Part 3

For was it not natural that when Saxon unexpectedly reappeared at the Constantinople Hotel with a good deal of his money still left, and sent for Vaiti to join him and “live like a lady while she could,” the improvident island blood should all unbidden well up and smother everything else? Why go on? There are shops in Wellington—there are as many ways of getting fifteen shillings’ worth out of a sovereign, and repeating the process a great deal oftener than one means, as in any other of the world’s big ports.... The end was that, after ten delirious days of glorious spending. Captain Saxon and his daughter set sail for Tahiti with a general cargo, a complete set of empty pockets between them, and, on the part of Vaiti, a glad remembrance more than half stifled by angry regret for the cost. Yet, and yet, what a lovely thing money was, and what a pity that one could not both spend and keep it! If you did the one, you were happy, but no one thought anything of you. If you did the other, everyone paid court to you, but you didn’t get the fun. Yes, that was true of money—and of other things. Girls who had been brought up at convent schools understood a lot that the ignorant beach girls didn’t.... And, _bon Dieu!_ as they used to say in Papeëte, when the Sisters couldn’t hear—what a headache it gave her to think, and what a fool she was to do it!

“Ruru!” she called in Maori to a native sleeping peacefully on the deck. “Wake up, pig-face, son of a fruit-bat, and make me kava immediately. I am weary.”

* * * * *

It was many weeks after, and the hot season had come round once more.

The schooner was slamming helplessly about on a huge glassy swell. Everything on board that could rattle, rattled; everything in the cabins that could break loose and take charge, did so, sending up a melancholy chorus of crashes with every wallow of the ship. The great mizzen sail slatted about above the poop, offering and then instantly withdrawing a promise of cooling shade, in a manner that was little short of maddening, seeing that the hour was three o’clock, and the latitude not four degrees south. Friday Island looking like a small blue flower on the rim of a crystal dish, hovered tantalisingly on the extreme verge of the horizon, as unattainable as Sydney Heads or heaven. For the _Sybil_ was becalmed, a week’s from anywhere in particular, and there seemed no chance of a breeze.

“Lord,” said the mate, dropping the marlinspike with which he was splicing a rope, and mopping his forehead with his rolled-up sleeve, “I wonder ’ow many thousand miles we are from an iced beer!”

“Turtle!” said Vaiti, taking a slim brown cigar out of her mouth, and looking down from her seat on the top of the deck-house. “Only nine hundred and eighty-seven. You not remember Charley’s in Apia?”

“I’d forgotten Samoa,” said Harris, in a more cheerful tone, picking up the marlinspike, and going to work again, as if revived by Vaiti’s arithmetic.

“A miss is as good as a mile, for all me, specially when it’s nine hundred mile,” remarked the gloomy boatswain. “Couldn’t you manage to talk about something rather less ’arrowing to a man’s insides?”

“I’d like to know why she’s going skull-huntin’ to Friday Island, then,” said the mate, casting a cautious glance at Vaiti, who was scarcely out of ear-shot, up on the deck-house.

“Trade I can understand,” he went on, “and shell-huntin’—we haven’t done too bad all round over that last little job, and the old man’s a sight more sober since he’s owned the ship again. But skulls—and old skulls at that—filthy natives’ bones that’s been lyin’ in the caves since Heaven knows when! Besides, they ain’t our skulls, however you may look at it——”

“Nor I hope they won’t be,” said the boatswain darkly. “In no way, I mean. The Friday Islanders aren’t people to ask out to an afternoon tea-party without you’ve got your knuckle-duster on underneath your voylet kid gloves. And you know what natives are about their old bones and graves.”

“I do. What I don’t know is how she thinks she’s going to make anything out of a proper nasty job like that.”

“Oh, she’s on the make, is she!”

“Did you ever know her anything else, bless her?” asked the mate. “She wants sixty pounds, havin’ spent all the old man give her out of the shell business in Wellington, takin’ boxes at the theaytres and halls, and buyin’ women’s gear, and staying at the Constantinople, where she wore two new ’ats a day for a week; and other games of a similar kind. Pity you was sick, and not there to see the fun. I tell you, she made the town look silly.”

