That night as the second mate and his companions were sleeping peacefully under the thatched roofs of the little native village, with nought to disturb their slumbers but the gentle lapping of the waters of the lagoon on the sandy beach, and the ceaseless call of the reef beyond, Hendry and his companion in crime were sitting in their boat talking earnestly.
The captain was steering; Chard sat on the after-thwart, facing him.
“I tell you that I don't care much what we do, Louis,” said the supercargo, with a reckless laugh, as he looked into the captain's sullen face. “We've made a damned mess of it, and I don't see how we are to get out of it by going to Ponapé.”
“Then what are we to do?” asked Hendry in a curious, husky voice, for Chard's mocking, careless manner filled him with a savage hatred, which only his fear of the man made him restrain.
“Let us talk it over quietly, Louis. But take a drink first,” and he handed the captain some rum-and-water. Hendry drank it in gloomy silence, and waited till the supercargo had taken some himself.
“Now, Louis, here is the position. Wecan'tgo to Ponapé, for Atkins will very likely get there as soon as we could, for with light winds such as we have had to-day he would soon pass us with six oars, deep as he is in the water. And even if we got there a week before him, we might not find a ship bound to Sydney or anywhere else.”
“But there is a chance of finding one.”
“True, thereisa chance. But there is also a chance of Atkins's boat being picked up at sea this very day, or the next, or a month hence, and he and his crowd reaching Sydney long before us. AndIdon't want to run my neck into the noose that will be waiting there. Neither do you, I suppose?”
“Why in the name of hell do you keep on talking aboutthat?” burst from the captain; “don't I know it as well as you?”
“Very well, I won't allude to such an unpleasant possibility—Ishouldsay certainty—again,” replied Chard coolly. “But as I was saying, the chances are against us. If we kept on for Ponapé we should either be collared the moment we put foot ashore, or before we get away from there to China or any other place, for Atkins is bound to turn up there, unless, by a stroke of good luck for us, he meets with bad weather, and they all go to the bottom. That's one chance in our favour.”
“His boat is certainly very deep,” said Hendry musingly, as he nervously stroked his long beard.
“She is; but then she has a kanaka crew, and I never yet heard of a drowned kanaka, any more than I've heard of a dead donkey. With a white crew she would stand to run some heavy risks in bad weather, with kanakas she'd keep afloat anyhow.”
Hendry uttered an oath, and tugged at his beard savagely. “Go on, go on, then. Don't keep harping on the pros and cons.”
“Take another drink, man. Don't behave like a fretful child. Curse it all! To think of us being euchred so easily by Carr and Atkins! Why, they must have half a boat load of Winchester and Sniders, judging by the way they were firing.... There, drink that, Louis. Oh, if we had had but a couple of those long trade Sniders out of the trade-room!” He struck his clenched fist upon the thwart. “We could have kept our own distance from the second mate, and finished him and his crowd as easily as we did the others.”
“Well, we didn't have them,” said the captain gloomily; “and if we had thought of getting them, we were neither of us able to stand on our feet after the mauling we got on board.”
Chard drank some more rum, and went on smoking in silence for a few moments; then he resumed:
“You have a wife and family and property in Sydney, and I feel sorry for you, Louis, by God, I do. But for you to think of going there again means certain death, as certain for you as it is for me. But this is what wecando. We have a good boat, and well found, and can steer for the Admiralty Group, where we are dead sure to meet with some of the sperm whalers. From there we can get a passage to Manila, and at Manila you can write to your wife and fix up your future. Get her to sell your house and property quietly, and come and join you there. I daresay,” he laughed mockingly, “she'll know by the time she gets your letter that you're not likely to go to Sydney to bring her. And then of course none of her and your friends will think it strange that she should leave Sydney, where your name and mine will be pretty notorious. There's two Dutch mail boats running to Manila from Sydney—theAtjehand theGeneraal Pel. In six months' time, after Atkins and Carr get to Sydney, theMotutapuaffair will be forgotten, and you and your family can settle down under a new name in some other part of the world. That is what I mean to do, anyway.”
Hendry listened with the closest attention, and something like a sigh escaped from his over-burdened bosom. “I suppose it's the best thing, Sam.”
