# Adventure (magazine)/Volume 39/Number 1/Wild Justice

from Adventure magazine, 1923 Feb 10, pp. 68–76. An interesting tidbit in connection with South Sea pearling and this story—is in the Discussion page.
Torres Straits—the shark is arbiter.
WILD JUSTICE
$^{by}$ J. Allan Dunn
Author of “Two Men and a Boat,” “The Island” etc.
IVING was over for the day. Smoke curled from the galley pipe of the pearling-lugger Halcyon, lying off Thursday Island. The ever chafing currents of Torres Straits swirled in the change from ebb to flood, flashing under the gathering brilliance of the sunset.
Two whale-boats were overside, fended off by a native in the stern, sulky at the job. The skin divers and pearl-workers were gathered together in two groups by the rail. They looked with uneasy eyes toward the cabin or at the second mate, who stood lounging by the mainmast, his gaze upon them, a gun ostentatiously prominent in a belt holster. Their usual cheeriness at the day's end, work over, food and leisure in prospect, was absent. There was court martial in the cabin, summary justice to be served. The Kanakas, quartered ashore, were detained to see sentence passed and carried out.
In handcuffs and leg-irons Oku, best diver of the outfit, squatted on an empty box in the traderoom, stoldily awaiting his fate. Oku was from Tahiti, one of the five Polynesians of the pearling-crew. Tiri, his brother, was in the bows with three compatriots. The fifth, Vaiki, cousin to Oku, was in the cabin with the skipper and the first mate, giving testimony against Oku.
The rest of the native workers were in the waist of the lugger, Melanesians all, plum-colored, breech-clouted, with frizzy, fuzzy mops of hair ranging in color from dirty orange to black. Strips of bone and shell were thrust through their noses.
With their ragged ear-lobes trailing almost to their shoulders, short clay pipes, safety pins and ornaments of brass and shell fitted to holes in the leathery flaps; their flat nostrils dilating nervously, their blubbery lips parting with a glimpse of betel-stained teeth, muttering to each other in low gutturals, they were a wild-looking lot. Their splayed toes picked at the crumbling deck putty with the deftness of baboons. Their shallow eyes shifted constantly, like those of monkeys. Some were red-eyed with years of reef-diving in ten, twelve, even sixteen fathoms. They seemed more like half-trained animals than men, avoiding the cool and masterful look of the mate. Most of them were scarred with tribal wales. All of them carried their pearl knives, suspended about their necks on sennit cords.
The Tahitians were different—lighter of skin, better featured, better in form and muscle, less furtive of manner. They too talked in low tones, and the fine eyes of Tiri flashed now and then as he glanced aft or at the second mate, who regarded them all with a placid scorn, born of experience. He was one of their masters, a dominant white, together with the skipper and the first mate in supreme authority over infractions of all rules.
Behind the skipper was the Pearling Commission; but Captain Meeker of the Halcyon, like other masters of the pearling-fleet, exercised the right of dealing with offenders, and the commission seldom interfered with such prerogatives, save in extreme cases. The crime of Oku was a serious one. He had stolen a pearl of great value, according to Vaiki.
There was a stir among the Melanesians, and the Tahitians turned and watched where they pointed. Nosing about in search of garbage, a shark displayed its unusual length by the position of back fin and the top lobe of his tail. The tossing overboard of galley scraps and “burley,” or oyster offal, from the luggers of the fleet, invariably attracted the sea tigers; and some of them, attaching themselves to certain vessels, became known to the divers through various characteristics.
Rightly or not, the cruising shark that was prowling about the Halcyon, marked by the white scar of an ancient wound from spear, knife or harpoon, was considered a man-eater. Its presence excited the Kanakas, speculating upon the punishment to be given Oku, guessing that the shark would be used in its carrying out.
Captain Meeker was hard of feature, hard of hand and hard of heart. His one object was to get all the work possible out of his divers and all the shell and pearls possible from the reefs at the least expense. The Melanesians were signed on for the season, the Tahitians paid by the tonnage of the shell they collected.