“What’s the sixty pound for?” asked the boatswain, chewing fondly on his quid.

Harris giggled explosively, and whispered:

“She wants a Dozey dress!”

“What in ——’s that? It don’t sound respectable,” virtuously observed the boatswain, who had never heard of the famous French dressmaker.

“You bet it is, then. Dozey’s a regular bang-up swell in Paris, who makes the most expensive gownds in the world, and every one in them parts treats him just the same as a baronight or a duke. You can’t get so much as a jumper from him for less than sixty pound, and Vaiti she says every woman in Papeëte or Aucklan’ or Sydney who saw one of his dresses would spot it right away, and go and throw herself over the Heads. She read about his things in a piece in one of them female papers in the hotel, and she saw an actress wearin’ of one, and she’s been layin’ out to get one ever since, somethin’ awful. Seems when a woman in London, or Paris, or Yarmouth gets a Dozey dress, and takes to standin’ off and on before the others, who’s only got new velveteens with musling frills or such-like it just makes them other women drag their anchors and run head-on to the shore. So Vaiti, she——”

“Hold on,” interrupted the boatswain. “Why, if she ’ad one of those gownds, she couldn’t bend it on to her yards, not if it cost a million. Man alive, she ain’t laid down on the same lines as them Frenchwomen, anyway.”

“You let her alone for that,” chuckled Harris. “But what beats me is _who_ she’s going to do with them skulls, and _how_. We won’t know in a hurry, either, because she and Pita’s fixed it up between them to do the job alone. Thank ’eaven for small mercies, says I. ’Er on the war-path’s rather more than I care for; and this isn’t going to be any picnic, if I know anything of natives.”

“Pita!” whistled the boatswain. “The old man will ’ave ’is gore before the voyage is out, if Vaiti goes on like this. It’s Ritter, that fat German trader in Papeëte, that he’s wanting to marry her to; and as for natives, it’s ’ands off for them, if she is ’alf of one ’erself.”

“Well, she and Pita was planning it all out in the fore-top last night. I heard them, when she thought I was sleeping on the top of the galley. And the old man came out and roared at her like a Marquesas bull to come down; so down she came, laughing at him, like the devil she is. There’s no one else on this ship would laugh, without it was on the wrong side of his mouth, when the old man gets ratty. Coming! All right!”

The mate jumped to his feet, and answered Vaiti’s sharp hail in person, a deprecating smile spreading like spilt treacle all over his face as he came up to her, cap in hand. Vaiti took her cigar out of her mouth, and looked at him for a minute without speaking. The _Sybil_ rolled on the towering swell like a captured beast trying to beat its brains out against a wall, but Saxon’s Maori daughter stood as steady as the slender main-mast upon the reeling deck. Harris smiled more than ever, and turned the marlinspike about in his hands, looking a little foolish.

“You wanting Captain Saxon come and lay you out in the scupper pretty soon?” inquired Vaiti presently.

“Not particular,” answered the mate, the smile sliding slowly off his face.

“Then I think perhaps you keep your mouth more better shut,” said Vaiti, walking off with a contemptuous swing in the very fall of her laced muslin skirts. And Pita of Atiu, as if in defiance of the captain, the mate, and every one else but his cousin Vaiti, pulled a mouth-organ out of his shirt and began to play it triumphantly and frantically, making a noise exactly like the buzzing of a mad bluebottle on a warm window-pane. Further, he plucked a frangipani flower out of the wreath—a good deal the worse for wear—that hung round his neck, and stuck the blossom behind his ear. Now, every one who has ever been in the Islands knows that these two actions are significant of courtship. Pita was courting Vaiti, as everybody knew—Pita, a mere deck hand, who had been taken on at wild Atiu, in the Cook Islands, because he was a relation of Saxon’s dead native wife. Very handsome was Pita, very young and tall and broad-shouldered, wily and fierce like all the Atiuans, but smooth and pleasant of countenance. Were not the men of Atiu nicknamed “meek-faced Atiuans,” even in the days, only a generation gone, when they were the cruellest and most warlike of cannibals and pirates?

