CHAPTER XI
TOO LATE
Following instructions, Captain Cathie shook out every stitch of canvas theTorchcould carry, and laid her course dead for the Dark Islands. They made good way, but their progress still seemed slow to Kenneth Blair; for his fears outstripped the flight of the little ship, and, anxious as he was to reach the Islands, he still almost dreaded the cry that should tell of their sighting, in fear of what he might find there.
And grounds for fear were not lacking. The Dark Islands lay some five days distant, east by north—on the line, therefore, of the marauders' way home. From the atoll they had already raided, he judged, from the number of dwellings and general appearances, they might have got some fifty or sixty souls, not more. Their holds would still be far from full. If they had invaded the Dark Islands in similar fashion, it was a stormy reception the next comers might expect. At best it would be a negative welcome, and a matter of slow and cautious approach to their few good graces; but if the islands had been raided, the work would be thrown back for years, and all his hopes with them. He could scarce eat or sleep for thinking of it, and the pricking off of their position each day on the chart, and the calculation of the hours that still intervened between them and full knowledge of how matters lay, were matters of supremest interest and absorbing anxiety.
He could settle to none of the ordinary routine, and his evident upsetting, the causes of which they perfectly understood, disturbed them all in like fashion.
He spoke little, even to Jean, and she never once, by word or look, expressed anything but the utmost sympathy and confidence in him.
He tramped the deck day and night almost, with eager outlook over the waste of waters ahead, and never a look behind unless at the seething bubbles of their long, straight wake, which told of the speed and directness of their flight.
Once only, in these days of biting anxiety, he said to her—
"Dearest, I am poor company at present. Can you forgive me? I am on the rack about these poor souls ahead. I cannot help fearing the worst, and it means so very much to us."
"I am with you, Ken, heart and soul. We can only pray for the best. If what you fear has happened, all we can do is to do our best to right it."
He shook his head unhopefully. The idea had taken possession of him that they would arrive only to find death and desolation and the wild fury of revenge.
"Even if it is so," said his comforter, "I can see possibility of good coming out of the evil."
"It will throw us back years," he said gloomily.
"If your people have been carried off, we will follow them and release them and restore them to their homes"—there were new sparks in his eyes as she spoke like one inspired—"and that will give us the footing it might take years to obtain."
He kissed her hand.
"You give me new hopes, whatever may have happened. That is what we will attempt if the worst has taken place," and thereafter he brightened up considerably, but relaxed no whit of his anxiety to reach the islands.
They swept gallantly along on the northern fringe of the westerly wind, which maintained a propitious amplitude, and just before sunset on the fourth day, the lucent rim where sea met sky was dented with a filmy tooth which the sinking sun drew momentarily into view from the farther distance, and Captain Cathie and Blair pronounced it Kapaa'a, the highest peak in the Dark Islands.
There was not much sleep on board that night, the morrow would be so big with events. General opinion among the men ran somehow to a fight. That was, perhaps, the natural tendency of the pent-up feelings of the last few days. An outlet would be grateful, a violent outlet from choice. When a man's feelings suffer maltreatment, the natural man within him develops a violent desire to find relief in kicking, in which last word is comprehended the whole known range of methods of assault, with the exception, of course, of the circumscribed and properly debarred use of the feet.
They travelled warily that night, and the first of the dawn showed them the peaks of Kapaa'a, bold and beautiful, dead ahead, and growing bolder and still more beautiful with every graceful roll of the ship.
They hung over the sides, every man and woman of them, and eyed their future home with an eagerness which its outward aspect at once amply satisfied and further quickened.
For what they could see was grand in its opulence of crag, and cliff, and gorge, and greenery. And the clouds which wreathed the higher summits, and the gauzy films of mist, which floated along the hillsides and hung reluctantly in the tree-tops, gave promise of still daintier beauties in that which they held half hidden.
They drew in cautiously to within a mile of the outer reef, and then, not venturing the ship nearer till they should learn how matters stood inside, Blair and Evans, with a crew of ten, eight to pull and two in case of need, and Matti to interpret, shot through one of the openings in the reef on the back of a long blue roller and made straight for the white beach. They carried no visible arms, but each man of the crew had his Winchester between his feet.
The lagoon ran up into a spearhead of white sand, between two tall cliffs opposite the widest opening in the reef, as though the constant impact of the outer waves, tempered as it was by the compression of the opening and the subsequent run across the lagoon, had forced the beach inland at that spot. It was helped, however, by a river, which came down between the hills and divided the white sandspear into two equal parts.
Here, according to usage and natural proclivity, a village should have stood, but in this case did not. John Gerson had told Blair that other morning, when they came racing up the lagoon in similar brave case, that it lay up the valley near the taro fields.
His heart beat painfully as, one by one, he picked up the points which had charted themselves for ever in his memory.
There, to the left of the stream, was where they landed.
