Then they each went their ways, not knowing that their words had been overheard by Sikra, the father of Kinei, who had been hiding in the bushes by the path where they had met.
III.
This Sikra was only a basket maker and knew only one trade, but for all that he was the wisest man on that island, and the most cunning, and the most evil. And Sikra said to himself, “If these two men kill one another over Kinei and her conduct, all may be discovered openly which is now known only secretly and to a few.”
He went to the lagoon edge, and there, in the shelter of the canoe houses, he sat down, and, with his hands before him, began contemplating the matter, twisting the facts, this way and that, with the fingers of his mind, just as the fingers of his body had been accustomed to twist the plaited grass, this way and that, into the form of his baskets.
He knew that this thing was a death feud, and that by the morrow’s sunset one of the two men would be no longer alive, unless they were separated and one taken clean away from that island. But more than that, he said to himself, “Of what use is there in taking one away, for if Tauti is left he will maltreat my daughter and search more deeply into this matter and bring more confusion upon us. And if I were to kill Uliami to-night in his sleep, as has just occurred to me, would not the deed be put down to Tauti, who, in trying to free himself, might in some way bring the deed home to me? And if I were to kill Tauti, might not the same thing happen?”
Thinking so, his wandering mind crossed the lagoon to the two ships there at anchor—a schooner and a brig—and both due to leave by the flood of the morrow’s dawn. It was then, with the suddenness of the closing of a buckle, that a great thought came to Sikra, making him laugh out loud so that the echoes of the canoe house made answer.
He rose up and, leaving the beach, made through the trees in the direction of Tauti’s house. There, when he reached it, was Kinei, seated at the doorway. He knew, by this, that Tauti was not at home, and so, nodding to his daughter, he withdrew, making along that street toward the sea end where presently he met his man leaving the forge of Tomassu, the smith, who makes and mends in iron things and sharpens fish spears and knives. Tauti had a knife in his girdle, and, noting it, Sikra drew him aside into the lane that goes through the bushes of mammee apple, past the chief trader’s house to the far end of the beach.
Here he stopped, when they had passed beyond earshot of the trader’s house, and, placing his finger on the breast of the other, says he:
“Tauti, what about that knife you were having sharpened just now at the forge of Tomassu?”
“To-morrow,” said Tauti, “I have to kill a pig.”