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Bidding his sister and the old chief Kanka to come with him, Charlik quickly left the house, and walking through a grove of breadfruit trees, reached a spot from where he had a full view of the open sea.
Seated beside Brandon was the grim-faced Charlik, who was in high good humour at the speed shown by the boat, and promised to build him a new house within a few weeks. For nearly two hours the boat spun southward along the line of thundering breakers on the eastern shore, till Brandon hauled to the wind and ran inside the narrow passage to Utwé Harbour.
Further speech was denied them, for suddenly the thronging and excited natives around them drew aside right and left as Charlik, with a face beaming with smiles, came up to Cayse with outstretched hand, and greeted him warmly in English. Then he turned quickly to the Englishman and shook hands with him also, and asked him from whence he came. "From Sydney.
There right in the passage was a small barque; and, almost within hail, and just rounding the northern horn of the reef was a larger vessel, one glance at which told Charlik that it was the American whaler for which he had so long waited. In less than an hour they were at anchor abreast of the king's house, and the two captains were being rowed ashore. They met on the beach.
One by one the messengers knelt upon the coral flags no need for them to ask for mercy from Charlik, the savage son of a bloodstained father. The bearer of the club held the weapon knob downward, and watched the king's face for the signal of death. He nodded, and then, one after another of the men were struck and fell prone upon the stones.
And let there be not even one little child left in Môut or Leassé." Charlik was a lad or seventeen when his savage old father died, and for a year after his death he harried and distressed his people by his exactions.
To-day the people of Utwé shall see the new boat, and Charlik goes with us." "Father," asked the boy, as he ate his food, "when shall we go away from this place? Kanka, the priest, said to me yesterday that by and by the king would build us a new house in the village when you had finished another boat." Brandon shook his head.
Charlik, the king, was delighted to see Cayse, for in the days when his father was king the American captain had conveyed a party of one hundred Strong's Islanders from Port Lele to MacAskill's Island, landed them in his boats during the night, and stood off and on till daylight, when they returned reeking from their work of slaughter upon the sleeping people, and bringing with them some scores of women and children as captives.
One is, that Ledyard, who settled in Leassé a few years ago, taught the people there how to use their muskets in a fight, when Charlik's father tried to destroy them time and again; the other is that his wife is a white woman or almost a white woman, a Bonin Island Portuguese and Charlik means to get her.
The story of that day of bloodshed and horror, when Charlik and his white allies sought to exterminate the whole community, cannot here be told in all its dreadful details. Seventy years have come and gone since then, and there are but two or three men now living on the island who can speak of it with knowledge as a tale of "the olden days when we were heathens."
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