Part 3 (1/2)

”The Chilaneans could do better nor you!” he cried

”Jack,” whispered a voice beside hiain in a state of the sweetest contrition and remorse He took her in his arms and kissed her; and then, like a pair of lovers, they held each other's hands and shrank close together as the shells burst over the village

The firing lasted for an hour, and then the flotilla of boats, preceded by the Ah the break in the reef, and headed for Jack's house

”Oh, it's the flag they see!” cried Fetuao, and she besought Jack, with tears in her eyes, to haul it down

”Never!” he said, grinding his teeth

There were some three or four hundredat the top of their voices, Jack quailed in spite of hiitation, standing like a rock before his house and facing the storm that was about to burst

It wasn't for hi-billy of a stea streah this business, whatever deviltry they e, for blood's thicker than water every tiether all the world over He wasn't no politician nor side-taker, and it was all the sahted papist All he asked of anybody, by God! was to be let alone, though this broadsiding of defenseless people made him sick at the stu into shalloater, blowing off clouds of steam as her crew jumped out with their rifles and waded ashore, while the Tanu up in quick succession, aed in their turn cargo upon cargo of shrieking warriors In the indescribable coed plan nor any settled order of operation The Tanus scattered in a dozen noisy parties, looting and burning the houses, barking the breadfruit trees, shooting the pigs and horses, devastating with diabolical thoroughness the inland plantations that sustained the village The Americans, fearful of ambuscades, stuck to the shore and systematically destroyed the boats, which for a e of the beach These boats, in a country without roads, are as much a necessity to a man as the house which shelters his of years, and are not seldoality and self-denial; they constitute, indeed, the only wealth of Sas of the whole population In Oa these boats numbered perhaps a hundred, or a hundred and twenty in all, which, under the direction of a red-faced boatsith a package of dynamite sticks, were one by one blown to pieces, and the shattered boards drawn into heaps and fired

That day the whole of Oa went up in s was spared, not even the church, nor the school, nor the pastor's house; not a canoe nor a dugout; not a net, nor a fish trap, nor a float; not a pig, a horse, nor a chicken The boundary walls, ee, alone survived the universal waste

Jack's boat, being the nearest, was the first to be singled out; and as the blue-jackets began to bore it with auger holes in which to place the dynahly bade him leave it alone ”Hold on, there!” he said ”That's et out of this!” he said

Jack twitched the auger frooon Then, seizing a rifle froround, he whirled it round his head like a club and advanced furiously on the boatswain, who pulled out a six-shooter and leveled it at his head Even as he did so, one of the officers ca; while Jack, confident that he had nothing now to apprehend, dropped the rifle and turned to ot so far as, ”Please, sir, this boat is my property,” when a screa his house Abandoning the boat, he ran back to face this new danger, which, of the tas so infinitely the worse His first instinct was to snatch a hatchet and kill one of the half-naked plunderers, but Fetuao, catching his hands, held him back, and the impulse passed as he realized his utter helplessness With s eyes and a heart that seeutted of everything--his chests torn open, his tools taken, his wife's poor finery divided, and her twenty-dollar sewingsun It was horrible to look on, i, and see the fruit of three years the prey of these yelling savages; to realize that he ain froone for nothing Not daring to leave Fetuao behind, he took her with him and started off to find the officer to whom he had at first complained His protest had not apparently been very effective, to judge fro in a bonfire, and he was hardly encouraged to make a second attempt However, sli left to do Surely it was not possible that they would let his house be looted and fired with the others!

The officer, a thin youngin the shade of a palht had oozed out of hi my house up there!”

”Well?” said the officer

”I'm an American,” said Jack

”Well?” said the officer

Jack regarded hi for an American?” he asked

”Not for a da on his heel

Jack did not attempt to follow or to pester hi, androoan to sirl tried to speak to him, but he would not answer She whispered to hi, and he never even turned his head to look She took his hand, but he snatched it i to be comforted Thus he remained for hours, sullen and half-stupefied, until the returning Tanus eain, and the launch, with jubilant whistles, led the flotilla back to the ht that Jack rose, stretched hih of a man who has endured and has survived the most terrible experience of a lifetier and resent with bitter curiosity at the ruins that everywhere surrounded them They made their way to their own little plantation, to find it devastated like the others, the breadfruit trees ringed, the coffee bushes torn up by the roots, the _taro_, bananas, and vanilla cut to pieces In the paddock the cow and calf lay dead in a pool of blood; of the dairy, half-set in the strea ashes; under a felledhoofs of Fetuao's ed to find in the plantation, they built a fire and roasted the, their house had stood Though nothing noas left of it but some charred wood, the place was still ho up a few trifles that had been dropped or throay by the invaders--a comb, a spool of thread, a flatiron, a book or tith the covers scorched off--she lifted up a griesture of disdain, at her husband's feet He spread it out and saw that it was the consul's flag, the flag he had flown above his house with such confidence in its protection; the flag which, until then, he had always reverenced

Jack slowly tore it into pieces

V

Nothing is stranger than the effect of the same misfortune on different natures To Jack, arrested in the full tide of his petty activities, it was absolutely overwhel he possessed ept away, and with it the routine that for three years had kept him busy and content, he knew not what to do nor which way to turn Sunk in apathy, he spent whole days in dullyfor what he had lost He would have starved had not Fetuao forced him to follow her into the_tamu_ and climbed the trees for wild chestnuts; while she, with deft hands and a little tangled bunch of weeds, caught prawns in the pools and strea he ood enough to fish with, and nets froht him how to twist out of cocoanut husks She even sent him back to work in the plantation, for the bananas at least could be saved, and there was a well of sprouting yaapula_ that had somehow escaped destruction But Jack's spirit was broken; the old incentive was gone; he could not revive the energy, the zest, the interest that before had never failed him He did what Fetuao bade him and no more, and the days, once so short, see early he akened by theto the door of the hut he was surprised to see Fetuao's brothers, Tua and Anapu, Mele her uncle, Lapongi the orator, and a dozen others, some of them boys not yet tattooed In answer to his questions Tua told hier had come for them with orders to at once join the Mataafa forces behind Apia