He went quickly to the shed Ha'o had built for Nai, and found him there asleep, and was to that extent relieved. He woke him quietly, and told him what was going on.
"Food is scarce, and will be scarcer," said Ha'o, when he arrived at an understanding of the matter. "Everything is destroyed."
"Better starve than live so," said Blair vehemently. "But everything is not destroyed. We shall live somehow, and this has got to be stopped. Come on!"
He picked up a stick of wood from the drift, and set off at a run along the beach. The others armed themselves in like manner and followed him.
The brown men sprang up from their feast as they rounded the corner, some of them still gnawing at chunks of flesh in their hands.
Blair rushed at them like a blazing bolt. Several of them, for lack of clubs, snatched brands from the fire. He paid no heed to their weapons, but laid about him with his stick with such vigour that they gave way before him, and the others, following his lead with hearty good will, drove the brown men back, and finally put them to the run.
"Now," said Blair, as he leaned on his stick, "there is only one thing to be done. Pile all the rough wood you can find on to that fire. Keep out anything that may be useful. We must burn all those bodies. We can't take them out to sea, and if we bury them they'll dig them up."
It was obviously the best thing to do, and they set about the gruesome business at once.
They made a mighty pile of firing and laid the bodies reverently on it, and covered them with more wood, and more bodies and again more wood, till they had to wait till the pile burned down, because of the height of it and the heat. And their faces were pinched and their breaths shortened, as they carried to the pyre the bodies of those they had lived with in comradeship for so long, and they worked in silence.
The only sound that was heard beyond the crackle and fall of the burning wood, as the dense black smoke rolled up into the sky, was the voice of Blair, as he stood to windward and quietly recited portions of the service for the Burial of the Dead from time to time. And surely never did the solemn words sound more weighty and full of meaning.