In less than half an hour Vaiti came back, swimming the stretch of black water that lay between the Sybil and the shore, to leave the boat ready for the men. Dripping, sparkling, and laughing, she stood up in the dim light of the deck lantern and told the mate and boatswain how the capture had been managed. Tempest, with a sack over his head and his hands and feet bound to a pole, was at that moment being carried up in the dark to the bush village. The inhabitants of the place were to have ten pounds' worth of trade goods promised them to keep him there all night and let him escape in the morning, when they themselves would go off and hide in the impenetrable forests until the man-of-war had sailed away again. In half an hour or so the four natives would be back on board, and they would all sail away round the headland, and leave no evidence of any kind to connect the Sybil with this last unpardonable outrage; for Tempest could not but suppose that the natives who so neatly bagged him as he was philandering along the dark beach with the innocent Vaiti were ordinary hill tribesmen. And, in any case, his sacred person would be taken good care of.
"Then he ain't to be damaged, the little darlin'?" inquired Harris. The question was not an idle one. Every one on board the schooner knew that Vaiti was capable of ugly things at her worst.
The girl laughed—a low, gurgling laugh.
"No. No kill him, no hurt him. I not like," she said, tossing back her wet, wavy hair, with a coquettish gesture that told Harris the woman in Vaiti was fully awake that night, despite the rough and ready adventure on which she was engaged. Harris was no fool, if he was something unsteady in character, and more or less he admired Vaiti himself, which tended to sharpen his sight.
"Good job the dandy leftenant is out of the way," he growled as Vaiti disappeared into the cabin to change. "'Twouldn't take much for 'er to get fancyin' his silly face, after all, and then the fat would be in the fire."
"Well, if you hask me, I don't like none of the 'ole thing from beginnin' to hend," declared the bo'sun, jamming a wad of tobacco viciously into his pipe. "Not the keepin' of the bloomin' niggers, not again runnin' to Coral Bay, nor again this business. Wy? Because I don't, and because it make me smell dirty weather. Give us a light."
Overhead the stars in the velvet sky began to twinkle here and there as the breeze rose and the clouds melted away. An odour of hot, wet jungle drifted out across the bay from the invisible land, and a locust with a rattle exactly like a policeman's whistle burred loudly among the trees. It might have been half an hour, and it might have been more, before something else became audible—something that sounded like a frightened wailing on the shore.
"A—wé! A—a—wé!"
Vaiti came out of her cabin and stood on deck, listening intently.
The sound went on.