Chapter VII

THE TURNING OF THE TABLES

She looked narrowly about the island, hoping to discover the place where the lepers lived. A cluster of small, miserable huts, on the far side of the lagoon, attracted her attention. It seemed not more than half a mile from the spot where she had spent the night. The best fishing grounds she judged, by the look of the shore, to be near the village. She was therefore, no doubt, several miles from their usual haunts.

So far, so good. Where was the schooner? It lay to her left about a mile out at sea, close to a small, uninhabited, sandy islet. Vaiti supposed that the men were cutting wood and looking for water. She saw one or two black dots on the shore, recognisable by their blue dungaree clothing, and strained her eyes eagerly to see if the dinghy had been pulled up on the sand, for in this lay her only chance. If they brought the boat up on the beach, to repair her where wood could be had without going to the atoll itself (Vaiti would have wagered that the Ikurangi did not carry a splinter outside of the galley fuel), then the schooner would probably stop overnight. In that case she could carry out her plans. Otherwise ... there was always the dynamite.

The dinghy was ashore, drawn well up on the beach.

She drew a breath of relief, and slid down the tree again. Now she could wait till night with an easy mind.

All day she hid in the tangle of young palm and low-growing scrub that clustered about the foot of the loftier trees. Once she saw a couple of the lepers pass by in the distance, evidently looking for something. These had eyes, and she crept closer into the shelter of the scrub till they were gone. Then she came cautiously out, and plucked long sheets of the fine pale-brown natural matting that protects the young shoot of the cocoanut, to cover up her white dress, for the scrub was dangerously thin, in that staring overhead sun. She did not venture down to the sea to fish, but fed upon cocoanuts during the day.

Night came at last—night and coolness, with big stars shining in the lagoon, and a gentle breeze stirring among the palms. About midnight, as near as she could guess, Vaiti came out of her shelter and prepared for action.

She took off her clothes, and fastened about her waist a petticoat of the dark-coloured cocoanut matting which she had stitched together during the day. So habited, with her olive skin and black hair, she knew that she was invisible in the darkness of the night. She fastened the dynamite, and a box of matches, into the coil of hair on the top of her head, stuck her knife into the waist of her petticoat, and walked down the beach into the warm, dark sea.

She knew very well that the outer side of an atoll commonly swarms with sharks, but the risk did not trouble her. There was something a good deal worse to face on the island than any number of sharks. Heading for the distant light of the schooner, she swam through the starry water with the low, dog-like island paddle that can cover such marvellous distances—keeping her head well out, and quietly taking her time.

It was a long swim, but it ended at last, and the schooner rose up before her in the water, black and silent, and shifting ever so little upon the swell of the incoming tide. The stars made little trickles of light upon her wet, dark hull. Two boats lay alongside—the dinghy, freshly mended and watertight, and the whaleboat, loaded with wood and cocoanuts. After the slovenly fashion of the Ikurangi, they had left the boats until the morning to hoist inboard, seeing that it was dead calm in the lee of the islet.

This was more than Vaiti had hoped for, and it made her task easy. She cut the dinghy’s painter, got into the boat, and muffled the oars with a strip or two torn from her petticoat. Then she put the dynamite into the whaleboat, cut and attached a good long fuse, set a match to it, and saw that the tiny red spark was steadily eating its way along, before she pulled off from the ship. She towed the whaleboat after her a little way, and then let it go thirty or forty yards from the ship. It was not her desire to wreck the schooner at Vaka Island, and possibly let loose her enemies upon the atoll; rather she wished the ship well out of the way before any disaster should overtake her. The charts would most probably ensure that matter. The destruction of the boat was only intended to secure her own possession of the dinghy.

She had scarcely reached the shore before a loud explosion boomed out across the water, and immediately after lights began to stir on board the schooner. Vaiti worked with coolness and speed, knowing that it was not likely, though possible, that any one would swim ashore. From her eyrie in the coco-palm she had noted a deep, narrow creek running up from the lagoon—a mere crack in the coral, but wide enough to admit a small boat, taken in with care. There was just enough light from the stars to enable her to find the place, and run the boat up on the sand at the end, into the heart of a tangle of leaves and creepers that entirely concealed it. For safety’s sake, she cut a few more armfuls of trailing vines from the shore, and buried the boat two or three feet deep, so that neither from the sea nor the land could it possibly be seen.

As she worked, she could hear shouts and cries, made faint by distance, coming across the water from the schooner. She could imagine the scene that would take place on board when they found themselves boatless. Some of the native crew—not Donahue or the mate; they would never face the sharks—would probably swim ashore to-morrow to investigate. Well, let them!

Having finished the concealing of the dinghy, she got into it herself, put on her clothes again, drew the tangled creepers well over her, and went calmly to sleep, secure that no one could find her unless she chose to be found.

All the same, she was very cautious about getting up the next morning, and looked carefully between the leaves before she ventured out of her hiding-place. She covered up her light dress with the cocoanut canvas, and then climbed a palm to look about.

People were moving hurriedly about the decks of the schooner; something seemed to be going on. As she watched, she saw two natives, clad only in loin-cloths, stand up on the bulwarks, ready to dive. In another moment they had flashed down into the sea, small as ants to sight at that distance, but perfectly clear to Vaiti’s sea-trained eyes. Then the dark specks began to make their way across the water. The sun was newly risen, the sea was still a mirror of molten gold, and the tiny black heads stood out sharply on its surface. Vaiti set her teeth as she watched them creeping on. They were island men, of her mother’s own race, and they had done her no harm. And ... the longer a vessel lies at anchor in equatorial latitudes, the more certain it is that sharks will gather round her—even if there has been no explosion in the water alongside to kill the fish and collect the tigers of the sea from far and near.

