III
“We slept on deck that night for fear of an attack, me keeping first watch, but nothing came, and just at daybreak we put out, towing her till we caught the land wind and then cracking on all sail for Mauriri.
“We were making ten knots and all that morning Mauriri bloomed up against us, getting bigger and bigger till the foam on the big half-moon reef that lies to northward showed up. There’s a break in the middle of that reef and good anchorage once you’re through, and we pushed right in, dropping our anchor in twenty-fathom water close to the beach.
“Mauriri is a lot more open-faced than Taleka, and the chief village is close to the beach, not hid up a valley.
“It was a white beach, but near black with Kanakas when we dropped the anchor, and there were canoe houses, but not a canoe put off. The crowd ashore didn’t look unfriendly, but they seemed standing on one foot, so to speak, not knowing how to take us or whether we meant fighting or trade.
“Buck ordered the boat to be lowered and whilst the Chinks were getting it over I got him by the arm and took him to the after rail and tried to punch sense into his head.
“‘Look here,’ I says, ‘what’s the good of revenge? it’s unchristianlike and it’s not business, anyway. Forget Sru and trade those crackers for copra, if they’ve got any here, if they haven’t, put out along for some other island.’
“‘He killed my Chink’ says Buck. ‘Blow copra, I want his blood, and I’m going to have it, if it costs me my last nickel.’
“‘All right, all right,’ I says, ‘come along,’ and off we put with Taute to do the talking and a box of stick tobacco to help Tiaki swallow the crackers.
“It was easy to pick him out from the crowd on the beach, he was over six foot, with the half of an old willow pattern plate on his chest dangling from a necklace of sharks’ teeth, he had an underlip like an apron, one eye gone in some gouging match or another, and he stood two foot in front of the rest as if he wasn’t ashamed of himself.