"Twenty-two," Kapahei answered. "Yes, it would be a wise thing to
kill him. Twenty-three--twenty-four."

The idiot whined sharply when he saw the rifle levelled at him.
Koolau hesitated, then lowered the gun.

"It is a hard thing to do," he said.

"You are a fool, twenty-six, twenty-seven," said Kapahei. "Let me
show you."

He arose, and with a heavy fragment of rock in his hand, approached
the wounded thing. As he lifted his arm to strike, a shell burst
full upon him, relieving him of the necessity of the act and at the
same time putting an end to his count.

Koolau was alone in the gorge. He watched the last of his people
drag their crippled bodies over the brow of the height and
disappear. Then he turned and went down to the thicket where the
maid had keen killed. The shell-fire still continued, but he
remained; for far below he could see the soldiers climbing up. A
shell burst twenty feet away. Flattening himself into the earth, he
heard the rush of the fragments above his body. A shower of hau
blossoms rained upon him. He lifted his head to peer down the
trail, and sighed. He was very much afraid. Bullets from rifles
would not have worried him, but this shell-fire was abominable.
Each time a shell shrieked by he shivered and crouched; but each
time he lifted his head again to watch the trail.

At last the shells ceased. This, he reasoned, was because the