story of the White Man of Nalolo, or why he, of all men, rebelled so fiercely against the common lot of "not mattering any more," that he came away to the wilds of the Pacific and the highlands of Fiji, and never went back again, because, like many true stories, it cannot be believed, and therefore had better not be told. Besides, this is the story of Saxon and his daughter.Saxon was down on his luck. He had a charter for theSybil, but she was not able to undertake it at present, for, trying to pilot her into Suva harbour himself, he had contrived to run her on a reef, and damaged her so seriously that she was at present careened on the beach in front of the local boat-builder's, undergoing repairs. The builder, knowing something of Saxon's reputation, had insisted on cash in advance, and the captain, in consequence, found himself so nearly out of funds that he was unable to stay in Suva pending the repairs to his ship. He had therefore started with Vaiti for the interior of the great island of Viti Levu, intending to live on the real hospitality of the natives for a few weeks, and tramp from village to village.He explained something of this as he sat on the mats enjoying the grateful coolness of the house. The other man nodded gravely, watching the door. He offered a curious contrast to the Englishman's coarse red fairness, being lean, sundried, and grizzled, with expressionless, boot-buttoned eyes, and a straggling "goatee" beard that dated his exile from America back to long-ago days."Where's your daughter?" he asked."Coming. She stopped to tidy up at the river."The doorway was darkened at that moment by Vaiti herself, balancing lightly up the cocoanut log to the threshold. She wore a white tunic over a scarlet "pareo," her wavy curls, sparkling with the water of the stream, fell loose upon her shoulders; her lips were as red as the freshly-plucked pomegranate blossom behind her ear. Something like life stirred in the boot-button eyes of the White Man of Nalolo as he looked at her."Afi!" he called to a Fijian woman who was sleeping on the mats at the "kaisi" end of the house, "go and hurry the girls with the supper, and make tea for the marama (lady). Quick!"Then he turned to Saxon."Stay here as long as you like, both of you," he said. "Let her sit there sometimes, where I can see her and fancy.... I'll show you something."He rose slowly and stiffly, and limped across to a Chinese camphorwood box that stood in the corner. In a minute he returned with a faded photograph in a gaudy frame."My daughter," he said. "The only child I ever had. She was Afi's. She died a long time ago. Afi's a chief woman: she was as handsome as Andi Thakombau when she was young, and the girl took after her. Your girl's mother was chief too, I guess. Do you see any likeness?"Vaiti and her father craned over the photograph. The pretty half-caste girl, was certainly like the stately, slender creature who gazed at her pictured face, though the fire and spirit of Vaiti's expression were wanting."I'm growing old," went on the White Man. "I've no children. Stay a bit. I'll be glad to have you.""Thank you; delighted, I'm sure," drawled Saxon, with a pathetic resurrection of his long-forgotten "grand manner," And so it was settled.Vaiti, listening and thinking as usual, with her chin in her slender fingers, approved of what she heard, and smiled very pleasantly at her host. It seemed to her that he could be very useful just now.The four weeks that followed after glided away agreeably enough in the silent hills. Nothing happened; no one came or went—the Fijians, men and women, went out to the yam and taro fields in the morning, and returned in the afternoon; and after dark there would be long, monotonous chanting, and interminable sitting dances, on the mats inside the high-roofed houses. Saxon stupefied himself with kava most of the time, in the absence of stronger drink, and almost got himself clubbed once or twice on account of his too impulsive admiration for the beauties of the village. His host, however, was no censor of morals, and troubled very little about him. On Sundays the Fijians dressed themselves in their brightest cottons, stuck up their hair in huge halos, and went five times to church, under the auspices of the native Wesleyan teacher; while Saxon and his host smoked, slept, drank kava, and played cards. The village provided plenty of yam and taro, kumara, cocoanut, and fish; and there was tea and sugar in the Chinese box, and now and then the White Man killed a pig or a fowl. It was very pleasant on the whole.In a month's time, however, Saxon girded up his loins to leave this mountain Capua and descend to Suva once more. TheSybilwould be ready, and his charter to convey ornamental Fiji woods to San Francisco would not wait.They said good-bye to their host, and walked a mile or two across the river-flats below the town before either spoke. Then Vaiti put her hand into her sash, and drew out something small and shining."See, father, what the White Man gave me, because I was like his daughter," she said.Saxon took the object, and turned it over in his fingers. It was a small seal, shaped like an eagle standing on a rock. The eagle was gold, the rock amethyst."A pretty thing, but not worth more than two or three pounds," he said.Then he turned it over and looked at the device. There was a curious crest on the face of the seal—a wolf with a crescent moon in his jaws; underneath, a motto in a strange foreign character.Saxon's red complexion paled as he examined the crest. In other days and scenes, among ice-bound rivers and grim mediæval fortress-castles, he had seen that crest light up the crimson panes of old armorial windows—had read the motto underneath—"What I have, I hold"—of nights when he and the wildest young nobles of the Russian court were dining together under the splendid roof of one of Moscow's greatest banqueting halls. For a moment he felt the keen cold air of the ice-bound streets blow sharp on his cheek; heard the jingle of the sleigh-bells, drawing up before the marble steps where the yellow lamplight streamed out across the snow. The fancy faded, swift as a passing lantern picture that flashes out for a moment and then sweeps away into darkness. He saw the burning sky and the crackling palms again, felt the furnace-heated wind, and knew that it was all over long ago, and that he was ruined, exiled, and old. Yet there remained a thread of indefinite recollection, a suggestion of something half-remembered, that was not all unconnected with the present day. What was the story belonging to that crest—the story that the whole world knew?"Where did the fellow get the thing?" he asked his daughter.Vaiti told him.The White Man of Nalolo, it seemed, was one of the numerous South Sea wanderers who believe in the existence of various undiscovered islands, hidden here and there in the vast, untravelled wastes of sea that lie off the track of ships. Thirty years before, there had been wondering rumours of an island of this kind, touched at once by a ship that no one could name, found to be uninhabited, and never revisited; indeed, no one was sure where it was within a few hundred miles. Years went by, and the White Man, who had always taken a special interest in the story, found himself shipwrecked—the sole survivor of a boatful of castaways—on the very island itself. But fortune was unkind, for the morning after his arrival, when he was trying to sail round the island, a sudden storm blew him out to sea again, and he had drifted for many days, and all but perished, in spite of the fish and nuts he had obtained from the island, before a mission schooner happened to see him and pick him up. He had examined most of the island while ashore, and had seen no inhabitants or traces of cultivation. Nevertheless he had always been convinced that there was something mysterious about the place, for two reasons. One was the presence of common house-flies, which he had never seen far away from the haunts of human beings. The other was the discovery of an amethyst seal, lying under a stone on the shore. It was dirty and discoloured, but he did not think so small and heavy an object could have been washed up on the shore from a wreck.Where mystery is in the air, most men's minds turn naturally to thoughts of hidden treasure, and the White Man of Nalolo had ever since cherished a hope that there was treasure on the island. For several years he had fully intended to go and look—some day—but as he could only