Chapter XV

THE CALAMITY OF CORAL BAY

The wide, still waters of Coral Bay were turning glassy pink under the sunset afterglow. The Sybil’s boat, rowing rapidly towards the schooner, left as it went a long, ugly flaw upon the stainless crystal of the sea. It was very still, and the night was coming down.

Even in that uncertain twilight the colour of the boat as it cut through the pale-hued water stood out strange and sinister. Most boats are white in tropic seas: the Sybil’s had always been snowy as her own graceful hull. Now they were vivid scarlet, and the ship herself had a wide band of scarlet round her counter and flew a scarlet flag at her masthead.

Any islander could have told you at a glance what these things meant. The schooner was “recruiting”—conveying natives from the wild cannibal islands of the New Hebrides to the Queensland sugar plantations. Ten pounds a head was paid for the men on their arrival, and it was politely supposed that these ignorant heathen had one and all been duly engaged under a contract to serve three years, at a wage of five pounds a year. How much they understood of contracts, times, and wages—where and what they thought Australia might be—and what were the means employed to get them on board the ship, nobody asked. Saxon was not the man to answer, if any one had.

Why he had temporarily deserted the pleasant, peaceful islands of the Eastern Pacific, and gone “black-birding” in the wild and wicked and fever-smitten groups of the West, was Saxon’s own affair. Doubtless he had his reasons; possibly they were satisfactory. But there is reason to believe that about Apia and Papeëte at this time he was characterised as a (double-adjectived) liar, and an (impolite expression) villain, who was running away because it was (adverbially) unsafe for him to stay and risk his (past participled) neck among (adjective) men. This is not the history of Captain Saxon; at least, not all of it—from such a recital as that may the eleven thousand virgins of Saint Mudie, and the Blessed Young Person of Sixteen, deliver us! It must therefore be enough to say that, for sufficient reasons, he decided to shift his headquarters to the New Hebrides, and immediately did so, leaving behind him certain unsettled scores with which this tale has nothing to do.

He was not new to the islands or the natives, having been one of the most notorious of the sandal-wood traders in years gone by. The sandal-wood was gone, and of the money he had made by it not even the memory remained. But there was still something in the labour trade, and Saxon liked the lawless atmosphere of the place.

Vaiti remembered the islands well, though she had only been there as a child, and she was glad to have the excitement of the change. When the recruiting boat left the schooner (guarded by a companion, full of armed men) and drew up on the beach to negotiate with the islanders, she always sat in the stern, with a very smart little Winchester rifle across her knees, and took command, if her father was not there. Very often he was not; for the New Hebrideans have long memories, and there was many a spot where Saxon had run up so many bad, black scores in the sandal-wood days that he could not hope for success—or safety, if he had minded that—in going ashore. Harris usually took command of the covering boat, a post of comparative security that suited him very well, while the dauntless Vaiti managed all the real business, and seldom came back with an empty bag.

They had good luck, on the whole, and not many narrow escapes. Coasting round the notorious island of Mallicolo, or Malekula, they succeeded in obtaining about forty natives in a week or two. Saxon was well pleased, and began to count up his profits. Also he began to drink again.

Then it was that trouble came, as trouble generally does, out of a fair-seeming sky.

Half-a-dozen natives had been given up to the missionaries on the far side of Malekula, to hand over to the British gunboat Alligator, which at that time was cruising about the islands, intent on punishing the Malekulans for a more than usually atrocious murder of whites. The tribes to whom the culprits belonged had taken fright, and were anxious to save themselves at any cost. The missionaries, when asked by them, consented to take charge of the prisoners, but refused to keep them any longer than could possibly be helped, since they did not consider themselves judges or gaolers. At this point the Sybil turned up, and the missionaries, hearing she was bound for Parrot Harbour, where the Alligator was certain to call, put the men on board, and engaged Saxon to hand them over to the Parrot Harbour mission, receiving from the missionaries there the price of their passage, which the man-of-war would doubtless refund.

