Stationed in a chair in the hall was one of Stevenson’s larger Samoan men, a rifle slung over his shoulder with a strap.
There was a thump from inside the room. I turned back to find my companion had fallen to the floor against the wall. He did not move from that spot for the next three or four hours. During the night, our guard was relieved by a tall, strapping Samoan named Sao, who looked in on us. Davenport seemed to take a little interest in this new arrival. Neither of us knew Sao, but had seen him doing his grueling work on the grounds chopping through encroaching liana with a bush knife in the impossible task of trying to keep paths clear of the ever-growing forest. He wielded an ax with grace. His legs were covered in tattoos that represented battles fought. Davenport called for assistance from Sao several times toward the end of the night shift, and Sao came in a state of utter exhaustion. Later, I could hear the Samoan curse his relief guard, the carefree and handsome Laefoele, for arriving fifteen minutes late, at least that was what I surmised from the part of the conversation I could translate. Davenport, I would discover, understood it all very well.
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I FELT A TUG on my shoulder the next night. Raising my head, the reality of our situation pushed out the sweet oblivion of sleep. I had been sleeping on the floor, without even a mat beneath me. Davenport gestured for me to come with him. To my surprise, I saw he had opened the door very slightly. Now he pushed it farther open. An even greater surprise, there was no apparent reaction to this, so he peered around the edge of the door, holding his breath as he did. Sao, who once again was our night guard, was slouched in his chair asleep and nobody else was in sight. Davenport gestured that I hurry; I shook my head and mouthed a protest. But he already had started his dangerous path, leaving me to either obey or be left alone.
Davenport dragged his uncooperative leg as quietly as he could and I remained so close behind I was almost touching him. We passed the guard’s chair without a stir from the dog-tired Samoan. Davenport later told me he had been tempted to grab Sao’s rifle, which rested loosely on the man’s lap, but judged it too risky. We did not know the exact time of night, but it was late enough that the rest of the house would be asleep—except perhaps for Laefoele, the relief guard, wherever he was. Possibly on his way.
A loose floorboard emitted a sound under our feet. A soft creak, no louder than a sigh. I willed myself not to look back, as though the glance itself would alert Sao. But I could not help it, and as I turned my head, I knew what was about to happen. Sao looked first at the open door and then at us.
Forgetting, it seemed, that he had a lethal weapon at his fingertips with which to shoot us down, Sao lowered his head and charged Davenport. The bookaneer watched this unfold with his usual composure, and easily dodged the runner. Sao smashed right through the stair railing. He toppled over the side and held one of the broken posts, dangling from the edge of the top floor, below him a long drop to the lower level.
Davenport grabbed one of his hands and I clasped the other. We heaved.
“Hold on to us,” Davenport said, struggling with his weight. I lost my grip on the other hand, which was slick with sweat, then the hand Davenport gripped began to slip, but Davenport was able to grab on to Sao’s long, thick hair and pull with better leverage. When Sao was safely back at the top, he remained on the floor, catching his breath and shaking off the scare.
“Thank to you, White Chiefs,” he said in English. “Thank to you, you save Sao—”
Davenport interrupted the speech by pummeling the back of Sao’s head with the butt of the rifle, which the man had dropped. “Apologies,” Davenport muttered as he stepped around the unconscious lump on the floor to close the door to our former prison. He gestured again for me, but my jaw and mind were slack, frozen by the scene as my companion strained to pull Sao into the chair. Though I was urging him to hurry, I had an idea why he would slow our progress to get Sao into position. If the relief guard thought Sao was asleep, we could win a few extra minutes for our escape before the room was entered.
I helped Davenport down the back stairs of the house. He was extremely winded from the confrontation with Sao. It struck me with a fresh jolt of fear just how weak his injuries had left him, worsened by these last sedentary days at Vailima. We found a lit torch outside the ground floor and Davenport swept it up, staggering and groaning into the night.
It was steamy and windless, but the air on my face and mouth refreshed me. Davenport was visibly relieved to find no signs of pursuers from the house. He was emboldened. But as he took a few more steps onto the grounds, his head swiveled upward. I followed the line of his gaze.