A Son Of The Sun Page 6

  Fanning along against light, vagrant airs, the _Rattler_ worked in.Calling the whale-boat on board, Grief searched out the shore with hisbinoculars. There was no life. In the hot blaze of tropic sun the placeslept. There was no sign of welcome. Up the beach, on the north shore,where the fringe of cocoanut palms concealed the village, he could seethe black bows of the canoes in the canoe-houses. On the beach, on evenkeel, rested the strange schooner. Nothing moved on board of her oraround her. Not until the beach lay fifty yards away did Grief let gothe anchor in forty fathoms. Out in the middle, long years before, hehad sounded three hundred fathoms without reaching bottom, which was tobe expected of a healthy crater-pit like Fuatino. As the chain roaredand surged through the hawse-pipe he noticed a number of native women,lusciously large as only those of Polynesia are, in flowing _ahu's_,flower-crowned, stream out on the deck of the schooner on the beach.Also, and what they did not see, he saw from the galley the squat figureof a man steal for'ard, drop to the sand, and dive into the green screenof bush.

  While the sails were furled and gasketed, awnings stretched, and sheetsand tackles coiled harbour fashion, David Grief paced the deck andlooked vainly for a flutter of life elsewhere than on the strangeschooner. Once, beyond any doubt, he heard the distant crack of a riflein the direction of the Big Rock. There were no further shots, and hethought of it as some hunter shooting a wild goat.

  At the end of another hour Captain Glass, under a mountain of blankets,had ceased shivering and was in the inferno of a profound sweat.

  "I'll be all right in half an hour," he said weakly.

  "Very well," Grief answered. "The place is dead, and I'm going ashore tosee Mataara and find out the situation."

  "It's a tough bunch; keep your eyes open," the captain warned him. "Ifyou're not back in an hour, send word off."

  Grief took the steering-sweep, and four of his Raiatea men bent to theoars. As they landed on the beach he looked curiously at the women underthe schooner's awning. He waved his hand tentatively, and they, aftergiggling, waved back.

  "_Talofa!_" he called.

  They understood the greeting, but replied, "_Iorana_," and he knew theycame from the Society Group.

  "Huahine," one of his sailors unhesitatingly named their island. Griefasked them whence they came, and with giggles and laughter they replied,"Huahine."

  "It looks like old Dupuy's schooner," Grief said, in Tahitian, speakingin a low voice. "Don't look too hard. What do you think, eh? Isn't itthe _Valetta?_"

  As the men climbed out and lifted the whale-boat slightly up the beachthey stole careless glances at the vessel.

  "It is the _Valetta_," Taute said. "She carried her topmast away sevenyears ago. At Papeete they rigged a new one. It was ten feet shorter.That is the one."

  "Go over and talk with the women, you boys. You can almost see Huahinefrom Raiatea, and you'll be sure to know some of them. Find out all youcan. And if any of the white men show up, don't start a row."

  An army of hermit crabs scuttled and rustled away before him as headvanced up the beach, but under the palms no pigs rooted and grunted.The cocoanuts lay where they had fallen, and at the copra-sheds therewere no signs of curing. Industry and tidiness had vanished. Grasshouse after grass house he found deserted. Once he came upon an oldman, blind, toothless, prodigiously wrinkled, who sat in the shade andbabbled with fear when he spoke to him. It was as if the place had beenstruck with the plague, was Grief's thought, as he finally approachedthe Big House. All was desolation and disarray. There were noflower-crowned men and maidens, no brown babies rolling in the shade ofthe avocado trees. In the doorway, crouched and rocking back and forth,sat Mataara, the old queen. She wept afresh at sight of him, dividedbetween the tale of her woe and regret that no follower was left todispense to him her hospitality.

  "And so they have taken Naumoo," she finished. "Motauri is dead. Mypeople have fled and are starving with the goats. And there is no one toopen for you even a drinking cocoa-nut. O Brother, your white brothersbe devils."

  "They are no brothers of mine, Mataara," Grief consoled. "They arerobbers and pigs, and I shall clean the island of them----"

  He broke off to whirl half around, his hand flashing to his waist andback again, the big Colt's levelled at the figure of a man, bent double,that rushed at him from out of the trees. He did not pull the trigger,nor did the man pause till he had flung himself headlong at Grief'sfeet and begun to pour forth a stream of uncouth and awful noises. Herecognized the creature as the one he had seen steal from the _Valetta_and dive into the bush; but not until he raised him up and watchedthe contortions of the hare-lipped mouth could he understand what heuttered.