Many skippers gave a premium on pearls. Meeker did not. He was handier with fist, rope's end, foot and belaying-pin than he was with rewards; and his two mates were of the same hard-boiled, hard-shelled school. His only largess was in curses and blows, and his system of fines for any lack in the scale he had established as a fair day's work saved him the payment of many a fairly earned dollar. He was a cheat and a bully.
Oku, best diver, was worst treated. He was sent to fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-fathom reefs that proved most prolific in pearls; but he was paid by shell rating. The more frequent the gems, the better their quality, the sicker were the oysters, with shells deep-wrinkled and distorted, with nacre of scant surface and dull luster. The deeper the water, the more exhausting the work and the smaller the contents of the diver's bag.
The Melanesians were contract laborers. The Tahitians had been wooed to service with many promises, none of which Meeker intended to carry out, many of which he had already welshed on.
The complaints of Oku, backed by Tiri as spokesmen for their crowd, had been met by the threat that they would not be carried back to Papeete but left on Thursday Island. They had been shipped on at Sydney with this understanding, for they had been three years from Tahiti, and their hearts were sick for its pleasant groves of palm and breadfruit and banana, for its crystal streams and bright lagoons, the cozy village, the palatable food, the flowers, the songs, the laughter of their own people.
Meeker had never entertained the slightest idea of sailing four thousand miles to Papeete unless an exceptional find of pearls and the prospect of a paying market in that South Sea clearing-house for those gems offered him a distinct advantage. Neither did he propose to pay out passage money for his divers.
This Oku and his fellows first suspected, then believed; and it had soured their natures. Their spirits were heavy, and they pined for home. Their pay had been docked and delayed; they had been swindled on the weighing of the shell, shortened in tobacco and other rations. If Oku had taken a pearl, it would, to his reasoning and sense of justice, have merely helped to adjust the balance between him and the skipper.
To Meeker, the brown man and the black was merely a machine of bone and muscle and certain capacities for earning him money. His rule was the rule of iron, of the steel hand ungloved by velvet, the steel automatic and the leaden bullet, with the mysterious mana—the spirit power—of the white man backing it all.
VAIKI fawned in the cabin, making a bargain.
“If I speak what I know, you send me back along Papeete, you give me all my tala (money) come along of me?”
“All that I give,” Meeker lied glibly. “Suppose you no tell I give you nothing. Maybe you try get piece of that pearl. Oku no give, you get mad along Oku.”
“No. I no want. I no steal along of you. Every one speak Vaiki good boy.”
Meeker winked at his mate.
“Hanged if I see just why he peached,” he said. “They usually stick with their own.”
“Oku's got a girl back at Papeete,” said the mate. “He figgers on havin' her when he gits back with his wages. Vaiki wants the same girl.”
“Oh! That's what sp'iled the soup! How d'you know?”
“Heard 'em talkin'. That's my business.”
“Sounds reasonable. Go on, Vaiki.”
“Three time he come up, Oku no open shell.”
This was the rule of the lugger.
“Oku he heap smart along shell. Plenty he sabe pearl oyster. Four time he empty bag, he put foot quick on one shell. Think I no see. Bimeby he put shell in pareu (loincloth). Bimeby he rest. I make believe I sleep. Bimeby Oku open shell, take out fine pearl. I see. He look quick. I close eye. I no see where he put pearl but I hear shell go along water.
“Oku no good,” he went on passionately, emphasizing all his words with telling pantomime. “Vaiki good boy. I speak. Kapitani fix me up along tala, tabaki, maybe kini-kini,” he added, with a look at the bottle of Hollands.
“Give him a drink, Jim,” said Meeker. “Then go an' git Oku.”
“You bring Oku along of me in here?” demanded Vaiki.
“We sure do. Take a drink, you white-livered skunk, an' see you speak the same talk.”
Vaiki gulped down the gin and folded his arms. It was plain that he did not fancy facing Oku, bound though the latter was.
