Habuhamo…
Again I wished I had killed him in the bamboo hut.
The islanders were between Tahaiupehii and me, and Habuhamo was running along the shore parallel to the girl.
Straight after the Marquesans I swam until I was abreast of the rear one. He was a wiry fellow, smaller than I, with an ugly blade gripped in his teeth. I struck him between the eyes and literally tore the knife from his mouth. As he sank I saw something black upon his lips.
After that objects swam in a blurr — blended water and rocks and over all the tranquil moon. Instead of launching an offensive against the other two natives, I succeeded in gaining a lead on them, and side by side Tahaiupehii and I were borne with the churning river. Occasionally I glanced behind at the pursuing islanders and that obese effigy on the bank.
With the deadliness of sharks the Marquesans followed — down with the boom and thunder of the stream into the mouth of the sea. Here the conflicting currents caught us in their turbulence and lashed us toward the giant rocks that fringed the shore.
A new peril loomed in the shape of the crags where the surf gave vent to its wrath, and we swam with all the strength we could assemble against the menace. Tahaiupehii was the first to reach the shore. I saw blood on her shoulder where the sea had flung her cruelly upon a jutting stone in her attempt to crawl from the surf.
I was not far behind her, and as I staggered out of the thrashing water the bulky figure of Habuhamo appeared from behind the rocks of the river bank. Trapped. I threw the girl a look of futility. It was the finish, unless…
"The cave!" I shouted, pressing the knife into her hand and pointing to a nearby cavity in the rugged cliffs. "Defend yourself until I come—"
I caught the gleam of her pallid face as she obeyed.
Habuhamo must come first, I told myself — but Fate decided otherwise. Upon glancing back I perceived that one of the Marquesans had reached the shore and was clambering upon" the rocks with a slim blade in his hand.
I looked about for some means of defense and my eyes dropped to the broken bits of boulders that lay at my feet. I bent and gripped one, lifted it above my head and let it fly. It struck him on the forehead with an ugly sound — like a crushed cocoanut shell…
Throwing a glance toward the cave I saw Tahaiupehii entering, Habuhamo at her heels. As I started to follow, a lean something from behind closed about my ankle — the hand of the last Marquesan, a terrible-looking fellow, naked and tattooed to a king's delight.
With a bound he was upon me, and I let go my fist, sending him rolling among the rocks. Regaining my feet, I reached his side and bent over him. How I accomplished the following feat I do not know — but I grasped him by the nape of the neck and one limb and lifted him clawing above me; staggered to the edge of the surf and hurled him head-first into the shallow water.
As the weight left my hands I fell back on the rocks, but was up instantly — for the picture of Tahaiupehii as she darted into the cave, followed by that obese chief, was written in crimson on my brain.
Shortly I reached the mouth of the cave, a huge gap in the cliffs, only partially roofed and under almost two feet of water. From the rear came a muffled roar.
Splashing through water above my knees, often stumbling in the dimness, I covered what seemed miles, plunging with every step further into the cave. At an abrupt turn I was brought into an outlet that ran between lofty walls. The light of the yellow moon intruded upon the gloom, faintly revealing the sucking, snarling tide that rolled over the rocks and eddied between the cliffs.
They were there — Tahaiupehii and Habuhamo, locked together on the surface of a boulder. As I rounded the corner I saw her thrust him away and down upon him, something glistening held over her heart.
I shrieked — but the gnashing of the surf devoured my voice.
Habuhamo sprang — and at his first movement Tahaiupehii plunged the shining thing into her breast…
I closed my eyes; I think I reeled, too, so sick with horror was I. When I regained the mastery of myself I dashed through the water, which was now just below my armpits, and drew myself upon the boulder where Habuhamo stood.
I struck him from behind, knocked him flat upon the stone and threw myself upon him, pinning him beneath my weight and sending my doubled fist time after time into the bloated, horrid face.
My reason surrendered wholly to a frightful lust to murder. Blind to all except the bloodshot eyes beneath me, eyes that were glazed with horror, that beseeched mercy, I thrashed him, tore at his skin with my finger-nails; choked him, beat his face until its grotesque mutilation forced a hysterical laugh from my throat. My own madness nauseated me, yet not once did I falter or weaken in the ghastly business — not until the body was lifeless, and with my bruised, bloody hands I pushed it to the edge of the boulder and kicked it into the delirious water. The last glimpse I had of that sodden, rum-soaked flesh called Habuhamo was as the surf flung its foaming arms about it and dragged it out to sea.
IV
Tahaiupehii was conscious when I knelt beside her on the edge — slim and white as fire, her wet dark hair spread in a tangle about her lovely face. More than ever her features seemed fashioned from blue moonlight.
"Tahaiupehii, Tahaiupehii!" I cried, trying to make myself heard above the surf. "I will take you out to my yacht — and you will get well—"
Daughter of the Pigeon smiled, not at me or what I said, but because, I believe, she heard another voice ringing clear above the tumult of the sea — the voice of her boy-lover in the darkness of Po.
She did not stir again, only lay there, lips locked, the childish smile frozen on her face…
I carried her down to the beach and placed her gently on the white sands. I shall never forget her as she lay there, her exquisite body dashed with the salt spray of the sea, the wound between her breasts as dark as a tropical gardenia.
A half hour later Cleaves and Leaping Fire came upon us on the beach. They were about to abandon the search for me, believing me gone to the sharks. After I told them the story we carried Tahaiupehii to the paepae of her father, and here, not far from the bamboo house that had known her love and sorrow, we buried her… between Mahuma and Red Moon.
Several hours afterward I was on the deck of the Jezbel, and while a sullen, red-shot dawn flared above the thunders of Temetiu, the yacht throbbed out of the Bay of Traitors.
The last sight that I had of Taoha, the dying isle, was through the morning fog, a haze that lay upon it like a spirit hand… as if the volcano that in ages past had spewn it above the green Pacific was reaching up from fathomless depths to reclaim it.
O Tahaiupehii — paepae kaoha!
The Heart on the mantel
by Paul Everman
I
When I first saw it move I became sceptical as to the worth of my vision. A dead man's heart, cut from his body, sealed in a glass jar of alcohol — why should it move, how could it move?
This heart was by far the most horrible thing in Leon Campeau's collection of human debris. As his roommate and fellow student in medicine I had tolerated' the clutter of bones and skulls he had picked up, also the immaculate skeleton which leered grotesquely at me from its tall, glass-doored case. But to me this heart, this lump of muscle and tissue, seemed hardly appropriate as a companionable ornament.
Leon had brought it in that very morning, delighted in its acquisition, for it was on the heart that he was specializing. He had secured it, he explained, with the connivance of a keeper of the morgue. He had bribed this keeper, he told me, to allow him to remove the heart from the body of a derelict who was to be buried that morning in the porter's field. A clever fellow, Leon!