Saxon, understanding that he had not to meet the Alligator, undertook the job at a rather excessive rate, and brought the prisoners over as agreed. But, finding that the Parrot Harbour mission refused to pay the passage money until the man-of-war arrived, he went into a towering rage and abused everybody. Wait for the Alligator? Not he! He had something else to do, and he wouldn’t have any condemned gunboat that ever sailed the sanguinary waters of the Pacific poking her nose into any of his business. He had been promised the money as soon as he arrived, and the money or its equivalent he meant to have or know the reason why. Off he went, with much more whisky in his brain than was compatible with sober judgment—off out to sea again, taking with him the whole six prisoners, and openly declaring his intention either to hold them for ransom or run them down to the Queensland plantations, as seemed most convenient.

Next day the Alligator appeared, and her commander was informed of the occurrence. Saxon, master of a miserable labour schooner, had run off with prisoners of war belonging to a British gunboat, defied the Imperial Government, and offered open disrespect to the Crown! The commander, an iron-faced, flinty-eyed disciplinarian of the toughest school, and a first-class pepper-pot into the bargain, nearly choked with rage and indignation. Out went the Alligator again, full steam ahead, making the captain’s dainty suite of cabins tremble like an ill-set jelly in the stern as the ship forged along at thirteen knots an hour, blackening the crystal sky with trails of smoke, and looking implacably about for the offending Sybil. That delinquent of the high seas was farther off than might have been supposed. The wind, though light, was in her favour, and she had managed to get round the far end of the island, and down the other side to Coral Bay, eighty miles off, before the Alligator came up with her, late in the afternoon. Once caught, her shrift was short. The prisoners were at once transferred; Saxon was arrested and taken, still half drunk, on board the man-of-war, and his ship was confiscated, “just to learn him,” as Gray (who had viewed his captain’s proceedings with sour and silent disapproval throughout) was heard to remark, not without a little I-told-you-so satisfaction.

And so it came about that Vaiti, returning with the boat from an unsuccessful recruiting expedition, and not in the best of humours to begin with, was met on her arrival with extremely unpleasant news.

“We’re took, cap’n; we’re took, ma’am!” shouted Gray over the bulwarks, as the boat nosed along the side of the schooner. He added a rapid account of the calamity, in which he was careful to suppress his personal feelings of triumph.

The smart young lieutenant who had been left in charge of the ship came and looked down at the boat. He wanted to know what sort of person it might be who was addressed with this extraordinary hail. He had been under the impression that the “captain” of the Sybil had been left two hours ago—sullen, swearing, and not at all sober—in the cells of H.M.S. Alligator.

What he saw was a red-painted boat, manned by four stalwart native seamen, and steered by an extremely handsome, olive-faced young woman, who looked up at him with eyes that seemed to dart black lightning under their beautifully drawn brows as she listened to the boatswain’s story. She wore a dainty, lacy white muslin frock, and carried a Winchester rifle in her lap.

Second Lieutenant Tempest, who had been cursing his luck up to that moment, suddenly became reconciled to the uninteresting job in which he was engaged. It is just conceivable that his commander might have selected another officer to perform the duty if he had been aware of its possible alleviations; for Mr. Tempest was notoriously given to scrapes with a soupçon of petticoat in them, and had already imperilled his career more than once after this fashion. But Commander the Hon. Francis St. John Raleigh had not seen “Captain” Vaiti; so he sent Mr. Tempest to take possession of the Sybil, and slept the sleep of the well-conscienced and well-dined, that evening, in his velvet armchair.... It might have seemed somewhat less perfectly stuffed to him, had his dreams been concerned with what was happening a few hundred yards away.

Mr. Tempest, smiling like the godmother beast of his own ship, offered his hand to the sullen beauty as she swung herself up the Sybil’s side. Vaiti tossed it indignantly away, favoured him with another black-lightning glance that reduced his susceptible sailor heart to pulp, and stalked aft like an offended Cleopatra. Tempest, persistently following, poured out explanations, apologies, smiles, consolations, promises. Vaiti began to think that civility might possibly avail her something, and began to melt by carefully calculated degrees. Before very long she was sitting on the main hatch, with Tempest beside her, holding her hand unreproved and continuing his consolations. The commander was very angry, no doubt, but he was a good sort at bottom, and perhaps he would not really seize the ship. She would be sent to Fiji, no doubt, and Saxon might possibly be imprisoned, but it would all come out all right, trust him! And he would take very good care of the Sybil and her charming “captain.”

