sea-ghosts and all the phosphorescent display of the struggle. He swam
back alone, but without relinquishing the precious burden of full
calabashes.
Of food they had little. Nothing grew on the Rock, and its sides, covered
with shellfish at sea level where the surf thundered in, were too
precipitous for access. Here and there, where crevices permitted, a few
rank shellfish and sea urchins were gleaned. Sometimes frigate birds and
other sea birds were snared. Once, with a piece of frigate bird, they
succeeded in hooking a shark. After that, with jealously guarded shark-
meat for bait, they managed on occasion to catch more sharks.
But water remained their direst need. Mauriri prayed to the Goat God for
rain. Taute prayed to the Missionary God, and his two fellow islanders,
backsliding, invoked the deities of their old heathen days. Grief grinned
and considered. But Brown, wild-eyed, with protruding blackened tongue,
cursed. Especially he cursed the phonograph that in the cool twilights
ground out gospel hymns from the deck of the Rattler. One hymn in
particular, “Beyond the Smiling and the Weeping,” drove him to madness.
It seemed a favourite on board the schooner, for it was played most of all.
Brown, hungry and thirsty, half out of his head from weakness and
suffering, could lie among the rocks with equanimity and listen to the
tinkling of ukuleles and guitars, and the hulas and himines of the Huahine
women. But when the voices of the Trinity Choir floated over the water he
was beside himself. One evening the cracked tenor took up the song with
the machine:
“Beyond the smiling and the weeping,
I shall be soon.
Beyond the waking and the sleeping,
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55
Beyond the sowing and the reaping, I shall be soon,
I shall be soon.”
Then it was that Brown rose up. Again and again, blindly, he emptied his
rifle at the schooner. Laughter floated up from the men and women, and
from the peninsula came a splattering of return bullets; but the cracked
tenor sang on, and Brown continued to fire, until the hymn was played out.
It was that night that Grief and Mauriri came back with but one calabash
of water. A patch of skin six inches long was missing from Grief’s
shoulder in token of the scrape of the sandpaper hide of a shark whose
dash he had eluded.
VIII
In the early morning of another day, before the sun-blaze had gained its
full strength, came an offer of a parley from Raoul Van Asveld.
Brown brought the word in from the outpost among the rocks a hundred
yards away. Grief was squatted over a small fire, broiling a strip of sharkflesh.
The last twenty-four hours had been lucky. Seaweed and sea urchins
had been gathered. Tehaa had caught a shark, and Mauriri had captured a
fair-sized octopus at the base of the crevice where the dynamite was
stored. Then, too, in the darkness they had made two successful swims for
water before the tiger sharks had nosed them out.
“Said he’d like to come in and talk with you,” Brown said. “But I know
what the brute is after. Wants to see how near starved to death we are.”
“Bring him in,” Grief said.
“And then we will kill him,” the Goat Man cried joyously.
Grief shook his head.
“But he is a killer of men, Big Brother, a beast and a devil,” the Goat Man
protested.
“He must not be killed, Brother. It is our way not to break our word.”
“It is a foolish way.”
“Still it is our way,” Grief answered gravely, turning the strip of shark-
meat over on the coals and noting the hungry sniff and look of Tehaa.
“Don’t do that, Tehaa, when the Big Devil comes. Look as if you and
hunger were strangers. Here, cook those sea urchins, you, and you, Big
A SON OF THE SUN
56
Brother, cook the squid. We will have the Big Devil to feast with us. Spare
nothing. Cook all.”
And, still broiling meat, Grief arose as Raoul Van Asveld, followed by a
large Irish terrier, strode into camp. Raoul did not make the mistake of
holding out his hand.
“Hello!” he said. “I’ve heard of you.”
“I wish I’d never heard of you,” Grief answered.
“Same here,” was the response. “At first, before I knew who it was, I
thought I had to deal with an ordinary trading captain. That’s why you’ve
got me bottled up.”
