Part 11

But Vaiti was not in the least mollified by his unprosperous case. In her opinion, he ought to have been dead long ago. There could be no peace of mind for her while he was still drifting about the Pacific, ever on the alert to do her an evil turn. She was not equal to actual murder, and, in any case, Niué was a British-owned island, with a resident Commissioner and a regular nest of missionaries, where you had to be very careful of what you did. But if any accident—a safe, convenient accident—should befall him by-and-by, why, it would certainly be an advantage to the _Sybil_ and her owners. Well, that might come about, and without introducing Saxon into it either. In such a delicate matter Saxon’s interference would very likely have acted much as a charge of dynamite might act in the destruction of a wasps’ nest—something more than the wasps would probably come to grief.

She waited until the ugly creature had rolled back into his cottage and shut the make-shift door. Then she slipped down from the rock once more, and began the second part of her errand. Neither then, nor at any other time, did she trouble to find out the manner of Donahue’s escape. If she had, she would have heard that he had been picked up by a native canoe, floating about on a piece of wreck the day after the disaster that destroyed the _Ikurangi_, and that, he had spent a good many months on a neighbouring island before a stray schooner had consented to accept his watch for passage money and convey him as far as Niué—the only place near their course where a penniless beachcomber would have been allowed to land. As things were, he was more or less smuggled off, and thought best to take refuge in the bush at once. The moneyless adventurer is not encouraged in islands belonging to the British Crown.

It is easy, therefore, to understand why Donahue, living under an assumed name in the far interior of the island, had not been recognised, and was not likely to be, by any one save the person whom his presence most concerned. His malice against Vaiti had by no means evaporated with the events that took place on Vaka. He did not, as it happened, suspect her of having actually caused the loss of the _Ikurangi_, but he was of a darkly superstitious nature, and laid down his ill-luck, first, last, and all through, to the fact of her influence. She had been a “Jonah” of the worst kind to him, and he would have been very glad indeed to serve her any ill turn of any kind that might be possible. But only the small piece of spite compassed through Mata had, so far, lain within his power.

Vaiti had still a mile or two to go, and it was waxing very late, or rather, early. She almost ran along the winding rocky path, following it as easily as if broad day or full moon had surrounded her instead of star-lit dark. Now the sound of the sea, unheard for the last hour, broke out again, and a cold salt breath from the beach cut through the heavy perfume of the forest track. In another minute she was out of the wood and fairly running down a sloping, sandy track that led to a little white house standing alone on the shore.... She laughed as she ran—it was such a soft, clear night, and the sea called so pleasantly down in the dark, and she did so dearly love an adventure—especially when all the world imagined her to be sleeping quietly in her mosquito-netted bed.

There was no secrecy about this matter apparently. The house had a good wooden door, and she rapped loudly on it with a stone, calling at the same time, “Sona! Sona! Wake up!”

There was a brief interval, in which the rollers tore at the beach and the palms swung and crashed overhead, uninterrupted by other sound. Sona was evidently asleep. She struck loudly on the door again. This time some one answered in a drowsy voice, and a slow, shuffling foot came to the door. The hinges creaked, and in another minute a small, bent, feeble figure appeared on the threshold.

“Tck! tck!” it clucked. “Is there magic in the air, and have I grown fifty years younger, that the lovely maidens come to my door in the starlight once more? Is it my beauty that has struck you to the heart, chieftainess Vaiti; or do you want a charm to catch the love of some one less deserving than myself?”

