No Man's Island/Chapter 11

HE early hours of the next morning slipped by without a sign from Tiburi, without sight of canoe or native. A lookout had reported to Manning, acting as officer of the watch, that he thought he had seen canoes passing through the reefs and had heard the sound of paddling.

This was close to dawn but before the sky had begun to lighten. Manning could see nothing and could hear nothing other than the soft booming of the surf and he fancied the man mistaken, for he had used his eyes enough at sea to be sure of them.

The relief, going in at nine o’clock with Hooper in charge, keenly on the lookout for possible trouble, saw canoes hauled out on the small beach, among them Tiburi’s own easily recognizable craft. A number of natives stood at the water’s edge watching the whale-boat pass and repass with Andersen, Thompson and the two sailors of the relieved watch. Everything seemed as usual.

“Steiner and his crowd are starting already to pack their dunnage,” Hooper told Manning. “Rest and food have done them a world of good already and I think the shaving and hair-cutting did as much as anything. Steiner is a bullet-headed junker once again and his men jump to his authority. Told them we’d come off for them about eleven. He seems to have made up his mind to take it philosophically. It being a case of Hobson’s choice.”

“How about Tiburi?” asked Manning.

“I’ve a notion he’s just sulking. Wants to get his farewell gifts and hates to come aboard after the way he acted yesterday. He has sent some of his canoes away. So the lookout was right last night. They’ve probably gone back to the cone and their wives and families. I imagine they are the ones of least rank and will not share in the trade split if Tiburi gets over his sulks and tries to come aboard.”

“Edwards has hurt his leg pretty badly, according to his own account,” said Manning. “I saw him slip half-way down the companion and he claims to have sprained his ankle. He’s got it painted with iodine and bandaged up now. He couldn’t do more than hobble so I sent him to his bunk.”

“Exit Edwards, for the time being. We won’t get much more out of him this trip. Fong’ll have to do double duty, but we can make it easier for him aft.”

“He may be malingering,” suggested Manning. “Or sulking, like Tiburi, after the call-down you gave him.”

“We can get along without him,” said Hooper. “We’ve got plenty to do between now and sailing-time. Neither Andersen nor Thompson is going to turn in until we get well away.”

For two hours there was the bustle of departure, stowage of provisions, general overhauling, arrangement of a space on deck for Steiner and his fifteen men. The Mary L. would run back under her own power as long as the gasoline-supply lasted and Hooper, for humanitarian reasons as well as those of general comfort, decided to keep his quasi prisoners where they would get the full benefit of sun and air. A canvas awning was rigged from foremast to forestay for their convenience.

Hooper had expected some last gifts of fresh fruit and fish from Tiburi, but as eleven o’clock came and the chief still remained within the crater, sequestered on his little beach, he resolved to do without them. The dynamite, with several of the sticks halved, primed and fused, was still in the stern of one of the two whale-boats and there was a chance of getting mullet at the last moment.

On the terrace Steiner and his fifteen men were under guard of Holabird, White, Ryder and Smith. The boats would be full coming back and Hooper did not want to make two trips of the job. Andersen was left in charge of the schooner, with Thompson and Manning’s three assistants under him. There were also Fong and Ling and the invalided Edwards with his sprained ankle. It was a strong outfit. Four sailors went in each boat as rowers, Manning, who could handle a steering-sweep, in the stern of one, Hooper in that of the other.

Again they passed Tiburi’s canoes drawn up on the beach and again the savages came down to the water’s edge and watched them. But Tiburi was not visible. His wounded dignity seemed to demand that he keep in seclusion.

“He’ll come round at the last minute,” said Hooper. “He’ll guess we are going out on the ebb, once he sees us transporting Steiner and his crowd. We haven’t seen the last of Tiburi. Not while there is any trade left aboard the schooner.”

It was about three-quarters of a mile from the crater-gap across the inner lagoon to the landing below the terrace. Usually the guards came to the bottom of the stairways to meet the incoming boats. Two guarded each trail. They were not visible and Hooper, in the leading boat, gave the order to hold water until Manning drew up.

“Funny,” he said, screwing his eyes up at the terrace. “There’s no one in sight.”

“Back in the caves,” suggested Manning. “Or maybe Steiner balked at the last minute and our men are rounding them up.”

“Soon find out,” replied Hooper. “Give way, men.”

They bent to the oars and the boats glided into a narrow channel that led right through the strip of beach to the largest of the water-caves. This channel bore evidence of having been man-made and the landing-ledges inside the caves were too handy to have been entirely accidental. One man was left in each boat, still afloat inside the cave, and the party divided, Manning going to the left with his three men and Hooper to the right with his.

