Rantan was at the wheel, and Le Moan forward, with swelling heart, stood watching as they passed the break, the Gates of Morning, through which the tide was flooding like a mill-race. She saw the southern beach still deserted and the northern beach where the trees sheltered the village from sight. Not a sign of life was to be seen in all that vast prospect of locked lagoon and far-running reefs till from the distant trees a form appeared—Aioma.
After him came others till the beach close to the trees was thronged by a crowd even in movement like a colony of ants disturbed and showing now against the background of the trees the glint of spears. Le Moan’s heart sank under a sudden premonition of evil. She turned and glanced to where Rantan at the wheel was staring ahead and Carlin close by him was shading his eyes.
Rantan had not expected this. He had fancied Karolin deserted. Sru had said nothing of what Le Moan had told him about Taori and he said nothing now as he stood with eyes wrinkled against the sun blaze from the lagoon. Taori, he had gathered to be some kanaka boy, a love of Le Moan’s who, so far from giving trouble, would welcome her back—but that crowd, its movements and the flash of the thready spears! He made vague answers to the questions flung at him by the mate, then at the order to let go the anchor he ran forward whilst Carlin dived below, returning with two of the Vetirli rifles and ammunition. Then as the anchor fell and the Kermadec swung to her moorings on the flood, nose to the break, Rantan, leaving the wheel and standing with compressed lips, his hand on the after rail and his eyes on the crowd, suddenly broke silence and turned to Carlin.
“We don’t want any fighting,” said he. “We’ve got to palaver them. It’s a jolt. Peterson said the place was empty, and I reckon he lied or else he didn’t keep his eyes skinned, but whether or no we’ve got to swallow it. Worst is we’ve no trade to speak of, nothing but sandalwood. No matter—we don’t want nothing but to be left alone. Order out the boat and we’ll row off to them, and keep those guns hid.”
He went below for Peterson’s revolver which Carlin had forgotten, and when he returned, the boat was down with four kanakas for crew and Carlin in the stern sheets; he followed and took his place by the beachcomber and the boat pushed off.
He had made a great blunder, absolutely forgotten the existence of Le Moan and her use as an ambassador, but the mind of Rantan was working against odds.
He had never consciously worried about Peterson. The dead Peterson was done with out of count, and yet away in the back of his mind Peterson existed, not as a form, not even as a shadow, but as the vaguest, vaguest hint of possible trouble, some day. Steering, or smoking below, or enjoying in prospect the profits to be got out of the venture, Rantan would be conscious of a something that was marring his view of things; something that, seizing it with his mind, would prove to be nothing more than just a feeling that trouble might come some day owing to Peterson.
On sailing into the lagoon, the wind across that great blue pearl garden had swept his mind clear of all trace of worry. Here was success at last, wealth for the taking and no one to watch the taker or interfere with his doings. No one but the gulls. A child on that beach would have shattered the desolation and destroyed the feeling of security and detachment from the world.
Then the trees had given up their people and to Rantan it was almost as though Peterson himself had reappeared.
He had reckoned to get rid of the crew of the Kermadec in his own given time after he had worked them for his profit, to get rid of Carlin, of his own name, of everything and anything that could associate him with this venture, and here were hundreds of witnesses where he had expected to find none but the gull that cannot talk.
Truly it was a jolt! As the boat drew on for the shore, the crowd on the beach moved and spread and contracted and then became still, the spears all in one clump.
There were at least thirty of the boys of Karolin able to hurl a spear with the precision of a man, and when Aioma had sighted the schooner and given the alarm, Dick, who had been on the outer beach, had called them together. Taiepa, the son of Aioma, had distributed the spears and Aioma himself in a few rapid words had fired the hearts of the tribe.
The strangers must not be allowed to land. For a moment, but only a moment, he took the command of things from Dick’s hands. “They came before,” said Aioma, “when I was a young man, and the great Uta knowing them to be men full of evil would not allow them to land but drove them off, and yet again they came in a canoe bigger than the first (the Spanish ship), and they landed and fought with Uta and he killed them and burnt their great canoe—and yet again they have come and yet again we must fight. We are few, but Taori in himself is many.”
