"We'll take the night over it. It's a serious matter."
They walked the deck far into the night, with the big stars swimming in the smooth black rollers, and the distant roar of the Aia surges, now to port and now to starboard, as they beat gently to and fro in default of anchorage.
"In the first place," said Blair, summing up their ideas, "these people are not safe here. Whatever we do or don't do, the Kanele men will take it out of them as soon as we're gone. We must do our best to persuade them to migrate to Kapaa'a. That will be a good thing for them and a good thing for us. As to the Kanele men, the difficulty is that we want to retain our hold on them. This affair only shows how great the need is. And if we take measures against them—any measures almost—we are like to weaken the small hold we have now."
"All the same," said Cathie bluntly, "it won't do to let 'em think they can carry on like this and nothing said about it. That'd be fair provoking them to do the same again."
"It's difficult to know just what to do," said Blair; and Jean down below, with Kenni-Kenni nestling close in her arms, heard the four feet tramping, tramping, slowly and heavily, to and fro, till she fell asleep. They seemed to be still tramping whenever the Torch gave a sudden kick and woke her. But there was a sense of guardianship in the very sound, and Kenni-Kenni's soft head against her heart was very comforting.
In the morning they set to work on the plans they had arrived at overnight.
Blair went ashore early, while Cathie prepared for his passengers.
It did not need five minutes' talk to show the Aia men how unsafe their position was. It was self-evident. But it took much talk and persuasion to induce them to migrate to Kapaa'a.
They saw the advantages. Some of them had been there already and seen for themselves; but the brown men cling to their own bits of coral or volcanic rock as strenuously as Highland crofter to his dripping heather, or Irish peasant to his patch of bog.
The women, however, had listened to those marvellous accounts of the unheard-of security of life and property on Kapaa'a, and now they joined forces with Blair and carried the day. By sunset they were all aboard the Torch with such belongings as the Kanele men had left them. The Torch beat to and fro again throughout the night, and not a native closed an eye for the strangeness of it all, and in the early morning Blair was ashore again on Kanele. He had assured Jean there was no danger; but he left Captain Cathie behind—to look after the crowd of brown men and women.