The new bows and arrows being at length ready, Billy and I started for Cliff Island on a certain morning, for the purpose of presenting the weapons to their prospective owners. Upon our arrival we were received by the natives with their accustomed cordiality, and I at once handed over our gift to Bowata, the chief, who was profuse in his expressions of gratitude. I had by this time acquired a sufficient grasp of their very simple language to enable me to make a pretty shrewd guess at their meaning when they spoke to me, and also to make myself fairly well understood by them, and I gathered from Bowata that the gift was singularly opportune, inasmuch as that the apes had of late, for some inexplicable reason, been unusually pertinacious in their raids upon the island; but that, thanks to my original gift, their attacks had been successfully withstood without loss of life on the part of the natives, the invading apes having all been slain before it was possible for them to effect a landing. The little fellow was immensely proud of those achievements—as indeed he might well be, considering that before the bow-and-arrow era every raid by the apes had resulted in the death of one or two natives and the more or less serious maiming of others; and so proud was he of the skill which he and his people had developed that he must needs set up a target, there and then, that I might witness a display of that skill. It now became apparent that Bowata was by no means devoid of shrewdness, for not only had he personally practised assiduously at the target, but he had insisted that the petty chiefs who had been entrusted with bows should do the same; and, not content with that, he had chosen some two dozen other men, all of whom he had personally trained; so that when I turned up with my gift he had already about thirty men, every one of them a quite fairly expert bowman. I could not forbear a smile at this intelligence, imparted with the most perfect naïvété, for it almost appeared as though the man had divined my intention to make this second gift.
And now occurred a rather remarkable coincidence; for while the display of native skill was in full swing the trumpets were sounded, giving warning of another approaching raid. The apes, it appeared, were heading for a point about half a mile to the westward of the spot where we were assembled, and toward that spot the archers, twenty in number, including those who had been entrusted with the new bows, set off at top speed, followed by their unarmed comrades, who merely delayed long enough to collect such blocks of coral and rock of suitable size as happened to be in their way. As for me, I announced my intention to attack the brutes from the boat, if I should be in time to intercept them; but Bowata delayed his departure long enough to beg me to allow him and his men to deal, unaided, with the enemy, as every victory gained by his people increased their confidence in themselves. But, he added, if any of the apes should escape and attempt to swim back to their own island, I should be rendering good service by destroying them on the way. The sound common sense of both these contentions I instantly recognised.
Keeping well off-shore, that we might be safely out of range of stray arrows, Billy and I arrived, in the boat, off the scene of the impending struggle, while the leading ape was still a good three hundred yards from the beach, and I was glad to see that the blacks were keeping cool and withholding their fire, instead of wasting their arrows by discharging them prematurely. The apes were swimming easily, and keeping so well together that it was only with difficulty I was able to count them. Billy and I were agreed that they totalled sixteen, which, if I had understood Bowata aright, was far and away the most formidable number that had ever been encountered; and I looked to our rifles and edged the boat in a little nearer the shore, to be ready for possible eventualities; then, as the first arrow was discharged, I brought the boat to the wind and hove her to.
That first shot was a miss; but the second shot scored, for I saw the leading ape shake his head angrily, and go through the motion of plucking an arrow from his neck; he swam a few yards farther, however; then he suddenly flung up his arms and rolled over in the water, motionless.
I was glad to see that the natives had assimilated the advice I had endeavoured, somewhat laboriously, to impart to them, to shoot singly at a selected mark, thus economising arrows, and promoting good shooting. They were adopting those tactics now, and the soundness of them was demonstrated by the fact that no less than five of the apes were put hors de combat before the feet of any of them touched bottom and they started to wade ashore. Then, indeed, as some half-dozen of the huge creatures upreared themselves simultaneously, revealing the whole of their bodies above the hips, the blacks betrayed signs of panic, a whole flight of arrows greeting the brutes. But if that indiscriminate discharge was indeed the result of panic it was nevertheless thoroughly effective, for every one of the monsters went down, either dead or too desperately wounded to be capable of further effort. The fate of their comrades, however, seemed in no wise to dismay or act as a deterrent to the survivors, who, five in number, pressed resolutely on and, finding bottom, rose in quick succession to their feet and proceeded to scramble ashore, actually passing between the bodies of their dead and dying companions, and noticing them only to thrust them roughly aside in their eagerness to get to grips with their enemies. But the latter were quite ready for them. The success of Bowata and his fellow archers, thus far, had inspired them with such confidence in themselves and their weapons that I believe not a man of them would have turned tail so long as a single arrow remained to them, and as the surviving apes advanced they were met by such a withering flight of arrows that not one of them lived actually to emerge from the water; and then, with yells of triumph, the victors rushed into the water and gave the coup de grâce to such of the apes as betrayed any signs of lingering life.
“Let draw the fore-sheet, Billy,” said I. “We must go ashore and congratulate our friends upon their victory.”
As the boat grounded on the beach I saw that several of the natives were still in the water, busily engaged in retrieving arrows from the bodies of their victims; but I had a shrewd suspicion that many of the arrows shot had been hopelessly lost; and the suspicion suggested an idea upon which I acted later on. But for the moment my attention was fully occupied by Bowata and his people, who crowded round us, all talking at once, some of them excitedly relating particular incidents of the adventure, while others were striving to express their gratitude to me for putting into their hands the means to defend themselves successfully against the most formidable raid that had ever been attempted by the apes.
On our way back to Eden I gave some consideration to the idea referred to above. It was this. Long as we had been on the group without sighting so much as the most distant glimpse of a sail, the hope was ever present that the day would eventually dawn when we should be rescued from our imprisonment, mild and even agreeable as it was in some respects; and when that day should arrive, what would happen to Bowata and his people? Who would continue to supply them with weapons of defence against their ferocious enemies? It was obvious that, from the moment of our departure from the group, they would be left entirely to their own resources; and to me it seemed that it would be only humane, if not my actual duty, to supply the means whereby it might be possible for them to replenish for themselves their supply of bows and arrows.
Now, how was this to be done? I could see nothing for it but to provide them with something in the nature of a boat wherein to navigate the channels, then to show Bowata where the wood for the bows and the shafts for the arrows could be obtained, and finally teach him and his people how to make bows and arrows for themselves. I fully realised that to present the savages with a boat might be a proceeding not altogether devoid of danger; for savages—even such apparently harmless savages as our neighbours—were apt to develop treacherous tendencies, and, once provided with a boat, it would be difficult to prevent them visiting our own particular island of Eden, when, if any of our possessions should chance to excite their cupidity, who could say what might happen? There was, of course, a way whereby this danger might be reduced to a minimum, and that was by so reducing the dimensions of the boat that she should be incapable of carrying more than two men at a time; and this I determined to do. As to material, there was plenty of such as I required to be obtained from the wreck, for I meant the boat to be of the simplest construction, being, in fact, nothing more than a miniature flat-bottomed Thames punt, to be propelled by a pair of paddles.
Having settled this matter to my satisfaction, I explained my intention to Billy that evening, as we sat together under the veranda discussing the events of the day by the light of a glorious full moon, with Kit sprawling as usual at my feet. My intention was to start next day with Billy for a trip to the wreck, where I proposed to remain until I had constructed the punt, which, I believed, could be done in something less than a week.