“Oh yes,” replied Gust, scratching his head. He was wondering if the Maori were really so ignorant as to believe the preposterous lie he was about to unload upon him. “Oh yes! You see every warship is equipped with what they call a wireless apparatus. It lets them talk to other ships hundreds of miles away, and it lets them listen to all that is said on these other ships. Now, you see, when you fellows were shooting up the Cowrie you did a whole lot of loud talking, and there isn’t any doubt but that that warship was a-lyin’ off south of us listenin’ to it all. Of course they might not have learned the name of the ship, but they heard enough to know that the crew of some ship was mutinying and killin’ her officers. So you see they’ll be waiting to search every ship they sight for a long time to come, and they may not be far away now.” When he had ceased speaking the Swede strove to assume an air of composure that his listener might not have his suspicions aroused as to the truth of the statements that had just been made. Momulla sat for some time in silence, eyeing Gust. 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. But Momulla was even more curious than he was superstitious, and so he quelled his natural desire to flee from the supernatural. Motioning his companions to follow his example, he dropped to his hands and knees, crawling forward stealthily and with quakings of heart through the jungle in the direction from which came the voices of the unseen speakers.