CHAPTER II—THE REVOLT OF THE OLD MEN
Two women were in it, and as they drove it ashore beaching it with the outrigger a-tilt, Dick, followed by Katafa, approached, and resting his hand on the mast stays attached to the outrigger gratings, he turned to the women, who, springing out, stood, paddles in hand, looking from him to Katafa.
“And the builders?” asked he, “where are they?”
The shorter woman clucked her tongue and turned her face away towards the lagoon, the taller one looked Dick straight in the face.
“They will not come,” said she. “They say Uta Matu alone was their king and he is dead, also they say they are too old. ‘A mataya ayana’—they are feeble and near past the fishing, even in the quiet water.”
The shorter woman choked as if over a laugh, then she turned straight to Dick.
“They will not come, Taori, all else is talk.”
She was right. The express order had gone to them to cross over and they refused; they would not acknowledge the newcomer as their chief, all else was talk.
Several villagers, seeing the canoe beaching, had run up and were listening, more were coming along. Already the subject was under whispered discussion amongst the group by the canoe, whilst Dick, his foot resting on the slightly tilted outrigger, stood, his eyes fixed on the sennit binding of the outrigger pole as if studying it profoundly.
The blaze of anger that had come into his eyes on hearing the news had passed; anger had given place to thought.
This was no ordinary business. Dick had never heard the word “revolt,” nor the word “authority,” but he could think quite well without them. The only men who could direct the building of the big war canoes refused to work, and from the tone and looks of the women who brought the message, he saw quite clearly that if something were not done to bring the canoe-builders to heel, his power to make the natives do things would be gone.
Dick never wasted much time in thought. He turned from the canoe, raced up to the house where the little ships were carefully stored and came racing back with a fish spear.
Then, calling to the women, he helped to run the canoe out, sprang on board and helped to raise the mat sail to the wind coming in from the break.
“I will soon return,” he cried to Katafa, his voice borne across the sparkling water on a slant of the wind; then the women crouched down to ballast the canoe, and with the steering paddle in his hand he steered.
The canoe that had brought Katafa drifting to Palm Tree years ago had been the first South Sea island craft that the boy had seen. The fascination of it had remained with him. This canoe was bigger, broader of beam and the long skate-shaped piece of wood that formed the outrigger was connected with it not by outrigger poles but by a bridge.
Dick, as he steered, took in every little detail, the rattans of the grating, the way the mast stays were fixed to the grating and how the mast itself was stepped, the outrigger and the curve of its ends, the mat sail and the way it was fastened to the yard.
Though he had never steered a canoe before, the sea-craft inborn in him carried him through, and the women crouching and watching and noting every detail saw nothing indicative of indecision.
Now there are two ways in which one may upset a canoe of this sort by bad handling, one is to let the outrigger leave the water and tilt too high in the air, the other is to let the outrigger dip too deep in the water.
Dick seemed to know, and as they crossed the big lift of sea coming in with the flood from the break, he avoided both dangers.
The beach where the remnants of the southern tribe lived, was exactly opposite to the beach of the northern tribe, and as both beaches were close to the break in the reef, the distance from one to the other was little over a mile. Then as they drew close, Dick could see more distinctly the few remaining huts under the shelter of a grove of Jack-fruit trees; beyond the Jack-fruit stood pandanus palms bending lagoonward, and three tall coconut palms sharp against the white up-flaring horizon.
As the canoe beached, Dick saw the rebels. They were seated on the sand close to the most easterly of the huts, seated in the shadow of the Jack-fruit leaves; three old men seated, two with their knees up and one tailor fashion, whilst close to them by the edge of a little pool lay a girl.
As Dick drew near followed by the taller of the boat women, the girl, who had been gazing into the waters of the pool, looked up.
She was Le Moan, granddaughter of Le Juan, the witch woman of Karolin now dead and gone to meet judgment for the destruction she had caused. Le Moan was only fourteen. She had heard of the coming of the new ruler to Karolin and of his bringing with him Katafa, the girl long thought to be dead. She had heard the order given to her grandfather Aioma that morning to come at once to the northern beach as the new chief required canoes to be built, and she had heard the old man’s refusal. Le Moan had wondered what this new chief might be like. The monstrous great figure of Uta Matu, last king of Karolin, had come up in memory at the word “chief,” and now, as the canoe was hauled up and the women cried out “He comes,” she saw Dick.
