Part 7

“About his daughter?” asked the nurse. She, like every one else in Suva, was deeply interested in this especial patient’s story. He had come to Suva in his own schooner, the _Sybil_, several weeks before, furious with rage and despair at the loss of his daughter, and eager to demand assistance from the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, although it seemed by no means clear in what manner Her Majesty’s representative could aid him. Before the matter had even been discussed, however, he had fallen seriously ill of sunstroke and excitement combined, and had been sent to hospital, with rather a bad chance of recovery. He was just turning the corner now, and the nurse—who could not but admire his rather weather-beaten good looks and romantic history—regarded him as her most interesting patient.

“Yes, it’s about his daughter,” answered the sailor. “I’m the mate of the _Sybil_, ma’am; Harris is my name. Perhaps you’d kindly read this.”

He held out a long slip of printed paper, containing a _résumé_ of the cables for the day—Suva’s substitute for a daily paper.

The nurse took it, and read:

“The missing daughter of Edward Saxon, owner and master of the trading schooner _Sybil_, has at last reappeared. Her fate has excited much interest and conjecture all over the Pacific. She arrived in Sydney yesterday on board the cable-ship _Clotho_, by which she was picked up on the 2nd instant, in an open boat, alone, and two hundred miles from any land. She had experienced bad weather, and was much exhausted for want of food, but declared herself capable, if it had been necessary, of reaching the nearest island group unaided. She had been carried away, as was surmised, by the captain of the island schooner _Ikurangi_, who marooned her on a remote leper island, Vaka, and then sailed for South America. Revenge for the loss of a pearl-shell bed of disputed ownership is said to have been the motive of this unparalleled outrage.”

“He shall have it at once,” said the nurse cordially. “It’ll do him more good than our medicines.”

* * * * *

The story was a popular one in the hospital for months after, and it had not been quite forgotten when, towards the close of the hot season, a Sydney paper furnished the last chapter of the tale. Saxon’s late nurse read it aloud to the others at afternoon tea, and they all agreed (not knowing how Vaiti’s fingers had cogged the dice of chance) that it was a wonderful Providence and a real judgment. The item read:

“THE LAST OF AN OCEAN ROMANCE.

“News comes via Tahiti from Nukahiva, Marquesas Islands, of the arrival of a shipwrecked crew on a raft, six weeks ago. They were the survivors of a disaster that destroyed the notorious schooner _Ikurangi_ whose master, it will be remembered, kidnapped and marooned the daughter of a British captain some months ago. The schooner, after leaving the island, sailed for Callao, but was wrecked on an uncharted reef three days east of Vaka, and went to pieces. The crew escaped on a raft, and underwent great suffering in their efforts to reach land. The captain and mate were drowned.”

“And serve them right, too!” said the audience.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*THE WHITE MAN OF NALOLO*

“By Jove! it’s a white man,” said Saxon, checking like a pointer on the threshold of the low dark doorway.

“Certainly. Very pleased to meet you,” observed the figure on the mats. It was sitting cross-legged, clad only in a waist-cloth, and the house was a Fijian chief-house in a mountain village three days’ journey from the nearest white settlement—but the thing squatted on the mats was undoubtedly white, and—English? Well, no; Saxon thought no. The phrase was American in flavour. He stepped across the threshold, and came a little way in, relieved in mind. When you have been dead and buried among the islands for a quarter of a century it is much pleasanter not to run the risk of meeting other ghosts (with university accents, tea-coloured families, and a preference for modest retirement on steamer days) who may possibly have been alive together with you before....

Before.... The word means much in that vast Pacific world, sepulchre of so many lost hopes and forgotten lives. We do not, in the Islands, cultivate curiosity as a virtue, since it would be likely to bring rather more than virtue’s own reward after it. We do not ask cross questions, because the crooked answers might involve questions of another sort. And when overfed, sanguineous passengers from smart liners happen along and tell us, as a new and excellent joke, that the proper formula for receiving an introduction in the Islands is: “Glad to meet you, Mr. So-and-so; what were you called _before_?” we smile an acid smile, and pretend we are amused....

