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The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom




(1888)
Country of origin: Australia Australia
Available texts by the same author here Dokument


XXVI. A Night Raid.

   DISCOVERED! With their intended victims in front and behind. How many? Ah! the inability to answer this question in a moment of uncertainty is how a hundred armies have been conquered before now, and battles lost.
   Kamo rushed down that lane with the rapidity of a racehorse, and would have been the first to give the warning to his friends had the road been clear, for the hundred and seventy-nine men paused irresolute in the forest as they heard the death shriek of their comrade, mixed with that wild yell, which gave the alarm to the sentinels in front, not knowing whether to turn back or advance; but, unfortunately for his project, there stood another guard about the middle of the path, against whom Kamo came with such velocity that they were both spun different ways, and for a moment were completely dazed with the collision.
   The guard, being a much more solidly built man than Kamo, was the first to recover wind, and when he did, without a moment longer pausing to consider matters, he plunged straight in the direction of his prostrate enemy, knife in hand, to finish up his advantage.
   The darkness, which had befriended before it be trayed the youth, once more acted on his side, for, as the other lunged wildly forward, striking at random, Kamo also slowly recovering, by chance caught at the arm, and so together they closed with one another in a most desperate and silent hand-to-hand tussle.
   Kamo felt he was in the furious grasp of an ignorant friend, much more powerful than himself, and tried with all his might to make him aware of the mistake he was labouring under, but without succeeding; as it required all his waning strength and breath to hold him back for the first few moments.
   At last, when the issue was no longer doubtful, he managed, with the knife almost at his throat, to gasp out,--
   "Don't kill me--Kamo!"
   "Ah!" the other relaxed his embrace just in time.
   "The enemy is behind!" panted the exhausted youth, huskily. "To the village and warn them, I will come when I can."
   "How many?"
   "One hundred and--"
   It was no time to explain matters further. Up leapt the savage, and away as the words were passing Kamo's dry throat, leaving him to pick himself up as best he could, and follow with his news.
   So it chanced that the three sentinels broke from their cover simultaneously at the moment when Toto demanded an opportunity of proving his valour as the defender of his country, while poor Kamo once more lost his chance of distinguishing himself, for the present at any rate, by telling of his single-handed action.
   Mavaraiko, an old and tried warrior, at once drew his men into the shadow side of the Dubo, where he promptly questioned the outposts.
   The two first could only speak of their alarm at the yell and death--shriek, so the third had it his own way. He briefly recounted his contact and struggle with Kamo.
   "How many did the boy say?" asked the chief.
   "One hundred, oh Kavana!" answered the sentinel promptly.
   It was as well for the pluck of the invaded that Kamo had not been permitted to finish his sentence.
   "And we are sixty, counting the old men!" muttered the chief. "But where are they that they do not come?"
   "Perhaps they do not know our force, and the fires have frightened them," replied Ila, the old father of Kamo.
   "That must be it," said the chief, pondering deeply for a moment, while his followers watched the thicket with anxious eyes.
   "We will beat them, and get many heads, for they must be afraid. Ila go round the huts and raise the women, they must help us, this must help us to-night; give them drums and the war-horns, and take four men and ten women round by the east end of the forest. Kupa, take the same number and go by the west; when you get equal distances from each other, and when you think you are behind them, make the women beat upon their drums and blow their horns, that will cause them to think our allies are joining us. Take only the young women, for they can blow hard on the conch shells, and see that Rea is of the number chosen. You, Heni, are old, and can be spared tonight;--gather the old women together on to the beach, and take all the canoes, put them in, and let them go half a mile from the shore, when that distance make all the noise you can, they will by that means think the Kerepuni men are coming to help us,--go quickly."
   The three men glided off like shadows without reply.
   "Toto!"
   No reply.
   "Where is Toto?"
   Ay, where was the gallant Toto, now that the moment of action had arrived?
   One of the spectators at last replied how he had seen the defender roll off the platform. A general grim laugh followed this revelation.
   "No matter," replied the chief, "we can do without him; I never saw him fight, yet ye know what Kamo can do, and I wish he was with us."