There was the rough scarp of rock round which they had followed the bristling crowd to the death.
There his former life had ended in turmoil and darkness, and the new life had begun in twilight dimness and the painful groping after broken threads.
And yet, how mercifully he had been guided! The shadowed valley had led, after all, to the fuller life and the mountain-top, and he bowed his head gratefully.
The white boat slid gently up the white beach, and so far their keen outlook had seen no sign of hostile life. But experience had taught him that appearances are deceptive, and that sometimes when least is seen most is to be feared.
They disembarked cautiously, and stood looking round. The palms about the mouth of the valley waved sombre welcome, or it might be warning. The thick brush below lay still and silent, but bright black eyes by the hundred might be watching them from it.
The very lack even of opposition was a menace, and suggestive of trickery and ambush.
"We will go round the point," said Blair at last. "And—yes, you must take your guns, men. I would have preferred not, but we don't know how matters stand."
So, leaving two in the boat, the rest shouldered their guns, and the little party went forward round the point where Kenneth Blair had been once before in his life, and almost in his death.
But no bristling mob confronted them this time. They went on step by step, with eyes for every rock and bush, and ears alert, and every nerve tight strung for the faintest hint of treachery, and Blair's face crumpled somewhat at the menace of the silence and the solitude.
Step by step they left the white beach and the friendly sea, and drew in to the blank hostility of the woods. He would a thousand times sooner have been confronted by the visible hostility of the natives. For that which is visible and tangible one may hope to cope with and subdue, but the invisible and intangible contain possibilities beyond the compassing, and the elements of unreasoning fear.
On one member of the party these were already having their effect. Perhaps on others also, but not so perceptibly. The knowledge of better things had not, in Matti, effectually eradicated the superstitions of a lifetime. Terrors of which the white men had no conception beat like bats about his soul, the indefinable terrors of bygone ages of horrors and darkness. His face was green. He sweated fears at every faltering step. His eyes bulged crablike in quest of that which he dreaded to find.
"Sirs, sirs!" he gasped, in an agonised whisper, "it is not good. I counsel——"
"Be quiet," said Blair. "We must see," and they went on warily, expecting the sudden outleap of death at every step.
But they saw nothing, heard nothing. That dreadful menacing silence brooded over the place just as it had brooded over the atoll. A flock of gay little paraquets whirred suddenly from the hillside and dived into the bush ahead, and the silence and the spell of it were broken. The paraquets started chattering and quarrelling like a school of sparrows, and Blair's danger-pointed wits suggested to him that they would not behave so if the brush was otherwise tenanted.
With a last careful inspection of the hillsides he moved forward, and the rest followed. There was a track through the brush, and the trampled ground showed signs of much traffic.
Five minutes more and they had found all they feared.
The thicket thinned and widened towards the valley and they were standing once more amid blackened ribs of houses, and heaps of ashes from which thin wisps of smoke still curled lazily. They had arrived too late!
CHAPTER XII
THE FLAMING SWORD
Blair's face was tighter and grimmer than ever as he took it all in, and the faces of the rest were sympathetically hard.
But this was no time to stand glooming. The wrong was done. Now to see if it could be righted.
He turned and led the way back to the boat, thinking too hard for speech. He knew what had to be done, but there were disquieting items in the programme for which he had been unable to make provision, and which he would gladly have escaped.
They would follow the marauders and rescue the victims—that he took as settled.
The settlement could hardly be a mild one, and he would fain have spared the women the sight of it; but there was nothing else for it—they could not possibly be left behind.
The raiders had doubtless filled their holds here to the last man. But there must be many left. They would be in hiding yet, but presently they would come out of their retreats, full of grief and anger, and it would go hard with the first white faces they encountered. The women must go with them—that was one of his troubles. And the next, supposing they caught these blood-thirsty and body-hungry rascals—and catch them they would, if it took a month's circling round—what were they to do with them when they had them?
There would probably be fighting, though the results did not trouble him. What he wanted was to put an end once and for all to this horrible traffic. The only way that suggested itself as adequate and final was to string them up to the yard-arm, every man-jago of them, and whether that might be done with impunity was more than doubtful. The only impunity he desired was for his future work. Morally, he would feel justified. And whether or no, the spirit that was in him would have borne lightly the burden of such a deed, even though its outward results to himself were personally painful and disastrous.
It took no more than two minutes after they had scrambled on board to set things in motion.
"We are too late," said Blair to the anxious waiters. "We follow at once, captain. They will have filled up here, and will make straight for home. Lay her straight for the Chincha Islands, please, and make all speed possible."
Captain Cathie had foreseen the possibility. He set their course due east for the present, and spread his wings again to the last stitch, and they swept away past the other islands, with no more than fleeting glimpses of them in the mellow distance.
Then Blair begged them to confer with him in the saloon, and laid his difficulties before them.