guess at the latitude and longitude, and as he had little money to spare, he never succeeded either in hunting the place up himself or in persuading any one else to do so. Now he was old and half-crippled, and did not care any more about anything; so he wanted Vaiti, who reminded him so much of his dead daughter, to have the seal. It was a pretty thing, and perhaps it would make her think sometimes of the poor old White Man of Nalolo.Saxon listened attentively to the story, and heaved a sigh of disappointment at the end."There's nothing in it, my girl," he said. "No proof of treasure there, eh?""No; no treasure," said Vaiti, looking at the ground as she walked."What then?" asked Saxon curiously. He saw she had something in reserve.Vaiti suddenly flamed out in eloquent Maori."What then, my father? Am I one who sees through men's heads, that I can tell what was in the mind of you as you looked at the jewel, and turned yellow and green like a parrot, only to see it? What then? I do not know. I walk in the dark, and the light is in your hand, not in mine. As for you, you have made your brain dull with the brandy and the kava, so that you cannot see at all. What then? Tell me yourself, for I do not know. I know only that there is something to be told.""Don't be rough on your poor old father," said Saxon pathetically. "I'd have knocked the stuffing out of any man who said half as much, but I spoil you, by Gad, I do. I don't know—I can't think, somehow or other. But there was a story about the Vasilieffs—the johnnies who had that crest—people I used to stay with when I went to——"He broke off, smashed a spider-lily bloom with his stick, and began afresh."Junia Vasilieff—what was it she did? Big princes they were, and much too close to the throne to be safe company.... Junia Vasili—I have it! Yes—the end of the story was in the Sydney papers, time you were a little kid. I remember. They were to have married her to the Czarewitch, just to make things safe. Her claim to the throne was big enough to have started a revolution any day, if it had been asserted.... Poor little Junia!—only sixteen when I knew—when the marriage was talked of—and such golden hair as she had! She hated the whole thing; courts and ceremony weren't in her line. But she was a gentle little creature, and I never thought she'd have had the spirit to do as she did."He turned the seal over in his fingers, as if reading the past from its glittering surface."There was a young lieutenant of Hussars, a Pole—you don't know what that is, but the Russians don't like them, I can tell you—a noble, but a very small one; not fit to black Junia's boots, according to their notions. Well, he bolted with her. It was in the Sydney papers, time I was in the Solomons; the paper came up to Guadalcanar.... She must have been twenty then; just the year the marriage to the Czarewitch was to have come off.... They bolted—cleared out—never seen again. All Russia on the boil about it; no one knew but what they'd hatch up plots against the throne, she having a better claim than any one else, if it hadn't been for the law against empresses. The secret police were after them for years, but they were never traced, though most people knew Russia'd give a pretty penny to know where they were——""O man with the head of a fruit-bat, do you not see?" interrupted Vaiti at this juncture. "They hid on that island—they may be there still. It is worth a hundred treasures!""The Pole was a great traveller, and had a sort of a little yacht," said Saxon thoughtfully. "It might be true, of course—if there is an island, and if the Nalolo Johnnie had any idea of where it was, and if nobody found them out and split years ago. Plenty of 'ifs.'""I think him all-right good enough," averred Vaiti, returning to English and prose. "By'n-by we finish F'lisco, then we go see, me and you."CHAPTER IXTHE LOST ISLANDSome two or three months later, the schooner might have been seen, like a white-winged butterfly lost at sea, beating up and down before a solitary, low, green island lying far east of the lonely Paumotus. Vaiti, sitting on the top of the deck-house, was examining the land through a glass. The native crew were all on deck; also Harris and Gray, the mate and bo'sun. Captain Saxon was not to be seen."The old man always do get squiffy at the wrong time, don't he?" commented Harris, rather gleefully.Gray spat over the rail for reply."You're ratty because you don't know nothing, ain't you?" he said."Do you?" asked the mate curiously. Harris had not much notion of the dignity of his office, and dearly loved a gossip at all times."More nor you, havin' eyes and ears that's of use to me occasionally," replied the bo'sun dryly.Harris considered."I'll give you my grey shirt to tell," he said persuasively. "There's sure to be something up.""'Ow much does we ever get out of it when there is?" asked Gray sourly. "I could do with that shirt very well, though. There ain't much to tell, except that the old man he thought there was an island hereabouts not marked on the chart that nobody knew about; and Vaiti she allowed that was all —— rot, because, says she, this part's been surveyed, and though the Admiralty surveys isn't the for-ever-'n-ever-Amen dead certainties the little brassbound officers thinks them, still they don't leave whole islands out on the loose without a collar and a name round their necks, so to say. So, says she, let me work out the length of time they ran before the hurricane, says she, and the d'rection of the wind, which the old boy remembered right enough, says she; and then look it up on the chart, and I'll be blowed, says she, if you don't find something for a guide like. So by-and-by she looks, and says she, ''Ere's something; 'ere's a reef marked P.D., and it is P.D.,' says she, 'for you and I knows there's nothin' there,' she says. 'But we'll look a bit more to the north'ard,' she says, 'where it's right off the' track of ships, and maybe we'll find somethin' and maybe we won't,' she says. 'But I think,' she says, 'that somewheres not too far off from that P.D. reef we'll maybe get a sight of what we're lookin' for,' she says, 'because sometimes reefs is put down for bigger things by mistake,' she says, 'especially if you 'aven't been to see.' Then she comes on deck, and I makes myself scarce, for it ain't healthy on this ship to listen at no cabin skylights, not if she knows you're there.""Well, whatever the game is, I don't suppose it'll line our little insides any fatter, bo'sun. We don't count on this ship anything like as we ought to when there's shares goin'. I wonder that I stick to her, I do! Old man as drunk as a lord half the time—me doin' his work as well as my own—a blessed she-cat running the blooming show——""Ready about!" sang Vaiti from the deck-house, and the mate and bo'sun sprang across the deck. There was something about the orders of the "she-cat" that enforced a smartness on theSybilrare on an island schooner, even when heavy-fisted Saxon was not about.Half an hour later, Vaiti had rowed herself ashore, curtly declining Harris's polite offers of assistance, and had landed on the beach. As she did not know who she might be going to see, she had provided for all emergencies. Her revolver was in her pocket, and she wore a flowing sacque of lace-trimmed white silk that made her feel she was fit to meet any Russian princess, if such were indeed on the island. It was a gratifying thought that the said princess, if she had been a celebrated beauty, must now be well into the forties, and consequently beneath all contempt as a rival belle.Her father's absence did not trouble her. He had a nasty trick of starting a drinking bout just when he was most needed—in fact, it was the one point in Saxon's character on which you could absolutely rely. Vaiti, therefore, had grown used to doing without him, and rather liked to have a perfectly free hand.She had fully grasped the bearings of the case. There was possibly a very great chief's daughter from Europe, with a rather insignificant chief who had stolen her away, living there in hiding. The people of her country would pay a great deal to know where she was and bring her back. Or, if there seemed any lack of safety about this proceeding (Vaiti had long ago learned that her father was not fond of putting himself within the reach of principalities and powers of any kind), the couple themselves must be made to pay for silence. It was all very simple.The fact that the island was supposed to be uninhabited