Needless to say, Captain Saxon, who had always had “views” for Vaiti, ever since she left the Tahitian convent school that had given her such fragments of civilisation as she possessed, did not favour the compromising attentions of Pita. As for Vaiti, her father’s prohibitions neither piqued her into noticing the handsome Atiuan more, nor alarmed her into favouring him less, than she found agreeable. At present there was rather more than less about the matter, because Saxon was in one of his fits of gloomy depression, and Vaiti foresaw the usual result. It was not at all likely that her father would be able to help her in her forthcoming raid. Harris she did not choose to rely on at a pinch; Gray was old; the crew were far and away too superstitious to aid in such a sacrilege as she proposed. There remained Pita, who, if he was a wild Atiuan, was at least “misinari” after a fashion, had been educated, more or less, in Raratonga, and was most certainly in love with herself.... Yes, Pita would do.

That night, when the second dog-watch had commenced, and a lew large crystal stars were just beginning to glimmer through the pink of the ocean sunset, Vaiti descended to the cabin, looked into Gray and Harris’s berths to make sure that they were both on deck, and then sat down on the cushioned locker opposite her father.

“What is it?” asked Saxon, raising his heavy blue eyes. He had been sitting with his head propped in the corner of the cabin, silent as a fish, since the clearing away of tea an hour before. You might have thought him asleep, or, if you knew him intimately, drunk. He was neither; but dead and drowned things were rising up from the black sea caverns of his heart to-night, and their bones showed white and ghastly upon the desert shores of his life. So he sat silent, with his face turned to the darkening porthole and to the night that was striding down upon the sea.

Through the port he saw the shining harbour of Papeëte as it looked a week or two ago—a tall grey British war-ship lying at anchor, the _Sybil’s_ dinghy, small and crank and unclean, creeping up to the man-of-war’s accommodation-ladder, himself, a weather-scarred, red-faced figure, in a worn duck suit and bulging shoes, sitting in the boat, and waiting patiently until the Governor’s steam-launch should have passed in front of him and discharged its freight of visitors.

He saw the captain of the great Queen’s ship standing at the top of the ladder, slight and trig and trim, all white and gold from top to toe, all smiling self-possession and cool command.

He saw ladies, immaculately coiffed and daintily shod; tall, clean, grey-moustached men following them; a cordial welcome on the deck; a flutter of light drapery and a glimpse of lounging masculine figures afterwards, framed by the great open gun-ports of the captain’s cabin in the stern. They were laughing and talking, and he could hear the clink of cups and glasses. After—a long time after—he could see his own shabby little boat creeping up to the ladder; the captain, cold and business-like, and more than a little brusque, speaking to him on the deck about a certain anchorage in the Cook Islands group, concerning which he was known to have information; himself, burningly conscious of his shoes and his finger-nails, answering shortly and with some embarrassment, and feeling, of a sudden, very shabby, very broken, very old.... Was it twenty-five years, or two thousand, since the Admiral of the Fleet, and the Prince of Saxe-Brandenburg, with half the mess of his own regiment, had dined on board his biggest yacht at Cowes a week before—it—happened?... Now a mere commander left him standing on the deck, and spoke to him like a native or a dog. Well, what did it all matter to a dead man? Was not his name of those days carved on the family monument in letters half an inch deep, and was not he, Edward Saxon, whom nobody knew, out here in the living death of the farthermost islands, a thousand miles from anywhere?...

“Father,” said Vaiti.

“What is it?” answered Saxon’s voice dully, as befitted a dead man.

“The wind is rising at last,” said the girl in Maori, “We shall be off the island by morning. Will you, or will you not, go with me into this cave of death, where I have told you that I shall find what is worth finding?”

“I have no heart. I will not.”

“Then I and Pita will go,” said Vaiti, fixing the Englishman’s blue eyes with her own black, stabbing and savagely unfathomable, yet set in Saxon’s very own narrow high-bred face.

The captain’s dark mood was on him, and he turned his face to the wall, with a Maori oath consigning Vaiti and Pita to a cannibal end.

