"Ain't we off our course, just!" he said, drawing his finger down the chart.
"No," said Vaiti.
"Why, hang it all, Cap"—the girl was accorded the title, half in fun, half through habit, a good deal oftener than her father—"we ain't making for the Delgada reefs, are we? I don't pretend to be any navigator, but I do know the course for Papeëte."
"What you think not matter," said Vaiti, rolling up the chart. "Make him eight bell. You go take wheel; I ki-ki [dinner], then I take him."
"What's the course?" demanded the mate eagerly.
"Nor'-west by west," answered Vaiti, going into her cabin, and slamming the door against Harris's open-mouthed questions.
An Aitutaki boy with a chain of red berries in his hair, and a scarlet and yellow "pareo" (kilt) for all clothing, brought up the dinner. Vaiti ate her meal alone, and then came on deck to take over the wheel, keeping a determined silence that Harris hardly cared to break.... And yet—Nor'-west by west, with the wind fair for distant Papeëte, and the deadly Delgadas lying about a quarter point off their present course, not ten miles away!
"She's a hard case, bo'sun," he remarked to that official as they sat down together. "She has me fair scared with the course she's steering; and yet, you may sling me over the side in a shotted hammock for the sharks'es ki-ki, if she don't know a lot more than the old man himself. Ain't she a daisy, too! Look at her there 'olding the wheel, as upright as a cocoanut palm, and as pretty and plump as a—as a——"
"Porker," concluded the bo'sun, pouring an imperial pint of tea into his mug.
"You ain't got no poetry in you," said the mate disgustedly.