"Speak Maori, high chieftainess!" implored Pita.
"No fee-ah!" answered Saxon's daughter succinctly. Pita understood at once that Vaiti was unwilling to use a language that gave free rein to her tongue and his, and the knowledge elated him.
"Perhaps I tell you," went on Vaiti, watching him narrowly. "I think you got heart in belly belong you, more better than Alliti. I tell you, you want plenty heart by-and-by."
"High chieftainess, Vaiti, speak Maori!" was Pita's answer, linked to an attempted embrace that only fell short of its main object because Vaiti quite calmly pulled a seaman's knife out of her dress and laid it edge upwards across her lips. Pita, who had learned the real European kiss during his visits to civilisation, and wanted very much to show it off, felt disappointed, although there was a smile behind the blade that almost out-dazzled the steel.
"Maori!" he persisted, putting his arm round her waist, with a cool disregard of her well-known readiness with the knife that won Vaiti's admiration a step further than before. She laughed, wavered, and then, still playing with the keen, bright blade, she lowered it a little, and spoke in the soft language of the Islands at last.
It was a fairly long tale that she had to tell. When last the Sybil had been in the Society Islands, some weeks before, there had been a German man of science in the group, collecting native skulls for museums at home. The grizzly old gentleman and his pursuits had not troubled Vaiti's mind particularly until her chief admirer, Ritter, a Papeëte trader, happened to drop a remark one day about the amount of money some of these old skulls were worth. Vaiti's sharp intelligence linked on the casual saying at once to certain other wandering rumours she remembered, and she decided to find out something more. She did not ask Ritter, for he was no talker, even to a handsome girl whom he admired; and the German was his compatriot, in any case. But when the schooner reached Raiatea, where Professor Spricht was staying, Vaiti drifted off among the native huts, and squatted for an hour or two on the mats of the second chief's wife's mother's cousin's house, smoking a great deal, talking very little, and listening quietly. By degrees the house filled up with interested natives all eager for gossip and chatter; and to Vaiti, pulling steadily at her cigar, and maintaining the grave, unsmiling demeanour proper to a princess of Atiu and a great Belitani chieftain's daughter, the drawing out of the secret she wanted was as easy as spinning sinnet out of cocoanut husk.
Nothing is private in the Eastern Pacific, and it was not long before all the professor's personal affairs were tossing about like seaweed on the flood of general gossip—mostly unfit for publication—that surged about the apparently uninterested ears of the silent, splendid sea-queen throned on the pile of pandanus mats.... The Siamani (German) had got skulls in Niué, in Uea, in Mangaia, and was now collecting them about the Society group.... He was an ugly, grey-snouted pig to look at, and rooted in the earth like any pig; still, Taous and Mahina, daughters of Falani, seemed to think that—(details lost in a heated argument about the personal characteristics of the ladies).... Anyhow, Vekia from the hills said he was going to buy her two silk dresses from San Francisco when he came back from Falaite Island; so he was not as mean as he looked. Yes, he was going to Falaite Island in a great hurry; he would not even take time to finish his pig-rooting in Raiatea, on account of something he had heard from an old man who had once lived up in Falaite.... What fools the papalangi (whites) were. Did not every one in the Islands know about the old, old people that used to live on Falaite, hundreds of moons before the days of Tuti (Cook), and how they all died, and nobody lived there for very, very long, until some people wandered up from Niué in Tuti's time; and how the skulls of the old, old people were still there, buried in a cave that was a hundred miles long, and guarded by as many devils as would fill twenty war canoes? Of course, these things were known, and always had been—but when would any man of Tahiti or Raiatea have thought of such folly as travelling more than a thousand miles to fight the devils and take away the skulls? What if they were worth money enough to buy a big schooner, as the old grey pig had told Vekia when he promised her those dresses? Would a whole schooner, loaded down with dollars, be any good to a man after the devils had killed him? Vekia would never get her trade finery, for all her airs; and Jacky Te Vaka, whose schooner was to be hired to take the Siamani up to Falaite, would never come back from such a sacrilegious journey.... Why could he not wait, and go by Kapitani Satoni's schooner when she made her yearly trip by and by? Every one knew that the Sipila was under a charm, and no harm could come to any one on board her. But he would not wait, and just as soon as Jacky's boat came back from Bora-Bora, next week, they were to go.... Ahi! and Jacky was such a handsome man—it was a great pity!
Such was the substance of the information gathered by Vaiti. It resulted in her ordering the course of the ship to be changed, and heading direct for Friday Island, instead of going down to Auckland. Friday Island—out of the way, infertile, uninteresting, and little known—had been one of Saxon's private preserves for some years. He touched there once a year, purchased all the copra that the little place produced at his own price, and paid for it in cheap tinned meat, boxes of damaged biscuit, and tins of imitation salmon instead of cash. He seldom went ashore, and certainly did not waste his time cave-hunting, if he did chance to set foot on the beach. Vaiti, with her odd faculty for acquiring miscellaneous information, had known since the first time the Sybil called that there were great caves on the island, and that a devil of unusual quality and size guarded them. So much might have been said of a hundred similar islands, however, and she had not troubled herself about either caves or devils until the German professor's secret set her on the alert for something that looked like a dangerous, exciting, and profitable adventure.
CHAPTER IV
THE BLACK VIRI