this visitant of the deep. “But a sad faun,” was the young man’s judgment,
as the golden-brown woods god strode forward to where David Grief sat
up with outstretched hand.
“David,” said David Grief.
“Mauriri, Big Brother,” said Mauriri.
And thereafter, in the custom of men who have pledged blood
brotherhood, each called the other, not by the other’s name, but by his
own. Also, they talked in the Polynesian tongue of Fuatino, and Brown
could only sit and guess.
“A long swim to say talofa,” Grief said, as the other sat and streamed
water on the deck.
“Many days and nights have I watched for your coming, Big Brother,”
Mauriri replied. “I have sat on the Big Rock, where the dynamite is kept,
of which I have been made keeper. I saw you come up to the entrance and
run back into darkness. I knew you waited till morning, and I followed.
Great trouble has come upon us. Mataara has cried these many days for
your coming. She is an old woman, and Motauri is dead, and she is sad.”
“Did he marry Naumoo?” Grief asked, after he had shaken his head and
sighed by the custom.
“Yes. In the end they ran to live with the goats, till Mataara forgave, when
they returned to live with her in the Big House. But he is now dead, and
Naumoo soon will die. Great is our trouble, Big Brother. Tori is dead, and
Tati-Tori, and Petoo, and Nari, and Pilsach, and others.”
A SON OF THE SUN
41
“Pilsach, too!” Grief exclaimed. “Has there been a sickness?”
“There has been much killing. Listen, Big Brother. Three weeks ago a
strange schooner came. From the Big Rock I saw her topsails above the
sea. She towed in with her boats, but they did not warp by the big patch,
and she pounded many times. She is now on the beach, where they are
strengthening the broken timbers. There are eight white men on board.
They have women from some island far to the east. The women talk a
language in many ways like ours, only different. But we can understand.
They say they were stolen by the men on the schooner. We do not know,
but they sing and dance and are happy.”
“And the men?” Grief interrupted.
“They talk French. I know, for there was a mate on your schooner who
talked French long ago. There are two chief men, and they do not look like
the others. They have blue eyes like you, and they are devils. One is a
bigger devil than the other. The other six are also devils. They do not pay
us for our yams, and taro, and breadfruit. They take everything from us,
and if we complain they kill us. Thus was killed Tori, and Tati- Tori, and
Petoo, and others. We cannot fight, for we have no guns—only two or
three old guns.
“They ill-treat our women. Thus was killed Motuaro, who made defence
of Naumoo, whom they have now taken on board their schooner. It was
because of this that Pilsach was killed. Him the chief of the two chief men,
the Big Devil, shot once in his whaleboat, and twice when he tried to
crawl up the sand of the beach. Pilsach was a brave man, and Notutu now
sits in the house and cries without end. Many of the people are afraid, and
have run to live with the goats. But there is not food for all in the high
mountains. And the men will not go out and fish, and they work no more
in the gardens because of the devils who take all they have. And we are
ready to fight.
“Big Brother, we need guns, and much ammunition. I sent word before I
swam out to you, and the men are waiting. The strange white men do not
know you are come. Give me a boat, and the guns, and I will go back
before the sun. And when you come to-morrow we will be ready for the
word from you to kill the strange white men. They must be killed. Big
Brother, you have ever been of the blood with us, and the men and women
have prayed to many gods for your coming. And you are come.”
“I will go in the boat with you,” Grief said.
“No, Big Brother,” was Mauriri’s reply. “You must be with the schooner.
The strange white men will fear the schooner, not us. We will have the
A SON OF THE SUN
42
guns, and they will not know. It is only when they see your schooner come
that they will be alarmed. Send the young man there with the boat.”
So it was that Brown, thrilling with all the romance and adventure he had
read and guessed and never lived, took his place in the sternsheets of a
whaleboat, loaded with rifles and cartridges, rowed by four Raiatea
sailors, steered by a golden-brown, sea-swimming faun, and directed
through the warm tropic darkness toward the half-mythical love island of
Fuatino, which had been invaded by twentieth century pirates.
II
If a line be drawn between Jaluit, in the Marshall Group, and
Bougainville, in the Solomons, and if this line be bisected at two degrees
south of the equator by a line drawn from Ukuor, in the Carolines, the high
island of Fuatino will be raised in that sun-washed stretch of lonely sea.
Inhabited by a stock kindred to the Hawaiian, the Samoan, the Tahitian,
and the Maori, Fuatino becomes the apex of the wedge driven
by Polynesia far to the west and in between Melanesia and Micronesia.
And it was Fuatino that David Grief raised next morning, two miles to the
east and in direct line with the rising sun. The same whisper of a breeze
held, and the Rattler slid through the smooth sea at a rate that would have
been eminently proper for an island schooner had the breeze been thrice as
strong.
Fuatino was nothing else than an ancient crater, thrust upward from the
sea-bottom by some primordial cataclysm. The western portion, broken
and crumbled to sea level, was the entrance to the crater itself, which
constituted the harbour. Thus, Fuatino was like a rugged horseshoe, the
heel pointing to the west. And into the opening at the heel the Rattler
steered. Captain Glass, binoculars in hand and peering at the chart made
by himself, which was spread on top the cabin, straightened up with an
expression on his face that was half alarm, half resignation.
“It’s coming,” he said. “Fever. It wasn’t due till to-morrow. It always hits
me hard, Mr. Grief. In five minutes I’ll be off my head. You’ll have to con
the schooner in. Boy! Get my bunk ready! Plenty of blankets
Fill that hot-water bottle! It’s so calm, Mr. Grief, that I think you can pass
the big patch without warping. Take the leading wind and shoot her. She’s
the only craft in the South Pacific that can do it, and I know you know the
trick. You can scrape the Big Rock by just watching out for the main
boom.”
A SON OF THE SUN
43
He had talked rapidly, almost like a drunken man, as his reeling brain
battled with the rising shock of the malarial stroke. When he stumbled
toward the companionway, his face was purpling and mottling as if
attacked by some monstrous inflammation or decay. His eyes were setting
in a glassy bulge, his hands shaking, his teeth clicking in the spasms of
chill.
“Two hours to get the sweat,” he chattered with a ghastly grin. “And a
couple more and I’ll be all right. I know the damned thing to the last
minute it runs its course. Y-y-you t-t-take ch-ch-ch-ch—”
His voice faded away in a weak stutter as he collapsed down into the cabin
and his employer took charge. The Rattler was just entering the passage.
The heels of the horseshoe island were two huge mountains of rock a
thousand feet high, each almost broken off from the mainland and
connected with it by a low and narrow peninsula. Between the heels was a
half-mile stretch, all but blocked by a reef of coral extending across from
the south heel. The passage, which Captain Glass had called a crevice,
twisted into this reef, curved directly to the north heel, and ran along the
base of the perpendicular rock. At this point, with the main- boom almost
grazing the rock on the port side, Grief, peering down on the starboard
side, could see bottom less than two fathoms beneath and shoaling steeply.
With a whaleboat towing for steerage and as a precaution against backdraughts
from the cliff, and taking advantage of a fan of breeze, he shook
the Rattler full into it and glided by the big coral patch without warping.
As it was, he just scraped, but so softly as not to start the copper.