CHAPTER

   I. The Song of the Maori
  II.  The Professor’s Daughters
 III.  A Knife From the Dark
  IV.  The Storm
   V. I Make a Promise
  VI.  The Isle of Tears
 VII.  The Pit
VIII.  The Ledge of Death
  IX.  Into the Valley of Echoes
   X. A Midnight Alarm
  XI.  Kaipi Performs a Service
 XII.  The Devil Dancers
XIII.  Tombs of Silence
 XIV.  Back to the Camp
  XV.  A Day of Skirmishing
 XVI.  The Stone Table
XVII.  Beneath the Centipede
XVIII.  Barbara’s Messenger
  XIX.  Leith Scores
   XX.  The Black Kindergarten
  XXI.  Together Again
 XXII.  The White Waterfall
XXIII.  The Wizard’s Seat
 XXIV.  The Way to Heaven

THE WHITE WATERFALL

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I

THE SONG OF THE MAORI

There is a Tongan proverb which tells us that only fools and children lie awake during hours that could be devoted to slumber, and it is a wise proverb when you judge it from a Polynesian standpoint.  No special preparations are required for slumber in the last haunts of Romance, and as one does not lose caste by dozing in public, the South Sea dweller sees no reason for remaining awake when he could be peacefully sleeping.  The shade of a palm tree furnishes an ideal resting place, and if a dog fight occurs in the grass-grown street, he becomes a box-seat spectator without moving from his couch.  Levuka, the second largest town in the Fijis, was dozing on the afternoon of December 14, 1905, and I decided to follow the example set by the inhabitants.  The thermometer in the shack at the end of the wharf registered 98 degrees, but the picturesque little town, with its white and vermilion-tinted houses, looked restful and cool.  The hot, still atmosphere weighed down upon the Pacific, ironing out the wind ruffles till the ocean resembled a plain of glass, in which the Union Company’s steamer Navua, from Auckland, appeared to be stuck fast, as if the glassy sea had suddenly hardened around her black hull.

A thin strip of shadow huddled close to a pile of pearl shell at the end of the wharf, and I doubled myself up and attempted to sleep.  But hardwood planks don’t make an ideal resting place.  Besides, the rays of sun followed the strip of shadow around the pile, and each time I slipped into a doze I would be pricked into wakefulness.  At last, maddened by the biting rays, I collected half a dozen copra bags, splintered a piece of kauri pine, and after rigging up one bag as an awning, I spread the others on the planks and fell asleep.

But another disturbing element awakened me from a short slumber.  From the sea end of the deserted wharf came a big, greasy Maori and a fuzzy-headed Fijian, and their words went out into the silence like sound projectiles.  The Maori had such a high-pitched voice that I thought, as I rolled over restlessly, he would only have to raise it a little to make them hear him up in Sydney, eighteen hundred miles away.  It was one of those voices that fairly cavort over big distances, and I buried my head in the shell as the pair came closer.