“Be not angry with them, Simi, for there is nought but goodwill toward thee in my heart. See, wouldst have me cure the hot fever that makes the blood in thy veins to boil even now?”

“No,” I said sullenly, “I want none of thy foolish charms or medicines. Dost think I am a fool?”

“Nay,” and she looked at me so wistfully that I at once repented of my harsh manner—“nay, indeed, Simi. Thou art a man strong in thy mind, and shall be strong in thy body if thou wouldst but let me give thee–”

“No more, woman,” I said roughly. “Leave me. I want none of thy medicines, I say again.”

“Thy wish is my law,” she said gently, “but, ere I leave thee, I pray thee that in a little way thou wilt let me show thee that I do mean well to thee.”

I laughed, and asked her what medicine or charm she desired to experiment with upon me.

“No medicine, and no charm,” she answered. “But I know that because of many things thy mind and thy body alike suffer pain, and that sleep would be good for thee. And I can give thee sleep—strong, dreamless sleep that, when thou awakenest, will make thee feel strong in thy body and softer in thy now angry heart to Niâbon.”

“If you can make me sleep now, I’ll give you twenty dollars,” I said in my English fashion.

She took no notice of my rude and clumsy remark, though she had good reason to be offended.

“Simi,” she said, “shall I give thee sleep?”

“Ay,” I replied, “give me sleep till the master of this house returns.”

She rose and bent over me, and then I noticed for the first time that, instead of being about thirty-five or forty years of age, as I had judged her to be by her hard, clear features and somewhat “bony” appearance externally, she could not be more than five-and-twenty, or even younger.

She placed her right hand on my forehead, and held my right hand in her own.

“Sleep,” she said—“sleep well and dreamlessly, man with the strong will to accomplish all that is before thee. Sleep.”

Her hand passed caressingly oyer my face, and in a few minutes I was asleep, and slept as I had not slept for many weeks past. When I awakened at sunset I felt more refreshed and vigorous than I had been for many months.

Krause had just returned in his boat, and met me with outstretched hand. His welcome was, I thought, unnecessarily effusive, and, declining his pressing invitation to remain for the night, I left, after remaining an hour or so longer. I noticed that immediately Krause arrived the girl Niâbon disappeared, and did not return.

That was my first meeting with her, and I did not see her again till the evening of the storm, when she brought Tematau to me.

CHAPTER III

We, Niâbon, Tematau and myself, were undisturbed by any visitors during the night, for the storm increased in violence, and, as daylight approached, the clamour of the surf upon the reef was something terrific. About four in the morning, however, there came such a thunderous, sudden boom that the island seemed shaken to its coral foundations, and Niâbon declared that the storm had broken.

“That is what the people of the Tokelau Islands call O le fati le galu—the last great wave, that gathering itself together far out on the ocean, rushes to the reef, and curling high up as the mast of a ship, falls and shakes the land from one side to the other.”

The girl knew what she was talking about, for from that moment the fury of the wind sensibly decreased, and half an hour later we were able to open the door and gaze out upon the sea, still seething white with broken, tumbling surf?

Walking down to my boat-house, I found that the boat herself was not injured in any way, though most of the roof had been blown away. Then feeling that my usual attack of ague was coming on, I returned to the house, and found that Niâbon had made my coffee.

I drank it, and then wrapped myself up in a couple of blankets in readiness for the first touch of that deadly, terrible chill which seems to freeze the marrow in the bones of any one who is suffering from malarial fever. Niâbon watched me gravely, and then came and stood beside me.

“Mr. Sherry,” she said, this time speaking in English, “why don’t you let me give you some medicine to cure you of that fever? I can cure you.”

“I believe you can, Niâbon,” I replied; “you certainly mesmerised me when I was at Krause’s station that day, and I awakened feeling a lot better.”

“What is ‘mesmerise’?” she asked quickly.

“Sending any one to sleep, as you did me.”

“I can always do that,” she said simply, “and so could my mother.”

“Can you make me sleep now?”

“Not just now. Wait till the col’ fit has gone. And then when you are wake up I shall have some medicine ready for you, and then you shall have no more fever.”

My attack of ague lasted about half an hour, and left me with the usual splitting headache and aching bones. When I was able to turn myself, I saw that Niâbon was seated beside Tematau dressing his lacerated back with some preparation of crushed leaves. She heard me move, turned her head, and smiled, and said she would be with me in a few moments. Although my head was bursting with pain, I watched her with interest, noting the tenderness with which her smooth, brown fingers touched her companion’s body. When she had finished she rose, carefully washed and dried her shapely hands, and came over to me.