  "Save me, master, save me!" the man yammered, in English, though he wasunmistakably a South Sea native. "I know you! Save me!"

  And thereat he broke into a wild outpour of incoherence that didnot cease until Grief seized him by the shoulders and shook him intosilence.

  "I know you," Grief said. "You were cook in the French Hotel at Papeetetwo years ago. Everybody called you 'Hare-Lip.'"

  The man nodded violently.

  "I am now cook of the _Valetta_," he spat and spluttered, his mouthwrithing in a fearful struggle with its defect. "I know you. I saw youat the hotel. I saw you at Lavina's. I saw you on the _Kittiwake_. I sawyou at the _Mariposa_ wharf. You are Captain Grief, and you will saveme. Those men are devils. They killed Captain Dupuy. Me they made killhalf the crew. Two they shot from the cross-trees. The rest they shotin the water. I knew them all. They stole the girls from Huahine. Theyadded to their strength with jail-men from Noumea. They robbed thetraders in the New Hebrides. They killed the trader at Vanikori, andstole two women there. They----"

  But Grief no longer heard. Through the trees, from the direction ofthe harbour, came a rattle of rifles, and he started on the run for thebeach. Pirates from Tahiti and convicts from New Caledonia! A prettybunch of desperadoes that even now was attacking his schooner. Hare-Lipfollowed, still spluttering and spitting his tale of the white devils'doings.

  The rifle-firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, but Grief ranon, perplexed by ominous conjectures, until, in a turn of the path, heencountered Mauriri running toward him from the beach.

  "Big Brother," the Goat Man panted, "I was too late. They have takenyour schooner. Come! For now they will seek for you."

  He started back up the path away from the beach.

  "Where is Brown?" Grief demanded.

  "On the Big Rock. I will tell you afterward. Come now!"

  "But my men in the whaleboat?"

  Mauriri was in an agony of apprehension.

  "They are with the women on the strange schooner. They will not bekilled. I tell you true. The devils want sailors. But you they willkill. Listen!" From the water, in a cracked tenor voice, came a Frenchhunting song. "They are landing on the beach. They have taken yourschooner--that I saw. Come!"

  III

  Careless of his own life and skin, nevertheless David Grief waspossessed of no false hardihood. He knew when to fight and when to run,and that this was the time for running he had no doubt. Up the path,past the old men sitting in the shade, past Mataara crouched in thedoorway of the Big House, he followed at the heels of Mauriri. At hisown heels, doglike, plodded Hare-Lip. From behind came the cries of thehunters, but the pace Mauriri led them was heartbreaking. The broad pathnarrowed, swung to the right, and pitched upward. The last grass housewas left, and through high thickets of _cassi_ and swarms of greatgolden wasps the way rose steeply until it became a goat-track. Pointingupward to a bare shoulder of volcanic rock, Mauriri indicated the trailacross its face.

  "Past that we are safe, Big Brother," he said. "The white devils neverdare it, for there are rocks we roll down on their heads, and thereis no other path. Always do they stop here and shoot when we cross therock. Come!"

  A quarter of an hour later they paused where the trail went naked on theface of the rock.

  "Wait, and when you come, come quickly," Mauriri cautioned.
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  He sprang into the blaze of sunlight, and from below several riflespumped rapidly. Bullets smacked about him, and puffs of stone-dustflew out, but he won safely across. Grief followed, and so near didone bullet come that the dust of its impact stung his cheek. Nor wasHare-Lip struck, though he essayed the passage more slowly.

  For the rest of the day, on the greater heights, they lay in a lava glenwhere terraced taro and _papaia_ grew. And here Grief made his plans andlearned the fulness of the situation.

  "It was ill luck," Mauriri said. "Of all nights this one night wasselected by the white devils to go fishing. It was dark as we camethrough the passage. They were in boats and canoes. Always do they havetheir rifles with them. One Raiatea man they shot. Brown was very brave.We tried to get by to the top of the bay, but they headed us off, and wewere driven in between the Big Rock and the village. We saved the gunsand all the ammunition, but they got the boat. Thus they learned of yourcoming. Brown is now on this side of the Big Rock with the guns and theammunition."

