As she stood on deck that night and felt the breeze coming that would cause the skipper to up anchor and set sail, she became quite happy. “On a ship at last, bound for Honolulu!” she thought. “And where is he? Perhaps still in Hayti. I will wait till he comes and then we will meet again and remember the sweet nights and the grape-vine and be happy!” Ah, Sestrina!
All wise men agree that happiness is only a fleeting anticipation of some longed-for event which, in its best consummation, can only end in disillusionment. And so it was as well that Sestrina should dream her own happiness that night. It was to be brief enough, God knows.
She little dreamed the true nature of the schooner on which she had embarked, and why it took a ghastly cargo on by stealth at midnight. Alas, through being educated from French novels instead of realistic South Sea novels, Sestrina was quite ignorant of the terrible dramas of the Pacific seas and lonely island groups. Had she known more of the ways of the world and life and sorrow in those seas, she would never have placed herself in the most terrible position that a girl could well be in. Even wilful Sestrina began to wish she had listened to her Spanish landlord’s advice, to wait for one of the large steamers that went to Honolulu. For as she lay in her bunk that night, just before the Belle Isle sailed at dawn, she felt sure she heard strange groans and the clankings of iron chains!
“What did it all mean? Was that a smothered groan and then a farewell as some one wailed ‘Talofa! Aue! O Langi!’? Why had the skipper shut the cuddy’s door tight, as though he wished to keep those moans and murmurs on the deck that night from the ears of his fair passenger? Was that a phantom bay that the Belle Isle lay anchored in as the red tropic moon bathed the palm-clad shores by Yucata with ghostly gleams. What nightmare could it be where chained men, with bulged, vacant eyes, were being carried and helped on deck of the Belle Isle, and then secretly dropped down into the fetid hold? The Belle Isle was not a blackbirding schooner (slave ship), for King Hammerehai of Hawaii had issued an edict that all persons found dealing in slave traffic were to be ‘shot at sight.’ And the Belle Isle was bound for Hawaii. So what was the mystery of that dark hold’s cargo?”
Sestrina awoke in the morning and half fancied that she must have dreamed the terror that had haunted her during the early night hours.
Before the sun was well up on the horizon the Belle Isle, with every stitch of her old-fashioned canvas spread, was fast leaving the Pacific coast. Sestrina was very ill for the first two days, then her languor left her. As she stood on deck, the boundless loneliness of the tropic seas depressed her. She stared over the bulwark side, the dim blue horizon seemed as far away, as illusive as her own hopes and dreams. The noise of the half-filled canvas sails depressed her, as they filled out to the lazy hot wind and then collapsed with a muffled rumble.
Only two members of the crew were visible as she stood on deck, and they were stalwart ferocious-looking men, who wore strange tasselled caps, and somehow reminded her of the pictures of the pirates of the Spanish Main which she had seen on the walls of the British Consul’s residence at Petionville, Port-au-Prince. One of the men seemed to be busy over an endless coil of rope. The other man stood like an inanimate figure, some fixture amidships, by the hatchway. Only the tobacco smoke issuing from between his blackened teeth destroyed the statuesque effect as he stood sentinel at that spot.
“Noa come dis way, miss,” the man muttered as he put forth his skinny hand and warned Sestrina away as she started to walk forward.
Finding she was even denied the freedom of walking about the schooner as she pleased the girl’s heart became heavy with dim forebodings. She began to realise that something was being hidden from her.
Hoping to find some one congenial to speak to, she strolled aft, then concluded that her own reflections were the better company.