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Updated: June 22, 2025
It came nearer the grass rustled and shook close beside them; and out from the tufted tangle came three large land-crabs, scuttling along on their ungainly claws, and evidently in a hurry. Manuela uttered a shriek, but Rita laughed aloud. "Good luck!" she said. "They are good Cubans, the land-crabs. Many a good meal has Carlos made on them, poor fellow. If we followed them, Manuela?
In a twinkling each Moro was supplied with similar mud-shoes, and like giant land-crabs, they flitted off across the marsh. Too wise to begin before reconnoitering, Piang led his men to the banks of the stream below to Big Bend. After hasty calculations he set them to work digging toward the head waters, following a line of ratan which he stretched to guide them.
Sometimes we climbed up a solid road, blasted out of the face of the black cliffs, or crept along the shore of the tranquil lagoon, frightening the land-crabs into their holes as they felt the shake of the approaching carriage. Palms and passiflora abounded, the latter being specially magnificent.
"Every man in Tahiti brought one stone, and the marae was builded," said Tetuanui. "We were many then." He had not been there in fifty years. We crawled down the other side, a broken incline, and to the beach. Land-crabs scrambled for their holes, the sole inhabitants of the spot once given to chants and prayers, burials, and the sacrifice of humans to the never-satisfied gods.
We grated in, over a shallow bottom of pebbles interspersed with gray lumps of coral pulp, and of Botrylli, azure, crimson, and all the hues of the flower-garden; and landed on the bank of a mangrove swamp, bored everywhere with the holes of land-crabs. One glance showed how these swamps are formed: by that want of tide which is the curse of the West Indies.
Once, as if in explanation for words unspoken, he commented nervously on the sensation of unreality with which these tropic scenes inspired him, and Rachael, who longed to withdraw her hand from his arm, told him of an entertainment peculiar to the Islands, a torchlight hunt for land-crabs, which once a year travel down from the mountains to the sea, to bathe and shed their shells.
The white-washed wooden house stood near the bank, with a stockaded compound between it and the water. It was built on piles and at the top of the outside stairs a veranda ran along the front. The compound was tunneled by land-crabs' holes, and light mist crept about the giant cotton woods behind. There was no movement of air, a sickly smell rose from the creek, and all was very damp.
Thousands of land-crabs, painted red and black and yellow, scrambled with a rattle like dead men's bones across the rails to be crushed by the hundreds under the wheels of the Juggernaut; great lizards ran from sunny rocks at the sound of their approach, and a deer bounded across the tracks fifty feet in front of the cow-catcher.
The bodies were in a most revolting condition, from the combined effects of the sun and the attacks of the sea-birds and land-crabs, the latter of which swarmed upon the beach in thousands. It was difficult to judge accurately how long a period had elapsed since death had overtaken these unfortunates; but from their appearance Gaunt believed that it could not have been many weeks.
The sand around his feet was spotted, as though with gouts of blood, by the ruddy land-crabs, and, from every direction, these repulsive carrion eaters were hastening to their prey. They formed a horrible alliance the "debbil-trees" and the blood-red land-crabs! The negro broke into a run.
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