He was not surprised, also, to find Ha'o anything but satisfied with the arrangement. He would have preferred wiping out Ra'a and the malcontents, and settling the business at once on a sound and final basis.
With infinite difficulty Blair succeeded in showing him that those others had rights as well as himself, even though they had wronged him, and tried hard to inspire him with his own hope that matters would eventually work out for the best.
Ha'o, however, knew better.
"Their hearts are like this," he said, laying his hand on a length of twisted creeper dangling from an adjacent tree. "They are as grasping as a convolvulus for the water. They will take all you will give them, and they will keep the tapu just as long as it suits them." And he said to himself, "But by that time we shall perhaps be ready for them"; while Blair was thinking, "Every approach they allow us to make is a point gained."
The taro fields and yam plantations and banana groves were soon roughly divided off in a fair equality, and sticks with plaited palm leaves set up to warn off trespassers from either side. Then, with the idea of impressing them to the utmost, Blair invited the two plenipotentiaries to accompany him on board the big canoe to get the things he was to give them.
To this they demurred at first, though obviously desirous, and it was only after much argument among themselves that they at last agreed, and then only on condition that the white woman stopped on shore till they were brought safely back.
They stepped gingerly into the steam-launch at last, and eyed her bustling, unaided progress with obvious but well-concealed amazement. They were shown over the ship, the big gun was fired for them at close quarters, they inspected the farmyard and the cat, and they finally went home laden with gifts, and with new impressions enough to set their brains spinning and their tongues wagging for a month to come. And it is not likely that their stories lost anything in the retailing.
CHAPTER XVI
SAWDUST AND SHAVINGS