“It is theonlything.”
The captain bent down and looked at the compass and thought for a moment.
“About S.W. will be the course for tonight. To-morrow I can tell better when I get the sun and a look at the chart. Anyway, S.W. is within a point or less of a good course for the Admiralty Group.”
He wore the boat's head round, as Chard eased off the main-sheet in silence, and for the rest of the night they took turn and turn about at the steer-oar.
In the morning a light breeze set in, and the whaleboat slipped over the sunlit sea like a snow-white bird, with the water bubbling and hissing under her clean-cut stem. Then Hendry examined his chart.
“We'll sight nothing between here and the Admiralty Group, except Greenwich Island, which is right athwart our course.”
“Do you know it?”
“No; but I've heard that there is a passage into the lagoon. We might put in and spell there for a day or two; or, if we don't go inside, we could land anywhere on one of the lee-side islands, and get some young coconuts and a turtle or two.”
“Any natives there?”
“Not any, as far as I know, though I've heard that there were a few there about twenty years ago. I expect they have either died out or emigrated to the northward. And if there are any there, and they don't want us to land, we can go on and leave them alone. We have plenty of provisions for a month, and will get more water than we want every night as long as we are in this cursed rainy belt. What we do want is wind. This breeze has no heart in it, and it looks like a calm before noon, or else it will haul round to the wrong quarter.”
His former surmise proved correct, for about midday the boat was becalmed on an oily, steamy sea under a fierce, brazen sun. This lasted for the remainder of the day, and then was followed by the usual squally night.
And so for three days they sailed, making but little progress during the daytime, for the wind was light and baffling, but doing much better at night.
On the evening of the third day they sighted the northernmost islet of Pikirami lagoon, and stood by under its lee till daylight, little dreaming that those whose life-blood they would so eagerly have shed were sleeping calmly and peacefully in the native village fifteen miles away.
With the dawn came a sudden terrific downpour of rain, which lasted but for a few minutes, and both Chard and Hendry knew, from their own experience and from the appearance of the sky, that such outbursts were likely to continue for at least five or six days, with but brief intervals of cessation.
“We might as well get ashore somewhere about here,” said Hendry; “this is the tail-end of the rainy season, and we can expect heavy rain and nasty squalls for a week at least. It's come on a bit earlier than I expected, and I think we'll be better ashore than boxing about at sea. Can you see the land to the south'ard?”
Chard stood up and shielded his eyes from the still falling rain, but it was too thick for him to discern anything but the misty outline of the palm-fringed shore immediately near them.
“We'll wait a bit till it's a little clearer, and then we'll run in over the reef just abreast of us,” said Hendry; “it's about high water, and as there is no surf we can cross over into the lagoon without any trouble, and pick out a camping-place somewhere on the inner beach.”
They lowered the sail and mast, took out their oars, and waited till they could see clearly before them. A few minutes later they were pulling over the reef, on which there was no break, and in another half a mile they reached the shore of the most northern of the chain of islets encompassing the lagoon, and made the boat's painter fast to the serried roots of a pandanus palm growing at the edge of the water.
Then they sought rest and shelter from the next downpour beneath the overhanging summits of some huge, creeper-clad boulders of coral rock, which lay piled together in the midst of the dense scrub, just beyond high-water mark.
Bringing their arms and some provisions from the boat, they placed them on the dry sandy soil under one of the boulders, ate their breakfast, and then slept the sleep of men mentally and physically exhausted.
When they awoke the rain had cleared off, and the sun was shining brightly. By the captain's watch it was a little past one o'clock, and after looking at the boat, which was high and dry on the beach; for the tide was now dead low, Chard suggested that they should make a brief examination of the islet, and get come young drinking and some fully-grown coconuts for use in the boat.
“Very likely we'll find some turtle eggs too,” he added; “this and next month is the season. We are bound to get a turtle or two, anyway, if we watch to-night on the beach.”
