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Timoa pointed to the lump which had been raised on his shin, grinned again, and turning quickly round, glided into the underwood like an evil spirit of the night. At that time Menalee was engaged in some menial work in the hut of John Mills. Managing to attract his attention, Timoa sent him into the woods to join Nehow.
Presently they came to an opening in the bushes, through which they could see him, not thirty yards off. Timoa drew himself together, and in a crouching attitude levelled his musket. During their absence in the woods, these men had practised shooting at a mark, doubtless in preparation for the occasion which had now arrived.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Nehow, who thereupon hastily detailed a plan, which they proceeded at once to carry out. Creeping round through the woods, they managed to get into McCoy's house by a back window, unobserved. Menalee then ran down to the garden, as if in a state of great excitement. "Oh, Missr McCoy, Timoa and Nehow hab come down from mountain, an' is robbin' you house!"
"Yes," said Quintal; "I vote that we get up a grand hunt, run them to earth, and shoot them like dogs, as they are." "Not so easy as you think to hunt down such men among these wild and wooded hills," said Young. "Besides, it is only Talaloo who has threatened us; Timoa is guiltless, I think." "I'll tell you what we'll do, lads; we'll poison 'em," said Williams.
The two combined assisted the pipe in soothing William McCoy at least so we may assume, because he had commanded the music, and lay in his bunk in the attitude of one enjoying it. He sometimes even added to the harmony by uttering a bass growl at the pipe. During a brief pause in the accompaniment Timoa became aware of a low hiss outside, as if of a serpent.
Tetaheite and Menalee then both sprang upon him, but he nearly throttled the one, tripped up the other, and, succeeding by a violent wrench in breaking loose, once more took to his heels. In running, the Otaheitans were no match for him. He gradually left them behind. Then Timoa called out to him to stop.
His man, or slave, Timoa, was seated on the opposite side of the hut, playing an accompaniment on the flute to McCoy's wife and two other native women, who were singing. The flute was one of those rough-and-ready yellow things, like the leg of a chair, which might serve equally well as a policeman's baton or a musical instrument.
"That's true," cried Mills, with a laugh, in which all the party except Christian joined more or less sarcastically according to humour. "Oh, mother," exclaimed Otaheitan Sally, going into her hut on tiptoe a few minutes later, with her great eyes dilated in horror, "the white mens is talkin' of shootin' Timoa and Nehow!"
Timoa is, of course, meant for Timor. "It has been the pleasure of this generation to malign and misrepresent this good man and brave, not once, but continually. It originated in false statements made in the defence of two of the mutineers, Christian and Heywood, representing Bligh's severity and cruelty as being the cause of the mutiny.
Like Quintal and McCoy among the whites, he was among the blacks a bad specimen of humanity. The consequence was that Timoa and Nehow, being resolved to submit no longer to the harsh treatment they had hitherto received, ran away from their persecutors, and took refuge in the bush.
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