Chapter IV

“‘What’s up now?’ says Buck. He wasn’t long waiting to know. Four big war canoes pushed out full of men, and making straight for the Greyhound, and Taute, who was talking to Tiaki turns and tells us we were prisoners. Tiaki, for all his underlip, was no fool, and when Taute had done translating what he had to say to us his meaning leapt up at us like luminous paint.

“You see Tiaki had always been used to look on traders as hard bargainers who’d ask a tooth for a tenpenny nail, and here we were, us two, blowing in and offering him a cargo of ammunition for nothing, so long as he’d go and bomb Sru with it. It seemed too good to be true, and he suspected a trap. Said so, right out. He was going to hold us till the business was over and everything turned out satisfactory.

“I had to swallow twice to keep that news down. A moment before we’d been free men, and there we were now like rats in a barrel, but there was no use kicking, so we sat down on the sand and watched the canoe men swarming over the _Greyhound_ and breaking out the cargo. They didn’t touch the Chinks nor loot the ship, just went for the cracker cases, bringing them off load after load and dumping them on the sand.

“Tiaki has a case opened and takes out a cracker; he’d tumbled to the mechanism, and there he stood with the thing in his hand explaining it to the population, talking away and flinging out his arms towards Taleka, evidently gingering them up for the attack on Sru. Then he gives an order sharp as the crack of a whip, and all the Marys and children and old chaps scattered off back to the village, and over a hundred of the fighting men took their seats on the beach in a big circle, whilst crackers were handed round to them and they examined the hang of the things, each man for himself.

“They were a fine lot, but differently coloured, some as dark as bar-chocolate and some the colour of coffee with milk in it, and as they sat there the women and children and old men came down from the village bringing bundles of mat baskets with them, and down they squatted by the edge of the trees going over the baskets and mending them and putting them in order.

“‘What are they up to?’ says Buck.

“‘Can’t you see?’ says I. ‘They’re going to carry the crackers in those baskets. They mean business right enough. Lord! Buck,’ I says, ‘I wish we were out of this; look at the fix we’re in. If them chaps are beaten by Sru, we’ll be done in as sure as paint—makes me sick, sitting here, and there’s our boat right before us. S’pose we make a dash right now, shove her off and get on board——’

“‘Not a bit of use,’ says Buck. ‘They’d let after us in the canoes before we’d pushed off—we’ve just got to stick and see it out. I’m sorry,’ he says; ‘it’s my fault; you were right, and if I ever get out of this I’ll steer clear of mixing up in other folks’ quarrels. I wouldn’t have done it only for the Chink.’

“‘Oh, it don’t matter,’ I says; ‘we’re in it and there’s no use in kicking.’

“I called Taute, who was standing watching the basket work and jabbering with Tiaki, and asked him for news and what he thought they were going to do with us in case things went wrong. He went to Tiaki and had a jabber, and came back to us looking pretty grey about the gills.

“Tiaki was going to attack Sru right away, starting that night and reaching Taleka next morning early; with the current the big war canoes would do the journey in seven hours. He couldn’t make a night attack because of the difficulty of getting in, but he reckoned to reach the bay just at daybreak. Then came the news that we were to go with them and lead the attack. Tiaki said as we had sold Sru the guns to attack Tiaki, it was only fair that we should lead Tiaki’s men against the guns, besides, he wanted to make sure we weren’t leading him into a trap; besides, he had often noticed white men feared nothing and were splendid fighters. He also said if we failed him facing the guns of Sru we’d have fish crackers flung at our backs.

“You see the way that durn cargo served us; the guns in front of us, the crackers at our back—we couldn’t say anything—couldn’t do anything but curse Scudder and the day we met him, and sit there watching the preparations. Women were bringing down provisions for the canoes, and the baskets were ready and being distributed. They weren’t so much baskets as bags such as the natives use for carting every sort of thing in; each fighting man had one, and then the crackers were handed round about twenty to a man. They’d place them between their legs in the canoes as they paddled; every man had a spear as well, and as they stood there getting on for sundown, each man with his basket of bombs and a spear, I’d have been proud to lead them only I was so frightened.