Chapter I (1)

WHEN Sestrina, on the morning after the _Catholot_ had sailed from Port-au-Prince, awoke and found that she was far out at sea, she felt greatly depressed. She could hardly believe her own ears when she heard the muffled thumping of the steamer’s screw and the pounding of the engine’s pistons. She immediately ran from her cabin and sought the skipper. He was a Yankee, and a kind-hearted man.

“Oh, I am so unhappy, I expected some one to come and see me last night or to-day; I quite understood that your ship was not leaving Port-au-Prince till to-night.”

“Did you, missy?” replied the skipper as he looked into Sestrina’s tearful eyes and explained to her that the _Catholot_ had sailed before her time so that they might not be locked in the harbour through the blockade, for months. “It’s not my fault, missy,” he added, as he gazed in a sympathetic way at the distressed girl.

“Am I alone on board? Where’s my father and Claircine?”

“I guess there’s no Pa or Claircine on board here with you,” replied the skipper.

When Sestrina discovered that she was quite alone on board the _Catholot_ her distress was deep indeed. But hope ever reigns in youthful hearts, and so Sestrina calmed herself by taking Clensy’s last two letters from the folds of her bodice and reading them over and over again. She felt quite certain that Clensy would hasten to follow her, and at once made up her mind to get to Honolulu as swiftly as possible. Then she clasped her hands across the hidden crucifix in the folds of her bodice, and thanked God that Royal Clensy had been thoughtful enough to make plans to meet the strait in which she found herself. Then she began to wonder if Clensy would be able to get safely away from Hayti.

In her mind she could still hear the furious cannonade in the hills round Port-au-Prince and see the entrenched soldiers round the palace. And, as she thought on, the terror and horror of it all became intensified; her imagination began to picture all kinds of dire disasters.

“He might be killed. Oh, Royal!” she murmured, and then she stole into her cabin again and wept.

Two of the saloon passengers, an elderly American and his wife, took compassion on Sestrina when they saw her grief, and did their best to cheer her up. Their interest in her deepened when they discovered that she was the daughter of the late President Gravelot of the Black Republic at Hayti. The American had belonged to the U.S.A. Consulate at Port-au-Prince, and had heard that President Gravelot had been shot; but he did not tell Sestrina about the disaster which had befallen her father. Sestrina became much happier when the American and his wife invited her into their cabin and promised to do their best to place her in good hands till such time as she could return to Hayti.

“The revolution won’t last for ever, you know,” said the American. But Sestrina soon let her new found friends know that she had no desire to return to Port-au-Prince again.

“Have you relations in Hawaii, mademoiselle?” queried the American, when Sestrina once more emphatically informed that gentleman and his wife that she wished to get to Honolulu with all speed.

“Yes, it is in Honolulu where I shall meet my best friends.”

It is almost needless to point that the pluralty of Sestrina’s “best friends” in Honolulu were comprised in the sole personality of Royal Clensy, who she expected to meet there.

When the American informed Sestrina that the _Catholot_ was bound for Vera Cruz, in the Gulf of Mexico, and it was a fairly easy journey to the Pacific coast where she could get a ship that sailed for Hawaii, she was delighted. She went straight into her cabin and, falling on her knees, kissed the crucifix, and felt that God had listened to her heartfelt prayers at last. The outlook began to look quite rose-tinted to her sanguine eyes. She had a thousand dollars in her possession, which her father had thoughtfully provided her with. For, like a good many sinners in this world, President Gravelot had a better side to his nature, a side which was revealed when calamity came his way to remind him that the world was made for sweetness and not for the gratification of the passions alone.

So did Sestrina find friends when she became a refugee and fled from Hayti with only Royal Clensy’s memory and his love letters to comfort her.

When the _Catholot_ arrived at Vera Cruz, the American and his wife went ashore with her and placed her under the care of the U.S.A. Consul at Plaza Mexo. This estimable gentleman made himself very busy on Sestrina’s behalf. He eventually advised her to leave Vera Cruz and go to the United States.

“You will be in direct communication with Hayti and will know exactly when to return, for the war may be over soon, or even now,” he said.

As can be imagined, Sestrina listened respectfully to the advice tendered on her behalf, but was still determined to follow the course of her prearranged plans, which agreed with all her hopes and sole ambition in life.

And so, about one week after Sestrina had arrived at Vera Cruz, the U.S.A. Consul called at the hotel where Sestrina was staying, and was somewhat surprised to find that she had gone, had vanished, leaving no trace whatever behind her! The fact is, that Sestrina had made inquiries, and had found out that by getting to Acapulco or Yucata, on the Pacific coast, she could get a passage to Honolulu on one of the many schooners that sailed for the South Sea Islands for cargoes of copra, pearls, etc.

It is a trite but true saying that “Man proposes and God disposes,” and equally true is it that “Coming events do not always cast their shadows before.” No prophetic hint of all the sorrow that lay before Sestrina’s sad path in the new world which she was entering, came to disturb her dreams as the winds stirred the palms just opposite her window at her lodgings at Yucata. She had only arrived at the ancient seaport town the day before and so was still feeling the fatigue of the long journey she had undertaken after giving the U.S. Consul at Vera Cruz the slip.

So often had the passionate, impulsive Haytian girl thought of Clensy, so often had her mind dwelt in the imaginary happiness of dreams that corresponded with all that her sanguine heart anticipated would happen when she met Clensy again, that her whole soul was centred on one burning ambition—the swiftest way to get to Honolulu.

