The fact that the island was supposed to be uninhabited did not trouble her. She meant to investigate that matter after her own fashion.
She walked all round it first of all. It took her about an hour. There was a nice, white, sandy beach, with straggling bush behind it. There were a good many cocoanuts—all young ones—also a large number of broken trunks, apparently snapped off by a hurricane.
This set Vaiti thinking. It seemed to her that the damage was rather too universal and even to be natural. Yet why should any sane human cut short all his full-grown cocoanuts?
She crossed the island twice at the ends, noting everything with a keen and wary eye. Fairly good soil; nothing growing on it, however, but low scrub and a few berries. In the centre of the island the scrub thickened into dense bush, impenetrable without an axe. No sign of life anywhere.
Vaiti stamped her foot. Was it possible she had been mistaken? Was this indeed just what it seemed, a commonplace, infertile, useless, little mid-ocean islet, let alone because it was worth nothing, and incorrectly described as a reef because no one had ever troubled to examine it? Things began to look like it.
And yet ... she thought—she did not quite know what, but she was very sure that she did not want to leave the island just yet. She would at least climb a tall tree and take a general survey before she gave it up.
Nothing simpler—but there was no such tree.
All the palms were young, or broken off short; all the pandanus trees were in the same condition. There was no rock, no commanding height. She could not get a view.
Vaiti's cheek flushed crimson under its olive brown. The spark was struck at last!
Somebody had cut short those trees—to prevent anyone from climbing up and overlooking the island. The encircling reef would not allow any ship to approach close enough for a look-out at the mast-head to see over the island, except in a very general way. There was something to conceal. What, and where?