o be dropping
into their places within my brain like the pieces of a picture puzzle
that has suddenly become plain to the eye of the child who is putting it
together. I understood! My brain seemed bursting within my skull. It
appeared to me that God, in his own way, had made me a blind instrument
to do his work. The big Maori on the wharf at Levuka knew of the hell
upon the Isle of Tears. The Maori had warned Toni, the little Fijian,
but fear of what might happen to any one possessing the knowledge had
made Toni deny that he was the companion of the Maori when he was
questioned before and after he had reached _The Waif_. In a burst of
confidence he had confessed the truth to me on the afternoon after I had
saved him from being washed overboard, but the confession had been made
in the presence of Soma, and, as Kaipi asserted, it had cost Toni his
life. Leith, alias Black Fernando, had ordered the big Kanaka to put the
possessor of such important information out of the way.

I repeated over and over again the words which the Maori had addressed
to his woolly headed pupil on that hot day at Levuka. They raced madly
round in my mind, as if exultant because I had found the reason why they
persisted in storing themselves in the cells of my brain. The soul
within me had known that the knowledge would be wanted!

"How many paces?" asked the Professor.

"Sixty!" I roared; and then, seized with temporary insanity, I chanted
the song of the Maori at the top of my voice:

"Sixty paces to the left,
Sixty paces to the left,
That's the way to heaven,
That's the way to heaven,
That's the way to heaven out
Of Black Fernando's hell."

"And here's the waterfall!" cried Holman, "Go easy now! It must be
flowing into some hole, and we don't want to fall into an abyss just as
Verslun has discovered the way out."

We advanced cautiously toward the spot where, as Edith had said, the
water sparkled like fireflies in the darkness. It was an eerie place. We
knew that the water was there by the sound it made flowing over the
rocks, but, except for the tiny sparks of phosphorescent light that
seemed to fly out from it, we could not see it. The spectacle thrilled
us. A million sparks of light seemed to rise from the bed of feldspar
over which the water leaped, and the peculiar quality of the rock gave
to it the weird brilliancy which held us spellbound as we advanced with
extreme caution. It wasn't white by any means, but in