"Breakers on the port bow!" sang out Harris.
Vaiti was up in a minute.
"I t'row water on my father's head," she said coolly—"but no good; he too much sick, he see snake by and by, I think. You and Oki carry him into him cabin, and come back pretty quick. I see this t'rough myself."
"See what?" demanded the mate, on the last verge of frenzy.
"Not know myself yet," answered Vaiti, giving one of her rare laughs. She seemed in a very good humour for once.
When the mate came out a little later, and the sailor went back to the neglected wheel, Vaiti was standing by the whale-boat, wearing an air of perfect self-possession and a complete suit of her father's white ducks. The sight was no novelty to Harris, but it came upon him now, as usually, with a new shock of admiration.
"Isn't she an outrighter!" he observed to the unsympathetic bo'sun.
"She certainly is, if outrighter's French for an undacent young woman," replied that officer sourly. Harris did not hear him, for the significance of the morning's mystery had just burst on his mind. He had not spent ten years in the Pacific for nothing and the sight of Tai, a diver from Penrhyn, standing beside Vaiti, with a water-glass in his hand, spelt "pearl-shell" to the eyes of the mate as clearly as if the magic word had been printed in letters three feet long. Vaiti flashed her white teeth at him.
"Tai, me, three boys, we go into lagoon," she said. "Suppose somethings happen, you find course for Apia written out, cabin table; you take ship back, put captain in hospital."
"By ——, but you're a corker, Vaiti!" cried Harris admiringly. "Where'd you hear anything about the Delgadas? No ship goes near them that can help it; they're a regular ocean cemetery."