Part 5

“Yes, blank asterisk your condemned foolishness, sure I am on for it!” replied the captain, betraying his nationality by a slight touch of brogue.

There is no nation that swings so high and so low between opposite extremes of character as the impetuous race that is handcuffed, by an odd freak of geography, to steady, serious England. Great saints and great rogues are commoner in Ireland than ordinary people, and each displays the fullest flavour of his kind. Donahue, master of the island schooner _Ikurangi_, was, or had been, Irish; and it was assuredly not the company of the saints that claimed his membership.

The two spoke together for a little while in level tones that sounded loud and careless enough, yet somehow did not carry. One learns these things by practice.

“She smells a rat, I’m thinking,” said the old mate, looking critically the while at Charley, as if he were valuing the half-caste’s clothes for pawn.

“Let her. You and I are apt to be a match for her, for all that,” answered the captain. He looked at Charley also. You would have sworn the two were discussing him, and rather unfavourably. Charley himself shifted in his seat, and showed his magnificent teeth uncomfortably.

“Think she’ll come on board?”

Vaiti was watching them, her chin on her hand. Her expression was not to be read.

“I’ll get her on board all right,” answered the captain, keeping his eyes away from the girl with an effort. “You play up, that’s all.”

“’Jer think you’re a match for that weasel in a woman’s skin—you or any of us?”

“I do, then. Forty’s a match for twenty any day in the year, if the heads of them comes anything near equal. Cunnin’ as Old Nick she is, but I’ve been cunnin’ twenty years longer than her.”

“You pitched her a good yarn, I’ll lay.”

“I did that—about the derelick we boarded nor’-east of the Paumotus, and the Spanish ladies’ clothes and cases of goods that was lying about, and how we took what there was, includin’ of a di’mond necklashe that was sittin’ all its lone on the table in the old man’s cabin (Be minding me, now, or you’ll be making mistakes), and the way a gale riz on us before we was through, and hurried us back to the _Ikurangi_, so that we lost the derelick, and didn’t see no more of her; and how we heard in Noumea afterwards that there was like to be joolery on boord her, so that we’re all on to go and find her again.”

“Straight fact up to finding the di’monds, and gory lyin’ after that, I see. But how d’ye make out the people that deserted the ship was such fat-headed idiots as to leave the joolery?”

“Why, they was fat-headed idiots right enough; they did leave a good lot of saleable stuff, as you and I knows; and it’s only addin’ on a bit to say that the ship had been on fire and made them clear for their lives, so that they didn’t think of the valuables. There’s the necklashe I have for proof. And, mind me now, what we heard was that the people of the ship knows now that she didn’t go down, and will be out after her themselves when they can raise the cash, so that hurry’s the word.”

“How much of that’s true?”

“Not a —— bit. The people was drowned, I allow. But it hangs well, and don’t you go and forget none of it. I pitched the yarn that way because of that bit of pashtry joolery I got hould of in mistake for goods down Melbourne way.... I misremember if I tould you.”

“You did, more nor once, and you was jolly well served right by her,” candidly replied the mate. “The yarn’s all right, I suppose, and the paste necklace is good business; but where does this Vaiti come in?”

“Quit lookin’ at her, ye —— fool, and give me a light for me poipe. Talk easy, can’t you.... Why, she knows more navigation than most men that’s got a master’s ticket, and she’s as vain of it as a paycock. And that’s how I’ll have her. Always get a woman t’rough her consate, me boy, especially if her eyes are too sharp in common. That’ll pull the wool over them when nothing else will.”

“When I was in Callao——” began the mate, with an evil chuckle.

“Leave Callao be now; you can tell me about her another time. Well, you understand about Saxon’s girl, I hope? She’s to navigate us on the trip, because nayther you nor I knows enough for a cruisin’ job like this, and the old chap himself is pretty general drunk—that’s the way I put it—and shares with what we find, and the ould divil himself to come along, just for propriety, and in case of a fight with the owners. Oh, a nate yarn, and she shwallowed it down like a cat atin’ butter. She’s comin’ on boord to-night, to see the necklashe and look over the chart I’ve marked. She’ll not bring ould Saxon, for she’s feared of nayther man nor divil, and I’ll bet she thinks to get the bearin’s of the place off of me and chate me out of it after all.”

