22 
LAND .S: W A T E R 
May i8, lyib 
evening. We couldn't go sooner than to-morrow. Lord ! 
every bone in my body is aching. I didn't ever think I could 
have worked like that. Do you know we have been at it for 
five days without a break scarcely ? " 
■' Seems more like five years," said Tillman. He had 
risen up and was leaning on the rail tapping the ashes from 
liis pipt- into the lagoon. Whilst engaged in this iiis eye 
caught sight of something. It was the prow of a fishing 
praliu. At this moment Chaya came on deck and her quick 
eye caught sight of the prahu. She called out to Houghton 
and he and Hull sprang to their feet. 
The prahu that had come iip tlie lagoon at a rapid pace 
turned in a hairpin curve witfl the foam jwuring like crean; 
round the blades of the starboard paddles and vanished as it 
had come almost in an instant. 
" That was smartly done," said Tillman. " Those chaps 
must have come to ha\'e a 'peep at us. I wonder how they 
knew we were here." 
" I reckon they didn't," said Hull. " They just struck 
sight of us and got skeered." But Houghton who had been 
talking to Chaya was not of this way of thinking. 
" 1 don't hke the look of those chaps," said he, "'neither 
does Chaya. She thinks they must have got wind of what 
we are after and they've seen her. That old woman who 
calls herself her mother is sure to have raised the tribe when 
Chaya did not go back. It's nearly a week now since she 
joined us arid she thinks that the fishermen of the tribe have 
come up from the sea to the village, got news of what has 
happened and started out after us." 
" That's cheerful," said Tillman. 
" I said just now I wished we were out of this lagoon," 
grumbled Hull. 
" Chaya thinks that the fact of her being with us may have 
caused the trouble," went on Houghton," and she says, rather 
than endanger you two and the gold she is ready to go back. 
I would go with her." 
" Now, we don't want any of that sort of stuff," said Hull. 
" We've contracted to lift the girl as well as the stuff and 
we're not goin' to be done over our contrack by those chaps." 
" We've got our rifles." said Tillman. 
" Blow rifles ! " said the Captain. " Sticks is good enough 
to beat them off with." He went down below and got an 
axe, then with the axe in his hand he lumbered over the side 
and disappeared into the forest. 
In half an hour's time he returned. He had cut down and 
cut up three small trees and he carried the result of his labours 
xmder his arm in the fonn of three cudgels, each four feet 
long. Down he sat on the deck and as he whittled at the 
weapons with his knife he laid down the law of self-defence 
by means of sticks to the others. 
" I'll lam you somethin'," said the Captain. " Don't 
you never try to belt a chap over the head with a stick till 
you have him on the ground. The p'int of the stick is the 
able end for fightin'. Use it like a bay'net. There's not a 
man Uvin' can stand up to the poke of a stick if the chap that's 
usin" the stick knows his bizness. Now these sticks is short 
enough to fend or break a spear with and long enough to dig 
a nigger in the stomach with. That's the p'int to aim at." 
He spent nearly half the day over these weapons, and at 
sundown they started to water the Barracuda, Houghton 
and Tillman "taking the beakers to the well they had found 
just inside the forest whilst Hull and Chaya kept guard. 
They slept that night on deck, keeping watch in turn. But 
not a sign came of any trouble from the river. 
Then just before dawn they unmoored and the Captain 
with TiUman got into the boat and hauled the Barracuda 
out. They towed her to the mouth of the river where the 
wind, setting from the land fortunately for them, was ruilling 
up the lagoon water. Here they got the boat on board and 
hoisted the mainsail and jib, whilst the Barracuda, beginning 
to walk and talk, nosed her way into the river mists now- 
breaking and making spirals to the wind. 
The tide was ebbing and as they drew along past wooded 
cajics and deep dense masses of mangrove growth, Hull, 
who was on the look-out, saw on the calm dawn-lit sea just 
at the river mouth vague forms like water flies come to rest 
on the ruffled water. 
