CHAPTER XXII THE GREAT FIGHT

No fires were lit on the fishing beach that evening, nor did the wind from across the lagoon bring any sound of singing from the fishermen.

Floyd remained at the lookout post while Isbel, returning to the house, put everything in order and gave a last touch to the defenses and a last look around. Then she returned and took her place beside him.

The moon, stronger to-night, yellow and brilliant, hung in the apple-green dusk of the eastern sky. It looked exactly like the quarter of a crystallized orange; then, as the sky steadily and swiftly darkened, it lost its yellow tinge and became a sickle of frosted silver.

The light was powerful enough to sparkle up the whole lagoon and show the reef like a curving gray road set on either side with the lagoon water and the foam of the sea.

The fishing beach showed clearly, and the grove, even the tents could be made out as gray flecks against the darkness of the trees, but sign of life there was none.

"I would like it better if we could see more of them," said Floyd. "They are a lot too quiet."

"They will come to-night, I think," said Isbel. "They are hiding now and talking. Sru will lead them."

[Pg 180]Floyd laughed. "He led them finely on the beach over there this afternoon," said he, "lying on his stomach all the time!"

"That is why I fear him," said Isbel. "He is very clever; the others are not clever, but they are good to fight. Sru is the head; they are the hands. Sru is a devil."

"You did not know what Sru was that time you left me and went back to them," said he.

"No," replied Isbel; "I thought he was good then. He said to me: 'Why not come back to your own people?' The words he said to me grew in my mind like seeds in the ground. I did not know you then. I thought you were the same as Schumer."

"You know me now."

"Yes," replied Isbel, "I know you now."

He could see her profile against the stars and the line of her delicately shaped head. She was sitting with her hands about her knees, in just the same position as on the day when, drawing near the beach, Schumer had stood to receive him, and Isbel had sat watching, seemingly indifferent, gazing at him with those eyes whose gaze held so much of the unknown.

She wore a flower in her hair that day, and she wore a flower in her hair to-night, a perfumed blossom plucked as she was passing through the grove. The scent of it came to him with a trace of the hot, gorse-like perfume of her hair, and for a moment he forgot Sru, the island, the fight on the beach, and the whole desperate position. For a moment only. As they sat beneath the stars, watching the moonlight grow stronger upon the lagoon water and the reef, suddenly from away out there came a cry like the sudden clam[Pg 181]oring of sea fowl. A sound fierce and sharp and with the ring of triumph in it. The invisibility of the enemy and the absolute silence they had maintained up till now lent the sound a weird significance.

"They are starting," said Floyd.

Isbel nodded. She said nothing; she was listening. Then she said: "They will have been talking, all sitting round as they were to-day. Sru will have been making plans to come here and kill us. Then when all their minds went together like men with spears they shouted like that and jumped to their feet and started."

She spoke like a person who was watching it all in some magic glass, slowly and in a dreamy manner and with a detachment as though what she were viewing had nothing to do with them.

"They'll start more before I have done with them," said Floyd viciously.

The events of the day, the tension of waiting, and that shout, cruel as a barbed spear coming out of the night, had raised the fierce fighting spirit of his race, a spirit all the more potent and terrible from the underlying sobriety that tempers its fierceness and levity.

"It's funny to think we may be knocked out before the sun rises again," said he. "What do you think happens to a man when he's dead, Isbel?"

"I don't know. It is, I think, all the same as before he is born. He doesn't know."

"That's what I have often thought myself," said he. "Look! What is that?"

Away toward the far end of the reef they saw moving points upon the coral. Huge insects seemed crawl[Pg 182]ing here and there, aimlessly at first, and now approaching nearer.

"They are coming," said Floyd, seizing a rifle. "They are spreading themselves out, and that confounded coral gives them good sheltering places. We must stop them if possible."

He stood up, and, putting the rifle to his shoulder, aimed it at the nearest moving spot and fired. He continued blazing away till the chambers were empty. The movement ceased, but almost immediately it recommenced, and now they could see the brown figures crouching and crawling, spread out fanwise, taking cover at every projection, and always advancing closer.

It was almost impossible to fire effectively, owing to the uncertain light and the fact that at the first flash every figure fell flat or dodged behind cover.

Between the rough coral and the point where they stood lay forty yards or so of smooth ground, across which the final rush would be made.

"It seems we can't stop them," said Floyd as he emptied the contents of the second rifle, while the girl reloaded, "and once they get near the edge of that smooth bit they'll rush us. Get everything together when I give the word and make back for the house. Ah, I had one then!"