Saxon was very tired, having walked thirty miles that day, and very hungry, being out of luck, and more or less on the tramp. But I think, tired as he was, he would have found another village to rest in if the derelict white on the mats had spoken with the shibboleth of his own class and country.

As things were, the look of the house pleased him, and he came in and folded himself up on the mats. The other man noted that he selected a “tabu kaisi” mat (a kind strictly forbidden to all but chiefs or whites), and that he looked hopefully towards the kava bowl.

“Not the first time you’ve stopped under a pandanus roof, I guess?” he remarked.

“No,” said Saxon. “Whose house is this?”

“Mine,” said the stranger. “Make yourself at home.”

It was a handsome chief-house of the best Fijian type, forty feet from mats to ridge-pole, the walls covered with beautifully inlaid and interwoven reeds, the roof bound together with exquisite sinnet work in artistic patterns, of red, black, and yellow, and towering up into a dark, cool cavern of pleasant gloom. The floor was overlaid with fine parquetry of split bamboo at the “kasii” or common-folk end, and piled deep with fine mats in the “chief” part. A Fijian bed, ten feet wide and three feet high, ran like a dais right across the end of the house. It was covered by mats prettily fringed with coloured parrot feathers. There were three great doors, east, west, and south, each framing in its dark-set opening a different picture of surpassing loveliness. Nalolo town (its name is on the map of Fiji, but it reads otherwise) stands very high on the sheer crest of a pointed green hill that is just like the enchanted hill in the pictures of a fairy tale. There is a little round green lawn on the top, and all about it stand the high, pointed beehive houses of the town, each perched on its own tiny mound like a toy on a stand. Sloped cocoanut logs run up to the doors of the houses, and quaintly coloured crotons cluster about them. In the deep, soft grass golden eggs from the guava trees lie tumbled about among fallen stars of orange and lemon blossom, and everywhere the red hibiscus shakes its splendid bells in the soft hill-winds. About the foot of the peak a wide blue river wanders, singing all day long; and from every door of every house, high perched above the cloudy valleys and hyacinth hill ranges, one can see pictures, and pictures, and pictures almost too lovely to be true. There are not two places in the world like Nalolo.

The White Man of Nalolo, however, was only interested in the fact that the river provided excellent crayfish; and that taro grew very well indeed on the slopes below the town. He had once been young, but he was not young now, and did not matter any longer. Therefore he had become particular about his dinner and indifferent to scenery. I will not tell you the story of the White Man of Nalolo, or why he, of all men, rebelled so fiercely against the common lot of “not mattering any more,” that he came away to the wilds of the Pacific and the highlands of Fiji, and never went back again, because, like many true stories, it cannot be believed, and therefore had better not be told. Besides, this is the story of Saxon and his daughter.

Saxon was down on his luck. He had a charter for the _Sybil_, but she was not able to undertake it at present, for, trying to pilot her into Suva harbour himself, he had contrived to run her on a reef, and damaged her so seriously that she was at present careened on the beach in front of the local boat-builder’s, undergoing repairs. The builder, knowing something of Saxon’s reputation, had insisted on cash in advance, and the captain, in consequence, found himself so nearly out of funds that he was unable to stay in Suva pending the repairs to his ship. He had therefore started with Vaiti for the interior of the great island of Viti Levu, intending to live on the real hospitality of the natives for a few weeks, and tramp from village to village.

He explained something of this as he sat on the mats enjoying the grateful coolness of the house. The other man nodded gravely, watching the door. He offered a curious contrast to the Englishman’s coarse red fairness, being lean, sundried, and grizzled, with expressionless, boot-buttoned eyes, and a straggling “goatee” beard that dated his exile from America back to long-ago days.

“Where’s your daughter?” he asked.

“Coming. She stopped to tidy up at the river.”

