“Wait a moment, Nell. I want to tell you something which I think will please you. Would you like a trip to Sydney?”
“Very much indeed,” she answered, with sudden graciousness.
“Well, I’m thinking of sending the Maritana there, to be docked and to be overhauled, with Lester in command. Then whilst you are away I shall charter the Loelia, cutter, and make a trip through the Line Islands. You will have at least two months in Sydney, and Lester will take good care of you on the voyage.”
“It will be a nice change for me, Jack? But why cannot you come?”
“I must make this cruise through the Line Islands before I decide to sell out to Danvers’s company.”
That evening Brabant announced his plans to his chief officer, and a week later both the Maritana and the Loelia were ready for sea. During this time Captain Danvers was an occasional visitor to the bungalow on the hill, but he and Brabant met very frequently in the town to discuss business together, and it soon became known that the latter either intended to sell out to, or amalgamate with, the Danvers company.
Ten days before the Maritana left Brabant bade his wife goodbye, for the Loelia was to sail first. He kissed her but once, and looked so searchingly into her eyes as he held her hand that every vestige of colour left her cheeks.
“You must try and enjoy yourself,” he said. “Minea” (her Samoan maid) “and you will be very comfortable on board. You’ll have the entire cabin to yourselves, as Lester will take up his quarters in the deck-house.”
Half an hour later he was giving Lester his final instructions.
“You will not leave Sydney till either you hear from me or see me. I may follow you in the Loelia in a month. But no one else is to know this—not even Mrs. Brabant.”
“You may depend on me,” replied Lester.
“I know it well. Goodbye, Lester.”
That evening the Loelia sailed from Levuka. Pedro Diaz had been transferred from the Maritana and was now mate of the cutter.
As night came on, and the green hills of Ovalau Island changed to purple, Brabant turned suddenly to his officer.
“Come below, Pedro, I want to talk to you.”
The Chileno followed him in silence, and the two men remained conversing in almost whispered tones for some time.
“Tell me,” asked the Chileno, fixing his dark eyes on the captain’s face; “when did you first begin to suspect?”
“From the very first day that I saw her and Danvers together. He betrayed himself—fool that he is—by being too formally polite to her, before me.”
“And then you read this letter of his to her. How did you get hold of it?”
“I was coming back from my bathe in Totoga Creek about six in the morning. Went into Manton’s for a few minutes’ rest and a smoke. Danvers’s door was open, and though he was not in the room, I could hear his voice talking to Manton. I stepped inside to sit down and wait for him. He had been writing a letter, which was but half finished. It was to my wife, and began, ‘My darling Helen.’”
“Ah-h-h!” said Diaz, in a savage, hissing whisper.
“I left it there, strolled out into the dining-room where Manton and Danvers were having their morning coffee. I joined them, and chatted with them for half an hour. Then I went home, and told Minea what to do when the letter came. It was delivered by Danvers’s native servant. Minea met him at the garden gate. He asked if I was in. She said I was out; he gave her the letter, and told her to give it to her mistress, who was still in bed. The girl brought it to me to where I was waiting. I opened it, took a copy of it, and gave it back to her to give to her mistress.”
He paused, and then smiled grimly at the Chileno. Then he smoked on in silence.
“You will kill them both?” asked Diaz.
“I don’t think so, Pedro. I must wait. And you will stand to me?”
The officer’s hand met his in a steady grip.
“That is all for the present, Pedro. She—and he, too—thinks that the Loelia will not be back in Levuka for three months. But we shall be here in less than a month. And if I find that Danvers has gone to Sydney in the monthly steamer, then I shall know how to act,” and he tapped the copy of the letter that was in his breast pocket.
Then Pedro told him the real cause of the quarrel between Dr. Bruce and Danvers. Brabant heard him with an unmoved face. “I thought as much,” he said briefly.
A few days later, the Loelia, instead of laying northwards for the Line Islands, was at anchor in Apia Harbour in Samoa, and Brabant, leaving the vessel in charge of his mate, paid a round of visits to several of his old friends in various parts of the island. At the end of three weeks he returned on board as calm as usual, and told Diaz to heave up anchor. By sunset that evening the Loelia was sailing between the islands of Savaii and Manono, and heading due west for Fiji before the strong south-east trade wind. Just four weeks from the date of her departure she re-entered Levuka harbour, and the first news that Brabant heard was that the Eagle, the monthly steamer to Sydney, had sailed a few days previously, and that among her passengers was Captain Danvers, who had “been called to Melbourne on matters connected with his business,” but would be returning in a couple of months. He had left a letter for Brabant, in which, after speaking of company matters, he said: “I do hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Brabant in Sydney before she leaves. I daresay I can get her address from your agents there.” As he was reading his letters Bruce came on board.
