Blair sprang upright instinctively.Blair sprang upright instinctively.
Blair sprang upright instinctively.Blair sprang upright instinctively.
The great wave broke on the solid earth with the crash of an earthquake. It was half-way up the hillside, and the opposite hill was suddenly shortened, and stood in the open sea. The valley was a boiling waterway of hideous and inexpressible confusion.
"It is the end of the world," gasped Aunt Jannet, and sank down, and looked no more.
"My God! My God!" groaned Cathie.
"God help us all!" said Blair, and the rain whipped his face till it seemed as hard and set as the neighbouring rocks.
They spent the night there in extremest misery, sodden through and through, chilled to the bone, faint with hunger. Even Kenni-Kenni was damp, though two protecting bodies did their best to shelter him. And all night long the only sounds in their ears were the hiss and rush and roar of many waters, as the terrible sea went back to its deeps, and the clouds discharged their ceaseless torrents, and the troubled land got rid of its torment.
And over and above the weariness of their bodies, their hearts were sick within them at thought of the destruction of all their work and all their hopes. For whether a soul besides themselves was left alive they knew not.
CHAPTER XXX
WIPED OUT
Jean and Aunt Jannet were dozing fitfully, fairly spent with the strain and misery of it all. Cathie's grey beard was on his chest, but whether he slept Blair could not tell.
He himself sat on his rock, chilled to the marrow of his bones, and watched with heavy eyes the slow birth of new life after the deadly horrors of the night. And his heart was as cold as his body.
He wrestled manfully with that which was in him, but surely man's faith and courage were rarely put to sorer test. He had striven so hard, and toiled so ceaselessly, at utmost stretch of hand and heart and brain, and here, just as the harvest was ripening, it was all dashed into nothing, as though by the stroke of an angry hand. Oh, it was hard, hard, hard!
But he fought out his fight singlehanded, and found himself—where steadfast faith and undaunted courage have always firm footing. And a spark of hope struggled up in him to meet the sun. The beginnings of things had always had a charm for him. And here must be a new beginning. They were back at first principles and the elementary facts of life. But, truly, there is a mighty difference between a beginning and a beginning again, and it calls for the best that is in a man to begin again with the heart with which he began before.
The rain ceased towards morning, the wind slackened, and when the sun rose behind the hills the western sky shone opalescent, and the sea below it was a cold, dark blue. The rollers were still of mighty size, but the reef was spouting foam again, and the lagoon was heaving within its usual bounds.
But everything else was changed—everything except the bare ridge on which they crouched.
The village—gone as though wiped with a sponge off a slate. The mission-houses, schools, church—not a plank left. And somewhere below the smiling face of the lagoon lay all that was left of the ships and the men who had been in them.
Not all below, after all, for from his perch he could see the beach strewn with fragments, human and otherwise. Right below him on the hillside, John MacNeil's waterwheel turned busily in fruitless labour, and its bare nakedness and useless fussiness added to the sense of desolation and discomfort.
Then the sun topped the hills, and cheered their chilled senses somewhat. Blair and Cathie straightened themselves wearily, but neither dared as yet look into the other's face, lest he should find there only confirmation of his own worst fears.
Kenni-Kenni, who had fared better than any of them, and was conscious of nothing more than bodily discomfort, gave a hungry cry which woke response in Cathie's breast.
"Let us go down," he said. "Maybe we'll find something to eat," and the two men scrambled down to the level, and walked over the soft mud where the houses had stood, and searched with anxious eyes for something that might stay their more pressing necessities.
Blair turned up towards the valley. Cathie, with more prescience, sought the beach, and presently a shout from him brought the two together again. When they met, the captain was carrying the body of a drowned kid under one arm, and a bundle of wood under the other.
"Here's breakfast," he said, and did not think it well to mention that he had found the kid lying between the bodies of two dead men, one brown, the other white.
The matches in their metal cases were all damp, but a few minutes' exposure to the sun put that right, and they soon had fire, and kid steaks grilling over it on pointed sticks. Then they helped the ladies down and were presently eating, though, in spite of their hunger, each one of them felt like choking at every mouthful. And there was no talk among them, for they were sitting on the grave of their hopes.
More than once Jean stopped feeding her boy and glanced questioningly at the men, and then, as they ate stolidly, weighted with their thoughts, she went on with her work.