A fit of coughing interrupted him; he crept out to the open air, and clung to the door-post, shaking all over with the violence of the paroxysm. There was more light here, down by the foaming rollers; one could see, if one had been walking half the night in the dark bush, that the man was very small and hairy, very decrepit, and very, very old. Indeed, the personal appearance of Sona, solitary recluse of the Avarangi beach, good Nonconformist Christian on Sundays, and heathen witch-doctor out of business hours, was a very important item of his stock-in-trade. He looked his part to perfection, and knew it. His very name was a piece of business, even though, rightly pronounced and written, it was that of the godly man of Nineveh. When Shark-Tooth of Avarangi had consented, largely for reasons of policy, to join the mission fold a good many years before—the last straggling heathens on the island having been then “brought in” by the exertions of a determined and energetic missionary—he had selected the name of Jonah for his baptismal title solely because, so far as he could ascertain, the original bearer of the name was proverbial for bringing bad luck to his enemies—and that was the sort of reputation that Shark-Tooth especially coveted.

Vaiti had not met him before, but she knew him well by reputation, and was very sure that he knew all he cared to know—probably a good deal—about her. It was, she thought, a case for going straight to the point, so she went very straight indeed.

“Let me in, Sona,” she said in his own tongue. “I want to talk with you, and I want to buy you; for you and I are wise people, and I know that there is nothing that may not be bought.”

“Crah—crah—crah!” cackled Sona, in a feeble old man’s laugh, tacking a joke to the end of it that might well have raised a blush on Vaiti’s cheek if she had been capable of such a weakness. He led the way into the house, still cackling, lit an ill-smelling kerosene lamp, and sank down upon the mats, a mere heap of crumpled cotton clothes, old bones, and ancient wickedness.

Vaiti pulled out her cigar-case, tossed the old creature a cigar, which he clutched at eagerly, and lit one for herself. Then she squatted down on the mats, her back against the wall, and puffed for a minute or two in silence. Old Sona watched her eagerly with his glassy little eyes. He saw that she was not angry at the part he had played in the late unpleasant occurrence upon the schooner, or at least that she did not mean to resent it. He had heard all about the strange happenings of the voyage, and was a good deal awed at the power of the woman who had actually broken the spell of his curse—in which, be it observed, he believed most fully himself, with excellent reasons for doing so. And he was really very anxious to know what she wanted now, and especially what he was going to make by it.

Vaiti pulled at her cigar vigorously for a minute to make it draw well, and then, with a leisurely puff, remarked in Sona’s own tongue:

“Mata gave you a gold ring to curse my sailors that they should die—all the village knows of it, so you need not deny it, old man with the face of a scavenger-crab. Was it not foolish of you to set yourself against Vaiti, the great sea-princess—very foolish to run into danger, and for so little?”

“Yes, yes, so little,” repeated Sona, in a kind of wail.

“Now I come to buy you for myself,” went on Vaiti, puffing between words (she smoked like most women, very hard and fast). “I buy like a great chief’s daughter, and you shall feed and drink well for a long time if you are faithful to me. If not, I shall split you open with my knife as one splits open a fish on the beach, and leave you out on the strand, so that the crabs may come and eat you before you are dead. That is what I shall do to you.”

“I belong to the high chieftainess, soul and liver,” quavered Sona nervously. Vaiti, hardly looking at him, pulled something out of her dress and flung it down carelessly on the mat between the two. Sona’s eyes glittered, for he heard the chink of gold.

“Take it, old pig of the woods,” said Vaiti contemptuously, and he clutched eagerly at the little parcel of rag. It contained a roll of gold coins. Sona, panting with mingled delight and fear lest his visitor should change her mind, scuttled away to some hiding-hole in an inner room, and concealed the packet with breathless haste. Then he returned to the lamp-lit room, where Vaiti sat smoking and waiting.

“I am yours, high chieftainess; I am yours,” he repeated, rubbing his hands together and cackling.

“What is this thing they tell about a devil that stays upon the road to Mua, and comes out at night-time?” asked Vaiti carelessly, looking over Sona’s head at the wall.

Sona shut up his eyes very tight, and shook his shaggy little head from side to side.

“If you ask the good misinari doctor, he will tell you,” he answered. “As for me, I have nothing to do with devils. I am a very old man, and I want to go to heaven.

