At daylight the mate got the Malolo under weigh, the skipper, with aching head, sitting up in his bunk and cursing the old trader's hospitality.
When the vessel was well outside the reef, Brice bade him good-bye, and getting his boat alongside started for the shore.
“I will—I must—clear out of this,” he was telling himself as the boat swept round the point of the passage on the last sweep of the ocean swell. “I can't stay under the same roof with him day after day, month after month, and not feel my folly and her weakness. But where the deuce I can get to for five months till the schooner comes back, I don't know. There's the Mission, but that is too close; the old fellow would only bring me back again in a week.”
Suddenly a strange, weird cry pealed over the water from the native village, a cry that to him was mysterious, as well as mournful and blood-chilling.
The four natives who pulled the boat had rested on their oars the instant they heard the cry, and with alarm and deep concern depicted on their countenances were looking toward the shore.
“What is it, boys?” said Brice in English.
Before the native to whom he spoke could answer, the long, loud wailing cry again burst forth.
“Some man die,” said the native who pulled stroke-oar to Brice—he was the only one who knew English.
Then Brice, following the looks of his crew, saw that around the white paling fence that enclosed Baldwin's house was gathered a great concourse of natives, most of whom were sitting on the ground.