It was only when they had all quite finished, and sat as though dreading what might come next, that she said—
"Are we all that are left, Ken? I thought I heard a cry just now."
"Did you, dear? It is possible. There must surely be others. We will go and see," and he and Cathie went off again towards the beach.
"How's it up the valley?" asked the captain briefly.
"Drowned out."
The beach was a pitiful sight. Every step spoke of the catastrophe. Bodies uncountable, white and brown, men, women, and children, pigs and goats, broken coco-nuts, bruised fruit, wreckage from the ships and plantations and houses.
"By God! Mr. Blair, I cannot understand it," broke out Cathie in a paroxysm, as he stood over the bodies of two of his men from theTorch. "What had we done to deserve this?"
"Cathie, Cathie! Come to your senses, man! This is no punishment of God's. Rather let us be thankful we are still alive."
"I'd almost as lieve be dead," said Cathie stubbornly. "Ships gone, men gone, everything gone, and all our work undone. Say what you will, Mr. Blair, it's bitter hard."
"These," said Blair, raising his hands reverently over the dead at their feet, "have gone home—beyond the reach of storms. The ships can be replaced. If there are any people left, the work can be rebuilt. If they are all gone, they are the better off, and they have gone further than if we had never come here."
"It's bitter hard, all the same——"
And then a faint, muffled cry reached them, apparently from the ragged hillside whose débris lay all over the beach, and they both ran towards it.
The cries were repeated, and led them at last to an out-jutting rock round which the sliding earth had flowed and settled.
"Where are you?" cried Blair.
"Here!" came from under their feet, and they spied a small hole in the earth, and set to work at once to enlarge it with their hands.
Cathie ran down to the beach and came back with some pieces of wood which made the work go quicker. The cries from the inside had ceased, and they worked the harder, and at last they had the hole large enough for Blair to get his head and shoulders in.
With his hand he felt the body of a man fallen in a heap, and by great exertions managed to drag it out through the hole.
It was the body of Captain Pym, white and senseless. They carried him down to the beach and dashed water in his face, and presently he came to, and lay for a minute looking dazedly up at them. Then he sat up.
"I apologise," he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness. "Been dead and buried all night—thought of coming to life again bowled me out. Saw you in the distance, and shouted and shouted—like being in a coffin—just room to stand, but couldn't move, and been holding up that hill all night. My God!" as it all came back on him. "What a horror it has been! Are you the only ones left?"
"I hope not," said Blair. "Can you walk? We've got a fire over there and something to eat."
"Bit shaky yet," said Pym, as he staggered along on their arms. "Never expected to walk again in this life."
"How was it?"
"When I saw that devilish thing smash the ships, and the other coming towards me, I made for the hill. I was just under that rock when it broke. It was like being under Niagara, only worse. It jammed me flat and beat the breath out of me. Then the earth came rolling down, and cased me in tight except a hand's space through which I could breathe. I've been seeing those ships go smash every minute since. God! It was awful!" and he hung slackly on their arms and glanced over the placid lagoon.
Jean and Aunt Jannet gave him quiet greeting, as one come back from the dead, and hastened to supply his wants. Blair and Cathie set off again up the valley with tight faces.
The havoc there was terrible. The cloud-burst and the great wave together had swept it bare. They went some distance up and stood looking round. It seemed incredible that so short a time could have wrought so woful a change.
The plantations were gone to the last stick and leaf. The very hillsides were almost cleared of trees. The smiling valley of yesterday was a stark empty pan, with deeply-scored sides and a sheet of shining mud caking slowly at the bottom.
"It will make good growing ground," said Blair.
"If we'd anything to grow and any one to grow it for," said Cathie gloomily.
"We shall find some of them in the hills, I hope. Let us get on."
And presently there was a shout up above on the hillside, and there came down, at a pace that risked their necks, Jim Gregor of theJean Arnotand young Irvine, who was on theTorchwhen last they heard of him.
They whooped with joy and shook hands a dozen times with Blair and Cathie, and were quite incoherent for many minutes.
"We're right glad to see you, boys," said Blair, when they calmed down. "Are there any more up there?"
"Three more Torches, sir, and half a dozen Bonitas, and about a dozen islanders, men and women, and a couple of children. Have you got anything to eat?"
"Yes. Go on to the water-wheel. You'll find food there. Where are these others?"