"I take it for granted we shall catch them," he said.
"Certainly," said the captain.
"I am distressed at thought of bringing you ladies into contact with bloodshed and violence. But there is no help for it; it would not be safe to leave you behind."
"Certainly not," said Aunt Jannet Harvey emphatically.
"We would not have been left in any case," said Jean. "Our places are by your sides," and the others quietly endorsed her.
"The next thing is this: we shall catch this ship, we shall rescue these islanders, by force if necessary. What are we to do with the crew and the ship?"
"Hang them and scuttle her," said Captain Cathie, with decision.
"That is one's natural first feeling, and possibly it would be the wisest thing in the end. And yet——"
"It is a question if we are justified in going that length," said Charles Evans gravely.
Stuart, too, shook his head doubtfully.
"Fighting in so good a cause is one thing," he said slowly, "but hanging in cold blood is another."
"Exactly," said Blair. "And that is the point of my dilemma."
"Do you know what will happen if you let 'em go?" said Cathie brusquely.
"I'm afraid I do, captain. And yet—even then—— You mean, of course, that they'll come back in larger force, and with a double incentive—plunder plus revenge."
"That's it to a T, sir, and you know it. There'll be no peace and security till they're wiped out. Wipe 'em out at once and completely, and you're all right till a new lot comes along, knowing nothing of these others, except that they never came back. And when the new lot comes we'll tackle them same way. I'm not by nature a bloodthirsty man, but if there's one thing can set me afire, it's this kind of work. I've seen so much of it. They're not men. They're scum of hell—asking your pardon, ladies!"
"Speak your mind, captain," said Aunt Jannet Harvey. "No good being mealy-mouthed when it's a question of life and death. I think they should be scuttled."
"I've no doubt we all agree as to what we would like to have done, but whether, in our position, we are justified in pronouncing and executing judgment to the extent of death—it is a difficult matter to decide."
"If you let one single man of them go, Mr. Blair, you're only breeding future trouble."
"I know it, captain. And yet—at times—I have seen the attempt to clear the future of trouble lead only to greater. Is there no alternative?"
"There's alternatives," said Cathie gloomily; "but they're only makeshifts—playing with nettles to get stung: you could fling all their arms overboard, and threaten 'em with worse if they come back. And they'll come. You could scuttle the ship and maroon 'em somewhere. You could bring 'em all back here and make 'em work. But there's trouble in it whatever you do, unless you hang 'em out of hand."
"I'm afraid there is, and I would dearly like to rid the earth of them; but——"
And Evans and Stuart felt as he did. They lacked nothing in courage, but to their minds this matter of essential right went deeper than any mere question of courage or future trouble.
Jean, and Alison Evans, and Mary Stuart listened with grave, troubled faces, but ventured no opinion. These were deeper waters than any they had ever sailed on, and they felt rather out of their depths.
"Well, we have some little time to think it over," said Blair, at last. "If any illumination comes to any of us, let the rest have the benefit of it. You will get all ready for what we may need to do, captain?"
"All's ready, sir. Long Tom's loaded, and the men are keen to square things with these rascals if we can come up with them."
"I suppose even these terrible men may have wives and children waiting for them at home," said Jean thoughtfully, as they rose.
"Like enough, ma'am," said Cathie—"and so have the brown men."
"Men like that have no right to have wives and children," said Aunt Jannet Harvey, with vehemence past grammar. "If they have they'll be better without them. They ought to be scuttled."
Nevertheless, Jean's suggestion remained in all their minds.
Never was such a bright look-out as the Torchmen kept for theBlackbirder, as they dubbed the chase. The rigging was never free from anxious gazers. It looked as though a flight of great birds had lighted on the ship.
Jean remarked on it to Aunt Jannet Harvey.
"They're fine fellows and all of one mind. See how eager they are to catch her."
"Ay, ay!" said Aunt Jannet. "They'll find her if she's to be found," and did not think it necessary to add that, through Captain Cathie, she had offered five pounds to the man who first sighted the other ship.
Blair walked the deck strenuously, mostly alone, occasionally with one of the others. And the more he walked and the more he thought, the more averse he became to the idea of hanging.
"We're doing right for right's sake in freeing these islanders," he said to Evans and Stuart one time. "If we hang those men I can't help feeling we're doing wrong for right's sake, and there we come to the old Jesuitical practice which we all condemn. We do a wrong in the belief that it will save future trouble. I don't believe we're justified. We've got to do what seems to us right now. The future is in God's hands. If trouble comes, He will show us how to meet it."
"That, I think, is highest wisdom," said Stuart. "If the trouble comes, we shall meet it with clear consciences, and clear consciences make stout hearts."
"I'm with you," said Evans. "I'd like to see them wiped out as much as Captain Cathie would, but I think we're on a higher plane in doing as you suggest. You feel sure of catching them?"