   "Kamo is here, oh Kavana," replied that youth with becoming modesty, rising up from the shadows beside the chief.
   "Welcome, my son, as you fight to-night, so will we judge your fault to-morrow, but what have you got there?"
   One of the heads had touched against the nude skin of Mavaraiko, as Kamo rubbed against him.
   "Four heads for the Dubo house," replied Kamo, pitching them down so that they rolled a little way into the fire-glare.
   "Good boy, you are a warrior, and have already wiped away your bad luck; how many have you killed?"
   "Twenty-one dead men lie on the mountain-track, whom I have killed to-night."
   Exclamations of wonder and delight broke from the assembled men when Kamo told his adventures, while the chief by a low whisper stopped him when he was about to tell of the number left.
   "Hush, Kamo, how many?"
   "Two hundred went before me, oh Kavana," whispered Kamo back again; "one hundred and seventy-nine are waiting in the forest close to the gardens."
   "Do not speak of it, my son," replied the chief in a low voice, and then raising his tones, he said,--
   "Kamo is a boy, and has slain twenty-one men; he went to meet them without a weapon, and comes back armed with spears; we must do no less, for we are men and have our spears; come, my braves, we will meet them in the forest and drive them into the light where we can kill them as we like;--guide us, Kamo, to where they are."
   Along the shadows, behind the houses, they all crept towards the cutting, leaving the fire burning brightly in the deserted village, with only the pigs to look after them, for the dogs, accustomed to the hunt, went with their masters.
   Meantime the one hundred and seventy-nine mountain men were still in about the same place as Kamo had left them, the silence around them being profound, and therefore, as they felt from experience, pregnant of treachery. The fires glittered through the intersections of palm fronds, palisades and forest leaves, and flickered upon odd portions of their bodies as they instinctively gathered closely about their chief, weapons in grasp, all ready for the sudden surprise, which they had come prepared to give, but now expected to receive instead.
   Was the enemy behind, in front, or had the allies joined and surrounded them, luring them into a trap and cutting off their retreat? No man dared to move or speak as they stood and listened intently.
   The chief himself was at a loss--he was old and not so quick either with his hand or his brain--and so he only stood, helpless, waiting upon the inspiration which would not come.
   Now, also, for the first time, they missed their twenty-one companions, at least, the twenty, for the last man slain lay a few yards away, with the man-trap still about his neck, the cane handle bent and twisted under him where he had fallen backwards upon it, and that broad bar of fire-light dancing slant-ways over his body, and gleaming upon the under half of one cheek, and this sight before their eyes, with the mysterious disappearance of the other twenty men, filled each breast with anticipated horror and superstitious chills, which seemed to freeze up their hearts, and pluck the courage from them, and the strength from their arms, their muscles seemed paralyzed, and their brains to be benumbed.
   Time passed on without a change in their position--quarter of an hour, half an hour, still that appalling silence of treachery around, the uncertain flickering and dancing of those dusky lights, fluttering like bronze-winged butterflies amongst the black shadows. That single bar of copper glow, moving and shifting slant-ways over the dead body so near to them, with the motion which a sleeper's breathing causes, and at times darting from the under part of the cheek to the one glistening, protruding eye, with a red sparkle, horrible to look at.
   "Ha! they are behind us," cried the chief at last, as the faint wind, breathing westward, bore the first distant blast of the conch shells from Ila's company of women, "they have got the Hood Bay men to help them."
   Another burst answered the first from the west, at which the men answered, "And the tribes from Round Head, let us get home."
   With one impulse they turned on their track to fly backwards, when suddenly the forest seemed alive with yells, as Mavaraiko and his party burst upon them from the cutting.
   "To the beach," shouted the old chief, suddenly waking up; "let us die in the open."
   And leading the way, he rushed towards the gardens, with the Hulu warriors spearing and man-trapping them as they fled.
