He did not get it. The traders one and all burst out laughing. The story of the doubloons, they told him, was a very old one in the island, and only the newest of new chums thought of believing it. It was quite true that the natives, who were perfect magpies for hoarding, did possess among them a certain number of doubloons, which came from God-knows-where—for the coinage used in the island was British—and true also that the trader would get a doubloon from one of them every now and then in the course of business, always with some mystery attached to it, and some reluctance to part with the coin. But the Resident Commissioner, who knew the island pretty well, and the missionary too, had long been certain that the store was merely the remains of some ship-wrecking raid of past days, about which the Niuéans were now ashamed to speak. They were great misers, and it would like enough be another generation before all the hoarded coins had come to light and passed through the traders' hands. But hidden treasure in Niué! Pf! If old Sona had been giving away money, he must be either going mad with age or (more likely) up to something. He was the cutest old fox on Niué, and that was saying something. Why, when he had come into that very store to buy a darning-needle a few hours ago (what a man who lived in a waist-cloth and nothing else wanted with a darning-needle he hadn't explained), it had been all the trader could do to prevent his picking up half-a-dozen odds and ends. That was what he was like if one ever took an eye off him; and he wouldn't even pay for the needle, either, till the trader had threatened to hammer him unless he forked out. Take his word for it, if Sona had been giving away money, he meant to have it back—somehow. And the treasure was poppy-cock.
Donahue had now passed into the quarrelsome stage, and he rose with tipsy dignity from his seat.
"I considdle you no gennlemen," he said scornfully. "For half a Chile dorrer I'd" ... He mentioned what he would do, in gross and in detail, to the assembled company for the small sum mentioned.
"Kick the dirty brute out," said the Alofi trader disgustedly. "It's easy to see what sort of company that carrion has kept."
Donahue was gone, however—gone with surprising agility, and lurching rapidly up the forest pathway towards his house. His legs were always the last thing to fail him.
He knew very well that he had had too much, and when he reached his hut he proceeded to sober himself by dipping his head repeatedly in a bucket of water. Then he brewed himself a powerful jorum of black tea, drank it, and set off considerably sobered.
It was a long way to the clump of palms, and he stumbled badly now and then as he went over the graves that lay thick about the edges of the path. Burial along the high-road is very popular in Niué, where they like to keep an eye on their dead and see that they are lying quiet in their graves—a thing that no one considers at all a matter of course. Some of the graves that Donahue passed had felt hats laid upon them; others had plates, bowls, bottles of hair-oil, fans—all to amuse the ghost and keep it quiet; and one or two looked ghostly enough to scare a nervous person as it was, with the wraith-like mosquito curtains thoughtfully suspended over the tomb by mourning and anxious relatives. Every grave was completed by a solid mass of concrete, weighing anything from several hundredweight to a ton. It was not the fault of any Niuéan if his dead relatives "walked."
Donahue as he went chuckled to himself at the thought of his keenness in over-reaching the old witch-doctor. He had used him for his own purposes through the girl Mata before, and though that had not worked out too well, it was the witch-doctor who bore the discredit, not he. He would use him again now, and in another way. It was in the daytime that Sona had arranged to meet him at the palm-tree clump. At night, he said, it would be certain death; and even in daylight no one would linger there who could help it. He at least would never dare to disturb the big tomb in which the money was hidden and call down the anger of the devils on himself, unless he had a white man with him who feared nothing. So next morning, very early, the white man who was so brave would meet him, and they would open the big, cracked tomb together—the tomb that no Niuéan had ever dared to lay a finger on before, though there were one or two besides himself who suspected that it was just there the mysterious foreign coins had come from years ago, and that there were a good many left.
Thus the witch-doctor. And Donahue had assented eagerly, and gone off with his earnest money. And, on arriving at his hut, he had looked out an old axe that he possessed, and cleaned up his lamp, and begged a drop of oil from the nearest native house. For he meant to go that very night, and take everything there was for himself. Who was to prove it?
Which was just the course of action that Sona had calculated very confidently on his taking.