"Hopeful—and determined to do it, if it can be done. They've got at most two days' start. Less, perhaps, for the village was still smoking. They're heavily laden, and we are making good way. We cut into a belt of calms and variables soon, and there we can take to steam. And then—they don't know they're being chased. We do."
There was, however, this one element of doubt in the chase: would the raiders carry on due east, in order to get all possible out of the fairly steady westerly winds,—thereby lengthening the distance they had to cover, and having, after all, in the end, to encounter the possibly adverse winds of the coast,—or would they take their chance across the doubtful calm belt and make straight for the Peruvian coast?
It was an even question, and the board on which the game had to be played was several thousand miles square.
Blair and Cathie discussed the matter in all its bearings.
"What would I do if I was them?" summed up the captain. "Well, that would depend too. If I had two or three hundred passengers aboard, and each one worth so much alive and nothing dead, I'd want to get 'em home alive as quick as possible. If I was well stocked with provisions I might carry on with this wind for the coast. If I was anyways short I'd probably try a beat straight for home. If we don't sight them in two days we'll edge up north-east a bit; but I'm pretty sure they'll keep this wind as long as they can, and chances are we'll sight them within twenty-four hours. They're probably not hurrying, and we're making every inch we can."
But it was the morning of the third day before the welcome hail from aloft brought every soul on board into the bows, to search for the tiny mote on the horizon on which all their hopes were concentrated.
It was a very early bird who had discovered the worm. He had gone up aloft before the dawn, and, as the sun shot up, the rim of the sea was lucent like the edge of a glass plate brimming with water. An almost invisible flaw, a mere film against the light, was enough for the practised eye, and his joyful "Sail ho!" turned the ship upside-down.
Captain Cathie swung up alongside the look-out with his glasses, and was presently on deck again beaming contentedly.
"That's her right enough," he said. "A brig, and we're raising her fast. You'll see her from below here inside an hour."
"When shall we catch her up?" asked Blair anxiously.
"Perhaps by three o'clock or so," said Cathie, after a moment's consideration, but added cautiously, "if the wind holds," and, as if resenting his doubt, the sails gave an ominous warning flap.
"Right," said the captain, with a determined nod, and set the engineers to work at once to get up steam. "We'd be as well to have it on anyhow, to keep the weather gauge of him when we come up," and presently the screw was churning the merry bubbles up astern, and the chase was rising slowly on the horizon.
The brig, however, had held the wind longer than they had. It was mid-afternoon before they got within range of her, and she was still drawing slowly along with sails that bulged and flapped in desultory catspaws.
"Shall I send a shot over her, just to show we mean business?" brimmed Cathie.
"No shots unless they're absolutely necessary, captain," said Blair. "We'll hail her first. And I think you ladies had better go below. Their answer may be lead."
Aunt Jannet was for resisting.
"I want to see," said she.
"There may be things not for your seeing, Aunt Jannet," said Blair quietly, "and other things besides. Please go with the others and keep them from feeling nervous if you can."
So the ladies went below, and we may imagine to what helpful furtherance of patient waiting they betook themselves.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MAN'S MAN'S MAN
The sides of theBlackbirderwere lined with sallow, scowling faces, as villainous a crew as ever gathered aboard one disreputable ship since time began.
They took in all the points of the trim little craft that nosed quietly up within speaking distance; the British flag, to which they were by nature antipathetic; the long brown gun forward, with its black mouth pointing plumb for every shifty eye of them; the glancing barrels of the Winchesters, and the steady determination of the men who carried them; the covert menace of the whole silent display. Muttered blasphemies rolled along the line of yellow faces, and the rumble of them was heard aboard theTorch.
"What you want?" shouted a burly figure, standing aft behind the deckhouse.
"Your cargo," replied Captain Cathie, patting the breach of his big gun affectionately, and the objurgations aboard the enemy broke out afresh.
"What you mean?"
"You'd better come aboard here and we'll explain."
"You better fetch me."
"Very well," said Cathie, with joy in his face.
He stooped behind his long gun for a moment, trained it carefully, and instantly its angry bellow filled sea and sky, and sent the women below to their knees. They heard a crash, aloft and below, aboard theBlackbirder, and the yells of the men as they scattered to avoid the falling spars. The smoke, drifting lazily away, showed the brig's maintopmast nipped neatly at the crosstrees, and hanging with its yards in a fantastic tangle of ropes to the deck.
"That's the first time of asking," shouted Cathie. "Are you coming?" and he bent behind his gun again.
"I kom," and they saw the black-a-vised crew set to launching a boat, with vicious side-glances at their oppressor.
Presently the dirty boat and its dirty crew lay alongside, and the burly one climbed slowly up the ladder they dropped for him.
His small eyes glared viciously out of his bloated cheeks, "like a hunted boar's," said Cathie afterwards.
"Now then! You are pirate?"
