“Who art thou, saucy fool?” he asked, “to so talk to me? Think ye that I fear any white man? See!” and staggering to his feet he came over to where she stood, “seest thou this bloodied cut across my face, which was given me by a white man, when I fought with, three but last night?”
The girl laughed mockingly. “How know I but that last night thou wert as drunk as thou art now, and fell on the ship's deck and so cut thy face, and now would make us think that——”
“Nay, Sépé,” broke in a lad who sat near, “'tis true, for I was on the ship and saw this man fight with three others. He does not lie.”
“Lie!” and the half-caste, drawing his knife from its sheath, flashed it before the assembled natives; “nay, no liar am I, neither a boaster; and by the gods of my mother's land I shall make this Parma give me more grog to drink before the night comes, else shall this knife eat into his heart. Come ye all, and see.”
And in another minute, followed by the girl Sépe and a dozen or more men and women, he sallied out into the road, knife in hand, lurching up against a palm-tree every now and then, and steadying himself with a drunken oath.
Sitting or standing about Palmer's house were some scores of native women, who waited for him to awaken from his afternoon's sleep and open his store so that they might sell him the pearl-shell that the menfolk had that day taken from the lagoon. But the white man seemed to sleep long to-day, and when the people saw Letanë, his wife, coming from her evening bathe, they were glad, for they knew she would open her husband's store and buy from them whatever they had to sell. But suddenly, as she walked slowly along the shaded path, a man sprang out upon her and seized her by the wrist. It was the half-caste sailor.
“Back!” he shouted warningly to the women, as they rushed towards him, “back, I say, else do I plunge my knife into this woman's heart.” And then, releasing his hold of Letanë's wrist, he swiftly clasped her round the waist, and swung her over his shoulder with an exulting laugh. “Tell ye the white man that his wife shall now be mine, for her beauty hath eaten away my heart,” and he ran swiftly away with his struggling burden, who seemed too terrified even to call for assistance.
And then as the loud cries of alarm of the women sounded through the village, Palmer sprang out from his house, pistol in hand, and darted in pursuit. The half-caste, with a backward glance over his shoulder, saw him coming.
Dropping the woman, who seemed to have swooned, for she lay motionless upon the path, Porter awaited the white man, knife in hand, and laughed fiercely as Palmer, raising his pistol, fired at him thrice. In another instant they were struggling fiercely together, and a cry of terror broke from the watching women when they saw the trader fall as if stabbed or stunned, and the half-caste, leaping upon him, tear the pistol from his hand, and, with an exultant cry, wave it triumphantly in the air. Then he fled swiftly through the palm grove towards Ijeet.