“And how the h—— do you think she’s going to believe that you give the show away before the ship sails? Her teeth wasn’t cut yesterday, by all we know.”

“Faith, and we do know!” muttered the captain, with a horrible undercurrent of oaths. “And she’ll know, by —— she will! I’d slit the throat of her, if it wasn’t for the other bit of divarsion we’ve planned.”

“Say you’ve planned,” interrupted the mate darkly. “I call it bad work, whether she was man, woman, or child; but you’re my master.”

“And you’re a plashter saint, ain’t you?” sneered the captain. “Let’s have no more of your chat; we know each other a —— sight too well. As for the chart, she’ll think we don’t mean to give it away till she and her father is under sail with us, but she’ll come on the chance of sneaking it out somehow. And when we’ve got her aboard, why—lave it to me! Ould Saxon’s hell-cat daughter won’t take no more pearl-shell beds from us or any one else.”

“You ain’t afraid of her knowing who we are?”

“How would she, then? The _Ikurangi_ isn’t the _Margaret Macintyre_—bad luck to her who brought me down to such a tub, after ownin’ the finest auxiliary in Auckland!—and she never seen you or me till to-day. No, it’s all right. That’s enough jaw; you go aboard, and attend to you know what, and then send off the boat for her and me.”

Vaiti, curly classic head on slender hand, still watched from her corner.

Did she suspect? There was nothing for suspicion to lay hold of. Donahue was one of the acutest villains under the Southern Cross, and he did not make clumsy mistakes. The story of the derelict, of the valuables abandoned on board, of the necessity for finding the ship soon and secretly, might have sounded far-fetched to city-dwelling folk, but out in the wild South Seas stranger things may happen any day. The plan was neat and plausible from every point of view, and Vaiti had taken the bait readily enough that afternoon. Yet Donahue felt—as the two walked silently down the dim, perfumed beach street, all ablow with vagrant sea winds and wandering wafts of song—that he would have given a good deal for just one peep into his handsome companion’s mind.

Vaiti walked beside him, looking straight ahead. Had Donahue’s wish been granted, he would have thought somewhat less of his own acuteness. She did suspect. A man, in her case, would have been convinced by the reasonable aspect of the whole affair. Vaiti, being a woman, with sea-anemone tentacles of instinct floating and tingling all about the steady centres of reason in her mind, was convinced, and vet not convinced. She thought it was all right, yet she knew it was not—after a woman’s way.

In any case, however, it was an adventure, and there was a mystery to fathom. So she put on a more substantial dress than the gauzy draperies she had been wearing, hung the neatest possible little pearl-handled Smith and Wesson round her neck, under the swelling folds of her frock, by means of an innocent-looking thin gold neck-chain that would snap with a tug; put her long-bladed knife in her pocket, with the sheath sewn to the dress, so that a pull would bring out the blade, and joined Donahue an hour after dinner, on the verandah steps, confident of her ability to see the thing through, whatever it might be.

She looked sharply about her, as she stepped over the low bulwarks of the _Ikurangi_ and dropped down on to the encumbered, untidy deck. No one about. Nothing to be seen but a dirty little main deck, with rusty pumps and a yawning hatch, and a poop that even in the pallid light just beginning to tremble up from the rising moon showed neglect of the sacred ceremony of daily deck-washing.

Now, any decent ship’s captain will attend to his deck-washing, even if he doesn’t shave or wash himself from port to port. Vaiti did not like that unscrupulous, dirty poop. But she was already up on it, and Donahue was bowing her down the cabin companion, with a jarring smile and a good deal of over-fluent blarney. The cabin was small and smelly; it had an oblong table in the middle, surrounded by cushioned lockers, and an open door at the end facing the companion. This door evidently opened into Donahue’s own cabin, for a rough wash-stand and a looking-glass, the latter hung high on the bulkhead, were plainly visible. There was a lamp nailed above the glass, and the two together shone brightly out into the rather ill-lit main cabin.