   Through the native gardens they all rushed, without order or discrimination, smashing down the palisades of bamboo, knocking against banana, palm, and Mammy trunks, tripped up by disorderly confusion on the ground of yams and sharded fronds, squashing amongst the lushness of decaying vegetable matter, and splashing up the mud from the watering pools, while their hunters, knowing the ground thoroughly and the necessity of action before reaching the light, where their disparity of numbers would be revealed, pursued them ruthlessly, with savage cries scattering them as much as possible, while they plunged their spears into them, leaving them where they stuck, pinned to the moist soil; man-trapping them when the spears were used up, casting man and trap away with force, to finish up the battle in the open with their flint-loaded clubs and axes.
   Through the gardens, and down the lanes, with the fires growing less and redder in their glaring, the hill-men went in broken up, disorganized masses, hardly even looking behind them, eager only to get into open space and light. The old chief, borne along in front of the impetuous rush and charge, the air filled now with sounds enough, shrieking of the dying and stabbed, nearer blowing of the conch-shells and beating of the drums, as the loud sounds of the battle attracted the now united bands of girls who came on close to the yelling hunters, with their lanes and gardens trampled down, and sprinkled with dead and wounded men, implements of war, bare and broken-down banana-trees.
   As yet the panic had been so complete on the part of the mountain tribe, that not a man of the sixty followers of Mavaraiko had received a wound, but now, as they rushed into the dimly-lighted square, for the fires were getting low, with this half-hour of neglect, the crisis had come when fair fighting would have to decide the question of victory.
   Into the centre of the village, scattering the pigs right and left, the old chief dashed with about ninety men left out of his hundred and seventy--nine, and most of these more or less wounded. With a rush and a rapid wheel round they gathered themselves about the old warrior with their faces towards their pursuers: those foremost had the advantage of a few seconds to form this impromptu circle, for slaughtering is slower work than flying, and as the wounded came on they were, with the characteristic trait of savages, made to stand on the outside and act as barricades for those unwounded inside.
   Ninety men in the full light, with sixty men forming themselves like a pack of hungry wolves in the shadow.
   Ninety men who did not know the force opposed to them in that darkness, and sixty men who knew exactly where they were.
   Ninety men in a decided trap, more or less wounded, and sixty out in the open, and still fresh.
   The chances were not much in favour of the majority, in this New Guinea game of "poker" for life and death.



   Toto bounded from the platform with the agility of an acrobat, and found himself in a few more seconds dragging away at one of the numerous small canoes which were lying well drawn up on the sea--shore, with all the strength which his frantic fear inspired him with.
   These small canoes are mostly used by the children and girls of Hula for fishing purposes or to carry water; they are capable of conveying with safety a dozen or more, for with their outriggers they can hardly either sink or capsize, no matter how heavily laden they may be, while, on the other hand, they can be quite easily handled by one, as they are lightly made and narrow, so not at all difficult to drag along the dry smooth sands.
   Seizing a couple of small paddles from many which were lying loosely about the shore, Toto quickly got his canoe afloat, and for the next five minutes paddled with all his energy in a direct line seaward; then he paused to rest himself, and look backwards towards the village which he had fled from.
   The fires were still blazing away brightly, and casting long glittering reflections down the many ripples of the coral-protected waters, while the houses built upon the sands stood out strongly in dark relief upon their piles, through which the golden firelight became the more intensified. Over within the bay eastward of him he could see the houses of refuge, raised from the waves, and about half-a-mile from shore.
   It was getting on towards morning, and the horned moon which had lighted up their spirit-meeting in the early portion of the evening had long since set over towards Round Head--the darkest hour of the night, yet the stars were very lustrous in the dome above and around.
   Out towards the stormy gulf he could hear the unceasing rushing and beating of the surf against the great coral walls, but on shore all was silence, with only the merry fires blazing as a sign of life.
   Toto began to think that he had been a little premature in his desertion of his friends, and began to east about in his mind how he could explain away his absence if, after all, it had been a false alarm. There could be no battle without noise, and as yet there was none from the shore.
   Had he not better get back before he was missed? No, there might be fighting yet, and he could always depend upon his own ingenuity to tell an easy lie, if required. Besides, he did not care much what they thought about his courage, so that he did nothing foolish enough to turn the father of Rea against his suit, and now that he had his public promise he felt pretty safe on that score, so he decided it to be wiser to wait where he was until he saw how things were likely to turn out.
