Just as the boat was ready to lower away, one of the men let her go with a run, and she struck the water stern first, with a terrible splash. The mate, screaming curses, ran over to the falls and began to abuse the crew. The dinghy was injured, and they had to haul her up and swing out the whaleboat instead.
This took some little time, and Vaiti was forgotten for the moment—a chance that made her heart beat with eagerness to profit by it.
Two ideas held possession of her—that she must plan to secure a boat, and that she must manage to do the Ikurangi some sort of mischief. Was it to be borne that Donahue should go unpaid? The blood of a hundred fierce Island chiefs made answer.
Concerning the boat, she thought she saw a chance. They were bound to stay a day for wood and water, and that should furnish an opportunity. But the other matter?
If she could only get hold of the ship's papers and destroy them! That would be satisfactory. She knew, none better, that a ship's papers are her character, her "marriage-lines" of respectability. Without them a vessel is an illegitimate, furtive creature, every man's hand against her, every official eye turned coldly upon her. Vaiti would have liked very well to get hold of the Ikurangi's.
But, careless as Donahue was, the papers were not to be found in the little deck cabin which he used as a chart-room. Vaiti, disappointed, took one of the charts and began studying the position of the ship, with a view to finding out the name of the island off which they were lying. The chart was almost a blank, nothing being marked upon its wide expanse but a number of reefs and two or three atolls—Bilboa Island, Vaka, Ngamaru—dotted hundreds of miles apart in a naked waste of white. Bilboa, an abandoned guano island, of which she had heard something, seemed to Vaiti the most likely of the three spots. Ngamaru, she knew, had a native population, and about Vaka she could for the moment remember nothing, although she knew she had heard something once upon a time. All this part of the Pacific was far removed from the Sybil's haunts, and indeed from the haunts of any other ship of which Vaiti had ever heard.
It did not seem to be a healthy place for schooners; the reefs round both Vaka and Bilboa were many, and most were marked "Position doubtful." Donahue was evidently not familiar with either place, for the chart was freshly pencilled over with notes and corrections. Vaiti's heart leaped up as she looked at the careless work.... She saw a way.
They were still clearing the lumber out of the whaleboat on deck. No one was watching.
Vaiti took a pencil and rubber, and began to do some artistic alterations on the chart, helped by her knowledge of seamanship. In ten minutes she had converted the innocent piece of parchment into a perfect death-trap, rolled it up and replaced it, put back the rubber and pencil, and slipped out again on deck, where she sat down on a coil of rope and waited.
In another couple of minutes the boat was in the water, and the mate called rudely to Vaiti. She came without a word, covering her face with her dress, and sobbing bitterly. She stumbled as she walked; you would have sworn she was weak, broken in spirit, and utterly helpless.