"I am where I would be, and as I would be, Ken. We are in God's hands." "Amen!" he said, and lifted his hat and led her round the shoulder of the hill. They did not know where they might come across Ra'a. "You will find him," Ha'o had said meaningly. So they climbed on and up, through tangled thickets of hibiscus and branching matpandanus, under grey-boled palms, along bare patches of rock, certain that scores of dark eyes were watching them, wondering when and how their journey would end. The hills had echoed many times to the voice of the long gun, when, from a clump of brush in front, a couple of bristling warriors rose suddenly and barred their way. They carried long, thin, venomous spears and heavy bows, and each had a bundle of arrows at his thigh. "Aoha!" said Blair quietly, and they stared grimly, first at him, and then, and longer, at Jean. She sat down on a rock and opened her fan and began to use it with an equanimity which covered a jumping heart. The climb had been somewhat exhausting, her face was radiant with colour and a great wistful expectancy, and her eyes shone like southern stars. She was a goodly sight to any man. To these brown men, who had never in their lives seen anything like her, she must have seemed almost more than human. After an appreciative glance at Matti's axe and spade, they stared at her with stolid insistence. "Tell them we have come to speak with Ra'a. We bring him presents," said Blair to Matti, and a conversation of clips and jerks ensued, and in the result the brown men turned and led the way into the bush. They came at last to a number of houses which had a hasty and temporary look about them, and were surrounded instantly by a buzzing crowd of men, women, and children, Jean again the centre of attraction, and bearing it, as before, with surprising equanimity. They almost mobbed her, and shouted their comments aloud from one to another. Her sunshade, her fan, her dress, her face, her hair, her hands, every bit of her was a new sensation, and they made the most of it. Then sudden silence fell, as a tall man strode through the lane they made before him, and stood in front of the strangers. "You are Ra'a?" asked Blair of him direct. "I am Ra-ch-ch-ch-a!" and his raucous name sounded worse in his own throat than it had ever sounded to them before; and as he said it, so it seemed to fit him. He was tall and well made, evidently younger by some years than Ha'o, but his face was truculent and his eyes quick-glancing and shifty. They rested, however, on Jean, and under other circumstances, and from a civilised man, Blair would have resented the look. "What do you want?" asked Ra'a harshly. And, through Matti, Blair answered him-- "We want peace between you and Ha'o"--and at the very mention of his brother the other scowled--"and between your people and his." "It is you who have made the trouble. Why did you bring him back?"