They were gathered in the smoke-room which was planted upon the boat deck abaft the chart-house. It was the snuggery held in common by Madame and Ching and Ewing; to them was now added another—Willatopy, Pilot. Madame, when she heard his name so unexpectedly had switched up the lights behind her and invited him to enter. She wanted to see him clearly, and to collect her thoughts. All through the long voyage she had pictured her meeting with a naked Cannibal in the appropriate setting of a tropical coral island. Yet here and now had come to her out of the seas a young man, passably English in dress except for his bare feet, passably English in speech, and a good deal superior to the English in his masterly knowledge of the variegated depths of his native seas. The blue eyes of this young man who called himself Willatopy had astonished her when first she came under their quick steely flash; now when they were bent upon her, quite plainly in admiration, she sensibly shrank before their bright intelligence. They were the Toppys eyes; she had admired them when set in Sir John's pale face; out of the dark, almost black countenance of young Willatopy they shone like beacons. They were beacons, the burning evidences of his Toppys blood.

It was their first night in the Straits—what Stevenson, pumped dry of tropical epithets, so often called "a wonderful night of stars." Yet Madame Gilbert had no eyes and no mind for the wonder of it. She could think of nothing but the Cannibal who for months had seemed to be so very remote and who was now so very near. Indeed exactly opposite to her, seated cross-legged like an Englishman upon a sofa bunk. His lips and nostrils were rather thick and broad, and his hair distinctly negroid—one should, I suppose, say Australoid—he was of the colour of strong coffee, yet he was not in the least like a Cannibal.

"Gatepath must be even a bigger fool than I thought," muttered Madame angrily to herself. Which was unjust. She had not, like Gatepath, been chased down to a boat by a naked furious Willatopy urged on to speed by the prod of a fish spear. But at that moment Madame was unwilling to be just, especially to Roger Gatepath.

"What makes your hair so red?" asked Willatopy suddenly.

"It grows that way," murmured Madame feebly.

"I have never seen hair red like that," observed Willatopy. "At Thursday Island the white women's hair is black or muddy. Not nice. Your hair is very nice. It shines like, like red copper. And your skin is whiter than any skin I have seen. Are you white like that all over under your clothes?"

"Young man," said Ewing, who had just entered and caught the last enquiry. "You are vairy indiscreet. Leddies do not possess what they do not please to show us."

"No?" Willatopy lifted his eyebrows. "But Madame"—he had caught the title from Ching—"has such beautiful skin. Her stockings shine, like rich bronze, and are very beautiful, but I think that her legs would be much nicer without all those stockings and petticoats."

Ewing grinned. Ching frowned. Madame for a moment almost blushed and then laughed in her old rippling fashion.

"Willatopy," said she, "if you don't mind we will change the subject. White men don't talk like that about white women, and you must try to behave like a white man. It was all your fault, Alexander," she went on severely. "If you had left the boy alone I would have dealt with him myself. How often must I tell you that Scotsmen have no tact?"

"The Scots are a vairy great people," proclaimed Ewing, unabashed. "We are too great for the snivelling hypocrisy which the English folk call tak. We say just what we think."

"And that is what makes you so exasperating to live with," rasped Madame.

"Scots!" cried Willatopy. "I know the Scots. There was one of them at Thursday Island. He was always drinking whisky and always drunk. He used to chant songs, long, miles long, and used to shout, as he rolled over hugging a bottle, 'From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs.'"

Willatopy's exact imitation of the old drunkard's accent, which was not widely different from Ewing's own accent, sent Madame and Ching into a roar of laughter.

"I will mind yon," growled the Chief.

"No, you won't," commanded Madame. "You will treat Willatopy very kindly. He is the pilot, and our lives are in his hands. Yon have brought your troubles on your own silly head, Alexander, and I don't sympathise with you one little bit. Now, Willatopy, tell us about yourself, how you came to be here, where you live, and how it is that you speak English so well."

"I am not English," said Willatopy, rather unnecessarily. "My father was English, a very grand Chief in his own country, but he did not love the English. He always said to me when I was so, so high," he indicated a child of about the height of the bunk on which he was sitting. "He said to me, 'Willie, you belong to your mother's people. You are a Hula, of the tribe of fishers and swimmers and sailors of the sea. It is better to be a Hula than an Englishman.' I remember the words of my father, whose hair was long and yellow, and his eyes blue like mine. The girls say"—he spoke a sentence in native dialect and then translated—"they say that my eyes are blue as the sky before dawn. The brown girls love my eyes. Do you love my eyes, Madame? I love yours; they shine like the English violets which my father planted, like the violets shine before the sun has soaked up the morning dew."

"You should not say things like that, young man," reproved Ewing. "Madame will be very angry."

