He heard the merry calls of the explorers, and wondered at the absence of any sign of life on the island. The very sight of an approaching ship used, in his time, to bring the population to the beach. But things had changed of course since then, and byways had become highways.
The white boat jerked slowly along round the bend, and the voices ashore grew less distinct. And suddenly his lips pinched and his brow crumpled, and he gazed ahead with a fixed, angry glare which set his men wondering what they were coming to, and carried their chins to their shoulders unconsciously.
A stretch of white beach, a bristle of black posts jutting out of the cleared ground above—that was all. But Cathie's experience read them like three-feet letters on a city hoarding.
He threw up one hand and jammed the tiller hard down with the other.
"Round with her, boys!" and they were swinging back up the lagoon to get the women aboard again. For there might be sights in the brush along that ridge to shock the souls of men.
Blair, Evans, and Stuart, with Matti, the Samoan, and the rest of the boat's crew, climbed the backbone of the island, whose highest point attained an altitude of perhaps thirty feet.
They were standing looking across the flawless mirror of the central lagoon, when the Samoan broke out suddenly, "Sirs, I presume advice. Return fortwit to ship. This place is not good," and when they all turned on him in surprise, they found his brown face strained and pallid with fear, his eyes starting, and his nose dilated like a startled stag's.
"Why, Matti, what's wrong?" said Blair.
The brown man shook his head.
"I know not, sirs," and his white teeth chattered so that his chin wagged visibly. "There is evil abroad. It is in the air, in the tree-tops."