Rantan, when they cast him in the fishing canoe, could see nothing but the roughly shaped sides, bright here and there where the scale of a palu had stuck and dried, the after outrigger pole, the blue sky above the gunnel and the heads of the crowd by the waterside.  
By raising himself a little he might have glimpsed the two dead children tied to the outrigger gratings, but he could not raise himself, nor had he any desire to do so.
 
He knew the islands, he had heard what passed between Aioma and the women, and as they carried him from the boat to the canoe, he had seen the dead children tied on the gratings. What his fate was to be at the hands of Ona and Nanu he could not tell, nor did he try to imagine it.
 
All being ready, the stem of the canoe left the beach, the two women scrambling¹ on board as it was waterborne. Nanu sat aft and Ona forward, trampling² on Rantan’s body with her naked feet as she got there. The paddles splashed and the spray came inboard striking Rantan on the face, but he did not mind; neither did he mind the heat of the steadily³ rising sun, nor the heel of Ona as she dropped her paddle for a moment and raised the sail.
 
Sometimes he closed his eyes to shut out the sight of Nanu, who was steering⁴, her eyes fixed⁵ on the sail; sometimes on the beach ahead, never or scarcely ever on Rantan.
 
Sometimes he could hear Ona’s voice. She was just behind his head holding on to the mast and trimming the canoe by moving now to the left or right—her voice came calling out some directions to the other and then sharp as the voice of Ona came the cry of a seagull that flew with them for a moment, inspecting the dead children on the gratings till the flashing paddle and the shouts of Nanu drove it away.
 
And now as the sun grew hotter, a vague odour of corruption⁷ filled the air, passed away with the back draught⁸ from the sail yet returned again, whilst the murmur⁹ of the northern beach that had died down behind them became merged¹⁰ in the wash of the waves on the southern coral.
 
Then as the place of their revenge drew close to them and they could see the deserted¹¹ shacks¹², the long line of empty beach and the coconut¹³ trees in their separate groups, Nanu seemed to awake to the presence of Rantan. She glanced at him and laughed, and steering all the time, with side flashes of the paddle pointed¹⁴ him out to Ona whose laughter came from behind him, shrill¹⁵, sharp and done with in a moment.
 
Truly Rantan wished that he had never embarked¹⁶ on this voyage, never seen Peterson, never left him for dead away there on Levua; bitterly did he repent¹⁷ his temerity¹⁸ in coming into Karolin lagoon¹⁹ and his stupidity in trying to shoot it up.
 
Sometimes, long ago, he had amused himself by imagining what might be the worst fate of a man at sea, shipwreck²⁰, slow starvation, death from thirst, from sharks, from fire. He had never imagined anything like his present position, never imagined himself in the hands of two women of the Islands, whose children he had been instrumental in murdering, two women who were taking him off to a desolate²¹ beach to do with him as they pleased. He could tell the approach of the beach by the face of Nanu and the outcries of Ona. Sometimes Ona would give his body a kick to emphasize what she was saying, which was Greek to Rantan. So sharp was her voice, so run together the words, that her speech was like a sword inscribed²² with unintelligible²³ threats.
 
Now Nanu was half standing²⁴ up, Ona was hauling the sail, the paddles were flashing, the sands close. They brought the stem of the canoe on to the shelving sand, and, on the bump and shudder²⁵, dropping their paddles, they jumped clear, seized gunnel and outrigger and beached her high and dry.
 
Then seizing their victim by the feet and the shoulders, they lifted him from the canoe and threw him on to the sand. He fell on his face, they turned him on his back and then left him, running about here and there and making preparations for their work.
 
The tide was running out and the wind, that had slacked to due west, bent²⁶ the coco palms and brought up from all along the beach the silky whisper of the sands, the rumour²⁷ of twenty miles of sea beating on the southern coral and the smell of sun-smitten seaweeds and emptying rock pools.
 
Rantan, who had closed his eyes, opened them, and turning his head slightly, watched the women; Nanu who was collecting bits of stick and wood to light a fire and Ona who was collecting oyster²⁸ shells. There were many oyster shells lying about on the beach and Ona, as she went, picked and chose, taking only the flat shells and testing their edges with her thumb.
 
Rantan knew, and a shudder went through him as he watched her carrying them and placing them in a little heap by the place where Nanu was building her fire.
 
A big brown bird with curved beak²⁹ and bright eyes sweeping³⁰ in the air above them would curve and drift on the wind and return, making a swoop³¹ towards the beached canoe and the objects on the outrigger gratings, and the women, busy at their work, would shout at the bird and sometimes threaten it with a paddle which Ona ran and fetched from the canoe. Not till vengeance³² had been assured would the dead children be cast to the sharks. The shark was the grave and burial-ground of Karolin.
 
When everything was ready they turned from the fire and came running across the sand to their victim.
 
Rantan, lying on his back with eyes closed and mouth open, had ceased to breathe.
 
Never looked man more dead than Rantan, and Ona, dropping on her knees beside him with a cry, turned him on one side, turned him back, cried out to Nanu who dashed off to the fire, seized a piece of burning stick, rushed back with it and pressed the red hot point of it against his foot. Rantan did not move.
 
Then furious, filling the air with their cries, with only one idea, to rub him and pound him and to bring back the precious life that had escaped or was escaping them, they began to strip him of his bonds, tearing off the coconut sennit strips, the sheet, unrolling him like a mummy from its bandages, till he lay naked beneath the sun—a corpse³³ that suddenly sprang to life with a yell, bounded to its feet, seized the paddle and flung itself on Nanu, felling her with a smashing blow on the neck, turned and pursuing Ona chased her as she ran this way and that like a frightened duck.
 
Few men had ever seen Rantan. The silent, quiet, sunburnt man of ordinary times was not Rantan. This was Rantan, this mad figure yelling hatred³⁵, radiating revenge, mad to kill.
 
Rantan robbed of his pearl lagoon, of his ship, of his prospect³⁶ of wealth, ease, wine and women—by kanakas; Rantan whom kanakas had bound with a sheet and dumped into a canoe; Rantan whom two kanaka women—women!—women, mind you—had trodden on, and whom they had been preparing to scrape to death slowly inch by inch with oyster shells, and burn bit by bit with hot sticks.
 
This was the real Rantan raised to his nth power by injuries, insults, and the escape from a terrible death.
 
Ona dashed for the canoe, maybe with some blind idea to get hold of the other paddle to defend herself with, but he had the speed of her and headed her off; she made for the rough coral of the outer beach but he headed her off; time and again he could have closed with her and killed her, but the sight of her frizzy head, her face, her fi............