Returning to the camp, they picked up their loaded Winchesters and started off, walking along the beach on the inner side of the lagoon, and going in a northerly direction. The islet, although less than a mile and a half in circumference, was densely wooded and highly fertile, for in addition to the countless coco-palms which were laden with nuts in all stages of growth, and fringed the shore in an unbroken circle, there were great numbers of pandanus and jackfruit-trees growing further back. Here and there were to be seen traces of former inhabitants—depressions of an acre or so in extent, surrounded by high banks of soil, now thickly clothed with verdure, and which Chard, who had had a fair experience of the South Seas, knew were once plantations ofpuraka, the gigantictaroplant of the low-lying islands of the South and North Pacific.
“It must be a hundred years or more since any one worked at thesepurakapatches,” he said to Hendry, as he sat upon the top of a bank and looked down. “Look at the big trees growing all around us on the banks. There can't be natives living anywhere on the atoll now, so I don't think we need to keep a night watch as long as we stop here.”
But had Harvey Carr or any one of the native crew sat there on the bank,theywould have quickly discovered many evidences of the spot having been visited very recently—the broken branch of a tree, a leaf basket lying flattened and rotting, and half covered by the sandy soil; a necklace of withered berries thrown aside by a native girl, and the crinkled and yellowed husks of some young coconuts which had been drunk not many weeks before by a fishing party.
At the extreme northern point of the islet there stood a mound of coral slab, piled up by the action of the sea, and similar to the much larger one fifteen miles away at the other end of the lagoon. With some difficulty the two men succeeded in gaining the summit, and from there, at a height of fifty feet, they had a view of the greater portion of the atoll, and of some of the green chain of islands it enclosed. On no one of them could they discern signs of human occupancy, only long, long lines of cocos, with graceful slender boles leaning westward to the sea, and whose waving crowns of plumes cast their shadows upon the white sand beneath. From the beach itself to the barrier reef, a mile or two away, the water was a clear, pale green, unblemished in its purity except by an occasional patch of growing coral, which changed its colours from grey to purple and from purple to jetty black as a passing cloud for a brief space dimmed the lustre of the tropic sun. Beyond the line of green the great curving sweep of reef, with the snow-white, ever-breaking, murmuring surf churning and frothing upon it; and, just beyond that, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific.
“There's no natives here, Louis,” said Chard confidently, as his keen, black eyes traversed the scene before them; “we can see a clear seven or eight miles along the beaches, and there's not a canoe to be seen on any one of them. We'll spell here for a day or two, or more, if the weather has not settled.”
Hendry nodded in his usual sullen manner. “All right. We want a day to overhaul the boat thoroughly; the mainsail wants looking to as well.”
“Well, let us get back, and then we'll have a look over the next islet to this one before dark. We may come across some turtle tracks and get a nest of eggs.”
They descended the mound, and set out along the outer beach on their way back to the camp.
Had they remained but a few minutes longer they would have seen two canoes come into view about three miles to the southward, paddling leisurely towards the northernmost islet.
The two canoes were manned by some of the crew of theMotutaputogether with six natives of Pikirami; one was steered by Harvey, the other by Huka the Savage Islander; and as they paddled along within a few feet of each other the crews laughed and jested in the manner inherent to all the Malayo-Polynesians when intent on pleasure.
That morning Harvey, tiring of the inaction of the past three days, had eagerly assented to a proposal made by Huka that they should make a trip round the lagoon, and spend a day or two away from the village, fishing and shooting. Several young Pikirami natives at once launched two of their best canoes, and placed them at Harvey's and Atkins's service, and offered to go with the party and do all the paddling, cooking, etc.
“Ay,” said Nena the head-man, a little wizen-faced but kindly-eyed old fellow, whose body was so deeply tatooed in broad vertical bands that scarcely a strip of brown skin could be seen—“ay, ye must take my young men; for are ye not our guests, ye, and the brown sailor men as well? and they shall tend on ye all. That is our custom to strangers who have come to us as friends.”
Preparations were at once made for a start, and Harvey went to tell Tessa, whom he found in the house allotted to her, listening to Atkins, who was planning some improvements in the interior so as to add to her comfort.
“I wish I could go with you, Harvey,” said Tessa with a bright smile; “it would be like the old days in Ponapé, with you and my brothers. How long will you be away?”
