In his harsh unmusical voice he chanted plainsong, which had a better covering effect: he had reached a Benedictus in the Dorian mode and he was straining for a high qui venit when the clear sharp voice of gunfire – carronade-fire – cut him short. Four almost at once, it seemed to him, and then two; but the echoes confused everything. Then four quick hammer-strokes again. Then silence.
Padeen and he stood staring up the mountain. They could make out a vague roaring, but nothing more; and the birds that had started from the trees below all settled again.
Perhaps battle had been joined: perhaps the carronades had been overrun.
Time passed, though less slowly now, and presently steps could be heard on the path. A young long-legged man raced down past them, a messenger of good news, his whole face alive with joy. He shouted something as he passed: victory, no doubt at all.
After him, several minutes after him, came two more, each carrying a human head by the hair, Polynesian the first, European the second. Both heads had their eyes open, indignant in the one case, perfectly blank in the other.
Then loud and clear, helped by some eddy in the wind, came the cry ‘one, two, three, belay-oh!’ and it was plain that a carronade was coming down the path. Long before it reached them a group of small-arms men could be heard laughing and talking, and as soon as they came in sight Stephen called ‘Wilton, are many of our people hurt?’
‘None that I know on, sir. Ain’t that right, Bob?’
‘Right as dried peas, mate. And none of the Queen’s men that I see, neither.’
‘But them poor unfortunate buggers in the gulley,’ said the captain of the hold, an old shipmate of Stephen’s and entitled to speak freely, ‘God love us, sir, it was bloody murder.’
By this time the mountainside was alive with men, islanders who knew scores of paths the guns could never have taken, most of them carrying their spoils: weapons, matting, ornaments, ears.
Presently Jack appeared at the turning, with Bonden a little way behind him, looking somewhat anxious. Stephen walked up the track and as they met he said ‘May I give you joy of your victory?’
‘Thank you, Stephen,’ said Jack, with a sort of smile.
‘Are there any wounded I can look after?’
‘All that did not run away are dead by now, brother. Shall we take a side path? It will get us down so long as we follow the slope and hit the Eeahu river. Tom is seeing to the carronades. Bonden, give Padeen a hand with the medical stores, will you?’
They struck off to the left, a track that led steeply down through ferns to a little purling stream; the path was too narrow and abrupt for any conversation until the place where the stream ran across, making a pool under a spreading tree. Jack knelt down, washed his face and hands and drank deep. ‘Lord, that is better,” he said, sitting back on a mossy root. ‘Should you like to know how things went?’
‘I am afraid it distresses you to speak of it at present.”
‘Yes, it does. But these things soon pass, you know. Well, the scheme worked perfectly, like a drill-book. They were rather tired, having come uphill nearly all the way, dragging their gun and precious short of food; and our young men, posted at the far end to provoke them and bring them on into the cleft, had plenty of time to run back behind the guns and leave the field clear. I should never have believed case-shot could do so much damage. I must say the French came on very well, leaping and scrambling over the bodies: two rounds dealt with them. But even then Kalahua’s people rallied and charged with a shout, some of them almost reaching the guns before the last broadside. We stopped firing then, and those that could run ran, pursued by some of Puolani’s men – not many, and they will not go far, the war-chiefs tell me, because of the broken country. We took their gun, of course, and I dare say Puolani will get it down in time.’ After a pause he said ‘We only fired ten rounds, Stephen, but there was a butcher’s bill like a fleet action. And though the hands were pleased, of course, scarcely anyone raised a cheer; and it was not taken up.’
‘You did not follow your plan of closing the other end, I collect, since some were able to run away?’
‘My plan? Oh no: that did not make very good sense. I was really trying to make your flesh creep, as you do mine with your surgical horrors. It is my belief, Stephen, that you do not always know when I am being droll.’
This was the first sign of a lifting, at least a superficial lifting of his depression, and by the time they had made their slow and often mistaken way down to Puolani’s village he was perfectly capable of responding to their extraordinarily happy and triumphant welcome. He had been expected by the main path through the sugar-canes, where arches of greenery with two carronades under each had been set up: the Queen led him back by a side way to the first and then through the middle of all three to an immense sound of cheering and the thunder of wooden drums. Then he was taken from one group to another – Tapia, recovered from the throng, explained that these were the various branches of the tribe –
and each group in turn fell flat, though not quite so flat as to hide their delighted smiles.
The tribe had a great many branches, but the repeated ceremonies, the incessant beating of drums and blowing of conches, the feeling of great friendliness and affection as Puolani led him about and the great beauty of the day – a brilliant sky and white clouds sailing evenly from the north-east and the heat of the sun tempered by a charming scented breeze – set a barrier between now and the slaughter of the morning, and he walked into the Queen’s house perfectly ready to be pleased with his entertainment. Here the whole company, all robed, stood up as he came in; and to his astonishment he saw Stephen, Pullings, West and Adams among them, wearing splendid feather cloaks, and as he stood there Puolani placed one on his shoulders, crimson from top to bottom. She smoothed it with great satisfaction and made a confidential remark. ‘She says it belonged to one of her uncles, now a god,’ said Tapia.
‘Any god would be flattered by such a cloak,’ said Jack, ‘much less an humble mortal.’
‘It is a present,’ whispered Tapia.
Jack turned and bowed, returning his best thanks: Puolani looked modestly down, an unusual attitude for her, and motioned him to a seat beside her on the bench, or perhaps firmly padded sofa would be the better description. A yellow-feathered Pullings was on her other side; Stephen, in blue-black, on Jack’s left, and to him he said in an undertone ‘Are you hungry? I have never been so famished in all my life. It came over me suddenly.’
Then, seeing Tapia whispering to an immensely tattooed chief beyond him he said ‘Tapia, pray ask the chief if Bonden can be sent back to the ship in a canoe to tell Mr Oakes that all is well and that the boats are to come round tomorrow morning. I shall sleep ashore.’
Puolani’s grandfather had acquired three ship’s coppers. These vessels rarely appeared, since almost all Polynesian cooking was carried out with hot stones in an underground oven, the dish being wrapped in leaves, but now, gleaming like red gold, they were brought out by strong men and set on hearths in front of the house. An extraordinarily savoury smell wafted in and Jack swallowed painfully; to distract his mind he desired Tapia to tell the Queen how much he admired the orderliness of the gathering – to the right hand, outside the house, sat the starboard watch in due order of precedence, on the left, the larboard, all hands wearing garlands of flowers, while beyond them, closing the square, were the densely-packed islanders; and on every hand attendants were preparing food.
As well as the coppers seven china bowls had reached Moahu, and these were placed on little cushions before the Queen, Jack, Stephen and Pullings, West, Adams, and an ancient chief, together with spoons and wooden platters of mashed taro. A chorus of conches blew three great blasts. Servants stood by the coppers, looking expectantly at the Queen. ‘Turtle on the left, fish in the middle, meat on the right,’ whispered Tapia. The Queen looked at Jack with a smile and he, returning the smile, said ‘Oh meat, ma’am, if you please.’
The bowls were filled all down the line: the Queen had chosen to begin with fish, nearly all the Surprise’s officers with meat. But it was exceedingly hot, and while they toyed with their taro, slavering as they did so, Stephen noticed the unmistakable helix of a human ear in his bowl and said to Tapia ‘Please tell the Queen that man’s flesh is taboo to us.’