“Oh no; I think it is all right.”
Then he told the men to stop work. As he was paying them, he heard two shots fired from the ship. He reached the house with a bound. The ship was a small one, not the one in which they had come to Suau, but another which had stayed beside them with cargo until they could land everything they needed. Its crew numbered only four, and this morning the captain and the cook had been left alone on board. The other two were on shore, helping to clear and to plant.
Whenever Tamate heard the shots, he sent these two sailors off to their captain. As he looked out to the ship, he saw natives swarming all over her deck, and some of them tugging at her anchor chain. On a point of rock that ran out towards the ship other dark figures crowded.
What could the captain be doing? Was he going to let the men in the canoes carry the line from his vessel to the wild crowd on the rocks, that they might pull the little ship ashore and wreck her?
Then a great noise rose from the beach, where the ship’s boat lay, and the two sailors came running back to say that natives were in the boat, and would not let it go back to the ship.
Tamate ran off, leaping over fences and bushes till he reached the shore. He sprang to the boat. The natives fled before him, and soon the sailors were rowing hard to reach the ship.
When the natives on board saw them coming they took fright, slipped down into their canoes, and made for the shore. Those on the reef ran back to the village. When the sailors reached the ship, they found their captain lying on deck with a spear-head in his side, and gashes on his head and foot. They were so angry that they began to fire at the crowd of natives that surged backwards and forwards on the shore. Two men were wounded. Tamate did not know what to do first. He longed to get to the ship to stop the firing, but for the moment all he could do was to bandage the wounds of the two natives. Meanwhile the villagers were arming. Clubs and spears seemed to spring from the ground on every side. Angry voices asked, “Where is Bocasi?” “Where is Bocasi?”
Bocasi had gone to the ship and had not come back.
Mr. Chalmers asked two native men to take him in a canoe to the ship. He was very anxious to know what had kept Bocasi. He was too eager to wait till he was on board, so he shouted when he came near—
“Is there still a man on board?”