“They shall not land,” said Dick, “even if I face them alone.”
That was the temper of Karolin and it voiced itself as the boat drew closer to the beach in a cry that rang across the water, harsh and sudden, making the kanaka rowers pause and turn their heads.
“They mean fighting,” said Carlin, bending towards one of the rifles lying on the bottom boards.
“Leave that gun alone,” said Rantan. He ordered the rowers to pull a bit closer, rising up and standing in the stern sheets and waving his hand to the beach crowd as though intimating that he wished to speak to them.
The only answer was a spear flung by Taiepa that came like a flash of light and fell into the water true of aim but short by a few yards. The rowers stopped again and backed water. Whilst Carlin picked up the floating spear as a trophy and put it with the rifles, Rantan sat down. Then he ordered them to pull ahead altering the helm so that the bow turned away from the shore and to the west.
As they moved along the beach the distant crowd followed, but the mate did not heed it; he was busy taking notes of the lie of the land, and the position of the trees. The trees, though deep enough to hide the village from the break, were nowhere dense enough to give efficient cover; the reef just here was very broad but very low. A man would be a target—the head and shoulders of him at least—even if he were on the outer coral.
Rantan having obtained all the information he required on these matters altered the course of the boat and made back for the ship.
“Aren’t you going to have one single shot at them?” asked the disgusted Carlin.
“You wait a while,” replied the other.
When they reached the Kermadec he ordered the men to remain in the boat, and going on board dropped down below with his companion. He went to the locker where the ammunition was stored and counted the boxes. There were two thousand rounds.
“I reckon that will do,” said Rantan. “You said you were a good shot. Well, you’ve got a chance to prove your words. I’m going to shoot up this lagoon.”
“From the ship?”
“Ship, no, the boat’s good enough; they have no cover worth anything and only a few old fishing canoes that aren’t good enough to attack us in.”
“Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong,” said Carlin, “but seems to me it will be more than a one-day job.”
“We aren’t hustled for time,” replied the other, “not if it took weeks.”
They came on deck, each carrying a box of ammunition. the spear salved by Carlin had been brought on board by him and stood against the rail. Neither man noticed it, nor did they notice Le Moan crouched in the doorway of the galley and seeming to take shelter from the sun.
Carlin who had ordered a water breaker to be filled, lowered it himself into the boat, then getting in followed by the mate the boat pushed off, Sru rowing stern oar and Rantan at the yoke lines.
It was close on midday and the great sun directly overhead poured his light on the lagoon; beyond the crowd and the trees on the northern beach the coral ran like a white road for miles and miles, to be lost in a smoky shimmer, and from the reef came the near and far voice of the breakers on the outer beach.
The crew left on board, some six in number, had dropped into the foc’sle to smoke and talk. Le Moan could hear their voices as she rose and stood at the rail, her eyes fixed on the boat and her mind divided between the desire to cast herself into the water and swim to the reef and the instinct which told her to stay and watch and wait.
She knew what a rifle was. She had seen Peterson practising with one of the Viterlis at a floating bottle. There were rifles in the boat, but it was not the rifles that filled her mind with a foreboding amounting to terror, it was Rantan’s face as he returned and as he left again. And she could do nothing.
Carlin, before lowering the water breaker had handed an ax into the boat. Why? She could not tell, nor why the water breaker had been taken. It was all part of something that she could not understand, something that was yet evil and threatening to Taori.
She could not make his figure out amongst the crowd, it was too far, and yet he was surely there.
She watched.
The boat drew on towards the beach. Then at the distance of a couple of hundred yards the oarsmen ceased rowing and she floated idly and scarcely drifting—for it was slack water, the flood having ceased. One might have thought the men on board of her were fishing or just lazing in the sun—anything but the truth.
Then Le Moan saw a tiny puff of smoke from the boat’s side, a figure amongst the crowd on the beach sprang into the air and fell, and on the still air came the far-off crack of a rifle.
Carlin had got his man. He was an indifferent shot but he could scarcely have missed as he fired into the brown of the crowd. Rantan, no better a shot, fired immediately after and by some miracle nobody was hit.
