when the firing had ceased and the boat had returned to the ship the wretched people hiding amongst the mammee apple had come out and grouped themselves around aioma and taori. taori had saved them for the moment by his act in swimming out to attack the boat; he was no longer their chief, but their god, and yet some instinctive knowledge of the wickedness of man and of the tenacity and power of the white men told them that all was not over.
amongst them as they waited whilst aioma and katafa distributed food, sat two women, nanu and ona, each with a dead child clasped in her arms. the child of nanu had been killed instantaneously by a bullet that had pierced its neck and the arm of its mother. ona’s child, pierced in its body, had died slowly, bleeding its life away and wailing as it bled.
these two women, high cheeked, frizzy-headed and of the old fierce melanesian stock which formed the backbone and hitting force of karolin, were strange to watch as they sat nursing their dead, speechless, passionless, heedless of food or drink or what might happen. the others ate, too paralysed by the events of the day to prepare food for themselves, they yet took what was given to them with avidity, then, when dark came, they crept back into the bushes to sleep, whilst dick, leaving katafa in charge of aioma, left the trees and under cover of the darkness came along the beach past the bodies, over which the birds were still at work, until he was level with the schooner.
she showed no lights on deck, no sign of life but the two tiny dim golden discs of the cabin portholes.
taking his seat on a weather-worn piece of coral, he sat watching her. forward, close to the foc’sle head, he saw now two forms, le moan and kanoa; they drew together, then they vanished, the deck now seemed deserted, but he continued to watch. already in his mind he foresaw vaguely the plan of rantan. to-morrow they would not use the boat, they would move the schooner, bring her opposite the village and then with those terrible things that could speak so loudly and hit so far they would begin again—and where could the people go? the forty-mile reef would be no protection; away from the trees and the puraka patches the people would starve, they would have no water. the people were tied to the village.
he sat with his chin on his clenched fists staring at the schooner and the two evil golden eyes that were staring him back like the eyes of a beast.
if only a single canoe had been left he would have paddled off and, with aioma and maybe another for help, would have attacked, but the canoes were gone— and the dinghy.
then as he sat helpless, with hatred and the fury of hell in his heart, the golden eyes vanished. rantan had put out the light.
with the rising moon he saw as in a glass, darkly, little by little and bit by bit, the tragedy we have seen in full. he saw the grouping of the foc’sle hands as they came up from below, he saw them disappear as they sat on deck. then he saw the figure of le moan, her halt at the saloon hatch and the following of kanoa, he heard the scream of the stricken carlin.
lastly he saw the crowding of the hands aft, carlin’s body being dragged on deck and cast overboard into a lather of moonshine and phosphorus, and something white carried shoulder high to forward of the galley where it was laid on deck.
then after a few moments lights began to break out, lanterns moved on the deck, the portholes broke alive again and again were blotted out as the cabin lamp lit and taken from its attachments was carried on deck and swung from the ratlins of the main for decorative purposes. the moon gave all the light that any man in his sober senses could want, but the crew of the schooner were not sober, they were drunk with the excitement of the business, and though nominally free men they felt as slaves feel when their bonds are removed. besides, rantan and carlin had plotted to kill them as they had killed sru and the others. on top of that there was a bottle of ginger wine. it had been stored in the medicine locker—peterson, like many other seamen, had medical fancies of his own and he believed this stuff to be a specific for the colic. it had escaped carlin’s attention, but poni, who acted as steward, had sniffed at it, tasted it and found it good.
it was served out in a tin cup.
then, across the water came the sound of voices, the twanging of a native fiddle, and now the whoop-whoop of dancers in the hula dance songs, laughter against which came the thunder of the moonlit sea on the outer beach and an occasional cry from the gulls at their food.
dick, rising, made back towards the trees; his heart felt easier. without knowing what had occurred, he still knew that something had happened to divide his enemies, that they had quarrelled, and that one had been killed; that, with sru and his companions, made five gone since the schooner had dropped anchor.
lying down beside katafa, whilst taiepu kept watch, he fell asleep.
at dawn taiepu, shouting like a gull, came racing through the trees whilst the bushes gave up their people. they came crowding out on the beach to eastward of the trees and there, sure enough, was le moan, the schooner against the blaze at the gates of morning, and the boat hanging a hundred yards off shore.
kneeling on the sands before taori, glancing sometimes up into his face, swiftly, as one glances at the sun, le moan told her tale whilst the sun itself now fully risen blazed upon the man before her.