She had been greatly upset when she first arrived at Yucata, for, when she tendered some of her notes as payment for her apartments, the tawny half-caste Spaniard, her landlord, informed her that half of her money was worthless paper, through the overthrow of the Haytian Government that issued it. However, she had a good sum of legitimate cash in hand and was greatly relieved to find that for about forty dollars she could get a passage to Honolulu, on the _Belle Isle_, a rakish-looking schooner that was due to sail for Hawaii in a day or two.

Though her Spanish landlord strongly advised her to wait till one of the larger steamers was leaving with mails for Honolulu, she would not wait. Her unthinking impulsive mind had begun to fear that Royal Clensy would arrive at Honolulu and, not finding her there, would leave again thinking she was not coming.

“Perhaps now that I’m far away from his sight he will cease to think so much of me, and even think that I’ve forgotten him,” she murmured, as her feverish imagination began to think over it all.

She looked into the mirror of the low-roofed hotel room and saw dark rings around her eyes, her face was drawn and haggard too. In the natural modesty of women that possess looks, she gazed with distress on her imaged, beautiful face. “I’m not beautiful at all! He only said those things to please me. I mustn’t wait! He might forget me! He might forget me!” she almost sobbed, as the shadows of night fell over Yucata and the drunken Mexican sailors passed below her window, singing strange words to ancient sounding melodies as they tinkled on their guitars.

Sestrina had been in Yucata for eight days when she found herself on board the _Belle Isle_. There was only one other passenger on board, and that was an extraordinary looking aged Chinaman.

Though the _Belle Isle_ was called a schooner, she was a brigantine, a hermaphrodite, square-rigged schooner, that carried square sails on the foremast and the main. She was due to sail at any moment; was only waiting a favourable wind.

The _Belle Isle_ looked as though she was off on some buccaneering voyage, that is, if the character of the crew was anything like the expression on their faces. The fact is, that Sestrina had entrusted an aged Mexican priest to arrange for her passage, also the choice of the boat. And it will not be defamation of character to positively assert that the aforesaid old priest had secured Sestrina the cheapest berth on the rottenest schooner he could find, so that he could put half of the money entrusted to him in his own pocket. And though the Mexican ecclesiastic had fallen on his sinful knees and prayed for Sestrina’s soul and a pleasant voyage when she bade him farewell, Sestrina was convinced that she had been swindled directly she set foot on the deck of the _Belle Isle_.

The skipper was a swarthy Mexican. He looked as though he wouldn’t die of remorse after cutting a man’s throat for the bribe of a dollar. However, he had gallant manners, for he bowed profusely when he saw Sestrina jump down on deck, and seemed to be quite elated to find that his saloon passenger was so prepossessing.

The crew were a mixed lot: two or three full-blooded Mexicans, a Chinese-Tahitian, two Yankee niggers, one old man who looked like a civilised Hottentot, and two Kanakas. There was also a tiny lad, Rajao, about nine years of age, he was the child of one of the Mexican sailors.

Sestrina’s dismay was very obvious when the nigger steward showed her into her mingy cabin that was situated in the schooner’s cuddy (saloon). But the Haytian girl accepted the situation with wonderful fortitude. “It’s not for long!” she thought as she looked up at the ancient-looking yellowish-hued hanging canvas aloft, and thought of how they would spread to the winds and bear her across the ocean to Honolulu and Clensy’s arms.

As she stood on deck that night and felt the breeze coming that would cause the skipper to up anchor and set sail, she became quite happy. “On a ship at last, bound for Honolulu!” she thought. “And where is he? Perhaps still in Hayti. I will wait till he comes and then we will meet again and remember the sweet nights and the grape-vine and be happy!” Ah, Sestrina!

All wise men agree that happiness is only a fleeting anticipation of some longed-for event which, in its best consummation, can only end in disillusionment. And so it was as well that Sestrina should dream her own happiness that night. It was to be brief enough, God knows.

She little dreamed the true nature of the schooner on which she had embarked, and why it took a ghastly cargo on by stealth at midnight. Alas, through being educated from French novels instead of realistic South Sea novels, Sestrina was quite ignorant of the terrible dramas of the Pacific seas and lonely island groups. Had she known more of the ways of the world and life and sorrow in those seas, she would never have placed herself in the most terrible position that a girl could well be in. Even wilful Sestrina began to wish she had listened to her Spanish landlord’s advice, to wait for one of the large steamers that went to Honolulu. For as she lay in her bunk that night, just before the _Belle Isle_ sailed at dawn, she felt sure she heard strange groans and the clankings of iron chains!

“What did it all mean? Was that a smothered groan and then a farewell as some one wailed ‘Talofa! Aue! O Langi!’? Why had the skipper shut the cuddy’s door tight, as though he wished to keep those moans and murmurs on the deck that night from the ears of his fair passenger? Was that a phantom bay that the _Belle Isle_ lay anchored in as the red tropic moon bathed the palm-clad shores by Yucata with ghostly gleams. What nightmare could it be where chained men, with bulged, vacant eyes, were being carried and helped on deck of the _Belle Isle_, and then secretly dropped down into the fetid hold? The _Belle Isle_ was not a blackbirding schooner (slave ship), for King Hammerehai of Hawaii had issued an edict that all persons found dealing in slave traffic were to be ‘shot at sight.’ And the _Belle Isle_ was bound for Hawaii. So what was the mystery of that dark hold’s cargo?”

