Rantan was at the wheel, and Le Moan forward, with swelling¹ heart, stood watching as they passed the break, the Gates of Morning, through which the tide was flooding like a mill-race. She saw the southern beach still deserted² and the northern beach where the trees sheltered the village from sight. Not a sign of life was to be seen in all that vast prospect³ of locked lagoon⁴ and far-running reefs till from the distant trees a form appeared—Aioma.  
After him came others till the beach close to the trees was thronged⁵ by a crowd even in movement like a colony of ants disturbed and showing now against the background of the trees the glint of spears. Le Moan’s heart sank under a sudden premonition of evil. She turned and glanced to where Rantan at the wheel was staring ahead and Carlin close by him was shading his eyes.
 
Rantan had not expected this. He had fancied Karolin deserted. Sru had said nothing of what Le Moan had told him about Taori and he said nothing now as he stood with eyes wrinkled against the sun blaze from the lagoon. Taori, he had gathered to be some kanaka boy, a love of Le Moan’s who, so far from giving trouble, would welcome her back—but that crowd, its movements and the flash of the thready spears! He made vague answers to the questions flung at him by the mate, then at the order to let go the anchor he ran forward whilst Carlin dived below, returning with two of the Vetirli rifles and ammunition⁶. Then as the anchor fell and the Kermadec swung to her moorings on the flood, nose to the break, Rantan, leaving the wheel and standing⁷ with compressed lips, his hand on the after rail and his eyes on the crowd, suddenly broke silence and turned to Carlin.
 
“We don’t want any fighting,” said he. “We’ve got to palaver⁸ them. It’s a jolt⁹. Peterson said the place was empty, and I reckon he lied or else he didn’t keep his eyes skinned, but whether or no we’ve got to swallow it. Worst is we’ve no trade to speak of, nothing but sandalwood. No matter—we don’t want nothing but to be left alone. Order out the boat and we’ll row off to them, and keep those guns hid.”
 
He went below for Peterson’s revolver which Carlin had forgotten, and when he returned, the boat was down with four kanakas for crew and Carlin in the stern sheets; he followed and took his place by the beachcomber and the boat pushed off.
 
He had made a great blunder, absolutely forgotten the existence of Le Moan and her use as an ambassador, but the mind of Rantan was working against odds¹⁰.
 
He had never consciously worried about Peterson. The dead Peterson was done with out of count, and yet away in the back of his mind Peterson existed, not as a form, not even as a shadow, but as the vaguest, vaguest hint of possible trouble, some day. Steering¹¹, or smoking below, or enjoying in prospect the profits to be got out of the venture, Rantan would be conscious of a something that was marring his view of things; something that, seizing it with his mind, would prove to be nothing more than just a feeling that trouble might come some day owing to Peterson.
 
On sailing into the lagoon, the wind across that great blue pearl garden had swept his mind clear of all trace of worry. Here was success at last, wealth for the taking and no one to watch the taker or interfere¹² with his doings. No one but the gulls¹³. A child on that beach would have shattered the desolation and destroyed the feeling of security and detachment from the world.
 
Then the trees had given up their people and to Rantan it was almost as though Peterson himself had reappeared.
 
He had reckoned to get rid of the crew of the Kermadec in his own given time after he had worked them for his profit, to get rid of Carlin, of his own name, of everything and anything that could associate him with this venture, and here were hundreds of witnesses where he had expected to find none but the gull¹⁴ that cannot talk.
 
Truly it was a jolt! As the boat drew on for the shore, the crowd on the beach moved and spread and contracted and then became still, the spears all in one clump¹⁵.
 
There were at least thirty of the boys of Karolin able to hurl¹⁶ a spear with the precision of a man, and when Aioma had sighted the schooner¹⁷ and given the alarm, Dick, who had been on the outer beach, had called them together. Taiepa, the son of Aioma, had distributed the spears and Aioma himself in a few rapid words had fired the hearts of the tribe.
 
The strangers must not be allowed to land. For a moment, but only a moment, he took the command of things from Dick’s hands. “They came before,” said Aioma, “when I was a young man, and the great Uta knowing them to be men full of evil would not allow them to land but drove them off, and yet again they came in a canoe bigger than the first (the Spanish ship), and they landed and fought with Uta and he killed them and burnt their great canoe—and yet again they have come and yet again we must fight. We are few, but Taori in himself is many.”
 
“They shall not land,” said Dick, “even if I face them alone.”
 
That was the temper of Karolin and it voiced itself as the boat drew closer to the beach in a cry that rang across the water, harsh and sudden, making the kanaka rowers pause and turn their heads.
 
“They mean fighting,” said Carlin, bending towards one of the rifles lying on the bottom boards.
 
“Leave that gun alone,” said Rantan. He ordered the rowers to pull a bit closer, rising up and standing in the stern sheets and waving his hand to the beach crowd as though intimating that he wished to speak to them.
 
The only answer was a spear flung by Taiepa that came like a flash of light and fell into the water true of aim but short by a few yards. The rowers stopped again and backed water. Whilst Carlin picked up the floating spear as a trophy¹⁹ and put it with the rifles, Rantan sat down. Then he ordered them to pull ahead altering the helm so that the bow turned away from the shore and to the west.
 
As they moved along the beach the distant crowd followed, but the mate did not heed²⁰ it; he was busy taking notes of the lie of the land, and the position of the trees. The trees, though deep enough to hide the village from the break, were nowhere dense²¹ enough to give efficient cover; the reef just here was very broad but very low. A man would be a target—the head and shoulders of him at least—even if he were on the outer coral.
 
