He did not enter into details with himself. He stood watching the men on the beach and then he saw Sru as if suddenly tired of the game they were playing, rise up, stretch himself and stroll towards the boat. Near the boat a fishing canoe was beached and Sru having contemplated the boat for a minute or so turned his attention to the canoe. He examined the outrigger, pressed his foot on it and then bending over the interior picked out something—it was a fish spear with a single barb. Carlin remembered that Rantan on landing had looked into the canoe, as though from curiosity or as if to make sure there was something in it. Who could tell?
The fish spear seemed to interest Sru. He poised it as if for a throw, examined the barb and then, spear in hand, came back to the fellows who were still playing their game and sat down. Carlin saw him exhibiting the spear to them, poised it, talking, telling no doubt old stories of fish he had killed on the reef at Soma; then, as if tired, he threw the thing on the sand beside him and lay back whilst the others continued their endless game.
Then came dark and the steadily increasing shower of starlight till the coal sack showed in the Milky Way like a hole punched in marble and the beach like a beach in ghost-land, the figures on it clearly defined and especially now the figure of Sru, who had suddenly risen as though alarmed and was standing spear in hand.
Then at a run he made for the trees and vanished.
Carlin turned away from the rail and spat. The palms of his hands were sweating and something went knock, knock, knock, in his ears with every beat of his heart. The kanakas on board were down in the foc’sle from which a thin island voice rose singing an endless song, the deck was clear only for the figure of Le Moan—and Carlin, half crazy with excitement, not daring to look towards the beach, walking like a drunken man up and down began to shout and talk to the girl.
“Hi, you kanaka girl,” cried Carlin, “something up on the beach—Lord God! she can’t talk, why can’t you talk, hey? Whacha staring at me dumb for? Rouse the chaps forward, we’ll be wantin’ the anchor up” ... He went to the foc’sle head and kicked—calling to the hands below to tumble up, tumble up, and to hell with their singing for there was something going on on the beach. Ruining everything, himself included, if they had been a white crew; then making a dash down to the saloon he beat and smashed at the store cupboard where he knew the whiskey was kept, beat with his naked fists till the panels gave and he tore them out, and breaking the neck of a whiskey bottle, drank with bleeding lips till a quarter of the bottle was gone.
Then he sat at the table still clutching the bottle by the neck but himself again. The nerve crisis had passed suddenly as it had come.
Yes, there was something going on upon the beach that night when, as Le Moan and the crew crowding to the port rail watched, the figure of Rantan suddenly broke from the trees and came running across the sands towards the boat followed by Sru.
She heard the voice of Sru shouting to the boat kanakas: “Tahuku has slain the white man, the trader and Pete’son have been slain.” She saw the boat rushed out into the starlit water and as it came along towards the ship, she saw some of the crew rush to the windlass and begin heaving the anchor chain short whilst others fought to get the gaskets off the jib and raise the mainsail. Already alarmed by Carlin the words of Sru completed the business. Tahuku was out for killing and as they laboured and shouted, Carlin hearing the uproar on deck, put the whiskey bottle upstanding in a bunk and came tumbling up the ladder and almost into the arms of Rantan who came tumbling over the rail.