Part 2

Famous as she was for speed, the record of her passage from the Delgadas to Wellington fairly astonished the Islands, when it came to be told. They had a fair wind almost all the way, with two or three lively nights when the little vessel, hard driven under the utmost pressure of the canvas, piled up the knots like a liner. Saxon continued delirious, but was fortunately quiet. Harris, and Gray the boatswain, though unenlightened as to the cause of the _Sybil’s_ sudden southward flight, fully understood that the possession of the pearl lagoon hung in the balance, and worked like half-a-dozen to supplement the efforts of the scanty Kanaka crew.

Vaiti interfered little with the working of the ship, but she kept a look-out that hardly left her time for sleep or food; although the _Sybil_, like most Pacific ships, was allowed, under ordinary circumstances, to chance it, day and night. Hour after hour she sat cross-legged on deck, watching the unbroken rim of the black horizon, or paced up and down the poop, silent and grave, in her lace and muslin fripperies, as a naval officer on the bridge. What she was looking for no one knew, but during that wild ten days of foam and smother, cracking sails and straining sheets, her silent watchfulness infected the men themselves, and eyes were constantly turned to scan the empty, seething plain over which they flew.

It was drawing on towards dusk of the tenth day, and the sky was beginning to light fires of angry copper-purple, high in the storm-driven west, when Vaiti, of a sudden, stopped dead in her endless walk, and looked with lips apart and eyes narrowed deep beneath her brows over the weather rail. All this time they had not sighted a single sail or a solitary funnel. They had been well off the track of New Zealand bound ships, and the Pacific waters are wide. But now they were drawing near to Wellington, and there was nothing to be astonished at in the sight of another sail creeping up over the horizon, except, indeed, the fact that it was momentarily growing larger and gaining on the _Sybil_. There was scarce another schooner afloat from New Guinea to the Paumotus that could have done as much.

The mate came up behind Vaiti, and handed her a glass. She looked through it, lowered it, raised it, and looked again with a steady gaze, and suddenly flung it out of her hand across the deck.

Harris caught it deftly and asked, with the constitutional calm that alone saved his reason when Vaiti took over command, “What’s to pay now?”

“She got auxiliary,” said Vaiti, with a note of agony in her voice.

“What if she has? Isn’t any vessel free to carry an auxiliary that can stand the stink of the oil and the cussedness of the injin?”

“I go see captain,” said Vaiti, flashing down the companion.

Saxon was better to-day, and almost in full possession of his senses. Vaiti went to the medicine chest; took out a hypodermic syringe, filled it with careful accuracy from a tiny dark blue bottle, and lifted her father’s arm as he lay limp and weak, but mending fast, in his bunk.

“Good girl, take care of your old father,” he murmured in island Maori as she slipped the needle-point painlessly under the skin, and the powerful drug began to race through every vein of the inert body. The effect was rapid and decisive. Saxon sat up against his pillows in five minutes, clear-headed though weak, and asked if the _Sybil_ had not sighted the Delgadas yet.

“Listen, father,” said Vaiti, speaking fluently in the low, soft tongue that the two had used together all her life—the Maori language Saxon had first learned from the pretty brown girl, dead this many years, whom he had stolen from her South Sea island to sail the blue Pacific at his side in the days of long ago. “Listen. There is little time, and we are in great need. We came to the reef, and the shell was there truly, but a strange ship had been before us. Even as we lay there she returned from Christmas Island with diving gear. I sent Gray on board to look at her chart and find out if she had been to Wellington; and it seemed that she had not the new line of annexation marked on the chart, where New Zealand this year added to herself all that lay within a certain space of the sea; also she had not been south of Auckland. So then, knowing that we, if we asked the Government, might have the atoll granted us for twenty years and take possession above the people of the other ship, I made sail for Wellington; and we are now but one day away when this ship appears again, chasing us. Where the suspicion has waked in their hearts, or when, is nothing; but that they have thought and discovered our desire, that is certain.”

