CHAPTER IV
THE STORM
Holman glanced inquiringly at the piece of sticking plaster above my right eye when he met me on the deck the morning after the knife incident, and I grinned sheepishly.
"You were right about that patch of shadow last night," I remarked.
"How?" he queried.
"This came from it," I replied, touching the plaster with my finger as I spoke.
The boy whistled and looked around cautiously. "You'll be getting wise in a day or two," he murmured. "She said you would when I told her this morning about our conversation of last night."
I laughed, and he turned suddenly toward me. "Do you think we'll put in anywhere in the Samoan Group?"
"I don't think so," I replied. "Why?"
Holman came closer. "If we do I'm going to get the girls ashore and keep them there," he muttered. "I don't care what you think of the proposition. This trip is going to be a tough one, and I'm certain there is some deviltry afoot."
I tried to laugh at the serious face upon the youngster, but the conviction which he threw into his words choked my mirth. Whether it was the little brush with the Kanaka or the gloomy forebodings of the boy I couldn't tell, but I felt a trifle anxious after my first night aboard The Waif.
"But there is nothing to be gained by running away if we do put in to a port," I growled.
"How is that?" stammered Holman.
"Well, if Leith is an admirer of Edith Herndon, as you say," I argued, "and if the captain is in league with Leith, the yacht wouldn't leave till the girls came aboard. Besides, the Professor wouldn't go on without them."
"I don't know about the Professor," grunted Holman. "That old doodlebug only thinks of the silly specimens that he is going to collect down here. If he had any love for his daughters he wouldn't have brought them along."
"But you told me they insisted on coming."
"So they did!" he retorted savagely. "But they knew that the poor old fool was in the hands of a scoundrel and they wouldn't let him go alone. They think they can protect him from that devil, and it nearly makes me cry to hear them say so."
Miss Edith Herndon and her sister came up on deck at that moment, and if I was impressed by the calm sweetness of the elder girl's face on the previous afternoon, the strength and beauty of it as I saw it in the fresh morning sunlight made my heart pound violently against my ribs. The prettiness of Miss Barbara made the quiet dignity of the elder sister more noticeable, and that apparent strength of character made me doubt Holman's contention that she would be unable to help the scientist if Leith's motives were discovered to be criminal.
It was Barbara's keen eyes that detected my plaster, and I squirmed as I saw the light of curiosity in her eyes.
"Oh, tell us how it happened!" she cried. "Please make it a night attack upon the yacht, Mr. Verslun! I heard a wild cry just after I retired and I felt sure that war canoes had surrounded us. They always surround the ill-fated ship, don't they?" she continued merrily. "And the ship is always ill-fated in all the really thrilling sea stories I have read!"
Leith came sauntering aft as she fired her questions at me, and he stood near Miss Edith with his dull eyes fixed upon me as I answered.
"I'm afraid I cannot feed your imagination to-day," I replied. "I tripped over a coil of rope, and the deck sprang up and bumped me."
I glanced at Leith as I spoke, and I fancied I detected a glint of amusement in the lustreless eyes that were turned in my direction. Whether it was caused by my hastily constructed lie or by the girl's inquiries I could not tell, but my dislike for the clumsy giant made me suspicious about his knowledge of the incident of the preceding evening, and I felt certain that he was smiling at my fib.
As if he wished to do something which would convince me of his ignorance of the happening, he hastily changed the subject.
"The captain thinks we are in for a spell of bad weather, Mr. Verslun," he drawled; "are you of the same opinion?"
"If signs go for anything we are," I replied. "We are running into a zone of trouble."
He walked away without further speech, and the two girls went below in response to a message from their father. The Professor was slightly indisposed, and he demanded that his daughters remain with him in the cabin. The selfishness of the scientist irritated Holman exceedingly, and he made bitter comments about him during the hour or two he kept me company.
"I never yet met one of those scientific gazaboos who didn't think he was something more than mortal," he growled. "I try to keep on good terms with the old bone measurer, but his vanity nearly turns me sick. Do you know what he told me yesterday?"
"What?" I asked, amused at the youngster's annoyance.
"Said that he might mention my name in the report of the expedition that he would send to some old research society in the States. When I didn't show any signs of elation he got offended, so I guess I'm cut out of the history."
