PAX
It took some days to get matters shipshape after the general upheaval
of the invasion.
For one thing, the brown men were much too busy on the other side of
the island to settle down to ordinary work. Most of the women and
children had joined them there, the villages were deserted, and there
was an intangible something in the mental and moral atmosphere which
made for depression.
Blair sent Evans over to see Ha'o, and endeavour to bring him back to
his right mind. Evans returned downcast, and described what he had
seen only to Blair and Stuart. Aunt Jannet, if she had heard, would
have had a fit.
The ladies were back in their own homes, and the crippled Blackbirds
were bottled up in the Happy Valley, under the wardership of Sandy Lean
and his wife and a small guard of _Torch_ men. It seemed like
desecration of the beautiful spot to use it as a prison, but it was the
only place in the island where the yellow men would be reasonably safe
from the brown ones.
The stars in their courses fought for Joshua. In like manner the
strange, stern facts of life fought now for Kenneth Blair. The cloud
which had threatened his work with destruction broke in unexpected
blessing. The fight in One-Tree Pass was an epoch in the history of
Kapaa'a.
In the first place it had brought into line--fighting line indeed, but
none the less permanent on that account--the various factions in the
island, and developed among them a hitherto undreamed-of community of
interests. Not by any means for the first time in history, a general
menace from without welded into one a diversity of hostile fragments,
and discovered to them an unexpected identity of ideas. On a
microscopic scale it was, in its results, the Franco-German war over
again.
The men from the eastern coast, who had borne the first brunt of the
invasion, had lost everything, including their headman. But they had
found more than they had lost. They had found out that the western men
were not necessarily their enemies, and that both they and the white
men were ready to fight to the death to save the island from the grip
of the yellow men.
They fully recognised that without the white men's help the marauders
would have had their will, and matters would in all probability have
gone very differently. In their way they were grateful, and by no
means blind to the advantages of the white alliance. That their
gratitude was based in no small degree on a sense of favours to come,
in no way lessened its utility as a factor in the solution of political
difficulties.
They too would share the benefits reaped by the western men from the
white men's friendship, and when differences arose amongst them at once
as to the choice of a headman, it was the most natural thing in the
world to refer the rival claims to Blair, who might reasonably be
expected to be without local bias in the matter.
The opportunity was too good to be lost. Blair was at pains to make
clear to them the great advantages which would accrue from the union of
all the communities under one head, and finally they argued the matter
out among themselves and agreed to accept Ha'o as chief, with local
headmen chosen by him and Blair.
They reaped their harvest at once and were content. Their houses were
rebuilt, tools were given them, and they were initiated into the
mysteries of the new foods and fruits introduced by the white men. A
proper road was promised to further communication between the opposite
sides of the island, and, so far, the descent of the Blackbirds made
for good.
In another and quite unexpected direction also the invasion wrought in
the direction of Blair's aims.
They were all sitting on the verandah of his house one night, watching
the lightning play tremulously up and down the western sky, listening
to the surf, and discussing matters generally. Captain Cathie, in the
little leisure the refitting of the _Torch_ afforded him, was much
exercised in his mind as to what was to be done with the prisoners.
Aunt Jannet had just expressed the opinion that it was a very great
pity they had not all been scuttled.
"It does seem a pity you could not have made a clean sweep of them like
Captain Cathie did, Kenneth," said she.
"Well, you see, we couldn't kill them in cold blood, Aunt Jannet."
"And now you've got them alive in cold blood what on earth are you
going to do with them?"
"I see nothing for it but shipping them off home as soon as they are
fit to travel. What do you say, Cathie?"
"I suppose there's nothing else for it," said Cathie gloomily. "We
don't want them here, and yet I'm loth to turn them loose."
"I don't think they'll ever come back, after the reception they had
this time."
"I don't know that they will, but they'll be at the same game somewhere
else. I look on them as I do on mad dogs--best got rid of."
"Right!" said Aunt Jannet with emphasis.
"The trouble is that men are not dogs, you see----"
"That they're not. Dogs are mostly honest and good to look at," said
Aunt Jannet again.
"We could put them on one of the schooners, and you could convoy them
part way home," said Blair to Cathie. "I really don't think we have
anything more to fear from them."
"I can do all that," said Cathie. "But all the same I'd as lieve they
were none of them going home."
"Why?"
"Well, you never know. If ever they can do us a mischief you may take
your davy they'll do it."
"I don't really see what they can do, captain."
But Cathie only shook his head. Perhaps his ideas were too vague to
clothe in words.
Just then a shadowy figure slipped out of the darkness under the house,
reached up, and rolled something softly along the platform towards them.
"Hello! What's this?" said Cathie.
[Illustration: "Hello! what's this?"]
"A present--for Aunt Jannet, I should say," laughed Blair. "Some dusky
admirer bringing tribute."
"A thankoffering to the wounded warriors," said Evans.
"An unusually fine coco-nut," said Stuart, tipping it with his usable
foot. "Carefully wrapped in leaves, too."
Captain Cathie picked it up, and began to open the bundle. Evans
struck a match, and match and bundle fell suddenly with a dull, dead
bump to the floor, and were followed by a quite involuntary and
seamanlike oath from the captain.
"What is it?" cried the younger ladies in a breath.
"Come away!" said Aunt Jannet hastily, and set the example herself.
"It's a man's head," said Evans gravely, as he tried to light a lamp.
And when the lamp was lit, and the bundle lay open in their midst, they
saw that he was right--it was the head of a man.
An exclamation burst from Blair as he bent over the ghastly offering,
while the others wondered what it might mean.
Was it a challenge?--a defiance?--a threat?
None of these.
"It is the head of Ra'a," said Blair at last. "I wonder who it was
that brought it? If we knew that, we might guess what it means."
There had been no fighting of late between Ha'o's people and Ra'a's.
In fact, the quiescence of the latter during the other troubles had
been cause for congratulation. And since then everything had been
quiet in the villages--over-quiet, the quietness of repletion. Evans
had indeed begun to fear ill results from the over-indulgence of savage
appetites.
"What do you make of it, captain?" asked Blair at last, as of one more
versed than the rest in heathen ways.
"Hanged if I know!" said the old man, with a puzzled frown.
"I take it, it is a sign of submission on the part of Ra'a's men," said
Blair quietly. "Ra'a himself would never have come in of his own
accord. His men have wanted to, and so they have brought him."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Cathie. "It's just the thing they might do."
And in the morning they sent up early for Ha'o, and showed him the
message, and asked his opinion.
"Kenni is right," he said at last. "They submit."
And presently he went boldly up the mountain-side and in due course
came back with Ra'a's followers in a straggling tail behind him.
He explained afterwards to Blair that Ra'a's men had wanted for a long
time past to come in and enjoy all the benefits they saw the others
receiving, but Ra'a had held them back, telling them that the whites
were only tricking Ha'o and his people and would presently carry them
away. They had seen the arrival of the Blackbird ships, had watched
the fight at sea, and also that in the pass, and these had convinced
them of the good intentions of the white men. Finally they had taken
matters into their own hands and settled things their own way.
And so the divisions in the island were healed by blood, and that which
had seemed like to wreck their hopes turned marvellously to their
highest good.