Nearly a week before the Iroquois had run into Port Lele to refresh before proceeding westward and northward to the Bonin Islands in pursuance of her cruise. Charlik, the king, was delighted to see Cayse, for in the days when his father was king the American captain had conveyed a party of one hundred Strong's Islanders from Port Lele to MacAskill's Island, landed them in his boats during the night, and stood off and
on till daylight, when they returned reeking from their work of slaughter upon the sleeping people, and bringing with them some scores of women and children as captives. For this service the king had given Cayse half a ton of turtle-shell, and the services of ten young men as seamen for as long a time as the Iroquois cruised in the Pacific on that voyage. When Charlik's father was dying, he called his head chiefs around him, and gave the boy into their care with these words—"Here die I upon my mat like a woman, long before my time, and to-morrow my spirit will hear the mocking laughs of the men of Môut and Leassé, when they say, 'Sikra is dead; Sikra was but an empty boaster.'"
Then his son spoke.
"Not many days shall they laugh. They shall be destroyed all, all, all of them."
The king touched his son's hand.
"Those are good words. But be not too hasty. Wait till the American comes again. He will help with his men and guns. But he is a greedy man. Yet spare nothing; give him all the silver and gold money I have stored by for his return, and all the turtle-shell that can be gathered together. And let there be not even one little child left in Môut or Leassé."
Charlik was a lad or seventeen when his savage old father died, and for a year after his death he harried and distressed his people by his exactions. All day long the men toiled at making coconut oil, and at night time they watched along the beaches for the
hawk-bill turtle; the oil they put into huge butts, which stood in the king's boat-sheds, and the costly turtle-shell was taken by the young ruler and locked up in the seamen's chests which lined the inside wall of the great council-house. And no man durst now fire a musket at a wild pig, for powder and ball had been made tapu —such things were given up to the chiefs, lest they might be wasted, and every morning three young men climbed up the rugged side of Mont Buache, to keep a look-out for the ship whose captain would help their master to wreak a bloody vengeance upon the rebellious people of Leassé.
At the end of the sixteenth month of watching, a sail appeared coming from the southward, and the watchers on the mountain-top sped down to the king's house, and sinking upon their knees in the courtyard of coral slabs, whispered their news to one of the king's serving-men, who, with a musket in his hand and a cutlass girt around his naked waist, stood sentry before the youthful despot's sleeping-room.
"Good," said the king to Kanka, his head chief; "'tis surely the American Késa, [ [13] ] for this is the month in which he said he would return. Let the women make ready a great feast, and launch my three boats, so that if the wind fail, when the sun is high, they may help to drag the ship into Lele."