A shriek following the shot he had just fired told of a hit, but it did not stop the advance. On the contrary, the wretches had now reached the psychological point, the point where instinct told them collectively that a rush must surely succeed, and where optimism told them individually that it was the next man who would be hit.

[Pg 183]They left cover boldly, and, heedless of the rough coral, of the pitfalls and sharp edges, leaped to the attack like bounding kangaroos.

Floyd bagged two of them with his two last shots; then calling to Isbel, who had also been firing, he led the way through the trees toward the house.

Isbel, with forethought, had lit the lamp in the main room, and the glow of it shining through the loopholes in the walls showed them their way. Once inside, they barred the door, placed the guns on the table, and began to reload.

They did not speak a word. Coolly and swiftly they shoved the cartridges in their places, and then, each with a rifle, stood at attention to the hell of voices from outside.

Never could Floyd have believed that human beings were capable of such sounds of ferocity and malevolence. Only in the long boo-hoo of the storm that had torn the bones of the Tonga to pieces had he heard anything like this outburst.

Fists and feet were thundering at the door, spear points poking through the openings in the walls, but all that was nothing to the uproar of the voices. The calling of monkeys and the shrieks of parrots seemed mixed with the howl of hyenas, and more terrible than these came an incessant, fierce whistling, harsh as the whistling of steam.

Floyd was less a philosopher than a man of action, yet even so, and though he had no time for philosophy in such a crisis, his mind for a moment was held by one stupendous fact—these fiends storming the house were not devils just let loose from the infernal regions; they were the "hands."

[Pg 184]The men he had worked with and overseen, pleasant and childlike creatures full of fun and laughter, most of them. It is true that many of them had, when in repose, that hard, set expression which seems to have come from ages of watching across the sun blaze on the sea, but their faces could express good humor, one might say, fluently, and as they had always been well treated on the island they had never cause to express anything else.

When Floyd had seen them first on the day that he and Schumer had boarded the Southern Cross they had struck him as a very hard lot, and a good deal of that expression had come from the shell nose rings and the slit ear lobes distinguishing most of them; as he got to know them better that impression became less vivid. Yet it had been the right one. The shell nose rings and split ear lobes were surely "features" inasmuch as they spoke of ages and ages of savagery, blood, and darkness.

Yet the second impression had been right in its way. Despite all their savagery these people were human, had in them a certain bonhomie and sense of humor, and possessed many of those traits which we associate with the word "gentleman." The latter curious fact had been impressed on Floyd several times in his dealings with them. Sru, for instance, the worst of the lot, though he had probably dined off his enemy in his time, and though he had planned and plotted murder, would not have hurt your feelings for the world by word or gesture. Floyd, having reloaded, disregarding the door toward which the main attack seemed directed, chose loopholes near the ones through which the spear points were being thrust, and fired with [Pg 185]effete, to judge by the sounds that followed the shots. Isbel, crawling and creeping close to the walls, seized on the spear shafts, and, using all her weight, broke them off.

She managed to break three like this, and then returned to the loading. Dark, cool, swift, and absolutely fearless, she seemed in these mad minutes the very spirit of destruction. They had ammunition in abundance, and when she was not engaged in reloading for Floyd she used one of the revolvers herself. The smoke of the firing blown back through the loopholes made a haze round the steadily burning lamp, near which, from the ceiling, a big spider was swinging from his thread, laying his nets utterly undisturbed by the sounds and fumes of the fight.

Then gradually the attack died down. The gentry outside had exhausted themselves mostly by yelling; they had done no damage and had received several injuries. Had they possessed a single firearm they might have made the position untenable, but they had nothing, and they had evidently come to recognize the fact that poking spears through loopholes was useless work, besides being dangerous.

Floyd wiped his brow with his coat sleeve.

"The fools have never thought of forcing the door," said he; "they might have done it with that crowbar. You remember the piece of iron I used to break open the big clamshell. They never thought of that. They came with spears only, and there is nothing over on this side they can use to force the door with. Let's hope they won't remember about it."

"Listen!" said Isbel.

Sounds were coming from the grove at the back of[Pg 186] the house, sounds more of a jubilant than a warlike nature.

Floyd knitted his brow; then his face cleared.

"I know what it is," said he. "They have got at the cache."

The fragment of moon low down in the west lit the beach, and very soon Floyd's suspicion was justified. Peeping through the loopholes of the front wall, they saw the whole band of the enemy debouching on the sands away to the left, and every man laden with loot.

Some were carrying bolts of cloth, and others cases of provisions and boxes of tobacco.

They thought themselves beyond rifle range, and, like children, they wanted to examine their treasures. Floyd, assured that none of them had remained behind, opened the door, and, rifle in hand, stood watching them. Then he opened fire, and they scattered, leaving their treasures on the sand. Some ran along the lagoon edge, toward the reef opening; one dashed right into the water and swam in the same direction, while the main body made back for the shelter of the grove.

