"Pretty near any thin', take it by and large, but one meanin's all we want, and that's the notion they have that these chiefs can sort of blast 'em with a curse, so's they'll go away and die. Like as if I was a chief, and you was a common man, same as you are, anyhow, and I was to say, 'Gray, you go off out of this and die next Thursday at four bells in the afternoon watch.' And you says to me, says you, 'Ay, ay, sir,' says you."
"Blowed if I would," ejaculated the bo'sun.
"Yes, you would, you chump, because you'd be a bloomin' native, and they always does. So off you'd go, and when Thursday come you'd lie down and die at four bells, wherever you happened to be."
"Wot of?"
"Nothin'—you'd run down like a watch—sort of 'stop short never to go again' business, like the grandfather's clock—and when you was dead you'd stay dead. That's all."
"And I never 'eard worse rot in all me days," said the bo'sun disgustedly. "Think I'm going to believe all that?"
"Who cares what you believes or what you don't?" demanded Harris, "You'll —— well see all about it soon enough. Vaiti she says they says Mata went to the witch-doctor, who they're as much afraid of as any chief in Niué, for all they're by way of bein' Christian, and he cursed them up and down and inside and out, worst style, and says they're all to die by sunset, to-night. And if I knows anything of natives they'll do it. I'll lay you, we got to work the ship up to Raratonga ourselves—if we ever get there. Of all the low-down, mean skinks that ever walked, them natives are the worst. They haven't a blessed scrap of consideration in them for anyone but themselves. Here we are with every man-jack of these fellows got an advance on his wages, and they says they're going to die! Die! I've no patience with them. I do hate selfishness and meanness."
CHAPTER XII
BREAKING THE MANA
Vaiti all this time had been steadily watching the men as they lay about on the main-deck in various attitudes of limp resignation. One or two—notably the emotional Shalli—were already beginning to look ill. Matters looked badly enough for the Sybil. It was in the hurricane season, and signs were not wanting that the calm would break up with energy when it did break. If the crew persisted in their dying, other people who had not been in any way subjected to the witch-doctor's operations might find it incumbent on them to die too. She did not for a moment doubt the Niuéan's power to slay. Had she not more than once seen the queen, who was her own cousin, politely dismiss some offender with the significant remark, "I wish I may never see you again after to-morrow" (for the queen was always courteous, and would never have used the crude terms of a Niuéan witch-doctor); and had not every one on the island known that with the next evening's sunset the wretch would lay him down and die as surely as the dark would fall? These men were doomed, and the ship would miss the steamer and the cargo would not be sold, and possibly the schooner would be lost in the blow that was creeping up, and none of them would ever go home any more.