Part 13

*THE FATE OF THE LIEUTENANT*

It was not a gratifying tale. Half a mile from the beach, the captors had been overtaken by a party of wild hillmen from Ranaar, one of the worst of the inland cannibal towns, and had been set upon fiercely in the dark. Aki, one of their own party, had been clubbed, and his body carried off. The other natives had escaped. As for the lieutenant, the Ranaar men had seized on him with cries of joy, exclaiming that now indeed they had a chance of “making themselves strong” before all Malekula. Then they had carried him away, slung on a pole between two men, and the _Sybil’s_ people, half dead with fright, had run down to the beach again; and here they were, begging the Kapitani to have mercy on them, for indeed it was not their fault, and no one could have known that the Ranaar men would venture so near the coast.

Vaiti, Harris, and Gray all looked grave at this recital. They knew only too well what was implied by the phrase “making strong,” and what virtues the hill tribes of Malekula ascribed to the eating of white man’s flesh. The rude play of the capture had turned into most serious earnest, and Tempest’s life was worth just so many hours as it might take the cannibals to reach their mountain stronghold and go through the preliminary ceremonies of the feast. No more.

There was silence for a minute or two, while the schooner rolled gently on the swell of the incoming tide, and the smoky kerosene light flickered to and fro upon the strange, wild scene: Vaiti’s beautiful, angry head standing out above the weather-beaten faces of the two English sailors, the three naked New Hebrideans, squalid and monkey-faced, cowering before her; the remnants of Tempest’s dinner, some one’s greasy pack of cards, and a couple of Saxon’s empty whisky bottles decorating the table. The natives were badly frightened still. They did not understand that the Kapitani’s plans had been entangled beyond all hope of setting right by this disaster, or that the _Alligator_ must have been alarmed by their noisy return; but Vaiti’s countenance was enough to warn any one who had ever seen the unpleasant things that happened at times on board the _Sybil_ that hurricane weather was ahead. But before she had time to speak again, a loud hail from outside made every one look towards the deck. In another moment the first lieutenant of the _Alligator_ had framed his smart white and gold personality in the dark oblong of the companion, and demanded, loudly, and authoritatively, to know where Mr. Tempest was, where the marines were, and what the deuce was the meaning of all this.

Vaiti, motioning aside the mate and bo’sun, swept to the front and spoke straight out.

“All your sailor, he too much drunk, sleep ’long hold. Tempesi, he been go shore. Men belong Ranaar, they catch him, take him away. Pretty dam quick they eat him.”

“Great Scott!” said the officer. Facts were falling very thick and fast, and there were evidently more facts behind them which for the present he felt obliged—most reluctantly—to neglect. People think quickly in the navy, and Lieutenant Darcy realised instantly that this strange, wild, handsome creature was speaking the truth, and that it must be acted on without delay.

He stepped out on deck, and gave certain orders to his men. A sharp little midshipman and half the boat’s crew followed him on board, and planted themselves about the ship. The rest remained in the boat.

“This officer will stay here and take charge, and you will come with me to the _Alligator_,” said the lieutenant, addressing Vaiti.

“Yes, I speak captain. Very good you let me see him quick,” said the girl imperiously; and the lieutenant, guessing that there was more still to be told, hurried the boat away.

He delivered his report to the commander, and concluded by saying that the girl was in waiting, and had, in his opinion, something more to say about the matter.

“Bring her in,” said the commander shortly. The gravity of the affair had darkened his face a trifle, but he made no comment. It was not a time for talk.

Vaiti entered with the light step and carriage of the woman who wears neither shoes nor stays, and stood silently before the commander, fixing his hard grey eyes with her inscrutable dark stare.

“You can sit down,” said the officer. “I want to ask you some questions.”

Vaiti drew herself up a little higher.

“No time for sit,” she said curtly. “Suppose you no want Tempesi ki-ki [eaten] pretty quick, you listen me.”

“Young woman!” began Commander the Hon. Francis St. John Raleigh sternly.

