imbed out and lifted the whale-boat slightly up the beach
they stole careless glances at the vessel.

"It is the _Valetta_," Taute said. "She carried her topmast away seven
years ago. At Papeete they rigged a new one. It was ten feet shorter.
That is the one."

"Go over and talk with the women, you boys. You can almost see Huahine
from Raiatea, and you'll be sure to know some of them. Find out all you
can. And if any of the white men show up, don't start a row."

An army of hermit crabs scuttled and rustled away before him as he
advanced up the beach, but under the palms no pigs rooted and grunted.
The cocoanuts lay where they had fallen, and at the copra-sheds there
were no signs of curing. Industry and tidiness had vanished. Grass
house after grass house he found deserted. Once he came upon an old
man, blind, toothless, prodigiously wrinkled, who sat in the shade and
babbled with fear when he spoke to him. It was as if the place had been
struck with the plague, was Grief's thought, as he finally approached
the Big House. All was desolation and disarray. There were no
flower-crowned men and maidens, no brown babies rolling in the shade of
the avocado trees. In the doorway, crouched and rocking back and forth,
sat Mataara, the old queen. She wept afresh at sight of him, divided
between the tale of her woe and regret that no follower was left to
dispense to him her hospitality.

"And so they have taken Naumoo," she finished. "Motauri is dead. My
people have fled and are starving with the goats. And there is no one to
open for you even a drinking cocoa-nut. O Brother, your white brothers
be devils."

"They are no brothers of mine, Mataara," Grief consoled. "They are
robbers and pigs, and I shall clean the island of them----"

He broke off to whirl half around, his hand flashing to his waist and
back again, the big Colt's levelled at the figure of a man, bent double,
that rushed at him from out of the trees. He did not pull the trigger,
nor did the man pause till he had flung himself headlong at Grief's
feet and begun to pour forth a stream of uncouth and awful noises. He
recognized the creature as the one he had seen steal from the _Valetta_
and dive into the bush; but not until he raised him up and watched
the contortions of the hare-lipped mouth could he understand what he
uttered.

"Save me, master, save me!" the man yammered, in English, though he was
unmistakably a South Sea native. "I know you! Save me!"