"Quit lookin' at her, ye —— fool, and give me a light for me poipe. Talk easy, can't you.... Why, she knows more navigation than most men that's got a master's ticket, and she's as vain of it as a paycock. And that's how I'll have her. Always get a woman t'rough her consate, me boy, especially if her eyes are too sharp in common. That'll pull the wool over them when nothing else will."
"When I was in Callao——" began the mate, with an evil chuckle.
"Leave Callao be now; you can tell me about her another time. Well, you understand about Saxon's girl, I hope? She's to navigate us on the trip, because nayther you nor I knows enough for a cruisin' job like this, and the old chap himself is pretty general drunk—that's the way I put it—and shares with what we find, and the ould divil himself to come along, just for propriety, and in case of a fight with the owners. Oh, a nate yarn, and she shwallowed it down like a cat atin' butter. She's comin' on boord to-night, to see the necklashe and look over the chart I've marked. She'll not bring ould Saxon, for she's feared of nayther man nor divil, and I'll bet she thinks to get the bearin's of the place off of me and chate me out of it after all."
"And how the h—— do you think she's going to believe that you give the show away before the ship sails? Her teeth wasn't cut yesterday, by all we know."
"Faith, and we do know!" muttered the captain, with a horrible undercurrent of oaths. "And she'll know, by —— she will! I'd slit the throat of her, if it wasn't for the other bit of divarsion we've planned."
"Say you've planned," interrupted the mate darkly. "I call it bad work, whether she was man, woman, or child; but you're my master."
"And you're a plashter saint, ain't you?" sneered the captain. "Let's have no more of your chat; we know each other a —— sight too well. As for the chart, she'll think we don't mean to give it away till she and her father is under sail with us, but she'll come on the chance of sneaking it out somehow. And when we've got her aboard, why—lave it to me! Ould Saxon's hell-cat daughter won't take no more pearl-shell beds from us or any one else."
"You ain't afraid of her knowing who we are?"
"How would she, then? The Ikurangi isn't the Margaret Macintyre—bad luck to her who brought me down to such a tub, after ownin' the finest auxiliary in Auckland!—and she never seen you or me till to-day. No, it's all right. That's enough jaw; you go aboard, and attend to you know what, and then send off the boat for her and me."
Vaiti, curly classic head on slender hand, still watched from her corner.