But the true inwardness of the situation not being apparent, the Alcyone's guests were very frightened indeed.
"P-perhaps if we go away very quietly, they won't f-follow us," said a wealthy young stockbroker, who had retained a little presence of mind, though his teeth were chattering in his head.
"Oh, let us! Victoria, save me! Oh, what shall we do?" wailed the elderly young lady, rushing up the bank and flinging her arms round the mistress of the violated feast. Lady Victoria, though white as her own Belfast linen collar, kept her head fairly well. She saw that Vaiti was not one of the invaders, and called to her. "Do you speak English? What are we to do? Will they kill us?" she asked.
Vaiti walked over to her with the bearing of a stage duchess, and favoured her with a fashionable high handshake that was the one thing wanting to complete the insanity of the whole impossible scene. A new idea had suddenly struck her—a fresh spark of mischief was lit. With an immovable countenance she replied:
"No kill you, I think. Suppose you want go 'way all right by'n-by, very good I think you sit down, eatum dinner alonga those fellow—then they think you all right, let you go home, no kill."
"Oh, Victoria, anything to please them!" sobbed the elderly young lady.
"Yes—a—I think we'd better do anything we can to get into their good graces, since we're not armed," submitted the stockbroker.
Vaiti exchanged a few words with the Tannese. She explained that these white people had come a long way, and were very hungry. The Melanesian has not many virtues, but hospitality is certainly one of them; and a man who may be planning to dine off you himself tomorrow will certainly not refuse you half of his own leaf of yams to-day. The Tannese were delighted at the chance of sharing their good fortune with the white chiefs, even in spite of the latter's extremely silly manners, and they beckoned to them at once to come and sit down.
Thereafter took place a scene incapable of description by mortal pen. The chief took his head out of the turkey, chewed off a leg, and grinningly handed it to Lady Victoria. The young warrior got off the pie, disembowelled it with one scoop of the hand that had not known water "for ten moons," and laid its interior in the elderly young lady's lap. Another knowingly poured out a champagne glass of Worcester sauce and handed it to the stockbroker, while the much-bitten lump of mutton that was at that moment circling from mouth to mouth, native-fashion, was hospitably passed on to all the whites. Driven by fear, they tried to swallow something; choked in the effort, made futile remarks to each other, laughed nervous laughs, and all the time watched with eyes of utmost apprehension the dusky hosts who were thus entertaining them with their own audaciously ravished goods. And above the crazy party the burning Tanna sun beat down, and the great volcano-cone far across the plain smoked and thundered.
It had been Vaiti's design to dismiss them in peace by and by, assured that their compliance had saved their lives, and anxious to make steam out of Sulphur Bay as soon as was reasonably possible. Fate, however, reserved a more dramatic ending to the entertainment, And it was "all along of" that talking-man.