“What’ll you take?” asked Donahue, with his unpleasant smile. “I’ve got some sweet sherry wine, just the thing for ladies—or wouldn’t ye put your lips to a taste of peach brandy?”

Vaiti shook her head.

“No good drink, suppose talk business,” she said. She would not have swallowed a glass of water on the _Ikurangi_ for a dozen Virot hats.

Donahue had not expected to catch her so easily; still, he cast a thought of regret to his nicely-doctored liquors. She evidently meant what she said—and the other way Was harder.

“Well, thin, darlin’, we’ll have a look at the cha-art,” he observed, producing a roll of paper. “It’s yourself that can help us t’rough this business—you and the ould man—better than any one from Calloa to Sydney if only yez are raisonable about terms.”

He spread the chart out on the table, and weighted it down with a couple of tumblers.

Vaiti, her mind charged full with watchful suspicion, felt that sudden small, sick thrill that is the forerunner of the thought—“I wish I hadn’t!” Afterwards, when she came to think matters over, she knew that it was because Donahue had made the mistake of bringing out the chart before the terms had been discussed, which was an improbable sort of thing to do. In such moments, however, one does not think, one only feels. Still, the warning was unmistakable, and Vaiti made as if to rise, intending to plead sudden illness and get out on deck. But Donahue, sharp as a snake, saw the movement, and brought out his trump card at once.

“Sure, I’m a —— fool, I am, to forget the necklashe! You haven’t seen that yet,” he said, whipping a stream of white fire out of his pocket and letting it fall across the dark wood of the table. It was a magnificent piece of paste-work, and had taken in Donahue himself, some few weeks ago, after a fashion that made him sore enough to remember. Vaiti gasped when she saw it, and laid both her pretty olive hands upon it at once. Her suspicions were not exactly killed, but they had for the moment no room to live with the passionate feeling aroused by the gems. Donahue, with his unspeakable experience of the sex, had calculated rightly when he classified her among the women who would almost do murder for a diamond.... Such jewels! and she had never had one in her hand before, though her eyes had often filled and her heart ached with hopeless desire before the maddening glories of the jewellers’ windows in Auckland and Sydney.

She hugged the necklace to her breast like a baby, she shook it, she danced it in the light.... And then, was it in woman’s nature to refrain from snapping the clasp about her neck, and feeling the dear touch of those cold drops and pendants on her bosom?

“Ah, now, but you’re the beauty wit’ them little jokers round your neck! And the lovely neck you have, darlin’!” blarneyed Donahue. He had better have been silent, for Vaiti, used to admiration of every kind and degree as to daily bread, felt the falseness of the tone. If all other men admired her beauty, this one did not, though he said so. His grey, goat-like eyes looked something more like hate across the narrow table, under the ill-smelling oily lamp, and Vaiti saw they did.

Donahue, taught by twenty years of active villainy, was quick to feel the necessity for the next move. He went into his own cabin and turned up the lamp. The looking-glass shone out brightly under its rays.

“Come and look at yourself, me beauty,” he said; “and let me ould shavin’-glass see the handsomest girl in the islands wearin’ what she ought to wear every day of her life, if she’d her rights.”

For the moment, Vaiti was not herself. She was drunk with the jewels; she was crazed with the desire to see herself in them. If heaven and hell had stood between her and the looking-glass, she was bound to go to it, and Donahue knew it, as surely as he knew that the moon would set that night.

Vaiti—still sensing the danger that she would not heed, through all the intoxication of the jewels—thought, in a cinematographic flash, that one was safe before a glass, at all events.... No one could come up behind you.... Besides, there was the little revolver, hanging on the chain that would snap with a tug....