"Not at all—we're missionaries," said Cathie.
"Missi——!" and the fat one came within measurable distance of apoplexy.
"You've stolen our people. We want them back. Do you understand?"
But theBlackbirder'sEnglish was limited, and the shock of meeting missionaries of so strange a texture had bemused his wits.
Blair begged Stuart to speak to him in Spanish, and the wandering wits came back at sound of it.
"Tell him," said Blair, "that the islanders he has kidnapped are our people, and we intend to take them home again."
And Stuart put it to him so.
"If he makes any resistance we shall overcome it. What does he say?"
"He asks how you're going to take them back."
"We will see to all that presently. First, he will bring aboard here all the arms they have over yonder," said Blair, and as that sank through Stuart into the other's understanding, the little boar-eyes gleamed more viciously than ever, and the fat body rumbled with volcanic fires.
"We will give him half an hour to deliver up the arms. If they are not here then, his other mast will go. He will bring them over himself."
The little eyes glared furiously round, but found nothing but grimmest determination in the faces that hemmed him in. Possibly they did not fail to note all the other points bearing on the question. He shambled to the side with a growl in his throat, and got heavily into his boat, and was pulled across to his ship, and immediately they heard the simmering of a hot discussion tipped with sharp flakes of invective.
"They don't like it," said Captain Cathie.
The minutes passed. Now and again a scowling face turned their way, and shot a venomous white-eyed glance at them, but there were no signs of the arms coming over.
"Five minutes more," shouted Cathie at last, bubbling with excitement, and clapping the breech of his gun. "And, my goodness, I hope you'll run it out! I want that other mast," he added softly.
"Five minutes more," shouted Stuart in Spanish, so that there should be no misunderstanding.
Cathie stood watch in one hand, lanyard in the other, one foot tapping restlessly. He hungered for that other mast, and the lesson its fall would teach the yellow dogs.
At last he closed his watch with a snap, stooped to the gun, and with a roar and a rattling crash, and a blasphemous scatteration below, the foretopmast shared the devastation of the mainmast.
"Now we have them right as a trivet," said Cathie, "and they'll begin to understand where they are."
They understood, and five minutes later the boat shoved off again, bringing the spoils of war, such part of them, at all events, as they chose to surrender—some thirty muskets, as many cutlasses, and half a dozen revolvers.
"Now," said Blair, to the downcast captain of theBlackbirder, through Stuart, "you will stop here. We shall tow you back to the islands. When your cargo is discharged, you will be at liberty to go. If you ever return on this errand, you will find us waiting for you. Now, captain," to Cathie, and, at a sign from the captain, one of the white whale-boats dropped to the water, and half a dozen men jumped into her, carrying the coil of a stout hawser, which ran out over the stern of theTorchand was secured amidships.
TheTorchherself swung into line ahead of the other, and the big steel gun swung slowly round till her muzzle grinned threateningly round each side of the mainmast.
"Tell those men to get back, Stuart, and say the captain waits with us," and the brig's boat pushed sulkily off. "Now, Stuart, you come with me, and Matti. We will take revolvers, though we shall not need them."
Matti shivered into the boat, and Stuart and Blair followed with four Torches carrying Winchesters, and pulled to the brig and climbed up among the truculent crew, every man of which had his knife at his back and hands that itched to get using it.
Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told the captain, and added some special instructions for his own benefit.
Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told the captain.Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told the captain.
Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told the captain.Blair called for the mate and told him curtly what he had already told the captain.
"First, make fast that hawser!"
They did it to the satisfaction of the Torches, and at a call from Blair theTorchstarted slowly ahead, the hawser tightened, and every solid thrust of the blades in the blue water cut an upward step in the life of the Dark Islands.
"Now, understand! There will be a hand on that rope night and day. If there is any tampering with it you will hear from us. This mess"—pointing to the dismantled masts—"you will not touch till we reach the islands. Now I am going to inspect your cargo. How often do you feed them?"
"Twice a day."
"Some of us will come across each time and see it done. I hold you responsible. If they suffer, you will suffer. Understand? Now lead the way! You"—to Stuart and the four Torches—"please keep your eyes about you while I go below. Matti, you come with me."
A grating, through which came a most horrible smell, was hauled up, and the three went down into the inferno, and felt sick before their feet quitted the ladder. For the mate was sick at this unexpected turn of fortune, and Blair and Matti came near to physical sickness with the stench.
Blair clung to the side of the ladder and gazed mistily round. There was little light, but the dimness seemed to come not so much from lack of light as from superfluity of nastiness of every possible description and human misery indescribable. The feel of the place was like a hot breath from the pit. It closed silently upon one like the hand of a crawling death. It dimmed the eyes, and choked the throat, and lay like a weight on the heart.
To breathe it seemed death, yet three hundred miserables breathed it and lived, and by degrees his eyes discerned them and never lost the sight.
