White Fire Part 30

"Run the ladies across to the Happy Valley at once then, captain, and take Lean and his wife to look after them, if she'll go. Will you send your women and children there too, Ha'o? They would be safe from Ra'a, at all events."

But Ha'o, knowing his people, shook his head.

"They will not go."

And so it proved. Fighting, the women understood, though they did not like it, but spirits they neither understood nor liked, and they would take no risks in such matters. They chose in preference to go up the southern hill, where they could keep a look-out for Ra'a and could scatter if he showed head.

The ladies understood the necessities of the case. Their preparations were quickly made, and within the hour they were landed in the Happy Valley, with Sandy Lean, armed to the teeth, to guard them from any stray yellow skins who might get in, an eventuality which was not at all likely. Sandy's wife chose to go with her man, which was a gratifying sign of moral improvement through marriage, and they tried their best to get Nai and her baby boy to go too, but she would not.

Captain Cathie saw to the armament of the land contingent, and gave them a strenuous word or two of his own. Then he carried the _Torch_ through the pa.s.sage in the reef and lay waiting for his prey.

Close upon a hundred men answered the call of the drum. They were armed only with fire-hardened wooden spears and clubs, and the axes they had used in more peaceful pursuits. But they had had no fighting for some time past, they were defending their hearths and homes, and with the yellow men keen in their memories, they were aching to be at them. And the little band of heavily-armed whites gave both edge and backbone to their courage and made them formidable.

Blair, Stuart, and Evans carried Winchesters and revolvers.

"Our cause is a just one," said Blair. "We will defend it by every means in our power. These men's blood is on their own heads." And there was that in all their faces which boded ill for the invaders.

The only communication between the east and west sides of the island was over a dip in the central ridge which, from its most prominent feature, they had named One-Tree Pa.s.s. On the farther side the slope was gradual and easy. On the mission side the ground was so broken, and the ascent so precipitous, that for all ordinary usage the pa.s.s was impracticable. No one ever dreamed of using it unless under most urgent necessity. No more urgent necessity had ever arisen than this present, and One-Tree Pa.s.s for once in its life became the active centre of the island.

The defending force scrambled up the broken way, and before it reached the pa.s.s Long Tom was bellowing angrily behind them, and was answered by another gun which sounded equally loud and defiant. The hill shoulders, however, hid what was going on, and they could only hope that Captain Cathie would be able to hold his own and something more.

Blair placed his men among the boulders overlooking the pa.s.s, and crept on along the ridge with Ha'o and Evans and Stuart, until they could look out over the long, easy sweep of the hill to the farther sea.

Opposite the landing-place lay the two schooners, with boats plying rapidly between them and the sh.o.r.e. The landing had evidently been disputed. The village was in flames and brown figures were creeping cautiously up the hill. The beach was filling rapidly with men from the ships.

"It will be a couple of hours before they get here," said Blair, and with instinctive foresight, in view of his greater work, "I wish we could get hold of those brown fellows. If they know that we're fighting their battle, it will pave our way with them later on."

He put it to Ha'o, and eventually the latter slipped away down the hillside, none too eagerly, to endeavour to intercept the fugitives and bring them in, if it were possible.

There was no difficulty in intercepting them. They were flying for their lives. Bringing them in, however, was quite another matter.

They recognised Ha'o, by his speech, as from the other side of the island--hostile therefore, and not to be trusted; and it took all his diplomacy, through the veil of a different dialect, to persuade the first half-dozen to the venture.

The sight of Blair, however, rea.s.sured them. They recognised him from his calls in the _Torch_, and presently they were off along the hills to bring in their fellows.

Altogether about thirty terrified men and women came in. The women were sent on down the valley. The men lay down among the rocks with the defending party.

Meanwhile the marauders had completed their landing and had begun their march, like the shadow of a black cloud creeping slowly up the hillside. Before them, urged on by blows from behind, crept two reluctant brown guides with ropes round their necks. There was no fear of the yellow men missing the pa.s.s. They toiled upward with stubborn determination, and wasted breath in voluble commination of the length of the way, when they could have employed it more usefully in compa.s.sing it.

And there was no possible doubt of their intentions. Slaughter and plunder were written all over them, as plain to see as the nature of a hyaena in the cut of its slinking face.

Nevertheless, Blair would permit no attack unchallenged. As the bristling crest of the black wave foamed cursing into the level of the pa.s.s, he drew cautiously back under cover till the whole should be there. When he struck, he would strike with all his might. This was a nettle to be gripped hard, to be squeezed to pulp and trampled out of sight.

The yellow men flung themselves flat and cursed their wind back. And the pa.s.s lay blank and bare and open under the glare of the sun. Not a stone rattled, not a shadow moved. The one lone palm seemed cast in brown.

