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NOTE

CAPTAIN JAVA

 

 

BY

LOUIS MORESBY

 

 

 

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

1928

FIRST EDITION

CAPTAIN  JAVA

CHAPTER I

Captain Dixon of the good ship Soldac had married very young, and with the illusions of youth thick upon him had believed that life with his Betsy would be one grand sweet song taken as a duet. It proved to be a soprano solo to which he was the merest accompaniment, and not always that, and there were times when but for his voyages he could not have faced the music. A sailor may have his sorrows—the lonely pillow, the unsolaced wakings—but there are compensations in all earthly things, and when Captain Dixon paced the deck, thinking of his Betsy, he felt that the tropics were not so sultry as his home atmosphere and the end of the world was preferable to Paradise Place, Gravesend.

He was sixty when the day of retirement came along, and with his wife’s thrift had laid by a tidy little sum. Betsy had pared and pinched and ground, and from the age of twenty-two he had never possessed a penny that he was not obliged to account for except indeed in the tropics. There was a little more latitude as well as longitude in the palm-fringed coral islands and blue seas the Soldac visited and there his soul expanded and a great peace possessed him.

His trade gave him a varied and peculiar acquaintance with the South and East Pacific oceans and all that therein is. For forty years, in one ship after another, he had traded there, man and boy, for pearl shell, for cargoes of copra and pigs—long pink living pigs delicately enclosed in cylinders of wicker work and strongly resenting it. Not much more latitude, for Mrs. Dixon knew to a farthing what his screw was and what his expenses should be, but enough to make him feel a man could be very happy in a simple way, swinging in a hammock between the palms with a half-caste lass to fan him and the breakers on the shore.

Nothing could be more unlike his present surroundings. He left the Soldac on a cold raw day in November, having received the compliments of the owners at parting and a handsome telescope, which he could fit if he pleased in the windows of number 4 for the purpose of sweeping the opposite row of houses. His heart was heavy within him as he pushed the door open and dried his boots, in the narrow passage inside, with the minute care that bespoke years of efficient training.

Mrs. Dixon sat by the fire, large, dark, with a determined jaw and plenty of it. The door leading to the scullery and kitchen stood open that she might keep her eye and ear on the little maid who was at once the pride and irritant of her life—the only maid in Paradise Place. She was enjoying her tea and had not waited for him. She never did.

“Shut the door, Dixon. The draught’s enough to cut me in two. Well—what did the owners give you?”

Relaxing into his chair he produced the telescope without any enthusiasm and she received it with less.

“Well—of all the shabby mean things! And you that have been thirty-four years with them man and boy! I’d have thrown it at their heads if they’d served me such a trick. But you haven’t the spirit of a mouse. Here, take your tea.”

“It’s as if they thought I was going to sea,” he said in a ruminating voice. “Ah, I shall never use the sea again.”

“And what’ll you do, may I ask, for I don’t intend to have you clumbering the house all day. Not me.”

“Don’t know. Take a barrel organ round and grind for coppers. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“Well, I won’t have it and so I tell you straight. I don’t see how I could have stood it up to this if it wasn’t for the trips. A woman wants to be getting about her business. She don’t want a man to be always tumbling over. You just get a job or you’ll hear of it.”

Captain Dixon finished his tea in silence. He didn’t want to be tumbled over, he loathed Paradise Place, and though he certainly respected Mrs. Dixon’s powers he preferred to meditate on them in the tropics.

The tropics! He could see the far-off sunshine, the blue sea breaking like a kiss on the white and sparkling coral beach. He could see the palm-thatched huts—in fact he could see the Island of Papalite, and he thought of it with a sickening yearning. Outside a dull gray rain was falling; Gravesend was a muddy smudge and Mrs. Dixon pervaded it like a fog.

Men are far more romantic than women. No one could have suspected Herbert Dixon of romance under his tanned and weathered skin and nose illuminated not by drink but by roaring gales and ardent suns. Romance might have turned up her nose at his short stubby figure, yet he longed for Papalite with the longing of a lover, and before him sat Mrs. Dixon and denied the very existence of any interest outside Paradise Place.

“If I could hear of any job——” he began cautiously. A dark and dreadful resolve was hardening in his mind.

“You won’t hear of anything you don’t ask for, and you’d better lose no time. Now do take yourself off. Can’t you see I’m busy? Take a walk.”

He rose ponderously to his feet and looked out of the uninviting window. Where to go? There was only one place where the shouting of the captains could be reckoned on for company and to that resort Mrs. Dixon strongly objected. The Ring O’ Bells. Never mind! He would roll along and see if Captain Homan was there. Better than staying where a man wasn’t wanted.

The streets were revolting—the greasy mud slopping his boots at every step; the Ring O’ Bells breathed light and warmth—and beer. And the first person his eye fell on in the cosy parlour was Captain Homan—as large as life, a stout elderly mariner with a long mild unhealthy face. He was nursing a tankard on one arm and staring meditatively upon the sea of slush and the wading wayfarers, but looked up with a glint of pleasure as the Captain entered.

“You here? Didn’t think the missus’d let you come, Scotty?” He jerked a tarry thumb toward Paradise Place. Captain Dixon filled and lit his pipe and ordered his beer before he replied.

“Never mind that! I was sixty year old yesterday, Homan, and I paid off and quit this morning. Man and boy I been with the Company thirty year, and old Mr. Dowser he shook hands yesterday and he gave me a spyglass!”

“And what else, Scotty?” the Captain asked relentlessly, cocking a mild blue eye at his friend.

“Don’t ask no questions and you won’t be told no lies.”

“I don’t need to ask—I don’t! A cool fifty down, and a pension of a hundred pound per annum, and very comfortable too.”

“For God’s sake, Homan, don’t tell! Don’t breathe it to a living cat. You’re a widower, but I’m not.”

“ ‘Don’t tell,’ says he!” rejoined the Captain with derision. “Is it likely? How much gooseberry d’you see in my eye, Scotty? There’s things women should know and things they shouldn’t.”

Captain Dixon glowed approval. He was so far encouraged that he related his troubles to his friend. Mrs. Dixon’s frosty welcome to the homing mariner, his future of tyranny and slavery; in short, Paradise Place to the end of his days.

“There’s times, Homan,” he said with feeling, “when I’d be thankful if she’d take a fancy to some other chap and do a bolt. But she’s a good woman—such an idea would never cross her head. She’s a professing Methodist.”

“There’s no escape that way then,” said Captain Homan, and resumed his fixed stare at the rain. Some minutes passed before they spoke again.

“Homan, d’you like Gravesend?”

“Hate it.”

“Was you ever at Papalite?”

“Wasn’t I! Ah, I believe you!” He wagged his head slowly from side to side.

“Would you like to see it again if so be you could?”

“If so be it didn’t give me too much trouble. What’s in the wind, Scotty?”

“She’s too good a woman to do a bolt, Homan, but I’m a bad man. Bad through and through. And the one that’ll do that bolt is me! Will you come along? I’m for Papalite!”

If he had hoped to galvanize Captain Homan he failed. Absconding husbands might have been a matter of daily experience with him. He turned and gazed at his friend with the calm retrospection of a cow, but said nothing. Captain Dixon went on:

“I’m for Papalite and the sunshine and the best chawing tobacco I ever knew. I’ll set down on that beach under the palms and I’ll say every day—‘Scotty, my boy, there’s ten thousand mile betwixt you and the missus!’ And I won’t ask nothing more.”

“Yes, you will,” said Captain Homan stolidly. “A man wasn’t contented even in Eden when he was by his lonesome.”

“He didn’t deserve his blessings—he knew better later on. And there’s snuff-and-butter, Homan. Snuff-and-butter isn’t to be despised when it’s eighteen.”

“I’m not for snuff-and-butter myself,” Captain Homan said mournfully. “Fine eyes, but a chancy temper and daylight through your ribs if you so much as winks at another. No—no, Scotty. What a man of your time o’ life wants is comfort—square solid comfort. Now if you could get any lady to go as had been cook in a gentleman’s family—she’d be used to a warm climate and once you got her there she couldn’t get away and you’d be master and more. Think it over, my lad. Them Papalite pigs roasted by a sure hand—and guava jelly to follow!” He smacked his lips. His friend considered the proposal from every point of view and shook his head.

“You go to thunder, Homan—you and your cooks! I’m afraid!”

“Who’s afraid?” cried the mild Homan, fired by his own eloquence. “Why it’s as easy as roasting eggs. And nowadays a man thinks no more of leaving a wife or two than he does of picking ’em up.”

“She wouldn’t like it,” said Captain Dixon sadly. “She’d be a solitary woman.”

“I’m none so sure of that. She don’t seem to want you in her pocket now. And you’d leave her comfortable. No gentleman couldn’t do otherwise.”

“Certainly I’d do that. She could have her cut of the savings. But look-ye here, Homan. If you’d pick up the lady we could charter a clipping little schooner and run down to Papalite and along the Reef and I don’t need to tell a man like you what pickings is to be made down there if a fellow has a nest-egg the size of a humming-bird’s to start with. And we’d have a nice little humpy on one of the islands and your good lady to look after the pork and jelly, and . . .”

Captain Homan interrupted.

“A man doesn’t deserve to have lost his first what takes up with a second, and if I lay myself out to be dominoed over again like I was then——! No, no, Scotty. Nothing doin’.”

But there was that in his eye which encouraged Captain Dixon to proceed. He did it cautiously, dwelling on the general untrustworthiness of the native-born article, the strong hold to be had on the obedience of a lady interned on a coral island and liable to be marooned if she gave trouble to a considerate husband, the pity of spoiling good pork and all its concomitants with native cooking, and much more.

“And I’ll be there to stand by you, shoulder to shoulder, Homan—and if the two of us can’t keep one woman in order—on an island too—I’m a greater fool than I look!”

“You couldn’t be that, Scotty. No mortal man couldn’t,” the Captain said gloomily. But there was yielding in his eye. It was a dream only, but an agreeable one and he was dallying with it.

“Do you mean to tell me, Scotty, as you’d do a bolt from the woman you swore as you’d love and honour?” he said at last, cocking his eye sternly at the other.

“Why not, Homan, why not? It’s a jolly sight easier to love and honour the missus with ten thousand mile betwixt us, and I’d send home her share reg’lar.”

“Well, I’m blest!” said Captain Homan, smiting his knee with a clenched fist. He paused a moment and added: “Well, I won’t say but what you’ve given me something to turn over, for I’m fair fed up with shore-going. Still—— It’s big risks, Scotty, it’s big risks.”

“Not with two of us on the job; no, Homan. You couldn’t face it alone, and I wouldn’t ask it of a nigger, let alone a friend. But, things being as they are—and if she had a bit of money to help the trading . . .”

The conversation that followed was prolonged and secret. Perhaps it was the pork, perhaps the romance, but it ended in the two putting their heads together and drawing up an advertisement for the Marriage Broker, a weekly gazette favourably known in shipping circles. Completed, it ran thus:

“That’s dandy. That’ll fetch her if anything will!” said Captain Dixon admirably. “Ah, you know ’em, Homan. That touch about the provisions—it’ll make her lick her lips.”

“Wait and see!” said the oracle. “Now we’ll post this to-night, and the Marriage Broker’ll be out in four days. She don’t take it in by any chance? She’d know Papalite, and then look out for squalls.”

“I should say not. No, that’s not her dish. That’s all right. Well, so long, old man. It warms a man’s heart to have a pal like you. We’ll be off Papalite way before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.’ ”

Captain Homan’s doubts overpowered his dreams at the moment. A second marriage is always the triumph of hope over experience at the best, and he was not buoyant. He resumed his contemplation of the mud through which Captain Dixon presently splashed on his homeward way. Scotty had seldom felt in better spirits. He saw visions. Himself swinging languidly in a hammock under the palms; Captain Homan, with a lady, fat, fair and forty sat by his side—likewise a table on which smoked a loin of roast pork—the kidney end; whilst an attendant train of scantily clad snuff-and-butter brought the guava jelly and a calabash of something in the nature of palm toddy. It was a beautiful dream.

What was less beautiful was the thought of breaking the proposed trip to Mrs. Dixon. She detested Captain Homan. As a widower she regarded him as a runaway slave who would be the worst possible company for one who had never sighted freedom. On the whole it seemed it would be kinder to her and would spare her much annoyance if the news were written from the first port in the South Seas, with large, rich, hazy promises of coming wealth. This would preclude argument. He had never liked argument . . . with Mrs. Dixon. And in this matter there was so much to explain—and to conceal.

Mrs. Dixon was not alone when he entered. She was seated at a well-spread table with Miss Martagon and they were enjoying a light supper of fried ham and muffins. He knew and disliked Miss Martagon, an acidulated spinster of fifty, a valued friend of Mrs. Dixon’s and stronger in the Methodist connection than even that lady herself. He would have retreated instantly, but the hour made it impossible and he pulled his chair up. The fare was good and as he beheld the ravages Miss Martagon made in the dishes before her, it became clear to him that in no sense of the word was she a paying guest. He watched with dreadful fascination as one muffin followed another down her throat, haggard as a plucked turkey’s, reflecting how very little credit she did her victuals or they did her.

“Well, what are you staring at?” demanded Mrs. Dixon, dividing her fourth muffin. “One would think you’d never seen Harriet Martagon before. If you want your supper, take it, and if not, go to bed. We’ve plenty to talk about.”

“Oh, yes, Captain Dixon, I was telling dear Mrs. D. of Mr. Riley the missionary lately returned from the South Sea Islands. I’m sure it’s like a picture to hear him describe the dear natives in their beautiful grass skirts and how they flocked to hear him. He’s asking for subscriptions for a gramophone to teach them their hymn tunes. Maybe you’d like to give a trifle? Me and my niece have subscribed.”

She smiled winningly but in vain. The South Sea Islands! Captain Dixon’s jaw fell. Papalite was in those latitudes, but he had never heard of a missionary in his day. As a matter of fact they gave it a wide berth because of blazing rumours as to cold sideboard dishes, entirely unfounded, but fanned by seafarers who preferred the room of missionaries to their company. Such was emphatically Captain Dixon’s own case. He shook his head with energy:

“Don’t you waste your money like that, Miss Martagon. I don’t know that locality—never was there, but I know plenty like it, and they’ve got no use for hymn tunes. No respectable person should go near them islands—they’re a bad lot and no mistake. A disgrace to the world!”

“Mr. Riley says it’s a rare harvest field. The poor natives feel they’re sitting in darkness and they’re just weeping for the light.”

He recalled the jocund dances on the shore of Papalite, on the coral sand better than any ball-room! He recalled the feasts—the half-caste girls swaying in grass-plait hammocks while they thrummed drowsily upon the kolalu. But weeping? He chuckled inwardly.

“We sailors see things different, Miss Martagon, but I don’t remember no weeping. Hardened sinners—that’s what they were. They’d sharpen their teeth if you so much as named a missionary. If you knew any good man as was thinking of the South Seas you couldn’t put it too strong that islands is unsafe for decent folk. There’s things goes on——” He paused darkly on the implication.

“A true apostle don’t think of trifles like that, Captain Dixon,” Miss Martagon said primly. Her figure reminded him of a kite in shape and texture, and her pale fluttering ringlets of its adorned tail.

“H-m!” said Captain Dixon. An innocent interjection, but something in the tone so annoyed his wife that she ordered him straight off to bed. He went with his resolution sensibly hardened by Miss Martagon’s presence, and the unceasing sound of their voices below lulled him into dreamland—and Papalite. If his resolve had needed stiffening the good Miss Martagon’s presence was the perfect stiffener; he slept and waked an abandoned reprobate.

CHAPTER II

The advertisement appeared the following Saturday and the authors thought it looked uncommonly well in print. They read it together in the little parlour of the Ring O’ Bells with the door shut.

“I believe,” said Captain Homan, “that if us two was to write a book and put into it true and plain all the things we seen and did you’d have the people fighting like mad in the book shops to get it. If we told the truth, that is! And this’ll cap it.”

“But we couldn’t. Not if the missus was to see it. She’s not an understanding woman, Homan. It’d be asking for trouble, and of all things I want to get off quiet. No squalls, so as we can slip off easy with a fair wind. That’s all I ask.”

“Maybe nobody’ll answer. Might be the best thing too!” replied Captain Homan with gloomy wisdom. He too was a doubting Thomas when the cold terrors of marriage loomed gray and grim like an iceberg on the horizon.

But two days later the answers began to come in. He was wrong. Evidently there were many ladies who wished to see the world, for the matrimonial office was so flooded out that the principal wrote to point out that a special charge would be required in Captain Homan’s case. Romance was blowing her trumpet to some purpose in London and the provinces. He and his friend sat almost up to their necks in torn envelopes and ruthlessly destroyed sheets of promised happiness. Brunettes, blondes, all professed the same qualities; good looks, guileless dispositions, unruffled tempers, savings, and a passionate devotion to Captain Homan. Yet there appeared little drawbacks everywhere, especially to one in Captain Homan’s nervous condition, and finally only two remained for serious consideration. The first ran thus:

They both liked this. It was sensible and to the point and showed a tender disposition and the sort of income that sounded likely. The house property in Walworth could be sold before the start to Papalite and would fetch a pretty penny. It promised well. The photograph was more doubtful because there were so many that the room resembled a Beauty Competition; Captain Homan had let it drop and would not swear he had picked up the right one, though he felt practically sure. It represented a comely woman of about forty with widowed jet beads beneath a slightly double chin, a figure ample yet trim—a figure that indicated and promised comfort, which, as Captain Dixon said musingly, had evidently a good table behind it.

“That woman would have the right notion of boiling a ’am,” he said looking at it admirably, “and them Papalite pigs they deserve good treatment. She’d give it ’em.”

“But what sort of treatment would she give me, Scotty? That’s what I’m thinking of. My first missus had as light a hand with a pancake as man could wish, and her liver and bacon——! If that was all, I wouldn’t be for Papalite. Give me your notions about her disposition. A man of your powers can tell a lot from a photo.”

“It’s a powerful jaw but kindly. She’d be open to reason,” said Captain Dixon with the photograph in strong light for his best eye.

“If so, she’d be the only woman I ever knew that was. Are you sure, Scotty?”

“Certain sure. She’s the kind that if you chucked her under the chin you could do what you liked with her.”

“But that isn’t reason,” objected Captain Homan.

“It’s a woman’s reason,” answered the sage, and relapsed into silence.

The second letter attracted by different methods.

There was art in this letter so deep that they failed to perceive it as art. It aroused curiosity, it gave rise to endless conjecture. It promised nobly. The sentence “If you are anything of a sailor-man,” was peculiarly winning to the two adventurers, and they each read it twice with profound and bewildered attention. Captain Dixon spoke first, striking the letter with a blunt fore-finger.

“I’ll say that’s hunky-dory—that one—a woman what comes straight to the point. What would you put her at, Homan?”

“May be a stewardess along of a big liner. But, Lord, Scotty, let’s go easy. Them women—wickedness is print to them after what they see on board with the passengers! You couldn’t maroon a woman like that on no island she didn’t mean to stop on. It’ll be one of the Dutch East Indies boats going down Sourabaya way. No— let’s stick to the first. There’s more heart to it.”

Courage was perhaps more natural to Captain Dixon’s lighter responsibilities. He soothed, he chided.

“Bless your heart, Homan, she can’t eat you if you see her in the office and me there. You might be refusing a ready-made fortune if you let her slip. If you tickle her under the chin she’ll go soft like all the rest of ’em!”

“Does Mrs. Dixon go soft when you try that? No intrusion meant, but this is no joke, Scotty. Does she?”

There was a conscience-stricken pause.

“Not always,” Captain Dixon answered and hurriedly passed on. “The thing to do is to see them both. Let’s toss which to take first.”

So the gravest affairs settle themselves. They tossed and the Gods of Chance backed “Java.” They searched through piles of beauty for “Java’s” photograph but found none of which they could be certain. Captain Dixon was in favour of a blonde lady, full-bosomed, meditating over a fashion paper upon her ample lap, and Captain Homan was attracted by what he called her yielding chin. It might as well be “Java” as any other. They hoped for the best though it must be owned that Captain Homan was also prepared for the worst.

Arrangements for the meeting were then made and a reply, cautious yet hopeful, was composed and addressed to “Java,” c/o, the office, and posted. Captain Dixon promised to support his friend on the occasion as was but just, and recommended a Sabbath richness of attire and some trifling gift suggestive of foreign parts, such as a necklace of iridescent shells, which would be an earnest of the future. He offered to supply the latter from his own sea chest.

The Wednesday appointed dawned in sunshine but Captain Dixon was far from happy. No experience could wholly subdue him to the character of a conspirator. And any consideration on his wife’s part winged the dart that quivered in his conscience. A new pair of socks that she had knitted was like arrows in his bosom, and at the very early dinner, a dish of liver and bacon simply melting in his mouth was wormwood. It was really helpful when she swept his plate away, saying tartly:

“Now you clear off till the evening. I don’t want to see so much as the tip of your nose till then. Here, take your pipe and be off.” This helped, but still it was a guilty soul that sought for his hat and placed the little parcel with the necklace in his pocket. He sighed as he gently closed the door. His innocent wife little knew the doom preparing for her. It was very sad, really, if you came to think of it.

It was a staggering surprise, however, when Captain Homan bore down upon him at the station. He whose attire was noted for its careless simplicity could not have shone more bravely. His preparations extended even to a flower in his button-hole and a spotless handkerchief. Somehow it was alarming . . . It felt like a wedding, the atmosphere about them vibrated with a suggestion to turn and flee. Indeed his face was as pale as a crumpet, and as damp, and his clothes evidently confounded him.

“It’s a great undertaking, Dixon. I wonder if it’ll be for my happiness. I’m a bit nervous. It’s all very well to be hopeful, but experience . . .”

“It isn’t a case of outward bound yet,” said the Captain, stepping calmly into the third-class railway carriage. “To-day you’re only going to take your bearings and then put the ship ahead or astern according. Don’t you lose heart. I’ll see you through.”

“It’s a kindness I’ll never forget,” said Captain Homan and relapsed into silence. He remained silent all the way to London, heavily considering, and Captain Dixon too was lost in thought. Finally they debarked from the train and the bus deposited them near Rutledge Square—the goal of their pilgrimage. There was an hour to wait and Captain Dixon could do no less than propose a glass of beer and a toast to the lady to pass the time comfortably. They made it last as long as they could, and had a second, and though it could not be said to be comfortable and Captain Homan could not remember beer he had ever less enjoyed, yet he was unwilling to leave his seat when the score was paid and the time had come to proceed up the side of the Square in search of the office. Walking slowly they found it, and he paused on the first step.

“Dixon, I haven’t got the spirit. I’m off. It’s a sight worse than I thought. Let’s catch the 4:40.”

His complexion had paled visibly. His knees were tottering. He laid a quivering hand on the railing. His friend strove manfully to rally him.

“Think of Papalite, my boy! Think of roast pig and guava jelly. And I’m thinking of Paradise Place and the missus for ever and ever, amen! Don’t give in before you know the whys and wherefores—you that never ducked your head to a wave yet! Here we are, and we won’t bolt till we’ve done a bit of prospecting.”

They knocked at what would have appeared a private door but for the lettered hall blinds, and were ushered by an anæmic young woman of slatternly appearance into a dingy room where a Jewish gentleman awaited them.

He informed them nasally that the lady was waiting in another room—would the intending gentleman step in, this being the usual procedure? The energy with which the intending gentleman clung to Captain Dixon’s supporting arm made it plain, however, that he would do nothing of the sort.

“You’ll have to come, Dixon. You couldn’t desert a pal so shameful. When you and me was lads together and you went overboard at Callao who was it went after you? Answer me that!”

“Bear up, Homan—bear up. Keep on an even keel. I’m with you all the time. It’s all hunky-dory. We’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Slowly urging the lover forward, Captain Dixon moved to the door indicated by the Israelite. He turned the handle with a jerk. They entered.

There stood, entrenched as it were, behind a round table, a young woman—a girl, tall, finely set up, with dangerous eyes and a colour like a rose. Her dress revealed the frank outlines of a figure almost like a boy’s—slim-breasted and flanked, lithe and strong, with capable hands and feet. One judged her a good comrade, a foe to be respected. Captain Dixon and his friend stared at her in consternation. These were not the melting comfortable curves of the ample lady of the photograph. This was rather the huntress than the cook or sentimentalist! Where were the jet beads that betoken widowhood? She wore a saucy chain of scarlet seeds from Southern Seas—their foreign perfume savoured of Papalite and bluest summer weather. They smote the nostrils of Captain Homan like a memory. He breathed them in deeply. Then terror re-possessed him. The lady’s calm was so complete as she advanced upon them! And yet with a startled look about her too.

“This will be the gentleman that advertised, I guess?”

She paused on a question and her clear eyes were focussed on Captain Dixon. They ran up and down him like the play of an electric current—a tingle of terror followed them. Tickle that chin against the owner’s will? Heaven forbid! But supposing she preferred him to Homan! Supposing she determined to elope with him—what could he do, short of evoking Mrs. Dixon? He stared at her helplessly, but the eyes swept off him and the blue search-ray was transferred to Captain Homan.

“No, it’s you,” she said. “You don’t look like a married man. He does. Can’t we all sit down?”

They did, and neither mariner had had the presence of mind to push a chair for the lady. She laughed a little to herself and, mastering the position consummately, resumed entire self-possession as she spoke.

“It might seem a bit strange that I met you like this, but it’s easy explained,” she went on. “My dad followed the sea. His heart was right in it, and if you gave him the dinkiest farm between this and Land’s End he wouldn’t give you a thank you. I might say I was brought up to the sea, for Dad took me with him on all his runs, and he used to say there wasn’t a deck hand—no, nor a mate, that he could count on more than on me in a tight place. When he took ill with fever coming up from Papalite——”

“Papalite!” It burst from Captain Dixon like a bomb as he surveyed this astonishing young person.

“Papalite! Why not?” she said composedly. “My dad—he was skipper of the Spray along the Barrier Reef trading for birds’ skins and pearl shell and oddments. What might there be in the name to surprise you? You signed it yourself to your advertisement.”

“You don’t need to know yet what there might be,” said Captain Dixon firmly. “You wait a bit. What might be your dad’s name?—that’s what I want to know.”

“My dad’s name was Hardy—Samuel Hardy, and they called him Cap’n Stormalong down Papalite way, for there wasn’t one of them would face a blow like him, so——”

“Stormalong!” shrieked Captain Homan. “Didn’t I know him? Didn’t I see him at Port Moresby when he come back with the hold so full of bird o’ paradise skins smuggled from up the coast that the hands were sneezing all day and all night for camphor and pepper? He made a tidy bit out of that run. Now you don’t mean to set there and tell me you was the kid with big blue eyes on Stormalong’s knee in the cabin and your hair in two tails at the back?”

“Look at my eyes!” she said with a smile, and opened them full on Captain Homan. They were as blue as the seas of the Pacific between tropic islands. Were they also as deep?

The two men stared at one another—then Captain Homan struck a ringing blow on his knee.

“It’s little Java Hardy so sure’s I sit here. Java!—you was born in Sourabaya, wasn’t you? And Stormalong says—‘That’s too heavy canvas for such a little barque to carry. I’ll call her Java.’ ”

She sprang to her feet with shining eyes and caught his hand in two supple sunburnt palms.

“Right-o!”—she cried—“I’m Java and I know you too. You’re Captain Homan of the Dancer schooner. And when you came aboard at Port Moresby you gave me this—and I’ve worn it ever since for luck.”

She pulled out of the bosom of her dress a thin old-fashioned gold watch chain such as our grandmothers wore in elegant festoons over a creaky black silk gown. Slung to the end of it was a little mother-of-pearl image perhaps a couple of inches long, a dwarf with a blobbed head and rudimentary blobbed arms and legs, evidently a natural curiosity. She held it out, laughing like a chime of bells at their speechless amazement. “A mascot, but it hasn’t brought luck as yet,” she said. At last Captain Homan broke the silence of his surprise.

“That come from the biggest pearl shell ever found on the Barrier,” said he. “And I give it to little Java Hardy. Well!” Captain Dixon nodded.

“It’s Providence and no mistake. And you can’t go again that any more than you can beat up dead in the wind’s eye. Now you sit down again, young woman. What’s been your log since Homan saw you at Port Moresby, and what signals are you running up now?”

She pulled her coat resolutely together.

“We can’t talk in this silly sort of a place. Let’s come and sit in a tea shop and be comfortable and I’ll tell you then.”

It was wonderful how instantly she took command of the expedition. They rose like one man and marched to the door under her eye, Captain Homan pausing only to settle collateral expenses with the Jewish gentleman who watched them curiously down the street. Which was the bridegroom? Whichever the bride preferred—he never doubted that certainty.

Five minutes later she was pouring tea for them with a generous hand in the back premises of a cake and tea shop. It was comfortable, but it was much more. It was heart-warming and thrilling. They glowed as they looked at this audacious and splendid young sea-maid who was Stormalong’s daughter; Stormalong, with his coppery complexion and booming voice! A rum start, look at it how you will.

“My dad’s dead,” she said when the last muffin had been slowly and ruminatingly devoured by her audience. “He died a year ago. He had fever coming up from Papalite, and the mate went overboard in a gale, and I had to take command and I did. That was after he bought the Spindrift.”

“She did!” repeated Captain Dixon with eyes like saucers, and Captain Homan echoed him. Amazement could rise no higher, but admiration topped it, holding the hand of awe.

“I nursed Dad and I sailed the ship, and he died at sea. But before he died he said: ‘I wanted a boy, Java. When you was born—I’m blamed if I didn’t tell Providence his business more than once. But I’ll own up as I lie here now with Blue Peter hoisted, that there isn’t a boy in the Seven Seas could have done better than Captain Java.’ He said so,” she whispered with wet eyes. “And Dad knew a sailor from a longshoreman, you’ll allow.”

“He did that! Old Stormalong!” said Captain Homan in a tone of affectionate reminiscence. “A better sailor never used the sea. Well, my girl what then?”

“Why, then I was sorry I was a girl,” she said, dashing the tears away. “For the ship was mine, but I couldn’t use her and I wouldn’t sell her. If I’d been a man I’d have been off the minute I could fit out. But who’d sail with Captain Java if I hadn’t my dad behind me? I thought it over, I own, but it wouldn’t work out. So I went ashore with my kit and stopped with friends and for a fortnight I’ve been living with my aunt, Miss Martagon, and eating my heart out. I couldn’t stand it any longer, I’ve just been going fair mad! After the sea and the islands—my God!”

“Miss Martagon!” faintly ejaculated Captain Dixon. “You don’t mean tersay——”

“Why not?” She was all clear-eyed astonishment.

“Because I know her. O Lord, if Mrs. Dixon hears of this!”

“I never tell my aunt Harriet anything,” said the young lady coolly. “But if you do know her perhaps I needn’t tell you I’m not with her for a permanency. But it’s got to be the sea. So when I was all on my beam ends I saw your advertisement, and I just thought something might turn up and lead to something. You get a bit desperate sometimes.”

“You don’t mean to say——”

“I don’t mean to say anything. I guessed it was a sailor-man from what you said. That’s all.”

“D’you mean to say you’d marry a stranger to get out of it? Lord bless me, and is she as bad as that?” asked Captain Dixon trembling.

“Marriage?” said Captain Java composedly. “Not me! I saw there was to be Papalite and trading from what you said, and I thought I’d find out the lie of the land. That’s why I talked business not marriage in my answer. There’s always a chance you know. Might sell the ship.”

Captain Homan flushed a hot brick-red. Scotty viewed his friend with a question in his eye. Could he be called a chance for a clipper of a girl like that? She settled the question with a flash of her blue eyes.

“There’s no talk of marriage. I never gave it a thought. So far’s I’ve got in the world marriage is—well, I won’t say what I think of it! What I want is to get back to the islands. I want someone to sail my ship and take me along.” She paused a second and added defiantly: “I want uncles.”

There was real art in that speech, the finest sort, which parades itself as frankness. She had sized up her audience with a glance, and saw in its eye how that statement got home. Captain Homan unbent and fetched a sigh of relief from the bottom of his heart. Each, contemplating the other as a possible uncle, felt there was a lot in the notion. They could chaperon each other if you came to that, and if they signed on as uncles it could be put in writing and all parties safeguarded. It was a new kind of a notion, but might answer really.

“But where on earth did you get hold of the Marriage Broker?” asked Captain Homan with a last relic of suspicion.

“Under my aunt Harriet’s pillow,” she said with a twinkle.

“Lord!” ejaculated Captain Dixon cautiously. “And as to sailing the ship I don’t see no breakers ahead there, do you, Homan? It’s more Miss Martagon as——”

“You leave my aunt Harriet to me. She’s in safe hands. You come and look over the Spindrift to-morrow. I can’t take a crew to sea on my own. But if I had uncles . . .” She made a seductive pause; looked at them under long eyelashes, and added slowly:

“That ship’s a clipper and no mistake. Now I’ve told you my game. What’s yours?”

There was nothing for it but frankness. She inspired confidence, and Miss Martagon, who would have fainted dead away if she had known the facts, was none the less a reference of unblemished respectability.

Captain Dixon unbosomed himself of domestic troubles, Captain Homan of his immeasurable boredom with a shore-going life. She listened with deep-eyed unblenching understanding. There was no doubt. Three kindred spirits were met by that tea table. They all panted for Papalite or its like. Three born adventurers. An immense sympathy sprang up between them. They had another pot of tea and plate of muffins on the strength of it and Captain Homan added shrimps and water-cress.

When the last sitting was concluded, it had been settled they were to meet next day at three o’clock at the Long Pier at Erith and inspect the Spindrift. But not a word, not a word to anybody!

Miss Martagon’s ears were radio-sets and Mrs. Dixon’s rather more so. The very air might carry the matter. But any intending seller may take a purchaser or two to have a look round, said Java, and there was nothing to that. Miss Martagon knew she wanted to sell, and approved so far. What had young women to do with ships? She must get rid of it somehow.

The captains went home silent in the train, and silent in the parting of their ways. Then Captain Homan spoke emphatically.

“As fine a young woman as ever I clapped an eye on. And from a dinner ashore to a schooner in a gale there’s nothing she couldn’t navigate in my opinion. That’s a niece a man could be proud of.”

“I’m with you there, Homan. And I don’t know as a niece isn’t even better than a daughter. I’ve seen daughters get round a father something shocking! But an uncle can hold his own.”

Poor innocents! They parted in the highest spirits, and Mrs. Dixon wondered what on earth had come to the man, for all her asperities rebounded from him like hail from a tortoise as he sat with his slippers thrust out to the fire and a fixed smile on his face. She supposed it might be whisky, and little suspected a more heady draught.

How was she to guess that his soul was coasting down the gulf on a big schooner with mainsail and jib boomed out to a fair breeze and Papalite sliding past like a mirage as she made for Port Palago? It was infinitely more real to him than the grim realities of Paradise Place. That already lay behind him like a cast-off garment. His soul perched on the branch of a blossoming tree and spread its wings to the urge of flight. Blue air and sea made him drunk with joy as he stared steadily into the future.