Not one of them was hit as far as he could see, and the men who had made toward the reef opening would return by the seaward side of the reef.

"I almost wish I had left them alone," said he. "It will only make them more vicious. The sight of that stuff lying there will keep them going. However, it is too late to bother now."

He turned back to the house and shut the door. He had been speaking to Isbel, and fancied her to be just behind him. She was not. She was at the table, quietly preparing some food. He noticed now for the[Pg 187] first time that the flower was still in her hair. It looked dark purple in the lamplight. And now for a moment a strange sensation stole over him, as though the whole of the business were a fantastic dream, a sensation of unreality that infected even his own being. It passed, and, coming to the table where the food was now lying beside the rifles and ammunition, he drew one of the chairs up and sat down sideways to the board.

Isbel remained standing, and as they ate they talked, and what they said had little to do with the main business in hand. It was not a thing to be talked about. The situation was hopeless, if ever a situation was hopeless, and no plan had yet appeared to either of them by which their position could be bettered.

Ideas had come to Floyd only to be dismissed as useless, the idea, for instance, of making a dash from the house and taking to the dinghy, which they could easily push off. That would not help them in the least, since there was no place of safety to which the dinghy could take them. Their assailants would not expose themselves to rifle fire by day, and by night they would attack as they had done before.

The only spot where they could put up a defense for any time would be the pierhead at the break on the opposite side of the reef, and there they would be cut off from all food supplies.

"It's a good thing we have plenty of food here and water," said Floyd. "We have water enough for a week and food for a fortnight. I expect those fellows will get back to the fishing camp to-morrow and leave us alone."

He said it for the sake of saying something, but Isbel[Pg 188] shook her head. She knew the men they had to deal with.

"They will never leave us till we kill them or they kill us," said she, clearing the things from the table. "Or," she finished, "till we kill Sru."

"Yes," said Floyd, "he's the center of the whole business. Well, we will do our best to nail him."

He rose up and went to one of the loopholes by the door. Peeping through, he could see the trade goods still lying on the sands, but not a sign of the enemy.

One of the most disturbing things in this fight was the manner in which the attackers would suddenly efface themselves, as after the first fight over on the fishing beach. They had vanished now as though annihilated, leaving neither outpost nor sign to hint of what plan they might be brewing.

The moon was very low down over the western reef. It was close to dawn, and soon the sun would be flooding the world with light. If another attack was in preparation it would not be long delayed, yet not a sound came to indicate an approach to the house.

"All the same they will come," said Isbel, "and they will come before day."

"You think so?" asked Floyd.

Isbel nodded. She had taken a seat on one of the chairs, and was sitting with her hands clasping her knees. Floyd, who had taken his seat at the table, was leaning his arms upon it and following with his eyes the graining of the wood.

The spider overhead, who had finished making, or maybe repairing, his net, had just fallen on luck; a long-legged fly that had been flitting about the rafters was his prisoner.

[Pg 189]The fly, caught by a few strands of the infernal web, was making a fierce resistance. It was caught by one of its legs and by the body. The wings were free, and the buzz of their vibration made Floyd look up.

Then, for something to do, he rose and examined the thing more closely. Isbel rose, too.

The spider was quite patient about his work, and horribly scientific in his methods. The buzzing wings did not disturb him in the least. He ascended to the rafter which was his base, and then came down again, fixed a thread to one of his victim's legs, and reascended. He was binding the legs together, making everything absolutely secure before the final assault and the moment when he would bury his fangs in his prey and suck its blood.

Watching the little tragedy, Floyd and Isbel for a moment almost forgot their own position. Then Floyd, with a laugh, raised his finger and broke the strands of the web, releasing the fly.

"It was in about as bad a position as we are," said he. "Maybe it's an omen."

Isbel did not know what the word "omen" meant, nor did she ask, for at that moment, as they stood in silence watching the released one trying its wings again, a sound coming from the back of the house made them turn.

A soft, stealthy sound, as though people were creeping close to the wall, and now and then the sharp snap of some stick of the undergrowth trodden upon and broken.

Floyd, springing to the table, seized a revolver and began firing through the loophole of the back wall. He fired six shots at random; then he paused to listen.

[Pg 190]The sound continued. The men outside were evidently crouching at whatever work they were on, and so were safe and below the level of the loopholes.

"Brutes!" said he. "There is no chance of reaching them, but what on earth can they be about?"

Isbel, who had been peeping through one of the chinks near the door, came toward him.

"The day has broken," said she.