“Give the _Sybil_ all sail, daughter, and she will leave the other. What is this talk?” asked Saxon, raising himself on his elbow to look out of the glooming circle of the port.

“But the ship has ’auxiliary,’ my father, and she will have passed out of sight before the morning.”

“Oh, she has, has she?” grunted the captain, dropping back into his native tongue. “What are you going to do about it?”

He had noted a glimmer in Vaiti’s eye that told him that she was not yet at the end of her resources. The Maori guile and the English daring were united to some purpose in this strange creature that he had given to the world.

“I will tell,” she said, standing up to her full height. “But you must give the order, my father, for Alliti drags on the rein these days. Let the bale of trawl-net, and the Manila rope, be taken from the cargo, and let us cross the bows of this ship, and drop them across her path. The keel will run clean, but the screw will foul, and they will creep like a bird with a broken wing till daylight. Then, if the sea has grown less, they will send down a diver and clear the screws; but we shall be almost into Wellington, and the lagoon is ours.”

“You are worthy to be the daughter of a brave man,” answered Saxon in Maori, sinking back wearily on his pillow. “Go, then; and if we lose the ship, we lose her; there is great wealth to gain, and a man must die at one time, if not another. I am tired. I will sleep.”

Vaiti left him, and hurried back on deck. The purple dusk was already beginning to gather, and the green starboard light of the _Margaret Macintyre_ gleamed like a glow-worm a mile or so behind. She was drawing very near; there was no time to lose.

“Alliti!” called Vaiti. “My father he better; he send word to take trawl-net and Malila out of hold, make come across that ship him path, foul him sclew. Suppose you not afraid, you bring us close, drop net and Malila.”

Harris’s hide was thick, but Vaiti knew how to pierce it when she chose; and the man had courage enough, in streaks. Vaiti had hit the mark when she called him chicken-hearted in fighting, but there was no manoeuvre of the ship too risky for him to undertake and carry through with perfect coolness.

“All right, my lady,” he nodded. “Don’t forget me and Gray when it comes to sharing out the swag, that’s all.”

The net and the rope were brought up, and the latter knotted here and there to make a hideous tangle of it. Then the _Sybil’s_ lights were put out, even the cabin lamp being extinguished. The stars pricked themselves out in sudden sharpness on the great blue chart of heaven above, and the waste of dark rolling water all around grew large and lonely.

You are not to suppose that Saxon’s daughter did not see and feel these things—did not hear the voiceless talk of the great seas on starry evenings, or feel her mortal body almost rapt away in the ecstasy of a black midnight and a shrieking storm; just as you, perhaps, who think that no one ever shared such experiences with yourself, may feel. It is not only the blameless tourist, with his daily diary, and his books of travel teaching him how and when to “enthuse,” who enjoys the splendid pageant of the seas. Vaiti, as the most indulgent chronicler must confess, had more than a spice of her father’s villainy in her composition, not to speak of whatever devilry her Maori forebears might have bequeathed to her. She was unscrupulous, ruthless, and crafty as a general rule; she was engaged in a deed of the very shadiest description to-night—yet, as she stood with her hands on the wheel, and her eyes on the green starboard light of the oncoming ship, steering the _Sybil_ to something extremely like certain destruction, she knew that the Southern Cross was rising, clear and beautiful, above its gem-like pointers, just ahead; and that a little sliver of young moon, crystal-silver against the dark, was slipping up the sky to her left. The thought just grazed her mind that this might be the last time the moon would ever rise over the Pacific for her. She smiled a little in the dusk, and steered steadily ahead. There were no “streaks” in the composition of Vaiti’s spirit.

A short tack to the starboard became necessary. Harris put the ship about at a lift of Vaiti’s hand. It grew very dark; a cloud was over the moon, and the stars were dimmed by driving vapour. The wind was increasing; the schooner lay over with its weight, and the foam gurgled along her clean-ran sides. Still the _Margaret Macintyre_ came on, stately and unsuspicious, all sail set, and the beat of the little screw distinctly audible through the night.