And then, for the space of a full minute, she saw nothing, knew nothing, lived for nothing but the sight of her own dark, beautiful face in the glass, lit up into surpassing loveliness by the scintillating fires about her neck. There was no movement in the mirror behind her. Donahue sat motionless at the table, and the cabin was very still.

... The first ecstasy subsided, and she turned her head a little to see the diamonds twinkle....

Donahue’s elbow knocked a glass off the table with a sharp crash. Almost at the same instant two powerful hands closed on each of Vaiti’s ankles, and snatched her feet from under her. She plucked out the revolver as she fell, but her hands were caught, whisked behind her, and securely tied, with a prompt swiftness that told of frequent experience. In another minute her ankles were lashed together, none too gently; she was carried into a small state-room, thrown down upon the bunk, and left alone in the dark, with the slam of the door and snap of the lock resounding in her ears.

Most women would have screamed. Vaiti remembered that they were out in the middle of a wide harbour, and decided not to risk the infliction of a gag for such a slight chance of rescue.... Certain ugly scenes on the _Sybil_ rose up before her eyes. No; decidedly it was her only policy to keep quiet.

Outside there was the thud of bare feet running about the deck, the creak of the booms rising on the masts, the slatting of loose sails—loud orders, long yells from the native crew, as they pulled and hauled. The _Ikurangi_ was making sail.

Then sudden silence, slow heeling over of the cabin, lip-lap of hurrying water along the hull. They were off. Where? God—or the devil—only knew!

*CHAPTER VI*

*MAROONED*

There was plenty of time for reflection in the long days that followed. The greasy-faced old mate came in and cut the lashings off Vaiti’s ankles and wrists, a few hours after sailing, and she was left free to move about the cabin, which offered a promenade of exactly seven feet by three. Meals were handed in to her three times daily—the usual black tea, tinned meat, and weevily biscuit of second-class island schooners—and she was not in any way molested, though the door was always kept locked. Donahue put in his head once or twice to look at her, as she sat cross-legged on her bunk, staring out through the port at the tumbling seas. He generally had something to say—a jarring, mocking compliment, or a remark about the time they were likely to make Sydney Heads—knowing all the time that Vaiti could estimate the general direction of their course by the sun, and that there was no southing in it. If she had ever feared any one, she feared this man—almost.

It was not difficult to understand how the capture had been brought about. A man under the bunk, another under the sofa opposite—her own eyes watching only the upper part of the cabin as reflected in the glass—nothing could be simpler or better planned. The affair was none the less ugly on that account. Perhaps it was only Vaiti’s burning anger at her utter rout and defeat in her own business of plotting and intrigue that saved her from something very like despair, as the schooner ploughed steadily on, day after day, carrying her into the great unknown, farther and farther away from all who could defend her. Yet, despairing or not, Saxon’s daughter never lost her courage. They had taken her weapons from her as they carried her into the cabin, but they could not take away her undaunted spirit. She waited her time.

As to the meaning of the business, she trusted, again, to time’s enlightenment. Saxon had many enemies; so had she. It would all come out by-and-by. Meantime, it was clear that no one meant to murder her. What else might be meant she could not tell, and she did not care to speculate overmuch. Under such circumstances one does best to save one’s nerve against the time it may be wanted.

It was on the twenty-third day out from Apia, bearing, as far as she could discover, in a north-westerly direction, that she first noted the approach of land. Nothing could be seen from her side of the ship, but she heard the long, excited cries of the island crew, and the thundering of their feet, as they began putting the ship about with unwonted vigour, to a chorus of native songs. She strained her eyes eagerly when the ship came about on the other tack, but the line of the horizon was unbroken; and it was not for another hour that she saw, from her low elevation, what the look-out in the crow’s nest had sighted long before—a line of small black bristles pricking the edge of the horizon several miles away.

Vaiti knew the sight at once for the palms of a low atoll island—evidently some barren, sun-smitten spot close up to the line—and a ready solution of the whole puzzling affair at once sprang into her mind.

Marooning!

