As soon as she and Mrs. Krause were alone Niâbon told her the cause of her visit and the steps which had been taken by the head men of Utiroa to conceal her husband's death, so that when the German warship arrived and found him missing, the people of Utiroa could not be, even after the most searching investigation, connected with his disappearance. Mrs. Krause quite agreed that a wise course had been taken, for were it proved that her husband had been killed in Utiroa, the man-of-war would certainly inflict a terrible punishment on the village, as was usual with German warships' procedure in the South Seas.
Then at Niâbon's suggestion she summoned the head men, and told them that her husband had not reached Utiroa. Something must have happened to him. Would they send out and search for him, and if they found him, urge him to return, as Tematau had come back, and there was now no occasion for him (Krause) to offend the people of Utiroa by entering their village armed.
The head men were only too willing, and at once sent out search parties, and when Niàbon was coming back, she met two of them, who told her that they had been to Utiroa itself, but not one single person had seen anything of the white man, and they were now returning along the weather side of the island to search for him in the thick jungle, where they imagined he might have strayed and lost himself.
“So that is why these people here have acted so strangely, Mr. Sherry,” she concluded. “It would be terrible for them to be all killed, and the village burnt. For the Germans are very cruel. I have seen them do very, very cruel things.”
“I think the Utiroa people have done right. The German brought his death on himself. But I fear that the secret must come out some day. The Taritai people will surely suspect something.”
“No. No one of the Taritai people will ever know. By this time to-morrow they will all say that he has been drowned when crossing one of those narrow channels between the islands on the weather side, for there are many deep pools, and the coral sometimes breaks under the pressure of a man's foot. And so they will think he has fallen in one of those pools, and his body carried out to sea, or into the lagoon, and eaten by the sharks.”
Her emphatic manner reassured me.
“Well, it is a bad business, Niàbon; but it cannot be helped. But I shall get away from here as soon as possible.”
“I am glad. And Simi, there is yet one other thing of which I have not yet spoken. It is of Lucia.”
She always called Mrs. Krause by her Christian name, as did the natives generally.