Waylao watched, paralysed with fear. Then from the deck arose two more skeleton figures—revealing their hideous, noseless faces.
They lifted their heads as though with terrible effort. Their mouths gave forth hollow moans as they slowly sank down again, out of sight, among the wreckage of the deck.
One diseased, eaten face stared through the grating which had been fixed up as an extemporised bulwark on the port side.
Waylao gave a terrified cry and turned to flee inland.
As she did so a hollow voice called out in a strange tongue:
The cry so resembled some distressed call of humanity that Waylao’s fright was slightly subdued. She turned and swiftly glanced over her shoulder, her heart beating with strange fear—a wild hope came that the awful visitants might, after all, be friendly spirits in evil disguise. She stared with terrified wonder. Three stricken forms stood on the deck. In the dim light she saw them waving their skeleton hands; but they were calling with beseeching voices, voices that thrilled Waylao’s heart with joy, horror and hope.
She lifted the lifeless infant above her head again. In her delirium she still thought that the direct cause of their visit was—her sorrow.
In response to her cry, a terrible form arose from the deck and stared at her as she held the dead child. That figure from out of the mystery of the silent seas lifted its hands and cried out:
“E ko mako Makua i-loko O ka Lani” (“Our Father which art in Heaven”).
Waylao heard that word Lani. She knew that it meant heaven. Her first great fright vanished. “They are the dead from heaven,” she thought.
Suddenly the hulk crashed against the reefs by the shore, swerved round and stopped still.
The stricken forms rose from the deck, lifted their skeleton faces and for a moment stood terribly visible as they swayed helplessly by the broken mast.
The moonlight brightened the tattered sails. It streamed down through the branches of the surf palms that grew on the edge of the promontory.
Once again those gaping mouths moaned forth: “Wai! Wai!”
As the hulk swerved and listed towards the rocks, the handsome chief leapt ashore, and the woman who had clung to him immediately followed.
For a moment that handsome stranger stood and gazed at Waylao like one in a dream, as she looked up into his fevered, bright eyes.