deck, where Borckman kept a sharp eye out against danger, Jerry
prowled about, sniffing the many legs of the many blacks he had never
encountered before. The wild-dog had gone ashore with the return boys,
and of the return boys only one had come back. It was Lerumie, past whom
Jerry repeatedly and stiff-leggedly bristled without gaining response of
recognition. Lerumie coolly ignored him, went down below once and
purchased a trade hand-mirror, and, with a look of the eyes, assured old
Bashti that all was ready and ripe to break at the first favourable
moment.

On deck, Borckman gave this favourable moment. Nor would he have so
given it had he not been guilty of carelessness and of disobedience to
his captain's orders. He did not leave the schnapps alone. Be did not
sense what was impending all about him. Aft, where he stood, the deck
was almost deserted. Amidships and for'ard, gamming with the boat's
crew, the deck was crowded with blacks of both sexes. He made his way to
the yam sacks lashed abaft the mizzenmast and got his bottle. Just
before he drank, with a shred of caution, he cast a glance behind him.
Near him stood a harmless Mary, middle-aged, fat, squat, asymmetrical,
unlovely, a sucking child of two years astride her hip and taking
nourishment. Surely no harm was to be apprehended there. Furthermore,
she was patently a weaponless Mary, for she wore no stitch of clothing
that otherwise might have concealed a weapon. Over against the rail, ten
feet to one side, stood Lerumie, smirking into the trade mirror he had
just bought.

It was in the trade mirror that Lerumie saw Borckman bend to the
yam-sacks, return to the erect, throw his head back, the mouth of the
bottle glued to his lips, the bottom elevated skyward. Lerumie lifted
his right hand in signal to a woman in a canoe alongside. She bent
swiftly for something that she tossed to Lerumie. It was a long-handled
tomahawk, the head of it an ordinary shingler's hatchet, the haft of it,
native-made, a black and polished piece of hard wood, inlaid in rude
designs with mother-of-pearl and wrapped with coconut sennit to make a
hand grip. The blade of the hatchet had been ground to razor-edge.

As the tomahawk flew noiselessly through the air to Lerumie's hand, just
as noiselessly, the next instant, it flew through the air from his hand
into the hand of the fat Mary with the nursing child who stood behind the
mate. She clutched the handle with bo