THE FÊTE OF DEATH

It was close on midnight and the ebb, running strong, showed through the branches an occasional lazy swirl on the moonlit lagoon water.

At the break it was racing strong, but here the water seemed hardly to move. The wind still held from the north, and as Dick untied from the tree roots, it parted and closed the branches above, showering Katafa with moonlight and shadow. He pushed off with a scull and before he could take his seat again, the current, lazy though it looked, had slewed the bow of the little boat right round.

They had settled to get away when the schooner people were asleep, but sleep was far from the island that night, to judge by the vague sounds that came from the east between the breathings of the wind.

But the tide was outrunning and the hour was come, and Dick was not of the order that waits for a better opportunity.

Stepping the mast with the sail lightly brailed and ready to break out, he took the sculls, and the moonlit glade and the cape of wild cocoanuts passed behind them out of sight for ever.

And now as they moved swiftly, great ripples running out from the divided water and spreading towards bank and reef, Katafa, who was steering, saw something beyond the tree-tops, a rose-red, pulsating light that seemed fighting the light of the moon, and, above the light, smoke like blown hair streaming on the wind towards the south; and now as the dinghy, driven by sculls and current, drew on to the great curve that led to the eastern beach, the sounds that had reached them by the sward loudened and became more shrill, and through the voices of men outshouting gulls, and gulls outshouting men, came a new sound, sudden, sonorous and without cease, the roar of flame triumphant.

The dinghy turned the last cape into a world of light. The schooner, fired by accident or design and straining at her anchor chain, was blazing against the night like a bonfire. Lagoon, reef and woods were lit broad as by day and, crossing the roar of the flames, the shouting of the reef gulls came mixing with the yelling from the beach, where a hundred black forms danced and sang and screeched, mad with the black joy of rum and destruction.

It was like breaking into a fÊte.

At a stroke the desolation of the Island was shattered and the world, holding clamorous festival, had taken the beach. Katafa, half standing up for a moment with the red light shining on her face, gazed fascinated with the terrible glamour of the thing. Then she sank back, steadily steering right for the broad fairway between ship and shore.

Dick shouted to her, she knew, and, leaving the tiller for a moment, leaned over him, unbrailed the sail, and gave it to the following wind.

Then, as the boat raced for salvation and without releasing the tiller, she saw two things; to left, and for a moment, the blazing schooner pouring flame to the sky, roaring at her, scorching her, and with its bowsprit festooned with wretches who dared not drop into the shark-filled lagoon, to right the white beach a stone’s throw away, and, racing the boat along the beach, shouting at her, threatening her, a great crowd of men naked, black and mad with rum.

Then, in a flash, all this was wiped out and the fire-lit concave of the sail was before her, outlined on the calm night beyond.

Dick, who had spoken no word since his order to her, half rose. She saw his face lit by the retreating blaze, and the rage and hatred in it. She saw him fling out his arm at the beach and schooner, and she heard his voice shrill against the cries that followed him. It was the cry that the companions of Sru had hurled at him long ago.

“Kara! Kara! Kara!” “War! War! War!”

Turning, he brailed the sail and seized again the sculls. The dinghy was rocking and racing in the confluence of the floods from the arms of the lagoon.

They passed the palm tree in the northern pier of the break as an arrow passes the mark, tossed to the meeting of current and flood, and with sail filling again headed south against the long heave of the Pacific. Behind them lay the glow of the still burning wreck, which was seen that night at Karolin.