Vaiti looked away, and began desperately to count the nuts clustered among the palm-fronds at her feet.... How many were there? Ten—fifteen—twenty——

A long, despairing shriek tore across the water. She put her fingers in her ears and buried her face in the leaves. Yet, all the same, she heard a second cry, short and sudden, and quickly ended. There was nothing more. She lifted her face again, her teeth set tight into her lower lip. The two black heads were gone.

“No one will come ashore to-day,” she said, with a shiver. Something seemed to stab her, as she thought of that doctored chart in the schooner’s deck cabin. The reefs on the course to South America were hundreds of miles from shore—the ship had no boats—and the native crew must suffer with the villainous captain and mate, if the disaster that she had plotted so carefully should come about.... There would be sharks there, too, when the ship broke up....

The crystal-gold of the sea turned dim before Vaiti’s eyes. It was only a mist of tears that lay between, but to the girl’s excited imagination it seemed like the spreading and darkening stain of blood.

Careless of whether she was seen or not, she slid down the tree and rushed into the scrub, where she sat down upon the sand and cried like a mere nervous schoolgirl. The sun was past the zenith when she lifted her head again; the schooner had put out to sea, and lay, a far-off snowy speck, upon the blue horizon.

Vaiti stood up, flung back her hair, and cast the trouble from her. She could not afford to grieve over the inevitable now; there was too much to do. The boat had to be prepared and provisioned, and that was not the work of a moment.

She husked and opened a number of large cocoanuts, and removed the insides. She then cut a quantity of young palm-leaves, and plaited them into baskets, which she filled with the cocoanut meat. Afterwards she cut down dozens of young green nuts for drinking, husked them to save space, and slung them together in bunches with strips of their own fibre. This done, she hid the provisions in the boat, and set about her own supper, as it was almost dark.

Nourishing food she felt she must have, if she was to get through with her enterprise, but she dared not attract attention to herself by going out torch-fishing on the reef. However, there were certain holes in the ground about the roots of the palms that to her experienced eye promised something better than fish.

She dug a fire-hole in the gravel at the end of the gully where she had hidden the boat, lined it with stones, and made a fire, looking well to it that no gleam should be visible from above. When the stones were beginning to heat, she took a piece of palms-leaf in her hand, hid herself in the bush, and waited, still as a rock.

By-and-by there was a faint scuffling among the roots of the trees, and a shadowy thing began climbing up the trunk of a palm. Vaiti waited till it had disappeared in the crown of the tree, and then climbed after it to a point about ten feet from the top, where she tied her strip of leaf round the trunk and came down again.

Thump! thump! Two cocoanuts fell to the earth. The crab (for it was a cocoanut crab of the biggest and fiercest kind) was getting his supper. Now he would come down the tree, rip open the nuts with his formidable claws, and enjoy the contents.

Slowly he began to back down the palm, his sensitive tail ready to tell him when he had touched earth and might safely let go. And now it was that Vaiti’s trap (a well-known native trick) proved his undoing. The belt of dry leaflets round the tree tickled his tail, he promptly let go, and fell with a crash seventy feet through air on to the pile of coral lumps that Vaiti had heaped up at the foot of the tree.

The girl picked him up, badly injured and unable to use his claws (which were big enough to crack her ankle), and put an end to him with a clever stroke of her knife. He proved to be two feet long in the body alone, and of a fine blue and red colour, as seen in the dim light of the fire. She put him on the heated stones, wrapped in leaves, buried him until cooked, and then enjoyed a hot supper that an epicure might have envied.

Strengthened by the good food, she worked on late into the night, catching more crabs, whose meat she hoped she could dry in the sun, making a rough sail out of the bed-sheet she had carried away from the schooner, twisting sinnet plait out of cocoanut husk for ropes, cutting and trimming a small pandanus for the mast. She had all her plans laid, and knew what she meant to do. Her present position was about five hundred miles from the Marquesas, and the south-east trades would be in her favour. With lines for fishing, a beaker full of fresh water on board (she had found that in the dinghy when she took it away), cocoanuts to help out with, and plenty of crab to dry, she hoped that she might manage to reach the islands before her strength or her food gave out. Greater voyages had been done many a time in mere canoes, and the dinghy was a large boat of its kind, strong, well built, and new. If she failed—well, any death, any horror that the wide seas could hold was better than Vaka Island.

All being ready, she lay down and slept till dawn—a somewhat restless sleep, for it was full of wandering dreams, and all the dreams took one shape: Donahue’s schooner, snared by the lying chart, rushing helpless to her end, with the green-eyed tigers of the sea hovering ever about the reefs, and waiting ... waiting....

* * * * *

“I don’t think the patient can see any one,” said the nurse doubtfully.

The big, yellow-haired sailor took off his hat and stepped up on to the verandah. It was a very beautiful verandah. You could see most of Suva Bay from it, and half the tumbled purple peaks of Fiji’s wonderful mountains lying across the harbour.

“If you could stretch a point, ma’am,” said the sailor, “it might be as well for him. I’ve got good news.”

“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.