“Give me thy hand,” she said in the native dialect, as she knelt beside my couch.

I gave her my left hand. She clasped it firmly but softly, and then the fingers of her right hand gently pressed down my eyelids.

“Sleep, sleep long.”

As I felt the gentle pressure of her hand down my face, my throbbing temples cooled, and in a minute, or even less, I sank into a dreamless and profound slumber.

When I awakened it was past nine o’clock, and I found that my own two native servants, who slept in the village, had prepared my breakfast, and were seated beside Tematau, talking to him.

“Where is Niâbon?” I asked.

They told me that she had gone away in search of some plant, or plants, with which to compound the medicine she was making for me. She returned early in the forenoon, carrying a small basket in which I saw a coil of the long creeping vine called ‘At ‘At by the natives, and which grows only on the sandiest and most barren soil.

“Have you been sleep well, Mr. Sherry?” she inquired.

“Indeed I did sleep well,” I replied, “and, more than that, I have eaten a better breakfast than I have for many weeks.”

She nodded and showed me the contents of her basket, and then seating herself at the table, ate a small piece of ship biscuit and drank a cup of coffee. It was then that I noticed for the first time that she was, if not beautiful, a very handsome woman. Her face and hands were a reddish brown, darkened the more by the sun, for I could see under the thin muslin gown that she was wearing, that her arms and shoulders were of a much lighter hue, and I felt sure that she had some white blood in her veins. Her hair was, though somewhat coarse, yet long, wavy, and luxuriant, and was coiled loosely about her shapely head, one thick fold drooping over her left temple, and shading half of the smooth forehead with its jet-black and gracefully arched eyebrows. This is as much as I can say about her looks, and as regards her dress, that is easy enough to describe. She invariably wore a loose muslin or print gown, waistless, and fastened at the neck; underneath this was the ordinary Samoan lava lava or waist-cloth of navy blue calico. Her gown, however, was better made, and of far better material than those worn by the native women generally; in fact she and Mrs. Krause dressed much alike, with the exception that the latter, of course, wore shoes, and Niâbon’s stockingless feet were protected only by rude sandals of coco-nut fibre such as are still worn by the natives of the Tokelaus and other isolated and low-lying islands of the Equatorial Pacific.

After making and smoking a cigarette she set about compounding my fever mixture by first crushing up the coil of ‘At ‘At and then expressing the thick colourless jelly it contained into the half of a coco-nut shell, which she placed on some glowing embers, and fanned gently till it began to give off steam. Then taking half a dozen ripe Chili berries, she pounded them into a pulp between two stones, added them to the ‘At ‘At, and stirred the mixture till it boiled.

“That is all, Simi,” she said, as she removed the shell from the fire, and set it aside; “when it is cool enough to drink, you must take one-fourth part; another when the sun is tu’u tonu iluga (right overhead), and the rest to-night.”

I thanked her, and promised to carry out her instructions, and then said—

“Why do you talk to me in three different languages, Niâbon? I like to hear you speak English best, you speak it so prettily.”

Not the ghost of a smile crossed her face, and she replied in Samoan that she did not care to speak English to any one who understood Samoan, or indeed any other native language. “I am a native woman,” she added somewhat abruptly, “and English cometh hard to my tongue.”

I said nothing further on the subject, fearing I might vex her, although I felt pretty sure that she was not a full-blooded native. However, I had no right to worry her with questions, and if she preferred to be thought a native it was no business of mine.

As soon as my medicine had cooled a little, I took my first dose. It tasted like Hades boiled down, and made me gasp for breath. Then Niàbon bade me wrap myself up in all the rugs and blankets I could procure, and undergo a good perspiration, assuring me that I should have no more attacks of the dreaded ague after the second dose. Calling one of my native servants, a big hulking native named Tepi, to come and roll me up presently, I first went over to Tematau, and asked him how he was doing, and as I stooped down to examine his head, and see if the dressing was all right, a heavy booted footstep sounded outside, and Krause walked in.

One look at his face showed me that he was labouring with suppressed passion, though trying hard to conceal it.

“Good morning,” I said without advancing to him; “take that chair over there, please. I just want to look at this fellow’s head for a moment.”

He stalked over to the chair I indicated and sat down, and a sudden spasm of rage distorted his face when he saw Niâbon. She was seated at the further end of the room, her chin resting on her hand, and looking at him so steadily and fixedly that he could not but have resented her gaze, even if his mind were undisturbed by passion. Tematau, too, turned his head, and shot his master a glance of such deadly fury that I murmured to him to keep quiet. I rapidly revolved in my mind what course to pursue with our visitor, who, though I could not see his face, was, I felt, watching my every movement.

