"At last the three schooners grew tired of chasing us back and forth.
So they went, the three of them, to Nihi, in the northeast. And then
they drove us steadily to the west. Their nine boats were in the water
as well. They beat up every island as they moved along. They drove us,
drove us, drove us day by day. And every night the three schooners and
the nine boats made a chain of watchfulness that stretched across the
lagoon from rim to rim, so that we could not escape back.

"They could not drive us forever that way, for the lagoon was only so
large, and at last all of us that yet lived were driven upon the last
sand bank to the west. Beyond lay the open sea. There were ten
thousand of us, and we covered the sand bank from the lagoon edge to
the pounding surf on the other side. No one could lie down. There was
no room. We stood hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. Two days they
kept us there, and the mate would climb up in the rigging to mock us
and yell, Yah! Yah! Yah!' till we were well sorry that we had ever
harmed him or his schooner a month before. We had no food, and we
stood on our feet two days and nights. The little babies died, and the
old and weak died, and the wounded died. And worst of all, we had no
water to quench our thirst, and for two days the sun beat down on us,
and there was no shade. Many men and women waded out into the ocean
and were drowned, the surf casting their bodies back on the beach. And
there came a pest of flies. Some men swam to the sides of the
schooners, but they were shot to the last one. And we that lived were
very sorry that in our pride we tried to take the schooner with the
three masts that came to fish for beche-de-mer.

"On the morning of the third day came the skippers of the three
schooners and that mate in a small boat. They carried rifles, all of