White Fire Part 33

"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.

"h.e.l.lo! What's this?" said Cathie.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "h.e.l.lo! what's this?"]

"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 b.u.mp 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 appet.i.tes.

"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 pa.s.s, 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.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SCOURGE OF G.o.d

But there was trouble of a quite unexpected kind brewing.

The yellow men in their lives had slain a certain number of the brown.

In their deaths they slew still more.

The whites had hoped that, with the introduction of new food supplies, the unnatural but deep-rooted native craving for human flesh would have disappeared. The final rites of the battlefield shocked them exceedingly, and words had so far failed to convince Ha'o and his people of the error of their ways.

"You eat pig," was Ha'o's blunt argument in reply, "and man is cleaner than pig."

There was, however, an argument in preparation for him with which the white men had nothing whatever to do, but which drove home conviction beyond dispute and in the most terrifying fashion.

Ever since the fighting, and the subsequent orgies, the villages had been unusually quiet. Even the wholesale submission of Ra'a's men produced little excitement among them.

"They are like snakes after a full meal," said Cathie. "They've eaten too much, and it'll take 'em all their time to digest it."

Evans, however, had his doubts. He hinted to Blair that he feared an outbreak of sickness, but as yet could form no opinion as to its character. The men had lost all their energy, the women were depressed, the children listless. It was as though the strenuous doings at One-Tree Pa.s.s had sucked all the life out of them. And Evans went in and out of the houses with a keen eye for symptoms.

It was about a fortnight after the fight that Blair, going up to the village, met him coming hastily from it, and was startled at the sight of his face.

"What is it, Evans?" he asked.

"It's come--I feared it, but could not be sure--smallpox."

"G.o.d help us! ... How has it got here?"

"I can only imagine," said Evans, with a quick, meaning look at him.

"Good G.o.d! How very horrible!"

"Yes. They'll have a lesson they'll never forget, and many of them will never have the chance to. What about our wives, Blair? Shall we send them away till it is over?"