The pearl lagoon

by Charles Nordhoff

With Fatu close behind, I swam under the overhang of the stern, and next moment my hand touched a heavy rope, trailing overboard from the rail. The half-caste girl had kept her word. The others were clustering about us, and as the wind was still strong I ventured to whisper fresh instructions there in the schooner's lee. "The rope is here," I told them softly; "do not hurry about getting aboard. Give that man time to settle down quietly in his chair. Be ready to come running aft in five minutes."

I had not reckoned on Fatu's impatience, nor on the native vagueness about time. My companion was roused as I had never seen him before. For a little while, with the greatest difficulty, I restrained his eagerness, but finally he shook my hand off his shoulder and began to pull his huge body up the rope, hand over hand. I followed: there was nothing else to do. The wind was still blowing strongly from the south.

Fatu reached the rail in an instant, heaved himself aboard with uncanny agility, and dropped to the deck without a sound. I was desperately slow in following, for I was tired and chilled, and my arms were not trained to sailors' work. When at last my head rose above the rail, I saw that the giant was stealing toward the unconscious man in the deck-chair, creeping forward with a stealthy swiftness in the shadow of the binnacle. The lantern, flickering in gusts of wind, cast a dim yellow light on the scene. Then my hand slipped on the wet rail, and I fell thumping to the deck.

I was on my feet in an instant, but the man in the chair was quicker still. It was Schmidt, and his senses must have been keen as those of a savage, for his eye was on me before I had taken a step, and the rifle came to his shoulder with a snap. In the same instant Fatu leaped at him from behind the binnacle, springing like a monstrous cat—but the spring was a breath too late. I saw a bright tongue of flame, heard a crashing report, and felt a great blow on my leg—a shock that spun my body about and sent me sprawling to the deck. I lay there sick and numb, yet keenly alive to every detail of the scene that followed: a swift drama stamped indelibly on my memory.

Fatu seized the rifle with a single mighty wrench, tore it from Schmidt's hands and sent it flying overboard, then his arms closed about the German's body. Schmidt was a very strong and active man. His foot went out behind the leg of his antagonist; he twisted his body with the movement of a skilled wrestler, and the pair came crashing to the deck. But Fatu's grip never relaxed and I knew that in the hug of those mighty arms Schmidt's moments of consciousness were numbered. He seemed to realize it too, and his right hand, free from the elbow down, began to move painfully toward the holster at his belt, where I saw the gleam of an ivory pistol-butt. Then I heard my uncle's axe thundering at the stateroom door, and the shouts of the divers, climbing over the bows.

I raised my eyes, hoping to see the natives running aft. I glanced back at the wrestlers and saw Raita there beside them—a slender, crouching figure in white, her face framed in waves of dusky hair. She had drawn Schmidt's revolver in the nick of time, and held it cocked in her hand.

But Kwala, the black savage, who must have been sleeping on the forward hatch, still had a part to play. In the second while Raita crouched there, fiercely seeking her chance to kill, there was another streak of flame, and the report of another rifle-shot. The girl sank down on the deck. I saw the shock-headed savage blinking in the lamplight while a wisp of smoke eddied from the muzzle of his Winchester. Then, with fierce shouts and a rush of bare feet on deck, the divers were on him, and he went down in a smother of brown arms and legs.

For an instant, Raita lay where she had fallen, but though she was dying, hatred of the German gave strength for the last act of her life. "Guk!" I heard her exclaim with a weak fierceness, as her hand went out to take up the pistol a second time. By chance it had not gone off when she had dropped it. With a wavering hand she aimed it at Schmidt's temple and pulled the trigger. A third shot rang out above the tumult—Schmidt's body quivered and relaxed—Fatu rose slowly to his feet.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man standing at the companionway. It was Rairi, an expression of angry astonishment on his handsome, sullen face.

He glanced swiftly about him, seemed to arrive at a decision, and bounded across the deck. Before I could cry out, he was over the rail and into the lagoon.