“‘What’s up now?’ says Buck. He wasn’t long waiting to know. Four big
war canoes pushed out full of men, and making straight for the
Greyhound, and Taute, who was talking to Tiaki turns and tells us we
were prisoners. Tiaki, for all his underlip, was no fool, and when
Taute had done translating what he had to say to us his meaning leapt
up at us like luminous paint.
“You see Tiaki had always been used to look on traders as hard
bargainers who’d ask a tooth for a tenpenny nail, and here we were, us
two, blowing in and offering him a cargo of ammunition for nothing, so
long as he’d go and bomb Sru with it. It seemed too good to be true,
and he suspected a trap. Said so, right out. He was going to hold us
till the business was over and everything turned out satisfactory.
“I had to swallow twice to keep that news down. A moment before we’d
been free men, and there we were now like rats in a barrel, but there
was no use kicking, so we sat down on the sand and watched the canoe
men swarming over the _Greyhound_ and breaking out the cargo. They
didn’t touch the Chinks nor loot the ship, just went for the cracker
cases, bringing them off load after load and dumping them on the sand.
“Tiaki has a case opened and takes out a cracker; he’d tumbled to the
mechanism, and there he stood with the thing in his hand explaining it
to the population, talking away and flinging out his arms towards
Taleka, evidently gingering them up for the attack on Sru. Then he
gives an order sharp as the crack of a whip, and all the Marys and
children and old chaps scattered off back to the village, and over a
hundred of the fighting men took their seats on the beach in a big
circle, whilst crackers were handed round to them and they examined
the hang of the things, each man for himself.
“They were a fine lot, but differently coloured, some as dark as
bar-chocolate and some the colour of coffee with milk in it, and as
they sat there the women and children and old men came down from the
village bringing bundles of mat baskets with them, and down they
squatted by the edge of the trees going over the baskets and mending
them and putting them in order.
“‘What are they up to?’ says Buck.
“‘Can’t you see?’ says I. ‘They’re going to carry the crackers in
those baskets. They mean business right enough. Lord! Buck,’ I says,
‘I wish we were out of this; look at the fix we’re in. If them chaps
are beaten by Sru, we’ll be done in as sure as paint—makes me sick,
sitting here, and there’s our boat right before us. S’pose we make a
dash right now, shove her off and get on board——’
“‘Not a bit of use,’ says Buck. ‘They’d let after us in the canoes
before we’d pushed off—we’ve just got to stick and see it out. I’m
sorry,’ he says; ‘it’s my fault; you were right, and if I ever get out
of this I’ll steer clear of mixing up in other folks’ quarrels. I
wouldn’t have done it only for the Chink.’
“‘Oh, it don’t matter,’ I says; ‘we’re in it and there’s no use in
kicking.’
“I called Taute, who was standing watching the basket work and
jabbering with Tiaki, and asked him for news and what he thought they
were going to do with us in case things went wrong. He went to Tiaki
and had a jabber, and came back to us looking pretty grey about the
gills.
“Tiaki was going to attack Sru right away, starting that night and
reaching Taleka next morning early; with the current the big war
canoes would do the journey in seven hours. He couldn’t make a night
attack because of the difficulty of getting in, but he reckoned to
reach the bay just at daybreak. Then came the news that we were to go
with them and lead the attack. Tiaki said as we had sold Sru the guns
to attack Tiaki, it was only fair that we should lead Tiaki’s men
against the guns, besides, he wanted to make sure we weren’t leading
him into a trap; besides, he had often noticed white men feared
nothing and were splendid fighters. He also said if we failed him
facing the guns of Sru we’d have fish crackers flung at our backs.
“You see the way that durn cargo served us; the guns in front of us,
the crackers at our back—we couldn’t say anything—couldn’t do
anything but curse Scudder and the day we met him, and sit there
watching the preparations. Women were bringing down provisions for the
canoes, and the baskets were ready and being distributed. They weren’t
so much baskets as bags such as the natives use for carting every sort
of thing in; each fighting man had one, and then the crackers were
handed round about twenty to a man. They’d place them between their
legs in the canoes as they paddled; every man had a spear as well, and
as they stood there getting on for sundown, each man with his basket
of bombs and a spear, I’d have been proud to lead them only I was so
frightened.
V
“Now the funniest thing happened.
“All that crowd of fighting men full up of pride and devilment began
shouting and chanting a war song. That was all right as far as it
went, but after it was over a chocolate-coloured son of a gun began
making a speech, shouting and pointing towards Taleka as if to say
what he wouldn’t do to Sru.
“Then a coffee-coloured devil cut in and seemed to carry on the
argument.
“Taute said the chocolate men and the coffee grinders were two
different races, though joined in the one tribe, and they were arguing
which was the bravest.
“Other chaps cut in, and then all of a sudden they began running
about, and before you could say ‘knife’ they split, the chocolate men
on one side, the coffee crowd on the other, with Tiaki running about
half bughouse, trying to keep order, and the row growing bigger all
the time till suddenly a coffee man remembered his bag of bombs and
fetches out a cracker, gives it a twist, and lets fly at the chocolate
man opposite him, sending his head to glory.
“Did you ever see schoolboys snowballing each other? All over the
sands they were, one chap chasing another, stooping to pick crackers
from their bags and screw them tight and then letting fly, heads and
arms and legs being blown away—not that we stopped to watch; we were
running for the boat. Next moment we had her off, and we didn’t wait
to pick up the anchor when we got aboard; we dropped the chain and
shoved, leaving Sru to come over to shovel up the remains, and pleased
to think that the Winchesters he’d diddled out of us wouldn’t be much
use to him since the crackers had spoiled his target.
“I expect there wasn’t a dozen fighting men on that island left whole
and sound, but that’s neither here or there. I was just telling you it
as a case in point. There’s something in one tribe that makes for war
against another tribe even if they’ve been living happily together for
years. It shows clearer in savages than civilised folk, but it’s in
both and it’s got to be reckoned with by anyone who wants to do away
with war for good and all.”
He tapped his pipe out, and we sat watching the Pacific coming
creaming in on the sands and round the rocks, the Pacific, that storm
centre or Lake of Peace for the whole world, according to the way men
may arrange their tribal differences and call upon intellect to
balance instinct.