" That's them," said he. " look, they're waitin' for us. 
Now, you take my orders and take 'em sharp. We're makin' 
five knots, we must make nine ; crack every stitch of canvas 
on her and give me the wheel." 
. He took the wheel whilst the others flew to obey his orders, 
and the Barracuda with all sail set and the main boom swun" 
out to starboard, came along at a spanking pace before the 
wind that was bending the palm tops and spreading before 
them in cat's paws of vaguest silver. The rifles, loaded and 
ready were lying on the deck to be used as a last resort. 
<"haya was kneeling by Houghton ready to hand him his 
weapon, and Tillman, with his foot on his gun and his club in 
]) i fist was standin:,' bv Hull. 
Houghton could hear the sound of the sea coming against 
the wind. Never in his life had he gone through moments of 
such supreme tension as now, waiting for what might come 
in the vague light of morning, and a silence unbroken but for 
the wash of the waves on the distant reefs and the wash of tiie 
water at the bow of the yawl. 
Then suddenly uprose a clamour hke the crying of sea-fowl. 
The six praluis that had been lying like logs on the heave 
of the sea swarmed into a dark line and tl>e line rushed to meet 
them. Houghton saw Hull, as calm as thougii he were on a 
pleasure sail, standing, quid bulging his cheek and great hands 
playing gently with the little wheel. Then suddenly the wheel 
went over to port and the Barracuda crashed into something 
that went grinding away under the keel. At the same 
moment, something struck the main sail. 
It was a light spear, venomous as the sting of a wasp, and 
it stuck there slatting and held from falling back by its barb, 
whilst Hull put the wheel over again to starboard and twenty 
more spears fell " wop, wop " into the water astern of her. 
" Done 'em," said the Captain. 
Houghton looked back. He could not beheve that it was 
all over. Yet there were the prahus all in confusion in the 
wake of the Barracuda, the wrecked prahu like a broken 
umbrella on the water, and the heads of the swimmers who 
were being rescued by their friends. 
" They laid to get us one on each side," said Hull, " and 
if I hadn't shifted the helm and rammed that chap, they'd 
have got their holts— which they didn't. Well, there's no 
blood spilt and that's all the better. Gad ! boys, we've got 
the stuff away ! " 
The sun answered him, breaking up over the sea, and all 
the great lonely coast they were leaving showed in its desola- 
tion across the water rippled with gold and strewn with the 
foam of the reefs. 
Houghton, holding Chaya 's hand, looked back. Then, 
still hand in hand, they went forward and stood looking far 
ahead to where the ruffled blue of the sea faded through the 
morning haze into a sky of azure fair with the promise of the 
future. 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
Envoi 
ONE bright mornmg, two months later, the Barracuda, 
having hung off and on all night in view of Mac- 
quarie, entered Sydney Harbour. Stole in un- 
noticed, storm-beaten, and sun-blistered, and foul with 
tropic weeds, the strangest craft that had ever made that 
port of call. 
She and her crew, bronzed and tattered, and her cargo, 
invisible but there, might have sailed in from some distant 
Age when men made the world marvellous with their deeds 
and before machinery had made man commonplace as itself. 
Chaya alone, sunburnt and laughing and amazed at the 
wonders of this new place, was a whole romance in herself. 
Yet no one noticed them — or only some early fishermen 
and a few longshoremen at the little bay near Farm Cove 
where they anchored, and one of whom was sent hot foot with 
a message to Screed— a pencilled message which ran : " Big 
luck. Come at once, and for God's sake bring some pro- 
visions with you." 
It would be impossible to describe that breakfast in the 
musty, fusty little cabin with the sun blazing through the 
port-holes and the skylight. Wealth sat beside each of them, 
and the prosaic Screed, as he hstened to scraps of the mar- 
vellous voyage, forgot even the gold he was sitting on in 
contemplation of the greater gold that lay like a halo around 
the work of these wanderers. 
Chaya sat by Houghton— the only man among them doubly 
blessed by wealth. 
The End. 
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