Chapter III
The story of that day of bloodshed and horror, when Charlik and his white allies sought to exterminate the whole community, cannot here be told in all its dreadful details. Seventy years have come and gone since then, and there are but two or three men now living on the island who can speak of it with knowledge as a tale of “the olden days when we were heathens.” Let the rest of the tale be told in the words of one of those natives of Leassé, who, then a boy, fought side by side with Ledyard, North, and Macy.
“The sun was going westward in the sky when the two ships rounded the point and anchored in what you white men now call Coquille Harbour. We of Leassé, who watched from the shore, saw six boats put off, filled with men. There pulled inside the reef, and went to the right towards Môut; three went to the left. Letya (Ledyard), with the two white strangers who had come to him in the night, and two hundred of our men, had long before gone into the mountains to await Charlik and his fighting men, and their white friends. They—Letya and the Leassé people—made a trap for Charlik’s men in the forest. Charlik himself was in the boats with the other white men. He wanted to see the people of Leassé and Môut driven into the water, so that he might shoot at them with a new rifle which Késa or the other ship captain—I forget which—had given to him. But he wanted most of all to get Cerita, the wife of Letya, the white man. Only Cerita was to live. These were Charlik’s words. He did not know that her husband had returned from the sea. Had he known that, he would not have given all his money and all his oil to the two white captains to help him to make Leassé and Môut desolate and give our bones to his dogs to eat.
“It was a great trap—the trap prepared by Letya; and Charlik’s men and the white men with them fell in it. They fell as a stone falls in a deep well, and sinks and is no more seen of men.
“This was the manner of the trap: The path down the cliff was between two high walls of rock; at the foot of the cliff was a thick clump of high pandanus trees growing closely together. In between these trees Letya built a high barrier of logs, encompassing the outlet of the path to Leassé. This barrier was a half circle; the two ends touched the edge of the cliff, and the centre was hidden among the pandanus trees. On the top of this barrier the men of Leassé waited with loaded muskets; lower down on the ground were others, they too had loaded muskets. On the top of the cliff where the path led down, fifty men were hidden. They were hidden in the thick scrub which we call oap. Oap is a good thing in which to hide from an enemy, and then spring from and slay him suddenly.
“I, who was then a boy, saw all this. I heard Letya, our white man, tell the head of our village that Charlik’s men would enter into the trap and perish. Then kava was made, and Letya and the head men drank. Kava is good, but rum is better to make men fight. We had no rum, but we had great love for Letya and his wife, and his two children, and great hate for Charlik. So we said, ‘If this is death, it is death,’ and every man went to his post—some to the barrier at the foot of the cliff, and some to the thicket of oap on the summit. Cerita, the wife of Letya the Englishman, was weeping. She was weeping because Nená, the chief of Môut, was waiting in the house to kill her if her husband should be slain. But she did not weep because of the fear of death; it was for her children she wept. That is the way of women. What is the life of a child to the life of a man?
“Nená was my father’s brother. He was a brave man, but was too old to fight, for his eyes were dimmed by many years. So he sat beside Cerita and her two children, with a long knife in his hand and waited. He covered his face with a mat and waited. It was right for him to do this, for Letya was a great man; and his wife, although she was a foreigner, was an honoured woman. Therefore though Nená might not look upon her face at other times, he could kill her if Letya said she must die. This was quite right and correct. A wife must be guided by her husband and do what is right and correct, and avoid scandal.
“For many hours the women in the houses waited in silence. Then suddenly they heard the thunder of two hundred guns, and the roaring of voices, then more muskets. They ran out of the houses and looked up to the cliff, and lo! the sky was bright as day, for when Charlik’s people and the white men walked into the trap in the darkness, Letya and our people set alight great heaps of dry leaves and scrub, which were placed all along the barrier of logs. This was done so that they could see better to shoot. There were thirty or forty of Charlik’s men killed by that volley. The white man who was leading them was very brave; he tried to climb over the barrier, but fell back dead, for a man named Sru thrust a whale-lance into his heart. All this time the other white men and the rest of Charlik’s people were firing their muskets, but their bullets only hit the heavy logs of the barrier, and Letya and our people killed them very easily by putting their muskets through the spaces. When the sailors saw their captain fall, they tried to run away, and the Lele warriors ran with them. But when they reached the path which led up between the cliff, it too was blocked, and many of them became jammed together between the walls, and these were all killed very easily—some with bullets, and some with big stones. Then those that were left ran round and found inside the trap, trying to get out. They were like rats in a cask, and our people kept killing them as they ran. Some of them—about thirty—did climb over, but all were killed, for when they jumped down on the other side our people were there waiting. At last four of the sailors made a big hole by tearing out two posts, and rushed out, followed by the Lele men. Letya was the first man to meet the sailors, and he told them to surrender. Two of them threw down their arms, but the other two ran at Letya, and one of them ran his cutlass into him. It went in at the stomach, and Letya fell. We killed all these white sailors, but some of the Lele men escaped. That was a great pity, but then how can these things be helped?” The two strange white men who were fighting beside Lētya, picked him up, and they carried him into his house. He was not dead, but he said, ‘I shall soon die, take me to my wife.’ I did not go with them to the house. I went into the barrier with the other youths to kill the wounded. It is a foolish thing not to kill wounded men; they may get better and kill you. So we killed them. There were fourteen white men slain in that fight beside their captain.
“Before it was daylight some of our men set out along the beach to look for the boats. They did not want to kill any more white men, but they did want to kill Charlik. They were very fortunate, for before they had gone far on their way they saw three of the boats coming along close in to the beach. So they hid behind some rocks. Charlik was in the first boat; he was standing in the bow pointing out the way. When he came very close they all fired together, and Charlik’s life was gone. He fell dead into the sea. Then the boats all turned seaward, and pulled hard for the ships. Then before long, we saw the other three boats going back to the ships; in these last were four of Charlik’s men who had escaped. The boats were quickly pulled up, and the ships sailed away, for those on board were terrified when they heard that all the white men they had sent to fight were dead.
“Letya did not die at once—not for two days. Cerita his wife and two white men watched beside him all this time. Before he died he called the head men to him, and said that he gave his small ship to the two white men, together with many other things. All his money he gave to his wife, and told her she must go away with the white men, who would take her back to her own people. To the head men he gave many valuable things, such as tierces of tobacco and barrels of powder. This was quite right and proper, and showed he knew what was correct to do before he died. We buried him on the little islet over there called Bèsi.
“The two white men and Cerita and her two children went away in the little ship. But they did not go to Cerita’s country: they remained at Ponapé, and there the tall man of the two—the officer—married Cerita. All this we learnt a year afterwards from the captain of a whaling ship. It was quite right and proper for Letya’s widow to marry so quickly, and to marry the man who had been a friend to her husband.”