All the men had strange stories to tell. Gregor and Irvine, and some of the others, asserted that when the waterspout struck the ships they were whirled up out of them and dropped into the lagoon some distance away. Then, before they could swim ashore, the great wave caught them and whirled them up into the valley, bruising them all more or less and breaking some. The brown men were mostly sound of limb. They had fled for the hills at the first sight of the spectral dangers outside.
"Have you seen signs of any others?" asked Blair.
Yes, they thought they had seen moving forms on the further hills, but too far away to distinguish clearly. On which Cathie set them to collecting driftwood from the shore, and piled it on the fire, with wet brush and tangle on top, till the smoke rose in a dense column.
"That'll bring them," he said, and in time they came dropping in, in small companies, from their various hiding-places, and last of all came one carrying a woman in his arms.
And at sight of him, toiling through the new soft mud where the village had stood, Blair sprang up and ran to meet him.
"Thank God, you are left to us, Ha'o!" he cried as they met, but Ha'o was as silent as the rest of his people. "Is Nai hurt? Let me help you."
Nai smiled wanly at him as he put his arms under her and took part of the weight, and then her face crumpled with pain.
They carried her gently to the fire, and laid her on the soft white sand, and Jean and Aunt Jannet knelt beside her and saw to her wants.
Captain Cathie, when he saw the increasing company, had made another visit to their only storehouse, the beach, and came back this time with a young pig and some bananas and coco-nuts, and some carefully-sought-out paw-paw leaves for the benefit of the too-fresh pork.
Ha'o was too weary and too hungry for talk, and Blair and Cathie called the militant members of the party to salvage work on the beach. Gruesome work too, and not calculated to raise their spirits even after a full meal, for every few steps brought them to the bodies of those they had known alive and well the day before.