But the head had been hacked off!
III.
In his own mind, Kimball had no doubt as to the identity of the black who had hurled the spear at him in the darkness, for a checkup of the laborers showed Tulagi missing.
Bitter at the trouncing Kimball had administered, the native had bolted. Hiding in the darkness, nursing his anger, fate had thrown in his way the man who had whipped him. The same fate had caused him to miss his mark when he had thrown the spear.
And Tulagi was of a tribe that believed in taking heads for souvenirs.
With the coming of Donaldson and Svensen in the Scary-Saray three days later, giving him enough white aid to handle the plantation without fear of an uprising, Kimball renewed the search for the runaway. Tulagi, at large, would be a constant menace, not only to his own safety, but to the peace and quiet of the blacks. The runaway was a man of considerable influence among the others, and there was already too much dissatisfaction among the laborers to allow any additional trouble to creep in.
The body of the murdered Hansen had been decently buried close to the edge of the cocoanut grove under Kimball’s direction.
Donaldson and Svensen never for a moment doubted his story, which was corroborated by Ornburi and the blacks. Such things are not uncommon among the Islands. Both volunteered to aid him in running down the supposed murderer. For the supremacy of the white man must be maintained for the common good of all.
It was near the end of the second day that they found that for which they were searching. Beside a skeleton lay a skull, the point of an arrow driven through the temple. A great ant hill close by told a grisly story.
That one of Kimball’s bullets had found its mark there was little doubt. Tulagi, wounded nigh unto death, had, nevertheless stopped long enough to hack off the ghastly souvenir, then made his way back toward the hills as best he could.