"Right by yon rock. We'll go back with you. Some of them are badly bashed and can't walk without help."
So they all climbed up, and came on the forlorn little company crouching by the rock, and gave them new life by the very sight of them.
The sailors plucked up heart at once, but the brown men were very subdued and silent. Their eyes were still wide with terror when at last they sat under the southern ridge and ate the food Jean and Aunt Jannet found for them, supplemented by coco-nuts and bruised fruit from the beach.
All the men had strange stories to tell. Gregor and Irvine, and some of the others, asserted that when the waterspout struck the ships they were whirled up out of them and dropped into the lagoon some distance away. Then, before they could swim ashore, the great wave caught them and whirled them up into the valley, bruising them all more or less and breaking some. The brown men were mostly sound of limb. They had fled for the hills at the first sight of the spectral dangers outside.
"Have you seen signs of any others?" asked Blair.
Yes, they thought they had seen moving forms on the further hills, but too far away to distinguish clearly. On which Cathie set them to collecting driftwood from the shore, and piled it on the fire, with wet brush and tangle on top, till the smoke rose in a dense column.
"That'll bring them," he said, and in time they came dropping in, in small companies, from their various hiding-places, and last of all came one carrying a woman in his arms.
And at sight of him, toiling through the new soft mud where the village had stood, Blair sprang up and ran to meet him.
"Thank God, you are left to us, Ha'o!" he cried as they met, but Ha'o was as silent as the rest of his people. "Is Nai hurt? Let me help you."
Nai smiled wanly at him as he put his arms under her and took part of the weight, and then her face crumpled with pain.
They carried her gently to the fire, and laid her on the soft white sand, and Jean and Aunt Jannet knelt beside her and saw to her wants.
Captain Cathie, when he saw the increasing company, had made another visit to their only storehouse, the beach, and came back this time with a young pig and some bananas and coco-nuts, and some carefully-sought-out paw-paw leaves for the benefit of the too-fresh pork.
Ha'o was too weary and too hungry for talk, and Blair and Cathie called the militant members of the party to salvage work on the beach. Gruesome work too, and not calculated to raise their spirits even after a full meal, for every few steps brought them to the bodies of those they had known alive and well the day before.
These they drew up the sand for burial later. Meanwhile the orders were to save everything they could lay hands on. Where everything had been taken, the smallest find was of value.
Fruits and shrubs especially Blair commended to their attention, and he had a couple of dozen paw-paw trees and several rows of bananas planted before sunset.
Out of the piles of timber they secured, Cathie and Pym built lean-to shelters among the rocks sufficient for the whole party. With the coco-nuts and broken fruit, and the bodies of several pigs and goats, they had food for several days, if only they could keep it in eatable condition. By the time it was finished they would know more about their actual circumstances.
Jean informed her husband that Nai had an arm and leg broken, and he at once sought out slips of wood and strips of garments, and put the broken limbs into splints.
Ha'o, after eating, lay thoughtful for a time, and then went down to assist the salvage party. He dragged and carried in silence for some time, but finally gave voice to his thoughts.
"Kenni, why has this come upon us?"
"You have had storms before, Ha'o."
"But never a storm like this one, with whirling devils and waves like rushing mountains."
"I have heard of both before in other places, but I never saw them myself till now."
"Was it your God sent them, Kenni?"
"Only in the same way that He sends everything, Ha'o—light and wind and rain."
"Why did He send this when we were doing our best to please Him?"
"It came in the ordinary way of things. It was just a bigger storm than usual."
"We never had it like this before," said Ha'o, sticking stubbornly to his point. "My people are saying it is your God sent it. If He is that kind of a god we don't want Him."
"How do you train your young men, Ha'o? By treating them softly? By petting them, and giving them all things easy and pleasant?"
"Nay, we toughen them, so that they may endure."
"Exactly! Do you think that God knows less than you? He also wants men who can endure even when the fight goes against them."
That seemed to strike him. He went on stolidly hauling and carrying, and at last said, bitterly—
"If He had left my people alive, Kenni, and not broken Nai, I would have thought better of Him."
"Let us be grateful for what is left, my friend. Nai will get better. Many of our people are dead, but more are left than we think, perhaps."
But Ha'o shook his head gloomily, and went on hauling and carrying, and said no more.