Sestrina awoke in the morning and half fancied that she must have dreamed the terror that had haunted her during the early night hours.

Before the sun was well up on the horizon the _Belle Isle_, with every stitch of her old-fashioned canvas spread, was fast leaving the Pacific coast. Sestrina was very ill for the first two days, then her languor left her. As she stood on deck, the boundless loneliness of the tropic seas depressed her. She stared over the bulwark side, the dim blue horizon seemed as far away, as illusive as her own hopes and dreams. The noise of the half-filled canvas sails depressed her, as they filled out to the lazy hot wind and then collapsed with a muffled rumble.

Only two members of the crew were visible as she stood on deck, and they were stalwart ferocious-looking men, who wore strange tasselled caps, and somehow reminded her of the pictures of the pirates of the Spanish Main which she had seen on the walls of the British Consul’s residence at Petionville, Port-au-Prince. One of the men seemed to be busy over an endless coil of rope. The other man stood like an inanimate figure, some fixture amidships, by the hatchway. Only the tobacco smoke issuing from between his blackened teeth destroyed the statuesque effect as he stood sentinel at that spot.

“Noa come dis way, miss,” the man muttered as he put forth his skinny hand and warned Sestrina away as she started to walk forward.

Finding she was even denied the freedom of walking about the schooner as she pleased the girl’s heart became heavy with dim forebodings. She began to realise that something was being hidden from her.

Hoping to find some one congenial to speak to, she strolled aft, then concluded that her own reflections were the better company.

The man at the wheel was a wrinkled, weird looking Mongolian. As he stood there, his hands gripping the spokes of the wheel, his pigtail, moving to the rolling of the schooner, swung to and fro like a pendulum, and to Sestrina’s overwrought brain, seemed to be ticking off the slow minutes of the hours to pass, ere something dreadful happened! The aged Chinaman, Sestrina’s fellow passenger in the cuddy, had been the more congenial to Sestrina had he never come on board: he lay in his bunk day and night chanting weird words as his yellow-skinned hand clutched an ivory idol, some heathenish symbol of his religion. It was only little Rajao, the Mexican boatswain’s child of nine years of age, who Sestrina felt inclined to welcome. Once he came running up to the girl, and after staring into her face curiously, he said, “You nice, Señorita, I like you.” Then he ran away forward.

“Morning, Señorita, nicer day.” Sestrina turned round and saw the Mexican skipper. “You speak Englesse?” he said.

Sestrina nodded. For a moment she could not speak. There was something sinister-looking about the man’s face. His small, brilliant eyes and thin, cruel-looking lips made her heart quake. He had stepped forward and had touched Sestrina under the chin, giving her a vulgar leer. The next moment the Haytian girl had swiftly brought her hand up and knocked his arm aside. So did Sestrina let the Mexican skipper of the _Belle Isle_ see the quality of her mettle. After that incident, she made up her mind to keep severely to herself. She had scanned each member of the crew and had come to the conclusion that she had never seen such a pack of cut-throats before. Only the negro steward seemed human. He _did_ have the grace to say, “Marning, missa,” and waited on her at the cuddy’s table without giving lascivious leers. Sestrina’s heart resented the weird music that accompanied her meals, for the Chinese passenger, who was suffering from some mortal disease, intensified the gloom of the cuddy as he chanted continuously to his ivory idol.

When the skipper discovered that Sestrina would allow no undue familiarities, he tried to redeem his lost character by giving her dainty dishes: tinned Californian pears, mangoes, yams, pineapples, and sweet scented preserves and candies adorned the mingy cuddy’s table.

Sestrina discovered that every time she went out on deck, she was shadowed by one of the crew, who would not allow her to go beyond the galley which was situated just abaft the hatchway. This restraint placed on her movements irritated her, as well as filling her already worried mind with apprehension. Though she thought and thought, she could not guess what the mystery could be. Why was the hatchway always open during the sweltering heat of the tropic days, while the _Belle Isle_ rolled becalmed on the glassy sea, and guarded by at least one member of the crew day and night? Who was down there in that fetid hold? Sestrina was certain that she could hear strange mumblings and faint wails, and sometimes a sorrowful-sounding song being hummed in the _Belle Isle’s_ hold during the vast silence of the tropic nights. Perhaps they were prisoners, convicts being transported from South America to some penal settlement away in the Pacific Islands, or refugees, like herself, and afraid to show their faces by the light of day?

As Sestrina reflected over the mystery of the schooner a nervous fright seized her heart. She began to dread the cramped cuddy, and so she stood on deck each night, watching the hot zephyrs drift across the glassy sea and ruffle the mirroring water, shattering the crowds of imaged stars. As the days went by, the plomp of the yellow canvas overhead and the interminable moan and mystery of the beings down in the hold began to tell on the Haytian girl’s brain. At last she would sit on deck all night, too terrified and miserable to stay in the cuddy.

The aged Celestial passenger was dying, and in his delirium would incessantly put his withered yellow-skinned hand through his cabin porthole—which faced the cuddy’s table—and, clutching the ivory idol, would moan and chant strange words to it. Sestrina felt like screaming in her horror over that heathenish, but sad sight.

One night the Mexican skipper knocked the skinny, yellowish hand back and gave a terrible oath as the sight got on his nerves too.

“_E fitu, padre meando_,” he said as he touched his brow significantly and gave Sestrina a sympathetic look.

But Sestrina hated the man. She knew that he had deceived her; had placed her in that precarious position with his cut-throat crew so that he could make a few extra dollars by securing her as a passenger.