Nothing was said, action preempting words, but the impression that something had gone askew in the arrangements, that the terrace was deserted, manifested itself, not only to Hooper and Manning, but in the sailors. The whole party was armed, as usual, with rifles and automatics. At the last moment, Manning, on impulse prompted by the strange silence of the place, carried up with him the box of dynamite.

He thought it possible that Steiner and his men had retreated to some position in the caves back of the images where they could make a resistance. Or better terms. They might have overpowered their guards. He had never underestimated Steiner and the men had been warned to be careful.

The two parties reached the level of the terrace simultaneously. Manning, peering about the pedestal of a god, pistol ready, saw Hooper’s face rising from the trail at the other end. The terrace was deserted. The cooking-utensils that Steiner had been given for his party were in orderly array, ready for transshipment. So were the blankets and a bundle or two of general dunnage. But no sign of Steiner, his men or of the four guards. Only silence, broken by the low plashing of the lagoon surf on the landing-beach and the steady dripping of water from the main cave. The grass-thatched shelters were empty.

There were five caves, but four of these were only gas-blow fissures in the lava rock, two of them too narrow for a man easily to squeeze through. All these they probed and examined after a preliminary search of the big cave. That was a bewildering labyrinth in its interior. It seemed foolish to think that Steiner had hidden in its depths. He would have but the smallest supply of food and water, if any, and two men could effectually prevent any exit. Unless he figured that the schooner would sail away after Hooper and Manning had grown tired of waiting, leaving their four men. Which was equally ridiculous. And would leave Steiner within a short time at the mercy of Tiburi once again.

They gathered on the terrace, uncertain, perplexed.

“Do you suppose they have discovered some passage leading up and out on the slopes?” Hooper asked Manning. “That would only take them out of our frying-pan into Tiburi’s fire.”

“If there was one, Tiburi would have known of it and attacked them that way long ago, when you first came here,” objected the diver.

“Perhaps he did. We don’t know the details of how he finally did get Steiner. I don’t like it. And I don’t quite see what to do. We can’t leave the men. We can’t leave Steiner to be put in that stockade again. Confound the man, what’s he up to?”

His glance ranged seaward to where they could see the schooner between the reefs, through the gap in the crater walls.

“Something doing on the beach with Tiburi,” he said. “They’re launching the canoes. And they’ve got all their weapons with them. They’ve been leaving most of them behind of late. Manning, there’s something stirring that looks fishy to me.”

“Steiner and Tiburi in together. That wouldn’t”

“It’s Tiburi anyway,” said Hooper. “Look at them come. Not for the schooner, but after us. They saw us go in and they are not going to let us out.”

The canoes were forming in line across the inner lagoon. As they gazed from the terrace they saw them take order and the spray flash from the paddles and surge before the prows as they came on at top speed. The canoes fairly bristled with weapons.

“Better tackle ’em here than try to break through them in the boats,” said Hooper.

Manning looked at him from a new angle of respect. Only once had he seen Hooper in the offensive, when he knocked down Holabird. And the conviction was borne in upon him that Holabird was mixed up in this somehow, with Edwards, for all the latter’s lame ankle. Treachery!

OW Hooper’s face was a fighting-mask, set, lips firm, jaws clenched, the lower jutting out in determination, his nostrils wide and his eyes ablaze. Manning did not realize that his own features were a replica of his friend’s.

He saw the folly of trying to run the gantlet against so many canoes, able to move three times as easily, as swiftly; crowded with men who could quill them with arrows in one discharge.

The two sailors left in charge of the boats came hurrying up the trail, their faces showing their alarm.

“There are the rest of Tiburi’s canoes, out to sea,” cried Hooper. “Going to tackle the schooner. They’ll have a tough time of it.”

“Tiburi seems to have got over his fear of the Hims all right,” said Manning grimly as he examined the breech of his rifle and the clip of his automatic, half fearful that they had been in some way tampered with. “But we’ll put the fear of Us into him before he gets through.”

Hooper nodded.

“Steady, men,” he rallied the sailors. “We can hold them off from the heads of the trails. Manning, you take the left, will you? Don’t waste a shot, any one of you.”

Two of the men suddenly shrank back to the wall of the cliff, pointing upward, their faces gray under the tan. Savage yells broke out from above. Arrows rained down, glancing and shivering on the stone flags. Leaping through the bush down the steep sides of the crater came two score or more tribesmen, brandishing spears and clubs, disappearing behind the leafy screen to discharge more arrows.

Their deafening, triumphant din was echoed from the lagoon, where Tiburi and his men, the chief’s war-canoe in the center of the cannibal armada, were closing in for the beach at terrific speed. The whites were caught between two attacks. A third was closing on the schooner. White puffs of smoke showed on her decks; the reports of rifles came floating back to the terrace.

