CHAPTER XXI
ENGINE TROUBLE
LEILA came aft a little after midnight.
“I'm a pig,” she said, “sleeping all this time. But it's done me a world of good aside from making me thoroughly ashamed of myself. How it's cleared up! The stars are wonderful, and I can read the compass by the moon. What's my course, Captain Chalmers?”
The few hours rest had given her a grip on her courage once again and she was her old audacious self.
“Turn in, skipper,” she said. “I'll call you at eight bells. You'll have to trust me. We left the poor old alarm-clock behind in the hurry.”
He found some clothes arranged to pad the bottom boards and with his head on the same pillow she had used, still fragrant with her hair, floated off into restful unconsciousness.
They had breakfast when she called him and then started to overhaul their engine. Finally adjusted and oiled from a supply they discovered in one of the drums, they filled the gasoline tank, primed it, and Chalmers, practically his own man again, heaved on the fly-wheel. There was a spatter and a buzz and then—inaction. They tried again and again, applying all their mutual knowledge without results, while the boat rocked gently on a breezeless sea.
At last, spattered and smeared with grease, they looked at each other in sympathetic disgust. Leila wrinkled her brows.
“The batteries are all right, we've got a good spark, the cylinders are clean, carbureter's in shape, gasoline I know was strained before it went in the drums. It's just sheer perverseness. It was always like that. It would run like a clock for days and then when you most wanted it, sulk till it got to feeling better.”
Chalmers laughed.
“Don't make faces at it,” he said. “You look demoniacal with those smuts on your cheeks and chin. Give it a rest.”
“You have a large one on your nose,” she answered. “I'm not going to give in to the beast.”
He straightened up, cramped from stooping over the engine. Then he reached quietly for the binoculars. The field showed him a double canoe, its mat sail flapping above the platform deck that swarmed with men, paddles flashing as the men in the canoes forced the craft along toward them.
“I wonder if they got blown out of their island,” he asked himself, “or if it sunk under them like ours. They don't seem particularly friendly. Let's hope it's curiosity, though I don't like the armory. And not wind enough to fill a fan. We're still in the woods.”
The canoe was coming up rapidly, the natives brandishing their spears. Chalmers picked up his Winchester, filled the chamber and spilled a lot of cartridges where they would be handy. Leila turned at the rattle they made.
“Your friends the savages,” he said. “It seems we are not out of our troubles. But I'll handle them. I'm not going to let them get within arrow range if I can help it. You've got your hands full with that engine. Coax it. If you can get it to running we can laugh at them. At present we look over-easy.”
He sighted, resting the barrel on the gunwale, crouching well down, and fired. The bullet went high through the sail but he depressed his muzzle and the next sang true. One of the savages on the platform tossed up his arms and fell into the sea, while the others yelled and brandished their weapons. A score of arrows whizzed toward the whale boat but fell short half-way.
Three men were down now but the canoe came on. Fire as he might, they would reach them, with overwhelming numbers, within a minute or two. He began trying to pick off the paddlers, but every time he paused to refill the magazine the gap between them closed ominously.
The barrel burned his fingers. Behind him he sensed Leila throwing over the wheel, repriming the stubborn cylinders, while she talked to the engine as if it were a refractory child. Twice she got a response that failed as soon as it had raised hope.
The arrows were coming thick now, feathering the sides of the boat, singing over him as he crouched.
“Lucky they haven't sense enough to try a dropping shot,” he muttered. “Wonder if they're poisoned. Ah! I got you.”
A tall Micronesian, bushy-haired, tinkling with brass armlets, who appeared to be the leader, spun about and fell from the deck into one of the canoes. There was instant confusion and the craft halted while Chalmers pumped shot after shot into the mass of them. Then they came on again, only fifty yards away. The air filled with their imprecations.
JUST then the engine coughed, snorted, coughed again, and settled down into a steady puttera-pattera that was music to Chalmers's ears. The screw churned the water and the whale-boat lurched ahead.
“Keep back there!” he called to Leila. “We'll be out of it in a minute.”