   "I can always pretend that I went out to look after the enemy when I am sure they are not there; but I had best be sure first, and then I can pull quietly ashore and slip among them with a big story, which I can easily make them believe."
   So he consoled himself, and sat at his ease, looking towards the fires.
   By-and-by he saw the shadows of figures dragging at the boats, as he had done, and quickly putting out towards him, at which again he took alarm, and began pulling in the direction of Round Head.



   "What is that on the water?" exclaimed the old man Heni, as he paused to rest on his paddle, with his flotilla about him, and looked towards Round Head Point. "My sight is not good; look for me, Kupatele, for your eyes are sharp."
   Kupatele, a strong young matron of about twenty-one summers, rose upright in her canoe, and, shading her eyes from the distant fire-glare, looked long and searchingly into the star-lit distance.
   "I see nothing, Heni," she said at last, sitting down again and taking up her steering paddle.
   "Do you hear nothing?"
   A moment or two of anxious listening, after which the woman laid her ear alongside the edge of the canoe.
   "Whirr! whirr! whirr!" very faintly and in the distance, but decidedly different from the monotonous sounds of the surf against the barrier; it was the vibrating sound of a steam propeller thrashing and churning the waves, miles away and going very leisurely. Sounds carry very far on the waters in those latitudes during this season of the year.
   Without a word, and regardless of sharks being about, Kupatele slipped her raumma down from her waist and slid over the side of the canoe into the shallow waters, which reached up to her breasts, then stooped her head forward till her eyes were on a level with the surface.
   "Puff! puff! Beretana smoking-boat coming, and little canoe going to meet it," whispered the woman, as she once more clambered into her place.
   "Ha! they will help our friends. Let some of you go and meet them, and catch up the little boat if you can, Kupatele, and see who has run away from the danger to-night," said Heni, settling himself back to look on the shore.
   "I think it must be Toto," observed one of the other youngest women, "for I saw him, through the cracks, jump from the Dubo House and run down towards the beach when the boys came from the forest crying."
   "And you ought to know Toto pretty well, Hankowa, not to make a mistake in the man," replied Kupatele, in a jeering voice.
   "Not more than Kupatele," retorted the other. "You were often enough at his place with your shells when the Beretana sailors came to smoke the bau-bau."
   "Be quiet," commanded Heni, sternly, "or I shall tell both your husbands what you say. Go at once, and bring the white fellows quickly, if you want to see them again."
   "If it is Toto, I shall soon catch him," cried out Kupatele as she darted off, "for he is too fat and lazy to go fast."
   On shore the fires were getting low, though still blazing, only the reflections were more vermilion than golden, and the columns of smoke which before blotted out the stars as they floated amongst them now spread out transparently, blurring them only, and causing them to shake and quiver with split-up rays.
   As Kupatele and the women deputed to accompany her darted off on their mission, Heni and those left behind heard the faint sounds of the conch-shells blown by the bands of girls ashore, with the beating of the drums, and at once responded to them with all their might, making such a din on the waters that Toto, by this time almost used up with his unexpected exertions, thought the enemy had discovered him, and were making all this row for his special benefit, and became so paralyzed with the horror of the idea that he dropped one of his two paddles over the side, and nearly tumbled in himself in his frantic efforts to get it again.
   Meantime the women were coming rapidly hand over hand, while poor Toto dashed the water about him aimlessly in his endeavour to get away with the one paddle.
   He splashed and dashed about with his canoe, making no headway, while he lost his head so completely that he seemed to forget the sea--craft which every child on the coast knows even before he can well walk, and which Toto had learnt as a child like the others, striking at the water blindly and frantically.
   "Caught!" cried Kupatele, coming up the first, and running her canoe prow against his with a bang which made it almost capsize, and sent the unfortunate pandarus overboard head foremost. Toto gave a shrick of mortal horror, which was checked before full delivery by the splashing waters.
   A faint gleam from the fires gave Kupatele and her companions a rapid glimpse of the vanishing pijamas before they were swallowed up, so that she exclaimed with a laugh,--
   "What a funny fish that was! Let us dive for him, and take him home to supper."


Chapter 27 >