Rantan having obtained all the information he required on these matters altered the course of the boat and made back for the ship.
 
“Aren’t you going to have one single shot at them?” asked the disgusted Carlin.
 
“You wait a while,” replied the other.
 
When they reached the Kermadec he ordered the men to remain in the boat, and going on board dropped down below with his companion. He went to the locker²² where the ammunition was stored and counted the boxes. There were two thousand rounds.
 
“I reckon that will do,” said Rantan. “You said you were a good shot. Well, you’ve got a chance to prove your words. I’m going to shoot up this lagoon.”
 
“From the ship?”
 
“Ship, no, the boat’s good enough; they have no cover worth anything and only a few old fishing canoes that aren’t good enough to attack us in.”
 
“Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong,” said Carlin, “but seems to me it will be more than a one-day job.”
 
“We aren’t hustled²³ for time,” replied the other, “not if it took weeks.”
 
They came on deck, each carrying a box of ammunition. the spear salved by Carlin had been brought on board by him and stood against the rail. Neither man noticed it, nor did they notice Le Moan crouched²⁴ in the doorway²⁵ of the galley²⁶ and seeming to take shelter from the sun.
 
Carlin who had ordered a water breaker to be filled, lowered it himself into the boat, then getting in followed by the mate the boat pushed off, Sru rowing stern oar¹⁸ and Rantan at the yoke²⁷ lines.
 
It was close on midday and the great sun directly overhead poured his light on the lagoon; beyond the crowd and the trees on the northern beach the coral ran like a white road for miles and miles, to be lost in a smoky shimmer²⁸, and from the reef came the near and far voice of the breakers on the outer beach.
 
The crew left on board, some six in number, had dropped into the foc’sle to smoke and talk. Le Moan could hear their voices as she rose and stood at the rail, her eyes fixed²⁹ on the boat and her mind divided between the desire to cast herself into the water and swim to the reef and the instinct which told her to stay and watch and wait.
 
She knew what a rifle was. She had seen Peterson practising with one of the Viterlis at a floating bottle. There were rifles in the boat, but it was not the rifles that filled her mind with a foreboding amounting to terror, it was Rantan’s face as he returned and as he left again. And she could do nothing.
 
Carlin, before lowering the water breaker had handed an ax into the boat. Why? She could not tell, nor why the water breaker had been taken. It was all part of something that she could not understand, something that was yet evil and threatening to Taori.
 
She could not make his figure out amongst the crowd, it was too far, and yet he was surely there.
 
She watched.
 
The boat drew on towards the beach. Then at the distance of a couple of hundred yards the oarsmen ceased rowing and she floated idly and scarcely drifting—for it was slack water, the flood having ceased. One might have thought the men on board of her were fishing or just lazing in the sun—anything but the truth.
 
Then Le Moan saw a tiny puff³¹ of smoke from the boat’s side, a figure amongst the crowd on the beach sprang into the air and fell, and on the still air came the far-off crack of a rifle.
 
Carlin had got his man. He was an indifferent shot but he could scarcely have missed as he fired into the brown of the crowd. Rantan, no better a shot, fired immediately after and by some miracle nobody was hit.
 
Then as Le Moan watched, she saw the crowd break to pieces and vanish amongst the trees, leaving only two figures on the beach, one lying on the sands and one standing erect³² and seeming to threaten the boat with upflung arm. It was Taori. Her sight as though it had gained telescopic power told her at once that it was Taori.
 
She saw him bend and catch up the fallen figure in his arms and as he turned to the trees with it, the boat fired again, but missed him. Another shot rang out before he reached the trees, but he vanished unscathed, and quiet fell on the beach and lagoon, broken only by the clamour of gulls disturbed by the firing.
 
Le Moan changed her place, the ebb³³ was beginning to run and the schooner to swing with it. She came forward and took her position near the foc’sle head, her eyes still fixed on the boat and beach. From the foc’sle came the sound of an occasional snore from the kanakas who had turned in and were sleeping like dogs.
 
Four fishing canoes lay on the sands near the trees, and now as she watched, she saw the boat under way again pulling in to the beach. The rowers tumbled out and the boat pushed off a few yards with only the two white men in her whilst the landing party made for the canoes and began to smash them up.
 
Sru—she could tell him by his size—wielded the ax, two others helped in the business with great lumps of loose coral, whilst the fourth stood watch.
 
It took time, for they did their work thoroughly³⁴, breaking the outriggers, breaking the outrigger poles, breaking the canoe bodies, working with the delight that children take in sheer destruction.
 
The god Destruction was abroad on Karolin beach and lagoon. Though without a temple or a place in mythology³⁵ of all the gods, he is the most powerful, the most agile³⁶ and quick of eye, and the swiftest to come when called.
 
Le Moan watching, saw the four men on the beach stand contemplating³⁷ their work before returning to the boat.
 
Then she saw one of them throw up his hands and fall as if felled by an ax. The others turned to run and the foremost of them tripped as a man trips on a kink in a carpet and fell; of the two others one pitched and turned a complete somersault as though some unseen jiu-jitsu player had dealt with him, and the fourth crumpled³⁸ like a suddenly closed concertina.
 
Le Moan’s heart sprang alive in her. She knew. The terrible arrows of Karolin poisoned with argora that kills with the swiftness and more than certainty of a bullet had, fired from the trees, done their work.
 
The spear was the favourite weapon of Karolin, not the bow. The bow was used only on occasions and at long distances. When they came down to resist the landing of Rantan, they had come armed with spears; driven to the shelter of the trees, Aioma, the artful............