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Then the surf broke her in pieces, and Tematau and the other men had to swim long hours to reach the shore. And as thou knowest, the north end of the lagoon hath many sharks, and it is bad to swim there at night even for a little time." "Bad indeed, Niâbon," I said, with a shudder; "'tis a wonder that any one of them reached the shore." She smiled mysteriously.
His master hath beaten him so that he is near to death. And we have come to seek aid from thee." I knew the speaker, but did not question her any further at the time, beyond asking her if he whom she called Tematau could rise and walk to the house.
I was about to ask him to have a glass of grog, just out of mere civility and island custom, when Tematau and Tepi made a sudden movement, and turning, I saw that they were trying to prevent three or four of Tolly's boat's crew from coming on board. "Tell your men to keep to their boat, please," I said sharply.
"That is Tematau, my husband's head boatman," said my hostess in her soft tones, as she watched him walking down to the beach; "he is so different from these noisy, quarrelsome Tarawa people, that I am always glad to have him about the house when he is not wanted in the boats. He is so quick, and yet so quiet."
"Get thy arms ready," I said to Tematau and Tepi, "and if these fellows are saucy stand by me like men, I shall not lift anchor and ran away because Apinoka of Apamama sendeth a boat to me."
Krause lay on his back in the centre of the room, his white duck clothes saturated with blood, which was still welling from three or four wounds in his deep, broad chest. I went over to him. He was dead. "Who hath done this?" I asked. "I, master," and Tematau placed an ensanguined hand on mine. "And I," said a softer voice, and Niâbon's eyes met mine calmly.
It was done so that when the German man-of-war comes here, no trace of him will ever be found;" and then she told me frankly the whole story, and the meaning of the strange silence of the natives. Krause, she said, after his savage attack upon Tematau, had told his terrified wife that he meant to bring back Tematau, and kill Niâbon.
The people at the fishing village, who had been watching the fight throughout from a safe distance, were within sight, so telling the prisoner he must go to them and get them to carry their dead and wounded up to the houses before the tide covered the reef again, I sent him off with Tematau, Tepi, and Niâbon.
Her strange, mysterious eyes as she spoke seemed to me a physically weak but still mentally strong man at the moment to have in them something weird, something that one could not affect either to ignore or despise. What could this woman know of my desire to leave the island in my boat? What could the man Tematau know of it?
What could I not do with such a boat and two such men as Tepi and Tematau, after we had landed Lucia and Niâbon at Guam in the for north!
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