“I tell you, no time talk!” interrupted Vaiti. “I savvy all right you very big sea-chief; I savvy my father been made bad work, made bad work myself. Let him go all-a-same that; by-’n-by we talk those thing. Now you listen me.”

“All right; sit down,” said the officer in a more conciliatory tone. Vaiti sat, and leaning across the table with her chin in one slender hand, and her eyes blazing out from under the mass of damp waves on her forehead, she said her say.

“You no savvy Malekula man; I savvy plenty. Suppose you do what I telling you, Tempesi he come back, I think. Suppose not, Tempesi he eat. Ranaar, he ten, eleven mile up ’long bush, plenty bad way. You take some sailor; he go too much sof’, too much quiet, all-a-same cat. Time we coming along Ranaar, one half-mile, sailor he all stop. I go myself Ranaar. Maybe I get Tempesi; we coming back to sailor, go home all right.”

“Oh, nonsense! how are you going to get him, if the men can’t?” demanded the commander. He saw that he had a remarkable personality to deal with in this strange half-caste beauty, but he did not comprehend her very clearly, and he thought she was “gassing” a little.

Vaiti frowned.

“I tell you, you no savvy Malekula,” she said scornfully. “Sailor belong you, all the man hear him when he walk ’long bush. Ranaar man he hear; he run away.”

“Well, so long as we rescue Mr. Tempest——”

“No you talk, I say; you listen, you Kapitani with um wooden face!” spat Vaiti.

The lieutenant turned his head away, and choked a little in his pocket-handkerchief. The commander stared, then burst out laughing.

“Go on, you she-cat,” he said.

“Ranaar man he run away; very good. He leave Tempesi; very good. No want Tempesi tell some tale, so he leave him dead. Break him head, all same pig, very quick, then run away. Now what you think?”

“I think you are a very plucky young lady, and that you have something more to say about it,” replied the commander politely.

“Very good. Suppose I going ’long bush; savvy plenty the way. I been ’long Ranaar recruit; savvy all-a-road. No walking all same white man, walking all same one snake, all same one mice. No white man he walk that way. I come up Ranaar, all-a-dark, I stop ’long one small place; see the man he dance, he sing, he make ki-ki. Bushman, he plenty frighten something he no savvy. Savvy gun, dynamite, but no savvy big blue-light signal thing you got ’long ship. I take one, two blue-light thing; I throw. Bushman he think one big devil stop, no think man-of-war come; run away too much dam quick, not stop kill Tempesi. By’n-by he coming back, but I cut rope before he come. I bring Tempesi ’long me, ’long sailor-man; we go back quick. Tempesi all right. Savvy?”

“Yes, I do savvy; seems a neat plan, on the whole. But what’s going to happen to you if they catch you?”

“Eat,” said Vaiti succinctly. “Now you listen me. I no do all this thing for nothing, see?”

“H’m; yes, I do see. How much do you want?”

“Two thing,” said Vaiti, eyeing him narrowly. “One. My father say he plenty sorry, no do any more bad thing. You let him go, let schooner go.”

“Well—yes, I’ll promise that,” answered the commander rather stiffly. The girl was taking her life in her hand to serve the interests of the British Crown, and it was not a time to stick at trifles, or, indeed, larger things.

“Two,” went on Vaiti. “Tempesi he seen leave ship, go ’long shore with me. You tell him all right, you no punish.”

“Oh, by Jove! that’s too much,” snapped out the commander. “No, Miss—Miss What’s-your-name, I can’t promise any such thing. I can’t have you or any one else interfering with the discipline of my ship. Mr. Tempest’s conduct is a very serious matter, and he must take the consequences, by Gad he must, if he comes back alive to take them.”

Vaiti had had a good deal to do with men-of-war, and their officers, during the course of the schooner’s many wanderings. She did not need to be told that Tempest’s career might be ended, and his life disgraced, if naval justice took its course. A few hours ago she would not have cared. But Mr. Tempest, like all men notorious for getting into scrapes with a petticoat at the bottom of them, had a “way with him,” and it happened to be a way that appealed to this daughter of the Islands more than she would have cared to allow. Besides, it was not her custom to give in to a defeat.