"Oh, shut up, Alexander," snapped Madame Gilbert. "I want to listen to the boy. He has paid me a pretty compliment. Thank you, Willatopy. I like your bright steely blue eyes. The girls on your island have good taste."

"Have you a husband, Madame?" enquired Willatopy eagerly.

"Yes," replied Madame with hardihood. "I have a fine big husband, and I love him very much."

"I am sorry," said Willatopy, simply. "I think that I should like to marry you myself. I am a grown man and very rich. I would have built a very fine hut for you on my island, and I would have taken one of my girls to be your maiden."

"You are not very old, Willatopy, and it will be better fun for you not to be married just yet. My own fine big husband would not wish me to take another one, not even you."

"No," assented Willatopy, true to the strictly monogamous code of the Straits. "One time, one husband. But it is a great pity. You are very beautiful, and I love you. The Skipper he called me a nigger, Madame, but you do not call me a nigger."

"I didn't," growled Ching, to whom the whole scene was highly offensive. "But if it wasn't for Madame here I would soon show you your proper place."

"Willatopy is half white," explained Madame. "He is not an ordinary native. And you said yourself he was a daisy of a pilot."

"So he is. As a pilot and down with the men in the foc's'le he would be in his proper place. But here, talking like this before you, he makes me sick. If you will excuse me, Madame, I will go to my chart-room." Ching stumped off with a sour face, but the more politic Ewing remained. He did not propose that the novel attractions of Willatopy should have the field entirely to themselves.

Willatopy, though half white in blood and quite passably well taught by his late father and in the mission schools on Murray Island, had all the inconsequence of a native. He would jump about from one subject to another, like a bee among flowers, sipping here and there, and then skipping on forgetful of where he had last been. He continued to stare at Madame in deep admiration—never in his small experience had he seen a woman with hair so richly red, eyes of so dazzling a violet, or a figure so graciously indicated by the clinging folds of a modern dress. His idea of woman had hitherto been of the crudest—black hair and eyes, and brown limbs fully revealed. But though he continued to be absorbed by the feminine mystery of Madame—there is no mystery about nakedness—he forgot all about his recent matrimonial suggestions.

"I sail everywhere in my yawl," said he. "When the tide is high I go straight over the reefs. They are nothing. But when the water falls I keep to the channels. Not the deep channels; the little ones which wander in and out among the islands. It was my father's yawl. He brought her out from England, from his own country. She was built—I forget where; perhaps I shall remember soon. It is no matter. In Baru, where I live with my mother and my sisters, my father bought miles and miles of shore and forest. It is all mine now, though my mother calls it hers. My father said to me, 'It will be all yours, Willie, when I die, though your mother must keep it while she lives.' My father was very rich, and I am now very rich. I do not work. There are fish, plenty fish, in the sea; we catch them with nets and in our hands. We are Hula fishers, and the sea is our home as much as the land. We hunt turtle and dugong. Both are easy. If you will come with me to my island, Madame, I will show you how to fish on the Barrier Reef and how to hunt the dugong with spears, and to catch the silly turtle with suckers. My father said, 'When God plants bananas and papaw and chestnuts in the woods, and fills the sea with fish and dugong, and turtle, there is no need for man to waste his life in work.' My father loved Baru and the Hula more than he loved England and the English. My father was a beachcomber," added Willatopy, proudly.

"I have never sailed the southern part of these Straits," said Ewing. "But I know New Guinea. The Hula tribe belong to New Guinea."

"That is so," assented Willatopy. "My father took my mother from the Hula pile village at Bulaa, and brought her to Baru, which he bought. Not the whole island, but miles and miles of shore and forest. I am half English and half Hula, but I love Hula and hate English. Except you, Madame. When I go to Thursday Island in my yawl to see my banker and to get my money—it comes from England, my money does, in big bags—I see English, and Japanese, plenty Japanese, but I do not love them, not a bit. I shall never go to England. My father said when I was so, so high: 'Always stick to Hula, Willie, never go to England.' And I never will."

Madame reflected. She was called upon to make a decision of some moment. Now that Willatopy, risen from the sea, had taken possession of the Humming Top, it was plain that he must remain on board until she let go her anchor at his island home. She would never arrive without him. Ching was an excellent deep-sea sailor, but Willatopy was immeasurably his superior as a pilot of the Straits. It was also obvious that the blood connection between Willatopy and the Family of Toppys must soon come out, though it would not necessarily be assumed that he was the legitimate heir of the family title. Half blood is much more common than legitimacy. Madame, of course, did not intend at any time to disclose the fact of her pre-knowledge. The revelation of Willatopy's parentage must be drawn from the artless boy himself. And since it seemed to Madame that a disclosure must come sooner or later, it were on the whole better that it should come sooner. Her task would thereby be made the more easy. So she led the boy gently, imperceptibly, to the point at which his identity would become manifest. From Gossip Ewing the toothsome scandal would spread over the ship as rapidly as if one shouted it from the bridge.

