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"I am so glad, Harvey; for it would be terribly hard upon the men if we missed Pikirami and had to make for New Britain." "Ay, it would indeed. So far we have been very lucky, however, yet, even if we had missed it, we should have no cause to fear.
Much to Harvey's satisfaction, the head-man informed him that a trading schooner was expected to reach Pikirami within two or three weeks, as nearly six months had passed since her last visit, and she always came twice a year. "That will suit us well," said Harvey to Tessa and Atkins, as they sat in the head-man's cool, shady house and ate the food that had been brought to them.
On the evening of the third day they sighted the northernmost islet of Pikirami lagoon, and stood by under its lee till daylight, little dreaming that those whose life-blood they would so eagerly have shed were sleeping calmly and peacefully in the native village fifteen miles away.
The two canoes were manned by some of the crew of the Motutapu together with six natives of Pikirami; one was steered by Harvey, the other by Huka the Savage Islander; and as they paddled along within a few feet of each other the crews laughed and jested in the manner inherent to all the Malayo-Polynesians when intent on pleasure.
Early in the afternoon, as the boat slipped lazily over the gentle ocean swell, he died. And though Atkins and Harvey would have liked to have acceded to his last wishes to be buried on shore, stern necessity forbade them so doing, for they knew not how long it would be ere they reached Pikirami; and so at sunset his body was consigned to the deep.
Atkins agreed willingly to Harvey's suggestions, for he well knew the great risks that would attend the attempt to reach Ponapé under such circumstances as were theirs; and the native crew, much as they wished to pursue the captain and wreak their vengeance upon him and the supercargo, readily acquiesced in Harvey's plan of steering for Pikirami Lagoon in when he pointed out to them the difficulties and dangers that lay before them by making for Ponapé, or, indeed, any other island of the Caroline Group.
The rest of their party the men from the Motutapu and the Pikirami people were busily employed in preparations for cooking, some making ready an oven of red-hot stones, others putting up fish and chickens in leaf wrappers, and Malua and two Pikirami youths of his own age were husking numbers of young drinking-nuts.
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