At last he
rose.
"You are a great liar," he said. "If you don't get us on our way
by tomorrow you'll never have another chance to lie, for I heard
two of the men saying that they'd like to run a knife into you and
that if you kept them in this hole any longer they'd do it."
"Go and ask Kai Shang if there is not a wireless," replied Gust.
"He will tell you that there is such a thing and that vessels can
talk to one another across hundreds of miles of water. Then say
to the two men who wish to kill me that if they do so they will
never live to spend their share of the swag, for only I can get
you safely to any port."
So Momulla went to Kai Shang and asked him if there was such an
apparatus as a wireless by means of which ships could talk with
each other at great distances, and Kai Shang told him that there
was.
Momulla was puzzled; but still he wished to leave the island, and
was willing to take his chances on the open sea rather than to
remain longer in the monotony of the camp.
"If we only had someone else who could navigate a ship!" wailed
Kai Shang.
That afternoon Momulla went hunting with two other Maoris. They
hunted toward the south, and had not gone far from camp when they
were surprised by the sound of voices ahead of them in the jungle.
They knew that none of their own men had preceded them, and as all
were convinced that the island was uninhabited, they were inclined
to flee in terror on the hypothesis that the place was haunted--possibly
by the ghosts of the murdered officers and men of the Cowrie.
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