"I am very dark," observed Willatopy, flying off upon quite a new tack, "darker than my mother, who is pure Hula. Though I have the blue eyes of my father, my skin is very dark; it is like my face all over. When I go to Thursday Island I wear these white clothes, but at home in my island I wear nothing—almost nothing. When you come to my island, Madame, you shall dress Hula fashion like my sisters. My sisters are very pale skinned; my father said that they were the colour of fawns in England."

"You remember your father very well," said Madame, ignoring the suggestion of a future costume for herself. "Has he been dead long?"

"Years and years. Before the war. I was so high when he died." Willatopy indicated the stature of a boy of about twelve. "But I remember him very well indeed. He and I used to sail together in the yawl, and I learned all the channels; every one. He always said to me, 'Be wise when you grow up, Willie. Stick to Tops Island. Never go to England. They are all ravening wolves in England where every man preys on his neighbour.' He meant, I think, that the English are cannibals. The Hula cut off the heads of their enemies—it is the custom—but they are not cannibals any longer. The English are cannibals. They devour one another."

Madame laughed, and thought of Roger Gatepath. This was a turning of the tables in rich earnest. "Your father meant that there are very many English crowded upon a small island, and that they try to get money from one another."

"They are just like that in Thursday Island," cried Willatopy eagerly, to show that he understood. "When I go there for my money, and carry it away in a bag, the English try to make me drink so that they may steal my money. But they never get it. I do not drink when I have my bag to guard."

"Good man," said Ewing, with approval. "Never mix up whisky and business."

"Never mix up whisky with anything," advised Madame sententiously.

"I never do," observed Ewing, grinning at her.

"Be quiet, Alexander. Willatopy has taken warning by that horrible countryman of yours in Thursday Island, and means always to be a good boy. He won't drink even when he hasn't a bag to guard. And now, Willie, tell us. Do you remember what part of England your father sailed from?"

Willatopy puckered his forehead. He was not accustomed to search his memory. The personality of the father had made a deep ineradicable impression upon the boy, but he knew very little of his origin and sought not to enquire. The savage half of him took everything as it came without comment.

"It was by the sea, I am sure," said he at last, "for there was a big battle long ago which the English won. It was a battle at sea. It is all in the history books at Murray Island." He dismissed the subject, but Madame stuck to her questions.

"Whom did the English beat?" she asked.

"I don't know," indifferently. "Yes, I remember. Spaniards."

"Was it the Spanish Armada?"

"Yes, that was it. The Spanish Armada. My father's father fought the Spaniards." Willatopy's conception of time did not reach much beyond a single generation. Centuries and historical dates conveyed nothing to him.

"Yon place must have been Plymouth," observed Ewing. Madame, for one, blessed the gratuitously informative Scot.

"Thank you, Alexander. You are quick. So your father came from Devonshire?"

"Yes, Devonshire. He often spoke to me of that country. I had forgotten. The yawl was built there—at Tops Ham, the Home of the Toppys, my father's home. He sailed straight away from the Home of the Toppys to Baru. It is Baru in the native speech," explained Willatopy. "But we often call it Tops Island."

The murder was out now. Madame stared at Ewing, opening her eyes very wide, and Ewing stared at her.

"What is all this?" exclaimed the puzzled Chief. "The Home of Toppys—Tops Island. I don't clearly comprehend. What is your name, boy?"

"Willatopy."

"I know. But what is your real name, your English name?"

"Willie Toppys."

"And who the blue blazes was your father?" roared Ewing, rising up in excitement. Madame did her best to affect an equally excited interest.

"My father," said Willatopy with dignity, "was the Honourable William Toppys. He was a Great Chief in England."

Ewing fell into his chair so suddenly that its revolution nearly pitched him out again.

"Christ!" shouted he. "He is a by-blow of Mr. William."

The Chief Engineer jumped up, rushed to the chart-room, where Ching was sulking in solitude, and returned dragging his commanding officer by the coat collar.

"Ching," he roared, pointing at Willatopy. "D'ye ken the bairn's ee' noo?"

"I don't ken the Moor's blasted eye," growled Ching. "Why should I?"

"D'ye ever see an ee' like to yon oot of a Toppys heid?"

Ching grudgingly admitted that the eyes of Willatopy were by some impertinent freak of Nature not unlike those which distinguished the Family.

Madame broke in. The scene was becoming ridiculous, and Willatopy was getting cross. He felt that Ewing was making a show of him.

"Alexander," commanded Madame. "Sit down and keep quiet. Captain," she went on, "we have just discovered that Willatopy our pilot is a son of Mr. William Toppys, who went to the South Seas twenty years ago and died there."

"I expect that our Mr. William has left a lot of brown brats scattered up and down the Islands," grunted Ching. "The boy is a good and useful pilot, but half blood don't make him a Toppys."