A great confused tangle of brown limbs and bodies, many entirely naked, a forest of shock heads, a hypnotising multitude of dark eyes all focussed on him, and all pitted with sparks of light from the opened hatch—mostly men, a few women, no children—short panting breaths, sighs, groans, the dull rattle of chains.
"Have they been fed to-day?" gasped Blair, and pointed to his mouth.
The mate nodded.
Blair went two steps up the ladder and called to Stuart.
"Tell them to feed and water these poor things instantly. Now, Matti, ask them in all the tongues you know if there is any headman or chief among them. And say we mean them well."
Matti tried them without success in two or three dialects, but at last hit upon one that evoked responsive movements in some of those nearest the light. He felt his way, and at last got a word in answer, the meaning of which he understood.
Here a couple of men came down the ladder carrying baskets of what looked like dog-biscuits, which they commenced handing round, one to each prisoner, and the latter sprang to the limits of their tethers for them, and snatched and worried them like dogs that had not been fed for a week. Blair looked at the mate, but the mate looked elsewhere.
It took a long time and many renewals to supply them all; but Blair would not move till it was done, nor until every one had had a drink of water. Then the interrupted conversation was resumed.
Yes, there was a chief there, and Blair ordered the mate to release the man and bring him forward. He came without eagerness, a tall, brown, well-built man of middle age, with a gloomy, but not absolutely forbidding face, pinched just now, perhaps with hunger, perhaps with despair. Experience had taught him to expect nothing but evil at the hands of white men.
But even his dull misery could not but perceive a difference between this clean, white-clad white man and those he had become accustomed to, and he gazed at Blair with a note of sullen inquiry.
"You are a chief?" asked Blair, through Matti.
"I am a king," he said, answering Blair, and bestowing no look on Matti, who, he perceived, was only a voice. And there was that in his tone and manner which carried conviction in spite of the misery of his condition.
"We have come to set you free and to take you back to the island."
And when the words beat through Matti's attempt at his dialect and got into his brain, it was as though an electric shock had galvanised him suddenly into new life.
"Free?—the island?" he stammered, and stared, still doubting. "All?" he asked.
"Yes, all," and he turned and told the news to the rest in quick, clipping words, and after a moment's amazed silence a shout went up, and the fetid hole was filled with a deafening buzz of talk.
It was only after anxious consideration of the point that Blair had decided to tell them the good news. He grudged every lost soul there. He would not lose one. There might be some given over to utter despair, and there is no tonic like hope.
"You will come with us," said Blair, to the discrowned king.
The man looked back into the gloom, and then again at Blair, and spoke eagerly.
"He says one of his wives is there," said Matti. "She shall come also."
The man pointed her out, the mate released her, and they climbed to the blessed upper air, all a-tremble with eagerness.
"Now, understand!" said Blair to the mate, through Stuart, so that all could hear him: "when your cargo is discharged, you will be at liberty to go where you will. If you attempt any treachery, we will blow you to pieces. If you ever return to the Dark Islands, you do so at your own peril," and he saw his guests into the boat and followed them.
The woman was young and not uncomely, but subdued and apparently somewhat dazed still at these sudden reverses of fortune. Neither spoke a word as theTorchslowed down for them to come aboard, but the man's eyes roved to and fro in ceaseless questioning, and he seemed to arrive at an intelligent understanding of matters. The long steel gun claimed his attention the moment he reached the deck, and from his instant glance across at the shattered hamper of the brig he evidently associated the two things.
Their only visible clothing was a native mat wrapped round the waist and falling nearly to the feet, and the very first thing to do was to cleanse them of the visible results of their 'tween-decks imprisonment.
Blair led the man down to the men's bathroom, and turned on the taps and filled the bath before his astonished eyes. He showed him also the use of soap, by washing his own hands, and left him to complete his toilet. He could not, however, forbear listening outside to hear how he got on, and was rewarded at first by a long silence, then by several tentative turnings on and off of the wonderful taps. Then a slight splashing suggested an experiment with the soap; and finally grunts of satisfaction and much wallowing told of savage man's enjoyment of the amenities of civilisation, and the return to his natural cleanliness. When he had had time to wash himself several times over, Blair knocked on the door and went in, and found his guest lying full length under water, with only his brown nose showing, and evidently feeling very much better.
He sat up and gurgled some words expressive of his feelings, and was mightily astonished at the sudden disappearance of the water when the plug was pulled up. He wanted to fill the bath again at once to see it run out again, and Blair let him engineer a final sluice for himself.
He was a much pleasanter companion after his wash. His fine brown skin shone under the unusual treatment of a towel, and his hair stuck out from his head like a twirling mop. He was about to assume his dirty mat again, but Blair hauled out some clean towels, tied one round him like a loin-cloth, draped another from his hips as he had worn his mat, and threw another over his shoulders, and the man was dressed as he had never been dressed in his life before. The towels happened to have broad red bands along the edges, and moreover had fringes, and their wearer was as proud of them as any Piccadilly dandy of his newest thing in spring suits.
