But ere they had sped more than halfway to the shore, the girl who had dived had swum in between the jagged, isolated clumps of coral that stood out from the reef, and rising high upon a swelling wave, they saw her lifted bodily upon its ledge, and then, exhausted as she was, stagger to her feet and run shorewards along its surface.
On, on, she ran, the sharp coral rock tearing her feet, till she gained the white sand of the inner beach, and then she fell prone, and lay gasping for her breath. But not for long, for in a few minutes she was up again, and with wearied limbs and dizzy brain she struggled bravely on till the houses of the village came in sight, and the wondering people ran out to save her from falling again.
“Flee! flee!” she gasped. “My uncle, and Fetu, and all with them are killed.... The white men on the ships have killed them all.”
Like bees from their hives, the terrified natives ran out of their houses, and in ten minutes every soul in the village had fled to the beach, and launching canoes, were paddling madly across the lagoon to the main island of Nukufetau lagoon. Here, in the dense puka and mangrove scrub, there was hope of safety.
And, with rage in their villains' hearts, the slavers pursued them in vain; for before the boats could be brought round to the passage the canoes were nearly across the lagoon. But two of the canoes, being overloaded, were swamped, and all in them were captured and bound. Among those who escaped were the wife of Big Harry and her daughter Vailele.
That afternoon, when the boats returned to the ships, Captain Peter Hennessy and his worthy colleague, Captain Martinas, of the barque Cid Campeador quarrelled, and the young Peruvian, drawing a pistol from his belt, shot the Irish gentleman through the left arm, and the next moment was cut down upon his own deck by a sweeping blow from Hennessy's cutlass. Then, followed by Arguello's curses, the Irish captain went back to his brig and set sail for Callao, leaving Martinas to get the better of his wound and swoop down upon the natives of Easter Island six weeks later.
And down below in the stifling, sweating hold, with two hundred miserable captives like herself, torn from various islands and speaking a language akin to her own, lay the heart-broken and despairing daughter of Big Harry of Nukufetau.
And now comes the strange part of this true story. Two years had passed, when one cold, sleety evening in Liverpool, a merchant living at Birkenhead returned home somewhat later than his usual hour in a hired vehicle. Hastily jumping out, he pulled the door-bell, and the moment it was opened told the domestic to call her mistress.
“And you, Mary,” he added, “get ready hot flannels, or blankets, and a bed. I found an unfortunate young foreign girl nearly dead from cold and exhaustion lying at the corner of a side street. I am afraid she is dying.”