"You are the owner," growled he, "and if you choose to butt my boats on the reefs it is your responsibility, Madame Gilbert."
"Willatopy is a first-rate pilot," said she. "I will trust the boats with him."
The Skipper swore under his breath. "It is not my boats I think of, but of your foolishness, Madame. You will spoil that Moor until he gets outside of himself, and then you will be sorry for the rest of your life. Once a savage always a savage. He is a grand pilot of the Straits, because he has lived in them and sailed them all his life. But in everything else he is a naked savage. Go away fishing if you please; you will be safe with my men."
Ching turned sulkily away. He grudged Willatopy that local knowledge of the Coral Sea which he would never have opportunity to accumulate for himself, and above all he grudged him Madame's undisguised favours. Madame landed a parting dig in the middle of the Skipper's back.
"Willatopy may be a Moor," said she, "whatever a Moor may be. But you can't look him in the eyes and protest that he isn't a Toppys." That was the worst of the poor Skipper's troubles. He had served the Family for twenty-five years, he had all the Devon man's respect for the landed gentry of his native county, and he was subjected almost nightly to the veiled hints of Alexander Ewing. Why had Madame Gilbert sailed for the Torres Straits, and did she and Sir John know that the Willatopy whom they had found was there waiting to be found? It was not only the naked savagery of Willatopy which made Captain Ching long to destroy him.
Madame, the girls, and Willatopy went forth to the yacht in the dinghy, passing the bar at nearly high water, and there joined the procession of boats which lay waiting for them. The second engineer took charge of the motor engine, Willatopy himself grasped the tiller, Joy and Cry bubbling with eagerness to travel in a "buzz boat," clambered into the bows, and the adventurers set forth for the Great Barrier, which a page or two back I have ventured to describe. It was early morning. The sun shone as it shone every day throughout that gracious southern winter. Its rays had a shrewd bite in them which one never feels in the moist English summer, so that Madame never ventured to confront them at high noon without the protection of a helmet. The wind was blowing up from the south-east as it always did, freshening every moment, and urging on the tireless Pacific rollers. The string of boats rose and fell as Willatopy drove them across the swell, and every now and then a wave would break over the bows, and the warm salt spray lash across the faces of the passengers. Madame Gilbert, in her bathing dress and thin trench coat, was equipped to laugh at the lashing of salt water, and the skins of the half-castes glistened as it soaked into them. Willatopy at a hint from Madame—though he raised his eyebrows in surprise—had put on the holiday trousers of Thursday Island. But he warned her that when the serious business of fishing called for his professional attention, the absurd usages of civilisation would go scat.
"That is right," explained Madame, "in the water. But on land or in a boat you should be dressed—slightly. Your father was an English gentleman, Willatopy."
"My father said," quoted Willatopy, "without clothes there is no curiosity. Sin came into the world with clothes."
"Yes," drawled Madame. "But that was a long time ago. And sin having come we have got to put up with it. I prefer you in trousers, Willatopy."
"As my lady pleases," said he, and Madame started. It was a strange sentence to come from so very dark a mouth, and she wondered where he had heard it. Then she remembered that it was Marie's English formula in acknowledgment of an instruction. Willatopy never came to her tent without invitation, and, so far as she knew, had never met Marie except in the officers' mess of the yacht. Where could he have heard her use just that phrase? Had Marie, in her clandestine French fashion, constituted herself the instructress of Willatopy in polite usages as she herself understood them? Violet lightning began to flash from Madame's eyes, and she determined to be very watchful of the movements of that maid of hers. Ever since her confidential talk with Grant of Thursday Island she had felt that the presence of Marie in the yacht and on the Island was a danger. Marie was a promiscuous little she-devil wholly devoid of moral scruples. If in defiance of Madame's warning she indulged her esoteric tastes for Willatopy's brown skin and bright blue eyes, grave mischief might be done before it could be stopped. "If she does," murmured Madame, through her gritting teeth, "I will send her back to France to be shot. And I will give myself the pleasure of attending her execution. There is no weak masculine softness about me."