Travers was worried. He could not forget Melita. It was preposterous he should so persistently remember a woman he had seen for scarce an hour. He had sailed to Samoa expressly to meet a half-caste adventuress, whom, so men had told him, had knowledge of every sailor in the Pacific at her finger tips.
Travers was usually distrustful of such women, on his guard against them when with them, and he had disliked the idea of enlisting the half-caste’s services. But the chance of picking up Brietmann’s trail, three years old from Fu Chow, had been very alluring, and the debt he had to pay for the death of the one-time mate of the Wanderer was long overdue.
And because of these things Travers had run across the sea to Melita. And he had found not the coarse-lipped woman he had expected, but a passionate, cultured woman, albeit a bitter one. Toward him she had softened somewhat.
He could think of that without conceit. For he had not tried to make love to her, to name conditions for his gifts. He was feeling strangely softened toward her himself. She must have had a hard life, and the world was, after all, a rotten place for a beautiful woman. They rubbed against more of the dirt than their plain sisters. They drew men, and the worst kind.
Melita was beautiful; there was no doubt of that. And her skin was as fair as any white woman’s, for all her native blood. Not a trace of the kanaka in her, except for the big, dark eyes. It was her face Travers had been seeing for so many years, since he had been old enough to dream of romance. Such a face had disturbed his sleep time and again. The ideal woman! Every man has his ideal woman, and the face of Travers’ ideal was the face of Melita. Known her for an hour? He had known her for years! He sighed.
He supposed he was in love. And he thought of the daisy-encircled cottage that every sailor thinks of when he thinks of marriage and love. The sea had been a hard mistress, but if she had led him to his woman the service had been fully repaid. He remembered, too, that men had said she had been no man’s woman since her return to the islands. Why should not the two of them start again, together? He smiled whimsically, and with sudden decision swung his feet off the table. He was a creature of impulse to a very large extent.
* * * *
“Toby!” he called lazily. The soft-footed Jap steward appeared after a while, and stood before his captain. “Send the mate down here.”
Without a word the steward padded away to the poop deck above, and presently the clatter of shoes on the companion that led from the saloon announced the mate’s arrival. He was a gray-haired man, very much tattooed about the hands, with a wrinkled parchment-like skin that gave the impression of great age, or a long time spent in the tropics. He was tall and very thin, and the corners of his big mouth drooped in a melancholy fashion under his fringe of moustache.
He had once been the commander of a famous liner, but drink and recklessness had brought him down to take any job that offered among the trading ships of the seven seas. Travers had picked him up in Sydney when he had been broke, and had given him a chance to get on his feet again. He was a wonderful navigator, and knew most seas like a book, wherefore he was a useful man to have aboard.
“Ever heard of Steinberger, Everett?”
The mate thought for a moment, and, removing his cap, scratched his somewhat bald head. He frowned.
“Seems I have. He’s a trader or something in these parts, sir.”
“Yes, that’s so. We’re going to visit him. Mark off the course to the Ellice group, Everett; and then make Funafuti Lagoon.”
“Yes, sir.” The mate turned to go, replacing his cap.
“Oh, Everett!”
“Sir.” The mate hesitated with one foot on the companion and turned half around.
“I’m thinking of getting married!”
“Married?”
“Yes. Just thinking, you know.”
“Oh, yes, sir.… Is that all, sir?”
“That’s all.… Say, Everett, see if there’s any book in the chart room with the marriage service in it, will you?”
“Very well, sir.” The mate whistled to himself as he went upon the poop and faced the battering wind. He wondered. Travers grinned to himself, swung his feet on to the table again, and went on dreaming.
CHAPTER VI
CAPTURED
Steinberger was at home at Funafuti. The Wanderer swept into the great lagoon, and came to anchor about a quarter of a mile from the shore. The Atlantis lay beached some half a mile away, and a crowd of natives were busily engaged in scraping from her hull the foot-long grasses and the clotted barnacles from her scanty keel. Travers looked at the brig through his glasses and swore harshly.
“Medusa figurehead and scroll work all down the forefoot,” he muttered. “Breitmann changed her name, but he couldn’t change her markings. Swine!”
The mate came from for’ard after letting go the anchor, and crossed the poop to his captain. “Going ashore, sir?”
Travers nodded as he dropped the glasses back into the rack. He felt in his pocket to make sure he was armed. “Lower away the port boat. And, Everett … if anything happens to me, you’ll find a letter in my room that’ll tell you what to do.”
The gray-haired, wise mate looked at his superior sharply. “Perhaps you’d like to take some of the men with you, sir,” he suggested. “They like you well enough to stand by you.”
Travers shook his head. “This is a private quarrel, Everett. I’d rather not have witnesses.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” And the mate touched his cap and turned obediently away to see that the boat was lowered.
The beach was a thing to wonder at, a magnificent sweeping curve, nine miles from tip to tip. Among the groves of coco-palms that fringed the sand could be seen the huts of the principal village. A few frigate birds were lazily sailing above the lagoon. Other life, except for those careening the brig, there was none. Funafuti brooded drowsily beneath the hot breath of noon.
Leaving the boat waiting in the shallows, with orders to push on if he did not return within an hour, Travers walked along the path that led to the trader’s house set in a grove of jack-fruit trees, that themselves nestled among a denser grove of palms. His face was set and ugly to look upon, and his right hand rested inside his pocket gripping something hard and cold.
He was still dressed in the light blue serge he affected, disliking the white duck most ship’s officers wore, and his peaked cap was still set back on his head, exposing the wavy hair.
Clear to the door of the trader’s house Travers went, and with a thrust of his foot swung it open and entered, to find himself in a high-ceilinged room, large and square, with native mats on the floor, an iron bed with the usual mosquito drape in one corner, large square holes in the walls in place of windows, and other doors leading to rooms here and there.
A tall, slender girl was busily engaged in cleaning a large bore sporting rifle to one side of a plain deal table, on which lay cloths and various bottles of oil and jars of grease. She looked up startled as Travers entered and placed her finger to her lips.
One of Steinberger’s numerous wives, Travers thought, a trifle grimly. She was a beauty in her way, olive-skinned, big-eyed and black-haired, like most of the island women. Travers politely lifted his cap, though the action was not usual with natives. Sympathetically, he noted the black bruises on the slender wrists, and the angry red weal across the bare breast. It was too plain that Steinberger still remembered some things about his Fatherland.
With a murmured