“And I am ashamed to say that I underrated you,” Grief smiled. “I took
you for a thieving beachcomber, and not for a really intelligent pirate and
murderer. Hence, the loss of my schooner. Honours are even, I fancy, on
that score.”
Raoul flushed angrily under his sunburn, but he contained himself. His
eyes roved over the supply of food and the full water-calabashes, though
he concealed the incredulous surprise he felt. His was a tall, slender, wellknit
figure, and Grief, studying him, estimated his character from his face.
The eyes were keen and strong, but a bit too close together—not pinched,
however, but just a trifle near to balance the broad forehead, the strong
chin and jaw, and the cheekbones wide apart. Strength! His face was filled
with it, and yet Grief sensed in it the intangible something the man lacked.
“We are both strong men,” Raoul said, with a bow. “We might have been
fighting for empires a hundred years ago.”
It was Grief’s turn to bow.
“As it is, we are squalidly scrapping over the enforcement of the colonial
laws of those empires whose destinies we might possibly have determined
a hundred years ago.”
“It all comes to dust,” Raoul remarked sententiously, sitting down. “Go
ahead with your meal. Don’t let me interrupt.”
“Won’t you join us?” was Grief’s invitation.
The other looked at him with sharp steadiness, then accepted.
“I’m sticky with sweat,” he said. “Can I wash?”
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57
Grief nodded and ordered Mauriri to bring a calabash. Raoul looked into
the Goat Man’s eyes, but saw nothing save languid uninterest as the
precious quart of water was wasted on the ground.
“The dog is thirsty,” Raoul said.
Grief nodded, and another calabash was presented to the animal.
Again Raoul searched the eyes of the natives and learned nothing.
“Sorry we have no coffee,” Grief apologized. “You’ll have to drink plain
water. A calabash, Tehaa. Try some of this shark. There is squid to follow,
and sea urchins and a seaweed salad. I’m sorry we haven’t any frigate bird.
The boys were lazy yesterday, and did not try to catch any.”
With an appetite that would not have stopped at wire nails dipped in lard,
Grief ate perfunctorily, and tossed the scraps to the dog.
“I’m afraid I haven’t got down to the primitive diet yet,” he sighed, as he
sat back. “The tinned goods on the Rattler, now I could make a hearty
meal off of them, but this muck—” He took a half-pound strip of broiled
shark and flung it to the dog. “I suppose I’ll come to it if you don’t
surrender pretty soon.”
Raoul laughed unpleasantly.
“I came to offer terms,” he said pointedly.
Grief shook his head.
“There aren’t any terms. I’ve got you where the hair is short, and I’m not
going to let go.”
“You think you can hold me in this hole!” Raoul cried.
“You’ll never leave it alive, except in double irons.” Grief surveyed his
guest with an air of consideration. “I’ve handled your kind before. We’ve
pretty well cleaned it out of the South Seas. But you area—how shall I
say?—a sort of an anachronism. You’re a throwback, and we’ve got to get
rid of you. Personally, I would advise you to go back to the schooner and
blow your brains out. It is the only way to escape what you’ve got coming
to you.”
The parley, so far as Raoul was concerned, proved fruitless, and he went
back into his own lines convinced that the men on the Big Rock could
hold out for years, though he would have been swiftly unconvinced could
A SON OF THE SUN
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he have observed Tehaa and the Raiateans, the moment his back was
turned and he was out of sight, crawling over the rocks and sucking and
crunching the scraps his dog had left uneaten.
IX
“We hunger now, Brother,” Grief said, “but it is better than to hunger for
many days to come. The Big Devil, after feasting and drinking good water
with us in plenty, will not stay long in Fuatino. Even tomorrow may he try
to leave. To-night you and I sleep over the top of the Rock, and Tehaa,
who shoots well, will sleep with us if he can dare the Rock.”
Tehaa, alone among the Raiateans, was cragsman enough to venture the
perilous way, and dawn found him in a rock-barricaded nook, a hundred
yards to the right of Grief and Mauriri.