“All right,” she said calmly. “I savvy all thing about Englis’ officer. Tempesi he no like court-mars’al, make break, make longshoreman, all the people laugh. Tempesi, he like die, I think. All right. I let him. Good night.”

The commander held out his hand.

“Good night,” he said politely. “Mr. Darcy, you will see about getting a native guide who can show the way to Ranaar, at once. We will do our best to surprise them.”

A low, sarcastic laugh came from Vaiti.

“You wooden-faced Kapitani, you think you savvy Malekula!” she said. “Where you get guide?”

Mr. Darcy did know a little about the New Hebrides, and he saw that they were beaten.

“She’s right, sir,” he said. “Take my word for it, no native would dare to guide you. There’s no mission here; they’re a very bad lot, and all at war.”

It was a bitter moment for the commander, but he surrendered like a gentleman.

“You’ve got the best of me, Miss—Miss Saxon,” he said. “Very well. You have my promise. Mr. Tempest shall be pardoned, if we get him back alive. You know nothing about this matter, you will remember, Mr. Darcy. Miss Saxon, you’re a very brave young lady, and I wish I had met you in circumstances of which I could more honestly approve.”

“No one need tell me,” he said afterwards, “that that old vagabond we had in the cells wasn’t a gentleman once. It comes out in the girl; blood will tell, even in a half-caste. But Providence ought rightly to have a down on the man who is responsible for any one of them, for there seems no right place for them, either in heaven or earth.”

* * * * *

Neither the bluejackets of the _Alligator_, nor the officer appointed to command the column, ever forgot that night’s march through the mountain bush of Malekula. The air was like hot water, and not a breath of wind was stirring. The track was but a few inches wide, and as slippery as butter, so that the men slid and fell continually when struggling up the endless sides of the innumerable gullies. Mosquitoes settled in bloodthirsty hordes upon their faces and hands, roots tripped them up, saw-edged reeds slapped them in the eyes, and thorny tangles of bush-lawyers fished for and successfully hooked them. At any moment a huge soft-nosed bullet, cruel as a shell, might come singing out of the darkness; or a poisoned arrow, freighted with sure and agonising death, might whirr across their path. When the officer in command, irritated by the stumbling and falling of the men, ordered them to remove their boots and march barefoot, Vaiti told him that nothing of the kind must be done, for poisoned spear-heads were in all probability set here and there in unsuspected places, ready to pierce the unwary foot. She herself seemed invulnerable and untiring; she led the column at a pace that caused more than one to fall out, and never hesitated nor faltered through all the three hours of the worst and most intricate march that the _Alligator_ men had ever known.

At last she told the officer to call a halt, and on no account to make the slightest noise or advance his men until he should see a blue light burning about half a mile ahead. Then she vanished into the darkness, lithe and noiseless as a lizard, and silence, dead and oppressive, settled down upon the bush.

* * * * *

Lieutenant Tempest was a man and a British sailor, and he was not afraid of death. But he thought there might be pleasanter ways of dying than that which actually stared him in the face.

Memory plays strange tricks when the dark is closing down about her doors. Lying there on the damp earth, bound hand and foot to a pole, with the hideous howls of the cannibal dancers in his ears and the glare of the cooking-pits in his eyes. Tempest could think of nothing but a fragment of verse out of a half-forgotten poem read somewhere long ago:

“It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts. But only—how did you die?”

How was he dying? Not as an English officer might gladly die in the cause of his country and in loyal obedience to orders. Not even as a man, with a sword in his hand, facing the foe. He was dying an unfaithful servant, false to his trust, and suffering because of that falseness, as a slaughtered brute struck down with a club like a bullock, and afterwards....

The red remains of the luckless Aki, jointed and piled in a ghastly heap, told the rest.

