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?"
"I know them all," he replied, "and they are like others of their kind, neither good nor bad. But like me, they are in fear of Schmidt and of the white man's prison."
"Listen, then," I went on, "and I will show you how to act the part of honest men. Schmidt is indeed an evil captain and to stand by him means prison in the end. My own ears have heard him say that after he has stolen our pearls and our shell he plans to sell the schooner and leave you deserted and friendless in a foreign land. Take warning, therefore, while there is time. You have heard of Seroni—Maruia will tell you whether he or Schmidt is the more to be trusted. Give heed to my words, then. Schmidt and that dog Rairi await your coming on the Cholita. Go to them now and tell them that you have delivered their message; that the people will obey, being unarmed and in fear of the rifles. In a little while those two men will go to the Tara, where they will sleep this night. Once they are gone, arouse the crew softly without showing lights, and talk to them in the forecastle, telling them what I have said. Remember that you on the Cholita need run no risks: only lie quietly if there are noises from the other schooner. In the morning the Tara will be ours and those three men our prisoners. Seroni will see to it that no man of you is wrongly accused. The truth is that the Government will praise you for having refused to aid a captain who is no better than a robber. Think of old Pahuri, whose blood is on your decks—is that the work of honest men?"
"Aye, and this!" A deep voice rang out as Fatu rose from the dark corner where he had been lying, and pointed downward with a gigantic outstretched arm. Then for the first time I saw Ivi, grinning at me over a shoulder done up in blood-soaked rags. "It is well said that Rairi is a dog," Fatu went on. "If I had my hands on his throat once more, I would not let go so soon!" An angry murmur went up from the divers; I perceived that the moment was ripe for my proposal.
"Who will come with me this night," I asked—"who will follow Fatu to capture the Tara and to set Seroni free?" Ofai sprang from his seat at Ivi's side. The divers crowded about me eagerly to hear my plan.
"We shall need only six or seven of the strongest," I told them. "Let us give Tua time to return and deliver his message, and then, when Rairi and the bearded captain have gone back to the Tara to sleep we will swim out without noise, climb softly on deck, and take them by surprise. Only one man will be on watch; Seroni waits our coming to break down the door with an axe that will be given him."
While I lay on a mat, discussing our plan with Maruia and the others, Tua took leave of us. I felt a reasonable confidence that he would play his part and keep his men from interfering on behalf of Schmidt. Maruia's blood was up; she was keen to go with us and it was not easy to persuade her to stay behind. An hour dragged by—another—another—it was nearly midnight when I gave the word to set out. Each man was naked save for a breechclout; our bodies were well rubbed with coconut oil, and we carried the long keen knives used for clearing bush.
The moon had set long since, and black clouds blotted out the stars. A stir of air from the south caused the palms to rustle and sigh uneasily. We were in for a squall. I saw that unless the wind grew strong enough to rouse the sleepers on the Tara, the weather was in our favor: the squall would put the watcher off his guard and drown the slight noises of our approach. Presently the wind was sweeping in gusts across the lagoon, driving a fine rain into our faces. The schooner must be facing the south, with her stern toward shore.
"I think there will be a line astern," I told the men crouching beside me under the dripping hibiscus trees, "and Fatu and I will go aboard that way. You others must swim to the bow without a sound and climb up by the chain or by the jib-boom stay. We will allow you time to get aboard. Wait by the forecastle till you hear the alarm given and then come aft to take them by surprise. As I told you, there will be only one man on watch, and Fatu alone can handle him. We must not use our knives unless they drive us to it. Come—it is time we set out—this squall will drown the noise of our approach."
"Yes," put in Fatu, whose closest friend was Pahuri, the old engineer, "let us go quickly! My hands yearn for the feel of Rairi's throat!"
I led the way into the water, deeper and deeper, till we were swimming in the black lagoon. We seemed an hour in reaching the Tara, anchored no more than four hundred yards offshore. The little waves slapped against my face and the rain stung my eyes. At last, when I was wondering if we had taken the wrong direction, the clouds broke and the stars shone out, disclosing the dim outlines of the Tara close ahead and Schmidt's schooner, riding at anchor a hundred yards away. At that moment a man appeared on deck,—whether Schmidt or Rairi I could not make out,—carrying a lantern in his hand. He made the lantern fast to the main boom and left it hanging there. Then he drew a deck-chair into the circle of faint light, and sat down, facing the schooner's bow.
With Fatu close behind, I swam under the overhang of the stern, and next moment my hand touched a heavy rope, trailing overboard from the rail. The half-caste girl had kept her word. The others were clustering about us, and as the wind was still strong I ventured to whisper fresh instructions there in the schooner's lee. "The rope is here," I told them softly; "do not hurry about getting aboard. Give that man time to settle down quietly in his chair. Be ready to come running aft in five minutes."