CHAPTER XXXI
REVERSIONS
Captain Pym was in that state of mind in which every man who loses his ship finds himself, and from which his fellow in misfortune, Captain Cathie, was slowly emerging. No slightest blame attached to him in the matter, and he would have no difficulty in proving it. Nevertheless, he was suffering exceedingly. The burden of his thoughts kept sleep far from him, and, after tossing restlessly through the night on a by no means uncomfortable couch of dried palm fronds, he got up very early next morning to give his depressed spirits fresh air and wider space than the confinement of the lean-to afforded them. Blair and Cathie, worn out with hard work and anxieties, were still sleeping soundly.
As Pym walked along the beach, he saw with surprise a thin curl of smoke rising behind an angle of the hillside not far from the scene of his coffining.
When he came to the angle he stopped transfixed, and then set off at a run to the huts. He caught Blair by the shoulder and roughly shook him awake.
"Blair," he cried hoarsely, "your brown devils are eating our men," and Blair and Cathie were on their feet in a moment.
Blair was not very greatly surprised, though not a little disturbed. He had seen the upsetting the catastrophe had wrought in Ha'o, the most advanced of all, and he had wondered if the rest would stand the strain.
"It's a throw-back," he said, "but it's really not very surprising. Where's Ha'o? Cathie, will you call the men?"
He went quickly to the shed Ha'o had built for Nai, and found him there asleep, and was to that extent relieved. He woke him quietly, and told him what was going on.
"Food is scarce, and will be scarcer," said Ha'o, when he arrived at an understanding of the matter. "Everything is destroyed."
"Better starve than live so," said Blair vehemently. "But everything is not destroyed. We shall live somehow, and this has got to be stopped. Come on!"
He picked up a stick of wood from the drift, and set off at a run along the beach. The others armed themselves in like manner and followed him.
The brown men sprang up from their feast as they rounded the corner, some of them still gnawing at chunks of flesh in their hands.
Blair rushed at them like a blazing bolt. Several of them, for lack of clubs, snatched brands from the fire. He paid no heed to their weapons, but laid about him with his stick with such vigour that they gave way before him, and the others, following his lead with hearty good will, drove the brown men back, and finally put them to the run.
"Now," said Blair, as he leaned on his stick, "there is only one thing to be done. Pile all the rough wood you can find on to that fire. Keep out anything that may be useful. We must burn all those bodies. We can't take them out to sea, and if we bury them they'll dig them up."
It was obviously the best thing to do, and they set about the gruesome business at once.
They made a mighty pile of firing and laid the bodies reverently on it, and covered them with more wood, and more bodies and again more wood, till they had to wait till the pile burned down, because of the height of it and the heat. And their faces were pinched and their breaths shortened, as they carried to the pyre the bodies of those they had lived with in comradeship for so long, and they worked in silence.
The only sound that was heard beyond the crackle and fall of the burning wood, as the dense black smoke rolled up into the sky, was the voice of Blair, as he stood to windward and quietly recited portions of the service for the Burial of the Dead from time to time. And surely never did the solemn words sound more weighty and full of meaning.
"I am the resurrection and the life....
"Lord, Thou hast been our refuge: from one generation to another....
"Thou turnest man to destruction....
"They are even as a sleep: and fade away suddenly like the grass....
"In the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered....
"For we consume away in Thy displeasure....
"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower....
"In the midst of life we are in death....
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust....
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.... For they rest from their labours...."
None of them ever forgot that strange and somewhat ghastly service—the hungry lick of the flames, blue and green and yellow and red from the salt and tar, but almost unseen in the beams of the fully-risen sun; the rippling lagoon; the sparkling white beach; the foam-jets on the reef; the great blue sea beyond; the pitiful things the flames consumed; and the rolling clouds of smoke which spread like a pall along the scarred hillside.
Aunt Jannet Harvey came hurrying round the corner to see what they were at, and Cathie caught sight of her and sent her hurrying back surprised at his brusqueness. For this was one of the things that may be told but is better not seen.
Ha'o had taken no part in these doings. He had no desire for human flesh, but there was a doubtful look on his face, as though he thought the proceedings wasteful and possibly to be regretted later on.
The brown men stood in a clump at a distance and watched sullenly all that was done.
When the pile died down Blair went over to the chief.