CHAPTER III

The conspirators met at the Long Pier next day, converging from three points with guilty eyes cast behind them. All but Captain Java’s. She didn’t care who knew she was going aboard her ship. Why should she? If a girl mayn’t board her own ship who may? She hailed the watchman and bade him look handy and run the gangplank out, and then led the way like an admiral, with the two after her.

Now it is no use detailing to landsmen the perfections of that schooner because they must be seen to be appreciated, and seen under no other guidance than Captain Java’s. Suffice it to say she had no novices in her uncles and after an exhaustive tour they were satisfied. Fully, profoundly, unspeakably satisfied. The schooner was well found—as thoroughly as the dashingest fine lady with her trousseau. There wasn’t a stay or bolt amiss. There had been no grasping stingy company behind her fit-out, she was Stormalong’s own, his pride, his joy, no less considered and indulged than his daughter, and he had spared nothing on her. The cabin was spruce and spotless as the inside of a flower with, by the same token, a fine nosegay in a china jar; the berths all the most knobby anatomy could wish. There was the tiny cabin where Captain Java always stowed her traps when afloat. There was a hold as dry as a nut, which Captain Homan’s calculating eye saw filled with all the trade necessary to tempt the unwary islander. He became speechless very early in the inspection—speechless with the repletion of utter satisfaction, and it was not until they came to anchor in the cabin that he broke his deep soul-satisfied silence.

“Well?” asked Captain Java with the blue searchlight sweeping them impartially. “Now you’ve seen her, is there anything you want to ask?”

“Nothing!” Captain Homan said, propping his hairy chin on two knotted hands, and his elbow on the cuddy table. “Trust old Stormalong! A finer, better-found, cleaner ship I don’t wish to see. What say you, Dixon?”

“Ditto. I’ve no more to say than that.”

“You’re satisfied then, both of you?”

“Complete. I don’t ask no more.”

“Then if I find the ship will you find the cargo? Isn’t that fair dues?”

“Fair dues. Never fairer. Scotty and me we’ll find the cargo and the hands and take equal risks, and we’ll pay you regular owner’s percentage, same’s always done down Papalite way. And if you like you can take out a bit of trade on your own, and we’ll have it all put in black and white before twenty-four hours is over. Will that suit you?”

“Fine!” she smiled charmingly on them, showing little teeth like nicked pearl shell, and added:

“Let’s all go along to the lawyer to-morrow. Mr. Brent—my dad always went to him; he said he was the only honest lawyer he ever knew. And then you can see to the cargo and the hands, and I don’t care how soon we’re off.”

A slow and almost incredulous smile of joy hooked itself round Captain Dixon’s ears and never budged for the rest of the interview.

“We should shake hands on the bargain,” he said.

“Of course we should!” Java said warmly. “And look here—I’m not going to ‘Captain’ you any longer. You’re my uncles. My dear, dear long-lost uncles. What’s your name?” she turned to Homan.

“ ’Enry,” he said stolidly.

“And yours?”

“ ’Erbert.”

She opened her bag gravely and took out a small medicine bottle of whisky tightly corked and extracted the cork with her teeth. Then she rose.

“I’m going to christen you. It isn’t wicked. It’s only whisky, for I thought you might like a shot after business. I baptize you Uncle ’Enry and I hope you’ll always behave yourself up to sample. For if you don’t . . .”

Girls! To waste good whisky like that! It was the first weakening of sentiment they had marked in their niece. But after all—they submitted! She stopped there and wrote “Uncle ’Enry” on Captain Homan’s brow, Captain Dixon watching in mute astonishment until his own turn came and he felt the deliciously smelling tracing of “Uncle ’Erbert” just where the cap had left a white rim on his forehead. They had the shot and Java a cup of tea made by herself in the flick of a finger. Handy girl!

“Now come along, uncles!” she said. “There’s lots to be done and it’s up to you to do it. You both know what’s wanted and——”

“There’s one thing more!” Uncle ’Enry said with his wonted caution. “Who’s to be skipper? Who’s to boss the show? There can’t be two you know, niece. There never yet was a ship put to sea with two skippers. I’m not thrusting myself forward in a manner of speaking. I’d as lief be mate under Scotty, though I’m used to being Old Man. But it’s got to be fixed up.”

This was felt to be a snag, but Java settled it instantly as she did everything else.

“We’ll draw lots!” she cried. “Now, Uncle ’Enry, you look out the port and Uncle ’Erbert that side, while I tear the paper and then you’ll draw from my hand.”

They faced about like one man and heard the tear of paper.

“Now!” and at the word of command they came to attention again before her.

“Which is the oldest?”

“Me, by a year!” said Uncle ’Erbert.

“Then it’s you first.”

They drew and compared and shook hands on it. Uncle ’Erbert was boss. The three came ashore with the gravity of urgent concerns upon them and as they parted she said brightly:

“And if either of you ever give the show away about my being only an adopted niece, I’ll let you hear of it! Uncle ’Enry’s sister married Uncle ’Erbert’s brother, and I’m Java Dixon. But that’s got to wait till we get put of this. Suppose Aunt Harriet answers that Papalite ad.? She might—what had she the paper under her pillow for? Don’t you go near that trap of a place again, either of you! She might be sitting there now!”

A cold sweat dewed Captain Dixon’s nose. She might. She might be The Well-Wisher. After Uncle ’Enry’s mad mix-up of the photographs anything was possible. There had been some thought of a line of polite apology to the rejected lady, but no—Java was right. No faintest risk must be run. They parted, struck dumb by her resourcefulness. And it never once occurred to them that the lots had certainly not decided who was to boss that expedition! The innocents!

After that matters proceeded steadily.

Careful of his reputation, Uncle ’Erbert retired into the background and risked nothing, while Uncle ’Enry was constantly but cautiously in Java’s society, the conferences mostly taking place in London, where a part of his own and Uncle ’Erbert’s capital (with a small investment of Java’s) was laid out in bolts of red calico, handkerchiefs that smacked you in the eye with a flare of colour, sticks of tobacco, beads, and many other attractions, together with the necessary provisions.

Captain Dixon, living in a state of passionate but suppressed excitement, advised from the background through Uncle ’Enry and was only twice in London to supervise, and then without his niece. He was determined that no unkind rumours should disquiet his good wife’s soul when he was far from her on troubled seas. No one should have it to say he had been seen anywhere in company with a petticoat, even if a niece’s. He felt that a merciful Providence must have directed his caution when—how it got round he never knew—Mrs. Dixon, who always rode the whirlwind and directed the storm, one evening over the spluttering sausages curtly informed him she had heard “that old reprobate you’re so mighty fond of has been traipsing round London with a young woman as gay as you please! If Mrs. Homan had lived to know of it!—poor soul, she had the reward of her troubles when the Almighty took her away from the wrath to come.”

“Maybe Homan wouldn’t have done it if she’d lived,” Uncle ’Erbert observed with a catch in his throat, “and after all, who’s to say it isn’t a female relative? A man may have cousins. Homan’s as partiklar a man as you’d wish to see. Real genteel. And he’s free now to please himself, all said and done!”

“Free to please himself, is he? Free to cut a stick for his own back, and Lord knows it deserves it. Much pleasure a man of his age will get from a jilting painted hussy with a nose like a hound’s for his purse. Girls nowadays—look at that niece of Miss Martagon’s!”

Captain Dixon distinctly felt his heart turn to cold quivering jelly at this allusion. It was bound to come—he only marvelled he hadn’t heard of it before, but none the less the situation was appalling. He exploded in a cough that shook the room and nearly hoisted him out of his chair.

“That niece of Miss Martagon’s,” pursued Mrs. Dixon relentlessly, “is more like a vicious young man than a decent girl—she should be put in a show—the way she strides along the streets, with her petticoats up to her knees. Whatever are you staring at?”

“Is the young woman settling down with Miss Martagon?” he asked meekly, seeing that interest was demanded.

“Settle down? Not she! She has a ship her father left her and——”

Captain Dixon controlled his terrors and replied reflectively: “A ship? Seems an odd thing for a girl.”

Mrs. Dixon exploded.

“Odd? I should say it was. But it seems she’s got some fool to buy it and now it’s off her hands she’s going to America to seek her fortune same as a man, instead of settling down with Harriet like any decent girl would, and thankful for a good Christian home. ‘Don’t tell me!’ I said to Harriet—‘You depend she’s off after some young man and you’ll never hear tale or tidings of her more.’ And Harriet’s bringing her into supper on Sunday because she’s afraid to leave her alone at home for fear she’ll get into some sort of mischief. She’s the sort you couldn’t trust as far as you could throw her.”

Sunday! Supper!! To-morrow!!! In his own house—or rather Mrs. Dixon’s—at her own table. The blood rushed to his face—happily unnoticed. He rose from his chair simply because he could sit no longer, and laid a shaking hand on the back of it.

“Betsy, I forgot to mention it but I’m obliged to be out on Sunday evening because I promised to have a bite with Homan. He’s knocked right out with toothache and hasn’t a soul in with him Sundays. I’m sure you’ll prefer to be three ladies alone and I’ve no taste for a young woman’s company like you describe.”

The tone of virtue in the last remark might have won his case but for the allusion to Captain Homan. That dished him.

“What—you that never was out a Sunday ashore from the day I married you? And to go sit with that old villain because he has a toothache! I hope it’ll teach him manners! No, thank you! You’ll stay here. Company that’s good enough for me is good enough for you, you’ll find. You can talk nonsense to the girl while I talk sense to her good aunt.”

It ended there, for when the meal was finished Mrs. Dixon drew in her lips like a purse-string and sat passionately snipping the pattern of a blouse from the evening paper until she went off to hector the little maid. When she had left the room he caught up his hat and coat and sped away to Captain Homan’s lodgings. He roomed two streets off Paradise Place and there was no reason to suppose he would be in. On the contrary he would be probably in London or on board the Spindrift blissfully engaged in calculations, aspirations, and dreams of bliss now so rudely to be shattered.

He was, however, at home in the little stuffy parlour with green rep chairs and curved sofa, a large nautilus shell under a glass case and three humming-birds perched on a dry little bush under another. The curtains were tightly drawn and he sat by the table with calculations spread out before him and a cool flagon of beer beside a large glass, half full, which he was slowly consuming. It seemed almost cruel to burst in like a bomb and lay such content in smithereens, but he looked up and, seeing Uncle ’Erbert’s glassy eyes, rose instinctively to his feet as the other fell into a chair.

“It’s all up with us. We’re done in. You’ve been seen in London, and the missus knows Java’s sold the ship. And she’s coming to supper on Sunday.”

“Here? To supper? Mrs. Dixon?” cried Uncle ’Enry in wild confusion. “Then she can’t do it! Mrs. Murdock—my landlady—she’d die on the doorstep before she’d allow her in. Besides I’m off to London to-morrow to meet—a friend.”

He had pushed his hands through his hair till it stood up like shocks of corn, and mingled terror and resolution struggled in his expression. Captain Dixon feebly explained:

“Far worse, Homan. It’s Java that’s coming to supper to-morrow with Mrs. Dixon, and Miss Martagon’s coming too. I tried to get out but I can’t, and flesh and blood couldn’t stand it. I’ll let something out that’ll set the missus on the right track as sure as a gun. For God’s sake see Java and tell her to break her leg or Miss Martagon’s so she can’t come.”

To his amazement Captain Homan snorted. Deliberately snorted and then laughed aloud.

“What? D’you think little Java’ll turn a hair before two old tabbies? Aha! You don’t know her, my lad, and I do. I’ve walked with that young woman through warehouses and aboard ships and up and down the streets, and I’m free to say that she’s a Caulker, and I don’t believe the man lives that could make her run up signals of distress.”

Captain Dixon feebly murmured the word “Women?” in the tone of a question, but his friend swept on:

“No, nor women neither, nor an army of ’em. She’s all right! All you’ve got to do is to sit tight and say nothing, and maybe it’s all for the best for then your missus won’t guess. I’d like to look in myself and see you all of a row! I would!”

Such reckless daring could not fail to inspire at the moment, but when Sunday evening crept silent-footed along the pavements of Paradise Place and the table was arrayed with slices of ham and violent pickles set off by a cold apple pie and custards in glasses, with a rigid shape of carmine jelly to testify to the resources of the house and the truth of the statement that Mrs. Dixon owned a cook though the good-for-nothing idler must have her day off on Sundays, Captain Dixon was in such a state of nerves that on the cat’s leaping suddenly from the chest of drawers to his feet he almost screamed aloud. A composing draught was instantly indicated and swallowed.

It was he who opened the door while Mrs. Dixon sat in elegant ease by the fire, and never could he forget the air of polite and distant entry and the remoteness of Java’s gaze when it fell upon him after Miss Martagon’s tart introduction. The minx! Her eyes had the chilly blue of a December dawn. “Good evening,” dropped from her nearly closed lips like a hailstone, and her limp hand felt like a flat-fish in his with Miss Martagon’s eye on the meeting. Such perfection of acting was almost terrifying, he thought, as he followed her into the parlour. After all, who could tell what a dance she might not be leading Homan and himself when all was said and done. For here was clearly one of those sirens who can with a magic touch make all things seem what they desire. As Mrs. Dixon embraced Miss Martagon, Java, shielded by the door, turned and looked at him. Such a look! Sunny, fruity, roseate as a glass of the port that Mr. Dowser partook of with his captains on state occasions of meeting and parting—the best port, sacred to friendship and long service. It warmed the cockles of Uncle ’Erbert’s heart in exactly the same fashion. She finished her achievement with a wink of masterly subtlety and passed primly in before him; but he was reassured now. He almost thought he could play up to her.

There was need for it. Mrs. Dixon’s eye ever hovering like an angry wasp about him watched every interchange. She made it plain that she considered Java’s alert grace as something in the nature of sin and highly reprehensible. She gazed at the blobbed mother-of-pearl figure, disclosed on the white V of her bosom by a cut-down dress, as a gift that might well represent unholy adorations. That indeed was true, though in a way far beyond Java’s present understanding. Could she have looked at it with the eyes of knowledge she might have trembled from head to foot. But the Fates, though feminine, keep their counsel.

Java saw all this and laughed inwardly. She stood fire gallantly, ate her ham with appetite, commended the buttered crumpets by stalwart consumption, and answered all the covert attacks with grace and good temper.

“So you’re off to America, Miss Hardy, your aunt tells me. You had great luck to sell your ship so quick. It isn’t the sort of thing to be got rid of like a reel of cotton, I should say. But I suppose a millionaire turned up. Some folks have all the luck.”

“Indeed I can’t complain,” Java answered primly, but with a delicate distinct pressure of her shoe on Uncle ’Erbert’s trembling foot. “The very nicest old Scotch gentleman you ever saw, Mrs. Dixon, with a beard down to his waist and one glass eye. He wanted a ship for trading cargoes of monkeys from Samarang and——”

“Monkeys! Lord bless us!” exclaimed Mrs. Dixon. “And what for? If that isn’t the oddest . . .”

“The ladies in Borneo use them for pets. They’re all the fashion. Gray monkeys with pink noses, so he didn’t care what price he gave and——”

Captain Dixon’s tea went the wrong way with such a terrifying explosion that he was obliged to flee to the scullery tap to mop his brow. Lord, what a girl! Monkeys! And with pink noses! That was a good one! They could hear him choking in the distance. Presently he returned, certain that one more touch like that would do for him, and launched an entreaty under the table after Java’s own code.

“I scarcely think I shall come back,” she was saying coolly. “I’ve half made up my mind to marry an American.”

“And has he made up his mind too, may I ask?” Mrs. Dixon rejoined with asperity. “It takes two to that kind of a bargain, I should say.”

Miss Martagon put in her oar.

“Not where the girls of the present day are concerned. They do all the asking, don’t they, dear?”

Java smiled with eyes as well as lips.

“Ask Captain Dixon!” she said. “But, as a matter of fact, the American young man has clicked, and the Scotch gentleman offered to take me over with the ship and the monkeys, so I have a choice. I’ve no need to advertise in the Marriage Broker—just yet a bit!”

The deadly flash in Miss Martagon’s eye should have frizzled the ham on its way to Java’s mouth, and again and most unseasonably Captain Dixon exploded in a frightful laugh insufficiently disguised as a cough.

“There’s something very queer the matter with you to-night. Too much whisky on the Sabbath never did agree with you! Take a glass of water,” said Mrs. Dixon frostily. “Or take yourself off.”

Poor Uncle ’Erbert! How Java felt for him in her gay young soul! Her escapade assumed almost the character of a crusade. She, at least, could feel that she was taking two tired people to the Islands of the Blessed, and her resolve that they should have a jolly good time when they got there had almost religious fervour. Poor old boys—they should—so they should!

Reflecting on that evening when it was over Captain Dixon thought he knew exactly now how a man feels who in a dream of terror sees three swords whistling about him in the air, describing arcs about his nose, lunging, cutting, missing by a hair’s breadth and immediately renewing the dreadful game. He was positively dazzled and faint when he led the way to the door while Miss Martagon delayed to put on her rubbers and receive Mrs. Dixon’s congratulations on getting rid of such an abandoned hussy.

“Didn’t I keep it up well?” Java said with her lips at his ear in a whisper of delight that tickled it. “My! Uncle ’Erbert! no wonder you’re smart after living in such a perpetual scrap! But I came on purpose for I knew I was seen in London with Uncle ’Enry. You lie doggo now and it’ll all run smooth as oil. Night-night!”

When they were gone the fountains of the great deep were broken up and Mrs. Dixon rained unutterable indignation upon the Modern Girl in general and Java in particular, while Captain Dixon crouching by the fire was upborne by sentiments of admiration and confidence that rendered him immune. Never had he seen such a girl as Java. Her gay self-confidence, her fearless bearding of the lioness in her den had wrought miracles. He simply didn’t care any more. Blue Peter was at the fore, the boundless ocean in sight, and death before capture his slogan. But he resolved to toe the line very circumspectly, for he knew he had had his warning. He would lie doggo—he would not spoil a chance of that gay and glorious future for anything the world could offer. Not an eye did he cast on Java until the day they sailed. He heard of her through Uncle ’Enry, and with ever-deepening admiration, but that was all.

Yet an awful moment still lay ahead. It must be broken to Mrs. Dixon that a cruise was in prospect, and indeed it should have been done long before. Of the manner of this he lay awake thinking in the long watches of the night, but could come to no resolution, though his preparations were as wickedly complete as if hell itself fought on his side.

But Betsy must be told—must be told. That thought tolled a knell in his ear. And how? How? There was much to consider and his brain was spinning so that he could not consider it—no, not though the sands ran away fast in the hourglass and brought the awful day near.

The goods he needed he had sent straight to Erith and aboard the Spindrift, and Mrs. Dixon was as innocent of what was going on under her nose as ever an ill-used wife could be. And still he postponed revelation.

It was only two evenings before sailing that he broached the necessary part of his intentions and that with a horrid guilt which sat like under-done pork upon his spirits. Supper was finished, including the clatter of washing up. The little maid had bid them a hurried good-night and the pair sat by a grate filled with shavings and cut-paper, each wrapped in thought, Mrs. Dixon plying her knitting needles till they flashed and clicked unbearably. Trying hard for an easy and disengaged manner he began, his heart pounding within him till to his guilty conscience it drowned the rattle of the needles. His voice was low and ingratiating:

“ ’Tisn’t a good life, Betsy, for a man to be always in his wife’s way, sittin’ there with nothing to do. It’s enough to drive a man to the public if he wasn’t very steady-going.”

“I’d like to see you try,” said the needles clicking fiercely.

“You know me better, Betsy!” replied Uncle ’Erbert mildly. “No, that wasn’t in my thoughts. But Homan’s got a job, and why not me? Now’s the time to be saving against our old age, and if I had a job the weight of my appetite would be off you, and I’d be making a bit too very comfortably.”

She laid down the knitting and looked at him with eyes like gimlets.

“Now you’ve got something on your mind, ’Erbert Dixon. Out with it right here. What’s Homan’s job?”

“He’s going supercargo on a ship running down the Mediterranean with boot laces and needles and notions generally. But there’s another ship on the same run with room for a mate aboard. I don’t say but what it’d be a come down from skipper, but still it’s a good screw and something to do, and me out of your way.”

A pause during which he did his best to look unconcerned.

“If it was on board the same ship with that old fly-by-night, I’d not have let you go, no, not if you prayed me on your bended knees. But if it’s away from him, and the pay’s decent and it’s in Christian countries where you can write home regular and tell me what you’re up to I’ve no objections, though I’m sure I don’t know why nobody can’t content themselves at home nowadays. There’s that gawky niece of hers that Miss Martagon has been so good to, off again without a with-your-leave or by-your-leave. She said she found life at home too dull, if you please! I’d dull her! But she had her money for the ship and off with her!”

Captain Dixon palpitated until the paper in his hand rattled again like autumn leaves.

“What may she be going to do in America? I didn’t register all she said.”

“Do? Something she’s ashamed to tell her good aunt, you may swear to that. Not a word out of her after her disgusting jokes about marriage—but ‘I’m off to America, Aunt. I’ve taken up a situation which will suit me better than knocking about Gravesend, and I know you’ll be happier without me.’ So Miss Martagon up and asked what it was, and she only shook her head and laughed and said she’d tell her when the proper time came. Miss Martagon believes it’s the movies if no worse. She left a week ago, I’m told. You heard what she said here about marrying. I’d like to see the brave fellow that would take her!”

“I wouldn’t be surprised!” Captain Dixon said craftily. “Times change. Young girls nowadays is——”

“Aha, you may say that!” Mrs. Dixon cut in. “Harriet’s well rid of her if she knew her own luck. Well, when do you want to be off?”

He named Wednesday with a faltering tongue, and to his immense and astonished joy it was accepted on the spot. The unflattering truth, more precious to him than any flattery, was that his Betsy wanted to be rid of him. The terms of temporary separation were easily settled, for gratitude made him lavish and she undertook to look after his clothes before the start with a better grace than he expected.

It was only on the Wednesday morning when the truck for his baggage was at the door that the mask dropped.

“If I thought, Dixon,” she said, standing dark and portly on the top step, “that there was anything behind this as you wanted to keep from me you’d regret it not once but always. Did you ever know me not to be at the bottom of anything I suspicioned? Answer me that!”

Amid his protestations she turned and slammed the door. That was their parting. Two days later the Spindrift slipped down the river. He saw the chimneys of Gravesend melt into the impenetrable fog and Mrs. Dixon melted with them into a gray and forbidding memory. He turned and looked at Captain Homan’s gleaming sou-wester, at the fog-drops glittering in the meshes of Java’s hair and the joy in her shining eyes and ejaculated slowly and solemnly:

“Thank ’Evins!”

Such was his valediction to England, home, and beauty.

CHAPTER IV

A sea as hard and brilliant as if all the blue bags of civilization had been dissolved in it; a shadowless, stainless blue girdling an island. Not a wave, not a ripple, a mirror intolerably reflecting the rays of an almost intolerable sun until all the world was sunlight above and below.

An island typical of myriads more with shining coral beaches and an atoll ringing the blue moat of sea within it into perfect stillness. Outside, the breakers thundered on the protecting coral reef. Inside, the sleeping water like the ocean itself was a flashing glittering reflector of the intensely blue and cloudless sky. There was a little entry in the reef by which the Spindrift made her way into harbour and no more. The island was like an emerald afloat on the blue, plumed with palms, running up into peaks from which tumbled a rushing river carrying down the only news of the unexplored heights—an island fertile as the Garden of Eden, with paw-paw trees, granadillas and other tropic fruits for the gathering, reef-crabs and fish for the catching, and pork, rich and abundant, for the eating.

Paradise Island; their chosen island; their chosen name for their chosen home. Did it carry any tender reminiscence to Captain Dixon’s mind of far away Paradise Place in its fogs and rains at Gravesend? If so he hid them with admirable fortitude.

Java had kept her word to herself and her uncles and the gift she had brought with her was care-free happiness richly and abundantly seasoned with romance.

Was it not romance to live as owners in a blissful island they had formerly only touched in passing to see it sink in far horizons—an island where the riches and beauties were theirs for the taking? Where instead of Mrs. Dixon’s carking tongue and Mrs. Murdock’s shrewish tyranny they had Java’s young pleasure and energy for companionship. She did her spiriting so wisely that they never guessed they were mastered and dominated body and soul. They needed guidance. They would both have missed discipline and mastery rightly administered, would probably have run rather disastrously to seed without it, and knowing this she kept them in order consummately. Hands were washed before meals, tousled heads (grizzling now) were brushed at proper intervals. “A girl like that likes things shipshape and I don’t blame her,” said the one captain to the other. “Besides it’s for us to keep her up to the mark. It don’t do for girls to slip off the dot because they don’t live in a town, and she’s a regular daisy now.”

Keep her up to the mark indeed! But Java understood and loved the notion in them. After a dip in the placid sun-warmed waters of the lagoon they changed from workaday clothes every evening into clean cottons for what was, if you could choose amongst so much bliss, the best part of the day. They had supper then—to be described later—and their tot of rum and water, and the long chairs were out in the little veranda embowered in blossom, and they would lie there in joy beyond all expression, lords and masters, watching the lamping stars dawn in heavenly depths for them, the little lamp in the window lit for them, the perfume breathed out to the night from myriad blossoms for them, and beside them Java fresh from her evening dip in the lagoon, the sea-water still pearled in the tendrils of her brown hair and in her hands a pair of socks for Uncle ’Enry or a pile of mending for Uncle ’Erbert, and all—all for them! The perfect—the heaven-sent niece! And what had they done to deserve her? Tongue-tied as they were in all matters of consequence they consulted sometimes on that mystery and could reach no solution. She was there—a blessed inexplicable fact—and that was all there was to it. A drama and delight outspread before them.

“She’s as good as the moviest movie I ever clapped an eye on,” said Uncle ’Erbert one day, watching Java at work superintending the two native women who did all the rough work in the little house. She wore a pink cotton dress open at the throat, and the blobbed pearl itself was no whiter than her skin. She flitted to and fro with her strong purposeful hands guiding, touching, pointing, quick with the delight of ownership. They thought her as good to look at—no, much better, than the brilliant birds darting in and out of the boughs on their unknown interests, and in their eyes she was the perfect, the unimagined woman whose presence was delight, whose least wish was an order.

“Lord!—if she ever got married where would we be then?” said Captain Dixon, with the sigh latent in all human happiness. “If a man had to go back to the mess she pulled us out of!—Lord!”

“Advertise in the Marriage Broker again,” Captain Homan answered grimly and without conviction. “But I don’t see how it’s going to happen. There’s no men here and she’s as content as this cockatoo!”

The lovely cockatoo with pink lining his snowy whiteness and showing with Parisian elegance when he lifted a wing or a crest, erected his crest and suddenly remarked “Fool!” Nobody knew how he had picked up that word but it was there and he used it skilfully. He had climbed outside his cage and was disappearing into the orange-flowering creeper where he was free to come and go on the honourable understanding that he would return to his cage at stated intervals. “Fool!” he said again, and followed it with a sleepy croak of derision.

Uncle ’Enry always took the cockatoo seriously as a human commentator on affairs. The frightful manner in which it swore on occasions had endowed it with proud humanity in his eyes.

“Fool I may be!” he said with some disturbance, “But it’s uncommonly difficult to see where a young man’s to drop from, and if he did, Java’s not one to be easy taken in. She likes good sense and manners and to do your day’s work without jawing about it. You don’t find young men now bothering about that kind of stunt. I don’t think she’s the light-heeled fool young men take to.”

“No more you do,” said Uncle ’Erbert mildly. “Still I never knew anything but what there was two sides to it. You know yourself we’ve picked out what pearls we came across for her wedding necklace. If we died, where’s Java? I don’t say but what she could manage the sago plantations and the like, because Java’s Java. But—I think she’d miss us.”

She caught a word in passing, and ran her fingers through Uncle ’Erbert’s shock of grizzled hair with a quick affectionate gesture.

“Miss you? You bet! But we’re none of us going to miss each other. We’re going to be happy ever after, as they say in the fairy tales.”

“But if you get married, Java?” Captain Homan said, sitting up and looking at her anxiously. Neither of them had even dared to broach the subject before, but it had come like a ghost between them when the curry was perfection, or the stars shone more serenely than ever and the moon made a glittering path of light on the lagoon. It would be better to have it out. She had dropped into their lives like a settling bird, never saying what her own hopes and dreams were though she bounded theirs. What if some day she should spread her wings and fly away as mysteriously as she had come? Java could never be cruel, but youth is youth and age age. Is there not a latent cruelty in the mere fact of the difference? They remembered that vaguely sometimes though they never realized it. But now—they would ask.

“Marry? Me marry?” Java said, straightening herself with sparkling eyes. “Me? And after the things I’ve seen, and the dull humdrum it is at the best. Not me! No, Uncle ’Enry. No, Uncle ’Erbert. I’m a fixture here, and here I’ll grow old and die, just dropping off like one of the alamanda flowers when the day’s done. What! leave this heavenly place that’s our own, and go to be any man’s drudge?—No, no. Put it out of your heads. We’re enough for one another and here we’ll stay. Three’s company and four’s trumpery!”

Captain Dixon’s smile was from ear to ear, Captain Homan’s look a general illumination at this noble declaration which must put an end to all their fears. They loved the ground she walked on, even the way she called them “Uncle ’Erbert” and “Uncle ’Enry”—she who never dropped her h’s but talked like a real lady. It did their hearts good. It was so simple and homely like good fresh-baked bread—Java all over!

“Marry! No—not for this little child!” she asserted again, strongly, loudly, as if to reassure herself of safety from the common doom.

From the embowering blossoms came the guttural word “Fool!” solemnly repeated in the croak of a dreamer—the cockatoo’s comment on life. He put a white head from between the leaves and surveyed Java with an eye as expressive as a boot-button and withdrew it again. Silence.

“That bird!” she said with some impatience. “I love every feather of him, but he’s the most awful old unbeliever that ever enjoyed his dinner. I believe he knows as much as Hanua.”

Now Hanua was the puri-puri, the medicine-man, of the island, in whom for the natives all wisdom was summed up. Java too was inclined to think he knew a good deal more than could be guessed on first acquaintance. But she repeated her assertion firmly, “I shall never marry,” and turned away, leaving two rejoicing uncles behind her. The cockatoo made no rejoinder unless a sleepy croak of “Damn it all!” could be called one.

She thought as she went off, busy and interested, how little outsiders would be able to understand the life they three lived together and the strong bond that bound her to the two men. No matter. It was for them to live their happy life and not to bother about the explanation. They were none of them analysts. They took things as they came and relished them. Good enough too! Certainly there was no point of view from which the three might not be satisfied. They had all they wanted and more, and they had chosen the right road to modest fortune.

On this outlying island, where the natives as yet were unsophisticated and ignorant of the white man’s evil doings, they had bought as much land as they needed, with plenty of labour at hand to clear and plant the coconuts, sweet potatoes and cotton, and it had cost them only a few hundred dollars all told. The trading company that sent its little chugging steamer every now and then to pick up cargo round the islands realized that here were people of the right stuff. They would have given them any credit in reason if they had needed it, knives, calico, tobacco, or what not, to dicker with the natives, but they wanted nothing of the sort. The Spindrift had brought out all the trade they wanted for many a long day to come and plenty of capital was left to realize the big dreams inspired by the knowledge of the three partners who understood conditions in those parts. Kindly treated, the natives responded as human nature mostly will, and after a couple of years, what with the natural growth of the island and the schooner’s prosperous trading voyages to others between the steamer’s visits, things were realizing a deal faster than they really had any right to expect, and the balance in the bank in Port Moresby was running up quite comfortably. One may write of it temperately but they had had astonishing luck all round. It seemed as if nothing could fail with them.

In the first place, never were uncles better suited with a niece or a niece with uncles. They might have been born for each other. Never a cross word in that united family, and if it was because they gave way to Java and they watched her eye for approval, so much the better for them. It may be argued that if circumstances admitted of a free choice in relatives the League of Nations might not be required, and so it seemed. These three had thoroughly tested each other now and knew they meant to hold together for keeps on Paradise Island, cultivating those profitable openings and doing a good bit of trading in and about the outward islands. Of course it would have been even better if they could have run the Spindrift down to Nukulu every two months to meet the coasting steamer where she touched so frequently, but there were difficulties in the way of that adventure. They could only venture on short voyages at present, owing to the constant need of supervision on the island itself. But those short trips were heavenly pleasures to all concerned. Java often declared she was the most elderly and sensible of the party for the tropics went to her uncles’ heads like strong drink, and but for her cooling doses of common sense goodness only knew what antics they would be up to.

And she did look after them properly, the benevolent despot showing no partiality. Uncle ’Erbert could not crow over Uncle ’Enry nor vice versa. Each possessed a dutiful affectionate niece that any man might be proud of and the comfort she spread about her was for all.

Her housekeeping with two native women under her orders was perfection, and what with the meals, curries flavoured with fresh turmeric and coconut, crabs and oysters, fresh-caught fish, the famous pork, birds of sorts, perfectly cooked, and fruits that a European epicure might sigh for in vain, Uncle ’Enry was growing as plump as a partridge and Uncle ’Erbert rounding apace. As for Java, she grew prettier and fresher every day.

And the savings-stocking, or its equivalent, was rounding also. The trading steamer carried off with her on her infrequent visits cargoes that the captains grunted over with profound approval. Not only so, but Java had a little box in her own bedroom with two dozen as pretty pearls in it as a girl could wish to look at. Not that the big pearl oysters produce pearls of the first water, but every one her uncles found went to that box to make ready her wedding necklace, as they had said before her declaration, fervently hoping that day would never dawn. Java also laughed contemptuously at that notion of theirs, but she liked the pearls all the same.

For luck, and it certainly had brought them luck, she always wore on her breast the little mother-of-pearl image that Captain Homan had given her so long ago. It was pretty and queer and a mascot, and that was reason enough, though she laughed at herself for the mascot part of it. And yet, if she had known the fact, she would have treated that image with the far more deeply rooted respect due to it, as will appear later. Her uncles and indeed Java herself attributed it to her pleasant ways with the natives that all went so smoothly in the house and down at the plantation, and what other reason could there be to prompt those charming gifts of bush fruits and the wonderful bunches of pearl-white orchids which grew far out of reach and knowledge of the girl herself, marvellous flowers like the very spirits of the hidden places in great forests she could never hope to penetrate—delicate as the spray on a breaking wave? They were laid on her window-sill day after day in the quiet dawn by hands unseen and when she looked out to see another happy morning breaking over the dreaming lagoon they greeted her with their pale spiritual perfection. Any native who met the girl as she passed under the coco-palms wearing one of these magic flowers drew aside, and covered his face with his hands until she was gone, as if she shone like a star that dazzled him. The puri-puri man, Hanua, the sorcerer of the island, sent her skins of birds brilliant as jewels and queer necklaces of bright scarlet seeds from places she could not reach. Her word was law. Nothing could be better. She and the captains exulted daily. Other people had trouble with the natives, who, like naughty children, were sometimes capricious and unreasonable. They never knew the meaning of the word. That, like all else, ran on oil. It must surely be due to the personal charm they all three exercised. What else could account for it? They little knew, and content blinded their eyes.

