Chapter XV: Where Thou Goest

The building operations were progressing apace, and so far they had caught no more than distant glimpses of the malcontents, as they crept cautiously about the hillsides to oversee what was going on below. The proximity of the white men in such force kept them from any expression of what might be in them, and Blair was not without hope that, if he could only get time to develop his plans and demonstrate clearly the advantages of the white alliance, they might still think better of it and come in.

Time, however, is what no man can count on. Cautious Captain Cathie, as soon as he had seen the _Blackbirder_ fairly off, proceeded to "bolt the front door," as he said, by running a stout hawser with a kedge at each end across the opening in the lagoon. As this was buried by each incoming roller, it would inevitably overturn any boat running in on the swell, and he felt comparatively safe.

Nevertheless, he paced the deck for several nights to make safer still. For the _Torch_ was still the greatest factor in the enterprise, and any accident to her would spell disaster to them all.

That first night he was not without his fears of a possible attempt from without.

"You never know where you are with rascals like yon, until you've seen 'em hanging for an hour at the end of a rope," said he. "It would be a mighty fine thing for them, and a mighty bad look-out for us, if they crept in and caught us napping." And more than once he stood for minutes at a time listening intently, under the impression that he heard the cries of drowning men above the rhythmic roar of the outer surges, and in the morning he looked eagerly about, but found nothing.

He was also somewhat surprised at the complete absence of native canoes, and had visions of such also creeping up in the darkness and carrying his ship by assault. But the canoes had mostly been smashed by the raiders, as a matter of precaution, when they enticed the natives on board, and the rest they had destroyed when they came ashore in the night, and the captain's fears were groundless.

The ladies were allowed ashore for a time each day to inspect the progress of their future homes, but they still slept on the schooner.

Aunt Jannet Harvey demanded of Blair how long that kind of thing was to go on, as they were all anxious to get to housekeeping again as soon as possible, and Blair could only tell her that they could not hasten developments, but that he hoped each day passed in peace might make for healing.

But the peace was suddenly broken. That which had befallen the head of the community had equally struck its tail. Just as Ha'o, supposed to be as good as dead, had been supplanted by Ra'a, so on a smaller scale had most of his companions in misfortune. It was a matter only of degree. The hurt was the same.

Yams and taro do not come to maturity in a day. The rescued ones were rebuilding the village on its old site, close to the taro fields. The rebels on the hills and the perchers on the fence wanted their share of the common goods. They ventured down by night, warily and in mortal fear of more than Ha'o and his men, to procure them, and the fat was in the fire.

At first it spluttered in hot words.

"We want our proper share of taro," said the hillmen, not without reason. "You went away"--which was a provocative way of putting it--"and left us to tend the fields, and now you come back and sit on them."

"The fields belong to the community. We are the community. Come back into it and you will share with us. Where are our wives?" was the answer.

Some few, such as cared little who ruled so long as their stomachs were filled, did come back, and Nai brought down a number of the women and children, her towel costume and her descriptions of the white men's wonders forming strong inducements to the others. But many stood out, and the arguments developed from words to blows. Ra'a's men came down in force by night to replenish their larders. Ha'o's men resisted. One of the former got his head smashed in by an axe, and the feud was complete.

Blair did his best to prevent the rupture, but it was beyond him. Ha'o was, not unnaturally, hot against the usurper and his followers, and it was all the white men could do to persuade him from attempting a _coup-de-force_ for the full rehabilitation of his fortunes. Under Blair's forcible arguments, and a grievous shortage of weapons, he agreed to postpone any active movement till his village was rebuilt. Then, when time lay on his hands, Blair knew that it would be next to impossible to restrain him. He hoped, however, that opportunity might arise which would afford a chance of intervention with some hopes of success.

Meanwhile skirmishes went on almost nightly, and there came a time at last when two of Ha'o's men, in repelling an attempt on the taro fields, were speared and their bodies carried off.

In the morning Ha'o came up, wearing his grimmest face.

"They have killed my men," he said, through Matti. "Now I go to kill them."

Blair had been considering the matter ever since the report reached him, and he had made up his mind what to do.

To understand Kenneth Blair fully you must bear in mind all that he had gone through, and the effect it could not fail to have upon him.

Once in his life, in the face of imminent death, he had flinched and he had never forgiven himself. To all the world outside he could be tender and forbearing. To himself he was harder than iron.

He would condone in another what he would never permit in himself. In the intensity of his feeling on this matter even his strong common sense was liable to be thrown somewhat off its centre. His only fear was of himself, and in that fear he was liable to choose the hardest and most dangerous path, lest a smoother one should prove but a pitfall to his duty.

