“We slept on deck that night for fear of an attack, me keeping first
watch, but nothing came, and just at daybreak we put out, towing her
till we caught the land wind and then cracking on all sail for
Mauriri.
“We were making ten knots and all that morning Mauriri bloomed up
against us, getting bigger and bigger till the foam on the big
half-moon reef that lies to northward showed up. There’s a break in
the middle of that reef and good anchorage once you’re through, and we
pushed right in, dropping our anchor in twenty-fathom water close to
the beach.
“Mauriri is a lot more open-faced than Taleka, and the chief village
is close to the beach, not hid up a valley.
“It was a white beach, but near black with Kanakas when we dropped the
anchor, and there were canoe houses, but not a canoe put off. The
crowd ashore didn’t look unfriendly, but they seemed standing on one
foot, so to speak, not knowing how to take us or whether we meant
fighting or trade.
“Buck ordered the boat to be lowered and whilst the Chinks were
getting it over I got him by the arm and took him to the after rail
and tried to punch sense into his head.
“‘Look here,’ I says, ‘what’s the good of revenge? it’s
unchristianlike and it’s not business, anyway. Forget Sru and trade
those crackers for copra, if they’ve got any here, if they haven’t,
put out along for some other island.’
“‘He killed my Chink’ says Buck. ‘Blow copra, I want his blood, and
I’m going to have it, if it costs me my last nickel.’
“‘All right, all right,’ I says, ‘come along,’ and off we put with
Taute to do the talking and a box of stick tobacco to help Tiaki
swallow the crackers.
“It was easy to pick him out from the crowd on the beach, he was over
six foot, with the half of an old willow pattern plate on his chest
dangling from a necklace of sharks’ teeth, he had an underlip like an
apron, one eye gone in some gouging match or another, and he stood two
foot in front of the rest as if he wasn’t ashamed of himself.
“Taute started the talk whilst Buck opened the tobacco case, and as I
watched Tiaki’s face as the yarn went on, I thought to myself, God
help Sru.
“Then, when the palaver was over, Taute showed him one of the crackers
we’d brought with us and how it worked, explaining we’d got a cargo of
them and how he could do Sru in.
“There was a dog walking on the beach twenty yards off, and Tiaki
cocking his eye at it took aim and let fly with the cracker, and there
wasn’t any dog left after the thing had burst, only a hole in the
sand.
“You could have heard them shouting at Taleka. Those chaps ran about
clean bughouse, and Buck, he stood by mighty pleased with himself till
all of a sudden Tiaki quiets them and gives an order and the crowd
broke and made a run for the canoe houses.