On the second week out from Yucata, the Chinese passenger died, and the ivory idol and the withered, yellowish hand disappeared from the porthole; the chanting was over for ever. But strange enough, Sestrina felt terribly lonely when she heard that the Celestial was dead. The skipper, seeing her nervous state, had the grace to attempt to keep the Chinaman’s death from her. But Sestrina knew what had happened at once, for she saw two of the crew go into the silent cabin and pull in yards of sailcloth. Then she saw the crew collect on deck at sunset, ready to commit the body to the deep. The Mexican captain, for all his villainy, became religious in the presence of death.

Whether it was carelessness, or had been done deliberately, she did not know, but the hammock-shroud was sewn down so that the skinny, yellow hands were still visible, protruding about four inches through the canvas. In a few moments the skipper had murmured the solemn sea burial service as the crew stood in a row, their strange tasselled caps held respectfully in their hands. The sight of it all fascinated Sestrina. And as the weighted shroud softly splashed, alighted on the waters, she half fancied she saw the yellow fingers move, as though they, at that last moment in the world of the sun, sought to clutch the ivory idol. Then she saw the coffin-shroud slowly sink, and, like some sad symbol of all the universe of mortal desire, one bubble came to the calm surface—and burst!

After seeing that sight Sestrina hurried into the cuddy, in some strange fright seeking to hide from the memory of that sorrow which she had just seen. But, in the great irony of accidental things, the first thing that caught her eyes was the ivory idol lying on the cuddy’s table. She stared on it, fascinated, picked it up, and then dropped it in fright. Little did Sestrina dream that a day would come when she too would kneel in humble pagan faith before that tiny carven ivory god.

On the third week out from Yucata, the barometer began to fall.

“Señorita, ze wind is gwing to blow, big waves come over deck, savvy?” said the skipper.

“I don’t mind,” replied Sestrina as she gazed up at the deep blue of the tropic sky and noticed flocks of strange birds travelling out of the dim horizons. On, on they came, speeding across the sky, travelling south-west on their migrating flight from some distant land, outbound for another continent. Those winged travellers of the sky, voyaging onward, had read their wonderful compass, instinct, and so had unerring knowledge of the coming hurricane. Many of them had long necks and peculiar loose hanging legs, and as they passed swiftly over the lonely _Belle Isle_, Sestrina heard the faint rattle and whir of their ungainly wings and legs rushing through space.

“Big winds blow, birds they know, and so fly fast,” said the captain as he too followed Sestrina’s gaze and watched the flight of those migrating birds.

“No, Señorita,” said the skipper when Sestrina attempted to pass out of the cuddy and go on deck that night.

Perhaps it was as well that Sestrina obeyed the Mexican skipper, for the first stars had hardly pierced the velvet blue of the evening skies when the typhoon struck the _Belle Isle_. The sound of the storm’s first breath came like the massed trampling of infinite cavalry and low mutterings of mighty guns that fired the thunders and lightnings of the heavens.

Sestrina, who had never been to sea in real bad weather, thought the schooner was sinking.

“Rip! rppppppppp!” the stays and jib were torn to ribbons, were flapping like mighty wings, making a noise which could be heard above the universal clash and clamour of the thundering seas. The skipper helped the crew put fresh sail out to steady the schooner that lay over as though about to turn turtle. The crew worked with a will, for they well knew that their lives were at stake.

“Let me out! I don’t want to be shut in this dismal place,” said Sestrina, in an appealing voice to the skipper who had just entered the cuddy. The schooner was rolling and pitching furiously. The girl had to hold on to the iron stanchions of the cuddy to stay herself from being violently flung to the deck. The skipper, who had rushed into the cuddy for some rope and tackle, tried to soothe Sestrina’s fears. She noticed that his manner had completely changed; he looked serious more manly. But this fact did not ease Sestrina’s mind, since she knew the change in his demeanour was because he saw danger ahead. Nor was the girl wrong in her surmise. The skipper well knew that if the typhoon lasted much longer, the _Belle Isle_ was likely to get broadside on to the great seas and would possibly turn turtle, or the seas would sweep everything on deck away.

“You stay, no fright, Señorita,” he said.

Then the man ran out on deck again.

At this moment little Rajao, the boatswain’s child, rushed into the cuddy and clung to Sestrina’s skirt.

“Ze wins blow! Señorita,” wailed the child, a terrified look in his eyes, as he stared up into her face.

“It’s all right, don’t be frightened, Rajao,” she said.

Sestrina laid the boy down in her bunk and left the cabin door open so that he would not be frightened. Seeing by Rajao’s sudden appearance that the skipper in his haste had left the cuddy’s door unfastened, Sestrina immediately rushed towards it, and opening the door, stared out into the night. By the flashing light of the stars, that seemed to flicker to the force of the typhoon’s breath, she saw the great seas rising up! up! They looked like travelling mountains, foaming liquid ranges and multitudinous ridges lit with phosphorescent foams, that were tossed and swept into tremendous cataracts of glittering sprays as the typhoon’s breath swept the world of water like a huge unseen knife.

Crash! The schooner stopped, seemed to sink by the stern, then giving a shivery jerk, fell before the dead weight of the onrushing seas that crashed over her. The scene the lonely girl saw was as though God again held the oceans in the hollows of His hands, as though the universe of water had been re-thrown into the infinite; majestic liquid mountains tossing mighty arms that resembled promontories of fiery foams, triumphantly travelling through boundless space, bound for new regions, taking the millions of marching stars with them, as like a lone ark, with its little terrified mortality, the _Belle Isle_ flapped its broken wings, bravely struggling in some effort to survive the chaos of a new creation!