In his somewhat morbid dread of doing too little he was constantly in danger of doing too much. He was quite aware of it, and he held himself tightly. But where two ways offered, it was almost inevitable that he should choose the more dangerous and difficult. It was a weakness, perhaps, but, after all, he was only human, and no man is perfect.

Just as the soldier on whom has rested an imputation of lack of nerve will, when the chance offers, rush to seemingly certain death in order to wipe off the reproach, so Kenneth Blair. It was the spirit of the Six Hundred at Balaclava over again, save that, indeed, in their case their courage had never been called in question, but only their utility.

And so, when Ha'o came up, thirsting for his brother's life, Blair said quietly--

"This matter must be settled without shedding of blood. I will go and see Ra'a, and will do my best to persuade him either to come in or to leave us in peace."

"He will kill you," said Ha'o briefly.

"I hope not. We shall see."

"He hates the white men. The hardest thing he has against me is that I ever had any dealings with those others."

"Those men were yellow, I will show him what white men are."

"He will kill you," said Ha'o once more.

"I hope not," was all the reply he got.

When the rest heard of his undertaking they also tried hard to dissuade him from it--all except Jean, who sat silent and thoughtful.

"It's risky," said Captain Cathie, with a gloomy shake of the head.

"Few good things come without risk, captain--besides, I don't believe it's as risky as you imagine."

"It's simply suicidal," said Aunt Jannet Harvey. "It's just throwing yourself away, Kenneth, and spoiling all your great plans, to say nothing of Jean's life."

"I shall go too," said Jean quietly.

"You, Jean?" said Blair, with a catch in the throat and a sudden weight at the heart.

"Yes, dear. If you go, I go. If it is death for you it is death for me in any case, and I would sooner it was together."

A terrible temptation this to choose the easier path--on her account. What right had he to drag her life into so great a danger? For imminent danger there was, though he had made light of it.

He halted, and she saw it, and understood much of what was in him.

"Don't hesitate one moment on my account, Ken. I must go. It is possible my being with you may help. It will show them, at all events, that we mean them no ill."

"We are in God's hands," he said quietly, but was visibly disturbed at her insistence.

Stuart and Evans also strove with him, but with no better effect.

"The peace must be kept, if it is possible," he said. "And this seems to me a possible way to it. I would sooner my wife had stopped behind, but I quite understand her point of view. And--we are as safe there as here."

"You've no objection to my firing a blank round or two, Mr. Blair?" asked Captain Cathie.

"What's the idea, captain?"

"Just to impress them with the fact that we're here behind you, sir. A bang or two from the big gun will maybe have as big an effect as anything you can say to them."

"Well, I see no objection. All we want is to keep the peace. The big gun may impress them, as you say."

"You wouldn't take a dozen of the men with you, would you sir?" asked the captain insinuatingly.

But Blair shook his head at that.

"That, I fear, would hardly carry the impression that I want to make. I look on all these people as my parishioners. Sooner or later, please God, they will be. But we must win them, captain; we can't force them."

He walked the deck alone that night, long after all but the watch had retired, and thought and thought.

And at thought of Jean going into the peril of the morrow the temptation was strong at times to find some other and less dangerous way--for her sake. For himself he would not think twice. For her--ah! for her he would think many times. And, after all, had he the right to persist in his own way, even though he believed it to be the right way, since it meant undoubted danger to her?

But he found in such thoughts the visible cloven hoof of avoidance, compounding, cowardice, and resolutely shut down upon them. For her sake he could have wished that she had been content to stay quietly on board, and let him face the danger alone. But duty called him with a clear voice, and go he must, whatever came of it.

And so it came that, very early the next morning, Kenneth Blair and his wife Jean set out on a somewhat perilous journey. And with them went Matti, the Samoan. And Matti by no means relished the undertaking, yet compassed a fairly stout face, since it was a matter of duty and a tangible business, with nothing ghostly about it, as yet at all events, though as to what it might presently develop into he had his own very grave doubts.

They were surely as peaceful-looking an embassage as ever sought a distrustful enemy. They were all in spotless white, and their only visible weapons, beyond Jean's green-lined white sunshade, were some small bundles containing presents, and a new axe and spade carried by Matti. Blair, indeed, had a revolver in his hip pocket, but it was only there because Jean was there. Had he been alone it would have stayed behind. It was, no doubt, somewhat of an anomaly after his confident "We are as safe there as here" of the previous night. But he was very human, and, as I have said, no more perfect than you or I, though an infinitely finer specimen than either of us.

