Dully, he realized that the drizzle had stopped, the clouds had cleared
and the big and little moons were up. The seeing was good, too good.
There were people left alive in the wreck, men, women and children who
were trying to climb through the tangle of ropes, spars and broken,
jagged, projecting planks. Screams, moans, shouts and calls for help
made a chaos.
Groaning, he managed to rise to his feet. He had a very painful
headache. One eye was so swollen he couldn't see with it. He tasted
blood in his mouth and felt several broken teeth with his lacerated
tongue. His sides hurt when he breathed. The skin seemed to have
been torn off the palms of his hands. His right knee must have been
wrenched, and his left heel was a ball of fire. Nevertheless he got up.
Amra and Paxi and her other children were in there; that is, unless
they'd been caught in the other half. He had to find out. Even if they
were beyond his help there were others who weren't.
He started to hobble through the trees. Then he saw a man step out from
behind a bush. Thinking that he must be a survivor who had wandered off
in a dazed condition, Green opened his mouth to speak to him. But there
was something odd about him that imposed silence. He looked closer.
Yes, the fellow wore a headdress of feathers and held a long spear in
his hand. And the moonlight, where it slipped through the branches and
shone upon an exposed shoulder, gleamed red, white, blue-black, yellow
and green. The man was painted all over with stripes of different
colors!
Green slowly sank down upon his hands and knees behind a bush. It was
then that he became aware of others who stood behind trees and watched
the wreck. Then these emerged from the darkness under the branches.
Presently, at least fifty plumed, painted, armed men were gathered
together, all silent, all intently inspecting the wreck and the
survivors.
One raised a spear as a signal and gave a loud, whooping war cry. The
others echoed him, and when he ran out from beneath the branches they
followed him.
Green could watch only for a minute before he had to close his eyes.
"No, no!" he moaned. "The children, too!"
When he forced himself to look again, he saw that he had been mistaken
in thinking that everybody had been put to spear. After the first
vicious onslaught, in which they'd killed indiscriminately and
hysterically, like all undisciplined primitives, they'd spared the
younger women and the little girls. Those able to walk were lined up
and marched off under the guard of half a dozen spearsmen. The too
badly injured were run through on the spot.
Even in the midst of this scene, Green felt some of his intense anguish
eased a little. Amra was still alive!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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