The shark was still cruising near the lugger, the Kanakas regarding him fascinatedly.
“Chuck him some burley to keep him up, Mr. Simmons,” said the first mate. “I've a notion we'll be needin' him.”
“It's the kai-kanah” (man-eater).
“What of it? So much the better. Keep those beggars in hand.”
Below deck, Oku had seen the shark through the port-hole and guessed what might be coming to him. They had taken his knife from him. If only they would let him have it! That, and a word with his brother. He knew that suspicion was equivalent to guilt with the skipper; the mere thought of having lost a valuable pearl would bring out all his brutality.
They had searched Oku as thoroughly as a Kimberley foreman searches a Kaffir suspected of concealing a diamond—and they had found nothing. It made small difference. He was to be used as an example for the maintenance of what Meeker called discipline.
Across the glowing water he looked at Thursday Island, mean and small and comparatively barren; but he saw only the glowing crags of Orohena with its twinned battlements, the heights of Aorai and all the lovely shoreland of Tahiti-uni, the verdant stream-fed vales, the emerald groves where the smoke of the fires curled up from the villages.
He saw Tatua, deep-eyed, firm-breasted, with a flower in her black and shining tresses standing on the white sand, watching for the return of Oku, the traveler, bearing gifts and riches.
And then—that vision faded as the burley flung by the mate's orders spattered into the water and the kai-kanaka came gliding up, leisurely but swift, turning over so that his whitish belly showed and his maw opened in a serrated crescent; jaws wide enough to swallow a man, rows of teeth sharp enough to shear off a limb as an ax lops off a bough.
Oku showed no sign of fear when the first mate entered and roughly ordered him to follow. He went with his irons clinking. At the head of the companionway he looked for Tiri and gave him a meaning glance. The three Tahitians started to move aft, and the jabbering Melanesians shifted uneasily, checked by a barked, imperative command from the second mate, whose hand rested on the butt of his gun.
The Chinese cook stood in the galley door, his yellow, shining face craned out. Behind the second mate the burly negro quartermaster grinned at Oku disdainfully.
Oku drew himself up to his full height and gazed scornfully at Vaiki, who tried to return the look defiantly but failed and winced at the few words of low, hot anger that Oku flung at him.
“If I live, you shall die. Your blood is not of my blood. You are a bastard and a coward.”
The approaching triumph of Vaiki, in which Oku was to be left maimed on Thursday Island—dead perhaps, swallowed by the shark—while he, Vaiki, alone of all the Tahitians returned to Papeete and so to Tatua, a wealthy wooer, suddenly lessened and crumpled like a stuck balloon. For a moment he saw himself as Oku saw him, traitor to his blood, informer, a thing whose name would be forgotten among the villages if the truth was ever learned!
The lingering spur of the alcohol revived his courage. His victory reinflated, and he beheld himself talking dowry with the father of Tatua.
She was a stake well worth playing for. She had been only fourteen when they left. Now she was seventeen, an opened bud, a ripened fruit. And she had sworn to wait for Oku, not knowing she was thus keeping herself for Vaiki, whom she had affected to despise. It would be good to possess her.
Some day he might whisper in her ear why it was that Oku did not return. He could say she lied if she repeated it. It would only be a whip in reserve for a wife who was not sufficiently loving—or dutiful. He stole a sidelong glance at Oku, standing upright, his face disdainful, listening to the captain.
Again a doubt assailed him. Suppose the kapitani did not keep faith with him for his information? He felt the tremor of the player whose last stake is on the table and who fears the fairness of the man who holds the cards.
“You give up that pearl, Oku,” said Meeker, “and I'll let you off this time with a fine. If you don't——”
He paused significantly.
Oku's great chest, the cage of the tremendous bellows that furnished him with resistance to stay down deep nearly four minutes while he robbed the coral of gem-bearing shells, rose and fell slightly. His nostrils lifted, but he said nothing.