Vaiti, still smiling sweetly, dug her nails into wood of the hatch at her side. Underneath all this verbiage she foresaw the reality of serious trouble. Why had her father been such a fool? What could be done to save the ship? There seemed no way of helping Saxon himself. If the commander proved implacable, to prison he must go. Well, that would not break any bones; but the loss of the Sybil—if such a disaster was indeed possible—must be averted at any cost. She did not believe Mr. Tempest’s smiling assertion. The commander had threatened to confiscate the ship, and most probably he would. At any rate, the risk was too great to face. The schooner must not be taken to Fiji.

The wily brain was hard at work, as she sat on the hatch, listening, with a gentle smile and soft, downcast, maidenly eyes, to Tempest’s love-making, and answering now and then in her pretty Polynesian “pigeon-English”—so much simpler and less grotesque than the bêche-de-mer talk of the Melanesian Islands.... If he could be got out of the way, and the marines suddenly overpowered, the schooner might slip off round the corner of the headland in the dark, and get nearly a hundred miles away before daylight, with the steady wind that was blowing outside the glassy, landlocked harbour of Coral Bay. There was just enough air stirring at this farthest point to allow her to get out, and once off, she could show her heels in a way that would astonish even a British gunboat. Of course, the latter would easily overhaul her in an open chase, but Vaiti did not propose any such folly. There was many a perilous inlet and passage among those dangerous, ill-surveyed islands where the Sybil could safely go, but where the Alligator could not venture. Let them only gain a day, and who was to say whither they had flown into the wide wastes of the Pacific? Once beyond pursuit, paint and other disguises would so alter the ship that no one could identify her; her name could be changed, and the Mary Ann or the Nautilus would innocently sail the seas formerly polluted by the presence of the naughty Sybil.... It was certainly worth trying.

As for Tempest, she had a plan concocted to get rid of him almost as soon as the matter entered her mind. She left him, by and by, solacing himself with fresh turtle steak and excellent champagne in the cabin for the loss of his own dinner, while she went into the bows with Harris and Gray, and rapidly explained her plans. The marines had been accommodated with eatables and drinkables after their own hearts, on the cover of the main hatch, and were too much engaged to notice anything in the thick darkness that was now lying heavily on Coral Bay.

Vaiti’s plan was simple and effective. Tempest was to be enticed into leaving his duty and going ashore—she would see to that. Four of the New Hebridean crew, stripped of their ship clothes, and attired in their aboriginal paint and plumes, were to be concealed on the beach. They would capture him, and carry him off to a bush village near the coast, where the people were not ill disposed to the whites, and leave him there, scared no doubt, but safe until the morning, when he would be let go. Vaiti would come back to the ship as soon as the capture was effected, and the four native sailors would hurry down from the village as quickly as possible. Meantime, it would be easy for Harris to drug the marines’ drink and make them helpless. They would be set adrift in one of the boats, as soon as the schooner was clear of the land, so that they should tell no tales. With good luck, everything should be over, and the Sybil far out to sea, in less than a couple of hours.

* * * * *

Of the disgrace of Lieutenant Tempest—of his temptation, his struggle, and his fall—there is no need to tell at length. The decline of a British officer from duty and honour—his desertion of a post which every professional instinct should have compelled him to keep is not a happy subject, as (fortunately) it is not a common one. Vaiti, in brief, invited the officer to leave the ship unguarded, and slip ashore with her, to sup at a neighbouring trader’s shanty, where she said there would be drink and dancing, and every kind of fun. There was no such place, but Tempest did not know that; and if he had known, he might not have cared. Half-crazed with love and champagne, he thought only of the beautiful half-caste girl, and was ready to follow her to the mouth of hell, if she had asked him. The dinghy was got out softly and cautiously, and, with muffled oars, they slipped away unheard. So far out of his mind was the lieutenant that he did not even note the disappearance of his men, who were all lying, very ably and completely Shanghai’ed, in the hold.

