Chapter XXII: PAX

It took some days to get matters shipshape after the general upheaval of the invasion.

For one thing, the brown men were much too busy on the other side of the island to settle down to ordinary work. Most of the women and children had joined them there, the villages were deserted, and there was an intangible something in the mental and moral atmosphere which made for depression.

Blair sent Evans over to see Ha'o, and endeavour to bring him back to his right mind. Evans returned downcast, and described what he had seen only to Blair and Stuart. Aunt Jannet, if she had heard, would have had a fit.

The ladies were back in their own homes, and the crippled Blackbirds were bottled up in the Happy Valley, under the wardership of Sandy Lean and his wife and a small guard of _Torch_ men. It seemed like desecration of the beautiful spot to use it as a prison, but it was the only place in the island where the yellow men would be reasonably safe from the brown ones.

The stars in their courses fought for Joshua. In like manner the strange, stern facts of life fought now for Kenneth Blair. The cloud which had threatened his work with destruction broke in unexpected blessing. The fight in One-Tree Pass was an epoch in the history of Kapaa'a.

In the first place it had brought into line--fighting line indeed, but none the less permanent on that account--the various factions in the island, and developed among them a hitherto undreamed-of community of interests. Not by any means for the first time in history, a general menace from without welded into one a diversity of hostile fragments, and discovered to them an unexpected identity of ideas. On a microscopic scale it was, in its results, the Franco-German war over again.

The men from the eastern coast, who had borne the first brunt of the invasion, had lost everything, including their headman. But they had found more than they had lost. They had found out that the western men were not necessarily their enemies, and that both they and the white men were ready to fight to the death to save the island from the grip of the yellow men.

They fully recognised that without the white men's help the marauders would have had their will, and matters would in all probability have gone very differently. In their way they were grateful, and by no means blind to the advantages of the white alliance. That their gratitude was based in no small degree on a sense of favours to come, in no way lessened its utility as a factor in the solution of political difficulties.

They too would share the benefits reaped by the western men from the white men's friendship, and when differences arose amongst them at once as to the choice of a headman, it was the most natural thing in the world to refer the rival claims to Blair, who might reasonably be expected to be without local bias in the matter.

The opportunity was too good to be lost. Blair was at pains to make clear to them the great advantages which would accrue from the union of all the communities under one head, and finally they argued the matter out among themselves and agreed to accept Ha'o as chief, with local headmen chosen by him and Blair.

They reaped their harvest at once and were content. Their houses were rebuilt, tools were given them, and they were initiated into the mysteries of the new foods and fruits introduced by the white men. A proper road was promised to further communication between the opposite sides of the island, and, so far, the descent of the Blackbirds made for good.

In another and quite unexpected direction also the invasion wrought in the direction of Blair's aims.

They were all sitting on the verandah of his house one night, watching the lightning play tremulously up and down the western sky, listening to the surf, and discussing matters generally. Captain Cathie, in the little leisure the refitting of the _Torch_ afforded him, was much exercised in his mind as to what was to be done with the prisoners. Aunt Jannet had just expressed the opinion that it was a very great pity they had not all been scuttled.

"It does seem a pity you could not have made a clean sweep of them like Captain Cathie did, Kenneth," said she.

"Well, you see, we couldn't kill them in cold blood, Aunt Jannet."

"And now you've got them alive in cold blood what on earth are you going to do with them?"

"I see nothing for it but shipping them off home as soon as they are fit to travel. What do you say, Cathie?"

"I suppose there's nothing else for it," said Cathie gloomily. "We don't want them here, and yet I'm loth to turn them loose."

"I don't think they'll ever come back, after the reception they had this time."

"I don't know that they will, but they'll be at the same game somewhere else. I look on them as I do on mad dogs--best got rid of."

"Right!" said Aunt Jannet with emphasis.

"The trouble is that men are not dogs, you see----"

"That they're not. Dogs are mostly honest and good to look at," said Aunt Jannet again.

"We could put them on one of the schooners, and you could convoy them part way home," said Blair to Cathie. "I really don't think we have anything more to fear from them."

"I can do all that," said Cathie. "But all the same I'd as lieve they were none of them going home."

"Why?"

"Well, you never know. If ever they can do us a mischief you may take your davy they'll do it."

"I don't really see what they can do, captain."

But Cathie only shook his head. Perhaps his ideas were too vague to clothe in words.

Just then a shadowy figure slipped out of the darkness under the house, reached up, and rolled something softly along the platform towards them.

"Hello! What's this?" said Cathie.

"A present--for Aunt Jannet, I should say," laughed Blair. "Some dusky admirer bringing tribute."

"A thankoffering to the wounded warriors," said Evans.

"An unusually fine coco-nut," said Stuart, tipping it with his usable foot. "Carefully wrapped in leaves, too."

Captain Cathie picked it up, and began to open the bundle. Evans struck a match, and match and bundle fell suddenly with a dull, dead bump to the floor, and were followed by a quite involuntary and seamanlike oath from the captain.

"What is it?" cried the younger ladies in a breath.

"Come away!" said Aunt Jannet hastily, and set the example herself.

"It's a man's head," said Evans gravely, as he tried to light a lamp.

And when the lamp was lit, and the bundle lay open in their midst, they saw that he was right--it was the head of a man.

An exclamation burst from Blair as he bent over the ghastly offering, while the others wondered what it might mean.

Was it a challenge?--a defiance?--a threat?

None of these.

"It is the head of Ra'a," said Blair at last. "I wonder who it was that brought it? If we knew that, we might guess what it means."

There had been no fighting of late between Ha'o's people and Ra'a's. In fact, the quiescence of the latter during the other troubles had been cause for congratulation. And since then everything had been quiet in the villages--over-quiet, the quietness of repletion. Evans had indeed begun to fear ill results from the over-indulgence of savage appetites.

"What do you make of it, captain?" asked Blair at last, as of one more versed than the rest in heathen ways.

"Hanged if I know!" said the old man, with a puzzled frown.

"I take it, it is a sign of submission on the part of Ra'a's men," said Blair quietly. "Ra'a himself would never have come in of his own accord. His men have wanted to, and so they have brought him."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Cathie. "It's just the thing they might do."

And in the morning they sent up early for Ha'o, and showed him the message, and asked his opinion.

"Kenni is right," he said at last. "They submit."

And presently he went boldly up the mountain-side and in due course came back with Ra'a's followers in a straggling tail behind him.

He explained afterwards to Blair that Ra'a's men had wanted for a long time past to come in and enjoy all the benefits they saw the others receiving, but Ra'a had held them back, telling them that the whites were only tricking Ha'o and his people and would presently carry them away. They had seen the arrival of the Blackbird ships, had watched the fight at sea, and also that in the pass, and these had convinced them of the good intentions of the white men. Finally they had taken matters into their own hands and settled things their own way.

And so the divisions in the island were healed by blood, and that which had seemed like to wreck their hopes turned marvellously to their highest good.