Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/130

 pandanas palms, brothers of the trees growing further along the reef that were being used for canoe building.

Aioma knew from old experience what white men could do with guns, but he did not know that a house wall capable of stopping an arrow was incapable of stopping a rifle bullet.

Rantan seeing nothing else to fire at aimed at one of the houses, fired, and as the smoke cleared saw, literally, the house burst open.

The women poured out through the broken canes, made as if to run along the reef to the west and were suddenly headed back by a figure armed with a canoe paddle. It was Dick. He drove them into the mammee apple, where they took cover with the others, then running to the second house of refuge, whilst the bullets whizzed around him, he bade the women in it lie down, calling to the other hidden women to do the same, and then taking shelter himself.

But the blunder of Aioma was fatal. The men in the boat knew now for certain that the mammee apple thickets were packed, that there were no pot holes or crevasses of any account on the seaward side of the reef, that they had the population of Karolin corralled.

Resting his rifle carefully on the gunnel, Rantan led off. He couldn’t well miss, and the deafening explosion of the rifle was followed by a shriek and a movement in the distant bushes where some unfortunate had been hit, and, striving to rise, had been pulled down by his or her companions.