The meaning became sufficiently clear as soon as the boat approached the ship, but not through the medium of eye or ear. A strong stench of rotting fish struck the mate's nostrils almost before the boat was within hail, and instantly enlightened him. No one who has ever smelt the terrible smell of the pearl-oyster removed from its ocean bed, and left to putrefy in a tropical sun, can mistake the odour. Harris understood at once that the strange ship had been there before, and that Vaiti was bringing back a sample of the last catch, left out to rot during the vessel's temporary absence.
The Sybil was leaping dangerously when the boat came alongside, but Vaiti snatched at the lowered rope, and swung herself up over the bulwarks before any of the native crew. Tai, following her, brought a sack of hideously smelling carrion, and dumped it down on the deck. The mate's eyes glistened.
"I find great lot lying on reef," said Vaiti, with an apparent calmness that might have deceived any one who knew her less accurately than the mate. "I think been there two week. C'lismas Island, he one week away, good weather. Papalangi C'lismas Island belong plenty diving gear. You see?"
"Rather!" said Harris gloomily. "Game up, eh?"
"I think you no man at all," spat Vaiti suddenly, swinging into the cabin. Harris, not especially put out, gave a hand to hauling in the boat, remarking to the bo'sun, who was picking over the heap of decaying pearl-shell, "Don't know as one could say the same about her, lump of solid devilment that she is! But this looks like the end of all our 'opes, as they say in the plays; don't it?"
In a minute or two Vaiti appeared again, wearing a dignified muslin gown with three frills on its tail, and holding a chart in her hands. She eyed the horizon narrowly, and ordered the ship to be put about, a manoeuvre which headed the Sybil straight for the oncoming sail. It was now evident that the stranger ship was a schooner of some eighty or ninety tons, rather larger than the Sybil, and nearly as fast. No one on board had the smallest doubt of her mission, even had that rotting heap of shell not been there to offer evidence. Pearl-shell lagoons, with their shell worth £100 to £200 per ton, and their pearls (if any are found, which is not always certain) worth a fortune for half a handful, are the gold mines of the South Sea world; the very birds of the sea seem at times to carry the news of such a discovery, and spread it far and wide.
The Sybil gathered way, and sped fast towards the stranger ship. The sea was blackening and rising, but there was not very much wind as yet. Vaiti sat cross-legged on the deck, studying her chart in the waning light of the gusty afternoon. It was some minutes before she laid it down and stood up to speak, steadying herself with one hand against the deck-house, for the schooner was now rolling heavily.
"Alliti," she said, "suppose you got heart one small fowl inside you, I get captain's Winchester, my levolver, you and bosun's levolver, and we send that people Davy Jones, or go ourself, pretty quick. But you not got heart, though you big man, and old man he all time sick. Now, you listen too much what I tell you. You run alongside ship, you go on board. You say captain sick, no one take sun, we get off course, nearly wreck on Delgadas. Then you ask captain give bearings reef, and you look at him chart too much careful, see if this line mark—here."
She put the point of her small forefinger on the chart she held, and showed two or three newly-ruled lines in red ink, enclosing a large space east and south of Samoa. These were the boundaries of the area lately annexed by New Zealand, and she was exceedingly anxious to know if the stranger knew as much about the significance of that matter as she did.
"Then," she went on, "you ask him if he been Wellington, say we wanting news——"