In her fright Sestrina shut the cuddy’s door, bang! and then stared in terror through the porthole. She knew that something terrible had happened. She distinctly heard faint wails, like the despairing cries of helpless children calling from somewhere out in the infinity of dark and wind. The square-rigged foremast had been snapped off just above the mainyard—it had gone! The whole crew who had been aloft had disappeared, washed overboard. Sestrina and little Rajao, the child, out of all the crew, were left alone. The Haytian girl stood at the porthole, horrified by the catastrophe which she knew had overtaken the _Belle Isle’s_ crew. Like most women of her type, she revealed true pluck in a great emergency. She rushed to the child Rajao. He had given a terrified scream.

“It’s all right, Rajao, I’m near you,” she said as she clutched the child in her arms, then standing him on the cuddy’s floor exhorted him not to move. Then she stood waiting. An eternity of apprehensive terror passed ere she felt the heavy rolling and pitching of the vessel subside. The distant wails out in the night, the silence on the deck, where a few moments before she had heard loudly shouted oaths, made her realise that all the crew had gone. She knew that no human beings could live in the chaotic crash of the charging seas that loomed before her terror-stricken eyes like mountainous, glittering icebergs travelling triumphant across the world! In the first realisation of her own terrible loneliness, her thoughts flew to the imprisoned beings who, she knew, were down in the hold of the _Belle Isle_. Looking out on deck, she anxiously awaited her chance; the seas were still leaping over the side, great liquid masses washing to and fro as the schooner pitched and rolled. An opportunity presented itself; she ran out on deck and reached the main hatchway. Inclining her head, she could distinctly hear above the clamour of the charging seas muffled groans and wild cries coming from below the hatchway. The crew had battened the hatch down just before the typhoon had burst over the _Belle Isle_. As she stood there and listened in terror, wondering what to do, a small shadowy figure ran towards her. It was the child Rajao. He was wringing his hands and calling for his father.

“Go back! get into the cuddy, quick,” cried Sestrina. The next moment a tremendous sea crashed on board. The girl gripped a rope that was hanging from the ratlines near the galley, and so saved herself from being washed away. She let go and was immediately washed into the scuppers on the windward side. In her horror at the terrible cry that came to her ears, she ran to the side, and, careless of her own life, stared over at the great seas—little Rajao had gone to his father! A faint cry came out of the waters; then nothing more to tell of Rajao’s existence. This new disaster upset Sestrina more than anything else that had happened that night. She rushed back into the cuddy, and throwing herself on the floor beat her hands and moaned like one demented. After a while she calmed down. She had wisdom enough to realise that it was no good grieving. Then she sought comfort by kneeling, and with the crucifix in her hand prayed. And never did girl pray more fervently than did Sestrina Gravelot that night on the storm-tossed _Belle Isle_. She called Clensy’s name aloud in her prayers so that the word “Royal” might bring comfort and companionship to her loneliness. Remembering the appealing cry which she had heard when she had stood by the hatchway, she calmed herself and longed to release the prisoners.

“Thank God that I’m not alone, there is some one near me,” she cried, as she once more went to the cuddy’s door and anxiously waited a favourable moment to get to the main hatch again. The first wild breath of the typhoon had passed, but the seas were still running high. Seizing the first opportunity she once more ran along the deck. Directly she came to the main hatch she gripped a long piece of rope, and making one end fast round her waist, tied the other end into the bolt at the bottom of the mainmast. The whole time that she stood there she could hear muffled wailings and voices speaking in a strange language, beseeching her to release them from their perilous position.

Sestrina strove to lift the hatchway, but found it quite impossible to do so with her delicate hands. Placing her face close to the cracks in the hatch, she shouted, “Who are you? I’m all alone, the storm has washed all the crew of this ship overboard!”

Then she listened. At first she heard a lot of mumbling, as though insane men were gabbling in an unintelligible manner; then to her immense relief a voice said:

“Wahine! Oh save us or we die!” It was a musical, clear voice and sounded strangely calm in the midst of the hubbub of other voices that gabbled incessantly.

“I cannot lift the hatch; I’m not strong enough,” she shouted back as the wind swept her hair streaming behind her. A sea crashed on board. She was only saved through her forethought in lashing herself to the bolt in the mainmast. As soon as the water had subsided the schooner ceased to roll.

Again she placed her mouth to the chink in the hatch and shouted once more, “The crew have been washed overboard; I’m a woman, all alone up here; and who are you?”

“All gone, wash way?” replied the melancholy voice, the only voice that spoke in English. Then the voice continued, “You woman’s all alone?”

“Yes, I’m quite alone.”

“Getter hammer or lump of iron and knock lumps of wood, bolts, out of the sides of the hatch so that we stricken men, O Wahine, may open it,” said the voice in pathetic appeal.

The next moment Sestrina was groping about the dark deck seeking something that would enable her to knock the large bolts from the hatchway. At last she found an iron bar in the galley. Risking the danger of the heavy seas that still leapt on board every time the _Belle Isle_ rolled and lay over to windward, she lifted the bar and smashed away at the bolts with all her might.

“I cannot move the bolts!” she cried when she had struck away till her fingers bled.

“Oh, try again, Wahine, for the sake of dying men,” replied the voice as the gabbling ceased.