"Ha'o," he said, "go and speak to your people. Tell them that things are as they were, and that flesh they shall not eat."
"They will starve."
"No, they will not starve. We will find them food."
Ha'o looked at him doubtfully, but not without expectation. The white men were so wonderful, that it was difficult to say what they could or could not do, and Kenni never lied.
Nevertheless, "Where, Kenni?" he asked.
"We shall not starve," said Blair emphatically.
The brown man looked searchingly at him for a full minute, and then turned and strode away towards the others.
CHAPTER XXXII
FROM THE BEGINNING
"Our brown folk have lost their heads for the time being," said Blair to his wife, as they all stood round the huts. "They have gone off to the hills. It is not very surprising. They will come back all right in time. Captain Cathie, I want you to make a raft and take the ladies and the sick—in fact, all but Gregor and Irvine—to the Happy Valley for a time, till things straighten out a bit. You will, I think, find food there, and the natives won't intrude on you."
"And you, Kenneth?" said Jean anxiously.
"I am going across to the other side of the island with Ha'o, to see how they fared there. If food is plentiful we will bring some back here for the women and children. They may have been washed out also. If so we must get food from the Valley. We will drop in on you from the upper end, but it is too rough a road for you and the sick men. Will you join us, Captain Pym, or will you go and take care of the ladies?"
"Captain Cathie is quite equal to that, I am sure, Mr. Blair. With your permission I will join you."
"Can you induce Nai to go with the ladies, Ha'o?"
"She will go," said Ha'o tersely.
He was in a gloomy frame of mind through all these strange happenings and the defection of his people.
"Then the sooner we get to it the better." And under Cathie's directions they all set to work on a raft. Timber and rope were not wanting.
"Take all you can, and especially what we can use for boat-building later on," said Blair. "We shall have to get out of our hole ourselves, and that, I think, is the way out."
The brown women and children he set to collecting for themselves all the food they could find along the shore. He also gave them some lengths of rope, and bade them untwist it for fishing-lines and then start fishing from the ledge with splinters for hooks.
"You will probably find the bottom of the valley scoured out, Cathie," he said; "but there should be both fruit and animals on the hillsides. We may have to replenish the island from there."
When the work was well forward, he set out with his little band to cross the island by One-Tree Pass, and found the passage extremely difficult. For the cloud seemed to have finally broken on the saddle of the hills, and in many places the road they had built with such labour and difficulty was washed completely away, and in other places it was buried deep under slides of broken rock.
They found their way over the ridge, however, and saw at once that the deluge had wrought heavily on the further side also. The long slope was deeply scored and furrowed, but there were houses and palm-trees still standing down below, and they went on quickly to see how the brown folk had fared.
The villagers welcomed them heartily and received their news with amazement. The storm above and the storm below had terrified them. The water had come down the hill in cascades, but the long stretch had dissipated much of its force before it reached them. Then the great wave had swept across the beach and carried away all their boats. Their palms and plantations had suffered heavily, and they had picked up a number of dead pigs and goats, but otherwise there had been no loss of life. They had not overmuch food, but what they had they were quite willing to share with the others who had none. And Blair's heart, still sore over the defection of the western men, was comforted somewhat by their simple kindliness.
They stayed the night, and Blair explained more fully the disasters on the other side of the island and the temporary aberration of Ha'o's people, and begged them, if there should be any attempt at raiding, to treat the others as reasonably as might be, remembering what they had gone through.
They set off again very early in the morning, carrying such burden of food as was possible on the rough road they had to travel, and reached the huts by the sea before midday. The brown men had taken possession and received them in sulky silence.
Blair gave the food to the women and children, and to the men some bits of his mind in his own special way. He acknowledged the direness of the catastrophe, but bade them remember that the white men had suffered equally and yet had not lost their heads or their heart. He told them to be grateful for their lives, and assured them that there was no need for despair.
Blair's high spirits in the face of all difficulties, his forethought and far-reaching grip of the necessities of the case, made a deep impression even on Captain Pym's habitual and official phlegm. Under stress of circumstance he found himself under the necessity of rearranging his preconceived ideas. He became decidedly more human, and perhaps more of a man, than he had been for many a year.
He sounded Blair as to his hopes and intentions, and they discussed matters freely. In furtherance of them, when they had rested, they all set to work making another raft, and if theBonitamen could have seen their spick and span, stiff and starched captain, hauling and lashing, with his coat off and his trousers up to the knee, it is certain they would not have known him.