“I go; stay you there,” said Vaiti, using the quaintly courteous native form of farewell, barbed with a little sneer unknown to the original. Then she went to her cabin. And Saxon turned in his seat, and reached for the brandy bottle at last.

* * * * *

Handsome Pita had a great awe for Vaiti, for she was a princess of Atiu by her mother’s side. But she was beautiful, and he admired her—also he hoped that her imperious soul harboured one soft spot for him. It seemed good, on the whole, when they were pulling the dinghy over the reef next morning, to ask Vaiti openly where the value of the booty came in—with a secret hope in the background of securing as much as possible for a certain very deserving, more or less Christian youth of Atiu.

Vaiti, her white dress girded up high over her scarlet pareo, waded through the last yard or two of the emerald lagoon before she answered. The boat being safe on shore, she stood up and looked sharply about her. They had chosen a quiet spot at the back of the island for landing, all the natives being down at the harbour loading copra. The weird pandanus trees, standing on their high wooden stilts at the verge of the shore, the rustling coco-palms swinging their great fronds far over the water, the golden and pink-flowered vines trailing yard on yard of green garlandry over the paper-white sand, could carry no tales, and they were the only witnesses.

Vaiti looked at Pita up and down, from head to foot, and Pita gave the flower behind his ear a knowing cock, and set one hand saucily on his hip. He knew that he was the handsomest man in the Cook archipelago, and he felt that the way his pareo was tied that day was a pure inspiration. So he shut up his mouth very tight, and made play with his burning black eyes as only a South Sea Islander can, waiting confidently the while for the information that the whole ship’s company of the _Sybil_ could not have extracted from Vaiti in a week.

The girl stepped forward, and with a commanding finger tapped Pita’s biggest dimple, as if he had been a baby.

“Suppose I tell you, then you know too much, you plenty frighten, go back to ship,” she laughed.

“Speak Maori, high chieftainess!” implored Pita.

“No fee-ah!” answered Saxon’s daughter succinctly. Pita understood at once that Vaiti was unwilling to use a language that gave free rein to her tongue and his, and the knowledge elated him.

“Perhaps I tell you,” went on Vaiti, watching him narrowly. “I think you got heart in belly belong you, more better than Alliti. I tell you, you want plenty heart by-and-by.”

“High chieftainess, Vaiti, speak Maori!” was Pita’s answer, linked to an attempted embrace that only fell short of its main object because Vaiti quite calmly pulled a seaman’s knife out of her dress and laid it edge upwards across her lips. Pita, who had learned the real European kiss during his visits to civilisation, and wanted very much to show it off, felt disappointed, although there was a smile behind the blade that almost out-dazzled the steel.

“Maori!” he persisted, putting his arm round her waist, with a cool disregard of her well-known readiness with the knife that won Vaiti’s admiration a step further than before. She laughed, wavered, and then, still playing with the keen, bright blade, she lowered it a little, and spoke in the soft language of the Islands at last.

It was a fairly long tale that she had to tell. When last the _Sybil_ had been in the Society Islands, some weeks before, there had been a German man of science in the group, collecting native skulls for museums at home. The grizzly old gentleman and his pursuits had not troubled Vaiti’s mind particularly until her chief admirer, Ritter, a Papeëte trader, happened to drop a remark one day about the amount of money some of these old skulls were worth. Vaiti’s sharp intelligence linked on the casual saying at once to certain other wandering rumours she remembered, and she decided to find out something more. She did not ask Ritter, for he was no talker, even to a handsome girl whom he admired; and the German was his compatriot, in any case. But when the schooner reached Raiatea, where Professor Spricht was staying, Vaiti drifted off among the native huts, and squatted for an hour or two on the mats of the second chief’s wife’s mother’s cousin’s house, smoking a great deal, talking very little, and listening quietly. By degrees the house filled up with interested natives all eager for gossip and chatter; and to Vaiti, pulling steadily at her cigar, and maintaining the grave, unsmiling demeanour proper to a princess of Atiu and a great Belitani chieftain’s daughter, the drawing out of the secret she wanted was as easy as spinning sinnet out of cocoanut husk.