“Perhaps two days. Will you come, Atkins?”
“Not me! The less salt water I see and the less rain-water I feel for another week the better I'll like it. Besides, I'm going to do a bit of carpentering work for Miss Remington. We may have to hang out here for a month before that Dutch schooner comes along, and I'm just going to set to work and make Miss Remington comfy. And if you had any sense, Harvey, you'd stay under shelter instead of trying to get another dose of shakes by going out and fooling around in a canoe.”
Harvey laughed. “There's no more fever for me, Atkins. I'm clear of it. That little boat trip of ours has knocked it clean out of my bones, and if you don't believe me, I'm willing to prove it by getting to the top of that coconut-tree outside there in ten seconds' quicker time than you can do it.”
The boat voyage had certainly done him good, and although he had by no means thoroughly recovered his strength, his cheeks had lost their yellow, haggard look, and his eyes were bright with returning health. Atkins, who knew that Tessa was to become his wife, looked first at him and then at her with sly humour twinkling in his honest grey eyes. Then he took his pipe out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.
“Well, I'll come back by and by. Two is company, and three is none. The soonerIgo, the better you'll like it, and the sooneryougo, Harvey, the sooner I can get to work;” and so saying he walked out.
Tessa's dark eyes danced with fun as she walked backwards from Harvey, and leaning against the thatched side of the house, put her finger to her lips. “What abeautifulsensible man he is, isn't he, Harvey?”
“He's a man after my own heart, Tessa,” and then Maoni, who sat smoking a cigarette in a corner of the room, discreetly turned her back as certain sibilant sounds were frequently repeated for a minute or two.
“Harvey, you sinner,” she whispered, “I don't like you a bit. Really and truly I don't.... Now,now, no more.... Maoni can hear you, I'm sure. Theideaof your going away for two days—two whole days—and marching calmly up to me and telling me of it in such a rude, matter-of-fact manner. Youareunkind....Don't.... I don't like you, Harvey... I'll tell father that you went away and left me for two whole days—to go fishing and pig-shooting, and poor Mr. Atkins had to look after me, and... oh, Harvey, Harvey, isn't it lovely! Father will be so glad, and so will Carmela and Jack, and Librada and Ned. Harvey dear, I do hope your sisters will like me. Perhaps they will think I am only a native girl.... Oh,dobe careful, I can see Maoni's back shaking. Sheknowsyou're kissing me, I'm sure.”
“Don't care if she does; don't care if she sees me kissing you, like this, and this,andthis; don't care if Atkins sees us.”
Her low, happy laugh sounded like the trill of a bird. “Harvey dear, do you remember the day when we went to Róan Kiti in Ponapé—when you were sailing theBelle Brandonfor father?”
Harvey didn't remember, but, like a sensible lover, said he did, and emphasised his remembrance in a proper manner.
“Well, now, listen... Oh, you horrid fellow, why do you look at me as if I were a baby! Now, I shan't tell you anything at all.... There, don't pretend to be sorry, for you know... oh, Harvey dear, Imusttell you.”
“Tell me, dearest.”
“That's a good boy, a good would-be-climbing-a-coconut-tree youth, who wanted to show off before poor Atkins who told me just now that you were 'the whitest man in the South Seas.' He did really.”
“Atkins is 'an excellent good man,' and you are the sweetest and most beautiful girl inallthe wide, wide Pacific. Come, tell me what it is that youmusttell me.”
“I'll tell you if you don't kiss me any more. Maoni's eyes can see round her shoulders, I believe. Ido wishshe wasn't here.... Well, that day when you and I were climbing up the mountain-path you let a branch swing back—you careless thing—and it hit me in the face and hurt me terribly, and you took me up in your arms and kissed me. Oh, Harvey, don't you remember? Kissed me, just because I was crying like a baby. Harvey dear, I was only fourteen then, but I loved you then—that was the real,verybeginning of it all, I think. And then I went away to school to San Francisco, andyouwent away—and I suppose you never thought one little bit about me again.”
