That very afternoon, the Chief, beginning to get sober again, but quarrelsome from headache and the other after-effects of a long debauch, came round to the mission-house in a towering rage, and asked the unsuspecting missionary, "Say, white man, are you a Scotchman?"
"Yes," says Macglashin, not knowing what was coming. "I'm a Scotchman, Chief, certainly. I was born in Scotland."
The Chief laughed loud. "Ha, ha," he said, "then Queenie England no take care a you. No send gunboat to shoot us all dead, if man a Tanaki come up and kill you."
At that Macglashin grew alarmed, and answered, "O, yes! The Queen of England would certainly avenge us." And he tried to explain the exact relation in which Scotchmen stood to the British crown—that they were just as much British subjects as Englishmen, entitled to precisely the same amount of protection. But the Chief couldn't be made to understand. The French skipper had evidently poisoned his mind against them. "Man a Tanaki don't want no Scotchman interfere with Chief when him go to sell him boy and him woman," the savage said angrily. "Tanaki belong a Queenie England. Queenie England no want Scotchman interfere with people in Tanaki. Scotchman better keep quiet in him house. Queenie England no mind Scotchman."
And no amount of reasoning produced any effect upon him.
The missionaries went to bed that evening with many misgivings. They felt that for the first time, so far as the natives were concerned, the powerful protection of the British flag was now practically withdrawn. They were alone, as strangers, among those excited black fellows.
At dead of night, while the two boys slept, a horrible din outside the mission-house awoke them. They looked out, and saw the red glare of torches outside. A frightful horde of Kanakas, naked save for their war-paint, drunk with the Frenchman's rum and armed with his Sniders, surrounded the frail building in a hideous mob of savagery. As Martin put his head out of the lattice a bullet came whizzing past. He withdrew it for a moment, terrified, and then looked out again. As he did so the other Scotch missionary appeared upon the veranda, half-dressed, and holding up his hand in dignified remonstrance, began in Kanaka with his gentle mild voice, "My friends, my dear friends, ..." Before he could get any further, the Chief stepped forward, and aiming a blow at his gray locks with a sacred native tomahawk, felled the peaceful old teacher senseless to the ground. Martin shuddered with horror. The old man lay weltering in a pool of his red gushing gore, while the savages danced in triumph over his prostrate body, or smeared themselves with great lines and circles of his warm heart-blood.
"Come on!" the Chief cried in Kanaka. "Kill all! Kill every one! They're taboo to our gods. Don't fear their gunboats. Queenie England won't trouble to protect a Scotchman!"
Then began a hideous orgy of wild lust and slaughter. The savages rushed on, drunk with blood and rum, and dragged out the wife and children of the other missionary, whom they brained upon the spot, before the terrified eyes of the trembling Macglashins. The trader Williams ran up just then, with his revolver in his hand, followed by two faithful black servants from a neighboring island; but the French skipper had been cunning enough there too. "Him a Welshman!" the savages cried. "Queenie England no care for him!" For indeed he happened to be born in Wales. And they shot him down as he came, before he could open fire upon them. Then they turned to massacre the Macglashins, the only remaining Europeans on the island.
But just at that moment a sudden idea seemed to strike the Chief. He cried out, "Stop!" The savages fell back and listened with eagerness to what was coming. Then the Chief shouted out again in Kanaka—"I have a thought. The gods have sent it to me. This is my thought. We have killed enough for tonight. Let us catch them alive and bind them. Next moon is the great feast of my father Taranaka. I have an idea—a divine idea. Let us keep them till that day, and then, in honor of the gods, let us roast them and eat them."