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her jerk away from the man. On the instant Grief touched the 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. Van Asveld had managed to
catch the girl and was struggling with her. The Goat Man held a rifle on
him and waited a chance. The dynamite struck the deck in a compact
package, bounded, and rolled into the port scupper. Van Asveld saw it and
hesitated, then he and the girl ran aft for their lives. The Goat Man fired,
but splintered the corner of the galley. The spattering of bullets from the
Rattler increased, and the two on the rock crouched low for shelter and
waited. Mauriri tried to see 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 marksmen had got
the range and were maintaining a steady fire. Once, fanned by a couple of
bullets, Grief risked a peep. The Valetta, her port deck and rail torn away,
was listing and sinking as she drifted back into the harbour. Climbing on
board the Rattler were the men and the Huahine women who had been
hidden in the Valetta's cabin and who had swum for it under the protecting
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A SON OF THE SUN
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52
fire. The Fuatino men who had been towing in the whaleboat had cast off
the line, dashed back through the passage, and were rowing wildly for the
south shore.
From the shore of the peninsula the discharges of four rifles announced
that Brown and his men had worked through the jungle to the beach and
were taking a hand. The bullets ceased coming, and Grief and Mauriri
joined in with their rifles. But they could do no damage, for the men of the
Rattler were firing from the shelter of the deck-houses, while the wind and
tide carried the schooner farther in. There was no sign of the Valetta,
which had sunk in the deep water of the crater.
Two things Raoul Van Asveld did that showed his keenness and coolness
and that elicited Grief's admiration. Under the Rattler's rifle fire Raoul
compelled the fleeing Fuatino men to come in and surrender. And at the
same time, dispatching half his cutthroats in the Rattler's boat, he threw
them ashore and across the peninsula, preventing Brown from getting
away to the main part of the island. And for the rest of the morning the
intermittent shooting told to Grief how Brown was being driven in to the
other side of the Big Rock. The situation was unchanged, with the
exception of the loss of the Valetta.
VI
The defects of the position on the Big Rock were vital. There was neither
food nor water. For several nights, accompanied by one of the Raiatea
men, Mauriri swam to the head of the bay for supplies. Then came the
night when lights flared on the water and shots were fired. After that the
water-side of the Big Rock was invested as well.
"It's a funny situation," Brown remarked, who was getting all the
adventure he had been led to believe resided in the South Seas. "We've got
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hold and can't let go, and Raoul has hold and can't let go. He can't get
away, and we're liable to starve to death holding him."
"If the rain came, the rock-basins would fill," said Mauriri. It was their
first twenty-four hours without water. "Big Brother, to-night you and I will
get water. It is the work of strong men."
That night, with cocoanut calabashes, each of quart capacity and tightly
stoppered, he led Grief down to the water from the peninsula side of the
Big Rock. They swam out not more than a hundred feet. Beyond, they
could hear the occasional click of an oar or the knock of a paddle against a
canoe, and sometimes they saw the flare of matches as the men in the
guarding boats lighted cigarettes or pipes.
A SON OF THE SUN
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53
"Wait here," whispered Mauriri, "and hold the calabashes."
Turning over, he swam down. Grief, face downward, watched his
phosphorescent track glimmer, and dim, and vanish. A long minute
afterward Mauriri broke surface noiselessly at Grief's side.
"Here! Drink!"
The calabash was full, and Grief drank sweet fresh water which had come
up from the depths of the salt.
"It flows out from the land," said Mauriri.
"On the bottom?"
"No. The bottom is as far below as the mountains are above. Fifty feet
down it flows. Swim down until you feel its coolness."
Several times filling and emptying his lungs in diver fashion, Grief turned
over and went down through the water. Salt it was to his lips, and warm to
his flesh; but at last, deep down, it perceptibly chilled and tasted
brackish.
Then, suddenly, his body entered the cold, subterranean stream. He
removed the small stopper from the calabash, and, as the sweet water
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gurgled into it, he saw the phosphorescent glimmer of a big fish, like a sea
ghost, drift sluggishly by.
Thereafter, holding the growing weight of the calabashes, he remained on
the surface, while Mauriri took them down, one by one, and filled them.
"There are sharks," Grief said, as they swam back to shore.
"Pooh!" was the answer. "They are fish sharks. We of Fuatino are brothers
to the fish sharks."
"But the tiger sharks? I have seen them here."
"When they come, Big Brother, we will have no more water to drink
unless it rains."
VII
A week later Mauriri and a Raiatea man swam back with empty
calabashes. The tiger sharks had arrived in the harbour. The next day they
thirsted on the Big Rock.
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54
"We must take our chance," said Grief. "To-night I shall go after water
with Mautau. To-morrow night, Brother, you will go with Tehaa."
Three quarts only did Grief get, when the tiger sharks appeared and drove
them in. There were six of them on the Rock, and a pint a day, in the
sweltering heat of the mid-tropics, is not sufficient moisture for a man's
body. The next night Mauriri and Tehaa returned with no water. And the
day following Brown learned the full connotation of thirst, when the lips
crack to bleeding, the mouth is coated with granular slime, and the swollen
tongue finds the mouth too small for residence.
Grief swam out in the darkness with Mautau. Turn by turn, they went
down through the salt, to the cool sweet stream, drinking their fill while
the calabashes were filling. It was Mautau's turn to descend with the last
calabash, and Grief, peering down from the surface, saw the glimmer of
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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]