Then as Le Moan watched, she saw the crowd break to pieces and vanish amongst the trees, leaving only two figures on the beach, one lying on the sands and one standing erect and seeming to threaten the boat with upflung arm. It was Taori. Her sight as though it had gained telescopic power told her at once that it was Taori.
She saw him bend and catch up the fallen figure in his arms and as he turned to the trees with it, the boat fired again, but missed him. Another shot rang out before he reached the trees, but he vanished unscathed, and quiet fell on the beach and lagoon, broken only by the clamour of gulls disturbed by the firing.
Le Moan changed her place, the ebb was beginning to run and the schooner to swing with it. She came forward and took her position near the foc’sle head, her eyes still fixed on the boat and beach. From the foc’sle came the sound of an occasional snore from the kanakas who had turned in and were sleeping like dogs.
Four fishing canoes lay on the sands near the trees, and now as she watched, she saw the boat under way again pulling in to the beach. The rowers tumbled out and the boat pushed off a few yards with only the two white men in her whilst the landing party made for the canoes and began to smash them up.
Sru—she could tell him by his size—wielded the ax, two others helped in the business with great lumps of loose coral, whilst the fourth stood watch.
It took time, for they did their work thoroughly, breaking the outriggers, breaking the outrigger poles, breaking the canoe bodies, working with the delight that children take in sheer destruction.
The god Destruction was abroad on Karolin beach and lagoon. Though without a temple or a place in mythology of all the gods, he is the most powerful, the most agile and quick of eye, and the swiftest to come when called.
Le Moan watching, saw the four men on the beach stand contemplating their work before returning to the boat.
Then she saw one of them throw up his hands and fall as if felled by an ax. The others turned to run and the foremost of them tripped as a man trips on a kink in a carpet and fell; of the two others one pitched and turned a complete somersault as though some unseen jiu-jitsu player had dealt with him, and the fourth crumpled like a suddenly closed concertina.
Le Moan’s heart sprang alive in her. She knew. The terrible arrows of Karolin poisoned with argora that kills with the swiftness and more than certainty of a bullet had, fired from the trees, done their work.
The spear was the favourite weapon of Karolin, not the bow. The bow was used only on occasions and at long distances. When they came down to resist the landing of Rantan, they had come armed with spears; driven to the shelter of the trees, Aioma, the artful one, had remembered the bows stowed in one of the canoe houses. It was years since the arrows had been poisoned, but the poison of argora never dies, nor does it weaken with time.
In four swings of a pendulum the arrows had done their work, and four upstanding men lay stretched on the beach, motionless, for this terrible poison striking at the nerve centres kills in two beats of the pulse.
Rantan and Carlin, close enough to see the flight of the arrows, put wildly out, tugging at the heavy oars and rowing for their lives; a few hundred yards off shore they paused, rested on their oars and took counsel.
It was a bad business.
Armed with rifles and with easy range they had only managed to bag one of the enemy, whereas...!
“Hell,” said Carlin.
The sweat was running down his broad face. Rantan, brooding, said nothing for a moment. Then suddenly he broke silence.
“We’ve dished their canoes, they can’t come out and attack us; we’ve got the range over them, those arrows are no use at any distance; they live mostly on fish, those chaps, and they can’t come out and fish, having no canoes, and we aren’t hurried for time.” He seemed talking to himself, adding up accounts, whilst Carlin, who had picked up one of the rifles, sat with it across his knees, his face turned shoreward where on the beach lay the four dead men, and save for the gulls not a sign of life. The boat on the ebb tide was drifting slowly back in the direction of the schooner.
“We’ve just got to row up along,” went on Rantan, “and get level with the trees. Those trees don’t give much shelter across the reef. Their houses wouldn’t stop a bullet from a popgun. Take your oar, when we’ve got our position we can anchor and take things quiet.”
Carlin, putting his gun down, took his oar and they began pulling the heavy boat against the current till they got opposite the village and the trees.
Then within rifle shot, but beyond the reach of arrow flight, they dropped the anchor and the boat swung to the current and broadside to the shore.
