He was alive, I told myself — probably injured…
I forced myself to grip die figure and drag it from the sea-chest into the pallid moonlight.
It was a slim Marquesan youth, naked but for a pareu, an ugly blade driven hard into his stomach. The sight of the wound sickened me. His eyes were open and upon me — large, pathetic eyes. With him life was a matter of minutes. A surge of pity for the young body swept me. The death of youth is always a grim affair — a dark portal closing upon sublime vistas.
To my surprise he smiled — a rather ghastly expression.
"Menike," he whispered, something dark upon his lips. "You, you help me… I—"
"Go on," I urged as his voice trailed off, and although I knew he was beyond the aid of man I added. "I will help you."
Again the ghastly smile. "Tahaiupehii — Daughter of the Pigeon — she—"
Well, I finally got the story, a tale of tears and flowers such as one would expect to hear on this dying island, told between gasps for breath:
His name was Red Moon. On Taoha was a maiden whom he desired for his wife — Tahaiupehii, Daughter of the Pigeon, pale of throat and dark of eyes. She was the child of Mahuma, the chief. Habuhamo, a chieftain of Fatu-hiva, also coveted the fair Tahaiupehii — and Habuhamo was fat and degenerate, and Daughter of the Pigeon despised him, for she, in turn, loved Red Moon.
On this evening Red Moon had received a message to come to the Cave of the Laughing Lepers and as he entered he was attacked by Habuhamo and his men… stabbed. Before they put him in the sea-chest the obese Habuhamo told him that it was his intention to go to the paepae of Mahuma, the drinker of Kava, and steal the moon-throated Daughter of the Pigeon — after he had killed her father…
In the end he asked if I, the Menike, would follow Habuhamo and his men to the paepae of Mahuma and save Tahaiupehii. He was dying, he whispered, and if I did not go…
As he finished his story he did a plucky thing — he withdrew the knife with a feeble wrench from his stomach, his tawny face convulsed with agony.
"You take knife," he muttered, handing the bloody weapon to me, "You carry Red Moon on… back — and Red Moon show you paepae of Mahuma…"
I did not believe the boy would last three minutes, but I lifted him as gently as I could and slung him on my back.
When I reached the High Place, after a tortuous ascent from the gorge with Red Moon clinging to my neck, I was disappointed. I had hoped that by good fortune I would meet my friend here, but instead of Cleaves I found a pile of stones upon the Altar of Po.
That journey from the Cave of the Laughing Lepers to the house of Mahuma is burned into my memory. After what seemed deathless sons of plunging through jungles, a light glimmered among the trees. When Red Moon saw it he begged to be left here, saying he was an encumbrance now.
"Save her, Menike," he pleaded piteously as I placed him on the round, death seeping into the liquid black eyes. "Tell her that…"
But I never knew what to tell her. From his lips came a sound like the flutter of beating wings…
I left him there, resolved to return later and bury him, and with the bloody knife that he had given me, I crept into the clearing around the thatched bamboo house. Lights shone from the door and one window.
Climbing upon the paepae, I crawled to the lighted window. It opened out from a small cool room with green mats and bamboo walls. The five Marquesans were there, wearing crimson pareus and necklaces of shark's-teeth, all slim but one whom I knew to be Habuhamo. He was clad in a scarlet and yellow kahu-ropa, his big nose ringed with an ornament; fat and greasy in the light of the whale-oil lamp, with red, piglike eyes — a thing to loathe instantly.
The chief was speaking so swiftly in Marquesan that I, with only my smattering of the tongue, could not thoroughly understand him, and before I comprehended the full import of his words the four warriors filed out of the bamboo dwelling. I hardly had the opportunity to drop in the shadows before they emerged.
I lay still, not daring to move or hardly breathe, until I heard their padded footsteps growing fainter, then I became bold enough to raise my eyes — just in time to see the last of the four vanish in the gloom of a path that deserted the clearing for the jungle.
Once more I peered within the house.
Habuhamo was seated Turk-fashion on the green mats, his back to the doorway. I smiled with anticipation, for I hated him, not with the antagonism that is often the result of clashing personalities, but with a deep loathing as for some crawling thing of the earth.
Gripping the blood-soiled knife I moved to the door and crept stealthily inside, halting a few feet behind Habuhamo. At that instant some psychic current conveyed to him the fact that he was not alone. He glanced over his shoulder and I looked straight into the narrow, piglike eyes.
The sound that issued from between his moist lips was like nothing human. He tried to make his feet, but I was upon him, one arm encircling his thick neck, the blade poised above his heart.
"I ought to kill you instantly, Habuhamo," I said in my bastard Marquesan, "but there is something I want to know before—"
"No, no, don't kill!" he whimpered in poor English, "I spik English—"
"Where is Mahuma — and Tahaiupehii?" I demanded.
Habuhamo's red-shot eyes moved to a dark doorway on the left and I involuntarily loosened the grasp about his throat — and as I did he wrenched free, staggering to his feet with the scream of an angry boar. I scarcely had time to balance myself for the onslaught before the soft body was hurled upon me and his arms pressed me to his breast. I caught the reek of rum — and Habuhamo…
I struck with doubled fist instead of the knife — the left fist. It went home in the solar plexus, carrying my whole weight behind it, a foul blow I admit, and with that inhuman cry the island chief pitched forward like a sodden piece of driftwood upon the green mats.
I stood above him. breathing hard and trying to clear my nostrils of the odor of him. He did not move. I turned his bulk over with my bare foot and the feel of it sickened me.
That solar plexus blow had done him to unconsciousness. Habuhamo was out of it for at least fifteen minutes…
I moved into the adjoining room. Dark — but not so dark that I could not see the body on the floor. Instinct told me it was Mahuma. The wound was a nasty one — such as had been dealt Red Moon. Mahuma seemed so old, so helpless as he lay there in his own blood.
And Daughter of the Pigeon — what of her?
The dwelling boasted of three rooms and Tahaiupehii was in none.
As I quitted the room where Habuhamo lay upon the green mats, emerging upon the paepae, my eyes alighted upon the jungle trail which the islanders had taken. It was the only course left to pursue and I plunged between the whispering foliage.
I knew the path led seaward, for I could hear the breakers and the pounding of the surf in the blow-holes, but I was not prepared for what I saw. The jungle dropped away before a ledge whose quartz-like surface scintillated in the moonlight. Several yards beyond the brush a narrow stream flung its torrents over spray-dashed rocks, tumbling headlong into a huge bowl of solid granite fully nineteen feet below, and here, still foaming furiously from the fall, it swirled between stone banks toward the sea. At the juncture where the river met rough water lofty cliffs overhung the beach, pierced with innumerable caves.
I found myself on the very verge of the cataract before I knew it. Below, on a flat rock at one side of the pool, was a form, slim and pale as a flame, the slender shoulders lost in masses of dark hair. Daughter of the Pigeon. I knew — for as she stood poised on the brink of the huge granite bowl she was as fair as that winged creature after which she was named. I could see that she wore a pareu twisted about her.