On Kuria, the one beautiful island of the Gilberts, there lived four
such white men as those I speak of. Whence they came they alone knew.
Two of them--a Portuguese deserter from a whaler and a man named
Corton--had been some years on the island when they were joined by two
others who came over from Apamama in a boat. One was called Tamu (Tom)
by the natives, and from the ease with which he spoke the Gilbert Island
dialect and his familiarity with native customs, he had plainly lived
many years among the natives; the other was a tall, dark-skinned,
and morose-looking man of nearly fifty. He was known as Hari to the
natives--once, in that outer world from which some crime had dissevered
him for ever, he was Henry Deschard.
Although not familiar with either the language or the customs of the
ferocious inhabitants of the Gilbert Group, it was soon seen by the ease
with which he acquired both that Hari had spent long years roaming about
the islands of the Pacific. In colour he was darker than the Kurians
themselves; in his love of the bloodshed and slaughter that so often ran
riot in native quarrels he surpassed even the fiercest native; and as
he eagerly espoused the cause of any Kurian chief who sought his aid he
rapidly became a man of note on the island, and dreaded by the natives
elsewhere in the group.
There were then over a thousand people living on Kuria--or rather,
on Kuria and Oneaka, for the island is divided by one of those narrow
channels before mentioned; and at Oneaka Tamu and Deschard lived, while
the Portuguese and the man Corton had long held joint sway with the
native chief of Kuria.
During the time the four renegades had lived on the island two vessels
that had touched there had had narrow escapes from seizure by the
natives. The first of these, a small Hawaiian whaling brig, was
attacked when she was lying becalmed between Kuria and Aranuka. A breeze
springing up, she escaped after the loss of a boat's, crew, who were
entrapped on the latter island. In this affair Deschard and Tamu had
taken part; in the next--an attempt to capture a sandalwooding barque
bound to China--he was leader, with Corton as his associate. The
sandalwooder, however, carried a large and well-armed crew, and the
treacherous surprise so elaborately planned came to ignominious failure.
Deschard accused his fellow-beachcomber of cowardice at a critical
moment. The two men became bitter enemies, and for years never spoke to
each other.