The doorway was darkened at that moment by Vaiti herself, balancing lightly up the cocoanut log to the threshold. She wore a white tunic over a scarlet “pareo,” her wavy curls, sparkling with the water of the stream, fell loose upon her shoulders; her lips were as red as the freshly-plucked pomegranate blossom behind her ear. Something like life stirred in the boot-button eyes of the White Man of Nalolo as he looked at her.

“Afi!” he called to a Fijian woman who was sleeping on the mats at the “kaisi” end of the house, “go and hurry the girls with the supper, and make tea for the marama (lady). Quick!”

Then he turned to Saxon.

“Stay here as long as you like, both of you,” he said. “Let her sit there sometimes, where I can see her and fancy.... I’ll show you something.”

He rose slowly and stiffly, and limped across to a Chinese camphorwood box that stood in the corner. In a minute he returned with a faded photograph in a gaudy frame.

“My daughter,” he said. “The only child I ever had. She was Afi’s. She died a long time ago. Afi’s a chief woman: she was as handsome as Andi Thakombau when she was young, and the girl took after her. Your girl’s mother was chief too, I guess. Do you see any likeness?”

Vaiti and her father craned over the photograph. The pretty half-caste girl, was certainly like the stately, slender creature who gazed at her pictured face, though the fire and spirit of Vaiti’s expression were wanting.

“I’m growing old,” went on the White Man. “I’ve no children. Stay a bit. I’ll be glad to have you.”

“Thank you; delighted, I’m sure,” drawled Saxon, with a pathetic resurrection of his long-forgotten “grand manner,” And so it was settled.

Vaiti, listening and thinking as usual, with her chin in her slender fingers, approved of what she heard, and smiled very pleasantly at her host. It seemed to her that he could be very useful just now.

The four weeks that followed after glided away agreeably enough in the silent hills. Nothing happened; no one came or went—the Fijians, men and women, went out to the yam and taro fields in the morning, and returned in the afternoon; and after dark there would be long, monotonous chanting, and interminable sitting dances, on the mats inside the high-roofed houses. Saxon stupefied himself with kava most of the time, in the absence of stronger drink, and almost got himself clubbed once or twice on account of his too impulsive admiration for the beauties of the village. His host, however, was no censor of morals, and troubled very little about him. On Sundays the Fijians dressed themselves in their brightest cottons, stuck up their hair in huge halos, and went five times to church, under the auspices of the native Wesleyan teacher; while Saxon and his host smoked, slept, drank kava, and played cards. The village provided plenty of yam and taro, kumara, cocoanut, and fish; and there was tea and sugar in the Chinese box, and now and then the White Man killed a pig or a fowl. It was very pleasant on the whole.

In a month’s time, however, Saxon girded up his loins to leave this mountain Capua and descend to Suva once more. The _Sybil_ would be ready, and his charter to convey ornamental Fiji woods to San Francisco would not wait.

They said good-bye to their host, and walked a mile or two across the river-flats below the town before either spoke. Then Vaiti put her hand into her sash, and drew out something small and shining.

“See, father, what the White Man gave me, because I was like his daughter,” she said.

Saxon took the object, and turned it over in his fingers. It was a small seal, shaped like an eagle standing on a rock. The eagle was gold, the rock amethyst.

“A pretty thing, but not worth more than two or three pounds,” he said.

Then he turned it over and looked at the device. There was a curious crest on the face of the seal—a wolf with a crescent moon in his jaws; underneath, a motto in a strange foreign character.

Saxon’s red complexion paled as he examined the crest. In other days and scenes, among ice-bound rivers and grim mediæval fortress-castles, he had seen that crest light up the crimson panes of old armorial windows—had read the motto underneath—“What I have, I hold”—of nights when he and the wildest young nobles of the Russian court were dining together under the splendid roof of one of Moscow’s greatest banqueting halls. For a moment he felt the keen cold air of the ice-bound streets blow sharp on his cheek; heard the jingle of the sleigh-bells, drawing up before the marble steps where the yellow lamplight streamed out across the snow. The fancy faded, swift as a passing lantern picture that flashes out for a moment and then sweeps away into darkness. He saw the burning sky and the crackling palms again, felt the furnace-heated wind, and knew that it was all over long ago, and that he was ruined, exiled, and old. Yet there remained a thread of indefinite recollection, a suggestion of something half-remembered, that was not all unconnected with the present day. What was the story belonging to that crest—the story that the whole world knew?

