Hawaii - James Michener [336]
IN THE SEVENTH MONTH of their stay on Kalawao, the depredations of Big Saul and his cronies finally threatened the Chinese, because Nyuk' Tsin was recovered from her pregnancy. Therefore, the men began to study her, saying among themselves, "A man could have a good time with her, and she's not diseased at all."
Accordingly, three of them swooped down one night on the grassy shack and grabbed for Nyuk Tsin. But she and her husband had long ago prepared themselves for this event, and the invaders were met by two fighting Chinese armed with sharply pointed sticks. It was a bitter, silent fight, with doomed Mun Ki rising from his bed of leaves to battle desperately with Big Saul, while Nyuk Tsin, with pointed sticks in her hands, slashed and jabbed at the other two.
Once she was caught around the waist by arms that had only fragmentary hands, and she could smell the foul breath of a leper dragging her to him, but she jabbed backward with her sticks, and he screamed with pain and released her. Now there were two Chinese against two invaders, and like a jungle animal she instinctively ignored her own assailant and sprang for the jugular of Big Saul, the leader, and with great force she jabbed her remaining stick at the side of his head and it must have struck either his ear and gone in there or the soft part of his temple, for it pressed inward . . . long and sharp and pleasingly. At the same time Mun Ki ripped upward with his sharp stick, and Big Saul gasped.
Clutching his two vital wounds, he staggered away into the night and began shouting, "The Pakes have killed me!" This diverted his unwounded helper, who ran to assist his chief while the third man stumbled in the darkness with three inches of stick protruding from his left eye.
"The Pakes have killed me!" Big Saul bellowed, and he awakened all the community, so that by the time he actually did stagger mortally wounded into a circle of torches, all who could walk were present to witness his gasping, clutching death. Silently they withdrew from the ugly corpse. There were few who had not suffered at the hands of Big Saul, and now that they saw his leprosy-riddled body in the dust, they were content to leave him. His blinded crony slipped away into the night, and silence fell upon the lepers of Kalawao.
For the two Chinese it was a dreadful night. They could not know that the community at large approved the death of Big Saul and the blinding of his bully companion. They could not know, huddling alone together in the dark night, that no one in Kalawao was ignorant of how the huge man had met his death: "He went to rape the Pake girl, and her husband killed him. Good for the Pake."
Toward morning it began to rain, and the mournful drops, falling upon the leafy roof and creeping across the floor, first in tiny traces and finally in a small river, added to the misery, and Nyuk Tsin whispered to her shivering companion, "We did the right thing, Wu Chow's Father. The others should have done this years ago."
"Have we any sticks left?" Mun Ki asked.
"I lost both of mine," his wife confessed.
"I have one left, and there's another hidden under the leaves. I think that when they come to seize us in the morning, we should fight until we are dead."
"I think so, too," Nyuk Tsin replied, and she went to the corner of the miserable hut and from the muddy earth picked up the other weapon. In the lonely silence, not knowing when Big Saul's men would re-attack, they waited, and Nyuk Tsin said, "I am glad, Wu Chow's Father, that I came with you. I am humbly honored that tonight you fought to help me."
"I have forgotten that you are a Hakka," he replied.
The rain increased, and for a moment the couple thought they heard the noise of lepers assembling to attack them, but it was only the rustle of water