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The drums had scarcely struck up when I heard an Indian shout warningly behind us, followed instantly by the report of a musket. Churchill attempted to spring to his feet, but sank down coughing beside me, the musket dropping from his nerveless hand. Women were shrieking and men shouting on all sides, and I heard Vehiatua’s voice boom out above the uproar: “Aye! Kill him! Kill him!” In the flickering torchlight I saw Thompson break away from the scuffle behind me and begin to run toward the beach with ungainly bounds, still clinging to his musket. Atuanui, the warrior chief, snatched up a great stone and hurled it with his giant’s arm. It struck the murderer between the shoulders, and sent him sprawling. Next moment the Indian warrior was upon him, beating out his brains with the same stone that had brought him down. When I returned to the house, Churchill was dead.

Since the Indians made war, and abandoned plans for war, for reasons which struck me as frivolous in the extreme, the loss of Churchill was accepted as an unfavourable omen by Vehiatua’s priests, and the expedition planned against the people of the south coast of Eimeo was given up. I was secretly glad to be freed from the duty of taking up arms against men to whom I bore no ill-will, and settled down with relief to a tranquil domestic life and my studies of the Indian tongue.