“I've got it all down in the log-book,” went on Meeker, striving for special entertainment in making the diver show some fear. “Witness all sworn reg'lar. Jest what you did. Hid the shell under yore foot, then opened it an' took out the pearl when you thought Vaiki was sleepin'.”
Oku's eyes turned toward Vaiki, showing the white, the glance eloquent of contempt.
“You chucked the shell overboard an' hid the pearl. I want it.”
Meeker leaned forward across the table.
“I want it, you —— Kanaka, or I'll take it out of yore hide an' body. You come across along of that pearl. You speak where you hide or overside you go. We've burleyed up the kai-kanaka with the white scar an' there'll be more erlong in a minute. If they leave you alone I'll say you're innercent. If not, by ——, you're guilty, an' you deserve what you git.”
In all South Sea tribes there were, as Meeker knew, various ordeals by poison, boiling water and such a test as he was going to use, to determine guilt in witchcraft or adultery. He was not the first skipper to apply it, and the fact that there was such an elemental custom made it more impressive, less likely to be challenged by the natives.
“I think maybe that all same murder, kapitani” said Oku. “I think maybe the commission no like that.”
“Commission!”
Meeker rose snarling.
“You'll talk commission to me, you thieving-dog! I'll swing you up or I'll flay you alive if you rob me, and no blighted commission will tell me where to tack an' veer.”
He came from behind the table and shook his fist in Oku's face, then struck him open-handed. The marks of his fingers showed dull purple on the Tahitian's golden-brown cheek.
Every muscle of the native's magnificent body seemed to tense at once as if he would break his irons and brain or strangle the skipper. Meeker recoiled a little before the fury he had evoked. His hand reached back of him for his gun, and the first mate grasped Oku's arms from behind.
The diver freed himself with a twist and then stood still, facing the muzzle of the captain's weapon.
Meeker himself was making a struggle for restraint. He could not go too far. Oku's mention of the commission was a lash that at once irritated him and reminded him of authority that had already warned him for alleged unnecessary cruelty.
He had his mates to stand back of him, the Halcyon's own crew to swear as he bade them; but he was not on the high seas; Thursday Island was now a fortified coaling-station where the tale of murder might find a hearing and an awkward sequel. But he was determined to go through with what custom permitted.
“I'll put a rope round you an' give you yore knife,” he said. “Then you can talk it out with the sharks.”
A faint gleam came into Oku's eyes as he heard that he would not be denied his knife. He was conscious of it and lowered his lids. He knew that if he won through the ordeal that would be the end of the matter, if his wounds healed.
“You let me speak along Tiri?” he asked. “Maybe I die.”
He spoke with no semblance of begging a favor. Though his attitude won none from Meeker, the skipper fancied that he might be weakening, that his brother might counsel him to give up the pearl.
“Take him on deck and let his brother chin with him,” he said to the mate. “Then give him his knife and rig the line. I'll be out in a minute.”
He motioned Vaiki from the cabin with a jerk of his head and swallowed half a glass of neat Hollands. The informer went to the rail to watch the tragedy he had invoked. The Melanesians regarded him apathetically; the three Tahitians glowered at him. Tiri, summoned by the mate, passed him with two words hissed in a fierce whisper.
Vaiki's enjoyment was by way of being spoiled. The salt of hatred, jealousy and revenge had lost much of its savor in his mouth, which was suddenly dry when he tried to moisten it. Tiri's words were those of South Sea vendetta.
It was fortunate that the season was nearly over. He would have to be wary of Tiri, night and day. But in the end he would triumph when he sailed away and left them on Thursday Island, doomed to live as best they could for another season, to enter that in debt and so work on in exile while he, Vaiki, would be back in the village near Papeete, with Tatua preparing fish, pounding taro, weaving mats, fawning upon the favor of her lord.
THE talk between the brothers was brief. The sun was nearing the horizon. Meeker was impatient to get through with the thing. He had lost his pearl; but he did not mean to lose his supper, which was nearly ready, nor to forego the appetizer in the example he was going to make of Oku.