“Indeed I did, Tess” (here was a silent but well-employed interlude); “I often thought of you, dear, but not as a lover thinks. For in those days you were to me only a sweet child (if Maoni wasn't here I'd pick you up and nurse you), a sweet, sweet little comrade whose dear, soft eyes used to smile into mine whenever I stepped into your father's house, and——”
“Oh, Harvey, Harvey! I have never, never forgotten you.There!andthere!andthere!I don't care if Maoni, or any one, or all the world sees me,” and she flung her soft arms round his neck and kissed him again and again in the sheer abandonment of her innocent happiness. “But you reallyloveme now, Harvey, don't you? And oh, Harvey dear, where shall we live? And your sisters... if they don't like me?”
Harvey stroked her soft hair, and pressed his lips to her cheeks.
“They won'tlikeyou, Tess. They'll just love you—and they'll make me jealous.”
Again her happy laugh trilled out. “How lovely!... Harvey dear?”
“Yes, Tess.”
“I want to tell you something—something that only mother knows, something about me—and a man.”
Harvey looked smilingly into her deep, tender eyes, half-suffused with tears.
“Go ahead, dear.”
“Go ahead, indeed! You rough, rude sailor! Any one would think I was a man by the way you speak to me... But, Harvey dear, listen... there was a man who wanted to marry me.”
Harvey was all attention at once. “Sit down here, little woman, and tell me who the———”
“Sh! Don't swear, or I won't tell you anything, notanything at all, about it.... Harvey dear, why do you want to go away fishing? Stay here, and help poor Mr. Atkins.”
“Who was the man, Tess?”
“Are you really, really going away for two whole days?”
“I am, sweet.”
“Harvey dear, I'll tell you all about it. You won't be angry?”
“All depends. Who was the man?”
His laughing eyes belied his assumed sternness of visage, for in her eyes there shone a light so serenely pure that he knew he had naught to dread.
“A very,verynice man, sir. Now try and guess who it was?”
“Old Schuler, the fat German trader at Yap.”
“Oh, you wretch, Harvey! He's been married three times, and has dozens and dozens of all sorts of coloured children.... Now there! Guess again or I'll twist this side of your moustache until I make you cry.... Harvey dear, who was the girl whose photograph was over your bunk in father's schooner?”
“I forget. Most likely it was my sister Kate,” was the prompt reply.
“I don't believe you, Mr. Harvey Carr. But I'll find out all aboutyouby and by. You'll have to just tell meeverything. Now guess again.”
“The captain of theLafayette. He asked each of your sisters to marry him, I know, and I suppose you followed in turn as soon as you began to wear long dresses.”
“That horrible man! We all hated him. No, indeed, it was somebody better than the captain of a whaler.”
“Don't be so superior, Tess. Your brother Ned hopes to be skipper of a whaler some day.”
“But Ned is very good-looking, and——”
“So was old Ayton before he lost his teeth, and one eye, and began 'ter chaw terbacker' and drink Bourbon by the gallon.... Beauty is only skin deep, my child.”
“Oh, you, you—I don't know what to call you, but I do know that I have a round turn of your moustache in my hand, and could make you go on your knees if I liked. Now guess again; you're getting 'warmer,' because it—heI mean—is a captain. Quick, and don't struggle so. I mean to keep you here just as long as I please.”
“Well, then, old Freeman. He's a captain, or was one about a hundred years ago, when he was much younger than he is now.” (Freeman was a nonogenerian settler on Ponapé and a neighbour of Tessa's father.)
“Don't be so silly! I've a great mind not to tell you at all, but as you haven't whimpered when I pulled your moustache Ishalltell you—it—he, I mean—was Captain Reade, of the United States shipNarrangansett. Now!”
Then all her raillery vanished in a moment. “He was a great friend of father's, you know, Harvey; and first he asked father, and father said I was too young, and then when I was leaving school in San Francisco to come home he wrote to me and asked me if he could come and see me. And he did come, and asked me to marry him.”
“And you really didn't care for him, Tessa?”
“Not a bit. How could I? Harvey, I never, never thought about anybody in the world but you,” and she looked into his face with swimming eyes as he pressed his lips to hers. “There, I'll let you go now, dear. I can hear Huka and the others coming for you. But Harvey dear, don't stay away for two whole days.”