It was nearing sunset and Java, in a pink-and-white cotton dress, was shading her eyes from the low sun as she looked for Uncle ’Enry, who was catching crabs, not in a boat in the usual fashion of unskilful oarsmen, but along the shore, crabs which their very souls loved when dressed according to old Stormalong’s recipe, handed down in the family. The little house, which they had bought of a departed planter, glowed in the rosy light, clad in flowers a millionaire’s purse could not buy in the cold North. For ivory stephanotis steeped it in languid sweetness, overpowering the purer white of the jasmin, and the gorgeous D’Alberti creeper struck its note of blaring scarlet, and over and around it all were the yellow alamandas that cry aloud of the tropics to every man’s eye and memory—a riot of splendid blooms set against the blue lagoon and the splendid green of the jungle behind. Above and behind it towered the great candlenut tree, a hundred and fifty feet of silvery green loaded with millions of the queer oily nuts that give the tree its name and flame candle-fashion if you light them. It was a house in a dream.

Java, standing on the white coralled walk that led up to the wooden house, brown as a bird’s nest in the green, joined her hands and put them to her mouth trumpet-fashion.

“Uncle ’Enry, you come along this minute. We don’t want crabs to-night—we’ve got lots, and if we do, Mike can get them. You come along. The curry’ll be cold.”

Uncle ’Enry quickened his step and she went down to meet him. The water was quite deep off the coral just there, the cool transparent green of a cat’s eyes and in the same way hiding the unplumbed depths. She stood a moment to see her own wavering reflection, then hooked her arm in his.

“It’s been such a blazer of a day that I mean to have a moonlight swim after supper. Lucky no sharks in here! Oh what a life!—what a gorgeous life! Why does anybody stay away?”

“Because they don’t know no better. If they did they’d be fighting to get here. What’s for supper, Java?”

“There’s a fruit salad with the first ripe pineapple and coconut and there’s chowder—real good, my own making, and there’s curry and I put fresh turmeric out of the bush in it and it’s—oh so good! The smell of it’s as good as a dinner! And coffee, and I’m as hungry as a sea-hawk.”

“Isn’t it a pity Scotty ain’t here to have his bit?” Captain Homan said reflectively. “Now this crab—I never see a crab but what I think how he wires into ’em. He should be back to-night though, and may come over and have a cold snack. We’ll keep a claw.”

“I’ll look after him—don’t you be afraid!—if he comes, but you know he stops aboard. I wonder what luck he’s had down to Atla. I wish I could have gone along with him. You mustn’t have lumbago next time, Uncle ’Enry.”

“No more I must. But we’ll give him a rousing welcome anyhow.”

They walked up through the paw-paw trees to the house and the pleasant little parlour where supper was served by Kuki—or as the uncles called her “Cookey”—magnificent in her wide grass petticoat—the famous rami with flowing streamers of green and red sea-weed of the Papuan world. She had set a great bowl of waxen and crimson flowers in the middle of the table arranged with perfect taste and overhung with transparent fronds of fern. That was because Missy liked them and all that Missy wanted she must have. That was the unwritten law of the house and the island and it really seemed as if Providence fell in with it too.

So they enjoyed their meal while the sun set in gold and crimson splendours and left the world to the drowsy care of a quietly rising moon. Captain Homan pulled his chair outside and lit his pipe, and Java kept her word and went down to the lagoon to bathe, turning to hail her uncle and tell him the Spindrift was back from Nukulu. She had dropped anchor about a mile off in the lagoon, and there she lay with her lights glimmering on the ship and in the water.

“She’s back. I’ll be up in half an hour. Uncle ’Erbert won’t be round before morning, I expect,” she called, and went down to the tiny pier.

The lagoon was so beautiful with moonlight and the milky flames of phosphorus that it subdued her into a sort of solemnity, and she stood for some time looking into it and dreaming happy foolish dreams before she slipped into the sun-warmed water as quietly as a fish, keeping herself afloat with noiseless strokes, as much at home as the native girls and looking more like a sea-nymph than anything else with the harmless fire tangled in her hair and spreading outward from every motion of her strong young limbs.

She was happy as any queen in that wondrous water-world floating between earth and heaven. Her thoughts also floated on a quiet ripple of satisfaction. Oh, how wise—how wise she had been! She couldn’t have come out alone. She couldn’t have managed the crew or taken up the islands or done anything alone, but now—now, without the worry of marriage, here she was with two willing slaves who never guessed they were slaves, who in their delight in their own freedom were ready to do her will in everything, to relieve her of every care except that of themselves, and to put her interests far before their own in their gratitude for the door she had opened to them. The best of the copra, the most rainbow-hued pearl shell, the pearls, were put to her credit, and then and not till then they divided the rest. What girl could ask more? To go on like this for ever and ever and——

She could have dreamt she was floating in starry air between heaven and earth in the tepid water shot through with light. She struck out and fire glittered in the ripples her feet and hands made, spreading outward like the waves from a ship’s bow. The fish were globes of light in the water below her. She could see the pulsation of every fin. She drank in rapturously the beauty of stars and moonlight with a young sensuous delight bathing her from head to rosy feet.

Hallo! Oars! Where from? She turned over, and raised her head above the ripples like a sea-snake alive with curiosity. Yes—a small boat, the Spindrift’s dinghy, coming toward the little coral pier. Now what on earth could the Spindrift be wanting at this time o’ night with her dinghy? It must be Uncle ’Erbert pulling himself home, for there was only one man aboard her; though that he never did! And then Java remembered she was not exactly in court dress, and edged noiselessly behind a coral rock, moored herself to it with one hand and watched, her feet afloat behind her. Uncle ’Erbert generally stopped aboard for the night when they arrived after dark.

She could see everything as plain as day in that wonderful moonlight as the boat pulled slowly in, dripping soft fire from the oars, and she prepared to give Uncle ’Erbert a hail and ask him what he meant by coming ashore late for supper. My aunt!! It was no Uncle ’Erbert but a man, bareheaded, with a loose white shirt falling back from a strong brown throat, a stranger humming a song to himself as he edged the dinghy to the pier. Little did he think what bright eyes watched him so curiously from behind the rock.

She heard the words plainly. Then he stopped, lay on his oars and said aloud:

“What a night!”—and so sat staring over the water, breathing, drinking in the beauty as if he would never stop. Java, her face framed in swaying sea-weed, watched him with intense curiosity.

He began to sing again, not loudly but in a fine pleasant tenor and by no means the romantic ditty to be expected from the ocean and moonlight. A rollicking tune:

She never meant to laugh, but she did, very softly, and a ripple splashed into her mouth and nearly choked her. He looked round as if startled. Nothing doing. Only rocks, coral, and a sea magnificently lit up as for a royal fête, and beyond, the dazzling white beach, the garden, the paw-paws, and the window of the humpy, with the lamplight competing with the moonlight and badly worsted in the struggle.

“Well, I’m blowed,” said the tenor, “I thought I heard—— But it couldn’t have been.” He paused again, looked about him and began to pull slowly toward the tiny pier. Swaying in the water, anchored by her one hand, she saw him tie the boat up to one of the rings, and get ashore, looking round him once more in an uncertain kind of way. Then he began the long march up the beach and through the almost unbearable sweetness of the tropic flowers to the little home, going slowly and rather doubtfully like a man not sure of his welcome. Java immediately swam for the pier, and got into her clothes as quickly as possible. She was simmering with curiosity. What in heaven’s name could have brought a stranger in the Spindrift’s dinghy? It took her about ten minutes to make herself presentable, and then she was off and away after those firm footprints in the whiteness of the beach.

Voices greeted her a long way off. They carried far in that night-silence. First Uncle ’Enry, inquisitive, a little stand-offish. She couldn’t catch the words. Then the tenor, polite, brief in statement. Then Uncle ’Enry, argumentative as usual. The tenor again, and at last Java quickening her trot while under cover, slackening to a dignified walk when she emerged into moonlight, advanced upon the party, and beheld them from a distance.

The stranger was sitting in her own chair, the sea-grass rocker. The lamplight from behind made him a well-thought-out silhouette against the open door. She could hear now what he was saying, and hung on her foot a minute to listen.

“Well, sir, we put our money together—young fools, you’ll say—and bought the brig—ten pounds apiece we gave for her, a crazy old brute of a scow, and we started from Sydney, thinking to come back from New Guinea a set of blooming millionaires——”

“What might her name be?” asked Uncle ’Enry, somewhat dryly.

“The Warrigal. And then——”

She couldn’t stand there for ever to listen. She advanced with staid dignity, the moonlight glittering in the wet drops that clung like dew in cobwebs in the brown silk curls about her brows.

The stranger jumped to his feet. A girl, a pretty girl, coming up from the sea! Astonishing apparition! Uncle ’Enry introduced them with awful propriety.

“My niece, Miss Dixon. This gent’s name is Wynyard, he says.”

“Roger Wynyard,” supplemented the stranger.

“And he’s telling of a trip he made with a lot of young fellows from Sydney, prospecting up New Guinea way. But take your chair, Java, my dear, and I’ll have out another. Dixon will be up before long, he says.”

Captain Java took her chair and surveyed Wynyard calmly. She was not an easily flurried young woman, else this sudden advent might have flushed her a little.

He resumed his story more consciously, as a man will, with a pretty girl’s eyes upon him.

“Well, sir, we knew, when it was too late to mend our luck, that she was as leaky as a sieve and the spars and sails not fit to face a breeze much less the northeast monsoon. I was the only fellow on board who knew anything of navigation, and to make a long story short, either I didn’t know as much as I should or the luck was against us, for we struck on the Gravel Reef and that was the end of the ship. It was blowing hard and several of the men were drowned, and the master deserted in the best boat with six men and that was the last I saw of them. And whether they reached the land or not I couldn’t tell you.”

“What come of the other boats?” asked Uncle ’Enry in his ruminative way.

“They were as leaky as the brig to start with, and they drowned eight men before the brig slipped off the reef and sank to her lower yards. I was the only man left, unless the big boat reached land, and I climbed the rigging, and sat there for more than twenty-four hours—and I won’t tell you before the young lady here all I went through before the Spindrift passed heading north, so I’ll wind up by saying I made signals and they took me off, and Cap’n Dixon treated me like a king for the week I was on board, and here I am to tell you he’ll be up shortly and to give you my grateful thanks as part owner, for I owe my life and more to your partner and your boat.”

“That’s the owner!” said Uncle ’Enry jerking a thumb toward the silent Java, and the young man turned and looked at her in astonishment.

“That’s Cap’n Java!” said Uncle ’Enry firmly, much enjoying his effect. “And if you come to talk of partners——”

“D’ye mean to say, sir, the schooner’s that young lady’s property?”

Captain Homan nodded violently.

Such blank astonishment stared at her that Java intervened.

“It’s true I own the schooner, but my uncles and I are really partners in a trading concern. I count her no more mine than theirs, and surely we’re all three as glad as can be she happened along that way and picked you up. I expect you’ve to thank the monsoon for that, for Gravel Reef is off her course. You look at the chart and you’ll see!”

His eyes rounded still further on this clear-headed young woman. She looked as pink and white and feminine as if she had never walked a yard off pavements in her life. Her cotton dress was as daintily fresh as the stephanotis blossoms overhead, but here she was on Paradise Island in the Pacific, and she owned a schooner, and talked of charts as if she could handle them familiarly. As-tonishing!

He looked at her blankly—and by a sudden impulse she burst out laughing, a clear bright laughter like running water, delightful to ear and eye alike.

“Don’t look so frightened—a girl may own a ship as well as a sewing machine if you come to that, and if you do own a ship you may as well know one end of a chart from the other. So cheer up, Mr. Wynyard. You’re among friends. Make yourself comfortable and tell us when Uncle ’Erbert’s coming along. And have you had your supper?”

He had, and he gave the necessary information about Uncle ’Erbert, doing his best to behave in the ordinary way, but it was all like a dream to him. Events had rattled along too quickly to carry him with them; the voyage, the wreck, the rescue, and now this fairy island and the queer old men and the astonishing girl. In its setting of moonlight and perfume it seemed as if it might all dissolve with the sea-mist and float gently away on the moonbeams and he find himself hanging on to the Warrigal’s yards for dear life once more.

He was by way of being a reader. Wasn’t there one of Shakespeare’s plays about a magic island and an old man and a wonderful daughter with eyes like sea-water in the shadow? Miranda—yes, that was her name, but she didn’t own a schooner, and the bard had omitted to mention it if she could pick her way through a chart. Uncle ’Enry rose presently and went into the house, and the two were alone.

“It isn’t a dream,” she said, laughing a little again. “You’re not in the rigging, dreaming you’re ashore, but safe and sound on dry land.”

“I know!” he said eagerly. “I’d got used to that aboard the Spindrift. It’s the island, and the house, and the flowers, and you. I never saw anything like it down Sydney way!”

“No, nor never would!” she answered scornfully. “That’s the world. This is heaven.”

He looked about him and finally at her.

“I think you’re right.”

A pause.

“You don’t see many people here, I guess, dropping in, as I did. You must have been pretty surprised, Miss Dixon, when you found me sitting here.”

“I guess I might have been. But you see I knew you were here.”

“You knew? How in the name of——”

She interrupted, humming softly,

“What! you heard me singing? Where were you?”

“Ah where?” She was tantalizing him. “But I heard you, and you didn’t sound a bit like a man in a dream. Very much alive you were, and in uncommonly good spirits. No reason why you shouldn’t. This is a pleasant place enough and you’re heartily welcome.”

“But where were you? Of course I was simply howling for joy to find myself in harbour again, and I have about as much notion of singing as a dingo. What I want to know is where you came from just now,” he insisted helplessly, as Uncle ’Enry reappeared.

“Having her moonlight swim, she was, and if it wasn’t for a touch of lumbago I’d ask nothing better myself,” said the ancient mariner dropping heavily into his chair.

That was the last touch of unreality. So there were sirens in these magic seas—sirens who floated in the moonlight behind the rocks, with bright observant eyes on shipwrecked sailors making unsuspecting for their dangerous shores! Why hadn’t she sung herself, as a siren should, something romantic about the moonlight and—what else?—what should a siren sing about? All the world knows that.

“There’s Dixon!” Uncle ’Enry said, scattering romance and dreams. “I know his step in a thousand. You go meet him, Java.”

She flew, light-footed, as the elephantine tread pounded through the bushes and up the paw-paw walk, and presently reappeared with her arm through the Captain’s. Not five minutes, but in that five minutes she had got to the bottom of things, had assured herself that Uncle ’Erbert considered Wynyard a fine young fellow, full of grit and uncommon good company over a pipe, that he spoke up for himself very nice and sensible, that he said he hadn’t a friend in the world but an uncle in Sydney in the Cape Line office, that he had served mate on one of the coasting steamers of that line, and about half a hundred more details that none but a woman, and that woman Java, could have got out of a slow mover like Uncle ’Erbert in the time. She led him to the door with as innocent an air as if all their talk had been of copra and pearl shell, and disappeared into the house to call Kuki and see about Wynyard’s room. She would not have shown a gleam of curiosity for the world, and he was a little disappointed that she had not cared to ask one single question about his antecedents. It would have been politer if she had shown a little interest!

The three men sat outside, smoking, and, when the little brown room was ready even to the pitcher of water on the table, Java sat by the window in the sitting room and listened unseen to the account of the Spindrift’s voyage, the good haul she had made of pearl shell and bêche de mer and the rescue. She had the whole thing at her fingers’ ends before she leaned out and said gently:

“I’m off to bed, Uncle ’Erbert, and I don’t think Uncle ’Enry should sit out any longer with his lumbago. Mr. Wynyard’s room’s ready.”

A cluster of stephanotis brushed his face and sprayed it with scented dew as she pushed the casement open. He saw her face pale in the moonlight with bright limpid eyes like the irradiated water of the lagoon.

Dreams—dreams and visions possessed him that night as he lay awake looking at the moon tracing silhouettes of swaying branches on the white walls before him. The first night in Paradise may be disturbing enough to an earth-dweller. What did Adam feel the first moonlight night when he waked and knew himself alone? Wynyard heard the cockatoo in the veranda croaking confidentially: “It’s a damned hot night!” He certainly could not sleep.

CHAPTER V

But Java, sleeping soundly after her fashion, woke next day with a sense of disturbance in her little world. The usual unknown hand had laid a few orchids on her window-sill, white tremulous flowers each touched with mauve on the delicate lip, flowers a queen might wear for the sake of their haughty distinction. She looked at them with wonder and delight, noticing that a splendid ripe paw-paw lay beside them. Good for breakfast! she thought, marvelling at the kindness surrounding her while she slipped into kimono and slippers, tossing her short curls back, that she might run down to the lagoon for her morning bath. She walked down the path wishing she could find out from what source these lovely morning gifts came.

“I don’t like to be in debt!” she thought, fingering the pearl image about her neck. That always came into the water with her, and never left her night or day. “The dear kind people. Savages indeed! I wonder what people round Aunt Harriet’s would have taken the trouble to give me so much as a banana. Down in Australia just the same! Look at the scoundrels that cheated that poor fellow last night and his friends into buying that rotten boat. What did they care if they all went to blazes on the reef? With the white man it’s everything for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Give me these people and this country all the time. And it isn’t as if I’d done much for them. . . . Just a decent word here and there and treating them like human beings. That’s all.”

Did Java know the native quite as well as she thought? It was the defect of her energy that she was apt to be a little cocksure and, if she thought a thing, that was about the only thing a sensible person could think! The uncles had suggested once in a way that one couldn’t be altogether certain what was going on in the native nut. They were queer freaks sometimes and unless you knew them uncommonly well——

“But I do know them uncommonly well. Dad traded in and out of the islands and we often landed and they’d come aboard to trade and so on. Of course I know them. To the very bone!”

Certainly she had a way with them. The very children stepped aside to salute her when the white missie passed. The two house-girls flew when she called. The boys down in the sago swamps stopped working to salute and admire. Not impudently and familiarly, mind you, but as if she were a queen. It was really a beautiful sight and she was naturally proud of it. What woman does not enjoy the humblest tribute to her charm?

Strolling down the path now to the delights of her dip she was thinking of it as a man came up as if from the water-side. He too looked at her with the mingled pleasure and awe that in Europe might attend the coming of a very great lady who condescends to smile upon her worshippers. Then he looked at the ground with the deepest respect. He was carrying four of the most delicate fish of the lagoon—gleaming silver-jewelled on great green leaves, dripping fresh with sea-water. He laid them at her feet and vanished silently into the bush that she might not be troubled to thank him.

“Dear grateful things—that was Afla!” she said almost tenderly. Afla—she could get no nearer to his real name than that—had once cut his arm badly and she had run a bandage round it in workman-like fashion, skilful in first aid and the like. She could not know that he had run straight off to Hanua the puri-puri man and torn off the bandage wild with fear of the white man’s medicine stuff, and that Hanua had muttered a charm or two and smeared some filthy green-black stuff on the gaping cut instead. She could never know that, for when she saw the wound healed Kuki had told her how all the people were praising Missy’s skill.

“Missy good puri-puri like Hanua,” Kuki said, laughing until her white teeth sparkled and Java answered proudly:

“Why, I should just think so. Hanua doesn’t know the first thing about bandaging. You come to me, Kuki, when you get cut up.”

She ran back to the house now with the fish for breakfast—so handy for the guest!—and then away to the bathing pier.

Oh the cool plunge into those green cat’s-eye deeps, startling the shoals of little fish who could never get used to Java’s shooting in among them like a bolt from the blue! She swam as well as they did—better in a sense, for she had so many tricks in the water while they stuck to the old fish-fashion. It was heavenly that morning and as she swam and floated and almost dozed in the sustaining liquid embrace she thought of the stranger—Roger Wynyard. He certainly would have to stay either on board or on the island until the trading steamer called or the Spindrift went down again to Atla, and she did not quite relish the notion. If you have perfection an added ingredient will topple it over, more or less, into imperfection and she liked her life as it was. It suited her to a dot. Moreover this man might go back to Sydney and give tongue to the greedy prospectors there of what a snug little spot they’d found in Paradise Island, and then heaven only knew whom they might find taking up land next door and upsetting the boys and making mischief. Whereas their dream—hers and her uncles’—was to get together enough gradually to buy up all the cultivable land on the island and make it their own solid little kingdom. It wasn’t so much after you had subtracted what the natives must have and the mountains of course no one would want or touch. The mountains were a mystery and lived their own life apart. Nobody knew what went on up there and there was no reason why they should. It didn’t matter. But they should have all the rest and she wished the stranger had stayed away—it would have been safer all round.

A plunge caught her ear, close at hand but out of sight behind the rock. She swam cautiously round, supple and slipping through the water silently like a fish. Wynyard! They were bound to meet in and on the water it seemed. Well—so be it! He had enough on to make the meeting possible.

He raised his head after the plunge and saw the scarlet lady coming towards him, the bright colour flaring in long ladders of scarlet through green water. As he puffed and blew, clearing the water from eyes and nostrils. . . .

“Good morning!” she said, perhaps a little curtly.

A man may not look his best with wet hair and shining face, but she knew at once that she liked the frank astonishment and pleasure in his eyes.

“Miss Dixon! By George, how well you swim! You were under water. I never saw you coming.”

“I ought to swim well—considering I’ve done it ever since I was about the length of those fish. I love the water. There are days when I wish I could take to it altogether. Only what would the uncles do?”

“I should have thought your shore life was so jolly that you wouldn’t want to change it for heaven.”

“I don’t. Shall we swim out a good way? No fear of sharks here.”

He agreed, delighted, and they swam out with strong even strokes side by side like a mer-man and -maid making for the open sea. They talked now and then in a friendly way of their different experiences and the adventure that had brought him there. And then beauty overwhelmed them and they fell silent, swimming side by side as if in a dream, while the shore dwindled behind them.

Farther out the lagoon was blue—a deep hyacinth-blue, and Java fancied that in a dream a man and woman might swim away so and out of the narrow opening in the coral reef into the wide ocean and find some unimagined island remote and lovely. There landing they would become not only king and queen but the gods of a simple gentle people and so wander always hand in hand dispensing bliss, forgetting and forgotten by the wild world outside. Wynyard swam beautifully. She could see his broad breast launched like a boat against the water, his eager face like a ship’s blown figure-head looking above it as if he too had his dreams, leading him far into the unknown.

“There are worse deaths than drowning,” Java said, treading water for a minute beside him.

“I didn’t think so spitted in the mast of the Warrigal,” he answered. “I wanted to live as a man wants water when he’s mad with thirst.”

His eyes grew too dreamy; he had forgotten her, and her practical side took alarm. One should know a man better before one shares the freedom of the sea with him. She said coolly:

“What I want is my breakfast and so do you. We must turn back right away, for if there’s one thing my uncles won’t stand it’s being late for Kuki’s good cooking. And there’s fish this morning——”

She smacked her lips eloquently and making a turn in the water that splashed him with silver swam for the shore, so swiftly, with such an arrow-flight, that it was all Wynyard could do to keep up with her. The more Java’s hair was wetted the more it curled and with the morning sun on it now it looked as though covered with a net of diamonds. He had never seen anything so pretty as the scarlet streak that kept him company with glittering head and lips that shamed the scarlet reflections in the water.

“I left my clothes indoors so I must walk up to the house,” she said as they climbed the steps. “And I think if you don’t mind, Mr. Wynyard, that we won’t go up together. My uncles don’t like mixed bathing. They’re very old-fashioned and I wouldn’t hurt them—for nuts!”

She was partly joking, partly in earnest. He could not tell which was which but drew back at once. Not to a corner, however, where he could not command the walk up to the house. She had slipped her feet into sandals, and walked dripping under the palms and through the glory of the alamanda bushes, the wet scarlet clinging about her. Surely goddesses walked like that, with the same free long step, supple and beautiful, covering the ground quickly yet with no sign of hurry, white limbs shining against the green. No thought of love or desire was in his heart. He delighted to watch her as he delighted in the blaring golden trumpets of the alamandas or the sculptured green of the palm fronds breathless against a blue sky. To him she seemed a sister of the brilliant birds hawking in and out of the flowers, and no nearer to him. “A fine girl!” he said to himself wholeheartedly.—“A fine wholesome woman she’ll be, one of these days. It’s the right life for her here—better than the towns.”

He was thinking of the flat-breasted narrow-hipped girls he had known down yonder with no notion of life or romance but from cheap novels and the crook-stuff of the movies with their black-haired vamps and too-good-to-be-true peroxide blondes. Were these town girls likely or decent wives or mothers of men?—weakly vicious, foolish, given over to dress and cheap frolics with men which both must often pay for pretty dearly later on—and not worth it, not worth it!

Sex-conscious, self-conscious. Though those were not the words in which he put it, that was what he knew of them; that was what they had wanted to make him feel. Sometimes they had succeeded, not always. And it was partly the dead-sickness of them and their ways that had enlisted him in the Warrigal adventure. It would be much to get out of the towns and their cheap seductions into the world of seas and skies and free winds and the life they compel in their own kingdoms. This girl wasn’t like that. She was as content with those two old men as the others with an army of adorers. Her eyes looked straight into his like a dog’s, frank, sharing pleasure, natural as sunshine. He liked it. He liked her.

When he came up to the house Uncle ’Enry was flapping a red bandanna handkerchief from the window to hurry him.

“You come along, young man. The fish is just done to a frizzle—fair lovely! And the coffee—don’t you smell it there?”

He did, and it was heavenly. It banished thought and substituted luxurious enjoyment. He came into the room at a run, and the picture it made gave him the first taste of home he had had for many a long day.

It was low and brown, the wood showing plain and polished everywhere in walls and floor and tables and chairs. There was a large dark blue and cream matting on the floor and little curtains to match at the two casement windows. On one wall hung a deep-sea picture of a schooner in full sail that Captain Dixon had commanded once upon a time, and fortunately the royal blue of the sea went with the general scheme of things, which was about all you could say for the artist. On another hung the pride of Java’s heart, two real Chinese pictures wheedled out of an old skipper down from Singapore who couldn’t tell what to do with such a pack of rubbish. Mountains splintered like crystals and wildly smoking mists in one, and in the other a lake bordered with Chinese temples with outsweeping roofs and dragon finials, and lovely little gardens with hump-backed bridges and rocky pools. Nothing else. Uncle ’Erbert had had visions of draping one wall with the red ensign to give a nice comfortable touch of colour, but Java’s verdict that it would harbour dust was sufficient.

The table wore a cloth in chequers of blue and white and the breakfast it supported was worthy of kings’ palaces, in Roger’s opinion. There was coffee pervading the room from a pewter pot that shone like aged silver, and golden griddle cakes with maple syrup, and the fish as golden, and fried eggs and bacon, and jam in a cut-glass dish, and Java in a dark blue cotton (her working frock, if he had but known it), short in the sleeve, disclosing white arms, open at the neck revealing the round pillar of her throat and slung round it the queer mother-of-pearl figure that she wore for love of the giver and its own grotesquerie.

Behind her the open window broke into a glory of white and perfumed stars.

“This is paradise!” Roger said, taking his place opposite Uncle ’Enry. Captain Dixon faced Java. “And I don’t see how anyone could ever want to leave it if they offered him a millionaire’s job free in Sydney or London.”

“No more don’t I,” Captain Homan answered reaching for the fish and heaping the guest’s plate generously. “For I ask of you, what does a man want more nor sunshine and a good house and his own land about him and a bit of garden and good victuals and the sea to look at and a good ship to sail——”

“And the best housekeeper in the seven seas to keep it all shipshape,” interrupted Captain Dixon. “For I say straight out and I don’t care who hears me that there isn’t a thing on or off the island that would go right if it wasn’t for Captain Java.”

“Now, Uncle, you go on with your breakfast! Captain Java, indeed!” she said colouring a little at the praise. Captain Dixon had in either fist a knife and fork upright on the table while he looked at her, beaming mild pleasure. Captain Homan applauded:

“Right you are, Scotty, that’s God’s truth. It’s Captain Java all the time.”

“May I ask, sir, why you call your niece ‘Captain Java’? I like it awfully but it has a kind of sea-faring sound I don’t understand.”

He did presently when Captain Dixon, with Uncle ’Enry butting in when enthusiasm was choking him, told the great saga of her captaining her dad’s ship when he lay dying down below. Their pride moved Wynyard more than a little—how they loved the girl!—how happily they lived together, and yet what an oddly consorted trio! One thing puzzled him. Were the two uncles brothers and how came it that Captain Dixon had let drop Stormalong’s surname as “Hardy”? Family relationships branch out in a confusion beyond clearing but still—how was it that Java was Miss Dixon if Stormalong was Hardy? He didn’t like to venture a question but the whole thing was so like a romance in a book that he felt he would like to have all the points cleared up.

“Did you say ‘Captain Hardy’, sir?” he hazarded as the story drew to its triumphant climax. There was keen interest in his face and Java saw it. She would have kicked Uncle ’Erbert under the table if possible. Her cheeks grew angrily red as he went serenely on:

“I said Hardy by name and Hardy by nature, young man. And I say that if you’d had Cap’n Hardy aboard the Warrigal she wouldn’t have been knocking herself to bits now on the reef. Ah (with long-drawn-out-relish), he was a seaman—he was! It runs in the blood, that does! You can’t get out of it! Java’s got it too, simple as she sits there. That girl aboard a ship——”

Looking to Java for sympathy as he took his cup from her what was Captain Dixon’s horror at finding her eyes fixed on him with a blue and icy glare, her lips shaping a “Sh-Sh”—as near as he could guess it. What in hell had he said, what done? In his agitation he tilted the saucer and over went the cupful into the bacon.

“Now, Uncle ’Erbert,” she remonstrated gently but firmly, “if you would but eat your breakfast instead of telling old tarradiddles, we should get along better. Or if you must finish it why don’t you let Mr. Wynyard know how you adopted your niece when she was flying the Union Jack upside down and hadn’t too many friends in the world?”

Captain Homan chipped in:

“I’ve heard Scotty tell many a good story but never the end of one in his life. Here, young man, have another bit of fish and an egg. And what plans have you in the offing? You’ll have to put up with us for longer than perhaps you’ll like, for there’s no getting you away till the Spindrift makes another trip to Atla or the Bird of Paradise calls along for cargo. And that don’t happen too often.”

Roger laughed, but with a touch of anxiety.

“Why, sir, what man in the world could ask better than to stay a bit on this island? I couldn’t believe my luck if it wasn’t that I can’t stand butting in on you like this. And Miss Dixon?”

The two captains were full of kind assurances. Perhaps Java hadn’t heard. She was coaxing Pollipet the cockatoo to his breakfast from his nest of flowers in the veranda. He had his breakfast at table “like a Christian” as Uncle ’Erbert phrased it. Wynyard thought many a Christian worse off than the bird that sat clutching Java’s finger in little clenching claws while she fed him daintily with morsels of bread dipped in milk, and bits of fruit. He nestled his head against her breast with tiny noises of love and pleasure, happy as a child.

“But indeed I do apologize to Miss Dixon for the trouble I give her,” said Wynyard rushing on his fate. “If I could swim to the nearest island I would, but though I’m a fair swimmer——”

“If you did it’s not only a good step but you’d find them ready on the shore with their best new cooking-pots. Nula’s our nearest neighbour and fifty miles of good blue water between us and them and I don’t grudge it for they’re deep-dyed cannibals,” said Captain Dixon lighting his pipe.

Java made a wry face but still said not a word, busy with the cockatoo. Wynyard tried again. The cannibals for choice, if he could not wring a word of welcome from her. It had suddenly struck him she might think he meant to quarter himself on them indefinitely, sponging for a job. And what more likely when a man’s flung on people’s good nature with nothing but what he stands up in? He felt the blood in his very ears at the thought and hurriedly set himself right.

“I should say this, sir, I’ve an uncle in Sydney who’s beforehand with the world enough to put me into a good job when I get back. I know I look down and out and regular riff-raff now. A man does when he’s stuck on a mast like a spitted fowl but I’m as right as rain when I can get back to Sydney. And meanwhile, sir, don’t you want a hand on board the schooner or down at the sago swamps? I’m only too anxious to pull my weight and pay my way.”

And still Java said not a word. It was Captain Homan who answered loud and free.

“The man who would grudge a shipwrecked sailor-man his bite and sup and what’ll start him on his next cruise, is no man for me—— No, sir! And Scotty’ll say the same, eh, Scotty?”

“You bet, Homan! I’m with you right along.”

Captain Homan went on unmoved.

“And as to work—why I know an honest man don’t like to sit around twiddling his thumbs, more particularly a fine strong-built young fellow like you, so just you snoop around and take hold where you like and then you’ll feel more natural.”

Still Java said nothing. The incident of the story had ruffled her and she scented curiosity in Wynyard’s question as to the name. He had no business! and she wouldn’t have it known for golden guineas what the arrangements were between her and the uncles. Again he rushed on his fate.

“Miss Dixon, I’m sure it would give you less trouble if I dossed down aboard the Spindrift and I’d be only too thankful and grateful. . . .”

The cockatoo fixed a brilliant eye upon him and flapped his wings angrily from Java’s shoulder.

“Fool!” he said vindictively and made a bee-line for the window as if present company were unendurable. Java rose:

“It’s for my uncles and you to decide, Mr. Wynyard, but I should think you might be more comfortable aboard. And as to ‘dossing down’ there’s as nice a little cabin as any man could wish to see. Have we finished? Because, if so, Kuki and Devara can clear away.”

That settled that, and he retired to smoke his pipe under the candlenut tree and try to solve the problem of her dislike. It centred round Captain Dixon’s story—of that he was sure. One might muddle about with aunts and grandmothers and family connections, but if her father’s name was Hardy it must be hers too, unless—and his face lengthened slowly—unless she was a married woman. He recalled her quick interposition, her hint that Captain Dixon had adopted her. But people only did that when there were money and estates in the balance or a shady past to hide. How she had flattened her uncle out! That story would go no further. No, but—he could guess the whole thing now. A miserable marriage. A flight with her uncles to the farthest corner of the world where the scoundrel would never trace them—very likely in prison somewhere, and Java ashamed, sick, furious, casting off his name for good and all and trying to forget him in the peace of Paradise Island. And his ill-advised question had re-opened the wound. Well might the cockatoo call him “fool!” Well might Java prefer that such a tactless blunderbuss should live aboard the Spindrift till he could be shunted. Poor girl—poor, unfortunate girl! He must look at her hand for that tragic wedding-ring next chance he got.