I had not reckoned on Fatu's impatience, nor on the native vagueness about time. My companion was roused as I had never seen him before. For a little while, with the greatest difficulty, I restrained his eagerness, but finally he shook my hand off his shoulder and began to pull his huge body up the rope, hand over hand. I followed: there was nothing else to do. The wind was still blowing strongly from the south.
Fatu reached the rail in an instant, heaved himself aboard with uncanny agility, and dropped to the deck without a sound. I was desperately slow in following, for I was tired and chilled, and my arms were not trained to sailors' work. When at last my head rose above the rail, I saw that the giant was stealing toward the unconscious man in the deck-chair, creeping forward with a stealthy swiftness in the shadow of the binnacle. The lantern, flickering in gusts of wind, cast a dim yellow light on the scene. Then my hand slipped on the wet rail, and I fell thumping to the deck.
I was on my feet in an instant, but the man in the chair was quicker still. It was Schmidt, and his senses must have been keen as those of a savage, for his eye was on me before I had taken a step, and the rifle came to his shoulder with a snap. In the same instant Fatu leaped at him from behind the binnacle, springing like a monstrous cat—but the spring was a breath too late. I saw a bright tongue of flame, heard a crashing report, and felt a great blow on my leg—a shock that spun my body about and sent me sprawling to the deck. I lay there sick and numb, yet keenly alive to every detail of the scene that followed: a swift drama stamped indelibly on my memory.
Fatu seized the rifle with a single mighty wrench, tore it from Schmidt's hands and sent it flying overboard, then his arms closed about the German's body. Schmidt was a very strong and active man. His foot went out behind the leg of his antagonist; he twisted his body with the movement of a skilled wrestler, and the pair came crashing to the deck. But Fatu's grip never relaxed and I knew that in the hug of those mighty arms Schmidt's moments of consciousness were numbered. He seemed to realize it too, and his right hand, free from the elbow down, began to move painfully toward the holster at his belt, where I saw the gleam of an ivory pistol-butt. Then I heard my uncle's axe thundering at the stateroom door, and the shouts of the divers, climbing over the bows.
I raised my eyes, hoping to see the natives running aft. I glanced back at the wrestlers and saw Raita there beside them—a slender, crouching figure in white, her face framed in waves of dusky hair. She had drawn Schmidt's revolver in the nick of time, and held it cocked in her hand.
But Kwala, the black savage, who must have been sleeping on the forward hatch, still had a part to play. In the second while Raita crouched there, fiercely seeking her chance to kill, there was another streak of flame, and the report of another rifle-shot. The girl sank down on the deck. I saw the shock-headed savage blinking in the lamplight while a wisp of smoke eddied from the muzzle of his Winchester. Then, with fierce shouts and a rush of bare feet on deck, the divers were on him, and he went down in a smother of brown arms and legs.
For an instant, Raita lay where she had fallen, but though she was dying, hatred of the German gave strength for the last act of her life. "Guk!" I heard her exclaim with a weak fierceness, as her hand went out to take up the pistol a second time. By chance it had not gone off when she had dropped it. With a wavering hand she aimed it at Schmidt's temple and pulled the trigger. A third shot rang out above the tumult—Schmidt's body quivered and relaxed—Fatu rose slowly to his feet.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man standing at the companionway. It was Rairi, an expression of angry astonishment on his handsome, sullen face.
He glanced swiftly about him, seemed to arrive at a decision, and bounded across the deck. Before I could cry out, he was over the rail and into the lagoon.
The appearance of my uncle, dressed in a scarlet waistcloth and brandishing an axe, smothered the shout on my lips.
"Eh, Fatu!" he cried, as his eye fell on the gigantic figure of the mate. "Have you got them safe? Where's Charlie?"
"Here!" I said in a weak voice, and next moment he was bending over me. "Schmidt shot me in the leg. He's dead, I think, and so is that poor girl. Ofai and the divers have the black man—look—they're tying him now! And Rairi—he dove over the side a second before you came on deck! Quick! Send someone after him!"
At my words Fatu sprang away to lower a boat. When my uncle had made sure that Schmidt and the woman were dead and that the black was safely bound, he took me in his arms and carried me below to dress my wound. He laid me on the lounge in the saloon, turned up the lamp and bent over my wounded leg, his face wearing an expression I had never seen. Then he straightened his back with a great sigh of relief.
"Well, old fellow," he said, patting my bare shoulder, "you've given me a scare! But you're not badly hurt: the bullet has passed through the muscle of your thigh without touching the bone. Hurts like the deuce, eh? That won't last long—we'll have you on foot within a month!"
He made me drink a glass of brandy, the first I had tasted: burning stuff that made me cough and ran through my veins like fire. I was weak from loss of blood, and when he had staunched the bleeding and bandaged the wound with wet compresses, I fell into an uneasy sleep.