As they quitted the ship, the long gun thundered out over their heads, and the noise of it bellowed up into the hills, and clanged to and fro in the valleys. And when they touched the shore it bellowed again, and went on bellowing at intervals like the threatening little monster it was.

Ha'o met them at the landing with some of his people, and shook his head gloomily at their prospects. He offered to accompany them as far as possible; but, as he bitterly said, they had not a spear among them, nothing but the axes Blair had given them, and axes are of little use against spears and poisoned arrows.

But Blair would not hear of it. He begged him to keep his people at their work as usual, and went on quietly through the disputed taro fields, up through the yam plantations and banana groves, and stood for a moment to look back over the lagoon, with the shapely little ship at her anchorage, and the bursts of white foam along the reef behind. A puff ball of white smoke fluffed out from her deck as they looked, and the roar of it went past them into the hills. It was not by any means impossible that they looked on it all for the last time. And Kenneth Blair's heart was not light as he took Jean's arm through his own and pressed it close to his side, and felt the trustful pressure of her arm in reply.

They understood one another fully. They had said all that needed to be said. In this and in all they were one; and if this meant death, they had no other wish than that it should be together.

"You are very brave, Jean."

"I am where I would be, and as I would be, Ken. We are in God's hands."

"Amen!" he said, and lifted his hat and led her round the shoulder of the hill.

They did not know where they might come across Ra'a.

"You will find him," Ha'o had said meaningly.

So they climbed on and up, through tangled thickets of hibiscus and branching matpandanus, under grey-boled palms, along bare patches of rock, certain that scores of dark eyes were watching them, wondering when and how their journey would end.

The hills had echoed many times to the voice of the long gun, when, from a clump of brush in front, a couple of bristling warriors rose suddenly and barred their way. They carried long, thin, venomous spears and heavy bows, and each had a bundle of arrows at his thigh.

"Aoha!" said Blair quietly, and they stared grimly, first at him, and then, and longer, at Jean. She sat down on a rock and opened her fan and began to use it with an equanimity which covered a jumping heart.

The climb had been somewhat exhausting, her face was radiant with colour and a great wistful expectancy, and her eyes shone like southern stars. She was a goodly sight to any man. To these brown men, who had never in their lives seen anything like her, she must have seemed almost more than human. After an appreciative glance at Matti's axe and spade, they stared at her with stolid insistence.

"Tell them we have come to speak with Ra'a. We bring him presents," said Blair to Matti, and a conversation of clips and jerks ensued, and in the result the brown men turned and led the way into the bush.

They came at last to a number of houses which had a hasty and temporary look about them, and were surrounded instantly by a buzzing crowd of men, women, and children, Jean again the centre of attraction, and bearing it, as before, with surprising equanimity.

They almost mobbed her, and shouted their comments aloud from one to another. Her sunshade, her fan, her dress, her face, her hair, her hands, every bit of her was a new sensation, and they made the most of it.

Then sudden silence fell, as a tall man strode through the lane they made before him, and stood in front of the strangers.

"You are Ra'a?" asked Blair of him direct.

"I am Ra-ch-ch-ch-a!" and his raucous name sounded worse in his own throat than it had ever sounded to them before; and as he said it, so it seemed to fit him.

He was tall and well made, evidently younger by some years than Ha'o, but his face was truculent and his eyes quick-glancing and shifty.

They rested, however, on Jean, and under other circumstances, and from a civilised man, Blair would have resented the look.

"What do you want?" asked Ra'a harshly.

And, through Matti, Blair answered him--

"We want peace between you and Ha'o"--and at the very mention of his brother the other scowled--"and between your people and his."

"It is you who have made the trouble. Why did you bring him back?"

"If it had been you we would have brought you back just the same."

"Ha'o is a fool to have dealings with white men."

"Those others were not white men, they were yellow. They are not of our tribe. We, too, hate the things they do, and we have come to stop them."

"You are all the same. If you hate them, why did you not kill them?"

"We do not kill if we can help it. If they come again, we may have to kill them."

"Why is that noise?" as the voice of Long Tom bellowed in the hills once more.

"It is the voice of my big canoe."

"It is only a voice. It does no harm."

"When I choose. You saw the other big canoe's masts? It did that with twice speaking."

"What do you want?" asked Ra'a once more.

"We have come from the other end of the world, where the people are all white, to try and be of use to you."

"We do not want you. We do quite well."