“That will do,” I said to my patient in the island dialect, which Krause understood and spoke thoroughly; “lie down again. In a few days thou wilt be able to walk.”

“By God, he’s going to walk now,” said Krause, rising suddenly, and speaking in a low, trembling tone. I motioned to him to sit down again. He shook his head and remained standing, his brawny hand grasping the back of the chair to steady himself, for every nerve in his body was quivering with excitement.

“What is the matter, Mr. Krause?” I said coldly, though I was hot enough against him, for he was armed with a brace of navy revolvers, belted around his waist. “Won’t you sit down?”

“No, I won’t sit down,” he answered rudely.

“Very well, then, stand,” I said, seating myself near him.

Then I pointed to the pistols in his belt. “Mr. Krause, before you tell me the business which has brought you here, I should like to know why you enter my house carrying arms? It is a most extraordinary thing that one white man should call on another armed with a brace of pistols, especially when the island is quiet, and white men’s lives are as safe here as they would be in London or Berlin.”

“I brought my pistols with me because I thought I might have trouble with the natives over that fellow there,” he said sullenly, pointing to Tematau.

“Then you might have left them outside; I object most strongly to any one marching into my house in the manner you have done.”

He unbuckled his belt, and with a contemptuous gesture threw the whole lot outside the door.

“Thank you, Mr. Krause,” I said, “I feel more at ease now, so will you kindly tell me the object of your visit?”

“I’ve come to get that swine Tematau. I pay him. He is my man. I shall tolerate no interference. I shall take him back to Taritai” (the name of the village where he lived) “if I have to fight my way out of this village of yours and kill fifty of your niggers.”

“Steady yourself, Mr. Krause, and don’t say ‘your niggers’ so emphatically. In the first place I have but two native servants, not fifty, but either of those two would very much resent your calling him a ‘nigger.’ You know as well as I do that to call a native of this island, or of any other island of the group, a nigger, is so grossly insulting that his knife would be out in an instant.”

“Ah, you and I have different ideas on the subject,” he said sneeringly; “but that does not matter to me at the moment. My paid servant has absconded from my service, and I have come to get him. That is plain enough, isn’t it?”

“Quite. But I am an Englishman, Mr. Krause, and not to be easily bluffed because a man comes stamping into my house with a brace of pistols in his belt.”

“I did not come here to argue. I came here for that nigger—my property.”

“Your property! Is the man a slave? Now, look here, Mr. Krause; you have used the man so brutally that he is unable to stand on his feet. He and the girl–”

“I don’t want the girl, and I daresay you do,” he said, with a sneering laugh that made me long to haul off and hit the fellow between the eyes; “she’s a nuisance, and if I ever again see her prowling about my house and practising her infernal fooleries on my wife, I’ll put a bullet through her. But the man I will have.”

“Stop!” I cried warningly, as he took a step toward the sick man, “stop, before you run yourself into mischief. Listen to me. I have but to raise my hand and call, and you will find yourself trussed up fore and aft to a pole like a pig, and carried back to your village.”

“Out of my way,” he shouted hoarsely, as with blazing eyes he tried to thrust me aside.

“Back, man, back!” I cried. “Are you mad? The natives here will kill you if you attempt to force–”

“And I’ll kill you, you meddlesome English hog,” he said through his set teeth, and, before I could guard, his right hand shot out and grasped me by the throat, and he literally swung me off my feet and dashed me against the centre posts of the house with such violence that I went down in a heap.

When I came to a few minutes afterwards, Tepi was supporting me on his knees, and Niâbon was putting some brandy to my lips. The house was full of natives, who were speaking in suppressed but excited tones. I swallowed the brandy, and then, as Tepi helped me to rise, the natives silently parted to right and left, and I saw something that, half-dazed as I was, filled me with horror.

Krause lay on his back in the centre of the room, his white duck clothes saturated with blood, which was still welling from three or four wounds in his deep, broad chest. I went over to him. He was dead.

“Who hath done this?” I asked.

“I, master,” and Tematau placed an ensanguined hand on mine.

“And I,” said a softer voice, and Niâbon’s eyes met mine calmly. “Tematau and I together each stabbed him twice.”

As soon as I was able to pull myself together, I desired all the natives but three of the head men to leave, and then, after the unfortunate German’s body was covered from view by a large mat, I asked the principal man of the village to tell me what he knew of the tragedy.

“I know nothing,” was his reply. “Niâbon can tell thee.”

Niâbon, in response to my inquiring glance—I was shaking from head to foot as I looked at her, but her calm, quiet eyes as she looked into mine restored my nerve—spoke clearly.

