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"Just the same one big weather devil," came the Kanaka's answer. "I know. He want big blow, he make big blow. He want no wind, no wind come." "A regular old Warlock," said Mulhall. "No good luck them pearl," Tai-Hotauri blurted out, rolling his head ominously. "He say he sell. Plenty schooner come. Then he make big hurricane, everybody finish, you see. All native men say so."
The supercargo nodded. "That was fifteen years ago, and he's never budged." "And added to his pearls," said the captain. "He's a blithering old lunatic. Makes my flesh creep. He's a regular Finn." "What's that?" Mulhall inquired. "Bosses the weather that's what the natives believe, at any rate. Ask Tai-Hotauri there. Hey, Tai-Hotauri! what you think old Parlay do along weather?"
Tai-Hotauri came over jauntily, while Narii Herring and his three Kanakas paused and looked on from forty feet away. "I work no more for you, skipper," Tai-Hotauri said insolently and loudly. But his face belied his words, for he was guilty of a prodigious wink. "Fire me, skipper," he huskily whispered, with a second significant wink.
He turned to the steersman: "Tai-Hotauri, what about old Parlay's pearls?" The Kanaka, pleased and self-conscious, took and gave a spoke. "My brother dive for Parlay three, four month, and he make much talk about pearl. Hikihoho very good place for pearl." "And the pearl-buyers have never got him to part with a pearl," the captain broke in.
"You're the only skipper in the group that steals other men's sailors," He sat down, and in lowered voice queried: "Now what's Tai-Hotauri up to? He's on to something, but what is it?" As the boat came alongside the Malahini, Hermann's anxious face greeted them over the rail. "Bottom out fall from barometer," he announced. "She's goin' to blow. I got starboard anchor overhaul."
One tree they saw snap off halfway up, three persons clinging to it, and whirl away by the wind into the lagoon. Two detached themselves from it and swam to the Tahaa. Not long after, just before darkness, they saw one jump overboard from that schooner's stern and strike out strongly for the Malahini through the white, spitting wavelets. "It's Tai-Hotauri," was Grief's judgment.
Ashore, where Parlay's house had been, was no vestige of any house. For the space of three hundred yards, where the sea had breached, no tree or even stump was left. Here and there, farther along, stood an occasional palm, and there were numbers which had been snapped off above the ground. In the crown of one surviving palm Tai-Hotauri asserted he saw something move.
The stagnant calm continued, and the sand shook under their feet with each buffet of the sea on the outer shore. Narii Herring walked leisurely along the sand. He grinned at the very evident haste of the captains and buyers. With him were three of his Kanakas, and also Tai-Hotauri. "Get into the boat and take an oar," Captain Warfield ordered the latter.
Captain Warfield took the cue and proceeded to do some acting himself. He raised his fist and his voice. "Get into that boat," he thundered, "or I'll knock seven bells out of you!" The Kanaka drew back truculently, and Grief stepped between to placate his captain. "I go to work on the Nuhiva," Tai-Hotauri said, rejoining the other group. "Come back here!" the captain threatened.
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