Chapter V

A DIAMOND WEB

It was six o’clock in Apia, and the round sun was hanging low above the rim of the level sea, like a burning coal ready to drop down upon a breadth of hyacinth silk. The stores were closed along the straggling beach street, where the sand was white under foot, and parrakeets tweedled cheerily in the scarlet-flowered flamboyant trees. Native dandies, greatly oiled and dyed, and wearing a bright hibiscus blossom over each ear, swung past with the inimitable Samoan roll, their golden brown limbs gay with the red-and-white English bath-towel that is popular as full dress for steamer days in the little island capital. Girls with high-coiffed yellow heads and pink or green tunics wandered lazily home to the cool, dark-domed native houses open all round to the sunset sky. They went in groups, and sang as they walked—windy, fitful gusts of strange island melody, breaking out and dying away like the evening breeze among the heavy-headed palms. Smells of yam and breadfruit, brown from the baking pits, of fish cooked in green, savoury leaves, and taro spinach stewed with cocoanut cream, crept out upon the cooling air. The long, hot day was done, and Apia rested and ate.

In “Charley’s”—the least reputable of Apia’s tavern-hotels—the egregious table d’hôte was in full progress out in the green-shuttered verandah. Charley himself, an oily, flashy New Caledonian half-caste, dressed in striped pyjamas, was eating curried tin—nature unknown—with a knife and two fingers, at the head of the table. A corpse-faced Chinese was shuffling round with the inevitable Pacific fowl, cut up in a watery soup. The table-cloth was of linoleum, the swinging lamp guttered and smoked, the cutlery was dislocated and black. But there was English beer on the bar counter, and plenty of broken ice; and the whisky that mounted high in each man’s smeary tumbler was good of its kind. Charley knew his customers, and sought first the essential.

Captain Saxon, his schooner safe at anchor outside, and his copra advantageously sold to an Auckland agent, sat eating at the table, heavy-faced, a little intoxicated, and almost absolutely blank in mind. This was his nearest approach to happiness, and one that he enjoyed often enough, for, since thought meant pain to him, he had managed to acquire a wonderful agility in avoiding it, and to live for the most part almost as purely by instinct and impulse as a dog.

It was perhaps for this reason that he did not notice anything unusual in the demeanour of that singularly unknown quantity, Vaiti, his daughter. And yet Vaiti—sombre and sparkling in a dress of vaporous red, with a handful of star stephanotis from the verandah thrust into the marvellous waves of her hair—was evidently not quite herself. She sat a little apart from the noisy company that sprawled about the table, looked at no one, ate her food absent-mindedly and pulled little strips off the decaying oilcloth of the table-cover with a steady industry that made Charley wriggle in his seat, although he did not dare to remonstrate.

Some one else was watching her, if Saxon was not. A short, stocky man, with burning grey eyes, a fiery red beard, and a sharp furrow between the eyebrows, that somehow suggested belaying-pins and rope’s ends, was looking at her every now and then as he noisily sucked in his soup. The inspection did not appear to please him altogether. He finished his dinner quickly, took the current glass of whisky in his hand, and rolled off to the dark end of the verandah, followed by a grey-haired, greasy-faced mate who had been sitting beside him.

“Still on for it, cap?” asked the latter, leaning over the railing with an air of careless ease that contrasted oddly with his watchful eye.

“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!