  "But why didn't he go over the top of the Big Rock and give me warningas I came in from the sea?" Grief criticised.

  "They knew not the way. Only the goats and I know the way. And this Iforgot, for I crept through the bush to gain the water and swim to you.But the devils were in the bush shooting at Brown and the Raiatea men;and me they hunted till daylight, and through the morning they huntedme there in the low-lying land. Then you came in your schooner, and theywatched till you went ashore, and I got away through the bush, but youwere already ashore."

  "You fired that shot?"

  "Yes; to warn you. But they were wise and would not shoot back, and itwas my last cartridge."

  "Now you, Hare-Lip?" Grief said to the _Valetta's_ cook.

  His tale was long and painfully detailed. For a year he had been sailingout of Tahiti and through the Paumotus on the _Valetta_. Old Dupuy wasowner and captain. On his last cruise he had shipped two strangers inTahiti as mate and supercargo. Also, another stranger he carried to behis agent on Fanriki. Raoul Van Asveld and Carl Lepsius were the namesof the mate and supercargo.

  "They are brothers, I know, for I have heard them talk in the dark, ondeck, when they thought no one listened," Hare-Lip explained.

  The _Valetta_ cruised through the Low Islands, picking up shell andpearls at Dupuy's stations. Frans Amundson, the third stranger, relievedPierre Gollard at Fanriki. Pierre Gollard came on board to go back toTahiti. The natives of Fanriki said he had a quart of pearls to turnover to Dupuy. The first night out from Fanriki there was shootingin the cabin. Then the bodies of Dupuy and Pierre Gollard were thrownoverboard. The Tahitian sailors fled to the forecastle. For two days,with nothing to eat and the _Valetta_ hove to, they remained below. ThenRaoul Van Asveld put poison in the meal he made Hare-Lip cook and carryfor'ard. Half the sailors died.

  "He had a rifle pointed at me, master; what could I do?" Hare-Lipwhimpered. "Of the rest, two went up the rigging and were shot. Fanrikiwas ten miles away. The others went overboard to swim. They were shotas they swam. I, only, lived, and the two devils; for me they wanted tocook for them. That day, with the breeze, they went back to Fanrika andtook on Frans Amundson, for he was one of them."

  Then followed Hare-Lip's nightmare experiences as the schooner wanderedon the long reaches to the westward. He was the one living witness andknew they would have killed him had he not been the cook. At Noumea fiveconvicts had joined them. Hare-Lip was never permitted ashore at any ofthe islands, and Grief was the first outsider to whom he had spoken.

  "And now they will kill me," Hare-Lip spluttered, "for they will knowI have told you. Yet am I not all a coward, and I will stay with you,master, and die with you."

  The Goat Man shook his head and stood up.

  "Lie here and rest," he said to Grief. "It will be a long swim to-night.As for this cook-man, I will take him now to the higher places where mybrothers live with the goats."

  IV

  "It is well that you swim as a man should, Big Brother," Mauririwhispered.

  From the lava glen they had descended to the head of the bay and takento the water. They swam softly, without splash, Mauriri in the lead. Theblack walls of the crater rose about them till it seemed they swamon the bottom of a great bowl. Above was the sky of faintly luminousstar-dust. Ahead they could see the light which marked the Rattler, andfrom her deck, softened by distance, came a gospel hymn played on thephonograph intended for Pilsach.

  The two swimmers bore to the left, away from the captured schooner.Laughter and song followed on board after the hymn, then the phonographstarted again. Grief grinned to himself at the appositeness of it as"Lead, Kindly Light," floated out over the dark water.

  "We must take the passage and land on the Big Rock," Mauriri whispered."The devils are holding the low land. Listen!"

  Half a dozen rifle shots, at irregular intervals, attested that Brownstill held the Rock and that the pirates had invested the narrowpeninsula.

  At the end of another hour they swam under the frowning loom of the BigRock. Mauriri, feeling his way, led the landing in a crevice, up whichfor a hundred feet they climbed to a narrow ledge.

  "Stay here," said Mauriri. "I go to Brown. In the morning I shallreturn."

  "I will go with you, Brother," Grief said.

  Mauriri laughed in the darkness.

  "Even you, Big Brother, cannot do this thing. I am the Goat Man, andI only, of all Fuatino, can go over the Big Rock in the night.Furthermore, it will be the first time that even I have done it. Put outyour hand. You feel it? That is where Pilsach's dynamite is kept. Lieclose beside the wall and you may sleep without falling. I go now."

