Chapter XXXII: From the Beginning

"Our brown folk have lost their heads for the time being," said Blair to his wife, as they all stood round the huts. "They have gone off to the hills. It is not very surprising. They will come back all right in time. Captain Cathie, I want you to make a raft and take the ladies and the sick--in fact, all but Gregor and Irvine--to the Happy Valley for a time, till things straighten out a bit. You will, I think, find food there, and the natives won't intrude on you."

"And you, Kenneth?" said Jean anxiously.

"I am going across to the other side of the island with Ha'o, to see how they fared there. If food is plentiful we will bring some back here for the women and children. They may have been washed out also. If so we must get food from the Valley. We will drop in on you from the upper end, but it is too rough a road for you and the sick men. Will you join us, Captain Pym, or will you go and take care of the ladies?"

"Captain Cathie is quite equal to that, I am sure, Mr. Blair. With your permission I will join you."

"Can you induce Nai to go with the ladies, Ha'o?"

"She will go," said Ha'o tersely.

He was in a gloomy frame of mind through all these strange happenings and the defection of his people.

"Then the sooner we get to it the better." And under Cathie's directions they all set to work on a raft. Timber and rope were not wanting.

"Take all you can, and especially what we can use for boat-building later on," said Blair. "We shall have to get out of our hole ourselves, and that, I think, is the way out."

The brown women and children he set to collecting for themselves all the food they could find along the shore. He also gave them some lengths of rope, and bade them untwist it for fishing-lines and then start fishing from the ledge with splinters for hooks.

"You will probably find the bottom of the valley scoured out, Cathie," he said; "but there should be both fruit and animals on the hillsides. We may have to replenish the island from there."

When the work was well forward, he set out with his little band to cross the island by One-Tree Pass, and found the passage extremely difficult. For the cloud seemed to have finally broken on the saddle of the hills, and in many places the road they had built with such labour and difficulty was washed completely away, and in other places it was buried deep under slides of broken rock.

They found their way over the ridge, however, and saw at once that the deluge had wrought heavily on the further side also. The long slope was deeply scored and furrowed, but there were houses and palm-trees still standing down below, and they went on quickly to see how the brown folk had fared.

The villagers welcomed them heartily and received their news with amazement. The storm above and the storm below had terrified them. The water had come down the hill in cascades, but the long stretch had dissipated much of its force before it reached them. Then the great wave had swept across the beach and carried away all their boats. Their palms and plantations had suffered heavily, and they had picked up a number of dead pigs and goats, but otherwise there had been no loss of life. They had not overmuch food, but what they had they were quite willing to share with the others who had none. And Blair's heart, still sore over the defection of the western men, was comforted somewhat by their simple kindliness.

They stayed the night, and Blair explained more fully the disasters on the other side of the island and the temporary aberration of Ha'o's people, and begged them, if there should be any attempt at raiding, to treat the others as reasonably as might be, remembering what they had gone through.

They set off again very early in the morning, carrying such burden of food as was possible on the rough road they had to travel, and reached the huts by the sea before midday. The brown men had taken possession and received them in sulky silence.

Blair gave the food to the women and children, and to the men some bits of his mind in his own special way. He acknowledged the direness of the catastrophe, but bade them remember that the white men had suffered equally and yet had not lost their heads or their heart. He told them to be grateful for their lives, and assured them that there was no need for despair.

Blair's high spirits in the face of all difficulties, his forethought and far-reaching grip of the necessities of the case, made a deep impression even on Captain Pym's habitual and official phlegm. Under stress of circumstance he found himself under the necessity of rearranging his preconceived ideas. He became decidedly more human, and perhaps more of a man, than he had been for many a year.

He sounded Blair as to his hopes and intentions, and they discussed matters freely. In furtherance of them, when they had rested, they all set to work making another raft, and if the _Bonita_ men could have seen their spick and span, stiff and starched captain, hauling and lashing, with his coat off and his trousers up to the knee, it is certain they would not have known him.

They paddled their raft across the lagoon to the place where the ships had lain before the storm, and after some searching found where the _Torch_ and _Jean Arnot_ were lying. The great wave had probably washed them inshore but the return had carried them out again. The _Bonita_ had disappeared completely. She had probably been carried over the edge of the shelf and lay in unfathomable depths. They could see the other two dimly through the clear water, with the many-coloured fishes darting in and out of their battered sides and broken raffle, and Captain Pym's face pinched at the sight and at thought of it all.

Ha'o was the most expert swimmer of the party, and had long since shown that he could remain under water twice as long as any of the white men. On him therefore the burden of discovery lay, and he appreciated with the rest how much depended on his efforts. They had timber in quantity from the broken boats and ships, but without tools they could turn it all to no account. There were tools below there in the ships. Ha'o was going down to find them. With tools in their hands the door of deliverance would be at all events ajar.

"You will most likely find them in the front part of our ship, Ha'o, underneath where the big gun was," Blair told him. "If the gun has fallen through, so much the better. It will help you," and Ha'o nodded, and shot down through the clear water like a brown streak.

He was up again presently and hung panting to the raft. The big gun had gone out of sight through the side and bottom of the ship. He would get inside next time.

But it took many visits before he discovered anything, and then a ringing cheer went up as he came to the surface with a saw in his hand, and flung it on to the raft.

"There are more things, but they are scattered," he told them, when he had got his breath, and next time he took down with him one end of a thin cord they had unravelled out of rope, and presently sent up by it a heavy hammer, and came up himself with a chisel. It took many hours' hard work, but at last they had enough to go on with, and Ha'o lay panting on the raft, while the others paddled it slowly down the lagoon to the Happy Valley.