did not trouble her. She meant to investigate that matter after her own fashion.She walked all round it first of all. It took her about an hour. There was a nice, white, sandy beach, with straggling bush behind it. There were a good many cocoanuts—all young ones—also a large number of broken trunks, apparently snapped off by a hurricane.This set Vaiti thinking. It seemed to her that the damage was rather too universal and even to be natural. Yet why should any sane human cut short all his full-grown cocoanuts?She crossed the island twice at the ends, noting everything with a keen and wary eye. Fairly good soil; nothing growing on it, however, but low scrub and a few berries. In the centre of the island the scrub thickened into dense bush, impenetrable without an axe. No sign of life anywhere.Vaiti stamped her foot. Was it possible she had been mistaken? Was this indeed just what it seemed, a commonplace, infertile, useless, little mid-ocean islet, let alone because it was worth nothing, and incorrectly described as a reef because no one had ever troubled to examine it? Things began to look like it.And yet ... she thought—she did not quite know what, but she was very sure that she did not want to leave the island just yet. She would at least climb a tall tree and take a general survey before she gave it up.Nothing simpler—but there was no such tree.All the palms were young, or broken off short; all the pandanus trees were in the same condition. There was no rock, no commanding height. She could not get a view.Vaiti's cheek flushed crimson under its olive brown. The spark was struck at last!Somebody had cut short those trees—to prevent anyone from climbing up and overlooking the island. The encircling reef would not allow any ship to approach close enough for a look-out at the mast-head to see over the island, except in a very general way. There was something to conceal. What, and where?Only one answer was possible. The mass of apparently virgin bush in the centre of the island—several acres in extent—was the only spot where a cat could have concealed itself. The scent was growing hot.With sparkling eyes Vaiti began to circle the wood, watching narrowly for the smallest trace of a pathway. The branches were interlocked and knitted together as only tropical bush can be. Many were set with huge thorns; all were laced and twined with bush ropes and lianas of every kind.Nothing larger than a rat could have won its way through such a rampart. Vaiti walked swiftly on and on, striking the bushes now and then with a stick, to make sure that there were no loose masses of stuff masking a concealed entrance, and keeping a sharp eye for traces of footsteps.... It was with a heart-sinking shock that she found herself once more beside the low white coral rock that had marked the commencement of her journey, and realised that she had been all round, and that there was most certainly no opening.The sun was slipping down the heavens now. She had been exploring half the day, but she was not beaten yet. The unexpected difficulties she had met with only sharpened her determination to enter the thicket at all costs. Harris, suffering acutely, as usual, from suppressed curiosity, was nearly driven mad by the sight of the "she-cat" suddenly reappearing on the ship, picking up an axe, and departing as silently as she had come, with a countenance that did not invite questions. She had taken off her smart silk dress, and was in her chemise and petticoat, arms and feet bare, and waist girdled with a sash into which she had stuck her revolver. She dropped the axe into her boat, rowed silently away, and disappeared on the other side of the island.The sun was still some distance above the sea when she let the axe slip from her torn, scratched, and aching hands, and stood at last, tired but triumphant, in the heart of the mysterious island's mystery. She had won her way, with the woodcraft that was in her island blood, through the dense belt of bush, hacking and slashing here, stooping and writhing there, until the light began to show through the tangled stems in front, and a few swift strokes cleared the way into the open. Yes! there was a space in the centre, after all—a clearing over an acre in extent. There was grass here, and a few overgrown bananas, and a tangle of yam and pumpkin vines. Passion fruit ran in a tangle of wild luxuriance over the inner wall of the thicket; pine-apples rotted on the ground and fig-trees spread their wide leaves unchecked and unpruned.... In the middle of all was a house—a one-storied little bungalow, iron-roofed, with a tank to catch the rain. There was a long, low store behind it, and something that looked like a pig-sty, and something that might have been a fowl-run. But....But everything was rotten, ruined, overgrown, hardly to be distinguished in the thick tangle of vegetation that had overflowed the little retreat like a great green wave let loose upon a low-lying shore. Vaiti knew what she was going to see before she had reached the door of the bungalow—a rotten floor, with green vines shooting up between the crevices, and bush rats scuffling and squeaking under the boards—a rusted iron roof, where pink convolvulus bloom peeped in under the rafters, and lizards sunned themselves in the airy blue furniture unglued and decayed fast sinking into one common mass of ruin—door aslant, and thresholds sunken. Everywhere silence, emptiness, decay. There needed no explanation of the vanished pathway.The Maori blood owns strange instincts. Again Vaiti knew what she was going to see before it came—knew, and walked straight over to a certain corner of the enclosure, as if she had been there before.... It was under a scarlet-flowered hibiscus tree that she found it—a long, low grave, fenced round with a wall of coral slabs, so that the overflowing bush had surged less thickly here, and one could see that there was something lying on the mound, only half hidden by creeping vines—something long and white and slender.Vaiti dragged away the creepers.... Yes, it was a skeleton, bare and fleshless, with bony fingers and black, empty eyes. There was a splintered gap in one temple, and close to one of the hands lay a mass of rusted steel that had once been a revolver.On a flat white stone, standing at the head of the grave, a long inscription had been carved with infinite care in three different languages. Two of them Vaiti did not understand, but the third was English. She pulled the growing ferns off the stone, and, wiping its surface, read:
CHAPTER VII
THE TURNING OF THE TABLES
She looked narrowly about the island, hoping to discover the place where the lepers lived. A cluster of small, miserable huts, on the far side of the lagoon, attracted her attention. It seemed not more than half a mile from the spot where she had spent the night. The best fishing grounds she judged, by the look of the shore, to be near the village. She was therefore, no doubt, several miles from their usual haunts.
So far, so good. Where was the schooner? It lay to her left about a mile out at sea, close to a small, uninhabited, sandy islet. Vaiti supposed that the men were cutting wood and looking for water. She saw one or two black dots on the shore, recognisable by their blue dungaree clothing, and strained her eyes eagerly to see if the dinghy had been pulled up on the sand, for in this lay her only chance. If they brought the boat up on the beach, to repair her where wood could be had without going to the atoll itself (Vaiti would have wagered that theIkurangidid not carry a splinter outside of the galley fuel), then the schooner would probably stop overnight. In that case she could carry out her plans. Otherwise ... there was always the dynamite.
The dinghy was ashore, drawn well up on the beach.
She drew a breath of relief, and slid down the tree again. Now she could wait till night with an easy mind.
All day she hid in the tangle of young palm and low-growing scrub that clustered about the foot of the loftier trees. Once she saw a couple of the lepers pass by in the distance, evidently looking for something. These had eyes, and she crept closer into the shelter of the scrub till they were gone. Then she came cautiously out, and plucked long sheets of the fine pale-brown natural matting that protects the young shoot of the cocoanut, to cover up her white dress, for the scrub was dangerously thin, in that staring overhead sun. She did not venture down to the sea to fish, but fed upon cocoanuts during the day.