  And high above the sounding surf, on a narrow shelf beside a ton ofdynamite, David Grief planned his campaign, then rested his cheek on hisarm and slept.

  In the morning, when Mauriri led him over the summit of the Big Rock,David Grief understood why he could not have done it in the night.Despite the accustomed nerve of a sailor for height and precariousclinging, he marvelled that he was able to do it in the broad light ofday. There were places, always under minute direction of Mauriri, thathe leaned forward, falling, across hundred-foot-deep crevices, until hisoutstretched hands struck a grip on the opposing wall and his legs couldthen be drawn across after. Once, there was a ten-foot leap, above halfa thousand feet of yawning emptiness and down a fathom's length to ameagre foothold. And he, despite his cool head, lost it another time ona shelf, a scant twelve inches wide, where all hand-holds seemed to failhim. And Mauriri, seeing him sway, swung his own body far out and overthe gulf and passed him, at the same time striking him sharply on theback to brace his reeling brain. Then it was, and forever after, that hefully knew why Mauriri had been named the Goat Man.

  V

  The defence of the Big Rock had its good points and its defects.Impregnable to assault, two men could hold it against ten thousand.Also, it guarded the passage to open sea. The two schooners, Raoul VanAsveld, and his cutthroat following were bottled up. Grief, with the tonof dynamite, which he had removed higher up the rock, was master. Thishe demonstrated, one morning, when the schooners attempted to put tosea. The _Valetta_ led, the whaleboat towing her manned by capturedFuatino men. Grief and the Goat Man peered straight down from a saferock-shelter, three hundred feet above. Their rifles were beside them,also a glowing fire-stick and a big bundle of dynamite sticks with fusesand decanators attached. As the whaleboat came beneath, Mauriri shookhis head.

  "They are our brothers. We cannot shoot."

  For'ard, on the _Valetta_, were several of Grief's own Raiatea sailors.Aft stood another at the wheel. The pirates were below, or on the otherschooner, with the exception of one who stood, rifle in hand, amidships.For protection he held Naumoo, the Queen's daughter, close to him.

  "That is the chief devil," Mauriri whispered, "and his eyes are bluelike yours. He is a terrible man. See! He holds Naumoo that we may notshoot him."

  A light air and a slight tide were making into the passage, and thesc
hooner's progress was slow.

  "Do you speak English?" Grief called down.

  The man startled, half lifted his rifle to the perpendicular, and lookedup. There was something quick and catlike in his movements, and in hisburned blond face a fighting eagerness. It was the face of a killer.

  "Yes," he answered. "What do you want?"

  "Turn back, or I'll blow your schooner up," Grief warned. He blew on thefire-stick and whispered, "Tell Naumoo to break away from him and runaft."

  From the _Rattler_, close astern, rifles cracked, and bullets spattedagainst the rock. Van Asveld laughed defiantly, and Mauriri calleddown in the native tongue to the woman. When directly beneath, Grief,watching, saw her jerk away from the man. On the instant Grief touchedthe fire-stick to the match-head in the split end of the short fuse,sprang into view on the face of the rock, and dropped the dynamite. VanAsveld had managed to catch the girl and was struggling with her. TheGoat Man held a rifle on him and waited a chance. The dynamite struckthe deck in a compact package, bounded, and rolled into the portscupper. Van Asveld saw it and hesitated, then he and the girl ran aftfor their lives. The Goat Man fired, but splintered the corner of thegalley. The spattering of bullets from the _Rattler_ increased, and thetwo on the rock crouched low for shelter and waited. Mauriri tried tosee what was happening below, but Grief held him back.

  "The fuse was too long," he said. "I'll know better next time."

  It was half a minute before the explosion came. What happened afterward,for some little time, they could not tell, for the Rattler's marksmenhad got the range and were maintaining a steady fire. Once, fanned by acouple of bullets, Grief risked a peep. The _Valetta_, her port deckand rail torn away, was listing and sinking as she drifted back into theharbour. Climbing on board the _Rattler_ were the men and the Huahinewomen who had been hidden in the _Valetta's_ cabin and who had swum forit under the protecting fire. The Fuatino men who had been towing in thewhaleboat had cast off the line, dashed back through the passage, andwere rowing wildly for the south shore.