A rope was tied about the diver's waist, held by the negro quarter-master and the mate. His irons were taken off, his knife restored to him.
Oku took the blade and stood poised on the rail like a bronze statue against the sun. The shark had finished the offal and now swam up and down with an expectant eye. He knew that sundown would bring him more garbage. This was his lay. Everything that came overboard from the Halcyon was his perquisite. The other luggers had their scavengers. As yet no other sharks were ranging near.
Oku breathed deep, filling his lungs, stretching his limbs, cramped by the irons and his confinement. Once he looked at the land, then at his brother. Vaiki he did not deign to notice.
All seemed to hold their breath. The lapping of the turning tide sounded like a series of chuckles.
There came a swift tapping. Meeker was knocking out the ashes from the bowl of his pipe on the head of a belaying-pin. He filled and lighted it carefully and mounted the rail for a better view, steadying himself to the roll by the mainstays.
Oku jumped feet first, sinking down in a swirl of bubbles. The sun was too low for much transparency; but they could see him sinking far down as the shark, attracted by the splash, glided toward the disturbance, then with a tail stroke headed downward.
The ordeal was not a fair one, even to natives. In their minds sharks were allied with the gods, imbued with intelligence. Not all of them were man-eaters. Ordinarily there would have been a good chance of Oku not being attacked, even by a brute that hung around a ship for scraps. Therein lay the test of guilt. But this one was a notorious kai-kanaka. Man-meat to him was a dainty.
Tiri, his hands clasping the rail until the knuckles showed white, strained out to watch the combat. Meeker, puffing his pipe, waited to give the word to the mate to haul in. He did not want Oku killed. He was not sure if he wanted him maimed. That would lose him a diver.
But whenever he thought of the pearl his resentment flamed. As described by Vaiki, even allowing for exaggerations, it was the best of the season, worth a good many hundred dollars. Oku would have selected his shell unerringly.
Oku, poised in the water, legs and arms apart, like a great frog, awaited the rush of the shark. His knife had been in his left hand when he went over. He shifted it to the right, the sennit loop about his wrist. He stripped off his loin-cloth and wound it round his left hand and wrist. He was almost as much at home in water as he was on land. For three, perhaps four, minutes, though he had not had time properly to “take his breath,” he did not fear the odds against him of the monster in its own element.
After that, if he had to come to the surface the odds became heavier. That he could continue to elude the beast for some time was certain.
Left to himself, he held no doubt that he could dodge and climb aboard unscathed. That would not be allowed. And to play tag with the grisly, cold-blooded brute was not his intention. The rope that might prove his salvation was also a handicap.
The light was rapidly failing. The surface of the sea was still bright, though marred by the rip of the tide. He could see the shark coming down toward him in a gray bulk with just a hint of phosphorescence in its trail.
He was out of position; and, as the kai-kanaka rolled with open mouth, Oku clipped his lower legs together and stroked with one hand, passing beneath the baffled fish. He made no wasted motion. His skin scraped against the pebbly hide; and once more he spread-eagled, almost motionless, watching the monster turn with a great surge and drive for him again, its long snout pointed a little downward, its cunning prompting it to keep the man uppermost.
Oku waited, dribbling air from his lungs. The great hazard, the rope, had traded clear. His attitude was that of a duelist, his swathed left arm a little extended, the right curved, ready for a stroke.
Along the rail black men and white strained outward, seeing little but whorls of yeasty water, tiny bubbles of Oku's precious air breaking on the tide.
The shark turned, lunging upward. Oku, with automatic adjustment of his balance almost as perfect as that of the fish, up ended. A mighty scissors-clip sent him straight toward the widening jaw with its rows on rows of back-set, fast-embedded teeth.
He thrust his bound left arm fairly into the open maw, deep into the gullet of the shark. And, before the jaws could close, he lunged his knife to the hilt in its belly, ripping viciously. His hand and wrist slid into the wound and he turned the knife before he withdrew it and slashed again.