Vaiti signalled again to put the ship about, and as soon as the great booms had creaked across the deck, gave over the wheel to Harris.

“Run him just as he head now,” she said softly, “and bring him too much close; so (double adjective) close to ship he scrape the (qualified) paint off him. I go do rest.”

Harris, humming “Good-bye, Dolly Gray,” took the wheel over. If he had any doubts as to Vaiti’s purpose, the vigour of her language would have dispersed them. Vaiti never swore unless she was exceedingly in earnest.

The trawl-net and the tangle of Manila were hanging over the stern, held up by a single rope. Vaiti glided to the rail, holding a sharp knife in her hand—(“I always _did_ think she kept one somewhere among her frilligigs,” commented Harris silently, as he caught the flash of the steel)—and waited, still as a statue.

Presently out of the darkness shot a hail, accompanied by a perfect constellation of oaths. Its apparent object was to ascertain the _Sybil’s_ reason for steering such a course. The _Sybil_ answered not a word, but steered the course some more.

The hail, at the second time of repeating, became a yell, with a strong note of terror in it. On came the _Sybil_, a dim, unlit tower of blackness, taking as much notice of the shouts as the _Flying Dutchman_. Those on board the _Margaret Macintyre_ gave themselves up for lost. There was even a rush made for one of the boats. But the threatening shape swept past her bows, so near that the furious captain could have tossed a biscuit on board—so near that the _Sybil’s_ Kanaka crew, thinking the “papalangi” officers meant to ram the stranger, uttered war-cries wherein pure delight was mingled with overjoyed surprise.

It was all over in a minute, and the _Sybil_ was well away on the _Margaret Macintyre’s_ port side before the latter vessel discovered, through the medium of a horrible jar from the engine-room and a powerful odour of oil, that the screw was badly fouled, leaving them, like St. Paul with nothing to do but make the best of circumstances, and “wish that it were day.”

* * * * *

December weather is hot in Wellington, and it was now close to Christmas. Perhaps that was why the senior member of the trading firm that had taken over part ownership of the _Sybil_ for an unpaid debt thought his eyes were deceived by the glare of the sun when he saw a white schooner of singularly graceful lines lying alongside one of the wharves on a date when her engagements plainly demanded her presence in Tahiti.

When, however, he met Saxon and his daughter, a few minutes afterwards, on Lambton Quay, he understood that his eyes were in excellent order. So, it soon appeared, was his tongue. He was a gentleman of Scottish extraction, and it hurt him badly to see possible profits thrown away.

Saxon let him have his say, and merely laughed for answer.

“Come into the Occidental, and Vaiti and I’ll tell you something worth all the trade that you’d take out of Papeëte in ten years,” he said. “I’m going to own the ship again before New Year’s Day, and paint this good old town scarlet as well. You’ll see.”

And the man of money-bags, anxious to see, went into the hotel.

Vaiti, in a fit of perversity, declined to come in. She knew only too well that, in Saxon’s impecunious condition, there was no hope of getting their discovery effectively worked save at a price that would leave very little change over for the present possessors of the lagoon—even if the captain had been quite sober, which he was not. They had got the grant, and had furthermore had the satisfaction of noting that, day after day, Wellington Harbour remained empty of the hardly-used _Margaret Macintyre_. It was evident that her people, whoever they were, had tamely accepted defeat. There was no standing against a grant from the Government of New Zealand—no matter how acquired. But all this did not alter the fact that there was not going to be a great deal for the _Sybil_, and her captain, and her captain’s daughter—especially the latter. It was there that the sting lay. Vaiti had had dreams—oh, but dreams! oh, such dreams! before solid common-sense had brought her down to earth, and made her realise that Saxon’s unlucky state, and the eminently Scottish firm who held the destinies of the _Sybil_ in their hands, were quite certain to stand in the way of realisation. To make a fortune, you must first have one, generally speaking. And it was the canny Glasgow men who had it.

