The White Waterfall, Page 3

highwatermark.

  "Well," I said, climbing to my feet, "I might as well take it. I thoughtI had enough of the Islands, but as this has turned up I'm your man.Say," I added, "did you ever read Pilgrim's Progress'?"

  The young fellow looked at me and grinned. "Yes, I did," he answered.

  "Do you remember much of it?" I asked.

  "Not much," he replied.

  "Is there anything in it about a white waterfall that is on the way toheaven out of Black Fernando's hell?" I questioned.

  The youngster put his head on one side and looked as if he was turningthings over in his mental storehouse, then he gave me a quick, shrewdglance and burst out laughing.

  "Well?" I growled. "What's the grin for?"

  "What has Bunyan got to do with my business?" he asked. "I came to signyou up for a mate's job on _The Waif_, and I am in a hurry."

  "Yes, I know," I grumbled, "but I thought you might have heard somethingof a white waterfall. I'm not sure that it is mentioned in 'Pilgrim'sProgress,' but it seems to taste of Bunyan."

  "P'raps so," said the youngster, "but Bunyan isn't in our line atpresent. Captain Newmarch told me to hurry back to the yacht, as hewants to get away by sunset, so if you're ready we'll make a start. Myname is Holman, Will Holman."

  We walked up the quiet street together and I began to like Will Holman.One couldn't help but like him. He had the frank, open ways of a boy,but the cut of his jaw and the manner in which he minted his words ledyou to believe that he would give a man's account of himself if any onepushed him up against a wall. While he made some purchases in the littlestores, I went up to the broken-down shanty where Pierre the Rat ran hishouse of refuge, and, after I had collected my few belongings, I wentback to the wharf, where a boat from _The Waif_ was waiting to take usaboard the yacht.

  It was when I was climbing into the boat that I got a surprise. One ofthe two natives at the oars was the little Fijian who had been the pupilof the Maori, but he didn't bat an eyelash when I stared at him.

  "What's up?" asked Holman. "Do you know Toni?"

  "He's one of the brace that were singing that song about the whitewaterfall," I growled.

  The Fijian let out a volley of indignant denials, and Holman laughed.

  "You might be mistaken," he said. "Toni came ashore with me about twohours ago, but I don't think he left the boat."

  "I'm not mistaken," I said, as the Fijian kept on protesting that he hadnever moved from the boat, "but it doesn't matter much. Let it go."

  We were about a quarter of a mile from the shore when a man raced downfrom the town, ran along to the sea end of the wharf and waved his armsas if he was signalling us. Holman turned and looked at him.

  "I wonder who it is?" he muttered. "Perhaps it is somebody with yourboard bill, Verslun."

  I started to laugh, then I stopped suddenly. The man on the wharf wasshouting to us, and when my ears caught a word I recognized him. It wasthe big Maori who had been instructing the Fijian earlier in theafternoon.

  I told Holman, and he looked at Toni, but Toni's face was blank. Forsome reason or other he wished to ignore his instructor who wasscreaming on the end of the wharf.

  "He must be mad," muttered Holman. "The darned fool thinks we--Listen!"

  A land breeze brought the last line of the chant to our ears as weneared _The Waif_, and the words seemed to stir me curiously as theyswirled around us. I had a desire to memorize the chant, and even afterwe had got out of range of the high-powered voice of the singer I foundmyself murmuring over and over again the words:

  "That's the way to heaven out Of Black Fernando's hell."

  CHAPTER II

  THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTERS

  In the old days, when slave-carrying was a game followed by gentlemenwith nerve, the officer with the best nose on board the man-o'-war thatoverhauled a suspected slave carrier was always sent aboard to make anexamination. It was his business to sniff at the air in the hold in anendeavour to distinguish the "slave smell." No matter how the wilyslaver disinfected the place, the odour of caged niggers remained, and along-nosed investigator could always detect it.