An hour after leaving the village the canoes turned aside into a small narrow bay on one of the larger islands. The water was of great depth, from sixty to seventy fathoms, though the bay itself was in no part wider than a hundred yards. A solid wall of coral enclosed it on three sides, rising sheer up from the deep blue, and its surface was now bared and drying fast under the rays of the sun, for the rain had cleared off, and the sky was a vault of unflecked blue once more.
The natives had told Harvey and Roka that this bay was a spot famed as the haunt of a huge species of rock-cod calledpura, some of which, they said, “took two strong men to lift,” and they were greatly pleased when they found that both the white man and Roka knew thepurawell, and had eagerly assented to Harvey's proposition that they should spend an hour or two in the place, and try and get one or two of the gigantic fish; as they had the necessary tackle—thick, six-plaited lines of coir fibre, with heavy wooden hooks such as are used for shark-fishing by the natives of the equatorial and north-west islands of the Pacific.
Had Harvey and his companions been ten minutes later in turning aside to enter the bay they would have been seen by Chard and Hendry ere they descended the coral mound at the north end of the lagoon, and much of this tale would not have been told. For had the destroyers of poor Oliver and his crew discovered the canoes they probably would at once have launched their boat again, and have put to sea, or at least prepared themselves for an attack. But great events so often come of small things.
For nearly an hour Harvey, Roka, and Huka fished forpurafrom the coral ledges, but without success. They had baited their hooks with flying-fish, as was the practice of the Pikirami people.
“Master,” said Roka presently to Harvey, “never have I had good luck with flying-fish when fishing forpurain mine own land of Manhiki. 'Tis afeke{*} that the pura loveth.”
* Octopus.
“Ay, Roka,fekeis a good bait for thepuraand all those great fish which live deep down in theirfale amu” (houses of coral). “Let us seek for one on the outer reef. Then we shall return here. It is in my heart to show these our good friends of Pikirami that there is one white man who can catch apura.”
Roka showed his white teeth in an approving smile. “Thou art a clever white man, and can do all those things that we brown men can do. Malua hath told me that there is no one like thee in all the world for skill in fishing and many things. Let us go seekfeke.”
The rest of their party—the men from theMotutapuand the Pikirami people—were busily employed in preparations for cooking, some making ready an oven of red-hot stones, others putting up fish and chickens in leaf wrappers, and Malua and two Pikirami youths of his own age were husking numbers of young drinking-nuts.
Telling his native friends that he would return in an hour or two, or as soon as he had caught somefeke. Harvey set off, accompanied by Roka and Huka, the latter carrying a heavy turtle-spear, about five feet in length from the tip of its wide arrow-headed point to the end of the pole of ironwood.
Turning to the eastward, they struck into the cool shade of the narrow strip of forest which clothed the island from the inner lagoon beach to the outer or weather side, and Harvey at once began to search among the small pools on the reef for an octopus, Huka with Roka going on ahead with his turtle-spear. In the course of a quarter of an hour they were out of sight of each other.
For some time Harvey, armed with a light wooden fish-spear, carefully examined the shallow pools as he walked along over the reef, and after he had progressed about a mile he at last saw one of the hideous creatures he sought lying on the white sandy bottom of a circular hole in the reef, its green malevolent eyes looking upward at the intruder. In an instant he thrust the spear through its horrible marbled head, and drew it out upon the rocks, where he proceeded to kill it, a task which took him longer than he anticipated; then carrying it back to the shore, he threw the still quivering monster upon a prominent rock and set out again in search of another, intending to follow his native comrades, who were in hopes of striking a turtle.
As he tramped over the reef, crushing the living, many-coloured coral under his booted feet, his eyes were arrested by some objects lying on the bottom of a deep pool. He bent down and looked carefully—five magnificent orange cowries were clinging closely together upon a large white and sea-worn slab of dead coral.
An exclamation ot pleasure escaped from him as he saw the great size and rich colouring of these rare and beautiful shells.
“What a lovely present for Tessa!” he thought; and taking off his shirt he dived into the clear water and brought them up one by one. Then with almost boyish delight he placed them beside him on the reef, and looked at them admiringly.
