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three or four of the others would be absent from camp,
exploring or hunting. The Swede racked his brain for some plan
whereby he might successfully lure from the sight of the
anchored ship those whom he had determined to abandon.
To this end he organized hunting party after hunting party,
but always the devil of perversity seemed to enter the soul of
Kai Shang, so that wily celestial would never hunt except
in the company of Gust himself.
One day Kai Shang spoke secretly with Momulla the Maori,
pouring into the brown ear of his companion the suspicions
which he harboured concerning the Swede. Momulla was for
going immediately and running a long knife through
the heart of the traitor.
It is true that Kai Shang had no other evidence than the
natural cunning of his own knavish soul--but he imagined
in the intentions of Gust what he himself would have been
glad to accomplish had the means lain at hand.
But he dared not let Momulla slay the Swede, upon whom
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they depended to guide them to their destination.
They decided, however, that it would do no harm to attempt to
frighten Gust into acceding to their demands, and with this
purpose in mind the Maori sought out the self-constituted
commander of the party.
When he broached the subject of immediate departure
Gust again raised his former objection--that the warship
might very probably be patrolling the sea directly in their
southern path, waiting for them to make the attempt to reach
other waters.
Momulla scoffed at the fears of his fellow, pointing out
that as no one aboard any warship knew of their mutiny there
could be no reason why they should be suspected.
"Ah!" exclaimed Gust, "there is where you are wrong.
There is where you are lucky that you have an educated man
like me to tell you what to do. You are an ignorant savage,
Momulla, and so you know nothing of wireless."
The Maori leaped to his feet and laid his hand upon the
hilt of his knife.
"I am no savage," he shouted.
"I was only joking," the Swede hastened to explain. "We are
old friends, Momulla; we cannot afford to quarrel, at least
not while old Kai Shang is plotting to steal all the pearls
from us. If he could find a man to navigate the Cowrie he
would leave us in a minute. All his talk about getting away
from here is just because he has some scheme in his head to
get rid of us."
"But the wireless," asked Momulla. "What has the wireless
to do with our remaining here?"
"Oh yes," replied Gust, scratching his head. He was wondering
if the Maori were really so ignorant as to believe the
preposterous lie he was about to unload upon him. "Oh yes!
You see every warship is equipped with what they call a
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wireless apparatus. It lets them talk to other ships hundreds
of miles away, and it lets them listen to all that is said on
these other ships. Now, you see, when you fellows were
shooting up the Cowrie you did a whole lot of loud talking, and
there isn't any doubt but that that warship was a-lyin' off south
of us listenin' to it all. Of course they might not have learned
the name of the ship, but they heard enough to know that the
crew of some ship was mutinying and killin' her officers. So you
see they'll be waiting to search every ship they sight for a
long time to come, and they may not be far away now."
When he had ceased speaking the Swede strove to assume
an air of composure that his listener might not have his
suspicions aroused as to the truth of the statements that
had just been made.
Momulla sat for some time in silence, eyeing Gust. At last
he rose.
"You are a great liar," he said. "If you don't get us on
our way by tomorrow you'll never have another chance to lie,
for I heard two of the men saying that they'd like to run
a knife into you and that if you kept them in this hole any
longer they'd do it."
"Go and ask Kai Shang if there is not a wireless," replied Gust.
"He will tell you that there is such a thing and that vessels
can talk to one another across hundreds of miles of water.
Then say to the two men who wish to kill me that if they
do so they will never live to spend their share of the
swag, for only I can get you safely to any port."
So Momulla went to Kai Shang and asked him if there was
such an apparatus as a wireless by means of which ships
could talk with each other at great distances, and Kai Shang
told him that there was.
Momulla was puzzled; but still he wished to leave the
island, and was willing to take his chances on the open sea
rather than to remain longer in the monotony of the camp.
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"If we only had someone else who could navigate a ship!"
wailed Kai Shang.
That afternoon Momulla went hunting with two other Maoris.
They hunted toward the south, and had not gone far
from camp when they were surprised by the sound of voices
ahead of them in the jungle.
They knew that none of their own men had preceded them,
and as all were convinced that the island was uninhabited,
they were inclined to flee in terror on the hypothesis that the
place was haunted--possibly by the ghosts of the murdered
officers and men of the Cowrie.
But Momulla was even more curious than he was superstitious,
and so he quelled his natural desire to flee from the supernatural.
Motioning his companions to follow his example, he dropped
to his hands and knees, crawling forward stealthily and
with quakings of heart through the jungle in the direction
from which came the voices of the unseen speakers.
Presently, at the edge of a little clearing, he halted, and
there he breathed a deep sigh of relief, for plainly before him
he saw two flesh-and-blood men sitting upon a fallen log and
talking earnestly together.
One was Schneider, mate of the Kincaid, and the other
was a seaman named Schmidt.
"I think we can do it, Schmidt," Schneider was saying.
"A good canoe wouldn't be hard to build, and three of us
could paddle it to the mainland in a day if the wind was right
and the sea reasonably calm. There ain't no use waiting for
the men to build a big enough boat to take the whole party,
for they're sore now and sick of working like slaves all day long.
It ain't none of our business anyway to save the Englishman.
Let him look out for himself, says I." He paused for a moment,
and then eyeing the other to note the effect of his next words,
he continued, "But we might take the woman. It would be a shame
to leave a nice-lookin' piece like she is in such a
Gott-forsaken hole as this here island."
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Schmidt looked up and grinned.
"So that's how she's blowin', is it?" he asked. "Why didn't
you say so in the first place? Wot's in it for me if I help you?"
"She ought to pay us well to get her back to civilization,"
explained Schneider, "an' I tell you what I'll do. I'll just
whack up with the two men that helps me. I'll take half an'
they can divide the other half--you an' whoever the other
bloke is. I'm sick of this place, an' the sooner I get
out of it the better I'll like it. What do you say?"
"Suits me," replied Schmidt. "I wouldn't know how to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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