“You will go to-night, old scorpion-head, if you do not tell me everything I want to know,” remarked Vaiti. Her tone was pleasant, but there was a flavour of something else below the pleasantness that caused Sona, literally and figuratively, to sit up.

“I tell, I tell, high chieftainess,” he stammered eagerly. “The thing is known to all the people on the island—even the white people. It happened only last year, and it is as true as the Good Book. It was the foolish man from Mua way, whom they called a witch-doctor—and every one knows that such a thing does not exist, high chieftainess; but they said he was that thing, and he said so himself, because he was proud and mad. Now, we all know that there are many devils on Niué, and that the misinaris never were able to drive them all away. And there is a very bad devil on that road to Mua, right where the six palm-trees stand up by themselves among the graves. It is powerless in the day, but at night there is no Niué man who would dare to go there. Sometimes the white traders will ride past the place coming home in the dark, but it is a true thing that their horses will often shy and bolt when they come near to the home of the devil, and no man can say why; indeed, the devils, for the most part, do not have power over the ’papalangi.’

“So this witch-doctor, as he called himself, said that he did not fear the devil, and he would go and stay the night among the graves, thinking that because of that all the people in the island would believe in him, and give him many pigs and yams for fear of his ’mana.’ So he went to the devil-place, and all night he stayed, but in the morning he did not come back at all. And by-and-by all the people of his village went together to look for him. And they found him lying on the road, all dead, and his face was black and his body twisted up. So the people brought him to the misinari doctor, and he said that he could not make him alive again. And the traders said, ’What is the kind of this death? We do not know it, though we are white men and know everything.’ But the misinari doctor did not know. And they buried him, and that is all, high chieftainess.”

Vaiti smoked thoughtfully. She had heard something of the tale before, and Sona’s story did not vary from the version that was generally current about the island. She thought, on the whole, that she believed in it. There was no doubt that many of the white people gave it credit, though a few of them declared the man must have died in a drunken fit. A paper in Australia had published an account of the mysterious incident, and the spiritualistic set in Sydney were so deeply interested in it that a letter of inquiry from a psychical research society had been sent up to the island, inquiring into the matter. But it happened that the trader to whom the letter was addressed had committed suicide a good many months earlier, and excellent onions and pumpkins (much appreciated by his successor) were growing green upon his grave by the time the letter reached the island. So the inquiry was never answered.

Yes, on the whole, Vaiti thought she believed the story. That a similar result would follow in the case of a “papalangi” (white man) who followed the deceased magician’s example she did not, however, believe. She thought it very likely, however, that mischief of one kind or another would result.... And if the worst should chance to come about....

Vaiti took another cigar.

“What does your misinari say?” she asked. “He is not the right sort of misinari, it is true, but still, he should know more about devils than the traders.”

“Our good misinari was not here when it happened,” replied Sona in a pious tone. “It was the doctor misinari. Our own good misinari says that devils cannot do harm to any but bad men.”

Vaiti reflected, her eyes on the floor. She really had some respect, in an odd, upside-down kind of way, for missionary opinion. It is bred in the bone with the younger generation of Eastern Pacific islanders.

Donahue was certainly a very bad man. She did not think she had ever met any one much worse. Perhaps the badness, balanced against the whiteness, might swing down the scale. At any rate....

“Hear me, Sona!” she said, in a voice of command. “I have bought you to-night, and you belong to me. There will be more to pay by-and-by if you do as I tell you. But I would warn you to be careful, for you will not find it pleasant lying on the shore down there, with your inside hanging out like a gutted fish, and the crabs coming running to eat you before you are dead, as you will if you make any mistakes. Listen, then, very carefully.”

“I listen, I listen!” cried Sona.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*HOW THE WITCH-DOCTOR GOT HIS MONEY BACK*

When the trader’s wife came in next morning with Vaiti’s cup of tea, she was touched to see how deeply her pretty lodger was sleeping.