Then, from the water-cave beneath, out darted the two whale-boats, filled with Steiner and his men, rowing fast toward Tiburi. Holabird and the three other guards were with them, not as prisoners, but free, a part of the crowd, with their weapons. They turned and yelled defiance at the terrace. Tiburi’s flotilla parted to let them through and they sped on toward the schooner, the oars pulled by the German sailors. Tiburi’s savages yelled greetings to them as they passed. The whole attack had been deliberately planned and timed. Steiner, Tiburi and the four guards were in collusion for common advantages. Edwards too, in all probability, but he had funked the fight at the last minute.

“Why doesn’t Andersen put to sea?” cried Hooper. “He can come back for us.”

And then the men from the cliffs were upon them, leaping down on the terrace, yelling like so many demons from the pit; stark naked, save for ornaments, their filed teeth showing between their thick lips, drawn back in eagerness; their eyeballs flashing as they rushed wildly to hand-grips with the whites.

Some of them fell before the first fire. The fight became a mêlée in which the savages had an advantage with their weapons made for hand-to-hand combat, clubs of hardwood beaked with stone and shell; their skill and strength in handling them. The sailors were beaten back, Hooper and Manning in the front rank, making every shot of their pistols count in the desperate fight. They had none too many bullets. In a few moments the main attack would land from the canoes, rushing up at their backs, hewing, stabbing, spearing.

Manning flung his empty automatic into the open mouth of a warrior, breaking his teeth and spoiling the blow he was whirling down. He clubbed his rifle and used it as a flail, smashing furiously with Hooper beside him. The attack was so furious that the cannibals blocked themselves by their packed formation but sheer weight told and several of the men were bleeding.

A warrior sprang out and clung to Hooper’s uplifted arms, swinging his rifle. Another thrust at him with a spear that bristled with sharks’ teeth and was tipped with shell. Manning’s rifle-butt came down upon the skull of the second and shattered it like a pumpkin, spattering blood and brains. As the blow landed a savage sprang on him with a war-club and Manning kicked him in the knee, bringing him down with a howl of rage, clasping at Manning’s legs, dragging the white man down asprawl.

Manning still clutched his rifle in one hand; the warrior was beneath him,-striving to twist uppermost while Manning sought his throat with his left hand. Then weight sagged him, twining limbs imprisoned his. He was helpless, waiting for the final blow like a trussed ox—unless they were after him alive!

That thought shot through him in a lightning-flash. Then the strenuous pressure above and about relaxed. He heaved up. A hand caught him by the elbow and he stood erect. Three of the sailors were down. Hooper, bloody but smiling, was beside him. Manning’s first opponent lay with his face formless, bashed in by the butt of Hooper’s gun—another swung an arm broken at the elbow.

“Even,” said Hooper, panting.

“Rush ’em—dynamite! Rush ’em a bit!” gasped Manning.

Hooper gave him a look that swiftly lightened as he took in the meaning.

With a yell that outtopped any native whoop, that carried terror in its deep-throated heartiness, Hooper jumped at the massed ranks of the savages, embarrassed by their own numbers, amazed at the resistance of these hard-fighting whites. The sailors still on their feet, desperate, maddened by the trap that they were in, followed their leader and the mob gave sullenly back, a foot—a yard—two more, past the base of the biggest statue that leaned on its pedestal out above the cliff.

Beside it Manning had set down his precious box of explosives. As the natives stiffened, taking fresh heart at the yells that came up from below, as the canoes made a dash for the last fifty yards between them and the beach, he snatched out some of the half-sticks that were ready-primed. He found his matches, lighted the ruffled fuses, blowing at them.

“Back!” he roared. “Come back!”

Facing the savages, Hooper pressed back his sailors, stumbling over the dead and wounded.

“Take cover!” shouted Manning, and they leaped aside behind the pedestals, into the main cave, while Manning flung two grenades into the thick of the astounded savages and crouched back of the base of the great god, hurriedly stuffing into a crevice more of the prepared dynamite.

With a roar and a burst of flame the explosive detonated. The wail of the stricken cannibals, blown up, crisped, torn apart, those unharmed flung flat while the noise of the blast resounded from the cliff, was merged in a second storm of thundering noise and darting lightnings. Manning, racing for cover, was flung down, stunned as the terrace shook, the base of the great god rocked, the statue toppled and went hurtling down.

It crashed fairly into the clutter of landing canoes, half in the water, half on the beach, splintering Tiburi’s own craft, the crown one missile, the body and the pedestal two thunderbolts that crushed bodies to pulp and turned the peaceful tide crimson.