"All I wish is that we'd hung those yellow blackguards, sir," said Cathie, with lingering regret. "It would only have been right common sense, after all."
"Hear, hear!" said Aunt Jannet Harvey.
"Well, well," said Blair. "It's generally easier to undo than to do. But our aim is life, not death. We shall have all we can do to put new life into our brown friends, without spending our energies and bruising our consciences by choking the old life out of our yellow enemies."
"All the same, sir, we'd have been safer for the future if those rascals were rolling at the bottom of the sea than floating quietly on top of it. If they don't come back here, they'll go somewhere else and play the same game."
"I'm afraid they will, captain; but all the same I don't see my way to hanging them. If they come back here, as they quite possibly may——"
"Will, sure," said the captain.
"Well, if they do it will be our duty to protect the sheep from the wolves."
"I'm half hoping they'll try it on," said Cathie. "Yon long gun would make fine play with 'em."
In the morning Blair and the other men went ashore again. The ladies begged to go too, but he thought it wiser to wait till they learned the minds of the rest of the islanders.
They found the atoll men busily at work running up shelters, and quite content with their new surroundings. This was a place of infinitely wider scope than their own circumscribed island, and they had no desire whatever to go back to it. Knowing how intense the racial hatreds were among the islands, Blair could only hope that Ha'o's influence might suffice for their protection.