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. Soma was a person that I
was beginning to cordially dislike.

I turned to Newmarch and fired a question at him.

"Do you think he was helped overboard?"

"Why, no," he said slowly. "Why do you think that?"

"Oh, nothing," I replied. "I thought his narrow escape of the morning
would have made him careful."

It was a few hours after this conversation that I had my first chance
of speaking to Edith Herndon since the moment we had run into the
disturbance. The girl poked her head out of the companionway, and I
hastened to assist her out on deck. It was her first sight of the damage
which the storm had done to the yacht, and she gave a cry of alarm as
she looked at the splintered spars and the cordage that cracked in the
wind like the whips of invisible devils.

"Oh, Mr. Verslun, we are a wreck!" she cried.

"Not quite," I said, gripping her arm to steady her as _The Waif_ took