They paddled their raft across the lagoon to the place where the ships had lain before the storm, and after some searching found where theTorchandJean Arnotwere lying. The great wave had probably washed them inshore but the return had carried them out again. TheBonitahad disappeared completely. She had probably been carried over the edge of the shelf and lay in unfathomable depths. They could see the other two dimly through the clear water, with the many-coloured fishes darting in and out of their battered sides and broken raffle, and Captain Pym's face pinched at the sight and at thought of it all.
Ha'o was the most expert swimmer of the party, and had long since shown that he could remain under water twice as long as any of the white men. On him therefore the burden of discovery lay, and he appreciated with the rest how much depended on his efforts. They had timber in quantity from the broken boats and ships, but without tools they could turn it all to no account. There were tools below there in the ships. Ha'o was going down to find them. With tools in their hands the door of deliverance would be at all events ajar.
"You will most likely find them in the front part of our ship, Ha'o, underneath where the big gun was," Blair told him. "If the gun has fallen through, so much the better. It will help you," and Ha'o nodded, and shot down through the clear water like a brown streak.
He was up again presently and hung panting to the raft. The big gun had gone out of sight through the side and bottom of the ship. He would get inside next time.
But it took many visits before he discovered anything, and then a ringing cheer went up as he came to the surface with a saw in his hand, and flung it on to the raft.
"There are more things, but they are scattered," he told them, when he had got his breath, and next time he took down with him one end of a thin cord they had unravelled out of rope, and presently sent up by it a heavy hammer, and came up himself with a chisel. It took many hours' hard work, but at last they had enough to go on with, and Ha'o lay panting on the raft, while the others paddled it slowly down the lagoon to the Happy Valley.
CHAPTER XXXIII
SALT OF THE EARTH
The effect of the great wave in the Valley had been extraordinary.
When last they were there the whole place was a tangle of luxuriant undergrowth, ferns, mosses, lichens, pandanus, hibiscus, paw-paws, with stately palms waving gracefully above.
Now the bed of the Valley was bare. The growths and the undergrowths had been torn off and swept away, and the newcomers were led wonderingly through the uncovered ruins of the city built by the men who set up the stone gods—along a wide street paved with stone blocks, which ran up the middle of the Valley with the stream flowing through it; past the foundations of great buildings; into an immense square where the denudation had been less complete. A certain amount of mud had silted down again on to the ruins. Nature was already at work covering up the scar of her latest wound. And the great stone gods sat gazing expectantly out to sea, as they had gazed when the city below still teemed with busy life; as they had gazed through all the long years since, while the ruins of the city slowly disappeared beneath the touch of the healing hand.
The first party had found strange quarters in the uncovered basement of a building, which, from its size, had probably been a temple. It was a great quadrangle, and the head of the wide roadway that led from the sea ran right into it, and ended there. The upper end of the enclosure rose ten feet or more above the level, and was composed of great chiselled blocks of stone, and in this were cavernous square openings, the entrances of which now served as houses for these houseless strangers. They had appropriated four adjacent holes, and had made themselves as comfortable as circumstances permitted.
The whole place had been covered in with wild growth, but the great wave foaming up the valley had swept it all bare. The apartments were not uncomfortable except in one respect. They ran so far back into the hillside that the ends of them had not yet been discovered. "And," said Aunt Jannet, peering into the shadows which the firelight quickened into ghostly life, "I'm always expecting something will come out, and either frighten us to death or eat us alive."
Ha'o stood it for one night, with crumpled face and quick-glancing eyes, but next day he carried up some boards from the beach, and built a tiny lean-to outside for himself and Nai, and they found life more tolerable.
Nothing ever came out of those mysterious passages for their undoing. What dark uses they may have served in the bygone times they could only surmise. One passage they followed till it issued in the cliffs behind the stone gods. The others ran straight into the heart of the mountain, with cross cuts leading round towards the city, and the uses they might have been put to in the hands of a priestly oligarchy were apparent.
Captain Pym was fired with thoughts of hidden treasure, and spent many odd hours searching for it. Blair laughed at the idea, and begged him to keep it to himself, lest the men should catch the infection, and waste on it valuable time which might be used to much better advantage.
