Part 3 (2/2)
”And thou also, Jack,” said Lapongi the orator, ”for every man now is needed to withstand the fury of the whites”
Jack, as usual, turned to Fetuao
”We shall both of us go,” said she, ”I to carry water for the wounded, thou with the _th and terror”
Jack made no protest hell! what did itthe food that was handed hi in the dawn, and wondered whether he was not seeing it for the last tiht when they passed the outposts and reached the Mataafa ca Apia Below thehts of theat ti brilliancy into their very faces; and from the little war-enco as the uns of Britain and Aht attack After the stillness of Oa there was so cauards, and the rousing choruses around the fires There was, besides, an atendered by exciteer, by the very desperation of their cause, that could not long be resisted by even the most impassive recruit Jack alone, of his whole party, ree in her rising to the surface, grew intoxicated almost to the point of delirium
Ordinarily so demure and quiet, she beca her ax and dancing alent, she led it wherever it was sent, daring bullets and shells with sht have taken her for the spirit of war itself, as shereproaches drove up skulkers fro down her house, she was overborne with her own success; and the ly she exposed herself Under the stress of those fierce ee for the worse In war time, death, always in the air, seems to annihilate with its dark shadow all the bonds that bind society together Life, hitherto so assured, of a sudden becoifts, to be enjoyed with a feverish heedlessness before it vanishes forever into the unknown Thus Fetuao found and accepted a dozen lovers a her husband the first place, she yet permitted them liberties and fae of
Deep in every woman's heart there is a love for thethe tears to her eyes at the sight of a passing regiment and cause her to passionately mourn the unknown soldier dead This sentiment, this instinct, is a thousandfold intensified on the bloody field itself The pang when those brave fellows fall is inexpressible; her pride is strangely hu, and makes a virtue of her own abandonment
Jack followed Fetuao everywhere, a despondent, woe-begone figure, who, a warriors, lay or ran or advanced with the others in a black preoccupation He had not a spark of interest in the struggle; his thoughts were forty miles away in that ruined home, with his plants, and trees, and shrubs, his cow, and his chickens What victory could give them back? What terror had a defeat for one who had already lost his all! He lived in the past, in those frugal, thrifty, laborious years; for the present he had but an indifference, an apathy, that he had not even the desire to shake off
He becaht him their rifles to mend and called him a coward for his pains They envied hiht by his side and was not happy when he was out of her sight They nickna,” and would whistle to him derisively and shout, ”Come 'ere!” secure in the chronic absent-mindedness that had become a joke to them all When he answered, as he always answered, ”Eh, what?” and raised his vacant, hter, in which he hi to a lot of children If a shell went off soether with a mimicry of Jack's slow, dejected utterance of it, becaht it out on all occasions
The conflicts about Apia wereback of the pickets on either side The naval commanders, in spite of repeated bo the coasts, found theainst the Mataafa arh barricades were thrown up in the streets and three hundred ht attack on the uard at the Tivoli Hotel betrayed the weakness of the whites to friends and foes alike, and redoubled the anxiety of the admiral and captains
It was plain that no decisive blow could be struck pending the arrival of the reenforceently cabled for from New Zealand, unless a better use were made of the anizations were accordingly broken up, consolidated into a single coht hundred men, well armed and well drilled, and placed under the absolute command of a naval lieutenant
This fine force, supported by whites and Maxims, was counted on to retrieve the situation and drive Mataafa frohold
The plan for a joint attack was accordingly drawn up A quota of seauns, was to forade on either as to advance simultaneously, lap round and outflank the Mataafas This operation, covered by a terrific boun; on its success was staked the hopes of the little clique who had so lightly adopted the cause of a divinity student of seventeen, against the vote and wish of well-nigh all Samoa
On that day the Oa party held the center of the Mataafa line, a stone wall stretching across a wide clearing to the forest on either side It was the post of honor, for it crossed the road up which the eneuarded the headquarters of the patriot king, not a hundred yards behind In the trarass two hundred men sat or lay with their rifles in their hands and listened to thethe These old one battles, their wrinkled hands clasping the staves on which they leaned, never winced as the shells whistled above their heads, nor abated by a hair's breadth their tone of strident warning and encourageet six hundred feet above the sea level, the men-of-war made poor practice and did littledetonations of their guns, and the thundering echoes rolling and re-rolling round the bay, made pleasant music for their crews ashore It see explosions could be wholly without effect, and the tired seaht that the rebels were already suffering heavily and likely to run at the first encounter
