Vaiti of the Islands

by Beatrice Grimshaw

He had noted a glimmer in Vaiti's eye that told him that she was not yet at the end of her resources. The Maori guile and the English daring were united to some purpose in this strange creature that he had given to the world.

"I will tell," she said, standing up to her full height. "But you must give the order, my father, for Alliti drags on the rein these days. Let the bale of trawl-net, and the Manila rope, be taken from the cargo, and let us cross the bows of this ship, and drop them across her path. The keel will run clean, but the screw will foul, and they will creep like a bird with a broken wing till daylight. Then, if the sea has grown less, they will send down a diver and clear the screws; but we shall be almost into Wellington, and the lagoon is ours."

"You are worthy to be the daughter of a brave man," answered Saxon in Maori, sinking back wearily on his pillow. "Go, then; and if we lose the ship, we lose her; there is great wealth to gain, and a man must die at one time, if not another. I am tired. I will sleep."

Vaiti left him, and hurried back on deck. The purple dusk was already beginning to gather, and the green starboard light of the Margaret Macintyre gleamed like a glow-worm a mile or so behind. She was drawing very near; there was no time to lose.

"Alliti!" called Vaiti. "My father he better; he send word to take trawl-net and Malila out of hold, make come across that ship him path, foul him sclew. Suppose you not afraid, you bring us close, drop net and Malila."

Harris's hide was thick, but Vaiti knew how to pierce it when she chose; and the man had courage enough, in streaks. Vaiti had hit the mark when she called him chicken-hearted in fighting, but there was no manoeuvre of the ship too risky for him to undertake and carry through with perfect coolness.

"All right, my lady," he nodded. "Don't forget me and Gray when it comes to sharing out the swag, that's all."

The net and the rope were brought up, and the latter knotted here and there to make a hideous tangle of it. Then the Sybil's lights were put out, even the cabin lamp being extinguished. The stars pricked themselves out in sudden sharpness on the great blue chart of heaven above, and the waste of dark rolling water all around grew large and lonely.

You are not to suppose that Saxon's daughter did not see and feel these things—did not hear the voiceless talk of the great seas on starry evenings, or feel her mortal body almost rapt away in the ecstasy of a black midnight and a shrieking storm; just as you, perhaps, who think that no one ever shared such experiences with yourself, may feel. It is not only the blameless tourist, with his daily diary, and his books of travel teaching him how and when to "enthuse," who enjoys the splendid pageant of the seas. Vaiti, as the most indulgent chronicler must confess, had more than a spice of her father's villainy in her composition, not to speak of whatever devilry her Maori forebears might have bequeathed to her. She was unscrupulous, ruthless, and crafty as a general rule; she was engaged in a deed of the very shadiest description to-night—yet, as she stood with her hands on the wheel, and her eyes on the green starboard light of the oncoming ship, steering the Sybil to something extremely like certain destruction, she knew that the Southern Cross was rising, clear and beautiful, above its gem-like pointers, just ahead; and that a little sliver of young moon, crystal-silver against the dark, was slipping up the sky to her left. The thought just grazed her mind that this might be the last time the moon would ever rise over the Pacific for her. She smiled a little in the dusk, and steered steadily ahead. There were no "streaks" in the composition of Vaiti's spirit.

A short tack to the starboard became necessary. Harris put the ship about at a lift of Vaiti's hand. It grew very dark; a cloud was over the moon, and the stars were dimmed by driving vapour. The wind was increasing; the schooner lay over with its weight, and the foam gurgled along her clean-ran sides. Still the Margaret Macintyre came on, stately and unsuspicious, all sail set, and the beat of the little screw distinctly audible through the night.