“Oh you beauties!” he said, passing his hand over their glossy backs; “how delighted Tessa will be! No one else has ever had the luck to find five such shells together. I'm atagata manuia lava,{*} as Malua says.”
* A man with extraordinary good luck.
He picked the shells up carefully, put them into his wide-brimmed leaf hat, which he then tied up in his shirt, and taking his spear again made towards the shore, too pleased at his good fortune to trouble any further about anotherfekeand only anxious to let Roka and Huka see his prizes.
Half-way to the shore he paused and looked along the curving line of beach to see if either of them were in sight; then from behind a vine-covered boulder not fifty yards away a rifle cracked, and he fell forward on his face without a cry.
Soon after they had left Harvey the Manhikian and Huka parted, each preferring to take his own way, Roka laughingly telling his comrade that although he, Roka, had no spear, he would bring back a turtle.
“In my land of Manihiki we trouble not about spears. We dive after the turtle and drag them ashore.”
“Thou boaster,” replied the Savage Islander good-naturedly, as he stepped briskly down the hard, white sand towards the water, his sturdy, reddish-brown body naked to the waist, and his brawny right arm twirling the heavy turtle-spear about his head as if it were a bamboo wand. “I go into the lagoon, whither goest thou?”
Roka pointed ahead. “Along the beach towards the islet with the high trees. May we both be lucky in our fishing.”
In a few minutes he was out of sight and hearing of his shipmate, for the beach took a sudden curve round a low, densely-verdured point, on the other side of which it ran in an almost straight line for a mile. Suddenly he paused and shaded his eyes with his hand as he caught sight of a dark object lying on the sand.
“'Tis a boat,” he muttered, and in another moment he was speeding towards it. When within a few hundred yards he stopped and then crouched upon his hands and knees, his dark eyes gleaming with excitement.
“It is the captain's boat,” he said to himself, as lying flat upon his stomach he dragged himself over the sand into the shelter of the low thicket scrub which fringed the bank at high-water mark. Once there, he stood up, and watched carefully. Then stripping off his clothes and throwing them aside, he sped swiftly along an old native path, which ran parallel to the beach, till he was abreast of the boat. Then he crouched down again and listened. No sound broke the silence except the call of the sea-birds and the drone of the surf upon the reef.
He waited patiently, his keen eyes searching and his quick ear listening; then creeping softly along on his hands and knees again, he examined the sandy soil. In a few minutes his search was rewarded, for he came across the footmarks of Chard and the captain, leading to the vine-covered boulders under the shelter of which they had made their camp. Following these up, he was soon at the place itself, and examining the various articles lying upon the ground—provisions, clothing, the roll of charts, sextant. Leaning against the rocky wall was a Snider carbine. He seized it quickly, opened the breach, and saw that it was loaded; then he made a hurried search for more cartridges, and found nearly a dozen tied up in a handkerchief with about fifty Winchesters. These latter he quickly buried in the sand, and then with his eyes alight with the joy of savage expectancy of revenge, he again sought and found the tracks of the two men, which led in the very direction from which he had come.
To a man like Roka there was no difficulty in following the line which Hendry and the supercargo had taken; their footsteps showed deep in the soft, sandy soil, rendered the more impressionable by the heavy downfall of rain a few hours before. And even had they left no traces underfoot of their progress, the countless broken branches and vines which they had pushed or torn aside on their way through the forest were a sure guide to one of Nature's children, whose pursuit was quickened by his desire for vengeance upon the murderers of his brother and his shipmates.
Pushing his way through a dense strip of the tough, thorny scrub calledngiia, he suddenly emerged into the open once more—on the weather side of the island. First his eye ran along the sand to discover which way the footsteps trended; they led southwards towards a low, rugged boulder whose sides and summit were thickly clothed with a thick, fleshy-leaved creeper. Beyond that lay the bare expanse of reef, along which he saw Harvey Carr was walking towards the shore, unconscious of danger. And right in his line of vision he saw Chard, who, kneeling amid the foliage of the boulder, was covering Harvey with his rifle; in another instant the supercargo had fired, Roka dropped on one knee and raised his Snider carbine, just as Sam Chard turned to Hendry with a smile upon his handsome, evil face, and waved his hand mockingly towards the prone figure of Harvey.
