The wind had ceased somewhat on the morning of the third day, but the snaky rollers were still racing after the flying yacht. A watery sun peeped out from between the driving cloud masses, the rays glinting through the heads of the waves that curled menacingly as the battered yacht drove through them.
Newmarch hailed me from the poop when I came on deck, and there was a peculiar look upon his scrawny features as he addressed me.
"Do you know that nigger you rescued?" he asked.
"Toni?"
"Yes."
"What about him?"
"You did your heroic stunt for nothing," he remarked. "The fool can't be found, so I guess he went overboard in the night."
The news came as a shock to me. Toni's last question that he had put as he clung to the wheel with Soma had flashed through my mind several times through the night. He had asked it in a manner that insinuated that I might be interested in the reasons why Big Jacky, his companion on the wharf at Levuka, wished the whereabouts of the white waterfall to remain a secret, and now his disappearance blocked my inquiries. I felt annoyed with myself for not listening to what the Fijian had to say at the moment he confessed that he had lied, and then the face of the listening Soma came up before my mental eye. Soma was a person that I was beginning to cordially dislike.
I turned to Newmarch and fired a question at him.
"Do you think he was helped overboard?"