So, because she did not want to hear with her own ears what she knew very well must take place, she refused to come into the hotel, and wandered off alone down the quays, in the warm December sun, which yet was cool compared to the burning heats of the island world. She was dressed in a long, waistless muslin gown, as usual, but her shady Niué hat and white deck shoes—not to speak of a pair of kid gloves that caused her horrible discomfort and a parasol that embarrassed her extremely—spoke of a respect for certain of the conventions that might have astonished people who knew, or thought they knew, Vaiti of the Islands. Of course, the loungers on the quays looked admiringly after her—she would have liked to see them dare to omit that tribute to her fiery charms—and some of them freely spoke to her, calling her Mary and Polly, offering her hearts and drinks and new bonnets, and asking her for kisses or jobs on the schooner, just as it occurred to them, after the simple fashion of the sea. Some of them knew her, and some of them did not. It was the latter who asked for jobs. The men who did know the _Sybil_ and her “Kapitani” asked for kisses, which they did not expect to get. That was safer.

Vaiti, quite accustomed to this sort of demonstration, and enjoying it in a languid way as she strolled along under the annoying parasol, covered half a mile or so of the quay at her own leisurely pace, and then sat down on a coil of rope in a quiet place, to stare across the water and think.

She wanted something, and she did not see her way to get it.

To disentangle the dreams and hopes, wild fancies, and wilder aspirations of the half-caste mind when that mind, puzzling and elusive enough to the pure white in any case, is further complicated with a touch of genius, would be a task worthy of a whole academy of science. This much alone can the necessarily all-knowing biographer of Vaiti say—that she wanted to be someone, and wanted it so badly that nothing else in life seemed worth having, or even existent, She was a princess of Atiu on her mother’s side, and on her father’s (though Saxon’s past was as much a mystery as the origin of the yacht-like _Sybil_ herself) Vaiti felt that she had every right to claim high standing.

Doubly dowered, therefore, with the instinct of rule, the actual command of the schooner had fallen into her capable hands quite naturally. Left to herself, she would probably have made the _Sybil_ pay in a way unknown before to the easy-going island world. But the useless, dissipated Saxon had to be counted on. She liked him in her own way, such as it was, but she despised him also. And it was an undoubted fact that he hampered everything. This bargain with M’Coy and Co., for instance—it was useless for her to attempt to put a finger on it. Saxon had got drunk the night before, as soon as the matter of the grant had been finally decided, at the end of some anxious days of waiting; and in the morning the numerous “hairs” that he had taken to restore him had left him in a condition of hopeless obstinacy and self-sufficiency. In such a state he was as certain to be over-reached as a stranded jelly-fish is certain to be licked up by the sun. And this was bitter to Vaiti.

For, sitting there motionless under the parasol (which was serving a useful purpose at last, in shading her handsome face from observation and comment by the passers-by), Vaiti had arrived at something rather like a conclusion, and a conclusion, too, that was likely to shape most of her thoughts and acts henceforward.

Money was the thing.

She did not care for money in itself, and none of the things it could bring really interested her, except pretty clothes.

But money was importance, money was power; money was the freedom to do exactly what you wanted, and make other people do it too. She did not think it out in words, like a European. Pictures passed before her mind, more vivid by far than the glittering water and flashing sea-gull wings in front of her bodily eyes. She saw captains of great ships, giving orders like kings, and obeyed by the promptest and smartest of slaves. She saw owners of big stores entertaining half the island on their verandahs, paid court to by wandering beach-combers, going out to ships in beautiful boats manned by their own uniformed crews, who bent their backs double at a word. She saw “Tusitala,” of Samoa, the great English story-teller, living in his splendid house outside Apia, surrounded by a humble clan of native followers wearing wonderful lava-lavas of a foreign stuff they called “tatani” (tartan)—Tusitala, who was as great a chief as Mataafa himself, and had spoken to her, Vaiti, as one worthy of all honour.... Her pictures were almost all of the islands, for the islands were in her blood; but something, too, she saw of Auckland—the merchant M’Coy, old and so ugly, and of the commonest birth, yet reverenced like the greatest of chiefs, because he had money....