dick listened, gathered from the artless story the sacrifices she had made at first, the heroism she had shown to the last, but nothing of her real motive, nothing of the passion that came nigh to crushing her as katafa, catching her in her arms, and, pressing her lips on her forehead, led her away tenderly as a sister to the shelter of the trees.
then the mob, true to itself and forgetting their saviour, turning, raced along the sands, boys, women and children, till they got level with the waiting boat shouting welcome to the newcomers.
poni in the stern sheets rose and waved his arms, the boat driven by a few strokes reached the beach and next moment the crew of the kermadec and the people of karolin were fraternizing—embracing one another like long-lost relatives.
and now a strange thing happened.
dick, who stood watching all this, deposed for a moment as chief men are sometimes temporarily deposed and forgotten in moments of great national heart movements, saw in the boat, the naked, bound figure of rantan lying on the bottom boards.
he came closer and the eyes of rantan, which were open, met the eyes of taori.
rantan was a white man.
there was no appeal in the eyes of rantan—he who knew the islands so well knew that his number was up; he gazed at the golden brown figure of taori, gazed at that face so strange for a kanaka, yet so truly the face of an islander, gazed as a white man upon a native.
for a moment it was as though race gazed upon kindred race disowning it, not seeing it, mistaking it for an alien and lower race and from deep in the mind of dick vague and phantom-like rose trouble.
he did not know that he himself was a white man, blood brother of the man in the boat. he knew nothing, yet he felt trouble. he turned to aioma.
“will he die?”
“ay, most surely will he die,” said the old fellow with a chuckle. “will the dog-fish not die when he is caught? he who killed the canoes, the children, is it not just that he should die?”
dick inclined his head without speaking. he turned to where nanu and the other woman were standing, waiting, terrible, with their dead children still clasped in their arms.
“it is just,” said he, “see to it, aioma,” and turning without another glance at the boat he walked away, past the shattered canoes, past the half-picked bones, through the sunlight, towards the trees.
aioma, no longer himself, but something more evil, came towards the boat making little bird-like noises, rubbing his shrivelled hands together, stroking his thighs.
the tide was just at full ebb, the old ledge where the victims of nanawa were staked out in past times for the sharks to eat was uncovered and only waiting for a victim. it lay halfway between the village and the reef break and in old times one might have known when an execution was to take place by the fins of the tiger sharks cruising around it. this morning there were no sharks visible.
rantan was reserved for a worse fate; for, as aioma, standing by the boat, called on the people to take their vengeance, the woman nanu, still holding her dead child in her arms stepped up to him followed by ona.
“he is ours,” said nanu.
aioma turned on her like a savage old dog—he was about to push her back amongst the crowd when ona advanced a step.
“he is ours,” said ona, glancing at the form in the boat as though it were a parcel she was claiming, whilst the crowd, reaching to the woods, broke in, speaking almost with one voice.
“he is theirs, he has slain their children, let them have him for a child.”
“so be it,” said aioma, too much of a diplomat to oppose the mob on a matter of sentiment, and curious as to what gory form of vengeance the women would adopt. “so be it, and now what will you do with him?”
“we will take him to the southern beach with us. we alone,” said nanu.
“we would be alone with him,” said ona, shifting her dead child from her right to her left arm as one might shift a parcel.
“but how will you take him?” asked the old man.
“in a canoe,” said nanu.
“then go and build it,” said the canoe-builder. “what foolishness is this, for well you know the canoes are broken.”
“aioma,” said nanu, “there is one little canoe which is yet whole, it lies in the further canoe-house, so far in that it has been forgotten; it belonged to my man, the father of my child, he who went with the others but did not return. i have never spoken of it and no one has seen it, for no one goes into the canoe-houses now that the great canoes are gone.”
“then let it be fetched,” said aioma. he stood whilst a dozen of the crowd broke away and racing towards the trees disappeared in the direction of the canoe-houses. presently the canoe, a fishing outrigger, showed on the water of the lagoon, two boys at the paddles. they beached it close to the boat, the dead children were lashed to the gratings with strips of coconut sennit, rantan, raised by half a dozen pairs of hands, was lifted and placed in the bottom of the little craft, and the women, pushing off, got on board, and raised the sail.
the steering paddle flashed and the crowd stood watching as the canoe grew less on the surface of the water, less and less, making for the southern beach, till now it was no larger than a midge in the lagoon dazzle that, striking back at the sun, roofed karolin with a forty-mile dome of radiance.
