THE FIGHT ON THE BEACH

The rainy season came and made Dick busy mending a hole that had suddenly come in the roof of the house. It passed, leaving the island greener than ever and the birds preparing to mate.

Nan, on his stick on the southern reef, was beginning to show signs of wear and weather. Gulls roosting on his crown had left a white patch that did not add to his beauty, and the winds, for ever bending and straightening the sapling, had loosened his head so that it waggled a bit, making at times a click-clocking noise, as though he were clucking his tongue with impatience. But all things have their time and season, and had he been god of the lagoon instead of the cocoanut trees and puraka patches, he might have known that the poisonous season had arrived at Karolin.

They had fish ponds there stocked with sea fish to tide them over the bad time, but these pond fish were never quite as good as fresh fish from the sea, and adventurous spirits would put out sometimes long distances after the real article and, unable to carry fire with them, eat their catches raw.

“A raw sea fish is better than a cooked pond fish,” was a proverb with them, and one morning, when Dick took the dinghy round to the eastern beach after bananas, the proverb bore fruit. He had secured his bananas and placed them on the sand ready for shipment, when the idea suddenly took him of having a look at the gollywog on the reef. He rowed over, and no sooner had he landed on the coral than away across the sea he saw a canoe. It was longer than the canoe of Katafa, it was standing in towards the reef, and when the occupant caught sight of him a cry came across the water, fierce and sharp like the tearing of a sheet.

Dick didn’t wait. He dropped into the dinghy, rowed off to where an aoa tree jutted over the water, just beyond the beach sand, and hid the dinghy under its branches. Then he took to the trees. He had forgotten the bananas. They lay there on the sand, shouting to the sun, and it was too late now to secure them, for the canoe was coming into the lagoon. The sail was brailed up and paddles were flashing, and Dick, peeping through the branches, could see the forms and faces of the four rowers, fierce faces utterly unlike the face of Katafa, and forms brown and polished like mahogany.

The canoe passed the break and took the quiet undulations of the lagoon, the paddles now scarcely touching the water. Gliding and silent as a stoat it came, the faces of the paddle men turning to right, to left, to left, to right, the eyeballs showing, white as the shark’s-teeth necklaces on the breast of the bow paddle.

The bow touched the sand. Two of the men jumped out, made for the bananas, turned them over, and gave a shout. The bunches had been cut—no ghost had done that—and assured of this fact, the powwow began, the fellows on the beach shouting to the fellows in the canoe, evidently urging them to land.

But the boatmen were coy. Land! not they! It was well known that this beach was haunted by the spirits of the ancients and the men who had fallen in battle. They were unarmed, they were too few, they would come at another season with more men to follow them.

“Go, then, and search in the trees thyself, O Sru, son of Laminai,” cried the stern paddler; “if there is nought to fear, why fear it?”

“Dogs!” cried Sru. He bent, picked up the two banana bunches, and turned to the boats with them.

“They come!” yelled the canoe men.

Dick had burst from the trees, fear flung to the winds at the sight of his precious bananas being spirited away from him. Swift as a panther, flexible as india-rubber, he was almost on Sru, when the other man caught him, tripped, fell with him, and lay flattened for a moment with a blow on the nose.

Then, as Dick bounded to his feet, Sru had him—almost.

Kearney had always clipped Dick’s hair, and since the vanishing of Kearney Dick had done his own clipping when the hair worried him by getting too long, using Lestrange’s folding mirror for the purpose.

Sru had caught him by the hair and the hair was just an inch too short for the grip to hold, but long enough to hurt. With a yelp of pain like a dog when kicked, Dick struck out and Sru fell.

The lightning-swift blow had been given just below the chin point. Sru fell like a pole-axed steer and next moment Dick, a banana stalk in each hand, was running for the trees, trailing the clusters after him and diving amidst the foliage.