The jaws clamped on his arm, tearing the flesh, but he felt no pain. Neither did the sea tiger, yet it felt the knife in its belly, severing its entrails, plunging through its hide in fierce stroke after stroke. It thrashed the water, dragging Oku with it through the turmoil that was streaked with blood.
The crimson, oily fluid floated to the surface, hardly distinguishable in the gold and purple of the sunset painting the sea. But the watching natives saw it, and a guttural, “Eyah!” came from the Melanesians. The Tahitians closed their lips. The mouths of the rest were open as they thrilled with the excitement of the fight. The skipper's pipe went out, and he swore in his eagerness, the lust of cruelty in his eyes, stamped on his weather-burned features.
“Keep that rope slack, blast your black soul!” roared the mate at the negro quartermaster. “Give him a chance!”
The man obeyed. In his mental ferment he had unconsciously started to tauten the line.
Suddenly Tiri sprang to the rail, knife in hand. The skipper's pistol was out in a flash while he bellowed at him. Tiri hesitated; and then out of the seething waters there popped a black-sleek head, and a wild shout went up.
It was Oku, his eyes flashing as he stroked with one arm, gulping down the welcome air. His knife still swung from the sennit loop on his wrist. Rising more slowly beside him came the great bulk of the kai-kanaka, belly up, the whitish skin pink in the sunset, rent in half a score of places, from which the blood ran as the monster feebly struggled. It intestines protruded; it had lost control, partly paralyzed by Oku's vicious stabs which had reached some vital spot, swiftly dying from that and the loss of blood.
The divers were beside themselves with excitement. Meeker swore and spat into the sea, then turned away.
“Haul in,” called the first mate. “Easy now, you lubber! Easy!”
Oku's face was drawn and gray, but he smiled up at his brother as the line drew him alongside and a dozen hands gripped him and drew him over the low freeboard.
The cloth was gone from his left arm, which was terribly lacerated from elbow to wrist. Blood spouted from flesh rips and severed veins. It dripped on the deck as he stood weakly against the foremast, Tiri helping to support him.
The shark was beginning to drift slowly shoreward with the tide. The same current carried the blood away from the rest of the fleet and the scent of it from the other sharks that were patrolling the luggers for galley refuse.
“Take him below,” said the first mate to Tiri.
Oku's brother and the two other Tahitians picked up the wounded victor and carried him to the forward companion.
“I'll be down,” added the mate. “I'll fix him up. By all that's holy, he's a man!”
The mate's own manhood, roused by the plucky fight, had reversed his sympathies. The second mate ordered the divers onto the shore boats.
“Goin' to keep him aboard?” he asked the first.
“Yep—for tonight anyway. Wait for his brother and the others.”
The first mate hurried aft and encountered the skipper.
“What's the idea?” asked the skipper.
“I want the permanganate,” said the mate. “And a shot of squareface. You ain't goin' to let him bleed to death. If he dies you ain't goin' to keep this thing quiet, Meeker.”
“That don't git me my pearl.”
“To —— with the pearl! If he's got it I'm here to say he earned it.”
Meeker gave the mate a sullen look but said nothing. The mate had shares in the Halcyon, and his words had weight besides reason.
As he disappeared into the cabin for disinfectant and stimulant the skipper slowly followed. He met Vaiki, skulking on the starboard side, away from the boats. Meeker cursed at him and accompanied every oath with a kick.
“You git along where you belong. For'ard!” he yelled, venting his spleen. “Git ashore, you —— sneak! And stay there!”
But Vaiki was not in the boats when they left. He kept out of the way in the growing dusk, disconsolate and afraid. He knew that the skipper had repudiated him and that Oku was still alive. More, there was Tiri; and the words of Tiri were still plain in their meaning.
Tiri was in the second boat with his fellow Tahitians. He had the steering-oar and guided the boat alongside the dead shark, slipped a bight about the root of its tail, and they towed it to the beach. When the boats had been hauled up and the divers started for their quarters Tiri remained behind with the shark, motioning his comrades ahead.