“Poor young dear,” said the good woman, “lying there so sweet and innocent, sleeping like a baby! It’s only the good heart that rests like that. I don’t believe a word of the silly lies they tell about her. Here, dear, wake up,” she called gently. “Your good papa is ever so much better this morning, and looking for you to come in. And it is Sunday morning, and a nice cool day.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Smith,” said Vaiti politely, broad awake at once. “May I asking you one little hot water? I like get up and go to turch.”

Church, attended for reasons religious or otherwise, was not one of the amusements patronised by the nameless white man of the bush. Indeed, his amusements, such as they were, were so far confined to the native villages of the interior that very few of the other whites had seen him. He was not good for trade, having no money and possessing no credit—that was all they knew, or for the most part wanted to know, about him.

There was all the more astonishment, therefore, in the shanty owned by the Mua trader, away up in the bush, when the unknown man walked into the store that Sunday night, and demanded some tobacco, at the same time showing a sovereign he held in his hand. He was dressed in a pitiful mass of rags, none too clean, but he looked well pleased with himself, and was more than half drunk. Fortune had apparently found him out at last.

The Mua trader was an honest man, but he did not see why he should not have a share in anything good that happened to be available about that lonely and unprofitable district. So he welcomed the stranger in with much cordiality, and asked him to stop for supper.

The newcomer had no objection in the world to come in and share the trader’s good tinned meats and new yeast bread, and he made himself very much at home without pressing. The trader, who had a private store of consolation in his own back kitchen, plied the spirits freely. He was curious, and he believed in the old saw of “Wine in, truth out.” A couple of friends who had ridden over from Alofi, the capital, and were equally curious about the derelict’s sudden access to fortune, did their disinterested best to help, and the bottle went merrily round. The Niué traders are a sober, decent set of people enough, but Donahue had mixed with them so little that he did not know this, and consequently was not put on his guard by the unusual conviviality. Indeed, he was by no means the same active, crafty villain who had set that successful snare of the diamond necklace in Apia many months ago. A white man cannot “live native” without going downhill very fast, and Donahue was nearly at the bottom.

So he drank, and laughed, and told evil tales, and grew quarrelsome, and pathetic, and finally affectionate and confidential, in well-defined stages, while all the time the other men kept sober, or nearly so. The Mua trader in particular hardly touched his glass. But Donahue, once so wary, never saw, and chattered on.

Before midnight the trader had sold him some gay calico for the native’ girls, and a little tinned meat and flour, and half-a-dozen various trifles that brought the score up to about a pound. Here the guest came to a pause and fingered his coin.

“Oh, well, if that’s all you have, you won’t get any more goods to-night. Thanks,” said the trader, putting out his hand.

The visitor, however, declined to hand over the money. He would pay to-morrow, he said. He was not going to leave himself without money again—not if he knew it—and he would have lots to-morrow: and if the trader wouldn’t send up the goods without the cash to-night, why, he might keep his condemned rubbish, and his customer would go elsewhere.

Rather than lose the order, the other gave in, and sent a boy away with the stuff. It would always be easy to bully him out of it afterwards, he thought, and there was no arguing with a drunken man’s whim.

Then he set himself, in company with all the rest, to find out where the money had come from.

Donahue, who by now was far gone, responded readily. It was the silly old chap who lived down on Avarangi beach, he said; an old fool who was an uncle of a girl who was a friend of his. The old chap had a notion that there were some Spanish doubloons hidden somewhere on the island, but in a place he was afraid to touch, so he had forked out a good British sovereign, and offered it to Donahue to go in his place, and share the money with him. Donahue was to keep the earnest money for his trouble, if nothing came of it, and if anything did turn up he was to take half. So he was going, that very night—the sooner the better. Natives were—well, natives; but as for him, he was afraid of nothing.

“Thasser-sort-er-man I am,” he finished thickly, looking round for applause.