Somewhat similar doings had been in course in the ladies' quarters, but, thanks to Aunt Jannet Harvey's very determined, but equally mistaken, good intentions, the results were less happy.
Aunt Jannet believed firmly that decency as well as cleanliness were first steps towards godliness, and she was too recent an arrival in the equatorials, and perhaps also too conservative in her own ideas, to understand that decency of attire is after all purely matter of custom. To her, a girl dressed, or undressed, only in a ridi fringe which clung precariously to her hips and fell half-way to her knee, was practically unclothed. She did not know that it was death for a man to touch that scant, precarious garment. Strange anomaly of the cannibal isles—a dangling fringe of smoked coco-nut fibre a more stringent safeguard than the multitudinous garments of civilisation! When Aunt Jannet did learn that fact she thought considerably, and thereafter took a somewhat wider view of things.
Meanwhile, in the mistaken goodness of her heart, she had insisted on arraying the newcomer in garments of her own, the most visible of which was a light print dress, in which the poor creature looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt.
At sight of her transformation the brown man stared hard, and then grinned vigorously, and the girl hotched and wriggled in disgustful discomfort. She came up to the man and fingered his soft towels wistfully. She spoke to him, and he instantly handed her the one he had over his shoulder. She tore at the neck of her dress with evident intention, and Blair begged Jean to take her away and provide her with what towels she wished.
"Well, I never!" began Aunt Jannet remonstratively.
"That is a mistake that has wrought infinite mischief, dear Aunt Jannet," he said. "Our work must begin inside, not outside. Meddle as little as possible with manners and customs or you do more harm than good."
"My goodness me! It's absolutely indecent for a woman to go about with nothing on but a towel. Don't tell me you allow them to eat one another, Kenneth!"
"Well, we break them off that as soon as we can. But in all these matters we have learned that it is highest wisdom to hasten slowly."
"Well, I——"
But here the brown girl came back, all smiles and modest grace, clad in red-fringed towels like the man, and even Aunt Jannet, in her heart, could find no fault with her appearance.
Then Blair called Matti, and, sitting on the deck by the new arrivals, he quietly commenced his approaches towards the conquest of the Dark Islands.
Briefly—in the telling, though very much otherwise in the extracting—this was what they learned. The man's name was Ha'o—which he pronounced Hacho, the ch as in loch—and the woman's Nai or Na-ee.
He was, he asserted, chief of that one of the Dark Islands which had been raided by the brig. A number of the islanders had been enticed on board with soft words and presents and then suddenly made prisoners. The ship had then apparently sailed, but that same night the village was burnt and he and the rest carried off.
It was not easy to make him understand what had induced these other white men to follow and bring them back. If they did really land him on his own island again—of which he was by no means sure—he would be their friend and brother. As for those others—looking venomously at the captain of the brig, who was sitting amidships in gloomy contemplation of the scurviness of fortune—he would ask nothing better than to eat them if the chance offered.
"You eat men, then?" asked Blair, through Matti.
"Of course. Why not? Properly cooked they are excellent eating"—or words to that effect.
And Aunt Jannet Harvey and the other ladies shuddered and wondered, for he did not by any means look the monster his words implied.
Blair tried hard to convey to him the idea that they had come from the other side of the world for the sole purpose of helping him and his people; but that was too much for him—he could not comprehend it.
He got tired of being questioned out of his depth, and strolled about the ship, examining everything attentively. The long brown steel gun, the revolving screw, the engines, and the smoke pouring out of the funnel claimed his chief attention. During the next few days he hung over the stern watching the revolving blades and the bubbling wake by the hour, with absorbed and puzzled face, and every now and then would lick his hand and hold it up to feel the air. There was little wind, for Captain Cathie had purposely run up into the calm belt to lessen the strain of the towage, but such as there was it was dead against them, and the brown man could not understand it. As to the gliding pistons and smooth-running wheels in the engine-room, they were white men's magic of the most virulent description, and Matti himself understood the business too little to be able to convey any clear idea of the connection between them and the never-resting screw astern.
For the rest, both the brown man and the girl found ample grounds for wonder in the farm-yard in the bows—the contemplative cow, the sullen-eyed young bull, the stolid goats, and the rooting piglets and their mother, and the cocks and hens in their coops, and the men's pet cat, which occupied their various bunks in turn, and accepted all their attentions with the utmost complacence and gave nothing in return. But of all the things that set sparks in the girl's wondering eyes, the crowning delight was the piano in the saloon and the little harmonium which was lashed alongside it.