"Treasure is unlikely," he said. "If, as we suppose, these pioneers were accidentally blown across, or fled for reasons, they would not be likely to bring much with them."
"All the same, they built mightily," argued Pym, and went on with his search. All that he ever found, however, was a few flat beaten plates of gold, and some golden ornaments, of no great value save as curiosities.
Captain Cathie reported a fair amount of fruit and palms still standing on the hillsides, and pigs and goats enough to re-stock the island, in time and with protection. Most of the other animals had disappeared completely.
"I'll take the men back to-morrow over the hill," said Cathie, in excellent spirits at the prospect of the opening door, "and we'll bring back another raft of timber. With the tools you've got we can make a start anyway, and we can fish up more by degrees. There's timber enough in the lagoon to build a new schooner."
"Build us something that will float as far as the Marquesas or Paumotus, and we'll soon have a new schooner, captain. But the first thing I want is to get to Kanele and Anape to see how Evans and Stuart have fared. If they came through pretty well we can get fresh stock from them, both animals and plants."
"I've got a lot of paw-paws for you on the beach, and some bananas and plantains. Where will you plant, Mr. Blair?"
"For the present in the mud of the old fields. It'll make splendid growing ground. Later on, when we rebuild, we must get higher up. We're not likely to have another deluge just yet, but what has been may be, and we must take all precautions. When your boat is ready, and we've had a trip round the islands, my idea is for you to run across to the Marquesas and buy a schooner there, if you can lay hands on one, and send her back by Gregor for our use while you're away. Then you go on to Sydney and buy a newTorchand everything we need, Long Tom, Winchesters and all"—with a quizzical glance at Pym. "You know just what we want, and you can have all the money you require."
Captain Pym listened with surprise. His ideas of missionaries were crystallising rapidly from the solution of scepticism into concrete beliefs and admirations. He was not a man given to admiration of other men, but he recognised in Kenneth Blair a master mind and an indomitable spirit. He said little but thought much.
Every one was at work soon after daylight. Cathie produced drowned meat from an adjacent passage way, which he used as cold storage. Jean and Aunt Jannet prepared the morning meal. Blair had planted two rows of paw-paws and a number of bananas before breakfast, and Ha'o had built his lean-to for Nai and brought in some fruit.
Then Cathie built a small raft, and in due course Aunt Jannet Harvey was seated on it with many startled exclamations, and wafted herself uncouthly out into the lagoon. She was provided with two fishing lines and a supply of bait, and a rope to the shore lest she should disappear entirely from human ken, and she had instructions to catch all the fish she could for the amplification of the larder.
And Blair, when he had made sure of her safety, and turned to go up the valley to cross the hills, could hardly contain himself at sight of her face, in which determination to catch struggled desperately with horror at thought of pulling the hooks out of what she caught.
"This is a change from Kensington, Aunt Jannet, isn't it? You're quite sure you won't tumble overboard?" had been his jovial parting word.
"I'll t—try not, Kenneth. D—do you think it hurts them much to have the hooks pulled out?"
"If you leave them for a few minutes they'll die quite comfortably. Then it won't hurt them. Anyway, you see we need them."
So Aunt Jannet pursed her lips valiantly, and cast in the lines he had baited for her, and watched him and Captain Cathie with one eye, while the other waited on her lines in fear and expectation.
They waved her an adieu at the turn of the valley, and in her attempt to reply to it she frightened away a swarm of eager nibblers and nearly fell overboard herself.
"Yes," she said to herself, "it's a great change from Kensington. But if that child Jean can stand it, I can. And she seems as happy as a lark. That's partly Kenni-Kenni, of course. Oh dear, I've caught something! Whatever am I to do now?"
She looked wildly round for assistance, but the men were climbing the hill, laden with provisions for the brown folk. So she tightened her lips and hauled in her line, and at last drew her first fish on to the raft. And then, after a pitiful look at its changing colours, she turned her head away as far as she could, suppressed a strong inclination to throw her victim back into the water, and waited for the poor thing to die comfortably.
When Jean and Kenni-Kenni came down to inquire how she was getting on, she was quite herself again.
"I've got a dozen or so," she cried. "I hope they are all fit to eat. It's really quite interesting when you get used to it. If you like to try your hand at it, Jean, haul me in and I'll take care of Kenni-Kenni for a bit."