He went grumbling down into the cabin, and I watched the ocean. The barometer was low, and out of the west a pack of fat black clouds swarmed up from the horizon, stacking themselves one upon another till they resembled a huge pile of rounded boulders which a sudden puff of wind might bring toppling down upon us. The faint scouting puffs of air—"the devil's breath" of the poetical Polynesians—whined through the stays, but the small waves that tried to rise in expectation were clouted back by the heavy, oppressive atmosphere that ironed out the ocean till one's imagination pictured it waiting for the word like a strained runner on his mark.
It burst at last. Three violent blasts ripped over us like projectiles, and the "song of the dead men" was twanged upon the straining ropes. The Waif stopped for an instant, as if debating whether she would run or cower before the onslaught, then she dipped her nose into the mad lather that rose around her and plunged forward. That jump seemed to be a challenge to the storm. It burst upon us in all its fury, and the yacht became a tiny seesaw upon the murderous Himalayas that rose around us.
Great chunks of green water came hurtling over the rail, thundering down upon us till The Waif was buried in a boiling turmoil from which she would leap and shake herself, only to be pulled down again when the next sea fell upon us. When she sprang out of the lather, those devilish, snarling, snaky waves sprang after her, slapping at her flanks, tearing and biting at her like a pack of wolves. There's an awful likeness to a wolf pack about storm waves. When you see them all foam-lathered stretching out like a pack in full cry, or watch them leaping up as if they were trying to see whether the unfortunate ship had been torn down by one of their band, you begin to credit them with some sort of intelligence.
The Waif was no poppycock yacht, built to dodge about the Solent and run for Cowes if the wind blew a capful. She had been built to hold her own with the hardest slamming seas that ever chased a shattered hull, and it was lucky for us that she was. The storm that came screeching after us from way across the Coral Sea was one of those high-powered freak disturbances that juggle with lumps of water like a vaudeville performer juggling with cheap crockery. It took the tops off those rollers and pelted them at us, and the wind seemed to yell in triumph when the yacht was buried in the whirlpools in which she dived headlong.
All through the night we raced before it, and through the following day The Waif never paused for an instant in her mad race to the eastward. The Kanakas became demoralized with fear, and I forgot the trouble hanging over the heads of the girls and their father as I helped Newmarch drag the crew from their bunks to cut away the wreckage of the vessel.
I saw a new side of the captain during those hours. A very devil of energy took hold of him with the coming of the storm, and he became a human dynamo. He pounded the frightened crew unmercifully, dragging the screaming islanders back to their work by the hair of their heads, and heaping upon them curses that were strange and blood-curdling. That he was a good sailorman I had little doubt. He handled The Waif with skill and patience, while the crew, with rolling eyes and quivering lips, were so terrorized by his wrath that they fled to do his bidding.
I had been wondering since the moment when he had ordered me to let go my grip of the Kanaka in the f'c'stle, if he was afraid that any disagreement between me and the knife-thrower would start trouble with the crew, but from the way he hazed the niggers during the storm I was convinced that it was not through any fear of them that he ordered me to leave my assailant alone. The conviction did not increase my love for him. As I viewed the happening he was inclined to shield the big brute who threw the knife simply because the offence did not appear to be one that merited punishment, and this view was not pleasing to my nerves.
It was on the second day of the storm that a little incident happened which is worth mentioning. Toni, the small Fijian who had chanted the song of Black Fernando's hell, was caught by a huge wave and pounded hard against the cabin. The mad turmoil of water swept his nearly lifeless form into the scuppers, but before another comber could snatch him overboard, I managed to reach his side and drag him into safety.
I forgot the incident in the whirl of happenings that followed, but the Fijian had a longer memory. Late that afternoon he was holding the wheel with Soma, the big Kanaka who had jerked the knife at me, and as I stopped to peer at the binnacle he beckoned me toward him.
"That was me that sing," he shrieked, as I put down my head. "I tell damn big lie you an' Miss Herndon."
"Why?" I asked, amused at the peculiar manner in which he tried to express his gratitude for the rescue of the morning.
"Big Jacky tell me not say anything," he screamed. "He tell it to me one big secret all that talk about waterfall. Tell me not to tell any one. You know why?"
I glanced at Soma and found that he was straining his ears to catch the words the other was shrieking, and as I was more than suspicious of him, I promptly closed the conversation.
"I'll see you in the morning," I roared.
The Fijian nodded and I fought my way forward, wondering as I clung to the rigging what the pupil of the Maori had to tell me about the song.
The wind had ceased somewhat on the morning of the third day, but the snaky rollers were still racing after the flying yacht. A watery sun peeped out from between the driving cloud masses, the rays glinting through the heads of the waves that curled menacingly as the battered yacht drove through them.