“The German dashed thee against the centre posts of the house, Simi. Then he drew a little pistol from his breast and shot at me, and the bullet struck me on the neck. See,” and she showed us a still bleeding score on the right side of her neck, where a Derringer bullet had cut through the flesh. “And then he sprang at Tematau, but Tematau was on his feet and met him and stabbed him twice; and, as he fell I too stabbed him in the breast.”

“This is an evil day for me,” I said to the three head men, “and I fear it will prove an evil day to the people of this village, for the wife of the man who lies there told me that a ship of war of his country was soon to be here at this island. And how shall we account for his death?”

Niâbon bent forward and spoke—

“Have no fear, Simi. Neither thou, nor Tematau, nor the people of this village, nor I, shall come to any harm from the German fighting-ship. For when it comes thou and I, and Tematau, and Tepi, who know of the blood let out this day upon the floor of thy house, will be far away. And when the captain of the fighting-ship questioneth, and sayeth to the people, ‘Where is my countryman?’ the people will shake their heads and say, ‘We know not. He and his wife, and the Englishman, and Tepi, and Tematau, and the witch woman Niâbon have gone. They have sailed away to beyond the rim of the sea and the sky—we know not whither.”

I listened with all my faculties wide awake, and yet with a strange sense of helplessness overpowering me. Then Niâbon made a swift gesture to the head men. They rose, and lifting the huge body of Krause, carried it away.

She came to me and pressed her hand on my forehead.

“You are tired,” she said in English. “Lie down.”

She took my hand and led me to my couch beside the window and then bent over me.

“Sleep, sleep long. For now the time is near and thou must have strength.”

CHAPTER IV

I slept well on towards four o’clock in the afternoon, and when I awakened I found the house deserted by all but my man Tepi, who was seated cross-legged near me with a cup containing my fever mixture beside him. He held it up to me silently.

Even before I raised myself to drink I felt that I was a stronger man, physically and mentally, than I had been six hours previously, and my veins no longer seemed as if they were filled with liquid fire. I drank the mixture and then looked about me, and saw that every ensanguined trace of the tragedy which had occurred a few hours before had been removed. The coarse and somewhat worn matting which had covered the floor had been taken away and replaced by new squares, and the room presented the usual neat and orderly appearance in which it was always kept by Tepi and my other servant.

“Master,” said Tepi, “art hungry?”

“Aye,” I replied, “I would eat; but first tell me of the dead man. Who hath taken him away?”

The man, instead of answering me in a straightforward manner, bent his head and muttered something I could not hear.

I jumped off my couch and went outside, and the first person I ran against was my cook, an old grizzled fellow of about sixty years of age named Pai. He was carrying a freshly-killed fowl in his hand, looked at me in an unconcerned manner as if nothing had occurred, and asked me would I have it broiled or boiled.

“As you will,” I said impatiently. “Tell me, Pai, whither have they taken the dead white man?”

He made a peculiar and significant gesture—one that is not often used, but when it is it implies that certain matters or things must not be further alluded to, but must be for ever buried in oblivion. I put my hand on his tough, naked, and wrinkled shoulder, and again repeated my question.

“I know of no dead white man,” he replied, looking me steadily in the face, and yet answering me in his usual respectful manner. Then he sat down beside the low stone wall surrounding the house, and began to pluck the fowl, casually remarking that it was fat for its age.

Somewhat puzzled at the reticence of my servants, I walked across my compound towards the native village, which, as I have before mentioned, was some distance from my house, and as I walked I felt at every footstep a renewed bodily vigour, and almost unconsciously I took out my pipe, filled it, and began to smoke with an enjoyment denied to me for many months.

The day was gloriously bright and cool, and the westering sun on my right hand shone on a sea of the deepest blue, whose placid bosom was dotted by a fleet of canoes with their mat sails spread to the now gentle trade wind, cruising to and fro catching flying fish. This seemed strange to me, bearing in mind the events of the past few hours. The death of a white man, even from natural causes, was of itself generally a matter of such importance to the natives of any of the mid-Pacific isles, that their daily avocations were suspended, and the house of the deceased man would not only be surrounded on the outside by a circle of people sitting on their mats and awaiting their turn to enter and express their condolences with his wife or children, but filled inside as well.

The first houses I passed on the outskirts of the village were occupied only by women and children, who all gave me their usual cheerful greeting of Tiakapo, Simi! (“Good-day, Jim”) and one or two of them added a few words of congratulation upon my improved appearance, and then calmly went on with their work, such as mat-making, mending fishing nets, cooking, etc., but no one of them gave the slightest indication of even having heard that anything unusual had occurred.

