Chapter XVIII: Setbacks

So the _Torch_ slipped down the lagoon like a picture, and Nai and the other ladies completed their laundry operations, and in due course the red sun dropped into the sea, without the explosive hiss which seemed inevitable, and night fell on the little community as peacefully as usual.

Evans conducted their evening service, and the attentive ring of brown men and women round the platform of the house hummed the tunes gaily, echoed the white "Amen" with the gusto of children after a long sermon, and dispersed like big bumble-bees to their homes.

Jean could not sleep that night. It was the first time she and Kenneth had been separated, since their marriage, and she felt as lonely as the circumstances demanded. She got up at last and slipped on a dressing-gown, and went out and sat on the platform.

The soft lip-lap of the water on the beach, and the distant growl of the surf, were soothing, and she sat looking at the great new stars, with which she was becoming friendly by degrees, and thinking of her husband, and wondering how far he had got, and of the vast change her marriage had made in her life.

She had never for one moment regretted it. All her heaven on earth was centred in Kenneth. So long as he remained to her, all the rest was nothing. And before long they would begin to see the fruit of their quiet sowing, the Dark Islands would be dark no longer, and they would be living a quiet, happy life among a new and contented people. It was a grand and glorious work. No, she had no regrets--since she had Kenneth.

On her right across the river, as she sat facing the sea, the mountain loomed sombre and menacing--the hill Difficulty. Her thoughts ran back to that trying morning when she and Kenneth faced the hill, and what it held, all alone, not knowing whether they would ever come back alive. Like many another hill on life's highway, its menace had been chiefly in their own fears, and had disappeared on closer acquaintance. How she wished that uncomfortable man Ra'a would go away, or be reconciled to his brother, or do anything that would allow the community to settle down in peace to its new life's work.

She knew much of Blair's great hopes and large ideas, and how essential he considered it that the islands should as soon as possible attain to some kind of central government, so that they might unite in opposing an inflexible front to any attempt at interference from the outside. The Dark Islands for the Dark Islanders was his aim and object in life at present, and this truculent savage on the hill there was keeping everything back. She almost had it in her heart to wish Ra'a's speedy and sudden death.

Blair had often spoken of the evils that had followed the admission of traders in others of the South Sea Islands--drink, disease, dispossession--and how the communities were ruined before ever they had a chance of better things. Yes, surely, she thought, if Ra'a could meet with some happy accident, which would end him, it would be for the good of the community at large. That was not a thought that would commend itself to Kenneth, she knew, but she could not help thinking it. What a mighty relief it would be if Ha'o walked in some morning, and said, "Ra'a is dead." She felt as if she could almost forgive him if he had done the deed himself.

Then she thought she heard, a sound in the gloom of the hillside. She strained into the darkness and listened intently. She heard nothing, but still felt a sense of discomfort. After all, it might quite likely be one of the natives prowling about, though, as a rule, their fear of ghosts and evil spirits kept them indoors after nightfall, and it needed very strong inducement to take them abroad.

She was still peering towards the hill with puckered brow, when a curdling, short-cut yell ripped the silence behind, in the direction of the village, and in a moment pandemonium seemed loosed, and the night was alive with horrors--screams and yells and all the turmoil of warfare.

That first deadly cry sent Jean flying inside for Aunt Jannet. The good lady met her at the door of her own room with an anxious--

"What in the name of goodness----?" and then Alison Evans and Mary Stuart came tumbling in upon them, and Evans called to them from the ground outside to stop where they were, and they would be all right.

It was not in human nature, however, to stand huddled in the dark, asking one another questions which none of them could answer, when the answer was shrieking outside, and they all crept, trembling, to the verandah, and stood silently facing the danger, whatever it might be.

They heard Evans quietly ordering his men, and felt safer. And beyond, the shouts and yells waxed and waned and wavered to and fro. Once they thought they were coming in their direction, and their hearts thumped painfully. Then the tumult drifted away again, and at last passed furiously towards the taro fields, and died away on the mountain-side.

Then new sounds arose, cries of victory, little less blood-curdling than the shouts of battle, and the ladies crept back into the dark room, assured of their own safety, but with horrible premonitions of what these might portend.

Presently the shadowy darkness over by the river resolved itself into a mob of black figures which came towards the mission-houses, leaping and brandishing its newly-fleshed weapons, and shouting at the top of its voice, in horrible incongruity, and the more horrible in that the tune was perfectly correct, "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im! Law-daw-faw!"

They circled the fence, leaping and shouting and singing, and the men of the yacht inside grasped their weapons to repel an onslaught. But the brown men had had their fill of fighting for that night, and were only there to advertise their victory.