In due course, and with the aid of many curses, the marauders got to their feet at last, and came pressing loosely along behind their unwilling guides. They pa.s.sed unchallenged the place where Blair knelt behind a big rock. Below and on each side, pinched brown faces craned anxiously over restless brown shoulders at him, eager for the word. It was not till the motley crew had pa.s.sed that he stepped out suddenly from his cover, and stood, a tall white figure, in the sun-glare.

"Hola!" he cried. "What are you after?" And instantly such a villainous array of vicious yellow faces was turned on him as he had never before in his life set eyes on.

A babble broke out among them.

"Dios! It is he!"

"It is the fighting padre!"

"It is the devil himself!"

"Down with him!"

"Our turn now, senor missionary!"

And one answer to his question which needed no knowledge of b.a.s.t.a.r.d Spanish for its translation. A sharp report, and a bullet buzzed past his head.

Other guns were rising to correct the insufficiency of the first.

"Give it them, boys!" shouted Blair, and before the words were out of his mouth, rocks and fire-pointed spears were raining on them, back and front, and as they tried in vain to face both sides at once, there came the quick crackle of the Winchesters and a ringing cheer from the _Torch_ men at the end of the pa.s.s.

The yellow men reeled under their flailing. The ground was c.u.mbered with bodies and the air with curses. The momentary panic drove them in upon themselves and bunched them together.

But the weak point about the thrown spear as a weapon of offence is the fact that, once hurled, it is gone. The yellow men were an undisciplined mob, Ishmaelites all, accustomed every man to fight for himself and ready to fight at any moment, but their death dealers remained in their hands, and they outnumbered the _Torch_ men by seven to one. The Torches poured in volley after volley. The yellow men tightened their defence and replied in kind; while the brown men danced wildly among the rocks, and hurled stones and clubs, and were shot down like rabbits.

Blair's men were falling all round him. The sight was too much for him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed a club from the ground and sprang down the hillside.

In a moment the sides of the pa.s.s vomited brown men frenzied for the fight.

"Kown 'im!--kown 'im!--kown 'im!" they yelled, and hurled themselves on the enemy.

The _Torch_ men, reduced in number, fired one more round and came racing in with their cutla.s.ses. The yellow men replied, and then clubbed their guns and thrashed wildly at the advancing tide.

Under such conditions, and with the might of right as well as numbers against them, the yellow men gave way and drifted back towards the mouth of the pa.s.s, fighting stubbornly all the way.

And Kenneth Blair forgot that he was a man of peace. He saw his brown men falling all round him, ripped and bashed and broken, and he dashed into that fight as he had dashed into many a more peaceful one on the football field at home. He saw nothing at the moment but the vicious yellow faces and s.h.a.ggy heads of the despoilers. He knew nothing but the necessity of demolishing them, and with his unaccustomed club he smote with all his might at every head he could reach, as his forbears long ago struck down the Northmen when they came wading ash.o.r.e from their beaked ships on the coast of Caledonia.

The brown men eyed him with amazement, and yelled with unholy joy at sight of his Berserk fury. The teacher was a man like themselves, and could let himself loose like the rest of them. And Blair thought neither of them nor himself, or of anything whatsoever, save the necessity of ridding the island of the vermin that would pollute it.

For once in his life he tasted the wild, mad joy of battle.

His red club whirled and fell, and wherever it fell there fell a gap, and in him raged a red fury which nothing could appease or oppose.

He would surely have been a terrible sight to himself--his white face set to slaughter, and smeared with blood from a bullet graze on the temple, his white clothes spattered red, his eyes ablaze, and that murderous red club whirling and smashing to the tune that plunged in his veins.

At the end of the pa.s.s, where it dipped towards the sea, the yellow men broke, and it was over, so far as danger to the island was concerned.

But not by any means over as concerned the yellow men. Never yet did enemy break and flee but prudence and restraint fled with him.

Cast-iron discipline may leash it in the bulk, but in the individual the l.u.s.t of death will out and have its way. The wild beast that lurks in every man once roused is ill to curb, and hardest, maybe, in the man not easily provoked. And here was no pretence of discipline. The furies were afoot that day, and death and destruction were rampant.

Blair found himself plunging down the hill path after a scattered mob of yellow men. They were too breathless to curse. Their only hope was the sea.

The prey was escaping. Terror lent it wings stronger than the fury behind. He hurled his dripping club among them, and one man fell.

At one side, among the boulders, he caught a glimpse of Ha'o, all aflame with battle, doing dreadful things with a dripping red axe. So horrible did he look, so utterly inhuman and wholly possessed of the devil, that Blair gasped at the sight. Then he stumbled to a rock and dropped his bursting head into his hands--and came to himself.