The men were back before nightfall, very tired, but rich in timber, and in high spirits at the recovery of more tools, and all with appetites that disposed of Aunt Jannet's fish in a very much shorter time than it had taken that good lady to catch them.
Next day they laid the keel of their forlorn hope, and when that ceremony was over, Blair and Ha'o started off again across the hills to the old village, to endeavour to get the brown men to make a start on their own buildings and plantings. Characteristically, they were inclined to lie down under misfortune and let things take their chance, and Blair, characteristically also, stated his intention of stopping there till they got to work. He exhorted them to better heart both by word and example, and Ha'o lent the weight of his authority, and, where that failed, added the still weightier impulsion of physical force. Authority weakens under disaster, but a bold heart and a heavy hand are strong arguments, and, disaster or no disaster, Ha'o had no intention of abating one jot of his seigneurial rights. He was chief still and he let them feel it.
"What is the good of planting?" said the brown men. "We shall be dead before the fruit comes."
"Oh no, you won't!" said Blair cheerfully. "There is fruit in the Valley and fruit on the other side of One-Tree Pass, but in future you'll have to go and get it for yourselves, and you can have all the fish you want for the catching."
"But we don't care for fish every day."
"There are many things I don't care for myself, my sons, but when I can't do better I put up with them. You must learn to be men."
The actively mutinous spirit, which the opportunity of the day after the storm had kindled in them, had passed with the passing of that which had excited it. It had vanished in the smoke of the funeral pyre, and Blair was grateful, for things might have been very different. Instead of fighting the lethargy of despair they might have had to defend themselves against its fury, and he was well content.
He tried hard to get them to come over into the Valley, but that they would not do. They would come to the hill top for such fruits as might be brought there for them, and they would go over One-Tree Pass, but into the valley of the stone gods not one of them would set so much as a toe, and Ha'o himself could not make them.
With all hands working heartily and at high pressure,—from Captain Pym, who dropped the last remnants of his starch in the process, to Aunt Jannet who, in the intervals of her other duties, picked oakum as if she had been undergoing a term of imprisonment,—the boat building made famous progress, and four weeks from the day the keel was laid the Kenni-Kenni was launched—prevailed upon, at all events, and apparently much against her will, to quit mother earth and take to the water. And if she looked, as Captain Cathie admitted, something of a cross between a washtub and a patchwork quilt, she was undoubtedly built strong and would stand a good deal of knocking about. As to her sailing qualities, they might have been better and they might have been worse, and, as Cathie said, they had not started out to build a cup-winner—which was perhaps just as well.
There was an old candle-nut tree in a corner at the head of the Valley, and they set out to stain the little ship dark red with a decoction of its bark, but as the supply ran short the result was not altogether happy. However, she floated on an even keel and was as tight as a drum, forty feet over all, ten feet beam, decked all over and yawl rigged. Spars and sails they had in plenty from the treasure trove of the beach, and Captain Cathie undertook to take her all the way to Sydney if need be. He also expressed the explicit intention of overhauling the first ship or island he came across for a supply of paint, all of one colour, sufficient to go all round her.
Nevertheless, and in spite of her lack in such minor details, their hearts were very full as they lined the beach, with their eyes on the little ship, and in their ears Blair's voice ringing strong and true with gratitude and hope, as he prayed God's blessing on the accomplished work of their hands, and on the work she had still to do.
When the ceremony was over, and Blair happened to be standing for a moment alone, Captain Pym came up to him and wrung his hand heartily.
"Blair," he said, and his old shipmates on theBonitawould not have known either his voice or the look on his face, "I'm glad I came here. But for my poor fellows who are gone, I could almost say I'm glad I was wrecked here. I have learnt a great deal," and Blair answered him with a cordial grip and a beaming smile.
On the morrow, Blair and Pym and Cathie and a crew of six, three Torches, and three Bonitas, took leave of the rest and sailed for Kanele.
Jean felt this parting terribly, the little ship looked so small, so uncouth, so unequal to emergencies. But she kept a brave face, and waved her farewells from the shore with a fervent prayer for their safety, and then went quietly about her work, with her own Kenni-Kenni clinging to her skirts, while his namesake carried his father away across the seas to possible dangers, to possible—— Nay, she would have faith in that protecting hand which had brought them through so many difficulties before, and to fear was to doubt.