CHAPTER XII
THE FLAMING SWORD
Blair's face was tighter and grimmer than ever as he took it all in, and the faces of the rest were sympathetically hard.
But this was no time to stand glooming. The wrong was done. Now to see if it could be righted.
He turned and led the way back to the boat, thinking too hard for speech. He knew what had to be done, but there were disquieting items in the programme for which he had been unable to make provision, and which he would gladly have escaped.
They would follow the marauders and rescue the victims—that he took as settled.
The settlement could hardly be a mild one, and he would fain have spared the women the sight of it; but there was nothing else for it—they could not possibly be left behind.
The raiders had doubtless filled their holds here to the last man. But there must be many left. They would be in hiding yet, but presently they would come out of their retreats, full of grief and anger, and it would go hard with the first white faces they encountered. The women must go with them—that was one of his troubles. And the next, supposing they caught these blood-thirsty and body-hungry rascals—and catch them they would, if it took a month's circling round—what were they to do with them when they had them?
There would probably be fighting, though the results did not trouble him. What he wanted was to put an end once and for all to this horrible traffic. The only way that suggested itself as adequate and final was to string them up to the yard-arm, every man-jago of them, and whether that might be done with impunity was more than doubtful. The only impunity he desired was for his future work. Morally, he would feel justified. And whether or no, the spirit that was in him would have borne lightly the burden of such a deed, even though its outward results to himself were personally painful and disastrous.