He cautiously crawled aft and tossed the loop of a sheet about the tiller to steady it. A howl of rage came from the Micronesians. They plied their paddles at double speed and for a few seconds held their own while the bowmen sped their arrows. But the relenting engine warmed to its work and the whale-boat was soon out of range.
Chalmers gave them a few parting shots.
“Want to try your hand?” he asked Leila jestingly. “Careful with those arrows, they may be poisoned. There's the start of a nice collection for a museum. I'm sorry I ever abused you,” he apologized to the engine with a mock bow. “You're all your sales-agent ever claimed for you. Listen to that ragtime purr, Leila. Puttera-pattera, my name's Pat. Catch it? Go ahead Pat, and patter along to Byron Island.”
Leila laughed at his nonsense as he wanted her to.
“You're much too ridiculous for dignity,” she said.
“Do you prefer me dignified?”
“Sometimes I was quite afraid of you on the island at times, when you ordered me about like a cabin-boy.”
“I was afraid of you, too,” he confessed.
“Not now?”
“Not now. You're not an heiress any longer.”
“Oh!”
“I shouldn't joke about your losing the pearls, Leila, though I'm afraid the chances are slim of ever seeing them again. Do you feel very badly about losing them?”
She looked him squarely in the eyes. Her own held a twinkle, almost an invitation.
“No,” she answered. “I'm really rather glad.”
Looking at him while she slowly and adorably reddened, she saw his eyes change to a stare of incredulity.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It seems incredible,” he said, “but it's the schooner. And she's headed this way, as much as the wind will let her. She's hardly got steerageway. There's something wrong aboard of her. The sheets are hauled in and there's no one at the wheel, apparently. Give me the glasses.
“There's some one now in the bows. It's Hamaku. He's waving a cloth. There's Tomi, beside him. They don't know who we are.”
“You'll not go near them?”
“I'll go near enough to find out what's up. They wouldn't be coming back for nothing. There must be something that's upset your calculations. I've got a score to even with Sayers. Your pearls are aboard.”
“I told you I didn't want them. Don't go near them.”
“You lost the pearls through my fault, Leila. I should have thought of that diving-suit. It's not going to be my fault if you don't get them back again.”
He spoke with decision. It was his duty, as he considered it, to recover Leila's fortune, and he tingled at the hope of getting his eyes on Sayers. Leila sat silent as he steered the launch toward the schooner. As they neared it he called out to Hamaku.
The native started as he heard his name, spoke to Tomi, peered at the launch from under his hand and sprang into the water from the bowsprit, swimming swiftly toward them.
“Eh, Kapitani,” he said as his fingers clutched the gunwale. “Eyah, Kapitani, plenty pilikea aboard.”
“Climb in,” ordered Chalmers.
The dripping Hamaker came lithely overside and sat on the thwart his skipper indicated. His face was drawn and gray instead of its usual healthy brown, and his body twitched.
“Now then,” said Chalmers. “Out with it.”
“Sayasi (Sayers), he make (dead). Tuan Yuck he nearly make, too. One, two night ago they play cards together for pearl. Last night Tuan Yuck he win—everything. Sayasi he laugh and call for gin. I bring. Sayasi he say, 'All right, you too smart for me.' Then very quick he pull out gun and shoot Tuan Yuck. Big Boss he fall on floor and not move. Sayasi he got up and laugh some more. Then he take big drink of gin. Me, I keep back where he not see me. So then Sayasi he kneel along Tuan Yuck on floor and he say, 'Last man he laugh more loud.' Tuan Yuck open his eyes and say, 'Yes, you.' He strike at Sayasi with knife quick like that, all same cat. Knife he cut Sayasi all through stomach. He make, right away. Too much blood he lose.
“Tuan Yuck he no can move his legs. He make me pick him up and put him in cabin. He no eat. All the time smoke lele pipe. Very soon I think he die. So I frighten. I try make boat go along back Motutabu.”
Chalmers looked at the native searchingly. It was evident he was telling the truth. He restarted the engine and ran alongside the schooner. Tomi came to the side, his eyes bulging with terror.
“God bless it, you come Kapitani,” he said. “Too much pilikea.”
