She looked it, as she stood there in that livid light, her arms stretched high to heaven, her voice—was there ever a voice so full of passion, prophecy, command?—ringing out, now high, now low, now in tones vibrating with some subtle suggestion of horror that caused even the uncomprehending whites upon the poop to feel a cold shudder about the region of the spine. Upon the crew the effect was marvellous, yet, from Gray's and Harris's point of view, unsatisfactory as well. The limp figures sat up, it was true, wept afresh, and even rose to their feet before long; but it was only to rush wildly up and down the heaving deck, driven, it seemed, by the sting of an agony greater than any they had suffered yet. Above the loose sails thundered and the wind wailed wickedly.
Gray, at a motion from the mate, went to the idle wheel and grasped the spokes. The Sybil would want watching soon.
"Strike me pink if this isn't the craziest ship's company outside a lunertic asylum from Yokohama to the 'Orn," muttered the bo'sun to himself. "Now, what the 'ell is that? Ho, Jemmy Gray, why don't you look for a berth as a bally stoker in a bally Red Sea liner, or a supercargo on a Chinese pirate junk, and 'ave a quiet life at your age? Here, Mr. 'Arris, you going to let 'er shoot 'erself before your heyes?"
Vaiti had plucked out her revolver again, but instead of threatening the crew with it, she was holding it close to her own curly head, all the time pouring forth a river of eloquent Maori, strongly charged with adjurations and threats. It needed no translation to understand so much, not to see the abject if inexplicable terror of the crew, who cowered and howled in an extremity of distress every time she raised the pistol to her head.
"Vaiti, Vaiti! What're you doing, Cap?" yelled Harris. "You'll shoot yourself! Are you crazy? What are you givin' 'em, for Cord's sake?"
Vaiti turned round, and cried angrily at him:
"Hold 'm tongue! You no leave me myself, very quick I shooting you. I tell those men I great chief, no one can take 'um curse away, but can come 'long all those men myself, suppose they die—go Raratonga when 'um night come, an' all those man soul he running quick, quick, all a-cold, 'long those mountains top Raratonga where 'um dead man he go to jumping-off place. A—a—h! I put one bullet in head belong me, very quick, suppose those men they got dam cheek go an' die. I coming, very dead, very angry, I go 'long that soul, all a-time; no let 'um rest, no let 'um see woman fliend, die long time ago—I take big club belong chief, make 'um run, cry, all-a-time—no sleep, no eat, no lie down! A—a—h! no go heaven, no go hell, all-a-time, for ever'n ever, Amen. I pay him out for going die!"
She stormed through the brief speech like a hot-season squall, and instantly returned to the natives. Harris, struck dumb by the entirely unprecedented nature of the situation, could find no vent for his feelings save in plucking off his cap and casting it under his feet. She was threatening the crew that she would kill herself if they died; follow them to the land of shades (the entrance to which was popularly supposed to be over the edge of a certain desolate, far-up mountain precipice in Raratonga), and make it so hot for them in the "otherwhere" that they would certainly wish they hadn't dared to die.... What on earth was a man to do in a ship commanded by a thing—he could not call it a woman—that talked like that—with night coming on, too, and something very like a bad blow unpleasantly near?
Vaiti did not leave him long in doubt as to what he was to do. The crew, driven previously to the verge of frenzy by her gruesome threats, became entirely frantic during the eloquent peroration that followed her address to Harris. They ran up and down the deck; they shrieked, they prayed, they besought. Vaiti, with the eye of a hunter watching a quarry almost driven to bay, kept a keen look-out through all her fiery eloquence, and just at the moment when the men seamed driven to the highest point of human endurance, turned to the mate with a triumphant cry.
"Now, Alliti! he all right by'n-by: I no shoot myself, I think. You and bo'sun you get rope's end very quick, give 'um order shorten sail, make 'um go. I think he go; he too much plenty frighten die 'long me."