He had saved the bananas, but he was still ready for battle. Rage filled his mind, and a curious musky smell—it was the smell of Sru, cocoanut oil and Kanaka mixed. The smell kept his anger blazing; game as a terrier who scents a badger, he stuck his head from the leaves, ready to renew the fight armed only with the weapons of his race, but Sru had not risen. Sru was lying just where he fell; the other man bending over him and trying to lift him was chattering and crying to the fellows in the canoe who had pushed away a bit off the beach, their voices mixed with his like the clanging of sea-gulls.

“Tia kau—Tia kau—Matadi hai matadi.”

The broken sentences came up on the breeze. It was the language of Katafa. What were they saying about the reef and the wind? What was the matter with Sru?

Then Dick saw the bending Kanaka rise, race through the water, and scramble on board the canoe. The paddles flashed and the bow turned towards the break. They were leaving Sru, who still lay on the sand with arms outspread, staring up at the sky.

Now what was the meaning of that?

Dick knew all about traps, from the trap of the great spider of the woods to the trap which he and Kearney had constructed for catching crawfish on the reef. He was a fisherman and knew the ways of sea creatures that assume the appearance of sleep whilst watchful and waiting to snap; absolutely brave, he was yet no fool, and remained amongst the leaves waiting for developments.

He had no fear of Sru, but great fear of the thing he did not understand. The fellows in the canoe were under the same obsession; they had suddenly come on something they did not understand and, the foam dashing from their paddles, they drove out, the paddle swirls and the shearing ripple of the outrigger marking their track across the azure-satin surface of the lagoon.

At the break, they found their voices, shrill with rage. “Kara! Kara! Kara!” “War! War! War!” The cry came like the clang of sea fowl, and they were gone.

Dick watched. He was standing. He squatted, sitting on his heels, and continued to watch. The bananas were safe and on that fact he sat contented as on the top of a tower, his eyes travelling from the man on the beach to the opening of the break, and from there to the reef and back again.

He was capable of sitting there watching till Sru rotted—almost; capable of anything but playing into the hands of these strange folk, the first enemies he had met, the first robbers.

Sometimes the man on the beach seemed to move, but it was only the heat-shaken air blanketing over him; now a cry came from the reef as though the canoe men had landed there from the outer beach and were threatening him. No, it was only a sea bird.

Then a shadow passed over the sand and a great predatory gull circled over the beach, swept out across the lagoon, returned, and lit on the sand.

Sru had fallen near low-tide mark and the great gull, after a moment’s rest, came towards him, hop, hop, hop, across the hard sand, paused, and, as if frightened, took a flight and returned to its original position.

It was not afraid of the man, but it sensed Dick and was nervous in the face of something it did not understand. Then, gaining courage, it rose and lit on the chest of the man, spread its wings slightly, steadying itself, and then struck its beak, sharp as a dagger, into the stomach just below the ribs—plong! Like a dropped stone, another great gull lit on the man’s throat, steadied itself, and struck—extracting an eye.

Dick knew now that Sru was out of count, like the big fish when they went stiff, and he knew he had knocked him like that just with a blow.

He came out pulling the bananas after him, the birds flew away, and Dick, approaching the body, touched it with his toe. The creature with the broken neck was stiff now as a board, and his slayer stood looking at him, a boy no longer, but a man.

Dick knew nothing about death except its effect upon fish, eels, lobsters and crabs. Some of these fought him like the big eel he had hooked a month ago in the northward stretch of the lagoon and which he had killed just as he had killed Sru, the second son of Laminai, whom Katafa, without intention and through Fate, had brought to his death.

He touched the body again with his toe. Then, seizing his precious bananas, he took them to the dinghy hidden in the branches of the aoa and embarked with them.

As he turned the cape he heard the quarrelling of great gulls, sharp and fierce as the voices of the canoe men. One might almost have fancied it to be their voices rising and falling on the breeze.

“Kara! Kara! Kara!” “War! War! War!”