It was later that I was told of the happenings of that night: how one of the divers swam ashore to tell the people that Seroni was free; how a great fire was built on the beach and a fleet of canoes put off to swarm about the Tara; and how her decks were crowded with brown men and their women and children, all eager to shake my uncle's hand. It was a night of rejoicing. A fire was built in the galley to brew huge pots of tea, and cases of bully beef and ship biscuit were opened on deck.
The morning found me feverish and in pain with the stiffening of my wound. Old Maruia had installed herself in my stateroom. The season was over, she declared; she had earned enough for one year, and now she was going to nurse me till I was well. I was eating the gruel she had prepared, when I looked up and saw my uncle standing in the splintered doorway, a long cigar in his mouth.
"It's tough luck to be laid up this way!" he remarked, "Hurts, eh? It will for a few days. But you've a first-class nurse; I reckon she'll have you in a steamer-chair inside of a fortnight! I didn't know how many friends you had ashore—the whole lot of them were asking after you last night—Eh, Maruia, don't let him move that leg!
"About Rairi," he went on—"he got clean away. A Paumotu boy in the water on a dark night is a hard proposition to catch! We don't know which way he swam, of course; we'll search the two islands on the east side of the lagoon to-day. I'm leaving now; the boats will follow along the beach to the pass and meet us there to-night. With fifteen men we'll be able to comb the bush so that a dog couldn't pass us! If we don't get him to-day, we'll try the west side to-morrow—You've guessed why I'm going to so much trouble? Yes, he's gotten away with your pearls!
"This morning, when the excitement was over, I made an inventory of the things in the safe. The door was open; Schmidt had left everything in place, only taking the precaution to lock the inner door. I found the key in his pocket. He never knew about the Twins—I told you how I saw Rairi steal them under his eyes. I was losing hope of coming out of this affair so well. I owe you a lot, old man; I'll try to repay part of it by getting your pearls for you. We'll catch Rairi, never fear! Schmidt and the girl were buried this morning. He was a man, that German, though he had the morals of a wolf! It's odd—but there was something I almost liked about him—It takes courage to play a game like his, and he might have succeeded if he'd been a little less contemptuous of the natives he's abused so long. I wonder who he really was! I'm sorry the girl was killed—I would have sent her home. She couldn't have been more than twenty, poor child—a forlorn way to die. The black is in irons aboard the other schooner, where he's not popular with the crew!"
When my uncle had gone I sent a man ashore for Marama, and presently he was installed in the upper berth, a mass of bandages about his swollen feet. It was good to see my friend once more.
"I do not know where Rairi is now," he said, when Maruia had left us to smoke her cigarette on deck, "but if he was barefoot when he went overboard, he will be in no shape to run away! Aué! That dry coral is sharp underfoot! When I escaped from the Cholita, I had one thought in mind; to get to Seroni quickly, to warn him and bring help to you. I landed close to the village of the copra-makers and there was an old canoe on the beach, but when I took thought, I saw that the day would break before I reached the Tara, and that I would run a risk of being picked up again by that bearded captain who is now dead, so I traveled the length of the western island afoot. The sun was high when the time came to swim, and I was faint with pain and loss of blood—the coral cuts deep! If I had been stronger I would have gone directly to the Tara, for I had no suspicion that Rairi's boat had come to her in the night. Fatu was the first man I saw on shore; he told me of the shooting, of Ivi's wound, and how Seroni was a prisoner on his own schooner. All that day I lay in great pain, and my head was light with the sun."
At midday Maruia dressed our wounds and brought up food, and we dozed through the long warm afternoon. It was evening when my uncle returned with his weary men. They had scoured the eastern islands from end to end without finding so much as a footprint.
Next day, when they searched the long island on the western side of the lagoon, the story was the same, though one of the divers claimed to have found the half obliterated tracks of a man on a stretch of muddy beach. That night my uncle went to bed with scarcely a word; I could see that he was discouraged, mystified, and very tired. Marama and I were silent for a long time after the others had gone to bed. Finally the native boy spoke.
"Are you asleep?" he asked in his own tongue.
"No," I whispered back; "I lie here thinking."
"And I too. Listen, for there is something in my mind. First of all, know that Rairi is not a stranger on this land of Iriatai. His mother was a woman of the island—one of the wild people the French soldiers came to take away. And when he was a boy he came here to labor at the copra-making, with the woman who lived here before Seroni's coming. There are true words! Knowing all this, I have tried to put myself in his place. He has our pearls—pearls of great value, for which a man would endure hardships and long months of waiting. The question in his mind must be: 'Where shall I hide myself till the schooners are gone and I can steal a canoe to chance a passage to the nearest land?' Where, indeed? The three islands about the lagoon are long, but they are flat and narrow. The bush is thick in places, but not too thick to be searched as one searches for a dropped fishhook in a canoe. Where, then? Listen, and I will tell you—in the Cave of the Shark! Is it not possible that in his boyhood Rairi found the cavern even as we found it, or that the woman Turia showed it to him as an ancient sacred place? He would believe that no other man on the island knew of it; that he might lie hidden there for months, stealing out by night to catch fish and to gather coconuts for food and drink. I tell you that the thought of losing our pearls has weighed like a lump of lead on my stomach, but now I feel hope!"
