CHAPTER XXXII. AND LAST
"What happened to him, do you think?" asked Peter. "Did a shark get him?"
Captain Asger Holbaek shook his head.
"No; if a shark had seized him, there would have been a commotion on the surface. I've questioned the natives. They swear they saw no blood. I think he must have been caught by one of the oysters. I remember we lost a diver out amongst the Gilbert Islands some years ago. We recovered his body with one foot flattened out between the bivalve's jaws. But I will not satisfy my—and your—curiosity. If I did I would break the tabu I have laid upon the place. If you have any imagination, it does not require much to reconstruct the scene."
At length, amidst scenes of great rejoicing on the part of the natives (for they did not yet know that their white chief was about to leave them) the new Svend was launched and towed round to the lagoon to complete fitting out and stowing cargo. Viewed afloat she looked very little different from the hundreds of pearling schooners that frequent "the islands". She was a triumph of patience and ingenuity, riding on an even keel and hardly making any water through her well-caulked seams.
Ballasted with stones and brought down to the load line with a good cargo of copra, provisioned for a three months voyage, the Svend was at last ready to spread her brown wings to the favouring south-east Trades.
It was an affecting scene when at a palaver attended by every man, woman, and child on the island, Captain Holbaek announced his intention of relinquishing the chieftainship and leaving Talai. A chorus of lamentation rent the air, and when at length the five white men made their way to the waiting boat, they had to force their way through the crowd, who lavished upon them garlands, until, as Peter remarked, they looked like walking maypoles.
Already the devoted Kanaka crew were on board. Sails were set, the unwieldy anchor broken out. Heeling gracefully to the off-shore breeze, the Svend slipped through the tranquil waters of the lagoon, curtsied to the swell on the bar, and gained the open sea.
Two hours later Talai disappeared from sight beneath the misty horizon.
Five weeks later the party embarked at Panama on a homeward-bound liner. The copra had been disposed of at a fair profit. The Kanakas had departed for Tonga in the Svend, which, having performed her required task, had been presented by Captain Holbaek to his loyal crew.
From London the Dane returned supremely happy to his native country, with the knowledge that a draft for nearly nine thousand pounds awaited him at a banker's at Copenhagen.
Peter Arkendale, now rich beyond his wildest dreams, went back to school to "swot up" for Sandhurst.
Kenneth Heatherington went "up" to Cambridge, there to study for the Law, but Adventure is a persistent wooer, and it will not surprise any of his friends to hear that at some future date he will revisit the haunts of the Buccaneers of Boya.
[End of The Buccaneers of Boya, by Percy F. Westerman]