With great shouting and song, the pretty teak-built yacht was towed in by the long canoes and beached close to where Jerry lay just beyond the confines of the coral-stone walls.  Fires blazed on the beach, lanterns were lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangi was gutted¹ and stripped.  Everything portable was taken ashore², from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails.  No one in Somo slept that night.  Even the tiniest of children toddled³ about the feasting fires or sprawled⁴ surfeited⁵ on the sands.  At two in the morning, at Bashti’s command, the shell of the boat was fired.  And Jerry, thirsting for water, having whimpered and wailed⁶ himself to exhaustion⁷, lying helpless, leg-tied, on his side, saw the floating world he had known so short a time go up in flame and smoke.

 

And by the light of her burning, old Bashti apportioned⁸ the loot.  No one of the tribe was too mean to receive nothing.  Even the wretched bush-slaves, who had trembled through all the time of their captivity⁹ from fear of being eaten, received each a clay pipe and several sticks of tobacco.  The main bulk of the trade goods, which was not distributed, Bashti had carried up to his own large grass house.  All the wealth of gear was stored in the several canoe houses.  While in the devil devil houses the devil devil doctors set to work curing the many heads over slow smudges; for, along with the boat’s crew there were a round dozen of No-ola return boys and several Malu boys which Van Horn had not yet delivered.

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