HAT,” I said to Hawkins in a mood to throw him overboard, “is Dakaru.”
“That,” he repeated with complacent stubbornness, taking his pipe in one hand and extending the other requestfully, “ain't nothin'. Just a cloud or somethin'.”
We had the morning watch. The sun was peeping up and the sails were full.
“Think those boys there in the bow don't know land when they see it?”
I flung an indignant gesture at the Samoans who were staring at the faint low bluish mist-like form that touched the sea where sky and water met.
“Awright,” he rumbled. “Give me that pouch. It's Dakaru.” And having the pouch he added: “—If it ain't somethin' else!”
But it was Dakaru, and with ten Samoans headed by Malua and a half dozen white men—who rather imagined they would have something dreadful done to them any hour—with Dula and Davenant on board too, we were nearly at the long voyage's end.
We had left Lelela two days after Captain Lumholtz proudly went away with his cherished prisoner.
In those two days a few things perhaps worth mentioning had happened.
Malua had returned from Apia, empty-handed and furious.
At the feet of Taulemeito, before whom he poured out his story, he had brained the miserable Senva. And again at Williams's request a party of men hurried the Yankee missionaries off to the hills. Malua swore to club them to death. They had inspired Senva to treachery.
The American engineer at Apia, undoubtedly frightened and possibly truthful also, had said it was impossible to furnish dynamite. He had heard the report Senva gave out even before Malua learned it had been given out; and he conspired to hold Malua at Apia so he could not get away and give warning before the Friedrich had started.
He and his German employers might have held a large healthy conger eel much more easily than Malua, when that young chief discovered what was in the air. He did not even appreciate the joke that had been played on the gunboat. His temper was up.
And what had happened the night before he arrived home did not lessen his resentment against white men, all white men, who came overrunning the islands of his people, laying out plantations, feeding the natives rum and gewgaws, defiling the women, spreading disease and thrusting Bibles with the threat of hell-fire into their faces.
Strangely enough he did not think of Williams as a white man; but even face to face with the immobile serenity of Father Rinieri he had, with surprising bitterness for a Samoan, loosened his anger.
That night when I had waited so long outside of Father Rinieri's house I had not been eavesdropping. Of course I did not thrust my fingers into my ears or anything of the kind. But the little cockney, who had a very great admiration for Hawkins, had searched him out and told him that Raikes and Davenant were cooking up some deviltry; and that he, Cockney George, wasn't “hidiot henough to try to tyke the wind hout hof 'Urricane Wylliams's syles.”
No sir. George didn't have any love for Hurricane Williams. But he would he “bloomin' well blasted” if he didn't have too much sense to try to come anything over that fellow.
So I waited to give Williams what I had heard from Hawkins. At least that was the excuse I had given myself for remaining so long near Father Rinieri's door. I knew the crew felt miserable and in a mood to think they ought to do something, anything; but I really did not suppose that they would try to seize the ship.
What they expected to do with it after they got her I don't know. They had nothing to do but go on board. She was ready to sail—only she would have to be towed out, and by not less than a half dozen boatfuls of strong rowers.
But Davenant, it appeared, had told them of the rifles. Raikes, who alone knew something of ships, had talked foolish and gestured aside the difficulties.
Anyway they went on board and broke out the rifles.
Davenant had tried to get Dula to go on board too. What she told him I do not know. But one of the native girls who was present told me, though she understood scarcely a word of English, that the hairy-faced man had been very angry and tried to talk loud; and that Dula had been quiet and smiled. It was the native girl who had screamed when he raised his hand to strike her. And he went away.
Perhaps she had told Davenant much the same that I overheard Father Rinieri tell to Williams. I did not hear much, though my ears grew about two inches from the strain; but I did catch the fact that Dula had withheld nothing—nothing—from Father Rinieri, and that she was more relieved, more at ease with herself, than had ever seemed possible to her. But Father Rinieri was not himself yet at ease over her.