“Who are you? and why are you locked down there?” replied Sestrina as she stood breathless on the deck and for the first time realised her position. There were evidently many men locked up in that fetid hold, and she was there, a woman alone, about to release them. Her natural instincts had begun to warn her.

“Ah papalagi, kind Wahine, we are only poor men who have been taken away from our homes because we be ill.” There was an appealing, earnest note in the voice that said this, that sounded unerringly true.

Sestrina’s fears vanished. “Ill!” she cried, as the winds swept the deck and slashed her mass of wildly blown hair about her face. “Is that the only reason that you have been locked up down there?” she called back.

“’Tis all that is the matter with us, and by the light of truth and the great Kuahilo, Pelê, and the White God, I say this, O Wahine,” replied the voice in a trembling way.

Sestrina’s heart was touched. The next moment she had once again begun to deliver direct blows at the hatch bolts. Then she discovered that she had been knocking them the wrong way. Crash! out came the first bolt; crash! out came another. In a few minutes she stood still again; all the bolts were out except two, one bolt on either side. Dawn was stealing across the storm-tossed seas.

Though the first passion of the typhoon had blown itself out, a steady wind of hurricane force was still blowing. Up! up! rose the tremendous hills of water and the _Belle Isle_ creaked and groaned as she lifted and the great seas passed safely under her! For a moment the lonely Haytian girl stared seaward. It was a terrible, yet grand scene from the derelict schooner’s deck as the battered wreck laboured like a brave, conscious thing and the torn sails flapped and the seas leapt on board and romped about her like hungry monsters.

Sestrina had opened the hatchway, and had at once hastily retreated towards the cuddy’s doorway. As she stood there watching by the dim light of the breaking dawn, which had barely extinguished the stars to the west, she fancied she could hear the thumping of her own heart.

“Who had she rescued from the fetid depths of the schooner’s hold?” Her eyes were fixed on the opened hatchway. First one head appeared; just for a moment it wobbled and then sank back, as though from extreme exhaustion through climbing the ladder that led from the schooner’s bottom up to the deck. In another moment the head had reappeared. Sestrina saw the face! She stared like one paralysed at that terrible, ghastly sight. It was a skeleton of death, and the face noseless, disease eaten; the head wobbled and swayed helplessly; the fleshless lips grinned as the bony forehead turned and the face stared towards the dawn of the far skyline with blind eyes! Then another head appeared; it was white and blotched with snowy patches, hairless. The face might have been some symbol of all sorrow and misery under the sun, so pathetic looking was it, as it, too, shifted about, staring first to port and then to starboard, as though it would scan the dim horizons of the grey dawn-lit seas for help! Then came up another head. It was apparently the head of the one who had stood below, behind the others, assisting them, helping them ascend the ladder. There was no sign of disease on the head or face of this one. He was a tall, handsome man with fine bright eyes. Sestrina stared in surprise. She began to seek comfort in the thought that all she saw was only some terrible nightmare of her afflicted brain. The tall Hawaiian, for such he was, was attired in picturesque costume, a tappa-cloth girdle and flowing robe, such as Hawaiian chiefs wear. The man’s alert eyes at once espied Sestrina’s form as she stood in the shadows, just inside the cuddy’s doorway. He had leapt on to the deck and was moving in a hesitating way towards her. Sestrina gripped the door handle, quite prepared to rush in the saloon and shut it; then she stared hard in the soft grey light of the tropic dawn, and saw something in the man’s face that told her he deserved her deepest sympathy and not her fear!

“Who are you, and who are they? What’s the matter with them?” she asked of the handsome Hawaiian, as she pointed towards the deck by the main hatchway. Ten terrible-looking beings stood swaying like skeletons in their ragged shrouds, drinking in the fresh air of the fast-breaking dawn, as dying castaways might drink in water. What more terrible sight could the whole world present than that lonely, wrecked, waterlogged schooner, and on its deck those wobbling heads with half-blind eyes, the rags of the skeleton frames flapping in the wind, their forms falling to the deck as the schooner rolled and pitched on the storm-tossed seas. The fallen figures were on their knees, with lifted hands, praying feverishly in some musical tongue to the skies where the first deep blue of the tropic day was stealing.

“Are you quite alone, Wahine?” said the Hawaiian, who had sadly watched Sestrina’s terrified gaze on that dreadful sight of his fellows.

For a moment the girl looked steadily into the man’s eyes, then replied, “I am quite alone; the crew were all washed away last night.”

It was then that the tall Hawaiian stood erect with bowed head, as though lowered before the girl’s eyes in some shame, and said, “Wahine, we got kilia (leprosy), and this ship was taking us to the leper settlement, Molokai.” Saying this to the girl, the tall, melancholy-looking man seemed relieved. He raised his head and said softly, in the biblical style of the Hawaiians who have learnt their English from the missionaries, “And Wahine, who art thou?”