Crossing the village square—if it could be so called—I directed my steps towards the great open-sided moniep, or council house, from which came the sound of many voices, talking in the vociferous manner common to all natives of the Gilbert and Kingsmill groups. As I drew near I saw that there were about twenty men seated inside, smoking, card playing, or making cinnet for fishing lines by twisting up the strands of coco-nut fibre on their naked thighs. As they heard my footsteps on the gravel, their conversation dropped a little, but they all gave me Tiakapo! as usual, invited me to enter and sit down and smoke, and then went on with either their work or their pastime.

“Now,” I thought, as I sat down on the mat brought to me, “I shall get these fellows to tell me the meaning of all this reticence about the disposal of Krause’s body.”

For some minutes I smoked in silence and took the opportunity of looking at my hosts. They were all either middle-aged or old men, and were all known to me personally, especially one old bald-headed fellow named Kaibuka—“The Ship.”

In his younger days this Kaibuka had acquired an evil reputation for being the instigator and leader of cutting-off attacks on whaleships and trading vessels, and his performances had gained him such kudos and respect from his savage associates that now in his old age he was the most influential of the three principal head men of the whole lagoon. Like all the others present, he wore but the usual airiri, or girdle of grass, round his loins, and his dark reddish-brown body was covered from head to waist with the scars of wounds received in earlier years. Each of his ear-lobes, pierced in infancy, had from long years of continuous distention by means of rolls of pandanus leaf, become so pendulous that they now hung loosely upon his shoulders in two great bights of thin flesh as thick as a lead pencil, though one of them had twisted in it a long stick of tobacco and a spare pipe. He was not, however, a bad-looking old ruffian, and his shining bald head, still perfect teeth, and extremely Jewish cast of features gave him quite a distinctive appearance from the younger men, whose long coarse hair, cut away across the forehead and hanging loosely down on their shoulders and backs, made their fierce, savage faces appear as if they looked at you from a moving frame of black. They certainly were a wild-looking lot, but their appearance somewhat belied their dispositions—at least as far as I was personally concerned. We had always got along very well together both socially and in business, and I was well aware that whilst they disliked and mistrusted Krause they placed implicit confidence in me.

Putting down my pipe on the mat beside me, I told old Kaibnka that I desired to talk to them.

There was a dead silence at once.

“E rai rai” (“Good”), he said.

“Kaibuka,” I said, “hath the dead white man been taken to his wife?”

He looked stolidly at me for an instant, and then answered with an air of intense surprise.

“Dead white man! What dead white man, Simi? I know of none. We saw no dead white man!”

“Aye, we know of none,” echoed the others in unison.

I began to feel both angry and uncomfortable, and showed it: but for the moment I was too puzzled to do more than stare at them each in turn. They looked straight before them as if their faces were so many stone jugs—they had about as much expression.

Again I addressed myself to Kaibnka.

“Why do ye make this pretence? Thou thyself, Kaibnka, and thou, Berau, were, with many others, in my house when his dead body lay on the floor. Why are ye all so silent? And whither have the girl Niâbon and Tematau gone?”

This time I got an answer—to my last question, at any rate.

“Niâbon and Tematau have gone across the lagoon in a canoe. They desired to talk with the white man’s wife. In a little time, as darkness falls, they will return to thee.”

“Did they take the dead man with them, then?” I persisted.

The old fellow met my inquiring glance quite calmly. “I know of no dead man, Simi.”

I glared angrily at them all round, and then for a moment wondered if they were all crazy or I alone was wrong in my head. I was rising to my feet with an exclamation of anger at their obstinacy when the old bald-head motioned me to stay. Then at a sign from him all the others gathered up their impedimenta and quietly went off in Tarions directions, leaving us alone.

“Simi,” he said, coming swiftly over and crouching in front of me, “be wise. Ask no one of the white man who was here yesterday; for no one will tell thee but Niâbon. There is death in store for many, many people, if ye heed not my words. Go back to thy house, and be patient and wait, and ask naught of any one but Niâbon of what is past. Wouldst thou see this land soaked in blood because of one man?”

He spoke in such curious, whispered tones, and kept his keen hawk-like face so close to mine that I saw he was in deadly earnest.

“Promise me, Simi. Promise me to rest in thy house and wait for Niâbon.”

“As you will, I shall wait.”

I walked slowly back to my house and took a stiff glass of grog to steady my nerves, which were beginning to feel a little upset.

“It’s time I got out of this place,” I thought, as, lighting my pipe, I went down to my boat again and busied myself in taking out all her fittings, examining and replacing them again.

When I returned to the house for my supper it was quite dark, and just as my lamp was lit Niâbon entered.