Egypt and Ceylon were only incidents on her way. They only set the fever burning a little more restlessly in her veins; and her first moment of content was when the yacht of thirty tons, which she chartered in San Diego, carried her out to the long heave of the Pacific, and turned southward on the endless trail to the Happy Islands.
This was a part of her scheme about which she had not consulted any one at home, or she might have received some good advice about the choice of her ship. It was a sturdy little craft, with small but excellent cabins for herself and her maid. The captain and his wife were apparently created for her special benefit, being very capable people, with the quality of effacing themselves. The crew, of half a dozen Kanakas in white shirts and red pareos, was picturesque and remote enough from all the associations of cities to satisfy her desire for isolation.
The maid was the only mistake, she thought, and she did not discover this until they had been a fortnight at sea. Her own maid had fallen ill at an early stage of her travels, and had been sent home from Cairo. Rachel had engaged this new one in San Diego, chiefly because she thought it necessary to take somebody with her. When Marie Mendoza had come to do Rachel's hair at San Diego, she had a somewhat pathetic story to tell about a husband who had deserted her and forced her to work for her living. Rachel thought there might be two sides to the story when she discovered that the captain was playing the part of Samson to this Delilah. It was a vivid moonlight picture that she saw in the bows one night, when she had come up on deck unexpectedly for a breath of air. Captain Ryan was an ardent wooer, and he did not see her. Marie Mendoza looked rather like a rainbow in the arms of a black-bearded gorilla, and Rachel retired discreetly, hoping that it was merely a temporary aberration.
She would have been more disturbed, probably, if she had heard a little of the conversation of this precious pair.
"I tell you, it's a cinch, Mickey. I never seen pearls like 'em. They're worth fifty thousand dollars in Tiffany's, if they're worth a cent. She keeps 'em locked up in her steamer-trunk, but I seen her take 'em out several times."