Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/39

 The foam boiled to his calf when the mightier breakers came,

And the torch shed in the wind scattering tufts of flame.

Afar on the dark lagoon a canoe lay idly at wait:

A figure dimly guiding it: surely the fisherman's mate,

Rahéro saw and he smiled. He straightened his mighty thews:

Naked, with never a weapon, and covered with scorch and bruise,

He straightened his arms, he filled the void of his body with breath,

And, strong as the wind in his manhood, doomed the fisher to death.

Silent he entered the water, and silently swam, and came

There where the fisher walked, holding on high the flame.

Loud on the pier of the reef volleyed the breach of the sea;

And hard at the back of the man, Rahéro crept to his knee

On the coral, and suddenly sprang and seized him, the elder hand

Clutching the joint of his throat, the other snatching the brand

Ere it had time to fall, and holding it steady and high.

Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye—

Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahéro resisted the strain,

And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain,

And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump at his feet.

One moment: and there, on the reef, where the breakers whitened and beat,

Rahéro was standing alone, glowing and scorched and bare,

A victor unknown of any, raising the torch in the air. 27