Tempest did not look at that ugly pile any more than he could help. He wanted all the nerve he could muster for he was haunted by a deadly fear that he might cry out for mercy when it came to the last, and he did not want to add cowardice to the tale of his many shortcomings. If he could have died here as a prisoner of war—as a captured scout, a fighting enemy, taken in a skirmish—the death, hideous as it was, would have been honourable, and his pride of country would have upheld him. But it seemed as if his courage had nothing to stand on now, and he was almost—almost, but, thank God! not quite—afraid.

The Malekulans had been dancing for full two hours, ever since they had brought him to the valley and flung him down upon the ground. In the middle of the open village square were three huge idols, carved out of entire tree-trunks set upright. They had black, empty sockets for eyes; their mouths were curved upwards into a ghastly wrinkled grin, and their tongues hung mockingly out. On the head of each was perched a huge black wooden bird, with beak bent down and gloomy wings outspread—the very spirit of Nightmare herself. Round and round these devilish things, in the red glow of the fires, danced the cannibals ceaselessly and untiringly, fleeing with heads down and outspread hands, wheeling and turning, circling with measured steps; and all the time the huge hollow idols, beaten with heavy clubs “to make the spirits speak,” thundered death and doom. It was plainly a religious ceremony which must be fully enacted down to the last detail; but Tempest thought, as clearly as he could think in such a place and at such a time, that it could not last much longer.

“A fellow ought to say his prayers,” he thought; but the thunder of the drums and the wild, shrieking song of the dancers bewildered him, and his swollen wrists and ankles hurt him so much as almost to confuse his mind.... What could he say? Only one prayer remained clear in the turmoil of his brain—just the old, old prayer that he had prayed at his mother’s knee. Well, it would serve—and up above he hoped they’d understand how sorry he was ... for lots of things....

“Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come....”

It was coming, indeed! The dance had stopped.

“Thy will be done....”

What came next? He could not remember—and the savages were advancing across the square.

“Forgive us our trespasses ... and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil....”

It was _now_! The women were hiding themselves in the houses, and two of the men, armed with clubs, were stepping forward.

He was only conscious of one feeling—joy that he had the courage to look the cannibals in the face as they advanced, and meet his fate “game.” He hardly knew that he was still praying—

“... For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory....”

Death!

It came with a blaze of light—a sound as of a wild, deep shout and the rushing of many waters—then——

Was this the end? Was it indeed death? He had felt nothing—but a man does not feel the blow that kills—and his eyes were so dazzled with a strange, blue glory that he could not see.... The rushing sound continued; it was like the thunder of hundreds of flying feet.... The light burst forth again, and yet again, and then died away, and there was a great silence. Tempest saw the hideous faces of the idols standing out in the empty square, and began to understand. He was not dead—but something had happened. What was it? He tried to break loose and sit up so as to see all round.

“Stop um little bit,” said a voice, and some one drew a sharp knife across the lashings that bound his limbs, and lifted him into a sitting position.

The blinding light had almost died away now, and he could see the whole square. There was no one in it. The cannibals were gone, and the beautiful half-caste girl who had brought about his downfall—innocently, as Tempest of course supposed—was squatting beside him and putting a flask to his lips.

“Drink a little bit whisky,” she said. “Good whisky; he make strong. No good stop here, you Belitani sailor-man; more better we go away too much quick.”

The spirit cleared Tempest’s head and put some life into his limbs. Vaiti poked him unceremoniously in the ribs as soon as she saw that he was reviving.

“Show um leg there, lively!” she ordered, dragging him by the arms. Rather to his surprise, Tempest found that he could walk, once on his feet. He wasted no time in getting away, after Vaiti’s brief explanation of the blue-light stratagem, and the probable return of his enemies before very long. At something as near a run as his cramped limbs would allow, he followed her down the pathway that led away from the village—narrow, wet, and dark as a wolf’s gullet—and into the comparative security of the bush, towards the advancing relief column from the _Alligator_.

