No! Vaiti, sitting cross-legged on the netted vines and staring grimly out to sea, then and there took resolve that such a fate should not be hers.... Sharks were uncertain, if you really wanted them; but the stick of dynamite she had taken from the mate's cabin was safe and sure. If she failed in using it for the special purpose she had planned, she would put it in her mouth and light the fuse.... There would be no more trouble after that. And as for the flies—one did not feel them, of course, when one was dead.
All the same, she did not mean to die if she could avoid it, and, as the first step towards helping herself, she knocked some nuts off a young palm, and took her breakfast off the refreshing water and juicy meat. Then she cut a length of bush rope, looped it round the tallest palm in sight, and set her feet inside the loop, so that she could work herself up to the top of the tree, monkey-on-stick fashion, leaning against the rope. When she got into the crown of the palm she knelt among the leaves, holding on tightly, and looked right and left over the island.
It was a pure atoll, an irregular circle of feather palms lying on the sea like a great green garland set afloat. The inner lagoon was several square miles in extent, but the land was not more than a few hundred yards wide at any point, and there was no soil to speak of. The palms, the scanty, pale green scrub, the mop-headed pandanus trees, the trailing creepers, all sprang out of pure white coral gravel and sand. The scene was lovely as only a coral atoll can be—the jewel-green water of the inner lagoon, shaded with vivid reflections of lilac and pale turquoise, the stately circled palms, the wide, white beach enclasping all the island like a frame of purest pearl, the burning blue of the surrounding sea, all combined to form a picture bright as fairyland and sparkling as an enamelled gem set upon a velvet shield.
But Vaiti, while she saw and admired the loveliness of the scene, also recognised its barrenness as only an islander could. No fruit, no roots, little fresh water—nothing, in fact, but cocoanut and pandanus kernels, eked out by a little fish.... The lepers must often go hungry.
The hot day turned suddenly chill as Vaiti recalled those blind, snatching, handless arms. They came of a cannibal race, these Vaka folk. What if she had not waked? What if, wearied as she well might be, she slept too long and too soundly in the night that was to come?
CHAPTER VII
THE TURNING OF THE TABLES
She looked narrowly about the island, hoping to discover the place where the lepers lived. A cluster of small, miserable huts, on the far side of the lagoon, attracted her attention. It seemed not more than half a mile from the spot where she had spent the night. The best fishing grounds she judged, by the look of the shore, to be near the village. She was therefore, no doubt, several miles from their usual haunts.
So far, so good. Where was the schooner? It lay to her left about a mile out at sea, close to a small, uninhabited, sandy islet. Vaiti supposed that the men were cutting wood and looking for water. She saw one or two black dots on the shore, recognisable by their blue dungaree clothing, and strained her eyes eagerly to see if the dinghy had been pulled up on the sand, for in this lay her only chance. If they brought the boat up on the beach, to repair her where wood could be had without going to the atoll itself (Vaiti would have wagered that the Ikurangi did not carry a splinter outside of the galley fuel), then the schooner would probably stop overnight. In that case she could carry out her plans. Otherwise ... there was always the dynamite.
The dinghy was ashore, drawn well up on the beach.