Floyd knitted his brow; then his face cleared.
"I know what it is," said he. "They have got at the cache."
The fragment of moon low down in the west lit the beach, and very soon Floyd's suspicion was justified. Peeping through the loopholes of the front wall, they saw the whole band of the enemy debouching on the sands away to the left, and every man laden with loot.
Some were carrying bolts of cloth, and others cases of provisions and boxes of tobacco.
They thought themselves beyond rifle range, and, like children, they wanted to examine their treasures. Floyd, assured that none of them had remained behind, opened the door, and, rifle in hand, stood watching them. Then he opened fire, and they scattered, leaving their treasures on the sand. Some ran along the lagoon edge, toward the reef opening; one dashed right into the water and swam in the same direction, while the main body made back for the shelter of the grove.
Not one of them was hit as far as he could see, and the men who had made toward the reef opening would return by the seaward side of the reef.
"I almost wish I had left them alone," said he. "It will only make them more vicious. The sight of that stuff lying there will keep them going. However, it is too late to bother now."
He turned back to the house and shut the door. He had been speaking to Isbel, and fancied her to be just behind him. She was not. She was at the table, quietly preparing some food. He noticed now for the first time that the flower was still in her hair. It looked dark purple in the lamplight. And now for a moment a strange sensation stole over him, as though the whole of the business were a fantastic dream, a sensation of unreality that infected even his own being. It passed, and, coming to the table where the food was now lying beside the rifles and ammunition, he drew one of the chairs up and sat down sideways to the board.
Isbel remained standing, and as they ate they talked, and what they said had little to do with the main business in hand. It was not a thing to be talked about. The situation was hopeless, if ever a situation was hopeless, and no plan had yet appeared to either of them by which their position could be bettered.
Ideas had come to Floyd only to be dismissed as useless, the idea, for instance, of making a dash from the house and taking to the dinghy, which they could easily push off. That would not help them in the least, since there was no place of safety to which the dinghy could take them. Their assailants would not expose themselves to rifle fire by day, and by night they would attack as they had done before.