"Don't sound 'olesome," observed Harris thoughtfully.
"Now, don't you get to thinkin', for you ain't built that way, and you'll do yourself a mischief," said the boatswain warningly. "And let's be thankful to 'eaven for all its mercies, say I, that we've got such a nice, warm, dry, convenient night for to go and get drunk in."
CHAPTER X
WHAT CAME OF THE PARIS DRESS
The effects of Saxon's illness in Fiji were a long time in wearing off. It was many weeks after Vaiti had come back to the Sybil, flushed with importance and with the lionising she had received on the cable-ship—many weeks after the voyage to the unknown island and the visit to San Francisco—that he took ill again; not very seriously, but badly enough to prevent his going to sea. Of course, the time was an awkward one. They were off Niué, and there was copra waiting to be taken to Raratonga for the steamer—copra which would certainly be secured by some other schooner if Saxon did not take it at the promised date. Neither Harris nor Gray knew enough to be trusted with the ship, and he did not much care about letting Vaiti sail her—not because he doubted his fiery daughter's ability or desire, but because, rash as he was himself at times, he knew her to be still worse. He had seen her run the Sybil in the trough of the very last swell alongside a barrier reef for miles, sailing all the time so close to the wind that the shifting of a single point would have meant destruction. He had heard her raving about the deck in half a gale as they swept up to the iron-bound coast of Niué, abusing Harris in the strongest of beach talk because he had not another main topsail in the locker to replace the two that had just carried away one after the other and battered themselves to ribbons—the principal ground of her complaint being apparently the fact that she considered herself labouring under a social disadvantage of the most mortifying kind because the schooner was obliged to come up to Niué for the very first time without all sails set. He had seen her perform tricks of steering, getting in and out of Avarua in Raratonga (a perfect death-trap of a port at times, as all old islanders know), that "fairly gave him the jim-jams," to use his own phraseology.... No, on the whole he thought he would rather miss that fright than lie idle in the trader's house at Avatele, and think daily and nightly of the cranky though light-heeled Sybil out upon the high seas in Vaiti's sole command.
This being so, it was natural and inevitable that Vaiti should set her heart upon going and carry out her desire. She did not make any trouble about the matter; neither was she at all unkind to the invalided owner of the ship. On the contrary, she paid the trader's wife more than that kindly woman wanted, to take good care of her father while she should be away, bought him everything decent to eat that the island contained (which was saying very little), indulgently presented him with a demijohn of whisky, and then informed him, in the coolest manner in the world, that the copra was all loaded, the stores and water on board, and the schooner ready to sail next day, under her command.
Saxon swore at large first of all, then stormed at Vaiti, and finally began a pathetic lament over his own helpless position and the heartlessness of his only child. Vaiti, sitting cross-legged on the end of his bed, smoked a big cigar through it all and looked out of the window. When he stopped at last, fairly run out, she laughed and handed him a weed out of her own case and a match.
"You take'm that, no speak nonsense. You know me, what?" she demanded; and Saxon, who was not in reality nearly as ill as he thought himself, laughed, and allowed himself to be won over.
Having gained her point, Vaiti went off again to the schooner through the wonderful pink dusk that wraps a South Sea island at sunset, and left the captain to hold commune with his demijohn and sleep.
As she walked down to the shore, she heard a sound of laughing and the rustle of many dresses among the palms close at hand. Now in Niué it is an important matter that brings people out of evenings, because, although the island has been Christianised long ago, like all the rest of the Eastern Pacific, it still suffers from a perfect plague of heathen ghosts that no amount of Sunday church-goings and week-day pious exercises seem to affect in the least. So the natives are afraid to go out of their houses after sunset, lest uncanny things should rise out of the forest to spring upon the wayfarer's back unseen and choke him. This Vaiti knew, so she suspected something of interest in the little crowd, and turned aside to look. If she had not, there had been no story to tell about Niué and the happenings there.