Nothing is private in the Eastern Pacific, and it was not long before all the professor’s personal affairs were tossing about like seaweed on the flood of general gossip—mostly unfit for publication—that surged about the apparently uninterested ears of the silent, splendid sea-queen throned on the pile of pandanus mats.... The Siamani (German) had got skulls in Niué, in Uea, in Mangaia, and was now collecting them about the Society group.... He was an ugly, grey-snouted pig to look at, and rooted in the earth like any pig; still, Taous and Mahina, daughters of Falani, seemed to think that—(details lost in a heated argument about the personal characteristics of the ladies).... Anyhow, Vekia from the hills said he was going to buy her two silk dresses from San Francisco when he came back from Falaite Island; so he was not as mean as he looked. Yes, he was going to Falaite Island in a great hurry; he would not even take time to finish his pig-rooting in Raiatea, on account of something he had heard from an old man who had once lived up in Falaite.... What fools the papalangi (whites) were. Did not every one in the Islands know about the old, old people that used to live on Falaite, hundreds of moons before the days of Tuti (Cook), and how they all died, and nobody lived there for very, very long, until some people wandered up from Niué in Tuti’s time; and how the skulls of the old, old people were still there, buried in a cave that was a hundred miles long, and guarded by as many devils as would fill twenty war canoes? Of course, these things were known, and always had been—but when would any man of Tahiti or Raiatea have thought of such folly as travelling more than a thousand miles to fight the devils and take away the skulls? What if they were worth money enough to buy a big schooner, as the old grey pig had told Vekia when he promised her those dresses? Would a whole schooner, loaded down with dollars, be any good to a man after the devils had killed him? Vekia would never get her trade finery, for all her airs; and Jacky Te Vaka, whose schooner was to be hired to take the Siamani up to Falaite, would never come back from such a sacrilegious journey.... Why could he not wait, and go by Kapitani Satoni’s schooner when she made her yearly trip by and by? Every one knew that the _Sipila_ was under a charm, and no harm could come to any one on board her. But he would not wait, and just as soon as Jacky’s boat came back from Bora-Bora, next week, they were to go.... Ahi! and Jacky was such a handsome man—it was a great pity!

Such was the substance of the information gathered by Vaiti. It resulted in her ordering the course of the ship to be changed, and heading direct for Friday Island, instead of going down to Auckland. Friday Island—out of the way, infertile, uninteresting, and little known—had been one of Saxon’s private preserves for some years. He touched there once a year, purchased all the copra that the little place produced at his own price, and paid for it in cheap tinned meat, boxes of damaged biscuit, and tins of imitation salmon instead of cash. He seldom went ashore, and certainly did not waste his time cave-hunting, if he did chance to set foot on the beach. Vaiti, with her odd faculty for acquiring miscellaneous information, had known since the first time the _Sybil_ called that there were great caves on the island, and that a devil of unusual quality and size guarded them. So much might have been said of a hundred similar islands, however, and she had not troubled herself about either caves or devils until the German professor’s secret set her on the alert for something that looked like a dangerous, exciting, and profitable adventure.

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE BLACK VIRI*

Moreover, as Harris had said, she had been devoured with desire of a real Paris dress ever since her stay in the Wellington hotel. There had been a famous actress there at the same time, and all her garments had been freely paragraphed in the ladies’ column of the local press. When she swam languidly through the hall of the Constantinople, shining mystic and wonderful out of a cloud of rainbow silks and chiffons that had cost a formidable row of figures in the Rue de la Paix, all the women caught their breath, looked once, and then gazed determinedly out of the windows, pretending that they had noticed nothing. When she came in to a late supper, floating in spangled mists and sparkling with constellations of diamonds, every head was turned her way, and half the heads—the short-cropped ones—stayed turned, in more senses than one. It was a revelation and a martyrdom to Vaiti. What were her muslin frocks and her ten new hats at a whole pound apiece compared to this? And the vision of money saved up faded away for the time being before the vision of one such frock—only one—belonging to her. Life could surely offer nothing more.