White Fire Part 43

When the discussion came to a pause, Captain Cathie jumped up and went to the window.

"I'm off," he said quickly.

"If Mrs. Blair will excuse me for to-night, I will go too," said Pym.

"If there is risk for the _Torch_ there is risk for the _Bonita_, and I would sooner be on the spot."

"I hope there is no danger," said Jean. "We have had many a big storm, but the s.h.i.+ps have never suffered."

"Barometer's lower than it's ever been since we came here," said Cathie, with a shake of the head; "and I've no doubt Captain Pym feels as I do, that when you don't know what's in the wind it's as well to be where you can find out."

"Quite so," said Captain Pym, and Blair went down with them to the boat.

They were nearly blown off their feet before they got to it, and the waves that swept up the white beach were such as they had never seen on it before. The rush of the wind in their ears dulled all other sounds.

In the spasmodic gleams of the moon through the ragged clouds they could see the rollers sweeping over the barrier reef with unbroken crests, and the usually placid lagoon was in a turmoil.

"Can we manage it?" shouted Pym, in Cathie's ear.

"Under the lee of the ledge there," shouted Cathie, and pounded on the door of the men's house for his crew.

Blair helped them down with the boat, saw them all soaked through before they could get afloat, and then watched them toil away into the lee of the protecting ridge of rocks.

"They'll have their own to-do to get there," he said, when he got back to the house. "The waves are coming right in over the reef. I never saw anything like it."

"Is this man going to make trouble for us, Ken?" asked Jean anxiously.

"Oh, I don't think so. Don't worry about him, dear. He's a bit b.u.mptious and unsympathetic, but I think we can show him that we could have done no less than we did. He doesn't trouble me in the slightest.

Whatever he does, our work stands and tells its own tale."

In the morning it seemed to the unknowing as though the storm had blown itself out. The wind had fallen, but the sky was heavy; dark grey clouds boiled along close above mud-coloured waves, and the horizon lay just back of the reef. The sun made a faint fight for a show, but looked and felt out of place, and after pus.h.i.+ng ghostly fingers through stray holes in the clouds, and peeping at the water below, went into retirement again.

The two captains came ash.o.r.e after breakfast, but when Jean expressed satisfaction at the pa.s.sing of the storm without any damage, Cathie only shook his head.

"Now, Captain Pym," said Blair, as they walked along towards the village, "let me remind you that less than two years ago these people were eating one another, and delighting in it. There has not been a man eaten on Kapaa'a for over twelve months now. Here is the boys'

school. That is the girls'. As it is Sunday, they are all in church waiting for us. Perhaps you will stop for the service. It is very short and simple. Then we will go on and show you other evidences of our work."

The church was crowded, and when the brown men and women and children sang "Crown Him!" at the full stretch of their lungs, most of their black eyes were fixed on Captain Pym--to his great discomfort--as though they applied the hymn specifically to him, which possibly some of them did.

After service Blair conducted him to the village, and on to the plantations and taro fields, and even Captain Pym's official phlegm and preconceived notions had to acknowledge that, for a country three years ago buried in barbarism, the sights he saw were very striking.

He did not say much. His feelings were at strife. He had come to condemn, and he found himself forced to admit and admire.

The plantations had by degrees crept a considerable way up the valley.

The party came back along the shoulder of Ra'a's hill, and as they came towards the open a furious gust of wind carried them almost off their feet.

And then they saw the most appalling sight of their lives, and one they never forgot.

Out of the dim grey curtain of the west there appeared a monstrous sinuous shape that reached from sky to sea, and came swirling towards the island with an easy voluptuous grace that was full at once of haphazard fortuity and most malign intention.

They stood frozen. Blair suddenly gripped Pym by the arm. He could not speak.

Behind the first monster came another, and another, and another, all reeling hither and thither like drunken demons, but all making straight for the island.

"Good G.o.d!" cried Pym, and instinctively put his hands to his mouth to shout a warning to his s.h.i.+p, a shout that could not have carried five inches.

Then he commenced to run down the hill as he had never run in his life before. His whole thought was for his s.h.i.+p and his men, Blair's and Cathie's for the people below.

Captain Pym reached the beach through a crowd of fugitives making for the hillside. The monsters had been sighted, and panic was afoot.

Blair and Cathie rushed down through the village, shouting--

"To the hills!" and sped on.

Jean and Aunt Jannet Harvey, busy in the house, had seen nothing. The two men dashed up the steps. Blair seized his boy under one arm, and dragged his wife by the other. Cathie laid hold of Aunt Jannet, and with a gasping word of explanation which only filled the women with fear, and explained nothing, they ran for the southern hill, whose arm ran out into the sea.

Only when they had got half-way up it did they dare to turn and look.

They saw Pym ramping alone on the beach like a madman.

They saw the first of the hideous whirling monsters hop lightly over the swollen reef without a pause and pirouette in the lagoon. Then a blast of smoke whirled from the deck of the _Torch_, and the dull sound of the gun went quickly past them. The monster writhed and broke, and the pendulous head of it swept inland. The s.h.i.+ps pitched at their moorings till the kedge cables snapped and they seemed standing on their sterns. The waves of the lagoon churned up to the platforms of the mission-houses.

"Good lad! Good lad!" shouted Cathie.

Then the other three monsters, as though in answer to the challenge, as though endued with malignant understanding and most devilish determination, bent and swung and reeled over the reef and flung themselves towards the s.h.i.+ps.

They saw Captain Pym suddenly throw up his hands above his head in a gesture of utter impotence and despair, and then turn and make for the hill.

The watchers crouched in a crevice of the hillside and gazed narrow-eyed, and their breaths came quick and short, not from the run but because their hearts were in their throats and choked their breathing.

It was a most terrible sight. The powers of all evil--death, destruction, and malignity--against the puny works of man.

The three awful whirling shapes danced and swung in the lagoon, showing off all their evil graces. Three ineffectual flashes broke from the gunboat, but they avoided them with an easy swing, as though they understood and were on their guard. They reeled towards one another and seemed to take evil counsel together. Then, as though moved by one mind, they swooped down straight on the s.h.i.+ps.

"Oh, cruel! cruel!" moaned Jean, clasping her boy to her and hiding her face in him.

Captain Cathie groaned as he watched, and then burst into incoherent, and unusual, and most excusable blasphemies.

Aunt Jannet and Kenneth Blair stared in dreadful fascination.

For one of the whirling monsters reached the s.h.i.+ps, picked them up, and smashed them and itself together in one dreadful destruction. When the wild welter settled down and permitted sight, the lagoon was bare save for scattered fragments and struggling figures.

Another of the awful things made for the opposite mountain side. They saw it strike and break there. The solid earth crumbled and splashed like mud, and palms and rocks slid down to the sea, while the swollen hanging top of it swung away along the hillside belching ragged torrents as it went.

The remaining one went roaring past them like a great wounded beast, and tore up the valley, breaking itself and scattering destruction broadcast. They heard the final crash of it away up among the hills, and a foaming torrent came sweeping down the valley carrying everything before it.

All this time the wind was blowing a hurricane, Such palms as were left standing whipped and writhed in vain agonies. Some snapped like carrots and lay still. The rain beat mercilessly on the fearful watchers and bit like whips. Blair bent over his wife and boy to s.h.i.+eld them with his body. Aunt Jannet, dishevelled and grey, and haggard, still peered out at the horrors in front.

A sound from her, between a gasp and a groan, and a sudden terrified clutch at his arm, brought Blair's face up to the crowning horror.