Night came at last—night and coolness, with big stars shining in the lagoon, and a gentle breeze stirring among the palms. About midnight, as near as she could guess, Vaiti came out of her shelter and prepared for action.
She took off her clothes, and fastened about her waist a petticoat of the dark-coloured cocoanut matting which she had stitched together during the day. So habited, with her olive skin and black hair, she knew that she was invisible in the darkness of the night. She fastened the dynamite, and a box of matches, into the coil of hair on the top of her head, stuck her knife into the waist of her petticoat, and walked down the beach into the warm, dark sea.
She knew very well that the outer side of an atoll commonly swarms with sharks, but the risk did not trouble her. There was something a good deal worse to face on the island than any number of sharks. Heading for the distant light of the schooner, she swam through the starry water with the low, dog-like island paddle that can cover such marvellous distances—keeping her head well out, and quietly taking her time.
It was a long swim, but it ended at last, and the schooner rose up before her in the water, black and silent, and shifting ever so little upon the swell of the incoming tide. The stars made little trickles of light upon her wet, dark hull. Two boats lay alongside—the dinghy, freshly mended and watertight, and the whaleboat, loaded with wood and cocoanuts. After the slovenly fashion of theIkurangi, they had left the boats until the morning to hoist inboard, seeing that it was dead calm in the lee of the islet.
This was more than Vaiti had hoped for, and it made her task easy. She cut the dinghy's painter, got into the boat, and muffled the oars with a strip or two torn from her petticoat. Then she put the dynamite into the whaleboat, cut and attached a good long fuse, set a match to it, and saw that the tiny red spark was steadily eating its way along, before she pulled off from the ship. She towed the whaleboat after her a little way, and then let it go thirty or forty yards from the ship. It was not her desire to wreck the schooner at Vaka Island, and possibly let loose her enemies upon the atoll; rather she wished the ship well out of the way before any disaster should overtake her. The charts would most probably ensure that matter. The destruction of the boat was only intended to secure her own possession of the dinghy.
She had scarcely reached the shore before a loud explosion boomed out across the water, and immediately after lights began to stir on board the schooner. Vaiti worked with coolness and speed, knowing that it was not likely, though possible, that any one would swim ashore. From her eyrie in the coco-palm she had noted a deep, narrow creek running up from the lagoon—a mere crack in the coral, but wide enough to admit a small boat, taken in with care. There was just enough light from the stars to enable her to find the place, and run the boat up on the sand at the end, into the heart of a tangle of leaves and creepers that entirely concealed it. For safety's sake, she cut a few more armfuls of trailing vines from the shore, and buried the boat two or three feet deep, so that neither from the sea nor the land could it possibly be seen.
As she worked, she could hear shouts and cries, made faint by distance, coming across the water from the schooner. She could imagine the scene that would take place on board when they found themselves boatless. Some of the native crew—not Donahue or the mate; they would never face the sharks—would probably swim ashore to-morrow to investigate. Well, let them!
Having finished the concealing of the dinghy, she got into it herself, put on her clothes again, drew the tangled creepers well over her, and went calmly to sleep, secure that no one could find her unless she chose to be found.
All the same, she was very cautious about getting up the next morning, and looked carefully between the leaves before she ventured out of her hiding-place. She covered up her light dress with the cocoanut canvas, and then climbed a palm to look about.
People were moving hurriedly about the decks of the schooner; something seemed to be going on. As she watched, she saw two natives, clad only in loin-cloths, stand up on the bulwarks, ready to dive. In another moment they had flashed down into the sea, small as ants to sight at that distance, but perfectly clear to Vaiti's sea-trained eyes. Then the dark specks began to make their way across the water. The sun was newly risen, the sea was still a mirror of molten gold, and the tiny black heads stood out sharply on its surface. Vaiti set her teeth as she watched them creeping on. They were island men, of her mother's own race, and they had done her no harm. And ... the longer a vessel lies at anchor in equatorial latitudes, the more certain it is that sharks will gather round her—even if there has been no explosion in the water alongside to kill the fish and collect the tigers of the sea from far and near.
Vaiti looked away, and began desperately to count the nuts clustered among the palm-fronds at her feet.... How many were there? Ten—fifteen—twenty——
A long, despairing shriek tore across the water. She put her fingers in her ears and buried her face in the leaves. Yet, all the same, she heard a second cry, short and sudden, and quickly ended. There was nothing more. She lifted her face again, her teeth set tight into her lower lip. The two black heads were gone.
"No one will come ashore to-day," she said, with a shiver. Something seemed to stab her, as she thought of that doctored chart in the schooner's deck cabin. The reefs on the course to South America were hundreds of miles from shore—the ship had no boats—and the native crew must suffer with the villainous captain and mate, if the disaster that she had plotted so carefully should come about.... There would be sharks there, too, when the ship broke up....
The crystal-gold of the sea turned dim before Vaiti's eyes. It was only a mist of tears that lay between, but to the girl's excited imagination it seemed like the spreading and darkening stain of blood.
Careless of whether she was seen or not, she slid down the tree and rushed into the scrub, where she sat down upon the sand and cried like a mere nervous schoolgirl. The sun was past the zenith when she lifted her head again; the schooner had put out to sea, and lay, a far-off snowy speck, upon the blue horizon.
Vaiti stood up, flung back her hair, and cast the trouble from her. She could not afford to grieve over the inevitable now; there was too much to do. The boat had to be prepared and provisioned, and that was not the work of a moment.
She husked and opened a number of large cocoanuts, and removed the insides. She then cut a quantity of young palm-leaves, and plaited them into baskets, which she filled with the cocoanut meat. Afterwards she cut down dozens of young green nuts for drinking, husked them to save space, and slung them together in bunches with strips of their own fibre. This done, she hid the provisions in the boat, and set about her own supper, as it was almost dark.
Nourishing food she felt she must have, if she was to get through with her enterprise, but she dared not attract attention to herself by going out torch-fishing on the reef. However, there were certain holes in the ground about the roots of the palms that to her experienced eye promised something better than fish.
She dug a fire-hole in the gravel at the end of the gully where she had hidden the boat, lined it with stones, and made a fire, looking well to it that no gleam should be visible from above. When the stones were beginning to heat, she took a piece of palms-leaf in her hand, hid herself in the bush, and waited, still as a rock.
By-and-by there was a faint scuffling among the roots of the trees, and a shadowy thing began climbing up the trunk of a palm. Vaiti waited till it had disappeared in the crown of the tree, and then climbed after it to a point about ten feet from the top, where she tied her strip of leaf round the trunk and came down again.
Thump! thump! Two cocoanuts fell to the earth. The crab (for it was a cocoanut crab of the biggest and fiercest kind) was getting his supper. Now he would come down the tree, rip open the nuts with his formidable claws, and enjoy the contents.