It would have been no more than fitting if Vaiti, like a true heroine of romance, had vanished silently into the forest when they encountered the man-of-war’s men, leaving Tempest to “turn to thank his preserver,” and “find that she had disappeared.” But Vaiti, as it happened, was born under the Southern Cross, where the poetry of the footlights does not flourish. So she gave the men her company on the way down as a matter of course, asked the officer in command for a cigar, smoked it and accepted half a dozen more out of his case, and made herself wonderfully pleasant—for Vaiti. She had further driven Tempest to distraction by starting a flirtation with a handsome petty officer, eaten up two emergency rations, “borrowed” some one’s gold tie-pin, and very soundly boxed the ears of a leading seaman who tried to kiss her in the dark, before the long roll of the surf on the barrier reef, and the welcome glimmer of the _Alligator’s_ riding lights, told the tired-out party that they were safe back again. Then, like the mysterious heroine, at last she disappeared, and slipped off to the _Sybil_ in a native canoe, for the reason that she did not want to be seen on board the man-of-war in a very untidy and dirty dress, without any flowers in her hair, or fresh scent on her laces. Tempest had found time to “thank his preserver” on the way down, haltingly enough; but the preserver, instead of accepting his thanks after the fashion he would have preferred, had laughed wildly and somewhat wickedly, and gone on walking right in the middle of the column, without a glance to spare for him.... Still—he thought he knew women—and.... Time would show.

* * * * *

The rest of the wardroom did not envy Mr. Tempest his interview with the commander. It took place immediately after his return to the ship, and he came out from it with a countenance of entire inexpressiveness and extreme whiteness. One sentence—the last—was unavoidably heard by the lieutenant who followed immediately after Tempest, to deliver his report.

“Finally, Mr. Tempest—this Miss—a—Saxon—has risked her life to save your life and reputation. I think there is only one way in which you can repay her—by never seeing her again.”

Tempest’s answer was inaudible. But—he never did.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*INVADERS IN TANNA*

“What a beautiful girl! Is she one of the heathens, I wonder?” said Lady Victoria Jenkins, leaning on the rail of her yacht.

The _Alcyone_ floated on a sea of living silver. The coral reefs forty feet before her keel showed like a pavement of pale turquoise in the searching splendour of the tropic moon. Close at hand loomed the dark woods and cliffs of Tanna, and above them, blotting out half the crystal broidery of the stars, rose the cone of the great volcano, crowned by a canopy of fire. So, in the days of Bougainville and of Cook, stood this southward sentinel of the wild New Hebrides, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. So it stands yet, its deathless fires unquenched, its awful voice breaking the forest silences hour by hour—as the dead and gone discoverers of these distant lands saw and heard it long ago, and as those who follow us will find it in the days to come, when we and our thoughts and hopes, and adventures and loves are but a whisper in the homeless winds and a handful of dust blowing about on long-forgotten graves.

There are few volcanoes in the southern hemisphere more famous, and none less frequently visited, than the fiery cone of Tanna. The island lies thousands of miles away from everywhere, and the inhabitants are known to be almost all heathen, cannibal, and hostile to whites, although the expression of their hostility has been kept considerably in check of late years. But Lady Victoria Jenkins, daughter of the late Earl of Wessex, and wife of Mr. Abel Jenkins (“Jenkins’s Perfect Pills”), is well known as a romanticist and a lover of all things unusual and strange. Mr. Abel Jenkins’s income is only exceeded by that of two other commoners in England, and Mr. Abel Jenkins’s ugliness and ill-temper are not exceeded by the ugliness and ill-temper of any one known to polite society. If the reader will piece these detached facts together, and consider them, he will readily understand why Lady Victoria was enjoying a tour round the world in her celebrated steam-yacht, the _Alcyone_, why she had come to look at Tanna, and why, including a good deal of miscellaneous company, the travelling party somehow was not miscellaneous enough to include Lady Victoria’s husband.