Evans said a word or two to them, but learned only that Ra'a had come down from the hill and attacked the village, but that they had been ready for him. They were too excited to be able to give any details yet, and presently they drew off and went shouting and singing home.

Jean, with something of a shock, remembered her ill-wishes for Ra'a, and wondered with discomfort, now that the bald possibility faced her so closely, if they had been realised. If they had, she would feel almost as if she had had a hand in his death.

Then a native drum began beating in the village, and the ceaseless monotony of its deep, dolorous boom fretted their ears, and set their hearts jumping, and jangled their nerves to the point of agony. They covered their ears with their hands, they stuffed their fingers into them, but the drum beat in through their temples. They clasped their heads tightly to keep them from splitting, but the drum beat in all the same. When it ceased abruptly at last, and they ventured to lift their heads, they saw one another's pale faces in a faint gleam that stole in through the windows. The darkness over the village was pulsing with the glow of great fires, and as they glanced fearfully at one another they knew that the same horrible thought was in all their minds.

It was dawn before the noises died away, and Evans came in to them with a grim, grey face. He said nothing, but nodded silently--and their horror was confirmed.

Yes, truly, it was a decided change from Kensington and Hyde Park.

No soul from the village came near them that day, nor did any of them venture out except Evans, who went along twice during the day to see what was going on, but returned each time with pinched lips and a despondent shake of the head.

The following day the brown men were about again, but sluggishly, as though the fight had used up all their energies, or something else had clogged them. It was another two days before they settled down to work, and even then they were not quite as they had been.

Ha'o had kept away from them. When Evans came across him at last, he endeavoured to get some particulars of the fight, and gathered that Ra'a had probably watched the departure of the _Torch_, and thought it an opportunity not to be missed. He had crept down in the dark, hoping to surprise the village, and then make easy prey of the mission-houses and their contents. Ha'o had foreseen the possibility of such an attempt. Evans understood him to say that in Ra'a's place it was just what he would have done himself. So he had men on the watch, and the rest slept armed, and instead of a surprise, the hill-men walked into an ambush--and paid. Ra'a himself had escaped, leaving a dozen or so of his men behind. They had eaten them, said Ha'o, in a matter-of-course way. Ra'a had gone farther into the hills, and to follow him would be dangerous. And so to the boat-building once more, and much singing of "Kown 'im! kown 'im! kown 'im!" which sounded more than ever out of place under the circumstances.

Nai also put in an appearance that day, and to such an extent does the mind prejudice the eye, that it seemed to Jean and the rest that even she was changed from what she had been. In a word, it was difficult to look upon any of these sleek brown men and women without thinking with disgust of the horrible orgies in which they had been indulging. Their humanity seemed but skin deep, and just below it the wild beast lurked and peeped through the glancing black eyes.

Nor was it easy to conceal their feelings entirely, and perhaps Nai's womanly intuition perceived a touch of frost in the atmosphere. She stayed but a short time, and then went quietly away.

"I'm sorry," said Jean, with a sense of discomfort; "but really I could not feel towards her quite as usual."

"Of course you couldn't--nobody could," said Aunt Jannet briskly. "If I knew how to talk to them, I'd tell them what I think of the whole business. I'd make their ears tingle, I warrant you."

"I wish Kenneth was here. He would know just what to do."

"He'll tell you, my dear, that it's no good talking to them. You must just go slow, and break them off it by degrees. All the same, it would be a relief to one's mind to give them a right good scolding."

"They've been used to it all their lives, you see."

"All the worse for them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves."

"But that's just what they don't understand. Suppose a brown man came over to England and remonstrated with us for killing and eating beautiful little lambs and graceful cows----"

"Fudge, child! Lambs and cows aren't human beings," grunted Aunt Jannet. "They haven't souls."

"I don't know that the fact of men having souls makes much difference when it's only a question of their dead bodies being eaten. But I do hope Kenneth can break them off it! It is too horrible! And one can't help thinking of it every time one looks at them. Though I suppose it was just the same before we came."

"What they did before we came was not our fault. What they do now is, and the sooner Kenneth puts a stop to it the better," was Aunt Jannet's final word.

Matters went on quietly--Evans and the men of the yacht clearing and breaking up ground for trial plantings of various seeds, the brown men busy on their boats to the tune of "Kown 'im!" the women, brown and white, busy on their household duties, the children laughing and screaming--till, on the seventh day, a brown runner came, fresh from the surf behind the ridge, to tell them that the _Torch_ was in sight. And instantly they dropped what they were at, to scramble up the shoulder of the hill and wave their joyful welcome. Not a white man or woman there but felt a new sense of security and hopefulness at sight of her, and it was chiefly because on board of her was the wise head and great heart to which they had all come to look for guidance and inspiration in their work.

