When the long-boat was swung overboard and brought alongside, sounds of scrambling feet came up the companion-ladder, and next moment the captain, carpenter, and two of the crew appeared, bearing the rough coffin which the carpenter had managed to knock together. With some difficulty it was lowered into the boat, and then, the captain steering, Juanita sitting beside him, and two of the hands pulling, they set out for the shore.
Unlike most approaches to the island, the deep water extended right up; consequently the boat was able to discharge its burden on the beach without much difficulty. Having landed, they marched to the grave, situated beneath a grove of cocoa-nut trees, some hundred yards from the shore. The captain, whom Nature seemed to have designed for the work, delivered a short but impressive address, and then the remains of Marcos Veneda were committed to the ground.
To Juanita it was all a whirl. She could not realize that the man had passed out of her life—that he whom she had admired for his strength in Chili was now an inanimate substance on Vanua Lava. The whole thing had been so sudden that she had had no time to prepare herself for the shock. Yesterday he was triumphant in all the consciousness of living; to-day he was only a memory, a part of the mysterious, irreclaimable Past!
The funeral over they returned to the schooner, which at sundown weighed anchor, and resumed her voyage to Thursday Island. It certainly seemed as if Veneda was to be the last victim of the malady, for not another soul was attacked.
The following morning, after breakfast, the captain escorted Juanita to the vacant cabin, and handed her the dead man's goods and chattels. With a well-simulated air of grief she bore them to her own berth, in order to examine them. They made only a small parcel, but hunt through them as she would, no sign of either letter or locket could she find. The contents were simple in the extreme—a few clothes, a pocket-book containing twenty pounds in English gold, a tattered Horace, a knife, a ring, and a few little personal odds and ends, completed the total. Waiting her opportunity, she again approached the captain on the subject of the locket, but he had only the same answer for her.
"What he had on him, ma'am," he solemnly declared, "I reckoned was his own property, and left there; so the locket you speak of is under three foot of earth now, back there in Vanua Lava; meaning no disrespect to you, ma'am."
This was all the information Juanita could gather on the subject. Nor did she press the matter further. Fortunately her own immediate comfort was provided for by the twenty pounds, of which she assumed undisputed possession. Had it not been for this she would have found herself placed in a very awkward situation.
The rest of the voyage needs little chronicling; suffice it that ten days later the schooner dropped her anchor off Thursday Island, her eventful journey completed.
When Captain Boulger bade Juanita farewell, he asked if she had formed any definite plans regarding her future. She hesitated before replying, but finally said that she thought of remaining in the island until she had communicated with her friends. He felt a touch of pity for her loneliness, and proffered any assistance within his power. She, however, declined it with thanks, and a day later the Island Queen departed on her return voyage to Tahiti.
The same night, the Thursday Island telegraph operator was in the act of closing his office, when the following mysterious message was handed in—