It occurred to him to wonder why she hadn’t stuck to her father’s name when she cast aside her married name? There was another odd thing too! Java spoke like a lady—the finished product turned out by the best registered-at-Lloyd’s, A.1 boarding school. Why did she call her uncles “ ’Erbert” and “ ’Enry”? Why, if she did that, didn’t she shed her other h’s like autumn leaves? Not one was adrift—not a blessed one. And why were her uncles—good plain-spoken sailor-men, not quite on the same rung of the social ladder as their niece? And was her mother Miss Dixon or Miss Homan or both? It was very confusing really. The unhappy marriage must explain it all somehow—and the queer change of name. After all natural enough—no connection with the past was what she wanted. People might remember that Captain Hardy’s daughter had married a rotter where Miss Dixon would go unsuspected. Heaven send he might use more tact next time!

Meanwhile at the breakfast table Kuki and Devara were not clearing away. Java was lecturing her uncles, and Captain Dixon sat before her like a caught school-boy, Captain Homan leaning stolidly on the back of his chair.

“Uncle ’Erbert, I’m ashamed of you—I never was so ashamed in my life. I shished at you as loud as I could. I’d have thrown a plate at your head if I’d dared. How could you let on my name was Hardy and I your niece?”

Blue eyes darted lightnings at him. She looked as if she could have boxed his ears for a penny. He stared at her helplessly.

“But I don’t see what I’ve done, Java. You like to hear your dad get his dues.”

“So I do!” she answered wrathfully. “But I ask you, Uncle ’Erbert, what’s the sense of introducing me to the man as Miss Dixon which is what I choose to be, and then telling him Dad’s name was Hardy!”

That was quelling. The two stared at her dumbfounded.

“I declare to God I didn’t know I done it! It just slipped out like a mouse from a hole. What in gracious was you doing, Homan, that you couldn’t run up a signal for full steam astern? Standing there staring like a great moon-calf!”

It was such a relief to him to fall foul of anyone else that Captain Homan couldn’t grudge him the luxury.

“I might have signalled if I’d known where you was bound, Scotty,” he said mildly, “but you had the heels of me anyhow. And I declare to God’s truth I never suspicioned what you let on till Java told us off. As-tonishing how quick a woman picks a thing up, and Java like greased lightning.” He turned to Java hopefully and added:

“Well—what’s to be done now? Maybe Scotty better go and tell him he got Stormalong’s name wrong.”

She brushed away an angry tear and loved them for their simplicity while she could have boxed their ears. The two feelings are perfectly compatible. But, Java-like, she did not impart all her thoughts and resolves.

“Go out and smoke and then off with you to the sago swamps!” she said brightly. “No—there’s nothing to be done, but be more careful another time. Maybe he won’t give it another thought and least said soonest mended. But remember it’s not going to be known I’m not your real niece. If the thing came out we might have Mrs. Dixon and Aunt Harriet down in the next boat to Australia. They’d stand you two making off, for they want to be rid of you, but they’d never stand me with you! Now, mark my words! And go off and smoke.”

It was as if she had said “Go and play,” and indeed they went as humbly as two infants, petrified by the awful image called up in her last sentence. They knew too it was true. If those two ladies at Gravesend knew Java was with them, a long adieu to peace and comfort and delectable money-making—and most of all to Java—Java whom they loved as the apple of their eye and on whom they depended for all earthly bliss.

After they had gone out into the veranda Uncle ’Erbert thrust his head back through the window.

“If he asks, Java, I’ll ask him to mind his own business, and that’ll put the whole thing out of his head. He’ll not give it another thought.”

She shook her head despairingly.

“Let bad alone. I’ll attend to this job—and now go and smoke.”

They went.

It was only after Kuki and Devara had cleared away and as she sat thinking the thing out that an idea came to Java. Nothing would undo that slip of Captain Homan’s, and any allusion would make it worse. But her quick mind at once leaped to the deduction he would draw. Why of course he would think she had married in haste and repented at leisure. Let him think it! She had no objection. It might even be rather fun, and could certainly be used to protect her from any advances if he turned out “that sort.” “That sort” and what she meant by it was as common as dirt in all sorts and conditions of men. He might try to amuse himself like the rest if he got his chance. Well—let him try.

As she passed the uncles meekly smoking in the veranda, she halted on her foot before she turned into the garden:

“Now, uncles, just you remember I’m on this job. No one else. And if you either of you tell that Stormalong story again, as sure as you live I’ll dock you of your evening rum! NOW.”

They looked so downcast and subdued as Captain Homan shook his head and Captain Dixon sighed that she gave each a flying kiss on the cheek before she went off to her own bedroom. There, patiently hunting in an old box of treasures that she kept under lock and key, she found at last an old-fashioned wedding-ring, thin as fine gold wire, that Stormalong had worn on his watch chain. Her mother’s ring. Java put it on the third finger of her left hand and kissed it. Then smiled, showing a row of pearls between rosy lips.

“And now for some fun!” said she to herself. “Light come—light go! He’ll be off in three weeks or so.”

CHAPTER VI

She scarcely saw Wynyard that day, for he went aboard the Spindrift with Uncle ’Erbert to make his arrangements for sleeping. It was settled, however, that he should take his meals at the house. As Uncle ’Enry observed, what’s enough for three is enough for four and it would save having the cooking boy aboard when he was wanted in the sago swamps. Everyone could lend a hand while the Spindrift was idly swinging round on her moorings in the sparkling blue of the lagoon, and as Wynyard meant to put in a full share of work at the swamp it was much more handy that he should have his meals with the owners.

So it was settled, and Java knew the exact moment when his curious eye focussed her thin gold ring. She felt it like a burning ray and guessed very nearly what was passing in his mind. Very nearly only—because though she was right as to the curiosity and surmise of hidden disaster it never occurred to her that there was anything in the joke to touch him personally. How should it? It never occurred to himself. The discomfort he felt he quite naturally set down to his own stupidity in having touched on the raw and vexed her by inducing Captain Dixon’s inadvertence. And day followed day and drew nearer to the time when the Bird of Paradise would call with mail and a half empty hold on her way to Port Moresby.

But events marched quickly.

Whatever Wynyard felt he was a useful hand in all the work on the property. He fell into his proper place at once as a white man who knew exactly how to boss the boys and get the best out of them easily and in the cheery way, that is by no means so common a gift as it sounds, and the uncles sized it up at its full value instantly.

“For you see, Scotty,” said Captain Homan seated in large peace beneath the candlenut tree as the sun fell in a west gorgeously aflame with scarlet and green and gold and hues unnameable, “there’s a darned lot to think of one way or another. ’Tisn’t as if it was only the sago and sweet potatoes. There’s a lot more to it. There’s the schooner.”

Captain Dixon knocked the ash out of his pipe and sat up.

“True for you, Homan. A man wants eyes all over his body like a peacock’s tail to be even with the boys, and the Spindrift’s been laying like cold pork a-top of me the last month and more. If the Bird of Paradise came here four trips more in the year we could do all right but part of our stuff hurts by keeping and I’ve been thinking——”

“Steady on! Java said it first!” said Captain Homan. “What that girl don’t know you might put in a fly’s eye and he wouldn’t want no glasses. She said as plain as print to you, setting right here: ‘Uncle ’Enry and Uncle ’Erbert, if we could send the Spindrift down once in two months to cut off the Bird of Paradise at Nukulu there’s money in it.’ Didn’t she say that, setting in front of us? Answer me that?”

“She did—right there!” Uncle ’Erbert answered with feeling, “and I’m the last to deny it. Java has an eye like a gimlet and no mistake. But she didn’t say what I say now, Homan, and what I suspicion was what you were coming out with. That young fella Wynyard——”

“Then let me out with it myself, Scotty. Credit where credit’s due. That young fella . . . the work’s gone twice as quick down in the swamps since he signed on. The boys like him—he can boss them fine. And he’s a fair notion—though far be it from me, amen, to say he knows the business of following the sea, like you or me. No, we’ve got to size the thing up. Supposing I’ve got my lumbago and we’re busy with the sago. Who’s to take the little hooker to Nukulu? Java ups and says she could, and she could do it dandy, Lord knows, but would you and me see her sail alone with the black fellas that you can’t trust like English hands? Not we! Or would we leave her behind here to run the crops if so be as you was able-bodied and went skipper and I stayed on my beam ends with lumbago? No, sir! Then what I ask is—what’s to be done?”

“Wynyard’s turned up true blue so far, but a man has turns in him like the knots in a tree that you don’t know till you saw it up,” Captain Dixon answered immersed in thought. “Still I won’t deny that there’s a lot in what you say, Homan, and we neither of us get younger. I sometimes think Java does us a bit too well—what with fish and birds and them pigs as is fair delicious with crackling and guava jelly, a man’s apt to take his whack and a bit over. It isn’t in flesh and blood to refuse a second helping and her smiling to see how you like it.”

“Lord, don’t say that to her! Don’t put her off her dot. There’s things a woman should know and things she shouldn’t,” cried Captain Homan, repeating his favourite axiom. “And as for Wynyard now we’ve made up our minds let’s talk it over with Java. It’s her due as part owner. I don’t suppose she ever give it a thought. Women don’t look ahead like a man. Let’s put it it would be very handy if there was a man to skipper the ship down to Nukulu to meet the Bird of Paradise when we was busy here, or to boss the work the other way over if you went or me. But break it to her easy for women sometimes fly off the handle, even the best of them, and it don’t somehow seem to me that she has a powerful liking for young Wynyard.”

They broke it to Java next day, very cautiously that she mightn’t be startled into fits at the notion of a permanent intruder on their ring-fenced Paradise. She took it with an air of surprise tempered by reflection, and who could have supposed that the same idea had been working in her mind from the first day Wynyard had put his back into the work down at the swamps and she had seen with her own eyes how easily he took his proper place with the boys. She had liked that. It appealed to her strong practical common sense. The man had grit in him for all he had managed to run his head against the Gravel Reef.

But all she said was:

“Well, uncles, it’s for you to judge. If you think it wise to have a stranger we know nothing of in all our little secrets, I don’t say no. I only say—Don’t jump in a hurry. Why can’t I take the ship down to Nukulu when you’re wanted here?”

“There’s none would do it better!” said Captain Homan admiringly. “Old Stormalong said—says he——”

At that name she cast an apprehensive look about her.

“There’s one thing I’m afraid of, uncles, if he did stay, that what with you talking of Dad and one thing with another he’d soon be at the bottom of all our little family secrets. And I can’t stand that——!”

“No—no, Java,” Captain Dixon answered laying a hairy paw on her strong little brown hand. “Don’t you fear. You’re our niece all right and he’ll know no more. But if you could reconcile yourself to the notion—I know you dislike the young fella, and I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse—still, if you could! Homan and me won’t get younger as years come and go, and if either of us was to lose the number of his mess that lad would come in handy with the other.”

Quick tears sprang into Java’s eyes. She raised a warning hand.

“You’re not to dare to talk of such a thing. I won’t have it. But I’ll go as far as this. If it’ll ease either of your minds I’ll give in. After all we can hire him, and if he doesn’t suit he doesn’t, and that’s that! I do see the difficulty about Nukulu and it’s important.”

They were immensely relieved and yet still anxious as to her point of view. There were indeed many pow-wows between the three principals before the offer was made to Wynyard, and it was as good as a play to see the two practising all their arts to persuade Java while she sat in sphinx-like silence with heaven knows what thoughts hidden behind unfathomable blue eyes. They liked him better and better every day and it was really difficult to see why Java did not, though on the other hand it removed what might have been a lurking fear of her liking him too well. Such things had been known, as Uncle ’Erbert observed to Uncle ’Enry, and a girl whisked away to the ends of the earth before she knew what she was up against, but no fear here! He even wished it might be a bit more the other way because Wynyard seemed a likely lad all round. For Java to like him a little but not too much was the ideal. Ideals are seldom realized.

“You see, Java, he could have a little humpy down at the end o’ the garden, and Kuki’s sister to keep it clean, so it wouldn’t be no trouble to you,” urged Uncle ’Erbert. “I wouldn’t put it forward as he could mess with us always, like he does now though he’s a decent lively young fellow as ever stepped a deck, because every extry knife and fork’s a trouble, look at it how you will; but all the same if you’re not dead set against the notion . . .”

He cast a questioning eye at her. Certainly it would add to the gaiety of nations if Wynyard turned up with his laughing brown face at every meal. But Java was reticent.

“No, I think you’re quite right, Uncle ’Erbert. That wouldn’t be wise. Mr. Wynyard may be all very well, but he’s not to think we jump at him. If you feel he’d be useful in the trading and the work hereabouts, why I’ve nothing more to say, though for my part I think we did very well as we were—if it weren’t for Nukulu.”

“She don’t like the notion!” said Uncle ’Erbert turning a melancholy gaze on Uncle ’Enry. “And if she don’t like it——”

He shook his head despondingly. Java hurriedly corrected him.

“I never said that, whatever I said. A person mayn’t exactly jump at a thing but at the same time she may know it’s sensible. I know your lumbago bothers you, Uncle, and I know another hand would be useful. But I’m not going to have Mr. Wynyard think he’s so priceless that we can’t go on without him!”

She tossed her little head with its shining sea-scented curls, and Captain Dixon looked at her in mingled admiration and respect.

“Why, of course, my girl, you’re right, but I will say as a modester humbler-thinking young fellow than Roger Wynyard never reported himself aboard. No, no, he ain’t puffed up like the wicked man in the Scripture. Besides I don’t even know for certain as he’d stay. His uncle is doing very well down Sydney way, he says. But if you don’t like the notion, Java, why then it’s a case of coil down ropes and pipe down. We wouldn’t go for to propose it, would we, Homan?”

“Why, no, Scotty. Best say no more if the little Cap’n don’t like it.”

And Java suddenly, unaccountably, burst into tears.

“Oh, my heavens, did I ever say I didn’t like it? Aren’t you the stupidest pair of old uncles that ever badgered the life out of a girl! Everything must be said plain as print before you’ll understand. What I said was—Have him if you want him, but don’t spoil him, don’t pamper him. Now!—is that plain?”

She darted off into the bush, leaving the two staring at each other.

“First time I ever knew Java to behave like a woman!” said Captain Homan in a voice of deadly alarm. “Plain as print? I’m jiggered if I know what she wants.”

“It’s my belief she don’t know herself,” Captain Dixon answered ruefully. “She reminded me of the missus then as like as two peas. But my advice is—Have him, and if it don’t answer why then it’s a case of ‘Your way lies north, mine south, and henceforwards we’re in sunders.’ That’s easy said if needful.”

So it was settled, for Wynyard accepted joyfully. He didn’t want Sydney, not he! This was the life for him.

Java received the news calmly—still impenetrable. Neither Wynyard nor her uncles knew her thought, nor the inner radiance that transfigured her when that arrangement was signed and sealed. She had been in an agony lest she had gone too far with her reticence, and yet too proud to unsay a single word. The uncles had a dinner that delighted their souls, and Java sang like a lark in the evening, and Wynyard loafing in the dinghy about the lagoon heard it and blessed his happy stars.

So the little house was run up under the coco-palms beyond the garden. They meant to do an even more thriving business in copra and bêche de mer one of these days and everything seemed possible with this strong new help and the energy of a young man behind them.

To Java also everything seemed more than possible. The uncles heaped her with propitiations and adorations for her wonderful kindness in agreeing to a measure she had scarcely approved, and as to Wynyard he overflowed with the humblest gratitude. Woman-like she had won her heart’s desire, and serenely accepted the gratitude and praise for having been gracious enough to do exactly what she wanted. She could not understand now why she had been so snappish with them all.

“I know you didn’t want me, Miss Dixon,” he said a little sadly one evening after a long day’s work in the sago swamp, overseeing, ordering, lending a hand himself. Java had walked down to the beach in the moonlight, and the captains were reclining on long chairs outside the house in a comfort beyond words, their souls fulfilled with peace.

“Did I ever say I didn’t want you?” she countered, looking away from him into the mysterious beauty of the night.

“You never said it—no, but you never said you did.”

“Silence gives consent,” she quoted.

“Not the sort of consent that warms a fellow’s heart. Won’t you ever say you’re glad I’m here?”

“I’m glad to see my uncles get the help they want. I’m glad—”

“Yes? What?” he pushed up a little too close in his eagerness, and she drew away instantly. He had lost his chance. Some fine feminine instinct warned her that here—all alone amongst men, for the native women hardly counted, she must have an extra defence of reserve and supple retreat.

She turned at once to the house.

“Glad from a business point of view,” she said coolly and he followed meekly in her wake. He knew very well, if she didn’t, that for the ghost of a smile, the fag-end of a kind word, he would serve for her seven years on Paradise Island like Jacob. There was no life anywhere else for him now. Those coral reefs enclosed his world.

He looked at her left hand and sighed. What mystery did that golden thread of a ring enclose? He never would have sounded her uncles even if it had been possible, but he knew Uncle ’Erbert would shut up like one of the giant clams in the lagoon if he attempted it and Uncle ’Enry shuffle away to his fishing for supper. She herself was his only chance for knowledge. If they became friends she might confide in him as a sister to a brother. Friends! He excelled himself in labour at the sago swamp and in the garden she loved. And the result was that they never seemed to get a bit nearer to each other, however friendly the surface might be. No swimming in the lagoon now! He scrupulously avoided her hours and she his. What could it mean but that there was some secret trouble he had stupidly wounded? Yet that should not go on for ever. He thought he would make a bid for better understanding. He caught her one day in the garden:

“Miss Dixon, we live here—all of us together—and what with one thing and another I don’t think in this rotten old world a man could get much nearer heaven. But I wish I could feel you didn’t mind my being here. I don’t mean to be a nuisance. Couldn’t you put up with me a little better? You and the cockatoo hate me. He says ‘Damn fool’ every time I come near him, and you look it!”

It was the humblest plea. His eyes sought hers as anxiously as a repulsed dog’s. She looked at him serenely.

“ ‘Put up’? Why do you say that? I’m sure you’re very welcome always and I understand very well how much better the work has gone since you joined up. But the world isn’t perfect even in Paradise Island. A person has troubles she can’t forget——”

A well-spring of sparkling laughter bubbled up under the sigh as she saw the consternation in his face at this awful confirmation of his guesses. She thought it an excellent joke. Jokes were the only things that had languished a little in Paradise, but since Wynyard’s coming the air had seemed to be charged with surprises and amusements like the budding of spring. She thought that however much one loved one’s uncles it was rather jolly to have someone young to talk to—and perhaps tease a little. His earnestness now was very diverting. His mind must be in a perfect muddle about her.

“Troubles? You’re too young for troubles and too full of pluck. If there was ever anything I could help in . . .”

“A person may make a mistake and regret it all her life!” said Java solemnly. She had her visit to Miss Martagon in mind. After all, need one look for worse trouble than an aunt of the Martagon make? Java knew perfectly well that if ever news of the three of them reached Gravesend the next boat would bring Aunt Harriet attended by a missionary and Mrs. Dixon to rescue her from perdition. It certainly was not likely, but she made the most of it to mystify Roger and appease her own sense of truth. “Nobody can help me!” she answered with a bubble in her voice which might have been a rising sob and was not. “I brought it on myself. If I’d kept away from a certain person—but I mustn’t trouble you, Mr. Wynyard. You’re much too kindhearted.”

“They could never come here!” he said anxiously and infinitely flattered at so much confidence. If he could win that precious gift who knows what else he might win in time?

“Paradise Island is right off the beaten track,” he added. “There isn’t one man in ten thousand down this way that ever heard of it. And beyond that, in Europe—why you might be living in the moon and no one the wiser.”

“There are people that would smell out anything,” Java said solemnly, twisting the little ring about her finger to attract attention to it. “And the more you didn’t want them the more they’d be here. But don’t talk to me—I’m sure you have troubles of your own.”

There was no doubt of that. A really implacable love for her had fixed its talons in his heart. He had never meant it, never thought it possible, and regarded it more as a passion of the devil than anything you could reckon with. He could recall the exact moment when he passed from a state of freedom to one of slavery—and surely that was not what happened to other men? He had been standing on the boat pier and Java in a red jumper of some light summery stuff was rowing Uncle ’Erbert as he fished. All perfectly simple and natural. Nothing to excite anybody. But suddenly she turned and looked back at him as if she were glad to see him. A smile curved her lips and stressed the dimple at either corner of them. The sinking sun shot gold into her hair, making a misty halo about her face. Suddenly his heart gave a throb and for a moment slipped a beat or two. She turned her face from him and drew the water through the comb of her fingers like running silver, and it was as though the sun had set. It was madness unbelievable, but when his heart took up the beat again it was to a new rhythm. He loved the girl, passionately and tenderly, desired to possess and shield her, knelt at her feet in spirit—and she laughed at him.

So it went on. She saw very quickly that this excellent joke must be propped by laughter and friendliness. You couldn’t carry it on seriously if you pretended to dislike a man, and she liked Wynyard very much indeed. The new flavour he had introduced into their cup of bliss at Paradise Island suited her taste exactly, and to the uncles he was perfection. Each had the deference due to him combined with much excellent good-temper and pleasantry. Each he relieved sensibly and tactfully of anything irksome in the work. He fitted in to a dot, as Uncle ’Erbert said almost nightly when his steps crunched down the garden walk to his own little abode.

“But I wish you liked the young fella better, Java,” Uncle ’Enry would say thoughtfully. “If I could see as he’d misbehaved I’d lay him in irons as soon as look at him. You report him if there’s anything amiss, and you’ll just see!”

“Report him?” She laughed like a bird at the notion.

“I like him fine, Uncle ’Enry. We’re good friends and I tell him all I know about the islands. They don’t know much in Sydney and that’s a fact! Just you think of it—he had heard of the puri-puri here but he knew no more about it than a baby. And that reminds me. Do you know I believe I’ve found out who sends me all the flowers and paw-paws. I believe it’s Hanua, and if so it’s very decent of him and I don’t know why he does it.”

“Hanua!” Uncle ’Enry answered, filling his pipe. “Not he. He’s a big bean, Hanua, and has no time to waste on little jigger-snips like Captain Java. They think a powerful lot of Hanua here and in the islands round about.”

He laughed and settled himself for his nap and Java went slowly down to the pier to watch the sunset. Wynyard’s shack was so near that she almost always found him down there when the day’s work was done.

CHAPTER VII

Day by day he grew into the life of the place. He began to be the life and soul of the work in the swamps. He made his first trip as mate down to Nukulu with Captain Dixon and did excellently well for a beginner.

Privately he thought he could have done it even better on his own, but such a thing could not even be hinted, and on calmer reflection he owned to himself that the Captain knew a jolly sight more about the sea, not to mention the trading, than he did. When he gave himself time to think he had wits enough to escape the cocksureness of youth and the good sense to pick up what he could from everyone. It was Java who knew most about the islanders and their inmost concerns and though never a word that verged near sentiment was allowed him, she was perfectly friendly now and would talk by the hour of all the queer things and people about them, so long as the uncles were on duty within reach, sleepy indolent guardians, but still an inevitable check to any sentiment except such as expresses itself in tender glances. Those, even Java could not ward off. After all a cat may look at a king! It grew to be a habit too that Wynyard should join the evening meal at the house—“Stephanotis Cottage” as Uncle ’Erbert had christened it—and then they would sit out afterwards in the flooding moonlight and talk of things past, present and to come, often to a gentle accompaniment of snores from the two captains in those luxurious long chairs.

“Did you ever notice,” Java said one night of heaven, “how all the boys knock under to Hanua? He’s the queerest old character on the island. Yams, pigs, shell, tobacco—he gets more than he knows what to do with. Kuki says the ground under his house is ‘flenty’ [she gave the letter ‘p’ its South Seas ‘f’ sound] full like ‘grave’ with all his riches. No one knows his real name either or where he comes from. ‘Hanua’ only means ‘a village.’ ”

“Yes, but why do they make such a fuss? He’s like all the rest, ’cept that he’s older and uglier.”

“He’s the greatest puri-puri man in these parts. That’s why. And he’ll be hard at work soon, for Kuki says two big canoes are coming over from Lua with great presents to make puri-puri.”

“But you don’t mean to say you think there’s anything in that jabber, Miss Dixon? What exactly is puri-puri? Do you believe in such stuff?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” Java said thoughtfully. “My father was in these parts a lot and I’ve often heard him say there was more to it than most people allow. I don’t know, but it’s certainly a big witchcraft, sorcery, magic. Whether it’s a kind of hypnotism I don’t know either but I think it’s something that could be explained if one knew how. It’s there. I know that.”

“And how on earth do you know?”

“Things I’ve heard. And once Hanua came up here after dark, and said he had a message for me from Motu. Of course I snubbed him. Who was the message from? ‘Flenty devil-devil. He was me come tell Missy.’ ”

“But who in creation is Motu?”

“The great god of the islands. I should have thought you’d know that by this time. He’s a perfectly awful person. He lives in the fire—you’d expect that!—and he sends all the disease and deaths and everything horrid that happens, if the people don’t do what he wants. He never seems to do anything nice for them. And he sent a message to me lately.”

“You weren’t frightened?”

“No, why should I be? I won’t give you Hanua’s English, but it amounted to this: Motu has a special liking for me. He sends me flowers and paw-paws. Great trouble coming to me, but I mustn’t be afraid. Motu will look out for me. Wicked man run away and all good again. But I must send present to Motu. Now for a long time—really ever since we came to the island—I’ve been having presents, and thinking they came from the boys and people I’ve done little things for, but lately I’m not so sure. One morning I was up very early and I saw a boy run up with a bunch of orchids and put them under my window. I’m certain it was Hanua’s son—one of them. This morning it was a lovely pearl shell—all rainbows. Things come nearly every day. And yet why he should I can’t think.”

“But they needn’t all be from the same person. I know you’ve done a million kind things for the women and children.”

“I don’t know. What do you suppose he meant by Motu and trouble coming?”

“Yes, but that’s no proof. It’s easy to say what’s going to happen.”

“I know. But a few days later the boys told Uncle ’Enry there was a great war canoe hovering about to the northwest. The only one we’ve ever seen here. The Spindrift went out, and the canoe vanished. Uncle ’Enry couldn’t see a sign of her high or low. It was a coincidence.”

“Yes, nothing more. If that’s all——!”

“Oh, no, it isn’t. You could get a hundred stories in half an hour of the things he’s foretold and done. You watch to-morrow and see how the boys make up to him. You see the people here were once cannibals and ate their enemies, all but the heads, and they kept the bodies of their chiefs, and Hanua’s the only man left in these parts who understands how to dry the heads and dead bodies and paint them like mummies.”

“What a beastly trade!” said Wynyard. “I’ve heard of it but never believed it. And what do they do with them?”

“Who knows?” said Java, “but anyhow it’s known that on some of the big islands round they have secret lodges hidden away in the jungle, where they keep the bodies and the dried heads. Even here, in our own island, we know there are people we’ve never seen up in the mountains where the river comes from, and I believe from what Kuki and other women have told me that they’re cannibals still. But anyhow they have these secret places for keeping the dead chiefs. They must be terrible to see. Oh, it’s no harm to have Motu for a friend, but I don’t know why he’s taken so to me. I must send him a present, but what?”

“Could one get a sight?” Wynyard asked. She gave a quick shudder.

“No, no. We never talk of these things. It would be dangerous. Never meddle with a man’s religion here. Besides these people never come down from the mountains. They give no trouble. But if the thing interests you, you watch Hanua! He goes up into the mountains, I know.”

Wynyard did watch. He walked next day through the village, where all the boys lived in low but not uncomfortable thatched shacks on the edge of the palm groves. Hanua’s house stood apart from the others, with two Marys (“Mary” is the word used for women down in these parts) flitting about it, the wives conceded to the great puri-puri man by island fear and respect. They had been brought in a canoe from an island fifty miles off and delivered to him with great pomp, and the fact that they spoke another dialect tended to keep him still further apart from the Paradise Island folk. His house was at a distance from the others, as if some atmosphere of awe, surrounding it almost visibly, kept the others at a respectful distance.

A man went up to it with a basket of yams, another followed with a suckling pig, presenting them humbly, and the wives received the offerings in dead silence as if they were a matter of course. Hanua never appeared.

It was then that Wynyard took a resolution. There was the natural curiosity of a young man, but far beyond that was the conviction that if Hanua was in touch with islands where no white man held sway, where all these barbarous rites were in full swing, it would be as well for some one of the party to keep in touch with Hanua and ascertain very clearly what manner of man he was. It did not appear to him that it was wise to let the matter drift along as it was doing. He looked up the long glade through the palms toward the two great mountain peaks which, clothed in dense jungle far up the cliffs, towered in the blue distance, hiding their mysteries in most deceptive beauty. He saw the river tumbling down, fall after fall, over the precipices, like a queen’s floating veil of silver lace, and as he realized the vastness of the unknown territory, and remembered the snug little land-locked harbour behind the mountains which Captain Dixon had pointed out on the voyage from Atla, it became as clear as noonday to him that any number of war canoes might slip in there unknown to the white owners, and matters be pretty far advanced before a whisper of disturbance reached them. Two old men and a girl—what could they do?—especially if the Spindrift were down the coast with one of the men. He wanted no connection for Java with Motu. These heathen gods were disagreeably different from our own.

Every fresh thought crystallized his resolution. He advanced toward the sorcerer’s hut, smiling agreeably and holding out a stick of the treacly trade tobacco that he always kept in his pocket ready to hack off an inch or two as a reward for hard-working boys in addition to the two they were granted weekly. One of the dark silent women, hideous, both of them, with heads misshapen by pressure as infants, toad-mouthed and flat-nosed, came forward, the other hanging in the background. She stretched out her hand for the gift, two or three of the island men and women looking on curiously.

Wynyard held it back, and made signs toward the house. He must see the puri-puri man. She shook her head vigorously, the gesture of rejection all the world over. He pretended to put the tobacco in his pocket while the other wife ran up to her, pointing to the hut. What would the master say if he lost his tobacco? The first, hesitating a moment, went up to the house and disappeared. Presently Hanua himself stood in the doorway, the woman crouching behind him like a dog, and Wynyard walked up to him in an indolent, haughty sort of way intended to make the right impression.

“Taubada [great man] what for you come?” was the greeting.

“I like know great puri-puri man. Missy tell me he make puri-puri alonga her one day. He flenty wise. I bring flesent”—holding out the tobacco. A gratified smile, much intercepted by the bone cylinder through his nose, overspread the sorcerer’s countenance.

“Me have big devil-devil!” he said. “You come in see? Flenty good pig tusk too. Come see!”

Now this was a favour beyond words. He turned and led the way into the mysteries and Wynyard, handing over the tobacco, beamed at him and followed, amazed at his own success.

Seen from the front, the house appeared no longer than the others, but once inside, the difference revealed itself. He was dazzled at first by the transition from the hard white sunshine outside to the darkness within. When the spots ceased to dance before his eyes he looked about him and saw a long enclosure—more a hall than a room, with dim shapes standing about it against the sides of woven palm-leaf. At the end hung a curtain of fibre hiding some mystery. From a rafter hung the skeleton, fine as lace, of a great snake.

“Devil-devil!” said the proprietor, halting on the threshold, and pointing to the shapes which held their silent watch.

There indeed, Wynyard, though not alarmed, was astonished beyond measure. Sculptured in wood, hollow, painted, with great staring eyes and mouths like lipless holes, mitres of wood on some, flat caps on others, were the devils of various shapes and sizes which, using Hanua as their mouth-piece, gave him power among the islands. Terrible shapes, some of them, others grotesque with a horrible grotesquerie, they all appeared to glare at him from the gloom.

“That boo-boo!” he said, striking one with his foot, and it responded with a hollow boom. “That fishing-boo-boo!” he added. “He tell if good fishing. This fighting-boo-boo.” He kicked another. “This love-boo-boo, tell if man get flenty good wife. What Taubada want know to-day?”

Wynyard hastened to explain that he wanted nothing to-day but to see the great wise man and hear his wisdom. Had he any tusk bracelets he would like to trade? He knew that these pig tusks are treasures and command the sort of high price that would gratify the man if the deal could be carried through.

Hanua reflected and from a corner lifted a box, Europe-made and with a little bell a-top which tinkled foolishly in the gloom lit now by one or two sunbeams through the crevices. Within Wynyard saw a medley of bright-coloured shells, pigs’ tusks, and, unless he was much mistaken, a handful of pearls rolling among them. The least circular, and therefore the least valuable of the tusks, was produced and silently held out, the savage eyes glinting above it with a quite civilized commercial greed.

Wynyard had provided himself before he came along with one or two objects that he thought might do the trick of conciliating the puri-puri man. He drew out of his pocket a necklace of sparkling beads to fall on the breast. As a matter of fact, Java was the maker of these surprising creations. There were sacks full of beads aboard the Spindrift and she amused herself by making them up into ornaments splendid enough to set the islands mad with rivalry.

The eyes glinted more brilliantly as Wynyard held it up against his white coat.

“Me want one, two. Me have two Marys. Marys fight like mad if one.”

This was obvious, and Wynyard carefully restored the splendour to his breast pocket, and drew out two more on a smaller scale of magnificence, but still highly attractive in their different colours. Hanua took them and looked them over closely, fingering each bead, then passed both over his own head where they sparkled on his black breast, and tendered the tusk. The deal was done and it was clear that the Marys would not have a look-in. The necklaces set off their master’s beauty far too effectively.

“You good man, Taubada, me flenty fleased. You likum see my work?”

He led the way and pointed to what in the gloom Wynyard had taken for a devil-devil.

Heavens! It was human! A human body dried, smoked, mummied, the bridge of the nose removed to give it the scowl demanded in these ancestral portraits—if so they may be called. Stiff, and with a kind of horrible dignity, it seemed with its closed eyelids to be lost in some hateful dream of terrible, long-past pleasures of war and feast. The feet had been removed and pig’s tusks substituted, and on the whole the departed more nearly resembled a real devil-devil than the wooden works of art. Wynyard restrained his disgust, and admired warmly.

“Him great chief. Him from Nuluau Island. Him keep always now.”

Wynyard asked if good pay was given and Hanua nodded content. Afraid of still more painful revelations, he prepared to depart with all the courtesies, and at the door Hanua made a gesture of respect.

“You flenty good man, Taubada. You coming alonga me. I show you big puri-puri some day.”

And Wynyard went off, followed by the respectful gaze of the natives who had gathered outside, feeling he had done a good day’s work indeed. It is well to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness in and out of civilization.

He told his adventure to Java that evening when he had changed into his clean cotton suit after the day’s work.

“After what you told me, Miss Dixon, I did think it was as well to have a friend in the native camp. I don’t like those mysterious mountains and all that may be going on in the bush, and, depend upon it, Hanua is up to all their tricks. I mean to cultivate the gentleman for all I’m worth.”

“I think you’re right,” she said slowly. “One could never make my uncles see the need of that. They just are honest old sailor-men and they despise it all for savages’ foolery. But I can see it might very well be important to stand well with the man, not to mention Motu.”

“It might be a matter of life and death one of these days, though I don’t suppose it will.”

There was a minute’s silence.

“Then you’d go to his puri-puri business? I can think it might be pretty ghastly.”