Sestrina was speechless. She could not reply, for in her despair and horror she forgot who she was. “Lepers!” was the only word that escaped from her lips when the great mist left her brain, and once more the _Belle Isle’s_ deck became a solid something being beaten by the chaotic waters of an infinite sea. She had suddenly turned, as though she were about to flee from that terrible presence, a scourge that made the living dead still stand in the light of the sun, that they might watch their bodies dissolve before the ravages, the canker of a loathsome pollution, a malignant scourge that made its victims bless the blindness of their afflicted eyes as the third stage arrived, the stage when they could no longer see their disease-eaten limbs, the polluted flesh, and the peeping, whitened bones of their own unburied skeletons. Where could Sestrina fly to? Where? Already a faint odour from the pestilence of those swaying, moaning lepers came floating to her nostrils. What had she done that she should be cast away on a world of waters, alone on a living tomb where the dead clamoured in their shrouds, put forth bony fingers, and with half-blind eyes sought with pathetic indecision to locate her whereabouts, as they appealed for water and food! Food for the dead! Nourishment to sustain the loathsome body in that hellish purgatory where men hated and feared men, where pain and misery came as a blessing divine to stay memories of past love and homes, the anguished thoughts that haunt the living grave! “Food! wai (water!)” they cried. Such is the love of life in mortals who have once dwelt alive under the sun!

The intermittent sounds, the beseeching mumblings of their parched, almost fleshless lips, told Sestrina of their hunger and thirst. The language they wailed was unintelligible to her, but the appeal of the shrivelled outstretched hands and the stare in the bulged glassy eyes spoke in that language which is intelligible to all mortals who dwell under the sun. The horror that had partially paralysed Sestrina’s senses vanished. She was a woman. The slumbering instincts of divine motherhood, the sympathy and self-denial which springs into the hearts of most women when they are put to the supreme test by some heart-rending catastrophe, or when despairing men appeal, awoke in her soul. The inscrutable will of Providence, that so often stabs the heart with one hand and with the other soothes with sweetest balm, had given Sestrina the divine faculty which enables one to forget one’s own sorrow when in the presence of a greater grief. And so Sestrina’s fragile form was enabled to bear the weight of grief at that moment in her life, grief of a nature which was surely about the cruellest that the fates could devise. Her desire to flee from the presence of those afflicted men was swept away by a flood of sympathy and a feverish desire to help to alleviate their sufferings. She looked into the eyes of the tall, almost dignified-looking, handsome Hawaiian who stood before her. No sign of the scourge was visible on his countenance. Seeing the girl’s hasty glance at his face and over his form, and divining the reason why she had stared so, he at once pulled up the sleeve of his native jerkin, and, pointing to his arm, just under the muscles by the shoulder, said, “See, Wahine?”

A small bluish patch, not larger than a penny piece, was visible. The Hawaiian’s earnest, simple manner and the thought that he was still strong and possibly a doughty protector if trouble came, acted like magic on Sestrina’s stricken nerves.

“Come on!” she said.

The next moment she had dodged the green seas that were leaping over the side, and had entered the silent cuddy. The Hawaiian had followed her. Grasping the iron posts in the cuddy to save herself from falling, for the schooner was still rolling very heavily, she opened the small lockers and brought forth tinned meats, tinned fruits, bread, jam, and all the table delicacies she could lay her hands on. She looked up, sorrow and surprise in her eyes as the Hawaiian stood devouring a lump of the bread. Yes, so great was his hunger.

“Come on!” she said.

Then she ran out on deck. Seeing the lepers huddled by the starboard scupper, all clinging to the bolts and ropes as they swayed on their knees in their helplessness, she held the food up and beckoned the tall Hawaiian to take it to them. In a moment Hawahee, for such was the tall Hawaiian’s name, approached his stricken comrades and gave them bread.

“Here, quick!” said Sestrina, as she saw him trying to burst the lid of one of the tins of meat open. She had handed him a strong ship’s clasp-knife. In a second he had wrenched the lid off. As the lepers crawled about the deck, picking up the scattered crumbs and bits, Sestrina could hear them murmuring, “O Jesu, Maki, kola, se moaa Langi.” She knew that they were thanking her and the gods of their own creed and her own Saviour.

Such was Sestrina’s experience on the _Belle Isle_ when the crew were washed overboard. Daylight and the bright tropic sun shining over the ocean eased her first terrors. Strange as it may seem, the sight of the stricken lepers, and her knowledge that she could help them, made her accept the tragical position with a strange feeling of calmful fear and happiness. The Hawaiian, Hawahee, had an intellectual countenance, and his manner was reserved and gentle. Sestrina thanked God on her knees when she discovered that he had the scourge only in its first stage, and very slight. She trembled when she thought of what her position would have been had she found herself alone on those tropic seas with stricken lepers who were nearly all in an advanced stage. Four of them were quite blind, the rest were able to walk about and help Hawahee put things ship-shape on board as the days went by. Hawahee spoke little to her, but his sad demeanour, and the little he did say when he spoke to her, convinced Sestrina that he was a true friend.

Two or three days after she had rescued the lepers from the fetid hold, they nearly all showed signs of improvement. Even the four blind men would stand out on deck and bathe in the hot sunlight. It was a terrible sight, though. Sestrina would turn her eyes away as they put forth their withered, almost fleshless hands and chanted strange prayers to the skies. On the fourth night after the typhoon, one of the blind lepers rushed out of the forecastle and jumped overboard. Sestrina and Hawahee, who were standing aft by the cuddy with an oil-lamp, sorting out tinned fruits that they had found in the lazaretto, heard a cry and at once rushed forward. The swell was still heavy, causing the schooner to roll at times in an alarming way. As Hawahee and Sestrina stared over the side they heard the cry again, a faint cry like the wail of a child, but they could see nothing. Then the moon, which had been concealed by a wrack of cloud, seemingly floated into the blue space and sent a great silver radiance over the waters.

“Look! there he is!” cried Sestrina, as she pointed away towards the rolling, glassy waters.