“That's one more to the good, Louis——” he began, when Roka's carbine rang out, and the supercargo spun round, staggering, and then fell upon his hands and knees, with the blood gushing in torrents from his mouth.
Hendry, taking no heed of anything but his own safety, dashed into the undergrowth and disappeared.
Running past Chard, rifle in hand, the Manhikian launched a curse at the groaning man, who heard him not in his agony. Leaping from pool to pool over the rough, jagged coral, which cut and tore his feet and legs, the seaman sprang to Harvey's aid, and a hoarse sob of joy burst from him when he saw that he was not dead.
“My thigh is broken, Roka. Carry me to the shore quickly, and then haste, haste, good Roka, and warn the others. These men of Pikirami are traitors. Haste thee, dear friend, if ye be a good man and true, and help to save the woman who is dear to me.”
Tearing off the sleeves of Harvey's shirt, Roka, as he answered, bound them tightly over the wound to stay the flow of blood. “Nay, master, 'tis not the men of Pikirami. 'Tis the captain and thetuhi tuhi{*} who have done this to thee. Nay, question me no more... so, gently, let me lift thee.”
He raised Harvey up in his mighty arms as if he were a child, his right hand still grasping the Snider carbine, and carried him carefully to the beach. There he laid him down for a while.
“Stay not here with me, Roka of Manhiki,” said Harvey, trying hard to speak calmly, though he was suffering the greatest agony from his wound—“stay not here, but run, run quickly, so that there may be no more murder done. Leave me here.... Tell thesua alii{**} to get the people together and hunt and slay those two men. Give them no mercy.”
* I.e., one who writes—a supercargo or clerk.** The mate, chief officer—one next in command to acaptain.
“No mercy shall they have,” said the Manhikian grimly; “so rest thee content for a little while....Aue!”
He sprang to his feet, carbine in hand, for from out the thickset jungle there emerged a thing of horror to look upon.
Chard, leaning upon his Winchester, was staggering down to the beach, with his lower jaw shot away. He came blindly on towards the man he had sought to murder, gasping and groaning. Then he saw Roka, dropped his Winchester, threw up his hands, and tried to speak.
Roka walked up to him.
“'Tis better for thee to die quickly,” he said.
The supercargo swayed to and fro, and mutely held out both hands to Harvey as if imploring help or forgiveness.
Roka drew back, and planted his left foot firmly in the sand, as he placed the muzzle of his carbine against Chard's breast, and Chard, grasping the barrel in his left hand to steady himself, bent his dreadful face upon his chest.
As the loud report reverberated through the leafy forest aisles there came the sound of rushing feet, and Malua and the rest of the crew of the Motutapu, together with the six Pikirami natives, burst through the undergrowth, and gazed in wonder at the scene before them—Harvey lying on the sand, Roka with his still-smoking rifle in his hand, standing over the dead body of Chard.
Too weak from loss of blood to answer Malua's weeping inquiries, Harvey yet managed to smile at him, and indicate Roka by a wave of his hand. Then the Manhikian spoke.
“No time is there now to tell ye all. Run back, some of ye, to thesua aliiAtkins, and tell him that I have killed the man Chard, but that the captain hath escaped. Get thee each a rifle and follow him. He hath fled towards his boat, which lieth on the little island with the high trees. Follow, follow quickly, lest he drag the boat into the water and sail away. Slay him. Let his blood run out. And tell thesua aliiAtkins and the white girl that Harfi hath been sorely hurt, but is well, and will not die, for it is but a broken bone.”
Five or six men darted off, while the rest, under Roka's directions, quickly made a litter for Harvey, and placed him upon it.
“Art thou in pain, master?” asked the giant Manhikian tenderly, as the bearers lifted the wounded man.
“Ay, but let me smoke so that the pain may go. And one of ye go to where I fell on the reef and bring me the five pule,{*} lest when the tide cometh in they be lost.”