A watery sun
peeped out from between the driving cloud masses, the rays glinting
through the heads of the waves that curled menacingly as the battered
yacht drove through them.
Newmarch hailed me from the poop when I came on deck, and there was a
peculiar look upon his scrawny features as he addressed me.
"Do you know that nigger you rescued?" he asked.
"Toni?"
"Yes."
"What about him?"
"You did your heroic stunt for nothing," he remarked. "The fool can't be
found, so I guess he went overboard in the night."
The news came as a shock to me. Toni's last question that he had put as
he clung to the wheel with Soma had flashed through my mind several
times through the night. He had asked it in a manner that insinuated
that I might be interested in the reasons why Big Jacky, his companion
on the wharf at Levuka, wished the whereabouts of the white waterfall to
remain a secret, and now his disappearance blocked my inquiries. I felt
annoyed with myself for not listening to what the Fijian had to say at
the moment he confessed that he had lied, and then the face of the
listening Soma came up before my mental eye.
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