Slowly he began to back down the palm, his sensitive tail ready to tell him when he had touched earth and might safely let go. And now it was that Vaiti's trap (a well-known native trick) proved his undoing. The belt of dry leaflets round the tree tickled his tail, he promptly let go, and fell with a crash seventy feet through air on to the pile of coral lumps that Vaiti had heaped up at the foot of the tree.
The girl picked him up, badly injured and unable to use his claws (which were big enough to crack her ankle), and put an end to him with a clever stroke of her knife. He proved to be two feet long in the body alone, and of a fine blue and red colour, as seen in the dim light of the fire. She put him on the heated stones, wrapped in leaves, buried him until cooked, and then enjoyed a hot supper that an epicure might have envied.
Strengthened by the good food, she worked on late into the night, catching more crabs, whose meat she hoped she could dry in the sun, making a rough sail out of the bed-sheet she had carried away from the schooner, twisting sinnet plait out of cocoanut husk for ropes, cutting and trimming a small pandanus for the mast. She had all her plans laid, and knew what she meant to do. Her present position was about five hundred miles from the Marquesas, and the south-east trades would be in her favour. With lines for fishing, a beaker full of fresh water on board (she had found that in the dinghy when she took it away), cocoanuts to help out with, and plenty of crab to dry, she hoped that she might manage to reach the islands before her strength or her food gave out. Greater voyages had been done many a time in mere canoes, and the dinghy was a large boat of its kind, strong, well built, and new. If she failed—well, any death, any horror that the wide seas could hold was better than Vaka Island.
All being ready, she lay down and slept till dawn—a somewhat restless sleep, for it was full of wandering dreams, and all the dreams took one shape: Donahue's schooner, snared by the lying chart, rushing helpless to her end, with the green-eyed tigers of the sea hovering ever about the reefs, and waiting ... waiting....
* * * * *
"I don't think the patient can see any one," said the nurse doubtfully.
The big, yellow-haired sailor took off his hat and stepped up on to the verandah. It was a very beautiful verandah. You could see most of Suva Bay from it, and half the tumbled purple peaks of Fiji's wonderful mountains lying across the harbour.
"If you could stretch a point, ma'am," said the sailor, "it might be as well for him. I've got good news."
"About his daughter?" asked the nurse. She, like every one else in Suva, was deeply interested in this especial patient's story. He had come to Suva in his own schooner, theSybil, several weeks before, furious with rage and despair at the loss of his daughter, and eager to demand assistance from the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, although it seemed by no means clear in what manner Her Majesty's representative could aid him. Before the matter had even been discussed, however, he had fallen seriously ill of sunstroke and excitement combined, and had been sent to hospital, with rather a bad chance of recovery. He was just turning the corner now, and the nurse—who could not but admire his rather weather-beaten good looks and romantic history—regarded him as her most interesting patient.
"Yes, it's about his daughter," answered the sailor. "I'm the mate of theSybil, ma'am; Harris is my name. Perhaps you'd kindly read this."
He held out a long slip of printed paper, containing arésuméof the cables for the day—Suva's substitute for a daily paper.
The nurse took it, and read:
"The missing daughter of Edward Saxon, owner and master of the trading schoonerSybil, has at last reappeared. Her fate has excited much interest and conjecture all over the Pacific. She arrived in Sydney yesterday on board the cable-shipClotho, by which she was picked up on the 2nd instant, in an open boat, alone, and two hundred miles from any land. She had experienced bad weather, and was much exhausted for want of food, but declared herself capable, if it had been necessary, of reaching the nearest island group unaided. She had been carried away, as was surmised, by the captain of the island schoonerIkurangi, who marooned her on a remote leper island, Vaka, and then sailed for South America. Revenge for the loss of a pearl-shell bed of disputed ownership is said to have been the motive of this unparalleled outrage."
"He shall have it at once," said the nurse cordially. "It'll do him more good than our medicines."
* * * * *
The story was a popular one in the hospital for months after, and it had not been quite forgotten when, towards the close of the hot season, a Sydney paper furnished the last chapter of the tale. Saxon's late nurse read it aloud to the others at afternoon tea, and they all agreed (not knowing how Vaiti's fingers had cogged the dice of chance) that it was a wonderful Providence and a real judgment. The item read:
"THE LAST OF AN OCEAN ROMANCE.
"News comes via Tahiti from Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands, of the arrival of a shipwrecked crew on a raft, six weeks ago. They were the survivors of a disaster that destroyed the notorious schoonerIkurangiwhose master, it will be remembered, kidnapped and marooned the daughter of a British captain some months ago. The schooner, after leaving the island, sailed for Callao, but was wrecked on an uncharted reef three days east of Vaka, and went to pieces. The crew escaped on a raft, and underwent great suffering in their efforts to reach land. The captain and mate were drowned."
"And serve them right, too!" said the audience.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WHITE MAN OF NALOLO
"By Jove! it's a white man," said Saxon, checking like a pointer on the threshold of the low dark doorway.
"Certainly. Very pleased to meet you," observed the figure on the mats. It was sitting cross-legged, clad only in a waist-cloth, and the house was a Fijian chief-house in a mountain village three days' journey from the nearest white settlement—but the thing squatted on the mats was undoubtedly white, and—English? Well, no; Saxon thought no. The phrase was American in flavour. He stepped across the threshold, and came a little way in, relieved in mind. When you have been dead and buried among the islands for a quarter of a century it is much pleasanter not to run the risk of meeting other ghosts (with university accents, tea-coloured families, and a preference for modest retirement on steamer days) who may possibly have been alive together with you before...
Before.... The word means much in that vast Pacific world, sepulchre of so many lost hopes and forgotten lives. We do not, in the Islands, cultivate curiosity as a virtue, since it would be likely to bring rather more than virtue's own reward after it. We do not ask cross questions, because the crooked answers might involve questions of another sort. And when overfed, sanguineous passengers from smart liners happen along and tell us, as a new and excellent joke, that the proper formula for receiving an introduction in the Islands is: "Glad to meet you, Mr. So-and-so; what were you calledbefore?" we smile an acid smile, and pretend we are amused....
Saxon was very tired, having walked thirty miles that day, and very hungry, being out of luck, and more or less on the tramp. But I think, tired as he was, he would have found another village to rest in if the derelict white on the mats had spoken with the shibboleth of his own class and country.
As things were, the look of the house pleased him, and he came in and folded himself up on the mats. The other man noted that he selected a "tabu kaisi" mat (a kind strictly forbidden to all but chiefs or whites), and that he looked hopefully towards the kava bowl.
"Not the first time you've stopped under a pandanus roof, I guess?" he remarked.
"No," said Saxon. "Whose house is this?"
"Mine," said the stranger. "Make yourself at home."