“Of course I’d go. I’d do that and anything, anything on earth, for your safety.”

He could not hide the note in his voice—the note that every woman knows and responds to like a struck wire whether she cares for the man or no. How would it affect her?—he asked himself in terror the moment he had spoken. Her perfect frankness shielded her as well as twenty duennas could have done.

“Thank you. I know you would, and for anyone that trusted you and needed you.” It was delightful, but though the sentence crowned him like a king it got him no farther as a lover. He sighed unheard and changed the subject to the Spindrift’s first run to Nukulu to meet the Bird of Paradise. He was to go mate with Captain Dixon, and there had been some hazy talk of his going as skipper one day, which had given him the utmost pleasure. Still, since he could never forget the ship was Captain Java’s, it mattered much more than a little to him to get her point of view, and he felt he must have that clearly before the matter went any further. But she evaded the thing—that was evident and he dared not press it. He must bide his time. Two days went by and he caught a glimpse of red flitting through the alamandas one evening and hurried in pursuit. It was Java with Pollipet on her shoulder apparently whispering secrets in her ear. He could only hope it was not a private opinion of himself. He had never won Pollipet’s esteem in spite of the most painstaking efforts.

“Miss Dixon, Captain Dixon was talking to-day down at the swamp about the first run to Nukulu. He says he doesn’t see how Captain Homan can go because of his lumbago and he said——”

“I know,” Java said composedly, “he said he thought you’d better go next time but one as skipper and pick up the business in case neither of them was able to. No—I don’t mean the sea”—she saw the hurt look in his face—“I mean the trading at Nukulu. Well, don’t you think so too? Uncles and I can look after the boys.”

“You’ll like me to go? You don’t mind it?” He asked it like a school-boy.

She fixed him with an eye as cold as Pollipet’s.

“Why shouldn’t I like it? The uncles are always happy together. Always. And if they can’t go someone else must.”

“I didn’t mean that!” he said hurriedly. “It never occurred to me that you would miss me. What I meant was—the ship’s yours. You’ve made it very plain you don’t like me—you mayn’t want me taken on as skipper. P’raps you might rather go yourself. I know you’re equal to that or anything else, and I certainly brought no luck to the Warrigal. If so—don’t hesitate to say it. I’ve no feelings to be hurt.”

That might be, but if so his looks belied him, for no one could misread the pain in his face, whatever its source might be. She was ashamed of herself and saw instantly that she had been too hard with him—and he thrown on their compassion; a shipwrecked sailor!

Java could make sweet amends when she chose, and her smile was sunshine.

“I never meant to be a brute. Forgive me if I’ve been a nuisance sometimes. I don’t know why I wanted to tease you now and again but I did—only a little. Only in fun. Of course I’m glad you should go in the ship. She’s no more mine than my uncles’ for we’re part-owners, as I always say, and one of these days we may want you badly, but not until the uncles crock up. That would break their hearts. I wouldn’t see them retired for gold. Now that’s the truth. Will you shake hands and I’ll try to be nicer.”

“Try.” That was not quite the word he hoped for. Ought it to be so difficult? But he had a humble enough opinion of himself, and it was an improvement. He took her hand gladly, held it a minute, wondering whether he would dare kiss it as he longed to do. But no. It would be—or she would think it—silly and Frenchified. He held it for a second and dropped it laughing.

“Then I’ll do my best not to provoke you. I know it was all my fault. Thanks, Miss Dixon. But there’s another thing. If as you say a war canoe was seen I don’t like leaving you alone here with Captain Homan. It isn’t safe. You go with Captain Dixon next time.”

She laughed like a chime of bells.

“Oh, that’s a long time ago and nothing ever happens on Paradise Island. I expect they were on their way somewhere else. They often scrap among themselves. Uncle ’Enry and I have been alone and as right as rain. But what did you think of Hanua?”

He hesitated a little on that. What could he think but that the man was worth conciliating because of his influence with the people? Whether his own merits deserved affection was more than he could say. The man was certainly an awful-looking object and drove an unpleasant trade. He said as much and Java smiled.

“Right you are! I knew that long ago and I had a chance and took it even before I knew. Now I’ll tell you something if you’ll swear never to breathe a word to anyone. One day two years ago I was down at the bathing pier and there was Hanua sitting. I was surprised because the people never come on our private ground unless they have business. But there he was, and I thought—as well as you can think it about a black man—that he looked ill. I said so—you know I can talk their language a bit. He nodded and whispered and I saw no one must hear. And then he told me his story. While he was cleaning up one of his—well, subjects!—he had cut his arm with one of his knives, and it wouldn’t heal for all the charms and medicines he tried on it. Lots of people had told him I had useful things for healing up cuts, and he had paddled himself over all alone to see if I could do anything for him.”

“By George, the rival sorcerers!” Wynyard said laughing. It struck him as highly amusing.

“Exactly!” she answered with dancing eyes. “And the cream of it was that I had guessed long ago he didn’t quite like my interfering with his practice, though I don’t suppose it made the difference of two pigs in the year. It was really a bit of a triumph for me. Well, first I wanted to say no, for several reasons, but when he unwrapped his arm and showed it to me—you’ll laugh, I know, but living among these people they seem as real and human to me as ourselves, and I couldn’t say no. It was jolly bad and he must have been in awful pain. I ran to the house and got my things and dressed and bandaged it and I could see how it eased him. Now comes the funny part. He made me swear I’d never tell a soul for it would spoil his trade if it was known he had had to ask a white woman for medicine. He was frightfully in earnest over that, and he wouldn’t come to be done again until I swore it by all my gods. So I did swear and he came every day to have his arm dressed, slipping over in the dusk, and I made as clean a cure of it as you could wish to see. He was bucked beyond words.”

Wynyard was profoundly interested.

“I should say! No wonder he was grateful. And you think because of that he’d keep the people all right whatever happened.”

“Certainly I think so, and that they’d do what he told them. I never would have been a bit afraid of being alone here and less than ever since that happened.”

“Then surely that accounts for all the mysterious presents?”

“No, for they began directly we came to the island four years ago. Exactly as they have gone on ever since. And now, isn’t it a proof of friendship that I’ve told you this? I never told my uncles, never told a soul, and Hanua and I used to meet like two criminals down in the rocks. Not a soul knew. But I think it’ll relieve your mind when you go down to Nukulu. Won’t it?”

Certainly it did. He was thankful to have heard the story on more grounds than one. But the courage of the girl! Who but herself would have met a savage like Hanua—a man of his fearful trade and with the reputation of devilry that all the islanders believed in? And she had met him in the dusk and alone to heal his exceedingly unpleasant arm. Done it from pure pity, with no end of her own to gain, and held her tongue about it like a brick!

It deserved its reward. Every day there seemed some new reason why he should love Java. Every day she shone fairer and brighter upon his dazzled eyes. But what could he say who scarcely dared a word lest the whole torrent of passion should rush out of him after it? He feebly murmured approval, and Pollipet uttered his usual raucous “Fool!” a little more bitterly than usual and with Wynyard’s complete agreement in the sentiment. Then they all three went slowly back to the house.

CHAPTER VIII

Thinking it all over deeply, with all the new lights Java had thrown upon the matter, Wynyard decided to accept Hanua’s invitation and attend the puri-puri party a fortnight later. It was not the sort of occasion at which white men are welcome—he knew that, and there were stories of an uninvited guest or two who had liked the entertainment so well that they had stayed “for keeps,” as his informant put it, and where their bones reposed no man would ever know. The Government sent a rather languid punitive expedition to mark the ruling race’s anger but that was more official than impassioned, for all the men who knew the country agreed that if a white man butted in on the natives’ religion to please himself it was asking for trouble and he jolly well deserved what he got. That would be Wynyard’s epitaph if he went the same way.

Still, there were differences. Hanua had invited him, one might say, and Hanua was certainly head of the reception committee. The question was, would he have the power to protect his guest when the proceedings warmed up and it became a regular Wow? Wynyard was inclined to think Hanua would then simply melt into the background and be no more seen. Indeed for all he knew this might be the recognized and courteous way of disposing of a troublesome intruder. But he had two irresistible reasons for going.

The first, that that thin thread of trust and friendship with Hanua must be held on to and strengthened in every possible way. The second, that the mountains had become an obsession with him. They were beautiful as Beauty’s self in sunlight, remote and exquisite, with the impenetrable forest clothing their sides with green deep and secret as the ocean. No sign of life there, quiet brooding in age-old secrecy. No way of communication that anyone could guess, or living soul to communicate with. And yet whenever he looked at them Wynyard shuddered. To him they were alive in their deeps and heights, creeping with evil and cruelties, conspiring, plotting, with God knows what help below, perhaps from Hanua himself, almost certainly from the people in whom the captains reposed all their trust. What in the devil’s name had possessed the two of them to settle on an island so near the danger-zone of savages no more to be counted on than a thunder-storm and its lightning flashes? Or if they must come, why bring a helpless girl into the mess?

Helpless was not exactly the adjective which fitted Java, he knew in his saner moments, but these were intermittent, as every day he loved her more devotedly and every day those cursed mountains rose more secret and aloft before him.

So, though he could not pretend to himself that he liked it, he decided to go to the puri-puri and pick up any information possible. And never while he lives will Wynyard forget that night.

It was the night of no moon, the skies, like blue-black velvet, lamping with stars glorious in the moon’s absence. They shed little quivering paths of light on the lagoon, they dimly lit the dark ways into the bush where the puri-puri was to be held—or rather, let it be said, they made darkness visible which otherwise would have been impenetrable. It stood about him like the walls of a silent fortress.

The head man of the boys had come to his shack for him, and in a dead silence, utterly unlike his usual cheerful greeting, piloted him round by the back of the village and up a narrow trail through thickly interlacing bush that he had never seen before. There was a thudding of bare feet about them far and near, the people gathering to the celebration, and the air was so stiflingly still that every sound had added value and the crack of a branch, the rustle of a leaf, was enough to make a man jump like mad and send light terrors racing along his hands and arms.

Wynyard felt it like that himself as he moved among the moving invisible people, for not one could he see; even his guide went before him invisible, a breathing presence only. Suppose Hanua was a traitor, suppose they were gathering for a human sacrifice to some devil-devil hidden behind the veil that had not been lifted at the house in the village! Suppose the sacrifice was not animal but——! A nasty question! Yet another balanced it and steadied him. Suppose it were his duty to learn all he could, to strengthen his position against a day of possible need, to make friends, to teach these savages that their puri-puri had no terrors for the white man? He walked on, his head higher, though none could see it.

The muted sound of bare feet increased and multiplied as they came through the narrow path, which suddenly ended in a great clearing. Every particle of bush, every tree, had been removed from a square area with a stream running through it, and the stars shone down into the place, which was clear as a ball-room. Now he could dimly see silent ranks of natives squatting about it, and others silently dropping into their places. At one end was what looked like a rough altar of coral rock brought up from the shore, and behind this were two devil-devil figures, very large and doubtful in the darkness, and a man crouched before it who, Wynyard guessed, must be Hanua. He himself was guided up to a position on the left hand of the altar and the overseer took his place beside him. No women were present—always a sign of something dangerous or highly ceremonial in the islands. It reminded Wynyard vaguely of a great cathedral he had seen in England—a roof lost in gloom and faintly twinkling lights and massed people waiting, waiting, half seen. Only here the roof and lights were sky and stars and the people waiting for the Great Devil.

The movement in the bush ceased at last. All were assembled, and watching as if all his senses were turned to sight, he saw that a pile of wood was heaped in front of the altar, and that a man, writhing along the ground like a snake, had set himself to kindle it. It was done, and with a flash the darting flames, fed by coconut oil, sprang up through the trunks and shed a wild and terrible light on all the dark ranked faces.

There was no doubt it was impressive. The solemnity of the great trees standing blackly on guard to hide the secrets, the starlight quenched in the uprush of the flames that turned the stream to fire and broke the quiet with crackling and hissing and affronted the night, had a kind of awfulness very well calculated to attune men’s minds to what was to follow. No time was lost in suspense. It followed very quickly. Hanua sprang up in front of the altar and at first Wynyard hailed him as the comic relief. His wild mop of hair, stuck with Paradise plumes and flowers red as blood in the firelight, stood out like a wild halo about his face and he appeared to be clad in an armour of shells, plates of tortoise-shell, tusks and disks of mother-of-pearl, and things that fringed and trickled about him, while upon his dusky breast sparkled the two necklaces, resplendent as diamonds. He rattled like a beach torn down by the waves as he moved, and in the breathless silence, that and the crackling of the fire were the only sounds. So he waited until the flame had died into a red glow and Wynyard began to think the show might really be amusing.

Suddenly he sprang in front of the altar and flung up his braceleted arm, striking with the other on the hollow devil-devil beside him until it boomed like a gong; a menacing sound increasing in strength until it became unbearable, and as it did so a slow light kindled in the empty eyes growing and growing till they shot out rays across the dark. Wynyard could hear a shudder of fear like the hiss of a snake that ran all round the clearing—a horrid sound suggesting black multitudes shrinking back, back upon each other in deadly panic in the hot dark. He heard the sibilant intake of Hua the headman’s breath at his shoulder. And then a deep roar from all the men of “Motu! Motu!” His sense of comedy faded. He found his hands clenched without his knowledge, his lips dry and thirsty. And then a horrible thing. From the wooden jaws of the devil-devil, from beneath its spectral eyes came a voice. Hanua was crouching beside it embracing its feet with his head upon them but the devil-devil roared like the hollow thunder or surf on the outer reef when the great monsoon is doing its worst and wickedest.

“Ventriloquism. How well the fellow gets it over,” Wynyard said to himself; and still something inside him, primitive and abject, knew what that supernatural voice must mean to the hidden multitude. “Hua, what does he say?”

But Hua was past reply. His golden-brown face, for he, unlike the rest, was of the fair Polynesian type, was ash-gray with terror. His jaws had dropped apart, and he was fixed in listening to one sound and that only.

With fearful suddenness and in the midst of a roar it ended and the echoes bellowed away over the forest. The devil-devil stood silent again, only raying out horror through its eyes.

Then Wynyard became aware that something lay on the ground before the altar, on a sort of rough hand-bier made of crossed sticks, something long and narrow, dead-still in the midst of the movement and whisper of fear, and even as his eyes caught it there was a stir in the covering, as when a man turns himself in bed before rising. A sick man brought for healing? No—too straight, too thin; it made scarcely a lifting under the cover. His eye fell on Hua and he saw the sweat-drops form like little pearls on his forehead and run down his face like rain on a window pane. That answered him. He knew. Very slowly the covering moved, and the thing that lay was raising itself. Hanua flung himself all rattling on the ground and buried his face against it. An arm of fleshless bone pushed the covering aside, and then a leg followed—footless, horrible, with a curved pig’s tusk where the foot should have been, and lean, eviscerated, a skeleton covered with dried skin crept out of the bier and stood beside the devil-devil. Wynyard pulled himself together.

“I see it, but I don’t believe it’s devilry. It’s lies, lies, lies!” he said in his soul, and did not find the words reassuring. The abject primitive thing deep down in him was quivering responsive to the night and the horror, for the creature, horribly propped on the tusks, horribly scowling from beneath the flattened nose, like the devil-devil emitted light from its dead orbits and all its withered body, and so lit up itself and the altar with an infernal glow that seemed the very reflection of the Pit.

A feeling like physical sickness took Wynyard; that drop in self-control that men know when panic is prowling round them like a slinking beast ready to spring. He half rose to run from the hateful place. Hua dragged him down, silent but with a grip like iron which needed no words. He could feel—he knew himself, that it would be as much as a hundred lives like his were worth to make any disturbance at such a ceremony.

Yet for a moment he also knew he was at the edge of endurance and would slip over the precipice with a touch more if nothing saved him. Horrible. . . It was the dried and mummied corpse he had seen in the sorcerer’s house, but alive, moving, dreadful.

He felt his self-control slipping, slipping fast as the head man stared through a glaze of sweat at the lean dead thing tottering on the pig’s tusks, and a sighing panic fluttered the bush. He shut his eyes and clenched his teeth and hands and suddenly was saved; the weakness passed and he was cool and critical once more. For the dead man spoke through locked jaws, unlike the roar of the devil-devil but in a far faint voice which seemed to come from thousands of miles away. “Motu! Motu!” he sighed, and then incoherence and then weak sighing speech in a voice thin as a baby’s cry.

That restored Wynyard—he pulled himself together. Ventriloquism again of course. On with the dance! Let them do what they would now they couldn’t flurry him any more, he had been near it, perilously near it for five horrid minutes. Perhaps panic is infectious. It was lurking among those black trees like a miasma. And still the horrible voice went on and sighing shuddering sounds responded from the massed black men. The voice grew fainter, the body tottered, wavered, collapsed on the ground beside the altar and Hanua rising to his knees crept toward it and lifting it like a child in his arms laid it back on the bier and covered it again from sight, then stood before the Motu and raising a great vessel poured liquid all over it that sprang into flame as he poured. And now again Wynyard could see the ranked men sitting stiffly about the clearing, crowned with birds’ feathers, shells and flowers, rigid as black marble in the leaping light. Hanua flung his arms abroad and chanted some words that appeared to parody a parting benediction, and then collapsed himself in a rattling heap, burying his face in his arms. It was over, the flames died down, and in the dim starlight six men came forward and took the bier and bore the chief away into the bush, taking a track which apparently led onward and upward to the mountains.

All round could be heard the faint alarming sound of men melting away into the dark—not a word, not a sound, but that of the padding bare feet. Wynyard got up with the feeling of exhaustion that comes from long tension. He was probably the only white man living who had seen the ceremony of The Last Words of the Dead before the spirit takes its departure for ever from its people to the dim hereafter. Many canoes must have brought from neighbouring islands the crowd that had witnessed it, and it was more than likely that the mysterious mountain people had also descended from their unknown heights to hear the oracle.

But what had it all meant? What had been said? That was what filled Wynyard’s thoughts. It was easy to see what a tremendous influence such a scene must leave on a people whose nerves are as jumpy as wires. They could be driven in any direction with such horrors to prick them on. He must find out. The supernatural part of it was all poppycock, of course, but the consequences real as life and death. All this he considered while the head man moved before him silently, piloting him along the bush trail. He waited until they were at a respectful distance and then spoke.

“Hua, me want speak alonga Hanua. Suppose I giving something big he speak now?”

The man shuddered all over his body.

“No, no, Taubada. Somesings big no good. He no wantum speak now. He flenty sick after dead man speak. He boilum heads to-night. He busy.”

Wynyard was vanquished for the moment. He must lie low and wait a favourable time. They went on silently again, until he took the road to the beach and his own hut. After all he was lucky to get off with a whole skin. He could not make out why Hanua had allowed him to see the celebration at all. That was the greatest of the mysteries.

After long consideration backed by instinct, he resolved he would speak to Java before saying a word to the uncles. He knew very well who was the real commander of the expedition and acted accordingly. He caught her next day at the usual time after the evening meal, and coaxed her down the beach for a walk to see the phosphoric flare round the coral rocks flooding the lagoon with milky fire. It was especially beautiful that night. She stopped and dipped her hands in it and they dripped with splendour. To Wynyard she was beauty itself in her white dress, like a lovely ghost in the starlight. But more pressing matters were on hand at the moment. Uncle ’Enry would wake presently and hail Java for the glass of grog which she only must mix, so he plunged straight into the story of last night’s adventure and she stood straight and still to hear him.

“I mean to see Hanua to-morrow,” he said, “but I want to know what you think, for you know these people a lot better than I do. What did it all mean? Have any of the women said anything to you?”

“Kuki told me this morning that it had been a great pow-wow, though she didn’t call it that. She said a dead chief talked and told the men all that was going to happen for the next year and the men “flenty flightened.” Of course she did not know what was said, or pretended not to. They’d kill a woman who talked about men’s business.”

“Don’t you think I’d better see Hanua?”

She looked straight at him with those keen blue eyes of hers.

“Yes, I do. I wish I could go with you, but anyhow you might ask him to come along and see me. Tell him I have a present for Motu.”

“Good—but I want to take a present to him myself. Something glittering. Can you think of anything? We must win that man for keeps if we want to know what’s stirring.”

“Right-o! I’ll find something. I know! I’ve the top of an old ottoman worked in red wool and beads. That would be a real glad rag for his next jamboree. You come with me and I’ll find it before the uncles wake up. Don’t you say a word to them yet, Mr. Wynyard. They’re two darlings but not exactly what you’d call tactful.”

They went softly up to Stephanotis Cottage, and she glided like a snake between the chairs and the two reposing figures and so into the house. Presently Wynyard saw her leaning out of her window, framed in white blossom so perfumed, so sweet, that with her beauty it went to his head like strong wine as he crept up to the window—her face only a little above his own.

“Look here!” she whispered and held out a square of scarlet wool worked in cross-stitch and decorated with a bunch of calla lilies in opaque and crystal white beads, a hideous and glittering achievement of Miss Martagon’s mother’s youth. She waved it like a banner before his eyes.

“You take that, and if it doesn’t catch the medicine-man right here”—she pointed dramatically to his heart—“I’m a Dutchman. Just you look at the lilies! Did you ever? Fancy Motu with that for a waistcoat!”

Her eyes spilt laughter on him from among the flowers. There was a light behind her, and it turned the outline of her hair to gold mist. He caught the hand that waved the banner and kissed it.

The casement was shut in his face instantly. Uncle ’Enry, waked by the bang, called fretfully from his chair.

“Java, it’s grog-time. You come along!”

Wynyard was walking down to the beach when she reappeared in iron propriety with the glasses. He never dared even to look back but felt her in the very breath he drew into his lungs. Oh the fool, the fool he had been! Could he ever forgive himself and make good?

He made his way to Hanua’s abode next day when work was over, and found the Marys lounging round the door, shining with coconut oil, decked out in penwiper grass skirts ornamented with feathers, shells, and ribbons of bright sea-weed, evidently in afternoon reception dress. Evidently also the sorcerer’s establishment had been complimented with rich gifts by the visitors to the celebration. He asked at once for Hanua, and they rustled away to the door, and presently beckoned him to come in.

To his astonishment a meal was prepared to do him honour, and Hanua, as gay and smiling as if the ceremony had been only a dream, waved him to the chief seat.

“You eat alonga me, Taubada! You flenty good man. I feed you well.”

“But how you know I come?” demanded Wynyard, letting himself slide on to the fibre mat as easily as he could.

The great man would throw no light on that subject. He scowled over his shoulder to the Marys to bring the food. It was excellently good—no question of that—for it was a rich man’s feast meant to do special honour to a special friend. There was the inevitable roast pig—done to a turn, crackling and all. But the epicure’s dish was a land-crab—a creature that is thoughtful enough to feed only on coconuts nut-crackered by its own claws, which delicate food gives it the most delicious flavour imaginable. It was served with mami apples to follow, and the drink was fresh coconut milk in goblets of the half shell.

A man couldn’t wish to do better, and when all was over Wynyard was profuse in his thanks to Hanua who was languidly cleaning his teeth with a split twig as he watched the Marys setting to the remains of the feast in a dark corner. But still the mystery intrigued Wynyard. Why was the man making up to him? What did he want? What was the clue to the maze? More keenly on the watch than ever, he followed the sorcerer into the long room where the devil-devils stood on guard round the palm-leaf walls. He noticed that the chief’s body had disappeared, carried off to his own island by the visiting canoes.

Wynyard lit his pipe and offered a chew of tobacco which was graciously accepted.

“That big puri-puri, Hanua!” he said briefly after the silence custom demanded. “You biggest puri-puri man in the islands.”

A smile of gratification.

“Feofle flenty flightened,” he said briefly, and relapsed into meditative chewing.

“But what devil-devil say? What big chief he say?” Wynyard demanded. Hanua shot at him one quick glance, then lowered his eyes.

“You jump inside [were startled] when him speak?”

Wynyard hesitated. Would the truth offend or master? Difficult to decide. But he chose his course and laughed.

“I no jump inside. I know you make talk all time. Dead man no talk. Puri-puri man talk all time from him stomach. White man do same thing down Sydney way.”

Silence. He looked through the tail of his eye at the wizard, half prepared for a rush and a roar. It did not come. On the contrary, the great man smiled—a well-fed smile.

“You savvy that?” he said, shifting his chew. “You no telling, eh?” The white teeth showed in a grin.

“I no tell,” Wynyard said coolly. Confidence was established, and still the mystery was unexplained. What was the man after? He produced the scarlet square and draped it against Hanua’s brawny breast, offering it as a reward for the show, and the squeal of delight that followed brought the Marys running in to admire. It was agreed that it was a fit dress for the god—a most valuable stage property, and Wynyard seeing the hands that clawed it, the beady eyes that gloated, could not forbear a smile at the thought of the original artist, mild, ringleted and crinolined, and her thoughts if she had seen her treasure among the devil-devils, human and otherwise. Then he addressed himself seriously to the task in hand.

He explained in his best sandalwood English that he wanted to know if the coming of the canoes meant mischief, if indeed there were any mischief afoot, and whither Hanua’s own oration delivered through the devil-devil and the corpse had tended. He was lavish in flattery. He knew, he said, that though there were big chiefs on the island, Hanua was the biggest of them all, for he held their hearts in his hand. There were great rewards for a puri-puri man whom the white masters trusted. He could go down to Port Moresby one day with his fortune made and live on bullamacow (canned beef) and pisupo (pea-soup,—canned foods generally). But naturally Hanua would understand two things. First, that only great services could claim great rewards. Second, those who were traitors had better remember that British warships had a way of visiting the islands and dealing out justice that took no heed of war canoes and devil-devils.

Hanua listened in deep meditation.

“I savvy,” he said at length, and with a lordly gesture ordered the Marys out of the mansion into the flawless sunshine outside. They gathered up the fragments of the land-crab and hustled. Then Hanua began his explanation—better given in paraphrase than in the curiosities of the sandalwood language. He liked Missy, he began with that. When the knife that had dissected a chief’s head on the stick ran into his arm with results to be expected, it had been a bad business for Hanua. Naturally, if a medicine-man couldn’t heal himself, stocks slumped in the island belief. Wynyard would understand that. But he had taken his canoe round in the dusk to the beach where Java always walked in the moonlight and there he had displayed a tortured arm and she had dressed it often and given him a pot of ointment and ordered him to dispense with pork and crabs and live on fruit and sago till he was well, and in short the rival practitioner had cured him, and moreover, sizing up the case with her usual swiftness, had told him she wouldn’t breathe a word of her success but would resign all the honours to him. Undoubtedly Hanua was grateful and had cause to be. On his part he gave out to his admirers that the feelings of the devils-devils were hurt because offerings had fallen off and that though he was the first sufferer and had cured himself by his great medicine-power others would follow unless matters improved. Puri-puri stock immediately became buoyant in the market, and the arm healed, so to speak, by leaps and bounds. Such was his version of Java’s story.

“Very precious,” said Wynyard to himself, “is a woman who can hold her tongue, and like all precious things uncommonly rare.”

But that was only the beginning of the tale. Hanua had once been down to Port Moresby—the only Paradise Islander who had—and in that gay metropolis, as he considered it, the power of the white man had immensely impressed him. He realized perfectly well on which side his bread was likely to be buttered, and that a temporary victory of the black interest would be an expensive amusement in the long run, even if backed by the Motu. Wynyard nodded approval at this point and Hanua’s own grin was humorous.

No, he did not think there was an immediate danger, but he would not say there might not be trouble some day. Paradise Island was isolated and off the general cruising lines of the men-of-war, and their number on the Australian station had been heavily reduced since the big fighting in Europe so that they were more a memory than a fact, with about as much power as memories usually have. But comparatively near and very present were the islands of Oratu and Lua, inhabited by the cannibal blacks known all over the South Seas for ferocity. And Missy? Did the Taubada remember how on two of the colonized islands white women had been swept away into the bush and had never returned? He did, and his face was fixed as a mask, his attention riveted while Hanua spoke in that grim whisper, casting furtive eyes round him every now and then, and starting if a breeze flicked a coco-frond against the fibre curtains.

“What about the mountains?” Wynyard whispered back. Hanua paused a moment in doubt. That was the crux. Dared he speak? Wynyard saw the fear in his eye. It fell, however, on the calla lilies sparkling with bead-work on scarlet, and they encouraged him with the prospect of noble rewards. But his whisper dropped to a thread.

“Taubada, the mountains bad, bad, flenty bad. War canoes come in Ratua!”

Ratua was the harbour, Wynyard knew, that he had seen coming up from Nukulu. Yes, a pretty snug place for landing unknown to the colonized side of the island. He looked anxiously at Hanua.

“You watching, me watching. Still you come alonga me when I send white stick—you come alonga me here and I tell. Now—finish. No more.”

He shut his lips like a rat-trap and stood up. Wynyard also. He saw the wisdom of silence and separation if they were to co-operate. The only question was could he trust the man, and he thought he could. Anyhow there was no choice. As he reached the door, Hanua came up behind him, waving the lilies aloft and shouting to the few old men idling in the sun that it was the white man’s gift to the devil-devil for the wonderful words he had spoken in the night of No Moon—the good fishing and crops he had promised to Paradise Island. It made an immense impression, and after a largesse of tobacco to the ancients, Wynyard came thoughtfully away. On the whole better not ask Hanua to see Java.

CHAPTER IX

Java, sternly ignoring the hand-kissing incident, met him with her usual baffling friendliness that evening. There were moments when Roger Wynyard would rather she had struck him in the face than have shown that cheerful absence of emotion, for what could it mean but utter indifference? It meant, however, several things neither he nor she as yet understood.

She strolled down the glimmering white path with him and when out of earshot of the shouting of the captains in an argument on the respective merits of the American and British beachcombers, she came straight to the point and asked what he had thought of the sorcerer on closer acquaintance.

“Funny old duck!” said Wynyard easily. He had decided that it is not good for young women to be frightened and that details were best kept to himself.

Java looked at him composedly.

“Yes, I knew that already. What else?”

“Nothing that I know of, Miss Dixon, except that he expressed himself as very grateful to you for looking after his game arm, and especially for keeping the business to yourself. He seemed to think it would have pretty well taken the wind out of his sails to have it get about that you’d cured him.”

“So it would. I knew that too. But what else?”

“Nothing particular ’cept that I’m pretty sure he’d help us out in a tight place if it didn’t try him too high. Beyond a certain point I wouldn’t swear to my faith in the gentleman.”

The blue eyes regarded him inflexibly. She laughed quietly.

“What point? What tight place, Mr. Wynyard? Don’t you think you’d better tell me the whole yarn? Please don’t think of me as Miss Dixon. That’s a mistake. I’m Captain Java.”

Was it the most delicate of hints that there were to be no approaches or was it simply her natural high courage? He might take it as he pleased. There was no enlightenment in the gay blue eyes.

“Come now!” she urged, “get it out comfortably. You’ll feel better after. How does Motu come in?”

He ended by doing it, absolutely uncertain whether he was not a blithering fool for his pains.

“You see,” he said eagerly when he was through, “we must keep it as dark as hell, Miss Dixon, or we’ll sell Hanua and our chances. But the point is this, should we meet trouble half way? Quit, and come back when the razzle-dazzle’s over, or stay here, living aboard the schooner, or—best of all—you make a bee-line for Port Moresby, and leave us men here to see it out?”

At that point Java’s scandalized look tripped him up suddenly and to his own amazement landed him in self-contempt. She looked exactly as a spirited young man of twenty might look who had the same escape proposed to him. There was no humour in her face now. Stiff huffed annoyance. She turned abruptly toward the house, not a word said.

“Forgive me!” he said earnestly, apologizing to the unspoken wrath. “I’m the most cursed blunderbuss unhung. But you know you are a woman, and men fight easier when a woman isn’t knocking about!”

For answer she unbuttoned a crevice of the bosom of the cotton shirt she wore, disclosing within a glimpse of steel and ivory. Then buttoned it and turned seaward again, making no reference to the disclosure.

“What!” she said in a fine blast of passion, “go and leave all our work, all our home, everything, to those black hounds from the islands? I’d sooner curl up and die on the spot than give in like that. And as to living aboard the schooner that might have to come later, but it’s hauling the flag down if we do, and, if we did it now, you can see for yourself it’d give away the whole show and pull the string of the shower bath into the bargain.”

He studied her eyes as she looked up at him. Not a flicker. You can trust a woman like that. Impossible as it seems you may even find her a very present help in trouble when it comes to shooting. He could not imagine Java in a collapse of funk any more than he could imagine her eyes softening into love. Pity? Yes. He had seen them brim over a wounded sea-gull horribly caught on a fishing hook, but fear or love? No.

“Well then, what’s your advice?” he asked, meeting her on her own ground, and avoiding her eyes lest his own should tell tales.

“Not a word yet to the uncles, but when you get down to Nukulu on this run you send word there to Port Moresby that there’s trouble brewing up this way, and let them send a cutter, or better still a gunboat or whatever they call it, to patrol a bit. We shall have no peace till the mountains are smoked out.”

“Yes, the little busy bee is pretty securely hived up there. But I go to Nukulu and leave you here with Captain Homan? Not I, Miss Dixon! You’ll have to work it out some other way, please.”

“Can’t!” she said with a quick grimace that showed her white teeth. “It’s the donkey and the bundle of sticks. Uncle ’Enry can’t go ’cause of his lumbago. Uncle ’Erbert won’t go alone now he’s got used to having you on board and—besides we all want you to get to know the ropes.”

“Then let them both go and I’ll look after you and the island,” cried Wynyard audaciously. The look she cast at him wilted him on the spot. She led the way back to Stephanotis Cottage, walking like a queen.

“Wait till we hear again from Hanua,” was all she condescended. “You know there’s no fear until you get the white stick from him.”

Wynyard would certainly not have sighed as he did if he could have seen the inner tumult veiled by the icy decorum. And yet he would have sighed again and yet again if he had guessed how nearly that patient little sound brought it to melting point. How could a mere man understand the instinct that made her her own duenna and a stricter than the strictest just because it would be so fatally, so sweetly easy to grant a little here and there to the eyes and lips she loved, to turn to the only man she had ever seen who tempted her to cling and be sheltered in a love she could trust for ever? But the almost fierce maidenliness in her shrank from it then and there. What? The natives to see her being made love to, to make their coarse conjectures and observations? No—a thousand times, no! She knew, as every woman knows, that he cared for her, but that love must be tested as one tests a tree’s branch before climbing to a giddy height where a slip is death, and if the time ever came, if . . . ! Then it must be a voyage to Port Moresby, and a marriage of iron-clad respectability, and a return to Paradise—ah, Paradise indeed!—in all the panoply of a wedded wife. Does it sound cold? But Java was not cold, far from it—only controlled, resolute, determined on his honour and her own in one. And woman-like passing from one extreme to the other, she veiled her heart so well that he acquitted her of the possession of any heart at all.

In a fortnight’s time things stood thus. No white stick had come from Hanua. The voyage to Nukulu was drawing near, and Captain Homan’s lumbago still was in the ascendant. He was in much pain and very sorry for himself and clearly could not go. Who should go with the skipper?