She would sit with her ear pressed tight to the frame and her eyes like saucers as long as any one would play for her; and when her own slim brown finger touched one of the white keys and elicited due response she jumped with delight, and would have practised one-finger exercises of her own composition all day and all night. There were other wonders in reserve, but she had enough for the present, and more than enough.
"She has an ear for music," said Jean to her husband one night. "She was crouching by me during the singing, and I heard her humming the tune quite nicely."
"They are famous singers, some of them," said Blair. "I count a good deal on working up to the citadel through Eargate."
TheBlackbirdercaptain was lodged in an empty cabin, and had his meals there. He had ample time for introspective musing, for none cared to associate with him.
In the middle of the first night Blair jumped up in a sweat of terror. The idea had suddenly occurred to him that the hostage might make a break for liberty or revenge by setting the ship on fire. He went hastily to the spare cabin and found him snoring comfortably. Nevertheless he sat there all night, and after that the man was never left alone, day or night, till they finally got rid of him.
Twice each day some of them, with Matti as interpreter, dropped down to the brig and saw the islanders duly fed and watered, and said a word or two of cheer to them. And day after day the sallow crew scowled across at the quiet ordered life on board the schooner—the pleasant, friendly relations, the morning and evening services on deck—and cursed sparks into its vicious eyes; but ventured no more because of the ever-present Winchesters and the black mouth of Long Tom which gaped hungrily at them whenever they looked that way.
Their weighted progress was slow. It was the evening of the sixth day before the distant peaks of the Dark Islands bit up through the setting sun, and on the morning of the seventh day they were steaming slowly for the entrance to the lagoon.
Ha'o and Nai had refused to lie down all night. All night long they had hung over the bows, peering into the darkness in a fever of anticipation which left them no words. When the flaming east lit up the giant peak they knew so well, they could scarce contain themselves. Cannibals they were and benighted heathen, but this was home, and there was hope in them and for them.
Captain Cathie, with admirable skill, and a couple of his whale-boats, humoured the brig in, stern foremost, since she had no steerage-way on her. He dropped her down the lagoon as close to the white sand spear as he deemed advisable, then bade them drop their anchor and loose the tow-rope, and heaved a sigh of content as his gallant little ship shook herself free of that most undesirable partnership.
He took up a position to seaward of the brig, and Blair, and Evans, and Ha'o, with Matti and the usual guard in attendance, went on board of her to discharge cargo.
It was a thing to remember, one of the high times of life that stand out in the past when other things have faded.
A great shout went up from the chaotic mass of brown men as the white-clad figures came down the ladder and Ha'o shouted the good news to them. He had been across each day with whoever was going, and Blair, watching carefully this corner-stone of his enterprise, had come to think well of him.
A thing to remember, indeed, as the brown figures came tumbling up the ladder in batches. They fairly scrambled over one another in their haste, and, after one wild glance round to make sure, flung themselves headlong into the familiar waters, and made straight for the shore, shouting breathlessly as they went, eager only to set foot on that white beach once more.
Blair had reckoned on carrying them ashore in the boats, but who would wait for boats when the sparkling water called?
That long string of urgently bobbing black heads from brig to shore—first-fruits of victory—spolia opimain very truth—was a sight none of them ever forgot. The Torches laughed aloud with enjoyment. Even the sullen-eyed Blackbirders watched with interest.
Ha'o stood among the white men with wonderful self-control. Instinct drew him to the water with the rest, but he would not. Even these few short days on the higher plane had not been without their effect. He had watched ceaselessly. He had seen much that was beyond him. For the first time in his life, he had come across a force greater than his own, which made for good and not for evil. There were stirrings within him which he did not understand, but the first expression of them made for restraint.
When the stream of brown bodies ceased pouring out of the hatch, and the last batch had leaped overboard with joyful shouts, Blair and the others climbed down into the empty dimness to make sure that all had gone. They found three lying with starting eyes, too weak to move and fearful that they had been forgotten. These they wrapped in abandoned mats and passed up on deck and lowered into one of the whale-boats. Then a flying visit to theTorchfor Nai, and they sped to the shore.
It was only when they all stood on the white beach that Ha'o, shaking with excitement barely to be restrained, turned to Blair and, grasping his hand in his own two trembling ones, carried it to his forehead and said some words in a low voice.
Blair glanced at Matti for enlightenment.
"He says he is your man from this day, and will be to you as a brother," said Matti, and the white hand and the brown gripped firmly on the compact. Then Ha'o turned and walked rapidly towards the village, and they went with him.
So Ha'o of Kapaa'a became the Man's man's man. And the first sparks of light for the Dark Islands leaped from the match that set fire to the village thatch ten days before.
So good comes out of evil, and no man may safely say this is good and that is ill. For no man knows, save Him Who knows all things; and His ways are so very different from man's ways that wisdom and experience drive one only to the doing with one's might the thing that is in hand, in the faithful hope that He will round the corners and shape the work to its appointed end.