headed crazy fool to try, for they
were bound to see him first, and could always hide if we got too close,
or fight if need be, with all the points of the game in their favor. But
that wasn't what he meant to do, not he, but surrounded Afiola's two
houses, and took out everybody in them--Talavao his aunt, Oloa his
uncle, Filipo his brother (who was sick on a mat), and Afiola's two
children, Mali and Popo, and a raft of men and women, to the number of
twenty or more all told. They were scared blue at the sight of the
cocked rifles, and held up their hands like lambs for the Chinaman to
rope them, which he did like lashing a chest and about as tender, the
tears streaming down the women's faces. But there wasn't a spark of
compassion in Elijah Coe, and he never give them a thought.

He was at a white heat, and his finger was just itching on the trigger
of his gun, and he never started for the beach till all the Bowery was
crackling in smoke and flame. Not that our eighteen or twenty was the
whole of Afiola's family in the settlement. I guess there was several
hundreds of them altogether, taking it fine and large, retainers,
hangers-on, and connections of one kind and another; but Coe's boldness
took them by surprise, and not being in the secret of Mrs. Tweedie's
carrying off, they weren't prepared or anything. But even in the time we
were tying up the prisoners they began to turn ugly and bunch together
and hoot, and all the way back to the beach it was touch and go whether
they wouldn't rush us.

Not a soul durst ask Coe what he meant to do as we pitched into the
water and shoved off, him sitting there so grim and fierce, with his
eyes smoldering in his head like coals; but there was no sound but the
straining of the rowlocks, and a whimper or two from the women, and the
swish and gurgle of the water along the keel. I'll never forget that
boat ride if I live to be a hundred; the drums rolling and re-rolling
around the bay, and that strange humming of voices behind us like the
wind in the rigging of a ship, and Coe and the Kanakas and the Chinaman
and John Rau and the men pulling. But as for Coe's plan, we weren't long
kept waiting for what it was. The prisoners were bundled into the ship's
waist, with Lum to stand over them, while the mate got out the kedge and
brought the schooner broadside on to the mountain. Then they bent a
noose and ran up old Oloa between the masts. It was no fancy hanging
with a drop calculated to