“Where did the fellow get the thing?” he asked his daughter.

Vaiti told him.

The White Man of Nalolo, it seemed, was one of the numerous South Sea wanderers who believe in the existence of various undiscovered islands, hidden here and there in the vast, untravelled wastes of sea that lie off the track of ships. Thirty years before, there had been wondering rumours of an island of this kind, touched at once by a ship that no one could name, found to be uninhabited, and never revisited; indeed, no one was sure where it was within a few hundred miles. Years went by, and the White Man, who had always taken a special interest in the story, found himself shipwrecked—the sole survivor of a boatful of castaways—on the very island itself. But fortune was unkind, for the morning after his arrival, when he was trying to sail round the island, a sudden storm blew him out to sea again, and he had drifted for many days, and all but perished, in spite of the fish and nuts he had obtained from the island, before a mission schooner happened to see him and pick him up. He had examined most of the island while ashore, and had seen no inhabitants or traces of cultivation. Nevertheless he had always been convinced that there was something mysterious about the place, for two reasons. One was the presence of common house-flies, which he had never seen far away from the haunts of human beings. The other was the discovery of an amethyst seal, lying under a stone on the shore. It was dirty and discoloured, but he did not think so small and heavy an object could have been washed up on the shore from a wreck.

Where mystery is in the air, most men’s minds turn naturally to thoughts of hidden treasure, and the White Man of Nalolo had ever since cherished a hope that there was treasure on the island. For several years he had fully intended to go and look—some day—but as he could only guess at the latitude and longitude, and as he had little money to spare, he never succeeded either in hunting the place up himself or in persuading any one else to do so. Now he was old and half-crippled, and did not care any more about anything; so he wanted Vaiti, who reminded him so much of his dead daughter, to have the seal. It was a pretty thing, and perhaps it would make her think sometimes of the poor old White Man of Nalolo.

Saxon listened attentively to the story, and heaved a sigh of disappointment at the end.

“There’s nothing in it, my girl,” he said. “No proof of treasure there, eh?”

“No; no treasure,” said Vaiti, looking at the ground as she walked.

“What then?” asked Saxon curiously. He saw she had something in reserve.

Vaiti suddenly flamed out in eloquent Maori.

“What then, my father? Am I one who sees through men’s heads, that I can tell what was in the mind of you as you looked at the jewel, and turned yellow and green like a parrot, only to see it? What then? I do not know. I walk in the dark, and the light is in your hand, not in mine. As for you, you have made your brain dull with the brandy and the kava, so that you cannot see at all. What then? Tell me yourself, for I do not know. I know only that there is something to be told.”

“Don’t be rough on your poor old father,” said Saxon pathetically. “I’d have knocked the stuffing out of any man who said half as much, but I spoil you, by Gad, I do. I don’t know—I can’t think, somehow or other. But there was a story about the Vasilieffs—the johnnies who had that crest—people I used to stay with when I went to——”

He broke off, smashed a spider-lily bloom with his stick, and began afresh.

“Junia Vasilieff—what was it she did? Big princes they were, and much too close to the throne to be safe company.... Junia Vasili—I have it! Yes—the end of the story was in the Sydney papers, time you were a little kid. I remember. They were to have married her to the Czarewitch, just to make things safe. Her claim to the throne was big enough to have started a revolution any day, if it had been asserted.... Poor little Junia!—only sixteen when I knew—when the marriage was talked of—and such golden hair as she had! She hated the whole thing; courts and ceremony weren’t in her line. But she was a gentle little creature, and I never thought she’d have had the spirit to do as she did.”

He turned the seal over in his fingers, as if reading the past from its glittering surface.