In less than half an hour Vaiti came back, swimming the stretch of black water that lay between the Sybil and the shore, to leave the boat ready for the men. Dripping, sparkling, and laughing, she stood up in the dim light of the deck lantern and told the mate and boatswain how the capture had been managed. Tempest, with a sack over his head and his hands and feet bound to a pole, was at that moment being carried up in the dark to the bush village. The inhabitants of the place were to have ten pounds’ worth of trade goods promised them to keep him there all night and let him escape in the morning, when they themselves would go off and hide in the impenetrable forests until the man-of-war had sailed away again. In half an hour or so the four natives would be back on board, and they would all sail away round the headland, and leave no evidence of any kind to connect the Sybil with this last unpardonable outrage; for Tempest could not but suppose that the natives who so neatly bagged him as he was philandering along the dark beach with the innocent Vaiti were ordinary hill tribesmen. And, in any case, his sacred person would be taken good care of.

“Then he ain’t to be damaged, the little darlin’?” inquired Harris. The question was not an idle one. Every one on board the schooner knew that Vaiti was capable of ugly things at her worst.

The girl laughed—a low, gurgling laugh.

“No. No kill him, no hurt him. I not like,” she said, tossing back her wet, wavy hair, with a coquettish gesture that told Harris the woman in Vaiti was fully awake that night, despite the rough and ready adventure on which she was engaged. Harris was no fool, if he was something unsteady in character, and more or less he admired Vaiti himself, which tended to sharpen his sight.

“Good job the dandy leftenant is out of the way,” he growled as Vaiti disappeared into the cabin to change. “’Twouldn’t take much for ’er to get fancyin’ his silly face, after all, and then the fat would be in the fire.”

“Well, if you hask me, I don’t like none of the ’ole thing from beginnin’ to hend,” declared the bo’sun, jamming a wad of tobacco viciously into his pipe. “Not the keepin’ of the bloomin’ niggers, not again runnin’ to Coral Bay, nor again this business. Wy? Because I don’t, and because it make me smell dirty weather. Give us a light.”

Overhead the stars in the velvet sky began to twinkle here and there as the breeze rose and the clouds melted away. An odour of hot, wet jungle drifted out across the bay from the invisible land, and a locust with a rattle exactly like a policeman’s whistle burred loudly among the trees. It might have been half an hour, and it might have been more, before something else became audible—something that sounded like a frightened wailing on the shore.

“A—wé! A—a—wé!”

Vaiti came out of her cabin and stood on deck, listening intently.

The sound went on.

“A—wé! A—wé! A—wa—wé!”

Harris, watching Vaiti’s face in the light of the lantern, saw it change and harden, but she said nothing. There was another sound now—a dinghy shoving off from the beach and the rattle of carelessly handled oars.

“What’s the —— fools makin’ such a —— row for?” asked Gray. “They’ll ’ave the Halligator on to us.”

Still Vaiti said nothing, but stood like a statue on the deck, listening and looking into the darkness.

The boat rammed the Sybil in another minute with a shock that made her quiver, and then drifted aimlessly along her sides. Three brown naked figures lifted up their arms from below, and cried despairingly:

“Kapitani! Kapitani! A—wé! A—wé!”

“Get those fellows on board, too much quick, and bring him cabin,” ordered Vaiti. Harris and Gray hauled them in with small ceremony, and dumped them down the companion into the cabin, where they stood in the light of the lamp, painted, feather-bedecked creatures, fierce enough in appearance, but in reality abjectly frightened and a-shiver.

“What thing you been do?” demanded Vaiti sharply. “Where you make other sailor-man? What you do Tempesi?”

One of the men was beginning his wail again. She seized him by the shoulder, pulled a pistol from among her draperies, and shook it in his face. The man, with a yell of terror, twisted himself out of her hold. Harris, who was rather frightened at her demeanour, got him away, forced a dram of spirits into his mouth, and tried to extract the terrified creature’s story from him by degrees.