When my uncle had returned that evening, discouraged and empty-handed, I had felt the full bitterness of disappointment—the hopeless collapse of all my dreams. After all, our hopes had been absurd; a three or four mile swim at night was a risky business, even for a native. Perhaps Rairi had been seized with cramps; perhaps a roving shark had picked him up. In reality, the chances were against his being alive. But now, as the possibility of the cave grew large in my mind, I could scarcely wait for the morning, to tell my uncle of Marama's idea. Eight bells struck. It was midnight, and the soft breathing in the upper berth told me that Marama was asleep. He had a wholesome lack of nerves, and to him the loss of the pearls meant no more than a passing disappointment. In his eyes, money was not a thing that mattered greatly—if one had none of it, one did without; if one's pockets were full, it was pleasant to spend. I envied him, for with me it was far different.
Hour after hour I lay there, wakeful with anxiety and the fever of my wound, while the round ship's clock in the saloon struck off the bells. The glimmer of dawn was in the stateroom when at last I fell asleep.
Maruia woke us with a tray of breakfast, steaming hot from the galley. The sun was high, and glancing through the door, I could see my uncle, bending over some papers at his table. My head was heavy with lack of sleep, but the fever seemed gone and the pain in my leg diminished. I called to Uncle Harry and he rose at the sound of my voice.
"Well, boys," he said, smiling in at us, with a hand on either side of the doorway, "had a good night? I was for letting you sleep, but the old lady thought it was time you were eating breakfast." I told him what Marama had suggested the night before, and his eyes lit up with a brilliant gleam of interest.
"I believe you've hit it!" he exclaimed. "That's the one place we haven't searched. I remember now Schmidt's saying that, as a boy, Rairi had lived on Iriatai. I lay awake half the night puzzling over this business—I was beginning to believe that the man must have been taken by a shark. But we must waste no time; I'm off now for a look at this cave of yours. Wish me good luck!"
The hours of that day dragged past with interminable slowness. I grew depressed as time went on: perhaps we had been unduly sanguine the night before; the thread supporting our hopes was a slender one, after all. Even if Rairi were found, he might have lost the pearls or hidden them. Marama laughed at my fears, refusing to share in my renewed depression. At noon the old woman brought us lunch and we ate with good appetites, for by now we were on the way to recovery. Afterward, when she had cleared the things away, I fell into a dreamless and refreshing sleep.
It was late afternoon when I awoke. There was a hail from the deck and the sound of a boat, bumping against the schooner's side. Next moment my uncle ran down the companionway and burst into our stateroom, a smile on his lips and in the dark brilliance of his eyes. Without a word he placed in my hands a small tin box—a box that I had seen before. I opened it with a beating heart, and there, side by side in their nest of damp cotton-wool, were the Marama Twins! The native boy, gazing down over the side of his berth, gave a shrill whoop of joy.
"It was a tame affair," remarked my uncle, when he had answered our first rapid questions, but your cave is certainly a curious place. We had no difficulty in finding the entrance. I led the way in, with Fatu, Ofai, and a couple of others close behind. Whew! That's a bit of a swim before you can come up to blow! I had warned the men to make no noise; it was possible that Rairi might have clung to the six-shooter I had seen at his belt, and good ammunition is almost waterproof. Presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I made out the idol and the heathen altar, and then, on the ledge a little to one side, the huddled figure of a man. It was Rairi—his eyes were open and he had been watching us all the time. He's a plucky scoundrel; when I was standing over him wondering why he had not moved, he shook his head and grinned at me as he made an effort to hold up his right arm, blackened and horribly swollen out of shape. 'I glad you come!' he said in a weak voice. He was burning with fever.
"Then he told me what had happened. Swimming across the lagoon in the dark, he had run squarely on a patch of the purple coral, the poisonous kind that cuts like a razor-edge. He managed to get to the cave before the wounds stiffened, but next morning, when daylight began to appear through the cranny in the rock, he realized that it was all up with him unless help came. Both legs and his right arm are frightfully infected—I'm not sure that we can pull him through. Well, if he dies, it will save the Government from supporting him in jail! The pearls were in the pocket of his dungarees—he handed them to me of his own accord. We had the deuce of a time getting him out to the boat; he'd have been drowned if Fatu hadn't been along!”