Most people know the meaning of this term; nearly every one has heard of sailors captured by pirates in old days, and left on lonely islands, or even deserted by their own comrades on some isolated spot, with just enough food and water to save the marooners’ consciences from the guilt of actual murder. Vaiti knew both the word and the thing very well-indeed, and she was almost certain that the _Ikurangi_ had gone off the course on the way to some South American port with the view of hiding her where she would not easily be found again. There are many islands in the wastes of the vast Pacific where a ship may not pass once in half a century, and these—unlike the typical “desert” island of stories—are almost always barren, hungry, shadeless spots, where Crusoe himself would have been hard put to it to make a decent living. The fertile, mountainous, well-watered isle is never without a native population, permanent or occasional, and is very seldom indeed, in these days, without a trader as well, and a regularly calling schooner. As for the breadfruit, oranges, pineapples, the pigs and goats, the sugarcane and maize of uninhabited islands as known to fiction, they have no counterpart in real life. All the valuable food plants and all useful animals are the product of importation and cultivation, ancient or modern. It follows, that where there are no people and no ships, there is nothing worth having.

Vaiti knew this very well, and decided that if she was going to be marooned, she might as well make such provision as circumstances allowed. She had hunted over every inch of the cabin—which seemed to belong to the mate—during the long days of the voyage, and she knew exactly what it contained. From the stores put away under the bunk she selected a large new sheet, which she concealed under her dress; a small stock of needles and thread, a box or two of matches, some hooks and line, and a stick of dynamite, evidently meant for some forgotten fishing purpose. There was nothing in the shape of a knife, much to her regret; and there was a good deal of clothing that she would have liked to carry away; but it would not do to take more than she could easily conceal. So she made an end of her preparations, and sat down to wait once more.

There was no moon that night until very late, and darkness came down so close on the stroke of four bells that Vaiti felt sure they were very near the equator. No one came near her, and tea seemed to be unusually late. The anchor-chain roared home soon after dark, the ship lay very still, and there was a good deal of running about on deck. Vaiti was confirmed in her anticipations of an uninhabited island by the fact that no boat was to be heard coming off from shore. Not a sound of any kind, indeed, came from the island, and there were no lights on the beach. Some one handed her in her tea by-and-by, and a little later her door was flung open again by the mate.

“Come on out,” he said.

Vaiti followed the mate out of the cabin at once, rather to his surprise. She had made up her mind that anything was better than the _Ikurangi_, and she was looking out sharply for a chance—any chance—of turning the tables.

It did not look at first as if she were to have one. The dinghy had been swung out when she got on deck, and a couple of men were standing ready to lower away. They were islanders, and she knew that they would befriend her if they could—indeed, their glances showed as much—yet what could they do?

Donahue was nowhere visible. He had planned this business with some forethought, and he wanted to have a chance of casting blame on his subordinate if any inquisitive Government official should incline to look the matter up later on. So he stayed down in his own cabin, pretending to be asleep, and the mate, rather against his will, had to carry out orders alone.

Just as the boat was ready to lower away, one of the men let her go with a run, and she struck the water stern first, with a terrible splash. The mate, screaming curses, ran over to the falls and began to abuse the crew. The dinghy was injured, and they had to haul her up and swing out the whaleboat instead.

This took some little time, and Vaiti was forgotten for the moment—a chance that made her heart beat with eagerness to profit by it.

Two ideas held possession of her—that she must plan to secure a boat, and that she must manage to do the _Ikurangi_ some sort of mischief. Was it to be borne that Donahue should go unpaid? The blood of a hundred fierce Island chiefs made answer.

Concerning the boat, she thought she saw a chance. They were bound to stay a day for wood and water, and that should furnish an opportunity. But the other matter?

If she could only get hold of the ship’s papers and destroy them! That would be satisfactory. She knew, none better, that a ship’s papers are her character, her “marriage-lines” of respectability. Without them a vessel is an illegitimate, furtive creature, every man’s hand against her, every official eye turned coldly upon her. Vaiti would have liked very well to get hold of the _Ikurangi’s_.