Sure now of his vengeance, the son of Uta Matu wished to taste it alone, and, waving the others off with a sweep of his arm, and standing with his back to the trees, signed to his enemy to rise.
Dick sprang to his feet and stood facing the other with folded arms. He was lost and he knew it. He had no ideas about death. He only knew that as the speared fish was, so he would be, and that at once. He heard without at least heeding the words pouring out of the mouth of the other, and his gaze never flinched when Laminai, reaching with the spear, touched him on the left breast with the sharp brown point.
On the left breast, just below the nipple, Laminai laid the point of the spear. Just there the point would enter, piercing the beating heart. Then, swift as light, the father of Ma flung his arm back from the thrust and fell, struggling, with Katafa about his neck.
CHAPTER XXX
THE GREAT WIND
Creeping close to the wood edge, she had watched like a person in a dream whilst Dick rose to his feet and faced the spearman. She had heard the words of Laminai, she had seen him point the spear, and in those few seconds she had seen death and she had known love, the real love that heeds nothing, even death.
In those few seconds self vanished, and with it the spell that had bound her since childhood, the spell that passion or hatred could not break, that nothing could have broken in the mind of a Kanaka.
As the arm flung back for the fatal stroke, she launched herself, Laminai came crashing to earth, the spear flew from his hand, and Dick caught it. Useless, but for one thing, the cry that went up from Laminai’s men as Dick, seizing the spear, cried: “Katafa.” Instantly they recognised her, the girl who was dead, the taminanite whom no man dare touch, who dared touch no man. They saw her ghost clinging to Laminai and, breaking, they ran like curs, filling the woods with their cries.
But Laminai did not run. Rolling on the ground, fighting and struggling to free himself from the creature that had him in its grip, teeth in his hair and arms round his neck and legs locked in his, screaming like a horse in terror or rage, he tried to rise, whilst Dick, the spear held short, not daring to thrust, called on Katafa to release him. Then, as with a great and mighty effort the brute half rose, Dick, seeing his chance, drove the spear into his gaping mouth, raising the butt with the stroke so that the point emerged from the neck.
Then, with Katafa in his arms, Katafa clinging to him almost as tightly as she had clung to the other, he made upwards across the sward till he reached the rock. He was making for the southern woods, where the bad lands would give them a hiding place and protection, but as he reached the summit something seized him and wrestled with him and tried to drive him back. It was the wind.