True enough, as Hawahee and the three stronger lepers, Lupo, Rohana, and Steno, stared over the side they could see their comrade’s struggling form. For a moment the moon once more disappeared behind a dark cloud, and the sad watchers on the wrecked _Belle Isle_ only heard a faint cry as they stared into the darkness. Then a long shaft of moonlight fell slantwise, down to where they had seen the struggling form, and touched the waters. And as Sestrina watched, it seemed to her that a door in Heaven had suddenly been opened by the Hand of divine sympathy. They saw the dying man’s hands toss for the last time from his watery grave, as though in some pathetic appeal to the heavens. Though the seas still rolled on and the tangled ropes and torn sails flapped aloft and the schooner’s deck creaked and moaned to the eternal roll, it seemed that a great silence followed that last sad moment. Hawahee sighed and Sestrina’s form trembled as she stood there, her hair outstreaming to the wind. Yet they both knew that their dead comrade had at last found rest and peace.

Sestrina’s brain became strangely etherealised through sorrow. Grief had the effect of strengthening her mind. Even Hawahee gazed on the lonely girl in calm admiration as she ran about attending his stricken comrades with unremitting solicitude.

“Here are pillows and blankets,” she said, as she handed Hawahee all the bedclothes she had found in the cuddy’s cabins.

“Aloah, Wahine,” murmured the Hawaiian, as he bowed and took them from the girl’s arms and at once went forward to make comfortable beds for his leper fellows. For the Hawaiian also was a good man, his heart full of tenderness and religious sorrow for those who suffered around him. Sestrina would sit in the cuddy alone by night, unable to sleep as the schooner rolled helpless on the tropic seas. A dim, dream-like kaleidoscopic glimpse of Royal Clensy sitting in some room in far-away Honolulu, awaiting her presence, would flash through her brain. Her feelings at such moments were wonderfully intense; her past, her life itself and future hopes seemed to be suddenly crystallised into one magic diamond-flash of the mind as she saw the shadowy form and face of her awaiting lover. Her soul, winged by the mystery of the unexplainable, crossed those tropic seas and went wandering amongst strange people in strange places, searching to find the one who would think she had forgotten him. Then the boundless reality of the surrounding ocean would return and bring the darkest despair to her heart.

In a few days the swell of the ocean had subsided enough to make it possible to walk about the _Belle Isle_ without holding on to the fixtures. It was then that Hawahee set about clearing the deck of the wreckage, fallen spars and tackle, etc. The Hawaiian had been a sailor, and so he knew that it would be wise to get the fallen spars of the mainmast and the débris of the foremast overboard so as to ease the schooner’s list. The clearance, by the help of Rohana and Lupo and Steno, was accomplished in one day. Then Hawahee made Lupo take the helm, so that he could attempt to keep the vessel’s head before the swell; but the way of the schooner was not sufficient, and so she drifted broadside. A few nights after that it came on to blow again. Things began to look serious. Sestrina asked the Hawaiian to stay aft with her in the cuddy. The thundering seas had once more begun to lift the schooner as though it were a tiny boat. The seas swept right over her deck as she drifted away, away into the vast unknown regions of the Pacific Ocean.

Seeing that nothing could be done to bring the _Belle Isle_ under control, Hawahee told the lepers to keep in the forecastle. Then he looked kindly at Sestrina, and said, “Wahine, for your sake I will stay aft.”

“Yes, do stay here with me!” cried Sestrina in dread as the darkness came over the seas and the thundering seas crashed intermittently against the schooner. It was a terrible night. The cargo shifted in the hold, making the _Belle Isle_ take a worse list than ever. It was almost impossible to keep a footing on deck without holding on to something. Hawahee fell on his knees in the cuddy and prayed first to the great White God, and then to his own gods. It all seemed like some terrible nightmare to Sestrina as she lay in an exhausted state on the cuddy’s settee, her sleepless eyes watching the Hawaiian on his knees appealing to his gods with deep religious fervour. So often did Sestrina feel the mountainous waters bear down on the wreck and lift it up on the travelling hills, that she knew exactly when to expect the crash and shiver of the schooner as the seas struck her.

“Where are we going to, where?” moaned Sestrina.

The Hawaiian, who had risen to his feet, gazed on the girl with melancholy eyes, and then shook his head. He well knew that the _Belle Isle_ was drifting far away from the track of the trading vessels, away into the unknown seas.

Daylight came. Sestrina had lashed herself to the cuddy’s table and, with her head on it, had fallen into a subconscious state. She thanked her Maker on her knees when she woke and peered through the porthole. She saw the dim eastern horizon slowly brighten from grey to saffron and deep orange. Then she watched the crimson streaks burst out of the glowing dawn’s first magnificent thrill, dawn’s first splendid pang as the birth of the sunrise flooded the eastern skyline with a wealth of golden and crimson splendour.

“O Langi, O le sao va moana,” said Hawahee, as he gazed on the rosy eternity of the east. Then, folding his hands across his breast, he prayed in his native tongue. And still the _Belle Isle_ drifted on, drifting like some frightened conscious thing as the everlasting seas charged her helplessness. She was loaded with timber, and so, as far as sinking was concerned, they were safe.

“We shall not sink; Langi (heaven) is good to us,” murmured Hawahee as he walked softly into the cuddy after examining the _Belle Isle’s_ cargo.

When the seas had calmed down, Sestrina and Hawahee stood on deck and scanned the horizon to see if land or a sail was in sight.