Sitting listlessly on a boulder, Jack scarcely took in the fact that anything out of the as about to happen His only concern was not to be too far froht he was du warriors as any castaway in rown older in a month by a dozen years, was the only one which failed to reflect the co conflict Fetuao, on the contrary, was on fire froht eyes dancing in wild excite circle of her adainst them all in a victorious screa out in the looods; then tith a faltering third; then a scattered volley like a bunch of firecrackers going off at once A score ofback for dear life, the pickets who had been dislodged and driven in by the advancing whites They had hardly leaped the wall, panting, and crouching with the uns wheeled into the open and began to fire In the firsthuman could withstand therass, raised an exultant yell, and soe But the uns had to stand exposed and helpless before a fire an to drop, and those ere unhurt disconcertedly turned and ran A couple of officers sprang out of the grass to take charge of the abandoned guns,in their flurry to jam them both For a minute they tinkered and ha themselves, as they did so, to the concentrated volleys of a hundred Samoan rifles Of a sudden, one clapped his hand to his breast and sank on his knees; his co the guns, now silent and useless, to shi+ne innocuously in the sun
All this while the woods on either hand reverberated with the volleys and the cheers of an extended battle, and a haze of powder smoke drifted above the tree tops No one kne the day was going, and the h the Mataafa lines together with the naing the bullets, Fetuao flitted about ater for the parched fighters, passing the news and rolling cigarettes for such of the wounded as were not too far gone to care for the wretch in the rear and drove him to the front with taunts; or, if he were too panic-stricken to get up, she had no co hie was beside herself as she danced and sang like a wanton child in the rain--a rain of Martini and Lee-Re the air all about her
After the ht became a rifle duel, which went on briskly for upward of an hour Again and again the whites rose in the grass, blundered forward and took cover, each rush steave volley for volley at point-blank range Standing in a slop of blood, their great naked feet tra bodies of their co obstinacy of their resistance It was then the battle reached its deadliest stage,the whole previous course of the action There was no shouting, no cheering, but with clenched teeth each man held his place and panted for the supreme moment that should spell either victory or rout That e, when the whites, rising for the last ti themselves forith bayonets fixed On they came, crimson-faced, mouths open, British and Americans in a pellmell rush like a rally of boys at football Even as they did so, Fetuao leaped bolt upright on the wall, and swinging her carbine round her head, opposed her slender body to the whole attack In an instant she was tuh her throat, and as she lay coughing and strangling in the ht her in his arms There she died, aht, jostled and stu to his in the convulsive grasp of dissolution
Jack sprang up like a eance--vengeance, sudden, bloody, and swift He plunged into the thickest of the fray, cursing and raving as he opened a path with his brawny shoulders A seaht the fellow round the neck and throttled hiht and left, with a strength, skill, and ferocity that nothing could withstand He was fired at again and again; his ashen face enty tie that the powder burned his very skin As the line swayed to and fro in that desperate final struggle, there was a hoarse cry against him, constantly repeated, of, ”Shoot that white ainst bullet and sword, stood his ground like a lion and clubbed the butt of his gun into the faces of his foes; and when the whites, at last losing heart, began to weaken and fall back, it was Jack that led the Sa like a maniac for the rest to follow hi backward”]
He stopped beside the guns, laughing wildly to see the blue-jackets scattering like rabbits down the hill, and throwing away their rifles, water bottles, and accouterht There oundedout faintly for help; but, hell! what did he care! Let theroan, the skunks; let them remember the women and children they had bombarded, and the houses they had burned, and the honest hearts they had broken! To hell with the sort of sick hiered like a drunken man as he went slowly back up to the wall It was all he could do to straddle the bla, and then it was only with the help of a wounded Sah a kind of ether, likeit out of the shambles where it lay, they tried to clean away the blood isps of grass Jack was sitting with the girl's head in his lap when he began to sway unsteadily backward and forward, feeling strangely sleepy and cold He ed him somewhere, after all And then he rolled over--dead
THE SECURITY OF THE HIGH SEAS