“There was a young lieutenant of Hussars, a Pole—you don’t know what that is, but the Russians don’t like them, I can tell you—a noble, but a very small one; not fit to black Junia’s boots, according to their notions. Well, he bolted with her. It was in the Sydney papers, time I was in the Solomons; the paper came up to Guadalcanar.... She must have been twenty then; just the year the marriage to the Czarewitch was to have come off.... They bolted—cleared out—never seen again. All Russia on the boil about it; no one knew but what they’d hatch up plots against the throne, she having a better claim than any one else, if it hadn’t been for the law against empresses. The secret police were after them for years, but they were never traced, though most people knew Russia’d give a pretty penny to know where they were——”

“O man with the head of a fruit-bat, do you not see?” interrupted Vaiti at this juncture. “They hid on that island—they may be there still. It is worth a hundred treasures!”

“The Pole was a great traveller, and had a sort of a little yacht,” said Saxon thoughtfully. “It might be true, of course—if there is an island, and if the Nalolo Johnnie had any idea of where it was, and if nobody found them out and split years ago. Plenty of ’ifs.’”

“I think him all-right good enough,” averred Vaiti, returning to English and prose. “By’n-by we finish F’lisco, then we go see, me and you.”

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE LOST ISLAND*

Some two or three months later, the schooner might have been seen, like a white-winged butterfly lost at sea, beating up and down before a solitary, low, green island lying far east of the lonely Paumotus. Vaiti, sitting on the top of the deck-house, was examining the land through a glass. The native crew were all on deck; also Harris and Gray, the mate and bo’sun. Captain Saxon was not to be seen.

“The old man always do get squiffy at the wrong time, don’t he?” commented Harris, rather gleefully.

Gray spat over the rail for reply.

“You’re ratty because you don’t know nothing, ain’t you?” he said.

“Do you?” asked the mate curiously. Harris had not much notion of the dignity of his office, and dearly loved a gossip at all times.

“More nor you, havin’ eyes and ears that’s of use to me occasionally,” replied the bo’sun dryly.

Harris considered.

“I’ll give you my grey shirt to tell,” he said persuasively. “There’s sure to be something up.”

“’Ow much does we ever get out of it when there is?” asked Gray sourly. “I could do with that shirt very well, though. There ain’t much to tell, except that the old man he thought there was an island hereabouts not marked on the chart that nobody knew about; and Vaiti she allowed that was all —— rot, because, says she, this part’s been surveyed, and though the Admiralty surveys isn’t the for-ever-’n-ever-Amen dead certainties the little brassbound officers thinks them, still they don’t leave whole islands out on the loose without a collar and a name round their necks, so to say. So, says she, let me work out the length of time they ran before the hurricane, says she, and the d’rection of the wind, which the old boy remembered right enough, says she; and then look it up on the chart, and I’ll be blowed, says she, if you don’t find something for a guide like. So by-and-by she looks, and says she, ‘’Ere’s something; ’ere’s a reef marked P.D., and it is P.D.,’ says she, ’for you and I knows there’s nothin’ there,’ she says. ’But we’ll look a bit more to the north’ard,’ she says, ’where it’s right off the’ track of ships, and maybe we’ll find somethin’ and maybe we won’t,’ she says. ’But I think,’ she says, ’that somewheres not too far off from that P.D. reef we’ll maybe get a sight of what we’re lookin’ for,’ she says, ’because sometimes reefs is put down for bigger things by mistake,’ she says, ’especially if you ’aven’t been to see.’ Then she comes on deck, and I makes myself scarce, for it ain’t healthy on this ship to listen at no cabin skylights, not if she knows you’re there.”

“Well, whatever the game is, I don’t suppose it’ll line our little insides any fatter, bo’sun. We don’t count on this ship anything like as we ought to when there’s shares goin’. I wonder that I stick to her, I do! Old man as drunk as a lord half the time—me doin’ his work as well as my own—a blessed she-cat running the blooming show——”

“Ready about!” sang Vaiti from the deck-house, and the mate and bo’sun sprang across the deck. There was something about the orders of the “she-cat” that enforced a smartness on the _Sybil_ rare on an island schooner, even when heavy-fisted Saxon was not about.