It was a handsome chief-house of the best Fijian type, forty feet from mats to ridge-pole, the walls covered with beautifully inlaid and interwoven reeds, the roof bound together with exquisite sinnet work in artistic patterns, of red, black, and yellow, and towering up into a dark, cool cavern of pleasant gloom. The floor was overlaid with fine parquetry of split bamboo at the "kasii" or common-folk end, and piled deep with fine mats in the "chief" part. A Fijian bed, ten feet wide and three feet high, ran like a dais right across the end of the house. It was covered by mats prettily fringed with coloured parrot feathers. There were three great doors, east, west, and south, each framing in its dark-set opening a different picture of surpassing loveliness. Nalolo town (its name is on the map of Fiji, but it reads otherwise) stands very high on the sheer crest of a pointed green hill that is just like the enchanted hill in the pictures of a fairy tale. There is a little round green lawn on the top, and all about it stand the high, pointed beehive houses of the town, each perched on its own tiny mound like a toy on a stand. Sloped cocoanut logs run up to the doors of the houses, and quaintly coloured crotons cluster about them. In the deep, soft grass golden eggs from the guava trees lie tumbled about among fallen stars of orange and lemon blossom, and everywhere the red hibiscus shakes its splendid bells in the soft hill-winds. About the foot of the peak a wide blue river wanders, singing all day long; and from every door of every house, high perched above the cloudy valleys and hyacinth hill ranges, one can see pictures, and pictures, and pictures almost too lovely to be true. There are not two places in the world like Nalolo.
The White Man of Nalolo, however, was only interested in the fact that the river provided excellent crayfish; and that taro grew very well indeed on the slopes below the town. He had once been young, but he was not young now, and did not matter any longer. Therefore he had become particular about his dinner and indifferent to scenery. I will not tell you the story of the White Man of Nalolo, or why he, of all men, rebelled so fiercely against the common lot of "not mattering any more," that he came away to the wilds of the Pacific and the highlands of Fiji, and never went back again, because, like many true stories, it cannot be believed, and therefore had better not be told. Besides, this is the story of Saxon and his daughter.
Saxon was down on his luck. He had a charter for theSybil, but she was not able to undertake it at present, for, trying to pilot her into Suva harbour himself, he had contrived to run her on a reef, and damaged her so seriously that she was at present careened on the beach in front of the local boat-builder's, undergoing repairs. The builder, knowing something of Saxon's reputation, had insisted on cash in advance, and the captain, in consequence, found himself so nearly out of funds that he was unable to stay in Suva pending the repairs to his ship. He had therefore started with Vaiti for the interior of the great island of Viti Levu, intending to live on the real hospitality of the natives for a few weeks, and tramp from village to village.
He explained something of this as he sat on the mats enjoying the grateful coolness of the house. The other man nodded gravely, watching the door. He offered a curious contrast to the Englishman's coarse red fairness, being lean, sundried, and grizzled, with expressionless, boot-buttoned eyes, and a straggling "goatee" beard that dated his exile from America back to long-ago days.
"Where's your daughter?" he asked.
"Coming. She stopped to tidy up at the river."
The doorway was darkened at that moment by Vaiti herself, balancing lightly up the cocoanut log to the threshold. She wore a white tunic over a scarlet "pareo," her wavy curls, sparkling with the water of the stream, fell loose upon her shoulders; her lips were as red as the freshly-plucked pomegranate blossom behind her ear. Something like life stirred in the boot-button eyes of the White Man of Nalolo as he looked at her.
"Afi!" he called to a Fijian woman who was sleeping on the mats at the "kaisi" end of the house, "go and hurry the girls with the supper, and make tea for the marama (lady). Quick!"
Then he turned to Saxon.
"Stay here as long as you like, both of you," he said. "Let her sit there sometimes, where I can see her and fancy.... I'll show you something."
He rose slowly and stiffly, and limped across to a Chinese camphorwood box that stood in the corner. In a minute he returned with a faded photograph in a gaudy frame.
"My daughter," he said. "The only child I ever had. She was Afi's. She died a long time ago. Afi's a chief woman: she was as handsome as Andi Thakombau when she was young, and the girl took after her. Your girl's mother was chief too, I guess. Do you see any likeness?"
Vaiti and her father craned over the photograph. The pretty half-caste girl, was certainly like the stately, slender creature who gazed at her pictured face, though the fire and spirit of Vaiti's expression were wanting.
"I'm growing old," went on the White Man. "I've no children. Stay a bit. I'll be glad to have you."
"Thank you; delighted, I'm sure," drawled Saxon, with a pathetic resurrection of his long-forgotten "grand manner," And so it was settled.
Vaiti, listening and thinking as usual, with her chin in her slender fingers, approved of what she heard, and smiled very pleasantly at her host. It seemed to her that he could be very useful just now.
The four weeks that followed after glided away agreeably enough in the silent hills. Nothing happened; no one came or went—the Fijians, men and women, went out to the yam and taro fields in the morning, and returned in the afternoon; and after dark there would be long, monotonous chanting, and interminable sitting dances, on the mats inside the high-roofed houses. Saxon stupefied himself with kava most of the time, in the absence of stronger drink, and almost got himself clubbed once or twice on account of his too impulsive admiration for the beauties of the village. His host, however, was no censor of morals, and troubled very little about him. On Sundays the Fijians dressed themselves in their brightest cottons, stuck up their hair in huge halos, and went five times to church, under the auspices of the native Wesleyan teacher; while Saxon and his host smoked, slept, drank kava, and played cards. The village provided plenty of yam and taro, kumara, cocoanut, and fish; and there was tea and sugar in the Chinese box, and now and then the White Man killed a pig or a fowl. It was very pleasant on the whole.
In a month's time, however, Saxon girded up his loins to leave this mountain Capua and descend to Suva once more. TheSybilwould be ready, and his charter to convey ornamental Fiji woods to San Francisco would not wait.
They said good-bye to their host, and walked a mile or two across the river-flats below the town before either spoke. Then Vaiti put her hand into her sash, and drew out something small and shining.
"See, father, what the White Man gave me, because I was like his daughter," she said.
Saxon took the object, and turned it over in his fingers. It was a small seal, shaped like an eagle standing on a rock. The eagle was gold, the rock amethyst.
"A pretty thing, but not worth more than two or three pounds," he said.
Then he turned it over and looked at the device. There was a curious crest on the face of the seal—a wolf with a crescent moon in his jaws; underneath, a motto in a strange foreign character.
Saxon's red complexion paled as he examined the crest. In other days and scenes, among ice-bound rivers and grim mediæval fortress-castles, he had seen that crest light up the crimson panes of old armorial windows—had read the motto underneath—"What I have, I hold"—of nights when he and the wildest young nobles of the Russian court were dining together under the splendid roof of one of Moscow's greatest banqueting halls. For a moment he felt the keen cold air of the ice-bound streets blow sharp on his cheek; heard the jingle of the sleigh-bells, drawing up before the marble steps where the yellow lamplight streamed out across the snow. The fancy faded, swift as a passing lantern picture that flashes out for a moment and then sweeps away into darkness. He saw the burning sky and the crackling palms again, felt the furnace-heated wind, and knew that it was all over long ago, and that he was ruined, exiled, and old. Yet there remained a thread of indefinite recollection, a suggestion of something half-remembered, that was not all unconnected with the present day. What was the story belonging to that crest—the story that the whole world knew?
"Where did the fellow get the thing?" he asked his daughter.