The Melanesians gazed at him with dull curiosity. They fancied that he wanted to perform some ritual over the kai-kanaka, perhaps to cut out its teeth or to take some of its hide for a knife-haft or the head of a conjure drum.
The swift twilight had vanished. Lights had broken out on the pearling fleet and ashore. Tiri was alone with the dead shark.
|width=60px|align=left}}ON THE Halcyon Oku lay in a bunk, his wounds cleaned and dressed. His arm might not recover full strength, never its symmetry; but the mate was sure he would not lose it. The blood of Oku was healthy; his injuries would heal quickly. The salt water had started to cleanse them; the loin-cloth had helped; the permanganate had completed the asepsis. He had pleasant thoughts, and he was well content.
Vaiki ventured to the galley to beg for supper. The Chinese cook showed him a knife longer and sharper than his own, an Oriental fury that completely routed Vaiki's despondent soul. He coiled up on a cable in the bows, where Meeker presently found him. The skipper had supped, and he had washed down his meal with plenty of liquor. He was in better mood; but the sight of Vaiki roused him again to fury.
“I told you go along shore,” he said,
Vaiki whined—
“I plenty 'fraid go along that place.”
Meeker laughed.
“The —— you are! Wal, you're goin'. Git up! Now then, over you go, an' swim for it.”
Vaiki shivered. He was not very much afraid of the swim. It was not far, the tide was with him and the kai-kanaka was dead; but the land looked very inhospitable to him beside the comparative safety of the lugger. He cowered close to the cable.
Meeker, with a burst of anger, seized him by the loin-cloth and the scruff of his neck. Vaiki clawed at the cable. The skipper shifted his grip from neck to bushy hair, and Vaiki yelled with pain and let go of the rope. The captain hauled him to the side and bundled him overboard.
Vaiki hit with a resounding splash amid a burst of the seafire that was rising and breaking in luminous stars all over the anchorage. He struck out reluctantly for the shore, trailing flame, with Meeker's lurid prophecies of what would happen to him if he tried to board the Halcyon again stringing after him. He was hungry and dispirited, and he let the flood direct his course.
Ashore, under the stars, Tiri worked with his knife, expertly dissecting the head and gills of the shark. In the gullet he found a pulpy string of loin-cloth and then something that gently shimmered in the palm of his hand, rounded, perfect, silvery-white, with a faint suggestion of iridescence that would glow radiant under the sun or, beneath artificial lights, against the white skin of a beautiful woman. Tiri's teeth gleamed almost as brightly as he turned it with a forefinger, admiring its symmetry, then swiftly tucked it in his own pareu.
Something was coming up from the sea, rising on all fours from a receding wave. The shark had been hauled well up; but the flooding tide had brought the margin of the water within a few feet of it.
Tiri dropped like a dispelled shadow behind the body of the shark. He had been kneeling, and he did not believe that this man with the water in his eyes had noticed him. Now he crouched, his bent legs gathered under him, tense for a spring if the man was the one he wanted, the one he hoped for.
Back of the man, straightening himself while the withdrawing water swirled about his ankles, mounted the next incoming wave. Its crest was charged with the same flaming sea-stars, so that a greenish flame was reflected in the stream of the backwash.
The wave broke and thundered, and the man hurried to escape the undertow. He came over the hard sand to the body of the shark and peered over it, straight into the eyes of Tiri, before the latter leaped with a bloody knife that showed only a vague gleam.
Vaiki sprang back, then sidewise with the automatic agility of a cat, slipping free his own weapon. But he was in greater mood to run than fight. His heart was pounding; he felt himself predestined to defeat—to death.
“So,” said Tiri. “You have come, you bastard. Now the name of Vaiki will go out with the soul of Vaiki, forgotten in the uttermost darkness.”
He jumped over the shark, his left arm out on guard, expecting a thrust, expecting that Vaiki would squat as the other leaped and slash upward. But Vaiki veered and ran, refusing combat, his coward's soul in dismay. This landing by the shark, by the ambush of Tiri, was not to him a trick of the tide but magic, the magic of Tiri, who had conjured him ashore by superior mana.
