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"Well, look here now, Banderah. Are you going to do it?" "Yes, I do it right enough." "When?" "To-mollow." "To-morrow will do. And, look here, Bandy, I'm going to give you ten sovereigns each for the men I took away from you." "All right," answered the chief, "now you go away. I want go and look out for some good men come along me to-mollow." "Right you are, Banderah. Take plenty good men.
And he meant to take deadly vengeance. "Banderah, old man," and the captain laid one hand on the chiefs naked knee, "I meant to pay you for those men when I came back next trip. But I was taken by a man-of-war," here Bilker crossed his wrists to signify that he had been handcuffed; "taken to Sydney, put me in calaboose ten years."
"That's d d curious!" said Blount, turning to Banderah and speaking in English; and then the chief took him by the arm and pointed towards the shore the boat, pulled by Schwartzkoff and Bur-rowes, with Captain Bilker sitting in the stern, had just touched the beach. Then it flashed across his mind in an instant why the natives had left so suddenly they were lying in ambush for the three men!
Then springing out from the rest, he swung a short-handled, keen-bladed hatchet over his head, and sank it into the brain of the wretched Baxter. * Synonymous with Maori utu revenge. "Stand thou aside, Banderah, son of Paylap," screamed the old man, waving the bloody hatchet fiercely at him.
The bush tribes on Mayou, although at war with Banderah and his coast tribes, yet occasionally met their foes in an amicable manner at a bush village called Rogga, which had been for many decades a neutral ground. At several of these meetings Mr. Deighton had been present, in the vain hope that he might establish friendly relations with the savage and cannibal people of the interior.
And as Banderah looked at the old man's working face, and saw the savage mouth, flecked with foam, writhing and twisting in horrible contortions, and then saw the almost equally dreadful visages of the rest of his men, he knew that the old, old lust for human flesh had come upon them.
Presently the two yachting gentlemen, arrayed in a very stylish sporting get-up, appeared with their breach-loaders and cartridge-belts, and waving their hands gracefully to the missionary and his wife, disappeared with Banderah and his dark-skinned companions into the dense tropical jungle, the edge of which was within a very short distance of the mission station.
The white man's face paled. "I don't know, Banderah. I didn't know your brother was aboard when my mate put the hatches on. I thought he had gone ashore. I never meant to take him away to Fiji anyway." "All right; never mind that. But what you want talk to me about?" And then, as if to put his visitor at his ease, he added, "You dam rogue, me dam rogue."
Banderah, the supreme chief of Mayou, was, vide Mr. Deighton's report to his clerical superiors, "a man of much intelligence, favourably disposed to the spread of the Gospel, but, alas! of a worldly nature, and clinging for worldly reasons to the darkness."
"Stay here and pray if you like and get your throat cut In ten in five minutes more, every native except Banderah will be here ready to burn and murder. I tell you, man, that our only chance of safety is to reach my house first, and then the schooner. Come, Mrs. Deighton. For God's sake, come!" Pushing past the missionary, he seized Mrs. Deighton by the hand and descended the steps.
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