Now when a man finds himself in his grave he may like it or not, but he
cannot get out; and so it is with a ship.
Uliami presently found himself in the fo’c’s’le of that ship where the
hands were having their supper by the light of a stinking lamp, and so
far from eating, it was all he could do to breathe.
Neither did the men please him, being different from the men he had
always met with. There were men from the Solomons, with slit ears and
nose rings; and there were men from the low islands, whose language he
could scarcely understand; and he would have been the unhappiest man in
the world, just then, had it not been for the thought of Tauti so close
to him hidden among the cargo and fancying himself safe.
At the same time, on board the schooner, Tauti was in the same way,
wishing himself in any other place, but upheld by the thought of Uliami
hiding from him, yet so close.
Then, with an empty belly, but a full mind, Uliami turned in, to be
aroused just before break of day by the mate. On deck he was put to haul
on ropes to raise the sails, and on the deck of the schooner, lying
close by, he might have seen, had there been light, Tauti hauling
likewise.
Then he was put to the windlass which pulls in the chain that raises the
anchor, and as the sun laid his first finger upon Paulii the anchor came
in and the brig, with the tide and the first of the land wind, drew
toward the reef opening and passed it. Uliami, looking back, saw
Tilafeaa standing bold from the sea and the reef and the opening with
the schooner passing through it, and he wished himself back for a
moment, till the remembrance of Tauti came to him and the picture of him
hidden there among the cargo.
He reckoned that he would knock to be let out as soon as the ship told
him by her movement that she was well on her voyage, and, being on the
morning watch, he managed to keep close to the cargo hatch with his ears
well open to any sound. At first the straining and creaking of the masts
and timbers confused him, but he got used to these, but he heard no
sound. An hour might have gone by when a new thought came to Uliami. He
would lay no longer waiting for the other to make a move, but go
straight to the captain and tell him that a man was hidden there under
the hatch, for he was more hungry for the sight of Tauti’s face and the
surprise on it at their meeting than a young maiden is for the sight of
her lover.
At that moment the captain himself came on deck and began to look at the
sun, holding to his face a thing so strangely formed that Uliami would
have laughed, only that laughter and all gay thoughts were now as far
from him as Tilafeaa.
The captain was a big man with a red face, and when he had done looking
at the sun, and when he heard what Uliami had to say, he swore a great
oath, and, calling to the mate, he ordered the tarpaulins to be taken
off the hatch and the locking bars undone, and then the hatch was
opened, but there was no man there.
Then the captain kicked Uliami, and the mate kicked him, and at that
very time, or near it, they were kicking Tauti on board the schooner for
also giving them word that a man was hidden in the cargo.
Of a truth these two, who had set out so gayly to kill one another, were
receiving payment through the hands of Sikra; each of these men had
seized the devil by the tail and they could not let go, and here he was
galloping over the world with them, from wave to wave, like a horse over
hurdles, for the brig and the schooner, though separated by many
leagues, were going in the same direction.