The Tagal spies must have let their secret escape or allowed it to be guessed on the occasion of their first voyage to Sooloo.
The Malay pirates, finding their plans discovered, would not allow the Tagals to return to Kouparou after their second voyage. They would have flayed Admiral Campbell’s unfortunate spies alive, or would perhaps have eaten them, since the Malays are somewhat inclined to cannibalism.
After having eaten the Tagals, the Malays, whose vengeance never halts by the way, would have made a first descent by night on the island of Kouparou, which would explain the distant fires seen by Mr. Dawson, Lord Campbell’s secretary.
The poignard stuck in the sand was the symbolical menace addressed by the pirates to the sailors of the station, advising them, by this figurative but most expressive warning, that they would return and either poignard them or make themselves masters of them in some way or other.
They had actually returned, and the moment of their descent must have been at the time the fête given to the officers of the Halcyon by Vice-Admiral Campbell was taking place.
The pirates had, in all probability, succeeded in capturing all the officers and sailors whom they found on the island itself; they would next have attacked the Halcyon, when resistance would have been for the most part impossible, as nearly all the crew would have been on shore. They would then have taken the ship with all their prisoners to Sooloo, or to some other port of the archipelago known by this name.
The descent, the surprise, and the carrying of the prisoners off had occurred in the midst of the banquet which was to have preceded the ball, and from this in all probability arose the disorder and confusion remarked by me in the courtyard of the verandah on the day I first entered it.
The pirates and their prisoners departed, the apes, those millions of apes, of whom Admiral Campbell complained so bitterly in his journal, would have taken possession of the officers’ apartments, and profiting by the spoils left so unaccountably by the pirates, would have proceeded to dress themselves in the uniforms which the unfortunate officers and sailors of the Halcyon had not time or opportunity to take with them.
Lastly, not allowing the logical thread which I held as it were between my fingers to break for a single instant, I proceeded from all these incontestable inferences to this certain conclusion—namely, that in the island of Kouparou apes of a certain superior species had formerly possessed the sovereignty; that these apes had been dispossessed by the Tagals; that the Tagals had been sent to the right about by the English; that the English had been expelled by the Malay pirates; that the Malay pirates in their turn had just been dispossessed of it, if not by force, at least in fact, by the apes, to whom had returned again the sovereign authority over the island of Kouparou—a lot, indeed, which has befallen most of the islands of Oceania, many of which still attest by their ruins that they were formerly inhabited by people intelligent enough to cover these islands with handsome buildings, and who had afterwards to make room for a population of apes. Frightful revolution!
Plunged in the most gloomy reflections, after having thus pictured to myself the misfortunes which had happened to the English station of Kouparou, I quitted Admiral Campbell’s study, and descended to the lower apartments, resolved henceforth not to think seriously of a deliverance which I now felt to be impossible. “I shall live on in this tomb,” said I to myself, “so long as it pleases God to preserve me.” To dream of leaving it was now one of those extravagant hopes which only spring from madness—watched, guarded, surrounded, menaced as I was by gaolers a thousand times more crafty and cruel than the Malay pirates. I re-examined all the doors; I barricaded them more efficiently, and decided not to behold the light of day any more, since I could no longer enjoy it without looking upon that sinister and menacing cordon of besiegers; I lighted some candles, and installed myself in these lower apartments as though it were for eternity.