Dick with the sun on his face and on his red-gold hair, Dick naked and honey-coloured, lithe as a panther and straight as a stabbing spear. Dick with his eyes fixed on the three old men of Karolin who had turned their heads to gaze on Dick.
Le Moan drew in her breath, then she seemed to cease breathing as the vision approached, passed her without a word and stood facing Aioma, the eldest and the greatest of the canoe-builders.
Le Moan was only fourteen, yet she was tall almost as Katafa, she was not a true Polynesian; though her mother had been a native of Karolin, her father, a sailor from a Spanish ship destroyed years ago by Uta Matu, had given the girl European characteristics so strong that she stood apart from the other islanders as a pine might stand amongst palm trees.
She was beautiful, with a dark beauty just beginning to unfold from the bud and she was strange as the sea depths themselves. Sometimes seated alone beneath the towering Jack-fruits her head would poise as though she were listening, as though some voice were calling through the sound of the surf on the reef, some voice whose words she could not quite catch; and sometimes she would sit above the reef pools gazing deep down into the water, the crystal water where coralline growths bloomed and fish swam, but where she seemed to see more things than fish.
The sharp mixture of two utterly alien races sometimes produces strange results—it was almost at times as if Le Moan were confused by voices or visions from lands of ancestry worlds apart.
She would go with Aioma fishing, and with her on board, Aioma never dreaded losing sight of land, for Le Moan was a pathfinder.
Blindfold her on the coral and she would yet find her way on foot, take her beyond the sea-line and she would return like a homing pigeon. Like the pigeon she had the compass in her brain.
This was the only gift she had received from her mother, La Jennabon, who had received it from seafaring ancestors of the remote past.
Crouching by the well she saw now Dick standing before Aioma and she heard his voice.
“You are Aioma?” said Dick, who had singled the chief of the three out by instinct.
The three old men rose to their feet. The sight of the newcomer helped, but it was the singling out of Aioma with such success by one who had never seen him that produced the effect. Surely here was a chief.
“I am Aioma,” replied the other. “What want you with me?”
“That which the woman had already told you,” replied Dick, who hated waste of words or repeating himself.
“They told me of the new chief who had come to the northern beach—e uma kaio tau, and of how he had ordered canoes to be built,” said Aioma, “and I said, ‘I am too old, and Uta is dead, and I know no chief but Uta; also in the last war on that Island in the north all the men of Karolin fell and they have never returned, they nor their canoes.’ So what is the use of building more canoes when there are no men to fill them?”
“The men are growing,” said Dick.
“Ay, they are growing,” grumbled Aioma, “but it will be many moons before they are ready to take the paddle and the spear—and even so, where is the enemy? The sea is clear.”
“Aioma,” said Dick, “I have come from there,” pointing to the north; “the sea is not clear.”
“You have come from Marua (Palm Tree)?”
“I have come from Marua, where one day Katafa came, drifted from here in her canoe; there we lived till a little while ago when men landed, killing and breaking and burning—burning even the big canoe they had come in. Then Katafa and I set sail for Karolin, for Karolin called me to rule her people.”
“And the men who landed to kill and burn?” asked Aioma.
“They are still on Marua; they have no canoes but they will build them, and surely they will come.”
Neither of Aioma’s companions said a word whilst Aioma stood looking at the ground as if consulting it, then his eyes rose to Dick’s face. Age and war had made Aioma wise, he knew men and he knew Truth when he saw her.
“I will do your bidding, Taori,” said he quite simply, then he turned to the others, spoke some words to them, giving directions what to do till his return, and led the way to the canoe.
Le Moan, still crouching by the well, said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on Dick, this creature so new, so different from any one she had ever seen. Perhaps the race spirit was telling her that here was a being of her father’s race miraculously come to Karolin, perhaps she was held simply by the grace and youth of the newcomer—who knows?
Dick, as he turned, noticed her fully for the first time and as their eyes met, he paused, held by her gaze and the strangeness of her appearance, so different from that of the other natives. For a moment his mind seemed trapped, then as his eyes fell he passed on and taking the steering paddle pushed off, the wind from the reef-break filling the sail of the canoe.
Le Moan, rising and shading her eyes, stood watching as the sail grew less across the sparkling water, watching as the canoe rose and fell on the swell setting in from the break, watching as it reached the far white line of the northern beach where Katafa was waiting for the return of her lover.