"It's lucky you made friends with her," remarked my uncle quizzically, when Raita was gone; "I should dislike to have that young lady for an enemy! Well, if she doesn't forget that axe, I'll do my best to entertain her!"
XII
"BOARDERS!"
The sun went down that night behind banks of crimson clouds, which grew black as twilight gave place to darkness and blotted out the young moon sinking in the west. The evening was calm, but the night promised to be a stormy one. The Tara still lay broadside to the beach and a close watch informed us that Tua had not left the islet. My time had come.
Our chief concern was to make no sound which might give the alarm to the sharp ears of the savage on watch. Pulling together the curtains of the lower berth and muffling the operation in blankets to avoid the slightest noise, we tore a sheet into strips and braided a length of clumsy cord. Then in the upper berth my uncle knotted our rope to one of my ankles, and very gently and cautiously I began to squirm my way out through the porthole. It was a tighter fit than I had supposed; after a twist or two it seemed to me that I could neither move forward nor go back. I was naked save for a pair of swimming trunks, and several square inches of my skin remained on the porthole's sharp brass rim, but at last I was through, hanging by one leg with my head and arms in the water. Knowing that the least splash would bring Kwala instantly to the side, my uncle lowered me little by little into the lagoon, until I lay motionless in the black water and the end of the cord fell into my outstretched hand. I undid the knot, heard Uncle Harry's faintly breathed "Good luck!" and dove without a sound. It was not yet fully dark and I feared that the black man's eyes might discern my head in the reflections of the sunset. Thirty yards nearer the shore I rose to the surface and expelled the breath gently from my lungs. All was quiet aboard the Tara. I had neither been seen nor heard.
I landed under an overhanging thicket of hibiscus, in a little cove where Marama and I kept our canoe hauled up. There were no lights in the doorways that I passed, but when I came to Maruia's house I found the population of the islet assembled there, women and children outside and the divers in the house, surrounding Maruia and Schmidt's mate who sat in earnest conversation on the floor. The light of a lamp shone on the pair and I saw that Tua's face wore an expression of dejection and perplexity. A murmur of astonishment went up as I arrived, and indeed I must have presented a strange appearance—wet, nearly naked, bleeding in a dozen places. Maruia rose and put an arm about me, patting my bare shoulder softly.
"Ah, Tehare," she said, "you have escaped from that wicked man—that is good. And Seroni, your uncle?" I told her how we had been imprisoned in the stateroom, and how I had escaped through the porthole, too small for the broader shoulders of a man. Then I asked for news of Marama.
"He is here," she answered, leading me to her bed, screened off with mats in a corner of the spacious room; "see, he sleeps, and we must not wake him. He followed the western shore on foot, hastening to warn Seroni, but when he came here it was too late. His feet are cut to ribbons by the coral and the sun has given him a fever; I have bandaged his wounds and brewed a tea of herbs. But come—there are other things of which we must speak." She led me back through the crowd and pointed to Tua.
"This man is my foster son," she said, "a good man, but he serves an evil master. He brings us a message from that German that we must go to the far end of the islet while our shell and Seroni's is carried away. Tua is greatly troubled in his mind. He has signed papers and the white man's laws are strict. Furthermore those men are fierce and wary; they are armed with rifles, while we have none. What are we to do?"
I turned to the mate. "Saving Schmidt and the black and Rairi," I asked him, "are the others of the Cholita's crew good men?"