“‘Go ahead,’ he returned. ‘I’m in the front row and have paid for my ticket. Money won’t be refunded at the box office this time.’”
“What happened?” Bill Marley exclaimed eagerly. “Did you have a scrap?”
“Did we have war with Herzovinia ten years ago?” O’Neil asked contemptuously. “No! of course we didn’t, or even you’d ’a’ heard of it.
“The other ship gave up the game at sunset and we followed her back to Ukula,” O’Neil continued after Marley’s interruption had been settled.
“A few days later the commodore tried a new stunt: to disarm the natives this time. The Herzovinians landed at night on the big plantation of Vaileli. The Kataafa warriors got news that they were coming from some women in Ukula. I’ll bet,” he said insinuatingly, “that Mary Hamilton can tell you who the women were.”
Mary smiled. “I was blamed,” she replied. “My second husband was with Kataafa and I arrived a few hours before the sailors landed.”
O’Neil nodded. “Yes,” he said, “and there was an American who also was accused by the other side of carrying the news. Anyway, the Kataafa warriors attacked the Herzovinian sailors. Surprised them, killed about twenty and wounded twice as many. It was an awful shock to us all, and showed us we had been playing too close to a playful volcano. Such a thing had never occurred before. We thought the natives would not dare to raise their hands against the whites.
“I was on board another ship then; the ‘Wyoming’ had gone home to be paid off,” O’Neil continued after an impressive silence. “The worst of it all was that the heads were cut off the poor sailors. It gave us all cold shivers. We had thought the Kapuans were just good-natured children, and we found them heartless, brutal savages.—Excuse me, Mary,” he apologized. “I’m not inventing now. That’s the plain truth. When your people get really excited you ain’t civilized. You’re a lot of Apache Indians on the war-path.
“I don’t know what would have happened if the hurricane hadn’t come at that time. We found ourselves all on the beach and our ships wrecks. Over a hundred or more sailors were drowned, and the natives, both Kataafa and Samasese, came and risked their lives many times to save us out there clinging to the wreckage. Mighty near every man saved owed his life to the natives. That sort of patched things up. We lived ashore for several months, and every one was as friendly as you please. You wouldn’t have known there ever had been a war.
“Lots of things, I reckon,” he added finally, “have happened since I have been away, but what makes me laugh is to see the Herzovinians falling all over themselves to make friends with this Kataafa, and we, who were his best friends then, falling all over ourselves to call him all the bad names we can think of.