“We will do you no harm if you will follow us,” said Timoa.
They then went together to the house of Young. Here they found its owner, just roused by the noise of the scuffle with Adams, listening to the explanations of the women, who were purposely trying to lead him astray lest he should go out and be shot. The entrance of the four natives, armed and covered with blood, and Adams unarmed and wounded, at once showed him how matters stood.
“This is a terrible business,” he said in a low tone to Adams, while the murderers were disputing noisily about going into the woods to hunt down McCoy and Quintal. “Have they killed many of our comrades?”
“God knows,” said Adams, while Quintal’s wife bound up the wound in his neck. “There has been firin’ enough to have killed us all twice over. I thought some of you were spending the ammunition foolishly on hogs or gulls. Williams is dead, I know, and poor Brown, for I saw their bodies, but I can’t say—”
“Fletcher Christian is killed,” said Quintal’s wife, interrupting.
“Fletcher Christian!” exclaimed Adams and Young in the same breath.
“Ay, and Isaac Martin and John Mills,” continued the woman.
While she was speaking, the four Otaheitans, having apparently come to an agreement as to their future proceedings, loaded their muskets hastily, and rushing from the house soon disappeared in the woods.
We shall not harrow the reader’s feelings by following farther the bloody details of this massacre. Let it suffice to add, briefly, that after retiring from a fruitless search for the white men in the bush, Menalee quarrelled with Timoa and shot him. This roused the anger of the other two against Menalee, who fled to the bush and tried to make friends with McCoy and Quintal. This he appeared to succeed in doing, but when he was induced by them to give up his musket, he found out his mistake, for they soon turned it on himself and killed him. Then Young’s wife, Susannah, was induced to kill Tetaheite with an axe, and Young himself immediately after shot Nehow.
When McCoy and Quintal were told that all the Otaheitan men were dead they returned to the settlement. It was a terrible scene of desolation and woe. Even these two rough and heartless men were awed for a time into something like solemnity.