Rantan was right—the trees though dense enough in patches were not a sufficient cover for a crowd of people, and the houses were death traps. From where they lay they could see the little houses clear marked against the sky beyond and the house of Uta Matu with the post beside it on top of which was the head of Nan, god of the coconut trees, Nan the benign watching over his people, the puraka beds and the pandanus palms.
Of old there had been two gods of Karolin, Nan the benign and Naniwa the ferocious.
Le Moan’s mother had been Le Jennabon, daughter of Le Juan, priestess of Naniwa the shark-toothed god. On the death of Le Juan, Naniwa had seemed to depart, for Karolin. Had he? Do the gods ever die whilst there is a human heart to give them sanctuary?
Nan the benign, grinning on his post—he was carved from a coconut—was set in such a way that his face was turned to the east, that is to say towards the gates of morning. He was placed in that way according to ritual. Chance had anchored the schooner in his line of vision. Hand helpless, as are most benign things, poor old Nan could do nothing to protect the people he no doubt loved. He could keep the weazle-teazle worms away from the puraka plants and he could help a bit in bringing up rain, and it was considered that he could even protect the canoes from the cobra worms that devour planking; but against the wickedness of man and Viterli rifles he was useless.
And yet to-day as he gazed across at the schooner, his grin was in no way diminished, and as the wind stirred the cane post he waggled his head jauntily, perhaps because on the deck of the schooner he saw the granddaughter of the priestess of the shark-toothed god and said to himself with a thrill and a shudder: “Naniwa has returned.”
In the old days when a man revenged himself for some wrong, or, going mad, dashed out the brains of another with a club, he was supposed to be possessed by Naniwa, for just as Nan was the minister of agriculture, the shark-toothed one was the minister of justice. He was in a way the law executing criminals and also making criminals for execution, just as the law does with us.
Anyhow and at all events and bad as he may have been, he was the sworn enemy of foreigners; he had inspired Uta Matu to attack the whaler and he had inspired Le Juan in calling for the attack on the Spanish ship of long ago and to-day perhaps he had inspired Aioma in resisting the landing of these newcomers. The battle was still in the balance, but there on the deck of the anchored schooner stood the granddaughter of his priestess darkly brooding, helpless for the moment, but watching and waiting to strike.
No wonder that Nan grinned and waggled his head at her with a click-clocking noise, for the coconut had worked a bit loose on its stick.
Rantan took his seat on the bottom boards in the stern, resting his rifle comfortably on the gunnel; Carlin, going forward, did the same. The wind which had risen and which was moving Nan on his post, stirred the foliage, and between the boles and over the bushes of mammee apple the shifting shadows danced and the shafts of light showered, but sign of human being there was none.
The crafty Aioma, through the mouth of Dick, had ordered all the children and young people into the mammee apple and the women into the houses whilst he and Dick had taken shelter behind trees, two vast trees that stood like giants amidst the coconuts and pandanas palms, brothers of the trees growing further along the reef that were being used for canoe building.
Aioma knew from old experience what white men could do with guns, but he did not know that a house wall capable of stopping an arrow was incapable of stopping a rifle bullet.
Rantan seeing nothing else to fire at aimed at one of the houses, fired, and as the smoke cleared saw, literally, the house burst open.
The women poured out through the broken canes, made as if to run along the reef to the west and were suddenly headed back by a figure armed with a canoe paddle. It was Dick. He drove them into the mammee apple, where they took cover with the others, then running to the second house of refuge, whilst the bullets whizzed around him, he bade the women in it lie down, calling to the other hidden women to do the same, and then taking shelter himself.
But the blunder of Aioma was fatal. The men in the boat knew now for certain that the mammee apple thickets were packed, that there were no pot holes or crevasses of any account on the seaward side of the reef, that they had the population of Karolin corralled.
Resting his rifle carefully on the gunnel, Rantan led off. He couldn’t well miss, and the deafening explosion of the rifle was followed by a shriek and a movement in the distant bushes where some unfortunate had been hit, and, striving to rise, had been pulled down by his or her companions.
Carlin laughed and fired and evidently missed, to judge by the silence that followed the shot.