“You’ll go,” said Java, looking at Wynyard with an eye that suggested all the communications to be carried out with Port Moresby. That was his job. Uncle ’Enry was hers. His one object, on the contrary, was to get her safely and noiselessly away. He had scarcely seen her alone since that last talk, and their two wills clashed like steel.

“I want Java to stay along o’ me,” Captain Homan said querulously. “We’ve got Hua in fine shape to look after the boys on the plantation, and if we hadn’t they just skip when Java looks round the corner. And Java and me we’ll run the show here, and let you two salts go off on your errands. What could Wynyard do if I was took bad? And he must learn his job.”

“I think Miss Dixon’s looking pale. I think she wants a change. The run’ll do her good. I can go next time,” Wynyard said as firmly as he dared in the circumstances.

Carnation cheeks confronted him, giving him the lie on the spot. “Try another!” she said, not angry, but mischief incarnate, sure of her strength.

“She don’t look very bad, I allow!” said Captain Dixon, reaching for his pipe. “Still, though I don’t want no better mate nor Java nor no better business head at Nukulu, I’m bound to own I think Homan wants her worse to fetch and carry for him until he gets the crick out of his back, so she’d best stay. Besides you should be learning the business at Nukulu, young man. Some day Homan and me will be getting a bit old, and then——”

He sighed and Uncle ’Enry echoed the sigh. That was a day neither they nor Java could bear to think of. She interrupted quickly:

“There that’s settled, Mr. Wynyard goes mate.” He caught the quick blue flash of her eye like the dart of a kingfisher, and knew he might save his breath to cool his porridge.

Yet he caught Java in the garden and made another feeble attempt.

“I can’t bear to leave you alone with Captain Homan. Suppose anything should happen to him while we’re gone? It’ll be three weeks and more if the wind’s against us.”

“We may all die—I may, you may, for that matter. But we needn’t be torturers, and can’t you see it would just torture either of them to think they were back numbers. You heard what Uncle ’Enry said. He’s not a bit well and he wants me. And Uncle ’Erbert wants you. It isn’t as if you’d heard anything from Hanua. And there’s another thing. It’s you that must get word sent to Port Moresby that the people round here want a bit of tidying up.”

That was true and he saw it. There was no more to be said.

“We seem to be always half-quarrelling,” Java said ruefully, “and I don’t know why. You’ve been such a help all round. I’m glad you came, and still——”

“Still you can’t abide me! Well, I don’t blame you. There are many times when I can’t abide myself. Times when I think it would be better for me to be off to Sydney and leave you as happy as I found you.”

Java stared at him in sudden horror. Go? But then—her thoughts whirled into wild confusion. The sago—the ship—Hanua—the captains—all their little hopes—she saw them all falling into ruin if that strong support which had become so necessary were withdrawn. And if it should be, whose fault would it be but hers? She had never given Wynyard a square deal—never! Suddenly she saw the island as she had never seen it before—a little lonely place set in vast seas, surrounded with mysterious dangers and only two old men and a girl to meet them. It was as if the veil of unspeakable beauty had lifted for a moment and disclosed a death’s head behind it. She stood stiff and silent, conscious of all this and that beneath it was something deeper and more insistent of which she could control only the outward utterance—a longing—for what? Was it youth crying to youth, weakness pleading to strength, woman calling to man—what was it? She could not tell, but knew that the day he left would be a day of black misery and forlornness for her. Even the thought of it seemed to hold up the beating of the blood in her veins.

Wynyard turned to go down to the work in the clearings. With a wild impulse she laid a detaining hand on his arm, and said nothing. So they stood for what seemed a long time, speechless, looking at each other. Then Java said with little sobbing catches in her breath, although her eyes were dry:

“Do you think you could be wanted anywhere so much as here?”

His tone was blank amazement.

“Me? Do you mean yourself?”

She rallied at that into her practised air of courageous gaiety.

“I mean the uncles of course. How could they do without you? You know that.”

“Good enough reason for staying. Besides after all, I signed on,” he said briefly. “No, I won’t chuck. Not yet.”

He turned and went off. Pollipet, surveying the interview with unutterable wisdom and contempt from a twig beside Java, fluttered on to her shoulder and nestled his head into her neck. “Fool!” he croaked twice, very softly. That was not the tone in which he hurled his insults at Wynyard. She knew it was meant for her and kissed the little white head with fervour not wholly meant for Pollipet.

So the matter was settled for good or bad, and Wynyard, thoroughly unhappy and dissatisfied, dared not even approach Hanua. It might undermine the man’s influence with his people if he were known to be too friendly with the whites and as the news was certain to reach him that the Spindrift would soon be off he must rely on the promised message by the white stick and leave it to Hanua. Every time he went to his shack that day he looked first at the window-sill where he made sure the stick would lie. Nothing.

So the days went by, happy and peaceful as ever to outward seeming with blue unruffled skies and perfect content in the hearts of the uncles, for though Java and Wynyard were each passing through their own private cyclones neither showed it by the twinkle of an eyelash. He had resolved at last to meet her with her own weapons, cool friendly composure, steady avoidance of sentiment, and business before all. She had her secrets—that wedding-ring on her finger witnessed it. If that was her reason for holding aloof he could respect it and imitate her as far as possible. But leave the island, take the wise man’s refuge in flight, he neither could nor would. The time might come, but not yet.

On the appointed day the Spindrift sailed with a fair wind through the ten-fathom-deep passage, known as the Hall Door, where the great reef that enclosed the lagoon was broken. She set her sails like a white-winged sea-gull heading for Nukulu, and Java, standing on the beach, waving (of course to Uncle ’Erbert) and secure that no telescope could discover them, let two tears, bright as the sun-sparkles, fall down cheeks where the carnations had faded for a day, and went back in excellent high spirits to Captain Homan.

But before she saw him she slipped into her own bedroom and got out the little box of treasures where the pearls were accumulating with other matters dear to her heart. There she took the wedding-ring off her finger and locked it up securely, sat a moment in thought and went her way feeling as if a load had rolled off her conscience. She could not have done it suddenly with Wynyard on the spot, and now was the opportunity. Let him make what he could of it on his return.

It was a prosperous voyage and they got down to Nukulu in excellent time. There the Bird of Paradise was lying off the queer little settlement with its corrugated iron roofs for the few whites and long-legged huts, standing in the water, for the natives. When Wynyard could disentangle himself from the bargaining and business he got a word with her skipper, sitting in a long wicker chair on deck with something comfortable and cool in the hollow of the armrest. He was a youngish man, of a better class than many of the white men to be met down that way, and he received Wynyard civilly, perceiving instantly that there was more in the wind than sago and copra.

A chair was ordered and drink offered and Wynyard began:

“Captain Stretton, you’ve been up and about the islands on your last trip. Did you get so far as Oratu and Lua?”

“Certainly—there’s very few voyages when we don’t touch there. Why?”

“I’m told they’re a very bad lot, sir.”

“Why as to that, they’re cannibals when they can get it and mad with superstition and witchcraft and puri-puri. Yes, I suppose one would say they were a bad lot, but we get very good stuff from them and they’re honest traders all the same. What about them? I don’t advise you to start a mission there.”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking of that,” Wynyard said with rather a forced laugh. “I was thinking of Paradise Island.”

“Jolly little spot and uncommonly pretty girl. With a head on her shoulders too. What then——?”

“Well—as man to man—d’you think it’s safe for her and those two old men alone on Paradise and——”

“Why—have they had any trouble with the people? Nice old coots, the two uncles.”

His cheery laugh was reassuring, but Wynyard stuck to his point.

“No—not a bit. But still—you know that little harbour on the north of the island?—Ratua, they call it—I’ve some reason to think the war canoes come from Oratu and Lua and hold big jamborees there, sacrifices and heaven knows what. Do you think there’s any danger for the men and the girl, sir?”

Captain Stretton sat up in his chair and brightened into interest.

“That’s a very queer thing. Why should they come to Paradise? I happen to know they have an awful big place—regular tabu and all that sort of thing—on Oratu, and the blacks from lots of the islands come there to do their tricks. I don’t believe they go to Paradise; more likely Paradise goes to them.”

“That’s possible too for all I know. But—you know the mountains on Paradise? They climb up there from Ratua and all kinds of hell-work goes on. Now if they should take it into their heads to drop down into the valleys. . . .”

There was a pause, and then Wynyard added quickly:

“Have you heard the story of two white women being once carried off into the wilds and never coming back, sir? What for?”

Stretton’s face was very serious now.

“Yes, that was a bad business and the Government made them smart for it. No fear that’ll happen again. What for? Well, we never could be certain but those who knew best believed it was for a grand sacrifice to Motu, the fire-god, they worship out in Oratu and Lua. That was as far as we could get. But I know this—If I had any woman to look after with Motu hovering in the background I’d put a bullet through her brain sooner than risk any truck with that gentleman and his friends.”

Wynyard suppressed the sick shudder that ran through him from head to foot and his voice was firm as a rock when he spoke:

“That’s just what I feel, sir. Now, I’ve some information that makes me think the Motu crowd is on the move again, and I know they come to Ratua on Paradise. We don’t want any more tragedies—they’re bad all round. What would you do if you were me? I needn’t say how I value your advice.”

Captain Stretton considered. He liked the young man and his earnestness and his sensible way of taking things.

“You couldn’t run down to Port Moresby and tell the authorities all you have up your sleeve? I can see you’re not laying all your cards on the table. That is, unless you’ve got up the wind unnecessarily.”

“You’re right, sir. I can’t tell all I know. And I certainly can’t go down to Port Moresby because I’m afraid of a bolt from the blue any day while I’m away. Telling all I’ve heard might even make matters worse. I want to get back—I want to get back!”

Stretton caught the anguish in his voice and read it perhaps more clearly than Wynyard would have wished. But it stimulated him. He knew Java and had a strong liking and admiration for her, which might have been even warmer but for his pretty wife and their little diggings at Port Moresby. His tone was cordial and heart-raising as he answered: “You’re very right to keep your weather eye open. I’m bound to say I never knew Oratu and Lua quieter than they were the other day, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll see the proper people when I get down to Port Moresby and report what you say. I’ll report it fully and as I don’t believe they knew the war canoes were skipping about to Paradise and elsewhere they may believe there’s trouble brewing. In that case they’ll send the cutter up and perhaps something better, to do a little patrolling round the outer islands. Does Cap’n Dixon know?”

“Not on your life, sir. Not yet. Nothing must get out until help comes. And for God’s sake speed them up. They’ll listen to you.”

So it ended. Perhaps Captain Stretton took it less seriously than Wynyard liked but he was known to be a man of his word, and the message would go through. That was all that could be done except to ache and burn night and day to get back, living as best he could on the consolation that no white stick had come from Hanua before they left Paradise. But it was hard to listen to Captain Dixon’s easy optimism as to this best of all good worlds and to take the inevitable delays and postponements with any decency of patience. Even Uncle ’Erbert noticed this at last.

“You’re getting a regular fidget, young man, that’s what you are! If you’d been through what I have in life you’d act very different. Lord love a duck!—I’ve known what it is to sit smiling with tempers and tantrums a-flying about my head like shies for coconuts and not a word or a jerk out of me. You’ll live longer and quieter if you take life easy. That’s what it’s there for.”

And Wynyard smiled but ruefully.

CHAPTER X

Of course it was a dead-on head wind for return. Was it ever anything else when a man was in a hurry that kept his heart going like a racer? The delays were sickening. Every art of seamanship, every trick with sheet and sail, he tried, to screw a knot more out of the old hooker, and failed, and Captain Dixon would say with maddening composure: “Lor! what’s a day here or there! They’ll have all the more to show us when we make the island, and the granadillas’ll just be ripe and the passion-fruit. Take it easy, sonny—whistling won’t change the wind, you bet.”

Nothing had been said between the uncles, but on this voyage—and why he could not tell—it had suddenly dawned on Captain Dixon that it was a pity Java and Wynyard disliked each other as they did. No one had a lowlier opinion of the blessings of marriage than himself, but here large interests were at stake and he supposed some people made out to get along together somehow or the thing wouldn’t go on at all. Suppose the girl should rag the boy too harshly. Suppose he should see another pretty face down at Nukulu—and there was certainly Molly Harbord, the head clerk’s daughter, a good-looking saucy slip with black eyebrows—why, then, Wynyard might be off some day to some dream Papalite of his own, and what about Paradise? Captain Dixon knew perfectly well that things would go to rack and ruin without him now and privately resolved on a word with Java when he returned—nothing interfering—but just a word to the wise. It should run something after this fashion:

“You see we can’t do without Wynyard, Java—particular now that Homan has this crick in his back for keeps. Now I don’t say nothing about falling in love for that’s not my dish, and it’s the sure straight way to asking for trouble! I remember——” No, he dared offer no reminiscences! “But if a person married sensible, not expecting a silk purse from a sow’s ear or the like—then something might be made out of a bad job. And now see here—If you and Wynyard was spliced we’ve got him tied down to Paradise (and I will say a more handy sensible fellow never ate bread, nor with a modester notion of himself and his betters). I don’t see no other way to be sure of him.”

This would be delicate but arresting.

Java would probably fly out then and the pot boil over. She would say Wynyard didn’t care a snap for her nor she for him and bid Uncle ’Erbert mind his own business. After all, she had seen Mrs. Dixon in all her terrors. Was it fair to ask her to sacrifice herself? Love, indeed! “Love’s a damned queer thing—a queer thing,” he thought to himself. “You never can tell!—No, Nature’s too cunning an old lass to let you into the secret till you’ve snapped the chain about your neck for good and then she cocks a snook at you!” Still the notion pleased him. It would rivet Java and Wynyard alike to the island, and he wanted that, if he could only get up courage enough to break it to her. What would Homan and he be without either of them now, and Homan with that crick in his back too. But he chaffed Wynyard mildly:

“Don’t you go committing hurry-scurry as the Japs call it, young man. A watched pot don’t boil, and a ship don’t do her best if you swear at her. You keep your hair on, and keep smiling too. We’ll get back in plenty of time.”

It was an azure day of eternal summer and the gentle wind, capricious as a woman, had shifted and was blowing sweetly astern when they sighted the mountains of Paradise, blue, dreamy, melting into a delicious haze as if they were loosening their stony roots on earth and floating up, cloudy and unreal, into heaven itself. They might have been the habitations of angels instead of the devils that made Wynyard’s nightmares.

“Pretty, ain’t they?” said Captain Dixon with all his romance in blossom. “It warms up the cockles of a man’s heart as good as a drop of rum to see a picture like that. I’d like to make a few days’ trek up that way sometime when work’s slack and see what’s going on up in the bush. Wouldn’t you, Wynyard?”

“Guess I would,” Wynyard said through set teeth. “And we may have to do it one day, sir. I don’t like the accounts I hear of the playful savage up yonder, and Ratua’s uncommonly convenient for running in a few war canoes if they ever had a fancy that way. That harbour’s simply eating its head off for want of a few good hefty bootleggers to use it. ’Twas built for rum-running.”

“Rum’s not a bad booze in its way—hot with lemon!” Captain Dixon said reflectively. “But see now—we’re opening Stephanotis Cottage. Looks calm and peaceful, don’t it?”

“Can you make out Homan through the glass? I can’t.”

Nor could Wynyard. But all looked peace itself. In the still air they could hear the axes ringing in the swamp—even the voices of the boys carried in the quiet—as they nosed their way in through the narrow entrance in the coral that kept the lagoon smooth as ice cream while the open sea billowed and broke outside.

No sooner did the anchor run rattling down into the coral than the dinghy was hoisted out, and Captain Dixon took charge of the tiller while Wynyard got out the oars. They made for the little pier with all the speed his muscles could put into it. Of course all was all right or work wouldn’t be going on as usual. Still . . .

The boat’s nose grated on the coral rock, and he jumped out and made her fast to the ring. Captain Dixon jumped out leisurely.

“Lord love a duck, ain’t it pretty? Funny Java don’t come to meet us! Guess they’re down at the swamp.”

Not a word from Wynyard. He was at the end of his endurance, racked with an anxiety that reason laughed at and could not conquer. He ran for his life up the white path with Captain Dixon grumbling in the rear. What on earth was all the fuss about?

The door was closed—the casements flung back as usual to let in the sweet air. He hailed. No answer. He opened the door. The sitting room, neat as a new pin, the rose-bud curtains swaying in the breeze. Java’s work-box on the table, a book open beside it. The kitchen—a small fire in the cooking stove. The bedrooms spotlessly tidy. Kuki and Devara absent. Trembling all over he looked into Java’s room—the little white bed fresh and folded as a flower, and everywhere dead silence. He turned speechless to Captain Dixon who was standing in the sitting room, repeating:

“Down to the swamp, that’s where they are. You run along and fetch ’em.”

Wynyard cast one dreadful look at him and raced down to his own hut. The door there was closed also and nothing disturbed. But something was added. On the little window-sill lay a stick peeled white.

He caught it up and stared at it one moment, then dropping it, ran for Hanua’s house as he had never run in his life before.

Perfect peace reigned in the little village. The boys were all at work at a distance. A few ancients lolled in the shade, squatting under the palms—everything betokened perfect serenity. Everything but one—not a woman was in sight. None flitted between the houses, none looked from the doors. The Marys were all absent. Turning his head quickly he noted that danger-signal as he ran, noted too that the old goblins under the palms were discussing something pleasant to them, licking their chops over some crumb of excitement that titillated their faded ancestral wickedness. He was at Hanua’s door and into it within a minute after.

Darkness within as usual, shot with golden shafts of sunlight here and there. The puri-puri man was squatting on the ground putting the last touches to something which was propped on a short stick resting on the ground. It appeared to be sculptured in bronze and to be staring up at him with a cold curiosity while he looked down upon it affectionately as an artist regards his masterpiece. A human head—really not as horrible as the living ones to be seen in the village if one could forget certain prejudices. But one could not. It added the last turn of the screw to Wynyard’s inner anguish as he halted and looked Hanua sternly in the face.

“What has happened?”

That was all, but the head rolled over and lay regarding them still with chilling curiosity, while Hanua leaped to his feet, his necklaces rattling, and put out his hands as if to ward off a blow.

“No savvy!” he cried—“No savvy. What long? [wrong]”

“You savvy. You send stick.”

“I send ’tick yes. Plenty flighten mountain men come soon. Not yet. No.”

“They’ve come.”

Wynyard stared at the man with eyes dull with terror. Was he lying? What did he know? The impulse was to shake it out of him as a terrier shakes a rat but Hanua himself was shaking now from head to foot.

“Missy gone? Cap’n?”

“Gone. You tell all you savvy or——”

He drew something from his hip-pocket that glittered in the slip of sunlight. It clicked, and Hanua drew back shuddering, then pulled himself together with a manly touch not lost on Wynyard. The savage eyes met his and did not fall.

“Me sending stick for mountain men make great puri-puri. They tellum me four days now. But while me workum head no man, no Mary, come near me. I no savvy nothing four days. If Missy gone I no savvy. I flenty sorry. More better you telling me good words. I help.”

Wynyard knew that was true. While working on a chief’s head the sorcerer was tabu—shut up with the angry spirit. Not a human being dared to enter his house while that ghastly work was proceeding. Also it flashed on him that it would be madness to frighten or offend the one man who could help in the hour of need. His whole demeanour changed as he stuck the shining thing into his pocket again.

“You helping, Hanua. You telling all you savvy, you getting rich man.”

They drew close to each other, with a cornerwise glance from Hanua at the curtain, and still the head, looking upward, regarded the conference with cold curiosity as though distantly, very distantly, concerned in the matter.

It amounted to this. Hanua had had word four days ago—how, he would not say—that two war canoes were to arrive in Ratua Bay. That there was to be a mighty puri-puri up in the mountains at which he must be present for the chief of Oratu was deadly sick and it was believed that a devil-devil was in charge of the trouble, a devil-devil of the highest rank, whom Motu alone could master. Sacrifices, feasts, offerings; all was to be done on the highest scale of pomp.

Sacrifices? Wynyard’s eyes looked horror into Hanua’s when he grasped that meaning. The rarer, the costlier the victim, the more propitious the Motu. He knew. Hanua shook his head violently.

“No, no, Taubada. Not that. They want Missy, but not kill. Sure!”

“What then?”

The man would not tell. Some mystery lay behind that which was not for the white man’s ear at present. He skirted that question and went on. He had made certain on getting that message that the ship would be back and all well before there was any chance of a raid from the mountains. He had sent the stick that there might be no delay, and then shut himself up with his horrid work in the loneliness that was necessary. Mischief might come now from Wynyard having broken the tabu. He would do what he could, however.

“Perhaps the men outside know what has happened,” Wynyard said, moistening dry lips. Hanua took off the ceremonial necklaces, and hung the head up, where it stared down more aloof than ever. He went to the door and hailed the ancient goblins squatting under the trees. Talk followed, senseless endless talk it seemed to Wynyard; angry, abusive, commanding. A conch shell was sounded outside and the shattering roar was evidently a summons, for feet came running, men’s voices chipped in, there was all the sound of a gathering of men—sharply alive and interested.

Presently Hanua returned and Wynyard faced him, white and keen-eyed. They knew, he explained, but were afraid to speak. Best go on working, they thought, till Taubada came back. Two hours before a party had come down from the mountains and carried off Missy and Cap’n. Quite quietly. “No hurt.” They put korbu over their mouths on a cloth, the milky juice of a sleepy plant, and carried them off, “same like dead man,” and that was all.

“And they went on working as if nothing had happened?” Wynyard asked with black and bitter contempt.

Hanua wanted to know what else they could do? They could not tell him for he was tabu. They could not follow for there was not a man on the island but himself who would have faced the mountain people and the awful puri-puri above. From their point of view it was entirely reasonable. A native will often sooner die than bring bad news to his master. He has had hard experience of what that may mean for himself from the roughnecks who hold sway on the outer islands. Better and easier to hold their peace and let the white man deal with his own troubles. And who was there they could tell?

Would they help now? Wynyard asked. Hanua shook his head violently. They liked Missy very well, but the mountain was too much for them. Would Hanua help? Yes, but he must think. He was evidently not to be rushed. He would break the tabu of the head and come round in the evening. Not till then, for it was a long ceremony and the more so because the white man had broken in on it.

Wynyard, sick at heart, helpless, cursing the island and all its ways, rushed back to find Captain Dixon. He could do worse than nothing without Hanua. Through the blazing heat he ran to the cottage and never felt it, and there a terrifying surprise was waiting for him—Captain Homan dazed, heavy, purple-faced, almost in a state of collapse, and Captain Dixon staring distractedly at him. They had found him, bound and all but senseless, in a corner of the swamp, perfectly unable to speak or throw any light on the happenings of the day. No sign of Java—nothing to indicate whether there had been a struggle. The men had brought him back. No need to dwell on that meeting. It assured Wynyard that he would have to depend on himself and Hanua for any attempt at rescue. Homan was out of the question. Take Captain Dixon on a reeling deck with a cyclone playing pitch and toss with his ship and death ahead and astern, and no braver, wiser man could be found. But his slow-working wits could not bite on a peril new to him and requiring initiative as well as energy. He sat groaning with his head in his hands while Wynyard was marshalling his facts and bringing every power of mind and body to bear on them. It was a frightful thought to him that she was alone, without even the poor protection of Captain Homan, among the bloodthirsty savages.

“If we’d only thought to warn the Government at Port Moresby,” groaned Captain Dixon. “We could have done it at Nukulu.”

“You be easy, sir,” Wynyard said quietly over his shoulder. “That was done. I’m thinking what to do now, right here.” Not another word was said. Captain Homan lay breathing heavily, and Wynyard forgot his very existence in his tortured thoughts.

It was near ten o’clock before Hanua came, decks cleared for action, free of tabu, and crammed with information. The savages had trekked up the trail by the river, but then would take a short one known to the puri-puri men of their tribe. Not a man would go after them, but they could be trusted to stand by the captains below, while . . .

Here Hanua paused; his eyes were sparkling strangely. Then he added that he himself would go and bring back word, if no more.

“Alone?” said Wynyard. “You bet you don’t. I’m on.”

Hanua looked at him, saw words were useless, and grinned until his teeth showed like a dog’s.

“All same good,” he said. “You come alonga me.”

Remained Captain Dixon, for though Homan was coming round, he was quite unfit for business. Wynyard appointed him the duty of looking out for the Government cutter and giving her the news when she turned up. He strongly recommended an attack on the mountain tribe from the little harbour of Ratua. They would never dream of expecting that. But how the men and their guns were to get up the mountains Wynyard himself did not know. It was the frailest spider’s web of a hope.

Arrangements were made for food and then he turned to Hanua without further ceremony and said but one word.

“Now!”

He led the way and Captain Dixon, dully and without a parting wave, came to the door and watched them go. He seemed crushed beneath the suddenness and horror of the breakup of all that had seemed so safe and happy.

They tramped through the swamps and up into the bush, the moon shining with a mocking brilliance.

CHAPTER XI

For four days the two tramped through upward-climbing virgin forest and Wynyard, sick at heart, found it no picnic. They followed a secret trail, the artery of communication between the mountain and the lowland, and it clung more or less to the river, so that the rushing music never ceased except when it strengthened into the crashing of a waterfall. The climbing was bitter hard work for the great pitches of precipice often a hundred feet high and more had to be attacked, and all about them lay the steamy heat that was shut in and down upon them on both sides of the river by mysterious depths of forest, wherein the pink and white cockatoos screeched amongst giant ferns, rank, poisonous, luxuriant creepers and the trees strangled in their deathly embrace. Beautiful? Yes, but with a sinister beauty and the horrible efflorescence of rank corruption.

Progress was slow in such surroundings, and Wynyard had much time for his own thoughts, for Hanua was a silent companion. He travelled light enough in a loin-cloth but with the feather head-dress of parrots’ plumes that announced that he had killed his man, and was therefore a person of consideration apart from the special magic ornaments. Evidently the situation weighed heavily on him and anxiety went with him step by step. Slung on his back was an old canvas bag holding undisclosed treasures. Wynyard, when his dulled interest touched it, supposed it contained additional food, but neither that nor anything else mattered, for his thoughts centred on one thing only. Apparently Hanua also had much to consider. At least he never opened his mouth unnecessarily.

As for Roger Wynyard, it is of no use to dwell on the thoughts of a man who has but one, in however many torturing shapes it presents itself, and he had only one—one desire and will, and against that it seemed all nature was leagued. The river thundered down to separate him from the woman he loved, and the impenetrable leagues of forest and mountain barred the way. His sole frail hope was in the savage by his side and the Something that men do not willingly name but to which they turn in days of agony. But it was Java, Java, who absorbed his very soul. The least of his fears was that she had already won her freedom with the shining toy in her bosom. That would be very like her, and he himself might yet have to rejoice that she had done for herself what he would have done for her. There his mind stopped short. To think further would be paralysis, and all his heaven and earth depended on keeping steadily on. He repeated verses he had learnt at school, he counted to thousands as they went—anything, everything, to stifle thought a little.

In the late evening of the fourth day they reached a waterfall—a deafening perpendicular plunge where the river shattered itself into dust of diamonds in a mighty rock basin, and then, regathering itself after the torture, shot swirling and billowing away to the happy lowland. They climbed that precipice half dead with fatigue, and there sitting in a little clearing in the comparative peace above, took out their tucker and ate. Wynyard, chunking off a chew of tobacco with his knife, passed it silently to Hanua.

Then, looking round cautiously at the impenetrable and majestic darkness of the forest that closed them in, Hanua spoke to the purpose for the first time—and Wynyard listened with such torturing anxiety that he never noticed a word the man said for strained interest in his meaning. Divested of pidgin English it amounted to this:

They were taking their lives in their hands in this Never-Never land of the mountains, not to mention the savages beyond—and they holding a devil-ceremony which to look on was death! If they could arrive before that began Hanua still hoped he might get a hearing. But if not! . . . In any case no need to dwell on that. Arrows from the bush would be as likely as anything. No, they would not kill the puri-puri man and they would not use poisoned arrows on Wynyard because . . . Hanua’s eyes blinked and shirked, and Wynyard could very well tell why. But what must be done was this. They must not approach the place until near dark, and then Hanua must go on alone and Wynyard wait until he came for him. How wait, and where?

A quarter of a mile from the first village—for there were three—was a burying place that no one would go near at night—the corpses were laid on branches woven into platforms and raised on poles. If he hid among these he would be safe and Hanua would come when he could and give him news. Agreed, if no better could be, though his own impulse was to rush the village, shooting right and left, and get the girl off in the confusion. Hanua shook his head vehemently. No, who could tell what village she was in? and the alarm given in vain in one would mean . . . A native does not willingly mention death, but Hanua conveyed his idea exactly enough.

Silence except for the falling water and edged shrieks of the settling cockatoos, and then he turned and suddenly glared at Wynyard, his face devilish with its matted black wig of hair and the white bone cylinder thrust through the nostrils, though his meaning was not devilish at all. The point he wanted to convey was that he would not go a step further, he would turn and run down the trail again, or go on resolutely alone unless Wynyard swore he would do only and every thing Hanua directed in the quest.

“If Taubada comes with this feller man he doing what Hanua tell.”

To this, enforced with a nightmare glare and a grin, Wynyard instantly agreed. He could not move without the puri-puri man and besides he knew it was absolutely reasonable—no way out of it! He put out his hand and grasped Hanua’s, who accepted it as the white man’s sign and seal. Then they lay down in the sudden dark, in the heavy odour of leaves that had rotted for centuries, the dense fat smell of the forest, and took what sleep they could.

Two days later, Wynyard noticed an exaggerated caution in his guide. He became even more silent, and when he was obliged to speak it was under his breath. Presently he stopped and leaving the trail, lay down on his stomach and wormed himself under a thicket of bushes loaded with the gorgeous scarlet blossoms of the D’Alberti creeper, which had wound over and about them until they were a matted and blazing splendour of colour fit for kings’ gardens. Wynyard followed as best he could and with the same caution—though it seemed idle enough, for the cockatoos rose screaming harshly about them—yelling their approach, as it were, and drowning every other sound. They did that, however, for the wild pig, so it might pass.

Wynyard never knew how long they crawled, but he was stiff and cramped and his clothes stuck with thorn-needles, his face and hands bleeding profusely from the assaults of the leeches, when they dragged themselves out into a place where they could stand upright, no trail, but yet a narrow natural way between dense walls of trees. They now moved through shadow like deep water, for scarcely a sun could pierce the awful growth of the trees, themselves knotted half way up their immense height by creepers laced and interlaced. Yet, in spite of this, large black butterflies with crimson spots like drops of blood floated dreamily on the stagnant air, almost brushing their faces, too enervated, it seemed, by the steaming heat to flutter away. A small stream lipping over sand of purest white welled from some mossy spring above and made a tiny singing sound in the beautiful terrible place. Wynyard, exhausted, would have plunged his face, dripping with sweat, into the coolness to drink, but Hanua caught him by the arm with a look of terror.

“Poison-water. No drink!” and faint with weariness and thirst Wynyard followed until a bit farther on they came to a strange plant hung with what looked like small bronze-green pockets, and there, under Hanua’s silent guidance, he stopped and drank the cool living water stored in the plant’s own reservoirs. It gave him strength to go on.

It was drawing on to sundown when they came moving softly and in dead silence to another clearing—small, with the secrecy of the trees ranked closely about it. Since the sun had sunk below the level of the forest at that mountain height, the swiftly coming darkness gave it an air of mystery and gloom.

There were six or eight platforms of interlaced branches uplifted on poles, and these were surrounded by shorter poles of irregular height strangely decorated with skulls and human bones. A terrible odour of death pervaded the place and corrupted the air and Wynyard needed no words to tell him they had reached the present end of the journey so far as he was concerned. There they halted, and in a thread of a whisper Hanua bid him hide among the poles, crouching down low—so—he squatted—and get what sleep he could while he went on to the village.

Hanua drew one or two articles which Wynyard could not distinguish from the bag he carried, fixed his circle of feathers more jauntily on his mop of hair, and without another word or sign to Wynyard glided out through dense dark walls of the forest and was seen no more. Wynyard watched him go, then slipped in between the sheltering poles with the skulls and the dead to keep him company and tried to clear his thoughts for action.

In about twenty minutes there broke out, apparently close at hand, a thunder-beat of drums, and then such a devil’s chorus of yells inhuman, appalling, as tore the air with horror and tattered the silence of the night. It was the welcome to Hanua—the greatest puri-puri man of the island, and the prelude to—what?

What drove him half mad was the thought of Java alive or dead in the midst of these raving savages, and for a bad quarter of an hour he felt as if his own mind were slipping out of hand—so fearful were the sights it brought him. Then with an immense effort he collected himself into quiet and resolution again. He must believe he could trust Hanua and his powers. He must rest on that thought or he would go mad.

Followed a frightful silence, broken only by a night-breeze creaking in the platforms, giving the illusion that the dead men above were turning in their sleep—a horrible quiet, the background for grim thoughts and fancies provoked by every stir of a snake in the grass or the timid movements of small forest-dwellers. But these left him untouched. The thought of Java burned up all other fires of fear and left nothing to feed them.

So the minutes crept by, alternate horrors of sound and silence. A dripping dew now saturated everything and the white-faced moon had risen and looked down past the left-hand platform as though staring with terror at what lay upon it. There were sounds now and then of distant voices from the village. That had an almost home-like sound and he allowed himself to wonder whether Hanua had made peace and all would yet be well. Then a kind of stupor of weariness seized him and for a while he lost count of time.

He thought afterward that it could not have been a very long respite when he woke again in the foul air, for the moon had only slipped a little way beyond the platform where she had stood when he fell asleep. There was dead silence now; either the village had gone to sleep or to some secret vileness beyond his guessing. He sat up stupidly, half stunned by Java’s danger and his own helplessness, and suddenly his eyes fixed and stiffened on what he saw. For he was not alone with the dead men now. He rose slowly, very slowly, to his feet.

Where the moonlight fell clearest through the branches—glorious moonlight clear as day, now the moon had conquered her shudder at the dead—stood a white man, the tallest man Wynyard had ever seen. He was in a loose shirt and trousers. His head was bare and a great scar crossed cheek and temple just missing the eye. He leaned lightly on a crutch-handled stick and his gaze never wavered from Wynyard’s face. He was on guard—of that there was no question—on duty. But why? He was silent yet there was a feeling in the air that he had called and so waked the sleeper. The vibration was about him still, sensibly to be felt.

Now to this day Wynyard cannot tell whether the man spoke or not. It is not that he forgets but neither then nor since did he know the means of communication. And there is another thing to be said for clear understanding. He had fallen asleep, sick with fears, hunted, tormented. Looking at the man he was fearless, stayed on something unseen but mighty. It came through the stranger possibly, but may not have been he. One plays with words in recording such experiences, for they are beyond all but feeling, and that blind and instinctive at best.

