“If that chap downs me for good,” said Raft, “stick that knife through yourself. If he doesn’t you take my orders and take them sharp.”
He had risen to his feet and without a word more he came down the shingle again towards the workers, walking in a leisurely way and trailing the harpoon along.
He approached Chang who turned on him again with the anger of a busy man importuned by a beggar. The most heart-sickening thing to the girl was the way in which, after the first driving off of Raft, the great Chinaman and his crew had gone on with their work as though they were alone on the beach. Pity and humanity seemed as remote from that crowd as from the carcases they were handling. Active hostility would have been less horrible, somehow, than this absolute indifference to the condition of others.
Chang did not wait for Raft to speak, this time; he began the speaking, or, rather, the shouting, advancing on the other who began to retreat. Chang, as if wishing to have done with this matter for good, followed him up and at every step the devil in him seemed to rise higher whilst his voice filled the beach.
What a voice that was! Half-singing, half-booming, the “whant-whong-goom-along” of the running coolie chanting as he runs seemed mixed with it, till, his anger breaking bounds, he let fly with the strap in his hand, catching the other across the shoulder of the arm that held the harpoon.
Then Raft killed him.
The girl who saw the killing was less appalled for the moment by the deed than the doer of it. The blow of the harpoon that sent Chang’s brains flying like the contents of a smashed custard apple was like a flash of lightning, it was the thunder that terrified.
Roaring like a sea bull he sprang from the body of Chang towards the crowd who faced him for a moment with their flensing knives like a herd of jackals. The girl, who had sprung to her feet, plucked the knife from her belt and came running, terror gone and a wind seeming to carry her over the shingle; zoned in steel blue light she saw the harpoon flying from right to left destroying everything in its way, knives flying into the air as if tossed by jugglers, a yellow greasy back into which she struck with her knife, a yellow Chinese face falling backwards with eyes wide on her, as if the Chinese soul of the creature she had stabbed to the heart were trying to cling to her.
Then she was sitting on the shingle very ill and Raft was coming back to her, running.
The fight was over and the beasts had flown, left and right, she could see them crawling like ants away up on the higher ground. They had dropped their knives and the knives were lying here and there on the shingle where also lay four dead bodies including the body of Chang.