HE island of Motutabu was shaped like a broad-bladed sickle, the lagoon lying in the crook of the steel with low hills, thickly set with foliage, rising irregularly behind the emerald water patched with purple where the humps of coral came close to the surface. The handle of the sickle showed as a high, precipitous ridge, crowned with the clustering palms that Chalmers had first seen rise above the horizon.
Down the cliff fell a narrow white plume of water. From the tip of the crescent blade to the shoulder handle ran the line of the reef, accented here and there with creaming surf. Up to the barrier the free sea held the rich blue of a peacock's breast.
There was no sign of human life. A few birds wheeled above the hills, and once a flight of gulls scattered over the ridge like blossoms in a gale, and went soaring seaward bent on breakfast.
The dawn wind was fair from the sea, though light. Chalmers hauled in his sheets, dropped foresail and skirted the reef, looking for an opening.
Sayers and Tuan Yuck, the former in a high state of excitement, the latter impassive as ever, both scanned the shore line through binoculars, while Chalmers, setting his feet in the rings of the mainsail and grasping the halyards, mounted to the crotch of the main gaff, resigning the wheel to Hamaku, as he prepared to con the Aku in. His voice came clearly from aloft in the quiet morning air.
“Come up a bit, Hamaku. Little more. Steady. Tomi, come in on your mainsheet. Lend a hand there, Sayers, will you? Keep her up, Hamaku. There's a shore current. Stand by to let go the anchor. Down staysail, Sayers! Smartly. There's a back draft from the point.”
The Aku glided through the reef passage into the broad lagoon, the chain rattled out and the anchor struck, holding bottom in eight fathoms.
“Give her three fathoms of slack, Tomi,” called Chalmers, and slid down the halyards to the deck again.
“Chap must be asleep,” said Sayers. “What the devil's that?”
His exclamation was echoed by cries from Tomi and Hamaku, who threw themselves face down on the deck, lamenting
“Awwe, ke aitu!” (Alas, the ghosts!)
Even Tuan Yuck had started at the sight, and Chalmers stared in bewilderment. From the shore all about them came blinding flashes of light in rapid succession, as if a battery had suddenly been unmasked.
There was no sound, no sign, only the silent hostility of unwinking flares. Despite himself, Chalmers felt imaginary hair-lifting along his spine. Then, one after the other, the glares were swiftly extinguished.
“What d'ye make of those?” asked Sayers. “Signals?”
Hamaku, still prostrate, broke into a torrent of Hawaiian. Sayers translated.
“He says there are spirits on the island lighting ghost fires.”
The Australian himself seemed to half believe the superstition. A memory of Stevenson's stories of South Sea wizards burning fires that had no visible fuel flashed across Chalmers' recollection.
“Nonsense, Hamaku,” he said. “No pilikia (trouble). Aitu no good along haole (white man).”
The natives raised their heads above the rail and looked fearfully shoreward. Perhaps the Kapitani was right. May be the aitus were afraid of the white man. It might be.
Suddenly they howled again. A secondary line of dazzling lights above the first, back in the hills, broke instantly out in brilliant flame. For two or three minutes they glared, too vivid for eyes to meet, then died away. Tuan Yuck set down his glasses.
“Reflections of some sort, picking up the sun,” he announced. “There were none in the shadow.”
Sayers sighed with visible relief.
“My nerves are in rotten shape,” he said, wiping off the sweat from his forehead.
“Obsidian cliffs, I fancy,” said Tuan Yuck. “Volcanic glass. I've seen something like it before. Nothing like this though.”
The two natives plucked up courage as they sensed the mood of their masters, and the minutes passed without any hostile demonstration from the ghosts or further display of the weird lights. But they absolutely refused to go ashore.
“We'll have to leave them aboard,” said Chalmers. “I suppose we all three want to go. We'd better take our rifles and automatics.”
Sayers came up from below, steadied by his universal stimulant, refusing the coffee that Tuan Yuck prepared and shared with Chalmers.
The two white men pulled ashore with the Chinaman sitting in the stern, a Winchester across his knees. Sayers tugged at his oar, setting a hard pace even for Chalmers, and the whaleboat made rapid progress over the quiet lagoon. They spoke little, and then in whispers as seemed to befit the occasion.