And had Bashti hastened delivery of the wives by one day, or by even two days, Nalasu would have entered the feared, purgatory¹ of matrimony.  But Bashti kept his word, and on the third day was too busy, with a more momentous² problem, to deliver Bubu and Nena to the blind old man who apprehensively³ waited their coming.  For the morning of the third day all the summits of leeward⁴ Malaita smoked into speech.  A warship⁵ was on the coast—so the tale ran; a big warship that was heading in through the reef islands at Langa-Langa.  The tale grew.  The warship was not stopping at Langa-Langa.  The warship was not stopping at Binu.  It was directing its course toward Somo.  
Nalasu, blind, could not see this smoke speech written in the air.  Because of the isolation⁶ of his house, no one came and told him.  His first warning was when shrill⁷ voices of women, cries of children, and wailings of babes in nameless fear came to him from the main path that led from the village to the upland boundaries of Somo.  He read only fear and panic from the sounds, deduced that the village was fleeing to its mountain fastnesses, but did not know the cause of the flight.
 
He called Jerry to him and instructed him to scout⁸ to the great banyan⁹ tree, where Nalasu’s path and the main path joined, and to observe and report.  And Jerry sat under the banyan tree and observed the flight of all Somo.  Men, women, and children, the young and the aged¹⁰, babes at breast and patriarchs leaning on sticks and staffs passed before his eyes, betraying the greatest haste and alarm.  The village dogs were as frightened, whimpering and whining¹¹ as they ran.  And the contagion¹² of terror was strong upon Jerry.  He knew the prod¹³ of impulse to join in this rush away from some unthinkably catastrophic event that impended¹⁴ and that stirred his intuitive apprehensions¹⁵ of death.  But he mastered the impulse with his sense of loyalty¹⁷ to the blind man who had fed him and caressed¹⁸ him for a long six months.
 
Back with Nalasu, sitting between his knees, he made his report.  It was impossible for him to count more than five, although he knew the fleeing population numbered many times more than five.  So he signified five men, and more; five women, and more five children, and more; five babies, and more; five dogs, and more—even of pigs did he announce five and more.  Nalasu’s ears told him that it was many, many times more, and he asked for names.  Jerry know the names of Bashti, of Agno, and of Lamai, and Lumai.  He did not pronounce them with the slightest of resemblance to their customary soundings, but pronounced them in the whiff-whuff of shorthand speech that Nalasu had taught him.
 
Nalasu named over many other names that Jerry knew by ear but could not himself evoke¹⁹ in sound, and he answered yes to most of them by simultaneously²⁰ nodding his head and advancing his right paw.  To some names he remained without movement in token that he did not know them.  And to other names, which he recognized, but the owners of which he had not seen, he answered no by advancing his left paw.
 
And Nalasu, beyond knowing that something terrible was impending—something horribly more terrible than any foray of neighbouring salt-water tribes, which Somo, behind her walls, could easily fend²¹ off, divined that it was the long-expected punitive²² man-of-war.  Despite his three-score years, he had never experienced a village shelling.  He had heard vague talk of what had happened in the matter of shell-fire in other villages, but he had no conception of it save that it must be, bullets on a larger scale than Snider bullets that could be fired correspondingly longer distances through the air.
 
But it was given to him to know shell-fire before he died.  Bashti, who had long waited the cruiser that was to avenge²³ the destruction of the Arangi and the taking of the heads of the two white men, and who had long calculated the damage to be wrought²⁴, had given the command to his people to flee to the mountains.  First in the vanguard, borne by a dozen young men, went his mat-wrapped parcels of heads.  The last slow trailers in the rear of the exodus²⁵ were just passing, and Nalasu, his bow and his eighty arrows clutched to him, Jerry at his heels, made his first step to follow, when the air above him was rent by a prodigiousness²⁶ of sound.
 
Nalasu sat down abruptly²⁷.  It was his first shell, and it was a thousand times more terrible than he had imagined.  It was a rip-snorting, sky-splitting sound as of a cosmic fabric²⁸ being torn asunder²⁹ between the hands of some powerful god.  For all the world it was like the roughest tearing across of sheets that were thick as blankets, that were broad as the earth and wide as the sky.
 
Not only did he sit down just outside his door, but he crouched³¹ his head to his knees and shielded it with the arch of his arms.  And Jerry, who had never heard shell-fire, much less imagined what it was like, was impressed with the awfulness of it.  It was to him a natural catastrophe³² such as had happened to the Arangi when she was flung down reeling on her side by the shouting wind.  But, true to his nature, he did not crouch³⁰ down under the shriek³³ of that first shell.  On the contrary, he bristled³⁴ his hair and snarled³⁶ up with menacing teeth at whatever the thing was which was so enormously present and yet invisible to his eyes.
 
Nalasu crouched closer when the shell burst beyond, and Jerry snarled and rippled³⁷ his hair afresh.  Each repeated his actions with each fresh shell, for, while they screamed no more loudly, they burst in the jungle more closely.  And Nalasu, who had lived a long life most bravely in the midst of perils³⁸ he had known, was destined³⁹ to die a coward out of his fear of the thing unknown, the chemically propelled missile of the white masters.  As the dropping shells burst nearer and nearer, what final self-control he possessed⁴⁰ left him.  Such was his utter panic that he might well have bitten his veins⁴¹ and howled.  With a lunatic scream, he sprang to his feet and rushed inside the house as if forsooth its grass thatch⁴² could protect his head from such huge projectiles⁴³.  He collided with the door-jamb, and, ere Jerry could follow him, whirled around in a part circle into the centre of the floor just in time to receive the next shell squarely upon his head.
 
Jerry had just gained the doorway⁴⁴ when the shell exploded.  The house went into flying fragments, and Nalasu flew into fragments with it.  Jerry, in the doorway, caught in the out-draught of the explosion, was flung a score of feet away.  All in the same fraction of an instant, earthquake, tidal wave, volcanic⁴⁵ eruption⁴⁶, the thunder of the heavens and the fire-flashing of an electric bolt from the sky smote⁴⁷ him and smote consciousness out of him.
 
He had no conception of how long he lay.  Five minutes passed before his legs made their first spasmodic movements, and, as he stumbled to his feet and rocked giddily, he had no thought of the passage of time.  He had no thought about time at all.  As a matter of course, his own idea, on which he proceeded to act without being aware of it, was that, a part of a second before, he had been struck a terrific blow magnified incalculable times beyond the blow of a stick at a nigger&rsq............