“Quick! They have taken the house.”
The door was only a piece of cloth hung across the entrance. Tamate sprang to it and drew aside the curtain. In front of him a great band of armed men swayed. Another party blocked the end of the house. In the dim light the chief from the mainland stood out as leader.
“What do you want?” shouted Tamate.
“Give us more, or we will kill you and burn the house.”
“Kill you may, but no more payment do I give. If we die we shall die fighting.”
The chief cowered in fear. The weapon of the white man was uncanny and strange. The courage of the white man alone against them all was stranger still.
“Go!” said Tamate; “tell the others there must be an end of this. The first man who crosses the line where the fence stood is a dead man. Go!”
And they went! They went and talked. Talked wildly and fiercely too, but in less than two hours Kirikeu came to say that all was well.
On the shore they saw a large war-canoe ready to start, and watched the quick dark figures of the natives as they lifted hundreds of smaller canoes into the water. The warriors from the mainland shouted back: “We return to-morrow, to kill not only the white man and his friends, but to kill all of you.” But before to-morrow came they thought they would stay at home!
The white man’s courage had awed the natives, and though the chief of Suau would have liked to get larger presents, he did not wish the strangers to be killed. The iron and beads they brought had made him wealthy. When he saw that nothing would move Tamate, he turned against the others.