“Up you swarm, Hamaku,” commanded Chalmers, “and get out the “side-ladder. You'll stay here for a few minutes, won't you please?” he asked Leila.
“Yes,” she answered, pale at the mental picture of Sayers lying in his own blood on the cabin floor, much as she hated him.
The two natives under Chalmers' orders rolled the stiffened form into canvas and sewed it into a rude sacking. This they weighed with ballast and carried it up the companionway, where they slid it quietly into the sea from the opposite rail to which the launch lay. Then they cleared up the cabin while Chalmers went for Leila. The door of Tuan Yuck's room was closed.
When he came down with the girl, Chalmers, armed with the automatic that he had picked up on the cabin floor close to the dead body, opened Tuan Yuck's door.
The Chinaman lay in his bunk, smoking. His skin had the look of dirty wax; his glittering eyes seemed to have lost their luster.
“Ah!” he said as Chalmers entered. “So you have the last trick after all. Our Australian friend got me with his pistol, the same one you hold, I fancy. I'm done for, Chalmers. You couldn't do anything for me if you would. The spine's injured. I'm partly paralyzed. More every hour. I can just raise my arms to smoke. It's a good vice. It helps.”
“Where are the pearls?” asked Chalmers.
“So mercenary! Where are they? Ask me after I'm dead, Chalmers. I won't tell you while I'm alive.”
His eyes held a mocking light.
“Are you there, Miss Denman,” he called. “I did you a good turn once when I made Sayers leave you behind. I did it selfishly. I didn't want to be bothered with a woman. You see I figured on winning out from Sayers. It was clumsy of me to lose. Now do me a favor in return. Leave me alone until the end. It won't be long.”
“We will, if you tell us where the pearls are,” said Chalmers.
A smile that was half sneer broke the mask of Tuan Yuck's face. His voice had grown feebler.
“I've hidden them, Chalmers. They're aboard. But I don't think you'll find them, even though you search me after I am dead. But if you look in the right place you'll find them.”
His eyes held an impenetrable enigma as he puffed at his metal pipe with its bamboo stem and jade mouthpiece. His eyes closed. Only the movement of his chest and the curl of the acrid smoke that issued from his lips showed life was still in his body.
Chalmers hesitated. He could not torture a dying man. Leila set a hand on his arm.
“Come away,” she said. “We do not care about the pearls.”
Half an hour later Hamaku came hurriedly on deck.
“Kapitani, you come quick,” he said.
Tuan Yuck was dead in his bunk, his jaw fallen. A lacquered box lay on the counterpane between his nerveless fingers.
“I hear noise,” said Hamaker. “I come in quick. He try to swallow pearl. I think he choke. Look!”
He put his fingers into the dead man's mouth and drew out half a dozen of the pearls. The rest were in the box and spilled upon the covering of the bunk. Tuan Yuck's last trick had failed him.
THE wind was fair and the schooner sailed as if eager to leave latitudes that had held so much of danger and distress. Leila, in reaction from the terrific strain to which she had been subjected, kept closely to the cabin Chalmers overhauled for her.
He himself was glad of long lazy hours in the sunshine, drowsing off the consequences of his own ordeal. His shoulder had healed almost completely, thanks to the magic of Leila's ointment, and the stiffness and pain at the base of his neck disappeared as the great bruise made by the falling boulder took on all the colors of a dying dolphin.
On the afternoon of the third day, Leila, a little languid, but smiling, faced him on deck. In her hand she held the little lacquered box.
“I want you to take half these pearls,” she said and frowned as Chalmers shook his head.
“I insist. You've saved them time and time again. If you don't, I swear, I'll toss them overboard this minute.”
He temporized but the girl was determined. She walked to the rail and held her hand with the box in its palm above the water.
“Promise,” she said.
Her eyes looked at him tenderly, inviting ly, wistfully. They held a hundred variants of the one theme in their liquid depths. And in those depths Chalmers' last remnants of pride dissolved.
“I'll take them,” he said, “but I'll give them back to you again.”
She stepped backward, her face changing.
“Why?” she faltered.
“As a wedding-present, sweetheart,” he whispered.