Vaiki raced swiftly over the hard, wet sand, faster than he had ever run, because he believed Death joined in the pursuit with Tiri. And Tiri, next to Oku, was the swiftest runner of Tahiti-Uni. Fast as Vaiki flew he heard the pad of feet behind him, gaining, gaining. Once he set his head on his shoulder and looked back. Tiri was running easily, too easily, with long strides from the hip; and Tiri laughed at him as he lengthened the stride.
The shaken will of Vaiki interfered with the best coordination of his body. He tripped, staggered, recovered himself and went on with his recreant heart pounding at his ribs and his lungs laboring. There was a pain in his side. He could have run better if he had supped; but Tiri had not eaten, and Tiri ran lightly as a Molokai deer.
A low promontory loomed up ahead, a dyke of lava rock. Vaiki shrank from attempting it. He would have to slow up; and the knife of Tiri, the avenger, would be plunged between his shoulder-blades.
He slowed up and heard that Tiri had spare breath enough to laugh again tauntingly. When Tiri was almost upon him Vaiki doubled like a hare and passed Tiri on the latter's left, shifting his knife, slashing out. Tiri laughed and parried, catching Vaiki's wrist with his left hand, flinging him down with a side trip.
“Get up, bastard,” said Tiri. “Get up and fight.”
Vaiki lay there on one arm, breathing, taking grace. The courage of a cornered rat came back to him. He made a sudden swipe at Tiri's ankles to sever a tendon, and Tiri jumped backward over the stroke.
“Get up,” he said. “This is the knife of Oku. It has tasted blood, but it is still thirsty. It has spoken to my aitu (familiar spirit) and it has said that it must drink the blood of Vaiki, the bastard.”
He gave Vaiki clear space, standing with arms hanging. Vaiki read his thoughts. Tiri did not want to strike a murderer's blow. His lust for blood would be satisfied only with the killing of Vaiki man to man.
And his supreme confidence leached away all remnants of Vaiki's. Tiri would boast of this avenging, he would make a song of it, to chant on the beaches of Tahiti-Uni, with Oku listening, Tatua by his side. For he was sure that Oku, or Tiri, had the pearl.
The strength had gone out of his legs; his knees would not support him; but at the thought of Oku triumphant a desperate sort of bravery came to him and he sprang up, circling about Tiri, crouching, waiting for an opening.
Tiri gave it to him, and he leaped in. Tiri's left fist struck his right elbow in paralyzing counter, his knife hand went high over Tiri's shoulder and the avenger stepped inside his guard. The knife of Oku went home. It hit Vaiki's breast-bone with a skreek and then sank deep, assuaging its thirst.
The two Tahitians, coming down to the beach after they had eaten, found Tiri by the shark. He showed them the loin-cloth of Oku, and he showed them the pearl that Oku had thrust deep in the gullet of the shark.
“It belongs to Oku,” he said.
“It is the property of Oku,” they agreed.
“We will send him back to Papeete with our wages,” said Tiri. “Back to Tatua. We can get no price for the pearl in this place.”
“It is agreed,” they answered. “What of Vaiki?”
“The name of Vaiki is to be forgotten. It is better that we bury him. The tide may refuse him—and the sharks.”
He took them to where the body of Vaiki lays, face down, with the surf lapping at his feet.
“I slew him with the knife of Oku,” he said. “It is a good knife. Behold.”
He gave a sharp twist to the carved handle, and it came apart, showing the cleverly concealed cavity where Oku had hidden the pearl, whence he had taken it when he dived.
Presently the three walked up the beach. The tide came in, with sea stars radiating in the shallows. It packed hard the grave of Vaiki and tugged at the butchered body of the kai-kanaka. Presently the ebb tugged at it and took it out to sea, where its roving fellows found an early breakfast.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1941, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 83 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse