all humans. Very rarely, because of some fancied resemblance, an Islander claimed a shipwrecked person as his dead son or daughter returned to earth-life in spirit-form, and such were spared. Thus had Jakara been spared, and also a few, a very few, men and women who had survived shipwreck among the superstitious natives of those islands.*
(*Thus had Mrs Barbara Thompson been spared after the wreck of the cutter America on the distant Prince of Wales Group. She was claimed by the chief of Entrance as the spirit of his deceased daughter, Gi-’om. Boroto, chief of Murralug (Prince of Wales Island), took the white woman to wife. After five years she was rescued by H.M.S. Rattlesnake and restored to her friends in Sydney.)
Jakara blamed C’Zarcke that he had never met Eyes of the Sea, as the natives called the Lamar of Tutu. Though he had voyaged to Tutu Island, he had never seen the girl who had been taken from a shipwrecked vessel when five years old. She had been claimed as the Lamar of a Tutu girl. Jakara had often pondered upon the white girl’s plight. Reared as a savage, she had been forced to take part in all their dreadful ceremonies. Jakara shuddered as he thought of the Waiat rites, but she had so far escaped the “Wedding of the Virgins.” He knew her age; she must be twenty now, just the age at which a white girl would be dreaming of the glories of life.
Jakara sighed, and walked thoughtfully down the slope. Hilly Mer is very pretty. The foliage screened villages below, each facing its own tiny beach, with a fleet of big fighting-canoes drawn right up to the front avenues of palms. Each village was flanked by steep grassy headlands, or deep green of tangled jungle, with the intense green of banana-patches away behind. Behind, and farther back still, were the well-kept vegetable and fruit gardens climbing up the little hills, and towards the centre of the island the green-grey of the Wongais surrounding the Sacred Grove. And, brooding high over all, the sombre mass of Gelam, its dead crater-rim circular and glassy, miles in circumference, its great maw now supporting grassy slopes. The island was so markedly different from the Great South Land; in its people, its rocks, its trees, its birds, its corals and fishes. Seven hundred feet above the sea, in the lava rocks of that old crater, are huge chunks of dead coral, proving how in ages past the volcano pushed Mer right up through the bottom of the sea. The Miriam-le were vastly different from the nomadic Australian aboriginal. They were expert navigators, canny traders, and keen agriculturists, and had conquered, explored, and colonized all Torres Strait.
The village houses were plentiful and neat and clean, adroitly thatched with grasses and mats of plaited palm-leaves. Before every house there stood a Sarokag pole, sometimes adorned with big spiral shells, which showed that the man within was initiated into manhood, but was not yet a warrior. On other poles were skulls, the number of which denoted the fighting-power and honour of the master within.
Over Jakara’s house also there stood a pole, and it bore a strange device. This consisted simply of wings of palm-branches topping a bamboo and turned by the wind like a windmill. In answer to questions, in this matter as in numerous others, Jakara had smiled wisely. He had always striven to impress upon these susceptible people that there were things of which he understood more than they. And they had long since accepted him at his own valuation; admitted him as one of themselves, and let him alone, though he was always “Jakara the Strange.”
He entered the house, latched the door close, and took down a staff of seasoned ironwood from behind the festoons of bright yellow tobacco-leaf along the walls. Inside, the bamboo pole fastened to the windmill came through the roof and whizzed round. Attached to it by a simple wooden device was a stone killing-club, which whirled round at striking angles at the height of a man’s head. Jakara stood before it and struck, and the house rang with wood smacking stone as he warded off the swift blows. With spurts of the breeze outside the club revolved at erratic speed, and, to protect himself, Jakara became a machine of sinew and energy and unerring sight.
For years he had thus practised against the club, though occasionally it had sprawled him senseless on the floor. But practice and fear for his head had set him running the mill faster and faster, until he had long since developed a quickness of eye and foot, body and sword, and above all the lasting of his wind, which had earned him among enemy peoples the title of “Jakara the Unkillable.” Leaping back from the vicious club, he took from the wall a small shield which fitted snugly over his left forearm. It was of hardwood, thickly studded with iron bolts hammered from floating spars, and weeks of thought and labour and fear had gone to the making of that buckler. But in several hot fights it had saved him from a cracked skull. Now, setting the mill to its limit, Jakara rushed the whizzing club, while the villagers hushed to listen to ringing blows of stone and wood and iron. Sparks were slow in comparison to the quickness of Jakara’s eye.
Though self-defence was one object of this unceasing practice, the chief motive was the fear that at some time he must face the possibility of being forced to perform the Dance of Death. If he could only die fighting, so that they could not possibly stun him! For if they killed him outright he could never Dance!
The practice over, from the wall he took down a long rapier, pulled the shining blade from the scabbard, and balanced the thing, his eyes sparkling with unholy love. This blade was “Lightning,” so named by fighting warriors who had seen its gleaming swiftness in action. If he might only fight out the last act in the midst of a ravening crowd with his one earthly love in his hand! But, O Lord above, they were such experts at the stunning stroke. Though he killed and killed, they would strive and strive to stun, and stun only. Sighing, he bent the rapier like a bow, then whirled it around his body until the weapon hummed. Again he examined the steel, tenderly feeling its point and edge, and again, as at many times past, wondered at its history, for it was a Spanish blade. He had seen ear-rings of Spain adorning a girl of Las, and odd men of Mer wore rings heavy with the gold and workmanship of Castille. The Las villagers also used quite a number of Spanish words. What was the story of these relics? Without the slightest doubt, the wreck of a Spanish adventurer in the long ago.
Jakara knew that from the sixteenth century Dutch and Spanish ships had ventured into these treacherous seas, jealously keeping their discoveries secret until the great Cook had sailed through the Strait and claimed Australia for Britain. Jakara knew from the diving natives that the bones of many vessels, mostly unknown, lie among the reefs. What romances of the white man’s history C’Zarcke must know! C’Zarcke had given him the blade as a reward for the planning of a highly successful raid.
With the point piercing the floor, he leaned thoughtfully on the hilt. C’Zarcke, always C'Zarcke! Presently he jerked himself straight, with the old terrible feeling at the base of his neck – a feeling such as a man might have when half awake if a spirit breathed upon the back of his neck. He knew C’Zarcke was thinking of him. Hurriedly he replaced the weapon and, leaning over the coral hearth, blew the coco-husks into flame.
Within the Zogo-house C’Zarcke sat brooding with the night. Care creased his brow, thought clouded his eyes, his heavy lips drooped with a childlike despondency. C’Zarcke was not worrying about himself – he was dreading the future of his nation. For as a nation the Island people classed themselves.
C’Zarcke feared not the Lamars, but their numbers, the incomprehensible things that were theirs, and above all, their understanding. So far, these strange people had not troubled the Eastern Group and but little of the West, but he knew that at the Central Group of islands, and along the coast of the Great South Land and its islands off shore, wherever the Lamars wished to land, they landed; that whatever the Lamars wanted, they took.
For centuries past the mere existence of the Lamars had been acknowledged as a peril by the Zogo-le of the Strait. Those strange beings had come from they knew not where; they had come like a hurricane, done their damage, and vanished like the storm.
Throughout the centuries they had come in this manner, and the Zogo-le of the day had left on record that the arrows of the Islanders had splintered against the bodies of these beings, their toughest spears had crumpled up, even their stone clubs had bounced shattered from