The afternoon rays grew blinding hot on the water as the sun sank down. The sea-gulls dipped and screamed. Steamers glided away from the wharves with long hooting cries that somehow seemed to embody all the melancholy of the homeless sea. Steam cranes chattered ceaselessly above the yawning holds of discharging ships. Behind, the tramcars hummed in the street, and people hurried up and down.

And at last the western sky began to burn with sultry red, and Vaiti went home.

Something had taken root in her mind that afternoon that struck down and shot up, in the days to come, and led her into ways and places wilder even than the adventure of the pearl lagoon. As children string berries on a straw, so upon the stem that grew from that seed were strung the strange events that followed, one by one.

*CHAPTER III*

*THE FLOWER BEHIND THE EAR*

As Vaiti, Cassandra-wise, had prophesied about the pearl lagoon, so indeed it fell out.

It takes money to exploit even the smallest discovery of this kind, and the canny M’Coy made the most of the fact. Delgadas Reef was too risky a neighbourhood to be worked by any vessel unprovided with an auxiliary engine, so a cranky little schooner of some forty tons, owning a tiny oil engine that sometimes worked and sometimes did not—more commonly the latter—was chartered; also a couple of boats for diving work, and two sets of diving dresses; and a cheap crew was picked up somewhere, and some poor provisions laid in. Everything was done on the most economical scale possible—yet the Scotchman grumbled and lamented, and declared he would never see his money back. The shares had been fixed at a wickedly low figure for Saxon and there were, furthermore, clauses in the agreement concerning expenses which made that unlucky derelict swear fiercely when he read them after he was sober. It was too late to complain then, however, for he had signed everything he was asked, under the influence of the good whisky to which M’Coy—liberal for once—had freely treated him. Nor did he get any sympathy from Vaiti. She merely laughed when he complained, and told him frankly that he would have done better to stay in his cabin and drink there, if he liked, leaving her to finish what she had begun.

So the pearling ship sailed off, and Saxon, who could not afford to stay in port, went another voyage. And some months later, when he came back, it was to find that Delgadas Reef was cleaned out. It had held not much after all, said the Glasgow man, and shell was down, and the pearls had been few and off colour. But there was enough to pay Saxon’s debt and leave him owner and master of the _Sybil_ once more. And there might be a few pounds in addition—not much; but there, he was an honest man, and he would rather ruin himself than let Saxon and the charming Miss Vaiti feel they were badly treated. And if Saxon would kindly sign this paper releasing him from all further claims, he would be happy to give over all claim in the ship. Otherwise—money was tight, and that little matter between them had been owing so long that——

Saxon interrupted with a statement to the effect that he knew blank well he had been blank well had, and for the sum of two sanguinary sixpences he would be prepared to knock Mr. M’Coy’s doubly condemned head off his unpleasantly qualified shoulders—only, luckily for Mr. M’Coy, he was sick of him and the like of him, and merely wanted to get out of his way as soon as he possibly could. With which concise summing up of facts he signed the paper, picked up the cheque, and went out to spend it after his own fashion. Vaiti secured half of it at the bank where he cashed it, and went off with the money done up in her hair, to keep house by herself on the schooner until her father should turn up again. She knew him too well to expect that that would come about immediately.

Meanwhile, there were banks in which she could deposit her own share, and thus feel herself a step nearer to her goal—that dim, undefined goal that was to be reached somehow, some time, through the possession of the precious bits of paper and coin without which all pleasant things were impossible. She did not decide at once where the money should go, but hid it in her cabin, and day by day walked the pavements of Wellington, delighting her eyes with the shop-window beauties which she had so seldom seen. Thus came her undoing. Vaiti had never heard the saying, “We are none of us infallible, even the youngest,” or she might have been less certain of herself before it came about, and less bitter afterwards.