"There was a young lieutenant of Hussars, a Pole—you don't know what that is, but the Russians don't like them, I can tell you—a noble, but a very small one; not fit to black Junia's boots, according to their notions. Well, he bolted with her. It was in the Sydney papers, time I was in the Solomons; the paper came up to Guadalcanar.... She must have been twenty then; just the year the marriage to the Czarewitch was to have come off.... They bolted—cleared out—never seen again. All Russia on the boil about it; no one knew but what they'd hatch up plots against the throne, she having a better claim than any one else, if it hadn't been for the law against empresses. The secret police were after them for years, but they were never traced, though most people knew Russia'd give a pretty penny to know where they were——"
"O man with the head of a fruit-bat, do you not see?" interrupted Vaiti at this juncture. "They hid on that island—they may be there still. It is worth a hundred treasures!"
"The Pole was a great traveller, and had a sort of a little yacht," said Saxon thoughtfully. "It might be true, of course—if there is an island, and if the Nalolo Johnnie had any idea of where it was, and if nobody found them out and split years ago. Plenty of 'ifs.'"
"I think him all-right good enough," averred Vaiti, returning to English and prose. "By'n-by we finish F'lisco, then we go see, me and you."
CHAPTER IX
THE LOST ISLAND
Some two or three months later, the schooner might have been seen, like a white-winged butterfly lost at sea, beating up and down before a solitary, low, green island lying far east of the lonely Paumotus. Vaiti, sitting on the top of the deck-house, was examining the land through a glass. The native crew were all on deck; also Harris and Gray, the mate and bo'sun. Captain Saxon was not to be seen.
"The old man always do get squiffy at the wrong time, don't he?" commented Harris, rather gleefully.
Gray spat over the rail for reply.
"You're ratty because you don't know nothing, ain't you?" he said.