He did not get it. The traders one and all burst out laughing. The story of the doubloons, they told him, was a very old one in the island, and only the newest of new chums thought of believing it. It was quite true that the natives, who were perfect magpies for hoarding, did possess among them a certain number of doubloons, which came from God-knows-where—for the coinage used in the island was British—and true also that the trader would get a doubloon from one of them every now and then in the course of business, always with some mystery attached to it, and some reluctance to part with the coin. But the Resident Commissioner, who knew the island pretty well, and the missionary too, had long been certain that the store was merely the remains of some ship-wrecking raid of past days, about which the Niuéans were now ashamed to speak. They were great misers, and it would like enough be another generation before all the hoarded coins had come to light and passed through the traders’ hands. But hidden treasure in Niué! Pf! If old Sona had been giving away money, he must be either going mad with age or (more likely) up to something. He was the cutest old fox on Niué, and that was saying something. Why, when he had come into that very store to buy a darning-needle a few hours ago (what a man who lived in a waist-cloth and nothing else wanted with a darning-needle he hadn’t explained), it had been all the trader could do to prevent his picking up half-a-dozen odds and ends. That was what he was like if one ever took an eye off him; and he wouldn’t even pay for the needle, either, till the trader had threatened to hammer him unless he forked out. Take his word for it, if Sona had been giving away money, he meant to have it back—somehow. And the treasure was poppy-cock.

Donahue had now passed into the quarrelsome stage, and he rose with tipsy dignity from his seat.

“I considdle you no gennlemen,” he said scornfully. “For half a Chile dorrer I’d” ... He mentioned what he would do, in gross and in detail, to the assembled company for the small sum mentioned.

“Kick the dirty brute out,” said the Alofi trader disgustedly. “It’s easy to see what sort of company that carrion has kept.”

Donahue was gone, however—gone with surprising agility, and lurching rapidly up the forest pathway towards his house. His legs were always the last thing to fail him.

He knew very well that he had had too much, and when he reached his hut he proceeded to sober himself by dipping his head repeatedly in a bucket of water. Then he brewed himself a powerful jorum of black tea, drank it, and set off considerably sobered.

It was a long way to the clump of palms, and he stumbled badly now and then as he went over the graves that lay thick about the edges of the path. Burial along the high-road is very popular in Niué, where they like to keep an eye on their dead and see that they are lying quiet in their graves—a thing that no one considers at all a matter of course. Some of the graves that Donahue passed had felt hats laid upon them; others had plates, bowls, bottles of hair-oil, fans—all to amuse the ghost and keep it quiet; and one or two looked ghostly enough to scare a nervous person as it was, with the wraith-like mosquito curtains thoughtfully suspended over the tomb by mourning and anxious relatives. Every grave was completed by a solid mass of concrete, weighing anything from several hundredweight to a ton. It was not the fault of any Niuéan if his dead relatives “walked.”

Donahue as he went chuckled to himself at the thought of his keenness in over-reaching the old witch-doctor. He had used him for his own purposes through the girl Mata before, and though that had not worked out too well, it was the witch-doctor who bore the discredit, not he. He would use him again now, and in another way. It was in the daytime that Sona had arranged to meet him at the palm-tree clump. At night, he said, it would be certain death; and even in daylight no one would linger there who could help it. He at least would never dare to disturb the big tomb in which the money was hidden and call down the anger of the devils on himself, unless he had a white man with him who feared nothing. So next morning, very early, the white man who was so brave would meet him, and they would open the big, cracked tomb together—the tomb that no Niuéan had ever dared to lay a finger on before, though there were one or two besides himself who suspected that it was just there the mysterious foreign coins had come from years ago, and that there were a good many left.

Thus the witch-doctor. And Donahue had assented eagerly, and gone off with his earnest money. And, on arriving at his hut, he had looked out an old axe that he possessed, and cleaned up his lamp, and begged a drop of oil from the nearest native house. For he meant to go that very night, and take everything there was for himself. Who was to prove it?