But Wynyard went toward him with hands stretched out and a great confidence.

“I’m glad to see you—jolly glad!” he said. He could hear his own voice and the hope in it. “There’s an English girl among the savages in awful danger and what am I to do? Have you help near? Are there more?”

Now Wynyard will not commit himself to more than that the man smiled and that he made it clear there was help at hand, but how he made it clear was beyond Wynyard’s telling. Also he raised his arm and pointed and following his hand Wynyard saw a black man steadying himself and aiming directly at him—the bow bent till the horns nearly touched, the arrow quivering for flight. The poisoned arrow. He knew that. He started back, instinctively putting his hand to his face and as he did it there was a movement, from whom he could not tell, and the bow fell from the man’s hand as if he had gone suddenly powerless. He was staring with dropped jaw at the stranger, without cry, without breath, and presently he had fallen on his knees, on his face, and was crawling to the great man’s feet where he stood in moonlight, and so fell and lay prostrate—a limp heap of horror. Dead. No mistaking that.

Then for the first time a wave of unearthly fear swept over Wynyard, disintegrating, disabling. He stood shuddering from head to foot staring at the stranger with the man lying at his feet, and even while he looked there was only the dead man. The other was not.

It had happened and was over. That was all, but that it had happened he never doubted. He sat with his arms clasped about his knees staring, staring at the place where the stranger had been, and at the huddled corpse before it. The bow lay some yards away. Presently the moon passed on her way and he could see no more, but with darkness came hope and consolation like a strong cordial. The wave of fear had ebbed, uncovering hidden strength. He could wait.

CHAPTER XII

When Java was bound and carried up the mountain ways as swiftly as the terrible bad going would allow, she kept her head and her courage. It was useless to resist for she was alone among half a dozen black fellows, possibly more, and what became of Captain Homan she never saw. One moment they had been standing watching the work at the swamp in safety. The next, the terror was upon her and for nearly half an hour she knew nothing. They unbound her hands and feet presently and put her on a rough kind of litter of woven boughs rigged up with four handles, and the men relieved each other in carrying her up the steep trail. She would never forget the misery of those boughs tied together with fibre, jumbling along at every angle as they went, flung heedlessly down when they stopped. The suffering was awful. After the first day she told herself she would endure it no longer, and next morning after the night spent under the cottonwood trees, she stood up, white as a lily among them, and kicking the litter away, set out on her own, with never a look behind her. It told as courage always does tell, from North to South, and she had her way. With her magnificent health and strength the climb up the heights and through the bush, hard as it was, kept her in condition, and besides, the mountain men took them up a shorter trail than Hanua could venture to disclose to Wynyard. That was because she could never come back to reveal it. They knew they were safe.

Wynyard? She thought of him night and day. Did he know it yet? What would he feel? What would he do? She knew the answer to both questions but all her pondering could not find the way he would choose. Would Hanua help or hinder? Oh, if she could send him a message to tell him she was well and in good courage, and that even if she had to die she could do it bravely. It would not be so terrible as people made it with their talk and grief. A hundred years hence it would matter very little what the exit had been, and this—she touched her steel friend in her bosom—was an easier and swifter way than many a death-bed at home with tears and regrets to soften the courage in one and make the way out harder.

There was a streak of steel in Java herself, or she could not have thought like that, but it melted more than once in the night with the sighing of the bush about her, when she wept and wept for her lover, stifling her sobs that none of the savages sleeping about her might hear.

With the day always came courage. She was clear-headed enough to make mental notes as she went, and to take stock of every turn and twist, amazed herself at the evidences of frequent use of this trail. There must have been constant communication between the mountains and the coast villages. They had been living on a volcano and had never guessed their danger; and the boys had known and never said a word!

After a while she managed to get in talk with one of the band who could speak the sandalwood English of the islands and learned things from him that she also stored away and docketed under the silky hair, that as it curled and waved above her straight clear eyebrows, filled all the natives with astonished admiration. She had a little comb in her pocket and combed it as composedly as before the looking-glass at home. They sat to see her do it in great amaze.

She never let herself for one moment think how frightened she was, and therefore was really never as frightened as she ought to have been. Sometimes she sang to herself in a very low voice when the way was easier; and always when a more jewelled bird than usual hove in sight, or the magic of Nature’s gardens in the bush was more overwhelming, she stopped to admire as coolly as if she had been in the garden of Stephanotis Cottage. She felt instinctively that it was wise, and was never less mistaken. The wild men looked at her with astonishment—as something almost super-human, with her shining hair, her brave bright eyes and skin as delicate as the petals of the splendid crowds of orchids they passed daily, crowding the trees with loveliness. She was the only white woman they had ever seen and the mere look of her would have startled them—but still more startling were her cool courage and the air of contempt with which she looked upon them and took her own way. They never ventured to touch her, but had the air of the guards of a princess: a princess captive but royal. And moreover there was behind everything else the unexplained reason for her influence on savages—the reason that Hanua had refused to tell Wynyard but that coloured every dealing of hers with him or with the others. They treated her with awe, half cowering if she looked at them.

Hanua had warned them that “Missy” was not as the Marys they knew; had even hinted that she had powers that marauding mountain men would do well to consider, and her every look and gesture bore him out. She was a prisoner indeed, but she looked and moved a free woman. And still behind all that lay the mysterious something that set her apart—that she could not herself understand at all.

On the way up, Java made herself acquainted with certain facts that might or might not be useful later. There were three mountain villages with roughly about fifty able-bodied men in each. There were no old people. They were “invited to return to the ancestors”—in other words were killed and eaten when they no longer paid their way by work. These people had never seen an English ship, though some of the canoes that put in at Ratua had described them when they came up to the ceremonies in the mountains. The largest of the three villages, Oratu, was a sort of Mecca for many islands round, a great and awful place for devil-ceremonies. There was a Talking Hall—but they would say no more about that. The other items, she knew, would profoundly interest the British authorities at Port Moresby if she lived to get them down the mountains, for many expeditions to other islands had been successfully undertaken to smoke out the hives of wild bees that made such poisonous honey on the Imperial outposts.

She had a pencil and a few bits of paper in her pocket and at the halts would sit down and write the items she thought might help in the long run. The men crowded to see, and the spokesman was always put forward.

“What Missy been do?”

“Puri-puri,” she answered briefly. “Clear out!” and they scattered like flies while she went on making the strange gray marks on the paper. She did it the more, seeing the effect, and they would stand in knots, looking furtively from under the thatch of their huge mops of hair, terrified at the mystery to the bottom of their superstitious souls.

One day they passed a meaningless clutter of wood fastened together and bedecked with palm streamers and feathers, and slewed round it, giving it as wide a berth as possible. Java, seeing this, stepped out of her place and up to it, staring at it coolly. She took a bunch of the scarlet and yellow feathers, and taking off her big straw hat, stuck them in the band, and went on again, humming carelessly to herself. A simmering horror ran round her guard, for this was an altar to Motu, the terrible devil-god of sickness, fire, the black hunger and bloodshed, the god whose anger fell like a thunder-bolt on the profane, and she—this white woman—had stolen his feathers and laughed in his face, and the sky had not fallen. Her courage seemed a terrible thing to them in itself. Yes, even these black fellows recognized it, knowing that if she fell dead before nightfall it would be a light punishment for such profanity.

Something indeed did happen, but not at all what they expected.

At midday a halt was called and they were sitting under the trees for tucker, at the edge of the bush. She wandered to the edge of the river to drink and as she knelt her foot struck something hard. She stooped and picked up a little lump of what looked like glittering feldspar of the oddest shape and perhaps two inches long. It reminded her of a misshapen potato, a lumpy body, with a blob of a head and rudimentary blobs which might suggest arms and legs. She stood looking at it. It was not unlike her mother-of-pearl image. She pulled that out of her breast and compared the two.

There was a cry, a rush, all the men crowding round her to see the wonder, black faces thrust as near her as they dared, dark hands put timidly out to entreat a sight. She drew herself up like a queen. Some remote idea of the value of her find stirred in her, though quite ignorantly. She saw it mattered and that was all.

“Get back, every one of you!” she cried, and more to the gesture than the words all were obedient. They slunk back and stood at a distance, eyes riveted on the wonder. Then she called imperiously to the man who spoke pidgin English.

“What they say?”

“Motu. Motu!” he muttered and slunk back to the rest.

Motu. Again the great god of the islands, the fire-god. She knew his name very well, but not how and why it might affect her own concerns. Perhaps the stone was like him, but whether it meant life or death for her she could not know. Nothing more was said. The men went on with cornerwise looks at her, keenly alert and on the watch for her slightest movement. She raged at her own ignorance. Still, it gave her the thread of a clue. To play on their superstitions, to be strong and proud, that was the only way she could see.

Their arrival at the village was greeted with drumming, yelling and shrieking from the crowd assembled. Was it triumph, hatred—or what? She could not tell, but still she held her head high as she marched proudly toward the thatched hut under the nipa palms where she was to be—prisoner, guest, victim? Who could tell?

As she neared the threshold there was another yell and a frantic tattoo of tom-toms. She turned, with the fibre mat curtain in her hand, and looked at them haughtily, and as she did so every one of the black shrieking crowd flung himself prostrate on the ground and hid his face in a silence more terrifying than the uproar.

She dropped the curtain and went in. What, what could it mean?

“Will they starve me, I wonder!” was her first thought. But that question answered itself very soon. There was fish from the river baked on hot stones, and sweet potatoes and plantains. Not the luxury of Stephanotis Cottage, but enough and to spare.

When she had eaten and rested she hesitated as to what should be done next. Anything was better than to remain shut up in dead loneliness in the hut, and besides she thought it better to assert herself as a free woman. She put on her hat and tried to summon up the right expression. “I must look as if I’d bought and paid for the whole show,” she thought, and with the pearl shell Motu hung on her breast she pushed aside the fibre mat that closed the door, and went out coolly into the nearing sunset.

It was a scattered village, not palisaded as usual, for the neighbouring villages were friends and brothers, and not despicable in its comforts: little trails running from house to house, small clearings for sweet potatoes and yams, and pigs roaming contentedly with a few lean dogs. Women and children were standing about and stared in petrified astonishment at Captain Java’s gay and gallant bearing when she stepped out of the hut. But when she neared them they too shrank back and took to their heels till nothing was left but black furtive eyes among the trees. It seemed that no one could look her in the eyes. Why? Why?

It was a curious sight. Outside each house was a small devil-hut in which was slung a tiny grass hammock where the little malignant spirit might sleep at night and receive his respectful dole of flesh nuts in the morning. Coconut leaves and wooden posts were all inhabited by spirits and each had its offering. Apart from the rest stood the great mysterious Talking Hall, where huge devil-devils some twenty feet high with hollow boo-boos in attendance were housed in state. The village evidently took its devil-worship very seriously and as she walked Java saw all the black eyes fixed on her and knew that the story of her magic powers had got abroad.

More and more she felt that courage and disdain were the only wear. Two men passed her armed with ferocious-looking clubs and large bows, the arrows tipped with human bone and probably poisoned. They stopped beside her to stare and with perfect coolness she took the bow from one, stretched her hand for an arrow and shot it high and westward. Little did she know towards whom it fell when the trees hid it, and the man grinning for delight took back the bow as she walked on. That would be a lucky weapon henceforward; never an arrow would miss its mark! So she paced up and down until it was dark except for the moonlight and not a soul molested her. She dreaded the grim darkness, and loneliness of her solitary hut, lit only by the wick swimming in a bowl of coconut oil, and the night air was cool on her face. Yet she could not stay inside, and she turned slowly back. That night she even slept—in snatches, but good sleep while it lasted. That is the high reward of courage. It cannot tell on what it is based but even in the Slough of Despond finds sure ground under its feet. After all, death itself can be faced, Java thought, if you look straight into his eyes. Only Wynyard and the captains hampered her. Their grief and torture of suspense swept over her sometimes like the back-wash of an ocean wave. For a moment it would drown her but even then she emerged, and seeing the stars, swam bravely to her unknown goal.

They brought her food next morning with timid sidelong eyes, and after eating she went out and walked about the village, everyone fleeing before her as if she were the pestilence embodied. Among the trees she dared not venture, for it might mean an arrow if they suspected escape. They were waiting for something unknown and she must wait with them. No help for it. And so time went on.

Four evenings later she went out and wandered in her solitude. She tried to speak in a friendly way to a child and he fled shrieking. Even the dogs glared slinking by her—all but one, and because he looked at her with friendly eyes she stooped and stroked his head. He stayed beside her and it comforted her. She was turning back to her hut, he following, for the night was coming, when a sense of something drawing near—an event, a personality, she could not tell what, possessed her. There was alertness about the village. She saw a small group of village elders gathering beyond the Talking House; the women were slinking and shrinking back from matters with which they had no concern. Their time would come but was not yet. Java walked steadily on.

Suddenly a loud coo-ee stopped her, and out broke a most fearful tempest of drumming, yelling and shouting. Even the great boo-boos added their roar to the deafening din as all the people—men, women and children—came hurrying out of their houses. With a quaking heart and calm face she stood to see.

A figure rattling with chains of shells and beads, gorgeous with parrot plumes, carrying in his hand a club carved a-top into a shape uncommonly like the mighty Motu, with dogs’ teeth for eyes, was advancing slowly from the bush, a terrible figure with painting and tattooing distorting the face from all humanity—Hanua!

In a second he was lost to sight among the crowding men—for the women stood back herding together like frightened animals. They jabbered, they shouted, they pointed in wild excitement to Java—the word “Motu” was tossed to and fro in shrieks and yells of frenzy. At first the blood fell away from her face and she thought her last hour had come. Then hope for the first time glimmered in her heart. Her quick eye had seen at once that it was Hanua, and that might mean good beyond all expectation. Her quick wits told her she must not lower herself by seeking him or anyone. Dignity, coolness—those were the watchwords! She turned and walked haughtily back to her hut and let the mat fall behind her, and then sat in expectation so tense that she trembled not for fear but excitement wondering what every moment would bring, either of death or deliverance.

Neither. Nothing happened, and outside there was now silence. The voices ceased; the night possessed the place. She waited for half an hour and then took her resolve, and lifting the mat before the doorway, stepped out into the open space under the trees and looked about her in the dark, lit now only by dim lights from some of the houses, for the moon was low and setting.

A black figure stood on guard near the hut; slowly it detached itself from the heaped shadows and advanced. Hanua.

When Java tried to collect that talk in her mind later she passed over the pidgin English and remembered it only as short and simple as words could be.

“You here,” he said. “Taubada there,” and pointed west and down toward the black forest. Her heart made a leap, then settled and seemed to stop in the extreme need for composure.

“Captain?”

“Young Taubada. He come alonga me.”

“I knew it,” her heart told her. A warm flush ran up her face. “Where?” He pointed again. “Near. He there.”

There was a minute’s silence. Then, looking straight in his eyes she said slowly:

“Tell me why they took me, Hanua. Am I to be killed, or is it money? You good man. You tell.”

Hanua shifted the great shell necklaces until they rattled again. Evidently he had no fear of being heard or seen. A few heads looked out and drew in hurriedly and with evident alarm. They must not interrupt the puri-puri man in his talk with the favoured of the Motu. Great and terrible magic must be in the air when those two met. There was not a man in the village who would have looked or listened to save his life, and as for the women—they huddled and shrank together at the mere thought of terror in their midst.

CHAPTER XIII

He spoke in what she knew of his language, which was not a little, helping himself out with bits of island English when she failed, and as she understood a great astonishment and fury at her own blindness possessed her. What might she not have done if she had known!

Translated into plain English, this was Hanua’s tale:

When Missy came to the island not a man, woman, or child but noticed with terror that she wore on her breast and never parted from a pearl image of Motu. Motu—the god who while he deals disaster in anger holds every gift worth giving to those he favours. Long life and plenty of yams and pigs, and many sons and victory over all enemies. Now it is very good magic to make images of Motu for if this is not done he will send the black hunger and death to a dying people, but the person who possesses a natural image of Motu untouched by the tools of man is favoured beyond all favour; the god’s influence is upon him and he becomes a talisman, a well-spring of luck in himself. It is a tremendous magic indeed. Only once in the memory of man had such a thing happened. They had found in Oratu the stump of a dead tree which with a little imagination (helped by the puri-puri men) might be considered a rough sketch for a perfected image, and this, conveyed with immense ceremony to a place of honour, had brought with it such luck that none could stand against these lucky ones. The very earth gave them riches, and they waxed fat upon the bodies of their enemies, whose dead strength passed into them and became theirs because the mighty Motu had come to dwell among them. Even the thunder-ships of the white men had avoided their island since he came, and they went their way in peace and plenty.

It followed that Java was the beloved of the god, to be regarded as his daughter and a visible part of his power. No wonder, said Hanua, that the harvests, the bêche de mer, the copra, everything, prospered with the captains. How could it be otherwise? No harm could come near them while Motu rained blessings on them with both arms—for hands he had none. No wonder also that it became a ritual to lay daily fruit and flowers on her window-sill as on an altar.

But the great news spread up to the mountain villages and from there to Oratu when the great war canoes came over for their quarterly sacrifices. And then desire, greedy and implacable, burned in the hearts of the men of Oratu for the pearl Motu to add to their treasures. If that could be secured the island people would rule the world and even death cease from among them. And if the child of the god herself became a talisman the magic would be complete.

And now the daughter of Motu had found a second on her way up the mountains! Hundreds of feet had passed that way padding softly up and down but to none had Motu revealed himself. Only when she, the woman-Motu, came, was the image made visible. No wonder she could pluck the feathers fearlessly from his altar—a deed deadly to others but natural and safe in her.

“They flenty fool, black fella!” said Hanua scornfully. He had been to Port Moresby. He knew a world where Motus counted for nothing and gold and steel for everything, and while as a sorcerer he was quite prepared to live on the belief of his people he was equally ready to make the best of each world in turn. There was probably something in each point of view.

Java digested it in silence. Who could have foreseen this? And what was the way out? But she was conscious of neither fear nor surprise.

“Will they kill me and take the Motu?” she asked at last. Hanua’s whole body rattled with scorn and shells at the notion. Kill? Kill the daughter of the god, the inexpressibly favoured? Not they! Blue ruin would descend on them if they dared. No, but they wanted to keep her as a precious talisman for ever. They would take her to Oratu, the outermost of the cannibal islands and build her a house of honour with a court of devil-devils and boo-boos, and when she died—if ever she did die—her body would forever give oracles to the trembling people.

She left Hanua, unconscious herself of what she was doing, and paced up and down in the dark trying to think out the problem coolly. Of course there was no question of resistance for Oratu if the Government acted, but she was very sure that they would send Motu’s daughter to him in fire sooner than let her be taken from them. She halted a second on that and spoke in the man’s own tongue.

“Hanua, if they send the thunder-ships from Port Moresby the chiefs could not keep me. You know that?”

Yes, he knew, but they would kill her and hide her body and he himself would “have to make it last for ever and ever and talk good talk for the island at the festivals.”

He was quite frank on this point probably because he thought such a future decorative and gratifying in the extreme. It was not a thing to be lightly declined in his opinion. A cold little chill fluttered round Java’s heart and again she began to walk up and down while Hanua awaited her decision, and now her thoughts centred on Wynyard. What would he do when he knew that she had been carried off to Oratu? Attempt some mad rescue on the way and lose his life with hers. She knew it as well as if it were already done and over, and too late grieved over the love she had tormented and thrown away. The wisdom also. If she had listened to him she would have gone to Nukulu with the Spindrift and the thing would never have happened. Now she had thrown his life away with her own and brought dire misery on the two old men who loved her. Oh, men knew better than women all the time when danger was on the horizon, and yet she must needs set up her own silly pride and folly and ingratitude and run them all into ruin!

Java did nothing by halves. She had held her head high and valued her own judgment above any other. The captains’ obedience and admiration had confirmed her in this, if it needed confirmation, and she had treated Wynyard’s advice like the dust under her feet. Now in that bitter moment she saw herself a fool and unwomanly throughout—not a good word to be said for her—a girl sensible men must despise when they knew her for what she was. An ignorant headlong fool.

But what to do—what to do? Hanua stood patiently in the dark while she made her choice of deaths, for so it seemed it must be. She saw Wynyard waiting, waiting, in the forest and the longing to be with him overmastered her at last for she knew his choice as her own. But Hanua? And what could a woman do but throw herself on the mercy of the man she had wronged? Hanua came forward at last, frightened and wearied with waiting, and began to argue with her again. No help. She must go to Oratu and he would get the young Taubada down the mountain and all would be well. Afterward, perhaps—— He hesitated.

She raised a quick hand and shut down his harangue.

“You taking me now to Taubada. Now. Now! You make puri-puri keep the people quiet. I go now. Come.”

And she set out steadily but without hurry to the little clearing whence she had seen him come into the village.

He looked at her set face and his heart swelled within him for terror. Great as was his own power he did not count as a feather in comparison with the daughter of Motu. They might tear him to pieces if she escaped. Moreover, to go in the night to the place of the dead men and with the Motu on her breast—a place far more terrible for a certain reason than he had given Wynyard to understand—what was he to do? One may be behind the scenes in puri-puri circles and yet be very far from casting off certain horrors natural to all and doubly so to the savage mind. He overtook her and stared at her incredulously:

“Missy no been go. Dead man there.”

“Now,” she said superbly, “You tell the black fellows big puri-puri in wood! If you no come I calling out loud. Break the Motus. I say you do it. Then I shoot myself.” He stared at her incredulously.

She took the feldspar Motu from her pocket and held it in her hand ready to bash its pearl fellow to bits. He saw the butt end of what she carried in her bosom. Then she walked slowly down between the last huts to the clearing.

Hanua, desperate, lifted his voice in a cry. In a moment the place was alive and awake, for he called in his own tongue that all the world might understand. If she broke the Motu before them that would be the end.

“The daughter of the Motu goes to do puri-puri among the dead men of Oratu!” he yelled. “Let not a man, woman, or child stir until I give word lest the devil-death come on them from the bush. See, she has no fear. On her breast she carries the image of her father, in her hand his image also. Put out the lights and hide your faces. Quick, for the great devil-devil is upon us!”

Every little twinkling light went out as she passed steadily on with Hanua following at her heels, his tail between his legs in spite of his brave words. At that moment she neither thought nor calculated. It was just a chance—perhaps the last, that was all. She strung herself up to take it, while the sorcerer trembled in the night behind her.

The bush closed about them.

They walked along a narrow path, single file, for perhaps twenty minutes or less, and then Hanua stopped with decision.

“Missy going on. I stop. I no liking dark.”

“Straight on?” she pointed. He nodded and stood stiff-still in a shaft of fading moonlight that turned his paint and feathers to a ghostly horror, and without a pause she left him and went on light-footed. Presently she knew why he had stopped. There was a horrid silence in the place—a dim light shone from the clearing beyond, and the breath of death was about her.

Even her courage wavered for a moment then. Her head swam, and she put a hand against a tree-bole to steady herself. Then, very softly, like the voice of a bird in the night, she called under her breath:

“Mr. Wynyard!”

A movement, nearer than she expected. She could not see where, for the moon was below the trees, but near; then the dimness of a shape, soft steps, and suddenly two arms about her, and a speechless sound like a strangled sob of joy.

“Java, my own love—my darling!”

No more was needed. She had not a single thought of delay or holding back. She clung about him with a shower of tears and tender kisses and caresses, and what did trouble or danger matter in that heavenly moment, while she lay quivering on his breast, with his cheek pressed to hers?

So heaven may blossom for a moment—a rose in the flames of hell.

But it could not last. Memory returned with fear beside her, and Java drew herself apart and looked at him wan in the dying moonlight. Love must give way while she told her story in as few words as possible, for minutes were more precious than gold. She laid stress on her position as the Motu’s daughter, as the centre of it all, and he listened without a word holding her hand in a firm warm clasp which steadied her.

“Could we find the trail and make a shot for it now?” she asked earnestly when she had finished. “I know it fairly well. I took notes all the way up.”

He shook his head with decision. “Hanua might give the alarm, and we have no food—nothing. No, we must talk to him.”

They went back, hand in hand, to where he stood like a statue, and Wynyard spoke. The strength of purpose seemed to have gone out of Java and he took the lead by right—she following with womanly submission. He loved her for it; it touched all the manliness in him to fire. He had never seen her like that before, but always proud and self-sufficient. Now, half child, half woman, she moved his very soul.

“Hanua, what can we do?”

But there was no answer. The man stood stiff and staring, at his wit’s end, with no suggestion to make. There was no help in him. Wynyard turned impatiently to Java.

“We must think for ourselves, and I can’t think.”

“Shall we strike out for home?” she asked pleadingly.

He looked firmly at her.

“Useless; we’re neither of us certain of the way, and the trails cross here and there. We should die in the bush.”

“But together,” she said, in a voice where love touched despair. Suddenly she turned and her eyes shone upon him. “Better live together! There’s one chance more. Hanua—make a great puri-puri, and I give you this—see!”

She took the pearl Motu where it shimmered on her breast, and offered it with the other. He stared incredulous, speechless, as she thrust the two into his hand. She went on eagerly:

“You—for you! You taking. Big puri-puri, flenty flighten black fella. You been see? Now!”

She did not herself know what she meant, for the strange minds and beliefs of these people were beyond her, but Hanua knew. He might help. Fear. That was the only weapon.

The statue started into life. The Motus appealed to him as gold, diamonds, riches unspeakable, appeal to the white man. With those Motus his world was at his feet. He laid down the club he carried, and his eyes glittered with strange eagerness.

“Java, Java!” cried Wynyard in agony. “You’ve given away your last protection—your only hope. My God, what does it matter about me while they would never have laid a finger on you? This man has got all he wants now and may be as false as hell.”

For Hanua had turned and was walking quickly away with deep purpose evident in his gait.

“I’ll kill the fellow sooner than he shall take them from you,” Wynyard muttered between clenched teeth, and drawing his revolver aimed steadily at the glimmering spot before him made by many white shell necklaces on Hanua’s broad back. That was all he could see. But quick as he was Java was quicker. She caught the gun away.

“I trust him,” she said, “and I’m still the Motu’s daughter. They won’t kill me. Our last—last chance.”

They stood together hand clasped in hand, now seeing nothing, hearing only the light crackling of twigs as the man’s feet moved farther and farther off. Then silence. Wynyard put one arm about Java and kept the other free and ready.

A faint noise. The steps were returning, their sound strengthening. Was it Hanua or another? It is a singular thing but true that in the fierce danger Wynyard had completely forgotten the dead man who lay beneath the bushes. Java held his mind to the exclusion of all else. Now as the steps came creeping backwards and a faint light preceded them he remembered, but passively, that strange happening.

It was Hanua returning with a little dim lantern in one hand and his coarse canvas bag, the spoil of some wandering beach-comber, in the other.

“Missy giving me Motus, I help if I could but cannot,” he said apologetically in his own tongue. “All I can do is this—you and Missy go down the mountain and I tell the people bad puri-puri if they come here for two days. Then no more. I cannot help.”

Evidently remorse had brought him back and he felt himself hopeless.

“But, Hanua,” said Java despairingly, “you know we shall die on the way. We have no food. We don’t know the poison-water from the good. You must come. I have given you the Motus. You must come. If not, give them back.”

“Cannot give now.” Hanua shook his head in violent denial. “No. You go. I stay and keep people back. That is all. . . .”

Wynyard, not half understanding what was said, looked on wonderingly as Hanua stooped to lay his bag on the ground and put the Motus about his neck. As he did it the little light fell on the dead body, grim and forbidding, face down on the ground, hands clenching it as if he had tried to burrow in and hide himself from his exceeding terror. Java shrank back against Wynyard’s shoulder, gripping his hand, but otherwise stood steady while Hanua, uttering a cry of astonishment as he stooped, held the light down, pushed the body over with foot and hand and closely examined it.

“Oratu fella!” he said to Wynyard, raising himself with an angry frown. “I see him bow, you kill him? No hole in his body. How do?”

With a rush the strangeness of his vision came over Wynyard. What meaning had it? Hanua might know. Could it be any white man, a prisoner in the village and doomed to share their own fate?

“I’ll tell you what happened,” he said sternly. “Java, you make him understand.”

He told his story swiftly to her and she translated it as best she could into Hanua’s tongue. It did not touch her as it had touched Wynyard—how could it, for she had not seen? She was outside the atmosphere. But it was certainly a strange thing—a very strange thing, and if the man were a prisoner his life must be bargained for with theirs. In the dim light Wynyard watched Hanua’s face as the story reached him. He saw the sweat-drops bead on his forehead till they ran down his face. He saw his lips turn gray, his hands relax and hang beside him in the very abandonment of fear. His English such as it was deserted him and he answered Java in his own tongue:

“Missy, run, run from this place. Big devils here. Years ago the Oratu men took this white man, very big man like tree and big cut on his face. I saw it with my eyes. He stood, leaning on his stick, and not frightened, and they kill him, slow, slow; for hours they kill him but he not frightened. They buried his bones here by that tree where Taubada see him. And two, three men see him after and die for fear. When he come he very angry and big trouble come to Oratu and villages here.”

“He was not angry with me. He laughed,” Wynyard said sternly. “And if you help Missy he will be good to you, Hanua. Now quick—quick!—the night is going fast.”

Neither he nor Java could take in the story then. They could only realize Hanua’s terror and the use that might be made of it, and Wynyard would spare him nothing. He raised a threatening hand, and pointing to the dead body told Hanua he would call the white man again to blast him.

“I know. I know. I doing now,” the man said shuddering. “You stand still, Missy. You watchem. You see.” He laid a black grasp on Java to push her back.

Wynyard started forward, but she stood there, tense, strung up, staring fixedly at Hanua.

From his canvas bag he drew shell necklaces, plates of tortoise-shell tusks, a feather head-dress and parrot plumes, and laid them on the ground.

“You stand, Taubada. You no flighten. I makem you big puri-puri man. You see.”

From the bag he also drew a tin, the unromantic relic of canned soup, and with it a brush of fibre. He dipped it in the tin and it emerged smeared with shining stuff that emitted an unholy glimmer. With this he painted Wynyard’s face and throat till he became a mask of white fire, really terrible to see, for the features disappeared in the luminosity, all but the eyes and mouth, which he painted in heavily with black. Not for nothing had he come prepared to do himself credit in the great devil ceremony of the mountains, and certainly the way the black eyes and mouth glared out of the mask of fire was a masterpiece. He tore open Wynyard’s shirt and set his breast diabolically aflame. He slung a panoply of shells and tusks about Wynyard’s broad shoulders, and then stopping for a moment, looked up at the sky, and muttered:

“Him flenty dark now,” and set to work again.

From his bag he took the wig he himself wore on high days, a terrible mop of dead chief’s hair and cassowary plumes, and fastened it securely on his victim’s head with a crown of parrots’ feathers, touching all with fire until it flamed phosphorescent in the dark above the hideous face with its glare of black eyes and lips. Lastly he completed the toilette with a rami or stiff skirt of dried grass and leaves that stood out like a penwiper about Wynyard’s body, and this he also streaked with flame—standing back at last to regard his finished work.

Wynyard looked ruefully at Java without the remotest notion of what the man intended. A hard fate for so new a lover to be made ridiculous in his lady’s eyes, he thought!

“I feel more like a devil than a man!” he said. “What on earth does the ass mean?”

She stared at his ghastly figure hideously illuminating the dark, and then the unexpected happened. She had borne enough and more than enough and something in her broke at last. She began to tremble from head to foot, and whether with laughter or crying she could not tell, bewildered between the horror and absurdity of the sight and his rueful look.

“I—d-don’t know what I’m going to do,” she faltered with her hands to her face, and suddenly, and for the first time in her life, went off into screaming hysterics and nearly frightened Wynyard and Hanua into fits as she threw herself on the ground, rocking to and fro.

But Nature knows her business. The girl had endured heroically for days and this was the relief she needed. Her screams rang through the trees; she sat rocking herself to and fro like one distracted, sobbing, and laughing and shrieking. She would be deadly ashamed of herself afterward but she could no more help letting herself go then than she could stop breathing and it probably saved her from an utter breakdown later, however unworthy it might be of the heroine she had shown herself up to that moment.

Wynyard clapped his hands on her mouth expecting to see the savages rushing in upon them. Hanua caught the hand.

“Good, good,” he cried. “You come alonga me. Now! You scream, Missy, like cockatoo! You scream like mad. Screaming all time!”

He tore along the trail to the village without another word, running for his life and dragging Wynyard after him.

Java was left alone in the place of the dead with the dead body behind her, and as that dawned upon her she shrieked still more wildly, and then, exhausted, the shrieks quieted down to hysterical laughter and the laughter to wringing sobs, until she lay there against a tree, done for, the very life gone out of her, and for the moment neither knew nor cared what had happened.

But Hanua, running fleet-foot, had dragged Wynyard into the edge of the bush that opened on the village, the village where all the horror-stricken people, hearing the appalling shrieks from the dead men’s place, were looking from their huts, terrified to venture a step outside after the warning he had given them. What had happened to the Motu’s daughter? And there holding Wynyard by the hand in the gloom of the trees—a figure so frightful that Hanua himself scarce dared look on the awful glimmering thing he had made—the sorcerer shouted aloud to the night.

“Men of Oratu—men of the great tribes, come out! Behold the holy Motu living and on earth, for he has come to visit his good people. He has taken his puri-puri from his daughter for ever and ever and you may hear her screaming and sobbing in the dead men’s place because her father has forsaken her and taken his big magic away. And he has given it to me. To me!”—he held aloft the Motus in his hands that all might see them—“and from me will come the good yams and the fat pigs and the strength of our mighty men. And the women shall have sons in plenty and all be well. And I will go with you to the islands and bring the Motus with me. The one for Oratu and the other for Lua, and their days shall be great and mighty. To-morrow eat nothing all day, and be patient until I return again for I take the woman back to her own people according to the will of the holy Motu who has cast her off for ever. There is no good in her now—no more—she is but a useless woman like any other, good for nothing but to bear children and cook for her husband. But do honour to the holy Motu, for never again will your eyes behold him. And standing in the wood beside her is the big white man the Oratu men killed with many tortures and before him an Oratu dead for fear when he saw his grave. Go near the dead men’s place in the morning if you dare, and see if you will the dead Oratu. And hear now the Motu’s daughter crying for her father.”

In the awful silence broken only by Java’s cries Wynyard raised his two fiery hands slowly in the air. He saw the whole assembly sink on their knees, and then prone on their faces, and knew that the sorcerer was triumphant.

CHAPTER XIV

Held close in Wynyard’s arms after Hanua had stripped him of his unearthly glories, Java slowly recovered. There was nothing more to be said—there was only flight. Would Hanua come with them? Yes, he would, knowing that his position was secured for ever, knowing that he had put a tabu on the dead men’s place that no living soul would break, and that if any dared to peep from afar the sight of the dead man, whom he had propped up against a tree, would be enough for him. He prepared for the road methodically, went to the village for food and water, with the two Motus about his neck and the story in fuller detail on his lips of the apparition of the white man and the Oratu man’s death at his feet.