Rantan had some trouble with a cartridge. His face had quite changed within the last few minutes and since the corralling of the natives was assured. It was like a mask and the upper lip projected as though suddenly swollen by some injury. He flung the defective cartridge away, loaded with another and fired.
The shot was followed by the cry of a woman and the wailing of a child. One could guess that the child had been hit, not the woman it belonged to, for the wailing kept on and on, a sound shocking in that solitude where nothing was to be seen but the empty beach, the line of mammee apple and the glimpse of empty sea beyond and through the trees.
Carlin, more brutal but less terrible than Rantan, laughed. He was about to fire when a form suddenly moving and breaking from the trees took his eye and stayed his hand.
It was Dick. In his left hand he held a bow and in his right a sheaf of arrows. Aioma had directed that before taking cover the bows and arrows should be laid by the westermost of the two big trees that he and Dick had chosen for shelter. Dick had only to stretch out his arm to seize the weapons and armed with them he came, leaving shelter behind him, right into the open and on to the sands.
At the cry of the first victim, he had started and shivered all over like a dog; at the voice of the child thought left him, or only the thought that there, amongst the bushes with the children and the women, was Katafa; seizing a bow and a handful of the arrows, he left the tree and came out on to the beach and right down to the waterside.
There were seven arrows. He cast them on the sand, picked up one and fixed it with the notch in the bow-string; as he did so Carlin, altering his aim from the bushes to this new target, fired. The sand spurted a yard to the right of the bowman, who, drawing the arrow till the barb nearly touched the bow shaft, loosed it.
It fell true in line but yards short, and as it flicked the water, Rantan’s bullet came plung into the sand and only three inches from Dick’s right foot.
Dick laughed. Like Rantan’s, his face was transfigured.
He had come with no instinct but to draw the fire away from the bushes to himself. Now, in a moment, he had forgotten everything but the boat and the men in the boat and the burning hatred that, could it have been loosed, would have destroyed them like a thunderbolt.
Bending and picking up another arrow he loosed it, increasing the elevation. This time it did not fall short, it went over the boat, zipping down and into the water from the blue several yards away in the lagoon side.
“Hell,” said Carlin.
He dropped the rifle in his hands and seized on the anchor rope, dragging up the anchor, whilst Rantan, firing hurriedly and without effect, seized an oar.
Poisoned arrows even when shot wildly and at random are not things to be played with, and as they rowed, the fear of death in their hearts, came another arrow—wide but only a yard to starboard; then came another short and astern.
“We’re out of range,” said Carlin. They let the boat drift a moment. Another arrow came, but well astern.
Then with a yell as if the silent devil in the soul of him had spoken at last, Rantan sprang to his feet and shook his fist at the figure on the beach.
Then they dropped the anchor and took up the rifles. The boat was out of arrow range, but the bushes were still a clear target for the rifles.
Like artists who know their limitations, the two gunmen turned their attention from the single figure on the beach to the greater target, and Dick, who on seeing the boat draw off beyond range, stood without shooting any more, victorious for the moment but waiting.
He saw the anchor cast over, he saw the boatmen taking up their positions again, he saw the thready tubes of the guns and knew that the firing was about to recommence, then, bending, he seized an arrow and clasping it with the bow in his left hand, rushed into the water. Swimming with his right arm, he headed straight for the boat.
Dick in the water was a fish. To get close to the boat, and, treading water or even floating, loose the arrow at short range, was his object. He was no longer a man nor a human being, but implacable enmity, reasonless energy directed by hate.
Rantan and Carlin had fired before they saw what was coming, a head, an arm half submerged and a bow skittering along the water. Carlin’s jaws snapped together, he tried to extract the cartridge case from his gun, fumbled and failed.
Rantan, less rattled and quicker with his fingers, extracted and reloaded, aimed and fired and missed.
“Fire, you damned fool,” he said to the other, but the game was lost—Carlin was at the anchor rope, the memory of the four dead men on the beach slain by the poisoned arrows of Karolin had him in its grip as it had the other, who with one last glance at the coming terror dropped his gun and seized an oar.
They were beaten, put to flight—if only for the moment.