Part 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vaiti turned on him like a tigress.

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s him,” agreed Harris.

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

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

“Oh, shut up! You don’t know anything about it,” said Harris with irritation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wot’s that mean?”

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

“Blowed if I would,” ejaculated the bo’sun.

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

“Wot of?”

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XII*

*BREAKING THE MANA*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lord!” said Harris, in a tone of awe. “She’s the devil himself!”

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

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

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

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

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

Vaiti turned round, and cried angrily at him:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XIII*

*THE GAME PLAYED OUT*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, that was still to come.

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

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

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

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