"There are many things you do not know, many things you have not got. Axes, spades," and he laid them down at the brown man's feet, "and cloth, and beads, and fish-hooks, and knives"; and he opened the bundles and gave them to him, and the black eyes round about snapped greedily. "Very many things we have, and we would share them with you. But we must have peace. If you will make things as they were before, we will share all these among you, and many more. It is far better than killing one another."

There was a visible inclination in the crowd towards a share in the good things, and Ra'a saw it and countered quickly. The man was a savage and brutalised, but he did not lack brain.

"We do not need your gifts. We can take them--all you have."

"You cannot take them. My big canoe could blow you all to pieces. But it has come to fight for you, not against you, and when it has done fighting it will go back and bring many more things for you. But it must be in peace."

Ra'a, whatever else he was, was a diplomat. Truculent he was without doubt, treacherous if it served him, and his word was probably of small account; but such things are not unknown in even more accomplished diplomatic circles.

He saw the inclination of his people, and that he must go with the tide.

"Give us our share of the things and we will be satisfied."

"You shall have your share if it is peace. There must be no more killing."

"The taro and the yams belong to us also?"

"Certainly. We will divide equally. If you will draw a line, we will draw a line, and you and your people will keep to your side, and Ha'o and his people will keep to his side."

"We will draw the line and tapu it. When will you send the things?"

"When the line is drawn. Will you come and draw it now?"

"You will go--and you," he pointed to two of his men. "You will put in tapu sticks and bring back what the white man gives you. Who is the woman?" staring hard at Jean, who had managed to keep an unruffled face in spite of the inquisition to which the women were subjecting her--touching her hands, her face, her hair, and the puzzling appointments of her dainty toilet. She had even induced one mother to let her pat the head of one brown mite, who was mumbling its fingers after reluctant teeth and stared at her with big round eyes.

"She is my wife."

"What is she wanting?"--a question evidently inspired by Jean's Miss Inquisitive look, which showed strongly at times and was much to the fore under the strain of the present interview.

"She is wanting everything," said Blair, with a smile. "It is probably that brown baby at present."

"She can have it. Is she hungry?"

"I don't think she is hungry, and she would not take the baby from its mother."

"Is she white all through?"

"White all through," said Blair.

"Have you any more in the big canoe?"

"They are all married--except one."

"I will marry her. How many coco-nuts will you take for her?" and he stared appreciatively at Jean.

"We do not sell our women. You would have to ask her yourself."

And at last they got away without further compromising Aunt Jannet, and very gratefully they went back by the way they had come, with full, yet lightened hearts. For the way, though it had opened before them, and now, to look back upon, seemed neither very difficult nor very dangerous, had been a perilous one, and one where death might have opened at their feet at any moment.

They went in silence with over-full hearts. Blair did not in the slightest delude himself with the idea that he had settled the matter at one stroke. He was quite prepared to find the agreement turn out but a temporary one, but it was a step towards the light to have arrived at any understanding whatever.

He was not surprised, also, to find Ha'o anything but satisfied with the arrangement. He would have preferred wiping out Ra'a and the malcontents, and settling the business at once on a sound and final basis.

With infinite difficulty Blair succeeded in showing him that those others had rights as well as himself, even though they had wronged him, and tried hard to inspire him with his own hope that matters would eventually work out for the best.

Ha'o, however, knew better.

"Their hearts are like this," he said, laying his hand on a length of twisted creeper dangling from an adjacent tree. "They are as grasping as a convolvulus for the water. They will take all you will give them, and they will keep the tapu just as long as it suits them." And he said to himself, "But by that time we shall perhaps be ready for them"; while Blair was thinking, "Every approach they allow us to make is a point gained."

The taro fields and yam plantations and banana groves were soon roughly divided off in a fair equality, and sticks with plaited palm leaves set up to warn off trespassers from either side. Then, with the idea of impressing them to the utmost, Blair invited the two plenipotentiaries to accompany him on board the big canoe to get the things he was to give them.

To this they demurred at first, though obviously desirous, and it was only after much argument among themselves that they at last agreed, and then only on condition that the white woman stopped on shore till they were brought safely back.

They stepped gingerly into the steam-launch at last, and eyed her bustling, unaided progress with obvious but well-concealed amazement. They were shown over the ship, the big gun was fired for them at close quarters, they inspected the farmyard and the cat, and they finally went home laden with gifts, and with new impressions enough to set their brains spinning and their tongues wagging for a month to come. And it is not likely that their stories lost anything in the retailing.