  Now the trouble odour on board a ship is the same as the slave smell. Anexperienced investigator can detect it immediately, and when I climbedover the low bulwarks of _The Waif_ I got a whiff. I couldn't tellexactly where it was, but I knew that Dame Trouble was aboard the craft.It's a sort of sixth sense with a sailorman to be able to detect astormy atmosphere, and I felt that the yacht wasn't the place that thedove of peace would choose as a permanent abode. I don't know how theinformation came to me. It seemed to filter in through the pores of myskin, but it was information that I felt sure was correct.

  Captain Newmarch was a bilious Englishman with a thin, scrawny beard. Heendeavoured to make one word do the work of two--or three if they werevery short words--and working up a conversation with him was as tough ajob as one could lay hold of. Sometimes a word came to the tip of histongue, felt the atmosphere, as you might say, then slid back into histhroat with a little protesting gurgle, and after a ten minutes'conversation with him, those little gurgles from the strangled wordsmade me look upon him as a sort of morgue for murdered sentences.

  Professor Herndon, the head of the expedition, was on the deck when thecaptain and I came up out of the cabin, and Herndon was everything thecomic papers show in the make-up of science professors, with a littlebit extra for good luck. He was sixty inches of nerves, wrinkles, andwhiskers, with special adornments in the shape of a blue smoking cap,and a pair of spectacles with specially ground lenses of an enormousthickness.

  Newmarch grunted something which the Professor and I took to be anintroduction, and he put a skinny hand into mine.

  "You have been a long while in the Islands?" he squeaked.

  "Longer than I care to say," I replied.

  "Have you been around the spot we are making for?" he asked.

  "I was on Penrhyn Island for three months," I answered. "I was helping aGerman scientist who was studying the family habits of turtles."

  I made a foolish break by admitting that I possessed any knowledge ofPolynesia. The Professor had left his home at sunny Sausalito, on theshores of San Francisco Bay, in search of that kind of stuff, and beforeI could do a conversational backstep he had pushed me against the sideof the galley and was deluging me with questions, the answers to whichhe entered in shorthand in a notebook that was bulkier than a Dutchman'sBible. The old spectacled ancient could fire more queries in threeminutes than any human gatling that ever gripped a brief, and I lookedaround for relief.

  And the wonder is that the relief came. I forgot the Professor and hisanxiety concerning the "temba-temba" devil dance when my eyes happenedto catch sight of the vision that was approaching from the companionway.A boat carrying a science expedition to one of the loneliest groups inthe Pacific was not the place where one would expect to find thehandsomest girl in all the world, and my tongue refused to mould mywords. The girl was tall, of graceful build, and possessed of a quietbeauty that had a most peculiar effect upon me. Only that afternoon, asI lay in the shadow of the pile of pearl shell on Levuka wharf, I hadthought of crossing to Auckland and shipping up to 'Frisco so that Icould hear good women laugh and talk as I had heard them in my dreamsduring the years I had spent around the Islands, and now the woman of mydreams was in front of me. But I was afraid of her. When she came towardme I thought of the years I had wasted down in that lonely quarter whereambition is strangled by lassitude bred in tropical sunshine, and theghost of the man I might have been banged me fair between the two eyes.

  "My daughter, Miss Edith Herndon," squeaked the Professor, and when Iput out my big hand to take her little one I thought I'd fall down onthe deck on account of the Niagara of blood that seemed to rush to mybrain.

  It's funny how all the little imperfections in your dress and mannerrise up suddenly and bang you hard on the bump of observation when youfind yourself in front of some one whose good opinion you want to earn.I felt it so the moment I s
tood before the girl in the cream serge suit.My drill outfit, that I had thought rather clean when I brushed theshell grit from it after my sleep on the wharf, looked as black as thedevil's tail when she appeared. My hands appeared to be several degreeslarger than the prize hams that come out of Kansas, and my tongue, as ifit recognized the stupidity of the remarks I attempted to make, startedto play fool stunts as if it wanted to go down my throat and choke me todeath.

  The girl guessed the sort of predicament I was in at that moment. Godonly knows how many months had passed since I had spoken to a woman likeher. Not that good women are lacking in