Then he returned and set due offerings over the white man’s grave to propitiate his angry spirit; and they started on the downward trail in the first glimmer of dawn, Hanua in front, shaken to the very soul by the magnitude of the happenings which had made him the greatest man in the islands.

Java and Wynyard followed holding hands.

“Roger,” she said at last, after deep thought, “did you really see that man or was it to frighten Hanua? And how did the black man die?”

He pressed her hand until it hurt.

“It was exactly as I told you. I waked and he was there, standing quite still and smiling. I can’t explain it but I had no fear until the black fellow died, and he was gone. Then—did I know it was a ghost or did I know it all the time? I can’t tell—I can’t remember. I only know I had one deadly moment of fear and then a sort of assurance things would be all right. Java, do you believe in ghosts?”

“I don’t know—I never saw one!” she said in a whisper. “But in that awful place——”

“It wasn’t awful while he was there. I forgot all that. I can’t describe it. Words don’t fit the thing. But, Java—do you think that when there’s no hope and one knows it—one breaks through to help? I don’t understand it. Do you?”

He passed his hand over his forehead like a man dazed.

“I don’t know—I don’t know!” she whispered. “But it was wonderful. It came to us. We won’t forget, will we?”

“I know this,” he answered sternly. “I’ll search the country until I find out what happened to that man and who he was. He was a good man and we owe him our lives. There’s more than one guesses in life and death.”

Silence fell between them as they went swiftly down. There was no need for hurry: none would follow, but they were urged on by an instinct to escape swiftly from the horrors about, and they knew the two old men were suffering agonies of suspense below.

That night as they rested by a waterfall and ate and drank of the good food Hanua provided, Java said suddenly:

“There’ll be no danger now that Motu has cast me off. They won’t want me at Oratu.”

“But the Government will want Oratu!” Wynyard answered sharply, the very name filling him with loathing. “No, there’ll be no danger after they’ve done with Oratu. Paradise Island will be as safe as Port Moresby, for I shall tell my story and that man sleeping up there shall be avenged as sure as I live.”

There was a long pause and Java said slowly:

“I wonder if he’d care for revenge now! He doesn’t sound like that kind of thing.”

“I don’t know, but I care!” Wynyard answered, and again there was silence. His mind was brooding on strange things.

But lighter thoughts came back to rest as they began to reach the lower levels and to feel the joy of home and safety submerge the ugly terror and despair until they became dimmer and more dreamlike. That is human nature—the string stretched too taut must break. Relax it must for safety’s sake. Java could have told very little of the details of that trek, for she had so much to occupy her mind. For one thing she was thoroughly and wholesomely ashamed of herself and perhaps would never again feel with such certainty that men were made only to be bumped into paths of peace by their womankind. For if one could not count on oneself in an emergency, if one screamed and shrieked like a child in the presence of a great danger what could be said for one as a leader of men?

Plenty, and Wynyard said it again and again with the tenderest adoration as they threaded the downward trail guided by Hanua—sleek with self-satisfaction. The honours certainly remained with him. His future was triumphantly assured on the islands, and if that should fail or pall upon him he had deserved so well of the white people that an honoured reception at Port Moresby would always be his to command whenever the whim took him. There was nothing he might not ask and have. Privately he was inclined to think that he probably owed his saving inspiration to the pearl Motu. Outwardly he grunted contemptuously when the subject came up.

“Black fella he flenty fool. He b’lieve anythings alonga me.”

“But Roger, you were a gorgeous Motu, you were enough to drive them all mad. When I remember——” Java began, her lips trembling dangerously and her eyes dancing.

“For God’s sake, forget it!” pleaded Wynyard, utterly humiliated. “When I remember that grass petticoat and my legs——”

“I shall never forget your legs as long as I live!” declared Java, and exploded.

Woman-like she must drag a red herring across the trail of her own weakness though nobody wanted to reproach her with it, Wynyard least of all. Hanua declared his opinion that Motu himself had sent those precious life-saving shrieks at the right moment. After reflection she decided to smother her remorse. If one’s self-respect has received a blow, it is best kept to oneself. There was very little to recall it when they reached the edge of the plantation and Hanua sent a coo-ee screeching through the air that made every man drop his work, stand for a second like a black statue and then tear yelling to Stephanotis Cottage. Out came the two captains—Uncle ’Enry leading by a yard, to welcome the returned and tattered wanderers. Was home ever more precious and dear than that little brown nest under the big candlenut tree!

They could not speak at first for joy and wonder, but if Java had been the daughter of either the one or the other they could not have rejoiced more tenderly over her, and their greeting to Wynyard was a thing to hear and remember. All was good news. The shock and necessary activity had cured Captain Homan’s lumbago and there was to be neither spot nor flaw upon the triumph. They got her into the house, where tea was spread, with Kuki and Devara unable to satisfy themselves with staring at the returned prodigal—and such a tea!

Wynyard followed in unbidden, a proceeding that caused Captain Homan to round his eyes like saucers, so great was his astonishment. No wonder, for he had hitherto kept rigidly within the agreement, and not a meal had passed his lips but that stipulated one in the evening. Moreover he drew a chair by Java’s and sat down confidently, and there was that in his air which would have made a deaf and blind man sensible of disturbance in the peaceful atmosphere of the room. Captain Homan paused with his cup half way to his lips and set it down again untasted.

“Wynyard, what’s up? You didn’t do that before. What signals are you running up now? It’ll be ‘permission to part company’ if Cap’n Java don’t approve.”

Before the two pairs of astounded eyes she stretched out her hand for Wynyard’s and so raised it to her lips, looking over it at him with eyes glittering with laughter or tears, and which they could not tell.

“Lord! That’s pretty clear!” said Captain Dixon setting down his cup also. “Java, speak up! I never yet heard your tongue wanting when you wanted to speak.”

She was about to answer him when a most astonishing thing happened. Wynyard looked down at the hand holding his and suddenly cried:

“Java, where’s your wedding-ring?”

“Her wedding-ring!” echoed the uncles faintly, petrified into astonishment. Nobody marked them. She coloured scarlet to the very roots of her hair, and Wynyard held the hand mercilessly gripped in his own, though she did her best to drag it away.

“Confess! Out with the story!” he said masterfully. “Captain Homan, Captain Dixon, Java and I are going to be married first boat we can get to Port Moresby and so——”

“But I thought,” said Uncle ’Erbert interrupting, “that she couldn’t abide you! No offence meant, Wynyard. I think you’re a very good sort of fellow, but Java never did think it, did she, Homan?”

“Never, Scotty, more’s the pity!” said Captain Homan shaking his head mournfully, “and what’s more, maybe I encouraged her a bit for I couldn’t bear to think anyone’d carry her off, and what good’s a married niece, I ask you? But a wedding-ring? Java, was you by any chance sailing under false colours when we sighted each other in London?”

The tears brimmed in her eyes.

“False colours, Uncle ’Enry? Me? Oh how stupid men are! I declare a pig has more sense. You gave away between you that I wasn’t your niece and Java Dixon and what could I do then but put on my mother’s wedding-ring and try to make Roger think I had a name of my own anyhow. It was all your fault and now you blame me. It was a kind of joke, but I was a fool. I’m a greater fool than I look.”

She turned on the astounded Wynyard.

“I declare I forgot until this minute to tell you that Uncle ’Enry and Uncle ’Erbert are not my uncles. I meant to tell you but—other things—put it right out of my head.”

“Good Lord, what are they then?” cried Wynyard dropping her hand and struggling in a fog of bewilderment. Java shot one look at him.

“Nothing at all. But I love them,” and sprang to her feet with her hand laid defiantly on the back of Uncle ’Enry’s chair.

It was Captain Homan who came out strong in explanation after all, for Captain Dixon’s references to his missus and the terrible Miss Martagon so complicated the affair in Wynyard’s mind as to leave him in doubt whether the adoption had not turned on Miss Martagon’s projected flight with Captain Homan and Java’s rescue of him in the Spindrift, aided by Captain Dixon also in flight from his missus. At last, however, it was made clear.

“Well then, I think,” Wynyard said deliberately, “that a girl cast adrift in the South Seas, so to speak, with a schooner on her hands and no uncles to look after her, why, the sooner she has a husband to do it the better. She may be a fool again. And I ask you, Captain Dixon, and you, Captain Homan, as man to man, if you don’t think so too?”

“For my part I think, though no friend to marriage in general, that you’re in the right of it,” Captain Dixon said mildly. “Not but what I think it’s Java will look after you, in a manner of speaking. But she’s got to stay along of us here all the same, for to bring out two poor old sailor-men and leave them on their lonesome, marooned on an island, wouldn’t be like Stormalong, so it wouldn’t. Nor yet his daughter. Nor yet our niece. Eh, Homan?”

Captain Homan shifted his feet and looked reflectively at the lovers.

“Why no, Scotty. ’Twould make Stormalong turn in his last hammock if he thought it. And me that gave the heathen god that saved her when prayers wouldn’t! And my lumbago and all! No—no. Java signed on as niece and she’ll stand by it.”

“I will—I will, you dears!” she cried and flung her arms round each in turn. “I won’t marry Roger if he won’t sign on as nephew now on the spot. This minute. And we’ll be as happy as the day’s long in Paradise Island.”

“To think,” said Uncle ’Erbert, “as our little Java should be married after being up in them devils’ mountain and keeping the black fellas in order and frightening them into fits! Well, I never! Didn’t I say, Homan, the first time I ever clapped eyes on her that she was a chip of the old block? Old Stormalong! Ah, what would he have give to see this day!”

Captain Homan wagged his head gravely.

“Aha, you may say that, Scotty. But since he’s not here and we’re her uncles it’s up to us to draw up the agreement, so to speak—when Wynyard asks us proper—if he hasn’t asked Java first, that is——”

“He did—he did ask me!” protested Java almost sobbing, yet trying hard for dignity in the presence of her men. “No—he didn’t. He took me, and I even forgot to say Yes.”

Captain Dixon looked serious.

“Tisn’t the right drill, I’m thinking. But Hanua was there to see fair play. May be he’s an uncle too!”

So it was all settled, and Wynyard signed on as nephew, and there were great peace and many plans and hopes in the little brown house under the candlenut tree.

It was not until later that night that Wynyard asked as carelessly as he could whether either of the captains, trading along these parts in former years, had any knowledge of the disappearance of an Englishman anywhere about in these islands some years before—a man very tall with a great scar across his face and the sort of smile you liked to look at. A quiet way with him but masterful.

He gave them no leads on his own experience—and Java, sitting with her arm on his shoulder, was gravely silent too. That question meant much to them both.

The captains looked at each other for a moment digesting the question after their fashion, and at last Captain Dixon spoke.

“Why, Homan, that sounds uncommon like the cut of Johnston’s jib. What do you say?”

Captain Homan laid down his pipe.

“Uncommon. That scar—I remember it like as if it was yesterday, though it’s ten years ago—he got it from a black flinging a sort of stone axe at him on one of the outer islands and he trying to save a poor beast the brute was manhandling. He was a big man, Johnston—six foot four he measured in his stocking vamps in my cabin—and as good stuff as ever sailed the sea. He had a big crutch-handled stick he leaned on walking, and he wouldn’t carry no weapons, thinking you could reason with a savage like you would with a white man.”

“Yes—and what happened—what was he?” Wynyard was quivering with eagerness. “Was he a friend of yours, Captain Dixon?”

“A good friend,” said Uncle ’Erbert solemnly and sat up straight in his chair, “and once when I did a little turn for him, not worth mentioning betwixt friends, he said to me half laughing, ‘Well, Dixon, if ever I can do a good turn for you or yours I will. You count on me.’ And he meant it and would have kept his word, but he dropped out, just dropped out, and no one ever knew the rights of it. He landed with his boat’s crew for water on Rokery Island out yonder and walked up into the bush while they were filling the breakers and was never seen again. Folk hunted high, low, and centre but nothing doing. They thought he fell in from a steep rock where they found his shoes and hurt his head and was drownded. That’s all.”

“God rest his soul—he was a good sailor!” echoed Captain Homan, and there was a great silence.

But Wynyard never told them that story, nor did Java. It seemed to them, rightly or wrongly, that the uncles would not understand. It would sadden them—and to what end? It would disturb their simple faith in the Providence that watches over all good seamen if that fearful end were spread out before them.

“Let it be our secret!” the eyes of the lovers said to each other. “A sacred one, and ours.”

Therefore the captains never knew of the promise fulfilled and, lost in their memories, forgot even to ask why the subject interested Wynyard, and all sat silent in the soft lamplight and the coolness wafting in from the night.

CHAPTER XV

What Hanua told the people was best known to him and to them, but it was noticeable from the day of their return that the glory had departed from Java, so far as could be judged from their attitude. She was a white woman and a kindly one, and therefore to be respected and trusted, but nothing more. No longer were surreptitious gifts of fruit and royal orchids laid on her window-sill in the dawn. No more romance or mystery surrounded her than adhered to Uncles ’Enry and ’Erbert, and the case can scarcely be put more strongly. On the other hand, with her uncles she had become a heroine of the first water and she was the heart of Wynyard’s heart. There are compensations in life, even for the discarded daughter of a god.

The Government expedition arrived in time to catch the war canoes on their next voyage to Paradise Island and to deport the unruly spirits among the mountain villages to Oratu, where a safe watch could be kept on those black sheep so magnificently shepherded by Hanua. Magnificently indeed, for the oldest traditions told of no puri-puri man with whom the fiery living Motu had walked hand in hand or on whom he had bestowed two images of his divinity, stripping them from his own daughter.

Pigs and wives showered down upon the mighty sorcerer and his word, backed by a complete (but secret) understanding with the White Powers, ran as law in all the outer islands. Thus do the virtuous prosper and the gods reward piety! And if it sometimes occurred to Wynyard to wonder whether Hanua had been playing all along for possession of the pearl Motu and whether the artless savage had shown a skill worthy of Western diplomats in pulling the strings of white and black alike for his own purposes, that was a problem altogether beyond him, and by no means to be lightly probed, seeing that Hanua’s favour brought with it the favour of all the islands and the complete and perfect submission to authority of the mountain men.

But there was one very unexpected development to be recorded.

The two captains went down in bridal state with their niece and Wynyard in the Spindrift, that the marriage might be celebrated in Port Moresby. They went in the highest spirits and with no cares to cloud their skies since Hanua was left responsible for every native in Paradise and outside it. They knew in whom they could trust. His bridal gift to Java had been as many pearls from his charm-box as completed the row her uncles had begun, and well did he know that they would return good interest in a gift from Port Moresby calculated in every way to add to his consequence, which already towered to the heavens. Java in white with pearls about her throat was an adorable bride and the only dispute that could possibly have arisen was to which of the uncles, since the Church had made no allowance for two donors, should give her away.

This doubt, however, was settled by the expedient of drawing lots, and Captain Dixon as the winner had Java on his arm while Captain Homan attended Wynyard as best man. Champagne flowed freely at the wedding breakfast and Captain Homan allowed himself a little nap in the late afternoon literally on the strength of it while Uncle ’Erbert, rather than intrude his company upon his niece and nephew, went out for a little walk to cool his head by the sea. How could he guess that when he met a particularly pleasant young man most deeply and sympathetically interested in the romantic adventures that had led up to the marriage he was pouring them into the ear of a confirmed and desperate reporter, and that very soon they would be the world’s property as well as his own? He never guessed it; with his usual pleasure in hearing his own voice and a strong sense of the romantic interest of the Motu and the savages he left nothing untold except of course the elopement of the three adventurers from Gravesend. That was a secret ever to be locked in their bosoms.

“And a wonderful story!” said the young man warmly, “and as well told as ever I heard anything. You should be an author, Captain, that you should, and no mistake. I wish all luck to the young couple and peace and prosperity after all their troubles. By the way, what did you say Mrs. Wynyard’s maiden name was?”

There was no sign of a note-book in his hand or in his eye—nothing whatever to betray his profession, but the question rasped Captain Dixon. He hadn’t said what it was nor did he mean to say, and drew himself up instantly.

“That, young man, is my concern, not yours. Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies.” And so marched haughtily on, shaking off the pleasant stranger like a mosquito. He regarded the incident as closed, and when in a few days they all set out on the return voyage to Paradise Island, had completely forgotten it. He forgot also with what ease a church register can be consulted. He never remembered that Stormalong’s name was still great along coral beaches and palmy shores, and least of all did it occur to him that as the scientist from a single vertebra can reconstruct the Dinosaur so can a reporter from one pregnant hint build up an encyclopædic romance with wide-sweeping and terrifying ramifications. And life flowed on in the island with happiness and safety unknown even to its happiest days before.

It was impossible for the captains to believe now that the thought of Java’s marriage had ever been alarming. On the contrary it seemed as though they had never known the fulness of happiness before. They were safeguarded right and left against her desertion, against every arrow of fate, with youth and infinite hope to back them. Wynyard took hold with a courage and joy that he had never shown before, and the natives recognized that they had a strong man to deal with, a man moreover guarded by all the authority of the greatest sorcerer on earth. The prosperity of the past was as nothing compared with the prosperity of the present, and complete security surrounded the island as with a fortress.

CHAPTER XVI

Far off in Gravesend the rain was falling through a muddy fog that blurred the street-lamps until they shone like little prismatic islets in the gloom they served to deepen. It was Sunday, and a few depressed lovers with mackintoshes and umbrellas hurried along to their homes with arms about each other, love triumphant in weather suited only to hatred. The muffin-man came slowly down the street ringing his bell feebly over his baize-covered basket and Mrs. Dixon opened the door to hail him, her maid being out for Sunday and Miss Martagon expected to tea. Standing well within the shelter of the door she bought six muffins; then splitting and buttering them in the kitchen came into the sitting room and hung them on the bar of the grate, in a small Dutch oven, a little contraption specially contrived for that purpose. Miss Martagon would arrive on the tick of four and she would then make the tea. Jam and cake both in cut-glass dishes already decked the hospitable table drawn up near the fire.

Time passed.

“Drat Harriet! If she isn’t ten minutes late!” said Mrs. Dixon to the tortoise-shell cat luxuriously asleep on the fur rug. “And with her scent for a muffin I’ve never known her to do it before. Five minutes more and I begin without her.”

Five minutes passed and Mrs. Dixon rose strong-mindedly and made the tea and brought it in. As she did so the electric bell on the hall door (which you turned like a tap) sent its startling summons through the house. She went out and admitted the dripping Miss Martagon and her umbrella.

“Well, Harriet, when I was young—and it isn’t so long ago—it was considered good manners to be up to time with an invitation, but times are changed nowadays.”

Miss Martagon laid a tremulous hand on her heart.

“Why, Betsy dear, was I ever late before? But I’ve been delayed by something so awful and unexpected that I declare I’m all of a tremble and I’ve got the flutters so that I could sink away before your very eyes.”

She did sink into Captain Dixon’s arm-chair, and Mrs. Dixon, still a little grimly, poured her out a cup of tea and handed her a muffin, all crisped and buttery from the Dutch oven.

“Hot enough to burn your fingers and as good as good,” sighed Miss Martagon extending her feet to the blaze. “Ah, Betsy dear, I’ve always said there was no one like you for pouring a good cup of tea and serving a muffin as it should. But I declare that with what I’ve just seen——”

“And what have you seen, Harriet?” demanded Mrs. Dixon in deep organ tones. It was clear that Miss Martagon must unburden herself or they would never get to the comfortable enjoyment of their tea. Probably the pastor’s wife had had her third set of twins—no more.

Still with a trembling hand Miss Martagon laid a Sunday paper on her friend’s black silken lap. In great capitals ran across the front page a legend that all who ran might read.

“Well and what of it?” demanded Mrs. Dixon composedly. “Really, Harriet, your missions go to your head to that extent that you can’t so much as hear of a cannibal without thinking of a missionary. I’ve no patience with you. The tea will be cold.”

“But it’s Java!” almost screamed Miss Martagon, “and it’s those two old reprobates, and she never went to America, not she, but off to them islands your husband was always blithering about—and the newspaper’s got hold of them at last! The three of them.”

Gentility had dropped from Miss Martagon like a veil. From Mrs. Dixon it could not drop for she had never pretended to it. She caught up the paper, purpling with wrath and deadly curiosity.

She laid down the paper, her hand shaking till it rattled like castanets. “You tell me, Harriet, which she’s married before I go a step further. The snake!—the—the catapult!”

“Read on. You won’t believe your eyes!” ejaculated Miss Martagon in agitation that did not, however, hinder her from helping herself unnoticed to a second muffin.

Mrs. Dixon read on with visions of proceedings for bigamy jostling each other in her mind. It would be that fool Dixon, of course. Who else?

“Niece!” cried Mrs. Dixon in a voice that boomed through the room. “All I ask is—have the cannibals ate the three of them? They’ll find them a tough meal, I’ll warrant, if they have. I can answer for Dixon.”

“Read on, Betsy, read on!” said Miss Martagon deftly pouring herself another cup of tea under shelter of the paper and sluicing it with cream—a delicacy her own means did not permit.

Betsy read on.

“Her present husband!”—gasped Mrs. Dixon, “and how many has she had, in the Lord’s name? Harriet, if ever I forgive you for bringing that disreputable hussy to the house, may I never be forgiven myself for marrying Dixon, and I can put it no stronger.”

She resumed the paper, skimming hurriedly through the account of the adventure with the savages in which Java played the part of Motu in a ballet skirt of grass and sea-weed, with all the natives at her feet. The column ended thus:

“What a parure of pearls may be I can’t say,” said Mrs. Dixon, flinging the paper aside, “but when I remember the allowance Dixon makes his lawful wife and hear of him blarneying about with pearls for a little slut like that, it turns me sick and I don’t care who knows it. And now what’s to be done?”

Miss Martagon stood up to brush the crumbs off her lap into the tea-tray and sat down again.

“It needs considering, Betsy, before you took any rash step, because I suppose so long as a husband keeps his wife from the workhouse he can cut her down as low as he likes. I never married, but I think that’s the law. And if Dixon was annoyed——”

Mrs. Dixon snorted like a war-horse leading the charge into battle.

“There’s two things in marriage,” she said, “there’s law, and that’s no good to any woman. In fact it’s mostly against her, for men made the laws to suit themselves. And there’s moral influence, and that’s where a woman comes in. Now if I was to have a word with Dixon you’d see what moral influence means, and my notion is not to trash about with letters but to follow him up and face him with his behaviour. It’s that old reptile Homan as much as anything. I could always manage Dixon, but Homan and your precious niece and the cannibals between them have ruined all I ever made of him. Although Lord knows he never was fit for anything above cannibal society when my eye was off him.”

“But, Betsy dear,” protested Miss Martagon. “How are you to travel that never did more on the sea than to cross the Thames? and deadly sick you were then! You couldn’t do it. You write a letter to Dixon and tell him you know all there is to know and you’ll find he’ll be frightened out of his seven senses. I never knew him anything else when you hectored him.”

“Hectored!” said Mrs. Dixon, and paused, then added coldly, “Much good letters’ll do him with such company to back him! I expect this Wynyard’s an escaped convict from Botany Bay. No. He won’t believe in me coming out till he sees me, and he’ll believe then fast enough, you’ll see. If Port Moresby’s a real place, which very likely it isn’t, I’ll take my ticket there as sure as the sun rises to-morrow. And Dixon and your niece,” with a strong emphasis on the word, “will rue the day they cheated me.”

“People don’t choose their relations or the Lord knows I never would have chose Java,” she sobbed. “So I shouldn’t be blamed. But after all, Betsy, people do choose their husbands and so . . .”

“Harriet Martagon, if you sauce me when you see me wronged then you and me must part for good. I won’t stand it from the Queen of England, let alone an old maid like yourself. If you have anything sensible to say, say it; if not, you know your way to the door.”

Sobs choked Miss Martagon’s utterance for a moment, and then, all heart and remorse, she flung herself on her friend’s stormy bosom.

“Oh, Betsy, me see you wronged! Not for worlds. But to think of you going so far and them infidels and cannibals jeering at you in your sorrow——No, I can’t stand it. I c-can’t!”

Mrs. Dixon replaced her in her chair, but the words had struck home. Captain Dixon and the cannibals did seem to be on extremely friendly terms. Indeed it appeared that the cannibal chief had graced the wedding itself and must therefore have known how to behave in church. Yet it could scarcely be supposed such an individual would respect either her position as the Captain’s lawful wife or her status in the Methodist connection, especially if there were an unholy understanding between him and her husband.

“If you’ll stop sniffling, Harriet, perhaps I can do a bit of thinking!” she said with deep irritation. But Miss Martagon sobbed and bleated on.

“Why not see a lawyer, Betsy dear, and get your rights that way? There’s Mr. Brent that they say is the only honest lawyer ever born—he’d tell you if it was bigamy and——”

“That isn’t a bad notion!” snapped Mrs. Dixon. “Even a fool can talk sense sometimes. A lawyer’s advice—yes. Have another cup of tea, Harriet. As it was you that brought that young viper into the house you’ll have to put up with the consequences.”

A frigid peace was signed on those terms. Miss Martagon declined the tea and shortly afterwards departed, bathed in self-pity and feeling herself an extremely ill-used woman.

Monday afternoon beheld Mrs. Dixon in consultation with Mr. Brent, solicitor to Stormalong and general protector of Java’s interests. The interview could scarcely be called a consultation in the earlier stage for it took the shape of a long and heated statement from his new client in which vipers, pigs, cats, and other unfavourably regarded animals jostled each other to his utter confusion. At last he secured the newspaper and then recollection dawned upon him in a slow and secret smile. He folded the paper, laid it down and assumed a judicial air.

“Do I understand Captain Dixon makes you an allowance, Mrs. Dixon?”

“I should just think he does!” she replied with bitter emphasis. “Two hundred and fifty pounds per annum and little enough. But when you come to talk of paroors of pearls—though thank God I don’t know what it is, I——”

“A husband who makes a suitable allowance is very difficult to bring to book,” said Mr. Brent, with deep and excellent gravity. “And a husband in so remote and dangerous a part of the world and evidently in league with cannibals and other outrageous characters . . .”

This was touching her on a sensitive spot of fear, but she responded hardily.

“I should think, sir, that the law would protect a respectable married woman in search of a deserting husband, wherever she went.”

“Undoubtedly, madam, in so far as it could, but whether the cannibals would be amenable to law or would pause to read a marriage certificate before proceeding to extremes. . . .”

There was a pause. He added slowly:

“At all events the bride and bridegroom appear to have had a narrow escape of their lives.”

There was silence during which he permitted this reflection to sink in. He had known Java from a child and remembered her sunny blue eyes very well. He remembered also the engaging innocence of the captains during the legal arrangements made in connection with the ship and her cargo and their perfect trustfulness in Java, each other, and himself. No, he could not see Mrs. Dixon in harmony with the party on Paradise Island. Her dark and knotted brows and compressed lips impressed him as toning in far better with the cannibal note in the symphony. But long professional experience warned him that to oppose in such a case would be to confirm her resolution. He temporized, with weighty gravity.

“Certainly you could go out and argue the case with your husband, Mrs. Dixon. After all, travelling is easy nowadays, and if you are a good sailor a voyage of about three months from London to Port Moresby and from that on by small coasting steamer to Paradise Island would be a mere pleasure trip. The cost too should be inconsiderable. It would not exceed two hundred pounds, I should say, and what is that in view of a happy meeting with your husband! No doubt his house, which appears to be shared by Captain Homan and the bride and bridegroom, would be open to you. But in your interest I must consider all possibilities. If it were not——”

“Can’t the law force him to let me in?” Mrs. Dixon interposed thirstily.

“Certainly not if it is Mr. and Mrs. Wynyard’s and Captain Homan’s house also. And in view of their deplorable behaviour, could we be certain of a welcome? If not, the cannibals appear to be the only other residents on the island. Could we, do you think, rely on them to ensure your comfort? I should say their habits are extremely primitive. But with your courage——”

“It’s my belief,” she interrupted, with deadly emphasis, “that him and that girl is equal to handing me right over to them. I won’t give them that satisfaction, I’ll stop at Port Moresby and I’ll get police sent to Paradise Island to bring him back in handcuffs. The law daren’t refuse me satisfaction.”

“The law will be entirely on your side if you indict Captain Dixon for any crime it recognizes.”

“Aha!” said Mrs. Dixon grimly. “Now you talk!”

Mr. Brent proceeded smoothly:

“But since he has sent you regular remittances and you agreed to his going——”

“Agreed? He made out he was going mate on a ship in the Mediterranean for three years and of course he’d come back.”

“He may yet come back.”

“If he does,” Mrs. Dixon cried furiously, “I’ll teach him! He shall rue the day he started in with his pearls and his cannibals and his nieces and——”

“Are you perfectly sure you want such a deplorable character back?” asked Mr. Brent gravely.

“I certainly want to tell him my mind, if that’s what you mean. Is he to get off scot-free? Is he to live in luxury hung with pearls and diamonds, and that sneering peacock of a young woman to dance after him? And am I to live here on two hundred and fifty pounds per annum and see it all?”

Mr. Brent appeared to be impressed by this view of the situation. There was emotion in his tone as he answered:

“No, Mrs. Dixon, a thousand times no. And the more you say the more strongly I feel that your valuable life should not be risked in a wild-goose chase after a man of such lamentable character. It is most unfortunate that the law only considers the legal and not the moral aspects of such cases, but so it is. I see that fear has been your only hope of managing the man in the past, and so it will be again.”

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Dixon grimly. “And now you know. That’s why I want to go and go I will!”

Mr. Brent permitted himself to smile astutely.

“We can get him on the hop in quite another way and add considerably to your comfort in doing it. How about a lawyer’s letter demanding an increased allowance of, say, fifty pounds a year? How about telling the wretch that his concealment has been penetrated and that he may tremble in his lair where not even his cowardice will save him from chastisement? How about adding that nothing but the humblest submission and a speedy return will appease your just anger.”

“That’s it—that’s it!” she answered eagerly and then plunged into reflection. After a few moments:

“Would you write to him yourself, sir?”

“Undoubtedly. But I think a letter from you should be enclosed. He must know the worst, and that nothing but his immediate return will appease you. Of course a wife needs her husband’s company.”

“As to Dixon’s company . . .” said Mrs. Dixon, and relapsed into thought. Presently she raised her head, the sequins on her black hat tinkling.

“Mr. Brent, if it was to be fifty pounds a year clear without Dixon . . .”

“Certainly it would have to be without him. There would be no allowance of any sort if he returned, excepting of course for the housekeeping.” He waited a moment and added: “It’s a case of three hundred pounds a year without his company, or his company without three hundred pounds a year. But a good wife doesn’t compare money with the pleasure of having her husband beside her.”

Mrs. Dixon did not reply. She was revolving the matter deeply, angrily. Her thoughts could be read in her corrugated brow and twitching fingers. They had a hooked appearance that suggested claws. After a few minutes:

“Then I’ll write to-day!” Mr. Brent said, rising briskly to terminate the interview. “And I wish you success and many happy years together when you have reformed the wanderer. A good wife can accomplish miracles and he may yet be the man he should.”

But Mrs. Dixon sat as if nailed to her chair.

“No, Mr. Brent. There’s things a sensitive woman can’t forgive, and when I think what he was when he went—hardly fit to live with, goodness knows!—and what he’ll be after three years of such company I don’t think the law can ask me to face it—I don’t indeed. You write to him and say all is known and he’s in the newspapers where I never thought to see even a villain like him. And say if he makes it fifty pounds a year more I don’t want to see him nor hear tale nor tidings of him any more in this world or the next. But put it strong—the way a wretch like that should be treated. And I’ll wait for his answer and act according to how he bemeans himself. I’ll go out to him if he refuses.”

“Then those are your definite instructions, Mrs. Dixon?”

“Yes, sir, but understanding I’ll hold the whip over him till I know what he does. But I won’t write myself for he’s not to think he has a soft woman to deal with, but the law.”

She rose now in terrifying proportions and retreated slowly to the door.

“May I see the letter?” she asked on reaching it.

“That would not be in order,” Mr. Brent replied hastily. “But you may rely on my making the matter clear. One thing more. You understand he may summon you to join him on pain of losing the allowance. A husband can behave in that heartless manner. And he may have been in the hands of these people all the time. He may be in his dotage.”

“He always was, even when he was twenty-two. Do you mean to say he could summons me to come out to him, me that he left so shameful? I wouldn’t believe it of the law, not unless I saw it in print!”

Without a word Mr. Brent reached for a solid volume bound in calfskin, turned the pages and laid it open before her.

“An almost exactly similar case. A Captain Mardyke. He declared he had made a home for his wife on Diehard Island, a lonely spot in the ocean where a steamer called once in six months (which is probably the case with Paradise Island), and on her very properly refusing, the scoundrel cut down her allowance by half, and the poor lady had no redress.”

For the first time in her life Mrs. Dixon gasped.

“Well, I never! Of all the outrageous shameful tyranny! And she couldn’t make the brute come back to her?”

Mr. Brent shook his head gloomily.

“The law isn’t like that!” he said. There was another pause.

With her hand on the door-handle, Mrs. Dixon said slowly and in a deep thought-laden voice:

“I think I won’t write.”

Mr. Brent awaited her instructions.

“It’s for you to decide, Mrs. Dixon.”

“I think I’ll wish you good morning, Mr. Brent. It seems the law don’t protect respectable God-fearing women. It’s made by scoundrels for scoundrels and it don’t take no heed of a woman’s rights when an old sinner wants to be amusing himself.”

“It never did,” said Mr. Brent. “My clerk will send you an account for my fee.”

But when alone he wrote a line to a friend.

There was more but this may suffice to illustrate the perfidy of the legal profession. Months, many months after, arrived the reply.

There was more in this letter but that is the essential part.

When Mrs. Dixon received the news of her increase of revenue she permitted herself a few remarks to Miss Martagon, who happened to be with her.

“Fifty pounds per annum to be rid of a villain’s company! After all right does come by its own sometimes and I don’t know that I’ve done so badly. But if ever there was conscience-money that’s it! You spoke true, Harriet. Mr. Brent’s an honest man and a feeling heart and all his wits about him. You run in to Sunday supper. There’s some cold lamb and mint sauce and a bit of Stilton that I think you’ll say’s good. As for Mr. Brent, I’m knitting him a muffler, Dixon’s pattern, to show I thought he acted up like an honest man, and he shall have the making of my will. My little savings will go to the Methodist Sisterhood in Paradise Place, if they keep it apart from the Brotherhood. But there must be no mixing!”

A gleam of hope had flickered and died in Miss Martagon’s eye as Betsy spoke, but she was silent.

Far off in Paradise Island two unrepentant sinners fleeted the hours in unruffled joy, with a devoted niece and nephew to support them in their iniquity. In Paradise Place Mrs. Dixon sat by the fire and ate illimitable muffins with Miss Martagon.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

[The end of Captain Java by Elizabeth Louisa Moresby (as Louis Moresby).]