It was a very joyful meeting when the anchor rattled down, and Blair and Stuart and Captain Cathie jumped ashore from the whale-boat, and the brown men welcomed them, outwardly at all events, with as much gusto as the whites.

And great stories Blair and the others had to tell of their doings out beyond. The brown men and women crowded round the platform till late into the night, laughing and chattering with appreciation of the white men's volubility, though they could not understand a word of it all.

It had been a most satisfactory trip. They had visited all the six islands of the group, and had landed at various places on each of them. They had found the natives suspicious at first, but amenable to presents and open to their advances when they found nothing ulterior in them. In fact, in several places, when the brown men found them actually going away, without any attempts at kidnapping or otherwise molesting them, they followed in their canoes for long distances begging them to return.

"It's a glorious field," said Blair, stretching out his arms energetically as though to gather it all in at once, "if we can only occupy it and fence it round before the degraders come. And we must, for one of those islands given over to the devil would be like a plague spot infecting all the rest."

Then they told him of the happenings at home. He was startled at Ra'a's outbreak and at thought of the consequences if it had proved successful.

"I hate the thought of coercing him or any one," he said thoughtfully; "but until he either comes in, which I fear is hopeless, or is got rid of in some way, he is going to be a terrible hindrance to our work."

"Deport him to yon outer island, Mr. Blair, with such of his people as stick to him," suggested Cathie; "then the rest will have peace."

"Easily said, captain, and a good idea; but how?"

"It would mean fighting, I suppose," said Cathie briskly, "unless common-sense led him to give in quietly. Sometimes it pays best in the long run to grip your nettle at once and grip it hard."

"He'll never give in till he is forced to," said Blair. "Yet I can't see my way to use our force against him. How can we preach peace to these people if we begin by using the sword ourselves?"

"If you give the rest peace, it may be better than preaching it," said Aunt Jannet. "I agree with Captain Cathie. There'll be no peace till that man is got rid of. And, for goodness' sake, do stop them eating one another, Kenneth. I haven't enjoyed a meal since, and I can't look at one of them without thinking that a day or two ago he was munching one of his fellows."

"We shall break them off it by degrees."

"By degrees!--by degrees!" cried Aunt Jannet. "It is too horrible. You ought to go straight to Ha'o and tell him we won't have any more of it."

"And suppose he said, as would be very natural, that he'd do as he pleased? What would you do then, Aunt Jannet?"

"I'd tell him if he didn't stop it I'd make him, or else we'd all go away and leave him."

"Ay, well, you see, we can't make him and we're not going away, so it's no good telling him that. We must use our common sense. These people have eaten human flesh all their lives. It is the greatest treat they can have. If you argued the point with Ha'o, he would probably say that, as between man and pig, man is the cleaner feeder of the two, and therefore must be the better eating. When we have pigs enough, we'll work them on to pork. Until we can get them on to something they like as much, or, better still, get them to feel that man was not meant to be eaten by man, I fear words won't go for much."

"And do you mean to say that you'll pass the matter over without a word, Kenneth?" asked Aunt Jannet.

"I don't say that, and I don't intend to. But if you imagine, Aunt Jannet, that a cannibal is going to give up his daintiest dish simply for being spoken to, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

He made his first attempt against cannibalism the next day, and returned from it with a humorous twinkle in his eye.

"Well?" asked Aunt Jannet.

"Well," said Blair, "Ha'o holds that it can't be wrong for him to eat men when we do the same."

"If he'll wait till he sees us doing it, I'll find no fault with him."

"I assured him that white people never ate human flesh. And what do you think was his proof that we did? He pointed to some of those corned-beef tins with George Washington's head on the label, and said, 'There!' and nothing I could say would convince him that George Washington did not represent the contents. He is under the impression that we can our people at home for convenience, and carry them about with us in that way. I assured him it was cow, but it was no use. He could not believe anyone would kill such a beautiful animal as a cow simply for food. He said he would give ten men for one cow any day. So there we are, you see. It will be a matter of time. Meanwhile, I suggest peeling George Washington off the rest of those meat tins!"

"Well, I never!" said Aunt Jannet. "And Ra'a?"

"He is as anxious as you and Captain Cathie to make an end of him; but he acknowledges that it would be dangerous to follow him into the hills, and would certainly mean considerable loss of life, so for the present I have dissuaded him from it."