“‘Skunks!’ said Sellers. ‘Tawela’s Queen Bee of a proper hive. Well, we must be careful, that’s all. Keep our guns handy and give word to the Kanakas to be on the look-out.’
“The Mary Waters had a Kanaka crew as I’ve said, and having given the bo’sun the tip to be on the look-out for squalls, we got rowed ashore, sending the boat back to the schooner.
“Tawela’s house was the first of the line of houses that ran east and west along the beach; it was the biggest, too, and there was only her and her son at the dinner; the rest of the tribe had gone off in the canoes right across the lagoon to the opposite shore to gather shell-fish on the outer beach. Our Kanaka boy that acted as interpreter got this news from Tawela, and it lightened our minds a lot, for if any killing had been meant the tribe wouldn’t have gone off like that.
“It wasn’t a bad dinner, take it all round. Baked pig and oysters, and sweet potatoes and so on, with a palm salad that Tawela never invented herself, that I’ll lay a dollar, and said so.
“‘Oh, she’s probably made the cook of that brig show her how to do things white man style before she murdered him,’ says Sellers.
“‘Damn her,’ says Heffernan, and there those two sat talking away, she listening but not understanding; it was better than a pantomime.
“Then the son gets up and brings in some palm toddy, best I ever struck, and Sellers opens a box of cigars he’d brought with him, and we all lit up, Tawela included.
“I remember, as plain as if it was only ten minutes ago, sitting there looking at the sunlight coming in through the door behind Sellers and striking through the blue smoke of the cigars, and then the next thing I remember is waking up with my hands tied and my feet roped together, lying on my back in a shack with the morning light coming through the cracks in the wall, Heffernan and Sellers beside me.
“It was plain enough what had happened; we’d been doped. I heard Sellers give a groan and called out to him, then Heffernan woke, and there we lay admiring ourselves for the fools we’d been in falling into that mug trap. We’d each landed with a revolver strapped to his belt, but the revolvers were gone.
III