Newmarch hailed me from the poop when I came on deck, and there was a peculiar look upon his scrawny features as he addressed me.
"Do you know that nigger you rescued?" he asked.
"Toni?"
"Yes."
"What about him?"
"You did your heroic stunt for nothing," he remarked. "The fool can't be found, so I guess he went overboard in the night."
The news came as a shock to me. Toni's last question that he had put as he clung to the wheel with Soma had flashed through my mind several times through the night. He had asked it in a manner that insinuated that I might be interested in the reasons why Big Jacky, his companion on the wharf at Levuka, wished the whereabouts of the white waterfall to remain a secret, and now his disappearance blocked my inquiries. I felt annoyed with myself for not listening to what the Fijian had to say at the moment he confessed that he had lied, and then the face of the listening Soma came up before my mental eye. Soma was a person that I was beginning to cordially dislike.
I turned to Newmarch and fired a question at him.
"Do you think he was helped overboard?"
"Why, no," he said slowly. "Why do you think that?"
"Oh, nothing," I replied. "I thought his narrow escape of the morning would have made him careful."
It was a few hours after this conversation that I had my first chance of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment we had run into the disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the wind like the whips of invisible devils.
"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.
"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as The Waif took a header. "We've weathered the worst of it and we're still sound. The storm centre has slipped away to the north, and we can count ourselves out of the ruction for the present."
Her shapely hand clutched my wet oilskins as the yacht plunged from the back of an enormous swell, and I was so busy noting the beauty of the hand that I had no eye for the sallow face that peeped from the companion. Leith's bass voice rose above the noise of the waves, and there was an angry note in it.
"This isn't a nice place for you, Miss Edith!" he cried.
The girl half turned her head, looked at him for a second, then without any intimation that she had heard what he said, she turned again toward me and started to cross-examine me upon the amount of damage we had sustained. I thought that the white, shapely hand tightened its grip upon my wet sleeve at the moment Leith's bass voice came booming to our ears, and I blessed the big brute's interference for the thrill which I derived from the pressure of her fingers upon the greasy coat.
But Leith was not to be denied. The cold stare, instead of driving him back into the cabin, only roused his temper. Very cautiously he climbed along the heaving deck to the point where we were standing, and, clutching a rope, he swayed backward and forward immediately behind us.
"Miss Edith!" he called.
The girl turned her head sharply. "Well?" she cried.
"This isn't a proper place for you!" roared Leith. "One of those seas is liable to come aboard at any moment, and you might be washed away before any one could assist you."
Edith Herndon's lips showed the slightest trace of a smile. "You had better be careful too, Mr. Leith," she retorted. "Mr. Verslun is holding on to me in case one of those old gray rollers should make a sudden leap, but you have no one to hold on to you."
A frown passed over Leith's face like a cloud shadow across a yellow plain. He slackened his grip on the rope and lurched toward us.
"You must go below at once!" he screamed, addressing the girl. "Your father is too ill to look after you at this moment, so the duty is mine. There is danger here, and I order you below!"
He touched her shoulder with his big fingers that resembled talons, but the girl made a quick side movement and slipped from his grip.
"Do not touch me!" she cried fiercely. "How dare you put your hand on me!"
But Leith's temper was up at that moment, and he was angry enough for anything. He made a spring for the girl's hand, and I thrust my shoulder forward to bump him off. The Waif nearly stood on her end at that instant, and her acrobatic feat combined with the push flung Leith off his feet and sent him rolling ludicrously along the deck.
Miss Herndon gave a little cry of alarm and sprang for the companion-stairs, down which she disappeared without taking a glance at the brute on the wet planks. Leith picked himself up, gripped a loose backstay with his left hand and swung himself toward me, striking out viciously with his free right hand when he came within hitting distance.
The blow landed on my shoulder, and I returned the compliment with an uppercut that jerked him from his swing rope and sent him stumbling backward against the rail. The fall stunned him for a few moments and he rolled about in the wash; then Soma, the Kanaka who jerked the knife at me, rushed from the galley door and dragged him to his feet. The native steered him to the companionway, where he stood for a moment glaring at me as if undecided whether to continue the fight or beat a retreat, but the wild plunging of the yacht convinced him that the spot was not one where he figured to advantage, so he stumbled below.
I looked around and saw Holman clinging to the rigging, his boyish face wearing an expression of extreme pleasure.
"You're getting wise," he cried, as he scrambled toward me; "but don't think you've walloped him. He'll come back at you when he has a better opportunity of beating you up."