“You are back sooner than you thought, Brabant.”
“Yes. When I got to Samoa I met a German brig bound to the line Islands, and arranged with her captain to see all my traders for me, as the Loelia is as leaky as a basket. I’m going to give her a good overhaul here.”
There were of course the usual sneering comments made by the local female gossips on Captain Danvers’s sudden departure for Sydney, so soon after Mrs. Brabant had left in the Maritana. If Brabant knew of them he took no heed. He went about his work as usual, met his friends, and attended to the Loelia’s repairs in his methodical manner.
Eight weeks passed by, and then the Eagle, a slow-crawling old ex-collier, which did duty as a mail and passenger steamer, entered the port, and Danvers, jauntier and handsomer than ever, stepped ashore and took up his old quarters at Manton’s Hotel. Here he soon learnt the reason of Brabant’s early return, and in less than an hour he was up at the bungalow, and seated opposite Nell Brabant’s husband, whom he had found reading his letters.
“I met Mrs. Brabant quite a number of times,” he said effusively; “she was looking very well, but I think was getting tired of Sydney when I last saw her. Said that she thought that Fiji after all was the best place, you know.”
Brabant nodded. “Just so. Well, we’ll see her before another couple of months, I hope.”
“I hope so,” said Danvers genially, as he raised his glass of brandy-and-soda and nodded “good luck” to his host.
“I was thinking, Danvers,” said Brabant, as he laid down unopened the rest of his letters, “that it would be just as well if you came round with me in the Loelia and saw my stations in the New Hebrides. It would facilitate matters a good deal, and the cutter is all ready for sea. In anticipation of your coming I have fitted up your quarters on board.”
“Delighted, my dear fellow. When do you propose sailing?”
“As soon as ever you like.”
“To-morrow, then. I’m anxious to get this matter pulled through. As you will see by your letters from my people, they are prepared to pay ten thousand down at once, and fifteen thousand in three bills, at one, two, and three years.”
“That is all right. Shall you be ready tomorrow, then?”
“Quite.”
After Danvers had gone to his hotel Brabant went on board the Loelia, and he and Pedro Diaz again talked together.
At nine o’clock next morning the cutter Loelia weighed anchor, and made sail for “a cruise among the New Hebrides. With Captain Brabant” (so said the tiny weekly newspaper published in Levuka) “was Captain Harold Danvers, who is making a tour of inspection of the captain’s properties before taking possession of them on behalf of the new Trading Company.”
Forty-eight hours after leaving Levuka the cutter was clear of the land, and leaping and spinning before the trade wind which was blowing lustily. Danvers, as he sat in a deck-chair smoking a cigar, took a lazy interest in the crew, who were all natives of the Line Islands—short, square-built, half-naked savages, with jet-black hair and huge pendulous ear-lobes filled with coiled-up leaves. There were but eight of them—the Loelia was a vessel of ninety tons—and Diaz was the only white man on board except Brabant and Danvers.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon. A native seaman struck eight bells and Brabant came on deck. Pedro was standing aft beside the helmsman.
“We’re going along at a jolly good pace, are we not–” began Danvers. Then his voice failed him suddenly, and his face turned white as he saw that Brabant was looking at him with the deadliest hatred in his eyes.
“What is the matter with you, Brabant? Why do you–”
Brabant raised his hand, and Pedro came and stood beside him, and then two of the wild-looking crew suddenly sprang upon Danvers, seized him by the arms, and handcuffed him.
“Away with him below,” said Brabant, turning on his heel and walking aft.
Too utterly astounded to offer any resistance, Danvers was hurried along the deck to the main hatch and made to descend. The hold was empty, but an armed native was there awaiting the prisoner.
Diaz followed him below.
“You are to make no noise, nor speak to the sentry,” he said, with a sullen savageness; “if you do I shall put on the hatches.”
Danvers was no coward, but his heart sank within him. “Is this a joke, or has Captain Brabant gone mad?”