Vaiti told him.
The White Man of Nalolo, it seemed, was one of the numerous South Sea wanderers who believe in the existence of various undiscovered islands, hidden here and there in the vast, untravelled wastes of sea that lie off the track of ships. Thirty years before, there had been wondering rumours of an island of this kind, touched at once by a ship that no one could name, found to be uninhabited, and never revisited; indeed, no one was sure where it was within a few hundred miles. Years went by, and the White Man, who had always taken a special interest in the story, found himself shipwrecked—the sole survivor of a boatful of castaways—on the very island itself. But fortune was unkind, for the morning after his arrival, when he was trying to sail round the island, a sudden storm blew him out to sea again, and he had drifted for many days, and all but perished, in spite of the fish and nuts he had obtained from the island, before a mission schooner happened to see him and pick him up. He had examined most of the island while ashore, and had seen no inhabitants or traces of cultivation. Nevertheless he had always been convinced that there was something mysterious about the place, for two reasons. One was the presence of common house-flies, which he had never seen far away from the haunts of human beings. The other was the discovery of an amethyst seal, lying under a stone on the shore. It was dirty and discoloured, but he did not think so small and heavy an object could have been washed up on the shore from a wreck.
Where mystery is in the air, most men's minds turn naturally to thoughts of hidden treasure, and the White Man of Nalolo had ever since cherished a hope that there was treasure on the island. For several years he had fully intended to go and look—some day—but as he could only guess at the latitude and longitude, and as he had little money to spare, he never succeeded either in hunting the place up himself or in persuading any one else to do so. Now he was old and half-crippled, and did not care any more about anything; so he wanted Vaiti, who reminded him so much of his dead daughter, to have the seal. It was a pretty thing, and perhaps it would make her think sometimes of the poor old White Man of Nalolo.
Saxon listened attentively to the story, and heaved a sigh of disappointment at the end.
"There's nothing in it, my girl," he said. "No proof of treasure there, eh?"
"No; no treasure," said Vaiti, looking at the ground as she walked.
"What then?" asked Saxon curiously. He saw she had something in reserve.
Vaiti suddenly flamed out in eloquent Maori.
"What then, my father? Am I one who sees through men's heads, that I can tell what was in the mind of you as you looked at the jewel, and turned yellow and green like a parrot, only to see it? What then? I do not know. I walk in the dark, and the light is in your hand, not in mine. As for you, you have made your brain dull with the brandy and the kava, so that you cannot see at all. What then? Tell me yourself, for I do not know. I know only that there is something to be told."
"Don't be rough on your poor old father," said Saxon pathetically. "I'd have knocked the stuffing out of any man who said half as much, but I spoil you, by Gad, I do. I don't know—I can't think, somehow or other. But there was a story about the Vasilieffs—the johnnies who had that crest—people I used to stay with when I went to——"
He broke off, smashed a spider-lily bloom with his stick, and began afresh.
"Junia Vasilieff—what was it she did? Big princes they were, and much too close to the throne to be safe company.... Junia Vasili—I have it! Yes—the end of the story was in the Sydney papers, time you were a little kid. I remember. They were to have married her to the Czarewitch, just to make things safe. Her claim to the throne was big enough to have started a revolution any day, if it had been asserted.... Poor little Junia!—only sixteen when I knew—when the marriage was talked of—and such golden hair as she had! She hated the whole thing; courts and ceremony weren't in her line. But she was a gentle little creature, and I never thought she'd have had the spirit to do as she did."
He turned the seal over in his fingers, as if reading the past from its glittering surface.
"There was a young lieutenant of Hussars, a Pole—you don't know what that is, but the Russians don't like them, I can tell you—a noble, but a very small one; not fit to black Junia's boots, according to their notions. Well, he bolted with her. It was in the Sydney papers, time I was in the Solomons; the paper came up to Guadalcanar.... She must have been twenty then; just the year the marriage to the Czarewitch was to have come off.... They bolted—cleared out—never seen again. All Russia on the boil about it; no one knew but what they'd hatch up plots against the throne, she having a better claim than any one else, if it hadn't been for the law against empresses. The secret police were after them for years, but they were never traced, though most people knew Russia'd give a pretty penny to know where they were——"
"O man with the head of a fruit-bat, do you not see?" interrupted Vaiti at this juncture. "They hid on that island—they may be there still. It is worth a hundred treasures!"
"The Pole was a great traveller, and had a sort of a little yacht," said Saxon thoughtfully. "It might be true, of course—if there is an island, and if the Nalolo Johnnie had any idea of where it was, and if nobody found them out and split years ago. Plenty of 'ifs.'"
"I think him all-right good enough," averred Vaiti, returning to English and prose. "By'n-by we finish F'lisco, then we go see, me and you."
CHAPTER IX
THE LOST ISLAND
Some two or three months later, the schooner might have been seen, like a white-winged butterfly lost at sea, beating up and down before a solitary, low, green island lying far east of the lonely Paumotus. Vaiti, sitting on the top of the deck-house, was examining the land through a glass. The native crew were all on deck; also Harris and Gray, the mate and bo'sun. Captain Saxon was not to be seen.
"The old man always do get squiffy at the wrong time, don't he?" commented Harris, rather gleefully.
Gray spat over the rail for reply.
"You're ratty because you don't know nothing, ain't you?" he said.
"Do you?" asked the mate curiously. Harris had not much notion of the dignity of his office, and dearly loved a gossip at all times.
"More nor you, havin' eyes and ears that's of use to me occasionally," replied the bo'sun dryly.
Harris considered.
"I'll give you my grey shirt to tell," he said persuasively. "There's sure to be something up."
"'Ow much does we ever get out of it when there is?" asked Gray sourly. "I could do with that shirt very well, though. There ain't much to tell, except that the old man he thought there was an island hereabouts not marked on the chart that nobody knew about; and Vaiti she allowed that was all —— rot, because, says she, this part's been surveyed, and though the Admiralty surveys isn't the for-ever-'n-ever-Amen dead certainties the little brassbound officers thinks them, still they don't leave whole islands out on the loose without a collar and a name round their necks, so to say. So, says she, let me work out the length of time they ran before the hurricane, says she, and the d'rection of the wind, which the old boy remembered right enough, says she; and then look it up on the chart, and I'll be blowed, says she, if you don't find something for a guide like. So by-and-by she looks, and says she, ''Ere's something; 'ere's a reef marked P.D., and it is P.D.,' says she, 'for you and I knows there's nothin' there,' she says. 'But we'll look a bit more to the north'ard,' she says, 'where it's right off the' track of ships, and maybe we'll find somethin' and maybe we won't,' she says. 'But I think,' she says, 'that somewheres not too far off from that P.D. reef we'll maybe get a sight of what we're lookin' for,' she says, 'because sometimes reefs is put down for bigger things by mistake,' she says, 'especially if you 'aven't been to see.' Then she comes on deck, and I makes myself scarce, for it ain't healthy on this ship to listen at no cabin skylights, not if she knows you're there."
