The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ dread confirmation of all their fears, after long weeks of labor, with victory almost in sight.

      To fight off the landing of so many scores of warriors would be impossible. They had already seen how little they cared for gunfire. To retreat to the cave, to trust that the Golden Dolphin might be overlooked, was their only hope—and a slight one. The ship stood out on the beach, visible from the reef entrance. The sight of it surely meant a swift search all over the island, with destruction of the precious ship as the least of calamities. The best they might do was not to be taken alive.

      They stayed until the canoes, profusely decorated, streaming over the quiet sea, were lost to sight behind the headland of the landing bay, then hurried with their weapons to the cave. From it they could view, through a gap in the jungle, a section of the stone causeway. In the entrance they waited with grim fortitude, resolved to give stern account of themselves, to die as white men and white women should. Kitty, of her own accord, stood close by Jim. He smiled at her and she smiled back wanly.

      “At the last, Jim, you won’t leave me alone?” He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

      Suddenly they heard shouts. The canoes had landed. Then, to their surprise, a mighty chanting mingled with the beat of drums, the shrilling of flutes and the belching roar of conch shells. Whatever the reason for the visit, it was stronger than the curiosity that the inevitable sight of the ship set out upon the beach must have excited. The sounds came nearer, mounting. There was a procession coming up the causeway to the hill of sacrifice. Their discovery was delayed. Some vital ceremonial was forward.

      They waited breathlessly. They had brought binoculars with them on their first landing and Jim trained the glass on the strip of causeway. They could have picked off some of the savages with rifles but to commence a fight was to invite annihilation. The music, if such barbaric rhythm might be so termed, grew steadily louder. The leaders of the procession came into view, weird, leaping fantastic figures of naked men who wore high headdresses of feathers fluttering on frames that extended five feet above their bushy hair, itself tied with strips of gaily colored fiber. They were striped and patched in red and white and yellow, their faces hideously daubed. Some had picked out in white their ribs and the bones of their arms and legs. On their necks and all their limbs were strings of shells and teeth. Each held a drum shaped like an enormous wooden stein on which they beat as they sprang and shouted.

      Then came file after file of warriors, armed with spears and clubs, with bows and arrows, painted like the rest, leaping along in unison to the throbbing, screaming drum and whine and roar of the unseen orchestra.

      He handed the glass to Kitty at her request.

      “I wouldn’t look at it, if I were you,” he said.

      “I’m not afraid of them,” she said.

      She slightly changed the focus of the glass. A litter came by, a platform borne by six enormous cannibals, so braced that it could easily be carried horizontally along the ramp. On it, beneath a canopy supported by poles, reclined a figure of commanding pose. His upper body seemed to be covered with light pigment; the lower was kilted with patterned cloth of native pounding from inner bark.

      Jim heard an indrawn sigh from Kitty. The binoculars fell from her hands to the dust of the cave, and her face glowed with some strange ecstasy. Instinctively he put out his hand to restrain her but she swerved and leaped from the cave mouth to the tiny trail they had contrived. She flew down it with arms extended, sounding a glad, impossible cry of, “Father! Father!”

      For a heart-beat Jim thought she was demented; then he raced to overtake her, gun in hand. The others followed. The procession had halted. The man in the litter was looking toward the direction of the voice that had reached him above the clamor. The music stopped at a lift of his hand. He spoke to the savages in a high, imperious voice. Kitty fled on the wings of love. For all his efforts Jim could not reach her before, light as a fawn, she broke through the mask of green that ended the trail and was out by the side of the litter, reaching up her arms, sobbing and laughing—“Father! Father!” And to Jim’s amazement, the man stretched out his arms, and in a broken voice called back to her.

      He ordered the litter carried aside and waved the astounded procession on and upward. They obeyed, casting half fearful glances at him, looks of chained hatred at the little group of whites, Lynda among them, that gathered round the litter as the bearers set it down. Kitty was in her father’s arms and they drew to one side as the files passed—rank upon rank of warriors, priests carrying a strange representation of a fish in wickerwork frame, painted red and black; then the musicians with conches and panpipes and larger drums slung between four carriers, two men beating. As they passed their white leader—for such he plainly was, if not their god—they started once more to play their savage instruments. The chant recommenced and they went on up the hill. Last of all came men bearing baskets in which was flesh, the carcasses of pigs. Others carried giant yams. There was also another great wicker fish, red and black, toiling blindly along with two men inside of it, their spotted legs, red on black, showing strangely beneath the fetish.

      Jim turned to Captain Avery and saw on his breast the same emblem, a fish tattooed in red and black.

      “I saw my ship on the beach,” said Captain Avery, “and I marveled. I thought it might have been the work of the men who were killed some months ago by the tribe—without my knowledge—though I wondered why they should have salvaged it. After the ceremonial I should have investigated, of course. But nothing is allowed to interfere with this sacrificial visit.

      “This is the island of Lukuba. We came today from the island of Tudava where I am half chief, half god, the impersonation of Lono.

      “The Golden Dolphin was flung up on Lukuba by a tidal wave from a marine earthquake. The islands are both volcanic. At intervals there are shocks; on Tudava an occasional eruption and overflow from a crater.

      “I wrote you, Kitty, from Suva, that I feared trouble among my crew. It was ripe when the wave caught us up. After we were crashed down and found ourselves alive, they were still resolved to get the pearls that I had secreted in my cabin. I would not tell them where they were and they prepared to torture me after they had killed one man who tried to warn me of their coming.

      “This island of Lukuba is slowly sinking into the sea. One time it sank twelve feet, with frightful landslides. Then the tribe deserted it. But, by the order of their priests, they visit it once a year to make sacrifice on their ancient altar to avert more disaster, for each shock affects both islands.

      “The pilgrimage had landed just before the wave that carried us ashore. Terrified, they had seen nothing of our landing, flung through the jungle on the crest of a wild wave as we were. But returning, they heard the noise of our struggle, for my men were drunk and reckless. And they found me stripped, about to be tortured by fire. Had I not been naked they would not have seen the fish of Udanwaga, the totem of their tribe, tattooed upon my chest.

      “This was the totem of Mafulu, my blood-brother, part of the fraternity ceremonial. The tribes of the Pacific are far-flung. They break up and migrate, but their customs and their sanctities hold. They gazed at me almost in awe, and when I spoke to them in their own tongue, they fell down and worshipped me. The others they killed. I could not prevent that. And they sacrificed them to their gods—in their own way.

      “Me they took back to Tudava, and as we crossed the channel the crater was spouting smoke and flame and a flow of lava smoked down toward their main village, firing the forests. Their priests made incantations, and at last they called upon me. It may have been coincidence or the holier manifestation of God, but when we reached the landing the flow stopped, the eruption ceased. It was attributed to my mana, the godlike power within me, the manifestation of Lono who wore the sacred badge of Udanwaga, СКАЧАТЬ