"He is a Toppys, and we can't treat him as a stranger in a Toppys ship. Willie," went on Madame in her sweetest, most silvery tones. "By a wonderful coincidence you have come to the help of your own people. This yacht, the Humming Top, is owned by Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan. We are all employed by the Family of which you are a member. You have dropped quite by accident among your own people. Sir John Toppys must be a cousin of yours."

"Are you a cousin of mine, Madame?" asked Willatopy eagerly.

"No. I am a friend, that is all. But aren't you frightfully interested?"

Willatopy considered the situation. "It would have been very nice to have had you for a cousin, Madame. A sort of white sister. But I don't want the Skipper to be my cousin. I am a Hula, and I do not love the English. Also I am hungry, and I want my food."

As a subject for the exhibition of frightful excitement, Willatopy was a complete failure. He was bored. He had talked himself tired and hungry. He wanted food and afterwards sleep. He had no use, as the Americans say, for the cousinhood of Sir John Toppys, Baronet of Wigan.

Ching turned his rude back upon the discovered scion of Toppys, but the kind-hearted Chief led him away, presented him to the greatly interested Officers' Mess—Marie declared that she was ravished at the discovery—and left him in their care.

Later that evening, when Madame had gone to her stateroom, the Captain and Chief Engineer drew together in their own quarters.

"I have been reckoning," observed Ewing, "how mysterious are the ways of Providence. There yonder in England is the great House of Toppys without an heir, unless it be old Sir John; and here in the South Seas there drops in one son of Mr. William, and maybe, as you say, lots more of them are round about. To him that hath shall be given more than he wants—or intends to keep—and to him that hath not shall be taken away the heirs in whom his heart rejoices. When Lord Topsham's son and nephews were all killed in the war the old man just withered away. His House is desolate. I am thinking that if this nigger here, whom they call Willatopy, had not been born the wrong side of the blanket he would now have been the long-lost heir of the Barony of Topsham."

"That's nowt," grunted Ching. "He and all like him are just spawn. There may, for all we know, be a brown Topy on every island in the Straits."

"Maybe aye, maybe no. It is like enough. The Idle Rich are bestially immoral in their habits. Still, if by some chance Mr. William had married this nigger's mother the boy would have been the Lord of Topsham. Ching, I am a grandly circumspectious man. I am uneasy, powerful uneasy. Why did Sir John Toppys send out the Humming Top to these waters with that foreign Madame on board of her? She's not his mistress, I am sure of that. She is a great French lady. Why did he do it? Did he know, think you, that there was a Willatopy here?"

"He wouldn't have bothered his head about a Moor, anyway. The yacht was idle, and Madame wanted a voyage. That's reason enough for the likes of us."

"All coloured men are not Moors, you old Elizabethan seadog. This is a brown heathen Melanesian, not a Musulman Turk. Ching, I tell you that I am uneasy. My brain is buzzing with queer thoughts. It sticks in my mind that when that Willatopy told us the name of his father, our pretty Madame wasn't nearly so surprised as she sought to make me think she was. She seemed to my mind to be expecting it."

"You've got too much mind, Ewing. That is what's the matter with you. You keep to your engine-room and I will keep to my bridge. The ways of the gentry have nowt to do with us."

At about the same time Marie was brushing out the red gold mane which flowed in splendid waves over Madame's broad back. There was nothing grudged when Madame was designed and built. Beauty and power went hand in hand at her fashioning. She could have crumpled up Marie, the sinuous French girl, in her strong hands, and stuffed her body through a port-hole. Their talk was carried on in vivid French; I will do my best to render its purport in pale English.

"Did you ever see such eyes?" sighed Marie. "They go through me like swords. And his feet and hands. Quite small, Madame. It is easy to see that his blood is of the brightest azure. Did you say his father was an English Lord?"

"Marie," said Madame, crossly. "You are disgustingly promiscuous. I have allowed you two deck officers and two engineers. All fine handsome white men. Yet you must now be googling at a coffee-coloured savage. I won't have it, Marie."

"He is not a savage; he is most intellectual. His English is perfect—much better than mine. And he knows a few words, they are certainly but a few, of our French tongue. He is aristocrat. Is he not a cousin of the rich Sir John Toppys?"

"It is a cousinship which the aristocracy do not usually recognise," observed Madame drily. "Willatopy is in my charge, and I won't have him played with. Especially by an old campaigner like you. Do what you please with the officers, I give them to you, but leave Willatopy alone. These half-castes are dangerous to meddle with. Remember, if I have any reason to suspect that you are up to your usual tricks, I will send you straight back to France."

Marie shuddered, and promised that she would be cold as an icicle. She shivered as if her blood had been physically chilled, for there were grave reasons, the very gravest of reasons, why Marie Lambert did not desire to be sent back to France.