The timid and respectful manner of the islanders had now so impressed
the master of the brigantine that in a fatal moment he decided to
anchor. Telling the mate to range the cable and clear away all ready, he
descended to the cabin and tapped at the door of a state-room.
“I am going to anchor, Mrs. Deschard, but as there are a lot of rather
curious-looking natives on board, you and the young ladies had better
keep to your cabin.”
The door opened, and a girl of seventeen or eighteen appeared, and,
taking the captain's hand, she whispered--
“She is asleep, captain. She kept awake till daylight, hoping that my
father would come in the night. Do you think that anything has happened
either to him or Maurice?”
Maru, the Ambrym cabin-boy, said that the captain “patted the girl's
hand” and told her to have no fear--that her father was on the island
“sure enough,” and that Maurice would return with him by breakfast time.
The brigantine anchored close in to the shore, between Kuria and Oneaka,
and in a few minutes the long boat was lowered to proceed on shore and
bring off Maurice and Deschard. Four hands got into her and then the
mate. Just as he was about to cast off, the English-speaking native
begged the captain to allow him and the rest of his countrymen to go
ashore in the boat. Unsuspicious of treachery from unarmed natives, the
captain consented, and they immediately slipped over the side into the
boat.
There were thus but four white men left on board--the captain, second
mate, two A.B.'s--and the half-caste boy Maru. Arms and ammunition,
sufficient for treble the crew the brigantine carried, were on board.
In those days the humblest merchant brig voyaging to the East Indies and
China coast carried, in addition to small arms, either two or four guns
(generally 6-pounders) in case of an attack by pirates. The brigantine
was armed with two 6-pounders, and these, so the Ambry half-caste
said, were still loaded with “bags of bullets” when she came to an
anchor. Both of the guns were on the main deck amidships.
*****
Contrary to the wishes of the mate, who appeared to have the most
unbounded confidence in the peace-ableness of the natives, the captain
had insisted upon his boat's crew taking their arms with them.
No sooner had the boat left the vessel than the English-speaking native
desired the mate to pull round to the east side of Oneaka, where, he
said, the principal village was situated, and whither Maurice had gone
to seek Deschard. It must be remembered that this native and those
with him were all members of Corton's _clientèle_ at Kuria, and were
therefore well aware of his treachery in seizing the messenger to
Deschard, and that Maurice had been seized and bound the previous night.
In half an hour, when the boat was hidden from the view of those on
board the brigantine, the natives, who outnumbered the whites two to
one, at a signal from their leader suddenly threw themselves upon
the unsuspecting seamen who were rowing and threw every one of them
overboard. The mate, a small, active man, managed to draw a heavy horse
pistol from his belt, but ere he could pull the trigger he was dealt
a crushing blow with a musket stock. As he fell a native thrust him
through and through with one of the seamen's cutlasses. As for the
unfortunate seamen, they were killed one by one as they struggled in the
water. That part of the fell work accomplished, the natives pulled
the boat in towards Oneaka, where some ten or fifteen large native
double-ended boats and canoes, all filled with savages lusting for blood
and rapine, awaited them.
Deschard, a man of the most savage courage, was in command of some
twenty or thirty of the most noted of the Oneaka warriors; and on
learning from Tebarian (the native who spoke English and who was
Corton's brown familiar) that the two guns were in the waist of the
ship, he instructed his white comrades to follow in the wake of his
boat, and, once they got alongside, board the ship wherever their fancy
dictated.
There was a muttered _E rairai!_ (Good!) of approval from the listening
natives, and then in perfect silence and intuitive discipline the
paddles struck the water, and the boat and canoes, with their naked,
savage crews, sped away on their mission of death.