Schemmer was mistaken. In the end they would be let go. They were
all confident of that. Five men could not have their heads cut off for
two stab wounds. Besides, no foreign devil had seen the killing. But
these Frenchmen were so stupid. In China, as Ah Cho well knew, the
magistrate would order all of them to the torture and learn the truth.
The truth was very easy to learn under torture. But these Frenchmen did
not torture--bigger fools they! Therefore they would never find out who
killed Chung Ga.

But Ah Cho did not understand everything. The English Company that owned
the plantation had imported into Tahiti, at great expense, the five
hundred coolies. The stockholders were clamouring for dividends, and
the Company had not yet paid any; wherefore the Company did not want its
costly contract labourers to start the practice of killing one another.
Also, there were the French, eager and willing to impose upon the
Chinagos the virtues and excellences of French law. There was nothing
like setting an example once in a while; and, besides, of what use was
New Caledonia except to send men to live out their days in misery and
pain in payment of the penalty for being frail and human?

Ah Cho did not understand all this. He sat in the court room and waited
for the baffled judgment that would set him and his comrades free to go
back to the plantation and work out the terms of their contracts. This
judgment would soon be rendered. Proceedings were drawing to a close. He
could see that. There was no more testifying, no more gabble of tongues.
The French devils were tired, too, and evidently waiting for the
judgment. And as he waited he remembered back in his life to the time
when he had signed the contract and set sail in the ship for Tahiti.
Times had been hard in his sea-coast village, and when he indentured
himself to labour for five years in the South Seas at fifty cents
Mexican a day, he had thought himself fortunate. There were men in his
village who toiled a whole year for ten dollars Mexican, and there were
women who made nets all the year round for five dollars, while in the
houses of shopkeepers there were maidservants who received four dollars
for a year of service. And here he was to receive fifty cents a day; for
one day, only one day, he was to receive that princely sum! What if the
work were hard? At the end of the five years he would return home--that
was in the contract--and he would never have to work again. He