"Well, whatever the game is, I don't suppose it'll line our little insides any fatter, bo'sun. We don't count on this ship anything like as we ought to when there's shares goin'. I wonder that I stick to her, I do! Old man as drunk as a lord half the time—me doin' his work as well as my own—a blessed she-cat running the blooming show——"
"Ready about!" sang Vaiti from the deck-house, and the mate and bo'sun sprang across the deck. There was something about the orders of the "she-cat" that enforced a smartness on theSybilrare on an island schooner, even when heavy-fisted Saxon was not about.
Half an hour later, Vaiti had rowed herself ashore, curtly declining Harris's polite offers of assistance, and had landed on the beach. As she did not know who she might be going to see, she had provided for all emergencies. Her revolver was in her pocket, and she wore a flowing sacque of lace-trimmed white silk that made her feel she was fit to meet any Russian princess, if such were indeed on the island. It was a gratifying thought that the said princess, if she had been a celebrated beauty, must now be well into the forties, and consequently beneath all contempt as a rival belle.
Her father's absence did not trouble her. He had a nasty trick of starting a drinking bout just when he was most needed—in fact, it was the one point in Saxon's character on which you could absolutely rely. Vaiti, therefore, had grown used to doing without him, and rather liked to have a perfectly free hand.
She had fully grasped the bearings of the case. There was possibly a very great chief's daughter from Europe, with a rather insignificant chief who had stolen her away, living there in hiding. The people of her country would pay a great deal to know where she was and bring her back. Or, if there seemed any lack of safety about this proceeding (Vaiti had long ago learned that her father was not fond of putting himself within the reach of principalities and powers of any kind), the couple themselves must be made to pay for silence. It was all very simple.
The fact that the island was supposed to be uninhabited did not trouble her. She meant to investigate that matter after her own fashion.
She walked all round it first of all. It took her about an hour. There was a nice, white, sandy beach, with straggling bush behind it. There were a good many cocoanuts—all young ones—also a large number of broken trunks, apparently snapped off by a hurricane.
This set Vaiti thinking. It seemed to her that the damage was rather too universal and even to be natural. Yet why should any sane human cut short all his full-grown cocoanuts?
She crossed the island twice at the ends, noting everything with a keen and wary eye. Fairly good soil; nothing growing on it, however, but low scrub and a few berries. In the centre of the island the scrub thickened into dense bush, impenetrable without an axe. No sign of life anywhere.
Vaiti stamped her foot. Was it possible she had been mistaken? Was this indeed just what it seemed, a commonplace, infertile, useless, little mid-ocean islet, let alone because it was worth nothing, and incorrectly described as a reef because no one had ever troubled to examine it? Things began to look like it.
And yet ... she thought—she did not quite know what, but she was very sure that she did not want to leave the island just yet. She would at least climb a tall tree and take a general survey before she gave it up.
Nothing simpler—but there was no such tree.
All the palms were young, or broken off short; all the pandanus trees were in the same condition. There was no rock, no commanding height. She could not get a view.
Vaiti's cheek flushed crimson under its olive brown. The spark was struck at last!
Somebody had cut short those trees—to prevent anyone from climbing up and overlooking the island. The encircling reef would not allow any ship to approach close enough for a look-out at the mast-head to see over the island, except in a very general way. There was something to conceal. What, and where?
Only one answer was possible. The mass of apparently virgin bush in the centre of the island—several acres in extent—was the only spot where a cat could have concealed itself. The scent was growing hot.
With sparkling eyes Vaiti began to circle the wood, watching narrowly for the smallest trace of a pathway. The branches were interlocked and knitted together as only tropical bush can be. Many were set with huge thorns; all were laced and twined with bush ropes and lianas of every kind.
Nothing larger than a rat could have won its way through such a rampart. Vaiti walked swiftly on and on, striking the bushes now and then with a stick, to make sure that there were no loose masses of stuff masking a concealed entrance, and keeping a sharp eye for traces of footsteps.... It was with a heart-sinking shock that she found herself once more beside the low white coral rock that had marked the commencement of her journey, and realised that she had been all round, and that there was most certainly no opening.
The sun was slipping down the heavens now. She had been exploring half the day, but she was not beaten yet. The unexpected difficulties she had met with only sharpened her determination to enter the thicket at all costs. Harris, suffering acutely, as usual, from suppressed curiosity, was nearly driven mad by the sight of the "she-cat" suddenly reappearing on the ship, picking up an axe, and departing as silently as she had come, with a countenance that did not invite questions. She had taken off her smart silk dress, and was in her chemise and petticoat, arms and feet bare, and waist girdled with a sash into which she had stuck her revolver. She dropped the axe into her boat, rowed silently away, and disappeared on the other side of the island.
The sun was still some distance above the sea when she let the axe slip from her torn, scratched, and aching hands, and stood at last, tired but triumphant, in the heart of the mysterious island's mystery. She had won her way, with the woodcraft that was in her island blood, through the dense belt of bush, hacking and slashing here, stooping and writhing there, until the light began to show through the tangled stems in front, and a few swift strokes cleared the way into the open. Yes! there was a space in the centre, after all—a clearing over an acre in extent. There was grass here, and a few overgrown bananas, and a tangle of yam and pumpkin vines. Passion fruit ran in a tangle of wild luxuriance over the inner wall of the thicket; pine-apples rotted on the ground and fig-trees spread their wide leaves unchecked and unpruned.... In the middle of all was a house—a one-storied little bungalow, iron-roofed, with a tank to catch the rain. There was a long, low store behind it, and something that looked like a pig-sty, and something that might have been a fowl-run. But....
But everything was rotten, ruined, overgrown, hardly to be distinguished in the thick tangle of vegetation that had overflowed the little retreat like a great green wave let loose upon a low-lying shore. Vaiti knew what she was going to see before she had reached the door of the bungalow—a rotten floor, with green vines shooting up between the crevices, and bush rats scuffling and squeaking under the boards—a rusted iron roof, where pink convolvulus bloom peeped in under the rafters, and lizards sunned themselves in the airy blue furniture unglued and decayed fast sinking into one common mass of ruin—door aslant, and thresholds sunken. Everywhere silence, emptiness, decay. There needed no explanation of the vanished pathway.
The Maori blood owns strange instincts. Again Vaiti knew what she was going to see before it came—knew, and walked straight over to a certain corner of the enclosure, as if she had been there before.... It was under a scarlet-flowered hibiscus tree that she found it—a long, low grave, fenced round with a wall of coral slabs, so that the overflowing bush had surged less thickly here, and one could see that there was something lying on the mound, only half hidden by creeping vines—something long and white and slender.
Vaiti dragged away the creepers.... Yes, it was a skeleton, bare and fleshless, with bony fingers and black, empty eyes. There was a splintered gap in one temple, and close to one of the hands lay a mass of rusted steel that had once been a revolver.
On a flat white stone, standing at the head of the grave, a long inscription had been carved with infinite care in three different languages. Two of them Vaiti did not understand, but the third was English. She pulled the growing ferns off the stone, and, wiping its surface, read: