Lerumie lifted his right hand in signal to a woman in a canoe alongside.

She bent swiftly for something that she tossed to Lerumie.

It was a long-handled tomahawk, the head of it an ordinary shingler's hatchet, the haft of it, native-made, a black and polished piece of hard wood, inlaid in rude designs with mother-of-pearl and wrapped with coconut sennit to make a hand grip.

The blade of the hatchet had been ground to razor-edge.
As the tomahawk flew noiselessly through the air to Lerumie's hand, just as noiselessly, the next instant, it flew through the air from his hand into the hand of the fat Mary with the nursing child who stood behind the mate.

She clutched the handle with both hands, while the child, astride her hip, held on to her with both small arms part way about her.
Still she waited the stroke, for with Borckman's head thrown back was no time to strive to sever the spinal cord at the neck.