He went below for Peterson’s revolver which Carlin had forgotten, and when he returned, the boat was down with four kanakas for crew and Carlin in the stern sheets; he followed and took his place by the beachcomber and the boat pushed off.
He had made a great blunder, absolutely forgotten the existence of Le Moan and her use as an ambassador, but the mind of Rantan was working against odds.
He had never consciously worried about Peterson. The dead Peterson was done with out of count, and yet away in the back of his mind Peterson existed, not as a form, not even as a shadow, but as the vaguest, vaguest hint of possible trouble, some day. Steering, or smoking below, or enjoying in prospect the profits to be got out of the venture, Rantan would be conscious of a something that was marring his view of things; something that, seizing it with his mind, would prove to be nothing more than just a feeling that trouble might come some day owing to Peterson.
On sailing into the lagoon, the wind across that great blue pearl garden had swept his mind clear of all trace of worry. Here was success at last, wealth for the taking and no one to watch the taker or interfere with his doings. No one but the gulls. A child on that beach would have shattered the desolation and destroyed the feeling of security and detachment from the world.
Then the trees had given up their people and to Rantan it was almost as though Peterson himself had reappeared.
He had reckoned to get rid of the crew of the Kermadec in his own given time after he had worked them for his profit, to get rid of Carlin, of his own name, of everything and anything that could associate him with this venture, and here were hundreds of witnesses where he had expected to find none but the gull that cannot talk.
Truly it was a jolt! As the boat drew on for the shore, the crowd on the beach moved and spread and contracted and then became still, the spears all in one clump.
There were at least thirty of the boys of Karolin able to hurl a spear with the precision of a man, and when Aioma had sighted the schooner and given the alarm, Dick, who had been on the outer beach, had called them together. Taiepa, the son of Aioma, had distributed the spears and Aioma himself in a few rapid words had fired the hearts of the tribe.
The strangers must not be allowed to land. For a moment, but only a moment, he took the command of things from Dick’s hands. “They came before,” said Aioma, “when I was a young man, and the great Uta knowing them to be men full of evil would not allow them to land but drove them off, and yet again they came in a canoe bigger than the first (the Spanish ship), and they landed and fought with Uta and he killed them and burnt their great canoe—and yet again they have come and yet again we must fight. We are few, but Taori in himself is many.”
“They shall not land,” said Dick, “even if I face them alone.”