The Garden of God (Romance Classic). Henry De Vere Stacpoole
finished article to the chubby hand reaching for it. “Yes, sir.” He came to Lestrange, who had called him, and between them they set about the work of making things shipshape. Some bunk bedding had been brought ashore, and Jim’s scanty wardrobe that had never been increased out of the slop chest lay in a bundle by the shack amongst the trees.
Stanistreet had wanted to leave a tent, but Jim said the shack was good enough for him. There was lots of room for him besides the stores; Lestrange and the child would have the house.
They worked away at the little jobs to be finished and then came dinner, a sort of picnic on cold stuff brought from the Ranatonga and eaten seated on the sward, Dick sharing with them in the way of bananas and scraps just as a dog might have done.
In some extraordinary way the common sailor and the sensitive, super-civilised Lestrange had almost at once become companions, yet without any alteration in status.
It was always “Yes, sir,” with Jim, with Lestrange it was always “Kearney,” and the power of little things was never more evidenced than in the case of Jim relabelled by the gentle-voiced Lestrange in the first hours of this island life. He had always been “Jim” to himself and others. “Jim” had placer-mined on the hills of California, drunk himself blind, killed a “Chink” in a tong dust-up he had joined in for the fun of the thing, worked for the sandalwood traders and always had come out, to use his own expression, at the little end of the horn. There were rare moments of heart-searching with Jim when he accused himself not of crimes committed but of opportunities let slip, opportunities with women and with Fortune. In those rare moments which yet tinged in some manner his conscious life, the man he knew was “Jim”; the inconsiderable name summoned up his failures. “Kearney” was something new, didn’t seem to fit, yet in some way was not distasteful—almost a title.
Towards evening that day Kearney, who had been prospecting about in the woods and who with his island-trained eye had discovered and noted the places of all sorts of fruit-bearing trees, to say nothing of a patch of yams that showed evidence of cultivation—Kearney, chewing a long straw of maya grass, appeared before Lestrange, who was seated in front of the house reading a book.
“The old hooker was due out at the half ebb, sir,” said he. “She’ll be well to sea by this and bearing north, and I was thinking you’d maybe like to go over to the reefs to have a last look at her.”
“The schooner?” said Lestrange, closing his book. “Yes, I would like to see her on her way. Can you row me over?”
“Yes, sir,” said Kearney, with a half smile, “I can row you all right.” He took a glance into the house where Dick in a corner was asleep under a half kicked off blanket. “And the kid won’t take no harm, he’s sleepin’ like a Dutchman. Ain’t you goin’ to take your coat, sir? It’s breezin’ up out there an’ fresher than here.”
“Yes, Kearney,” replied Lestrange, putting the book and his reading glasses away on a little shelf by the door, a quaint little shelf that the lost ones had put up for who knows what purpose. “Yes, perhaps I had better take my coat.” He put it on and they went down to the water’s edge, where Kearney pulled the new dinghy close up whilst he got in.
Then they pushed off, the sailor sculling with his eye over his shoulder for the reefs.
As I have said, the lagoon here was very broad and broken by coral ridges that made navigation difficult; great ponds and narrow passages of diamond-bright water showed a floor ablaze with live or dingy dead and rotten coral. Coloured fish, haliotis shells, crabs and jellyfish showed as clearly as seen through air, and as they rowed, Lestrange, leaning over, gazed as interested as a child.
“Oh, them,” said Jim, his attention being called to a school of jellyfish, disc-shaped, adorned with purple buttons and projecting themselves through the water by the simple act of opening and closing like umbrellas. “Them’s pikers, seen ’em as big as a ship’s tops’l in the waters over by Howland—Howland, sir, it’s one of them line islands, east of the Gilberts.—Yes, sir, there’s fish to feed the fleet in this lagoon and I’ll be getting busy with the lines to-morrow. Fond o’ fishin’, are you, sir? Well, you’ll have your choice and plenty when we get the lines rigged. Step careful.”
He held the boat up to the reef coral whilst Lestrange got out. Then, having fastened her by tying the painter to a spike of rock, they stood looking.
The sound of the surf had been loudening as they crossed from the land. Here, facing the fresh sea breeze, the full roar of the breakers came to them, whilst to right and left the great low-tide outer beach lay bombarded by the ocean, flown across by gulls and showing in the golden light of early evening the rock pools left like bits of mirror by the retreating sea. Coral sings, and mixed with the voices of the waves the inner voice of the reef could be heard, a vague, chanting sound, remote and bell-like.
Here, standing with the sound of the sea and the reef in one’s ears, the island world took a new colour and a new atmosphere, altering according to the time of day from the gaiety of morning to the loneliness of evening.
“Look!” cried the sailor. “That’s her.”
He pointed away to where far at sea the white sails of the Ranatonga showed the sun full on them. There was a lump of coral worn smooth by weather just here. Lestrange took his seat on it and whilst Kearney pottered about examining the contents of the rock pools, the cuttle-fish bones and reef debris, he sat, his eyes fixed on the distant sail and his thoughts travelling far beyond.
A long time passed till footsteps roused him from his reverie. It was Kearney, a vast and edible crab—its claws bound with seaweed—in one hand, a crawfish in the other.
“Look!” said Lestrange, as he rose to his feet. “She is nearly gone.”
The sailor looked. Hull down, almost washed from sight by evening and distance, the Ranatonga showed her canvas to the sunset like a flake of golden spar. Less and less it grew, till at last the eye that chanced to lose it failed to find it again.
“Kearney,” said Lestrange, as he turned to the boat, and speaking without any sadness in his tone, “I may be wrong, but it has just come to me that I will never see that ship any more.”
The sailor, taking advantage of the fact that the dinghy had slipped her moorings in the last few minutes and had to be captured where she had grounded against a spur further along, made no reply.
Bowers, instructed by Stanistreet, had given him the hint that Lestrange’s compasses wanted correcting, and that he wasn’t to be “crossed” if he put up strange ideas about things, more especially if those ideas had anything to do with his lost children.
“Which children are you meanin’?” had asked Kearney.
“Them two in the boat we found,” replied Bowers.
“Children! What are you talkin’ about?” had asked the other.
“Maybe you’ll get it into your thick head he’s always seein’ them same as when they were little,” replied Bowers, “and he’s got it fixed in his nut he’s to find them again, that they’re somewhere hid on the island, not them but their sperrits; that’s how the land lays with him, and now you know.”
Kearney had thought a good deal on this matter. He had a fair charge of superstition in his make-up and no wish to increase his education in psychic affairs, reckoning bad luck, ghosts, omens, and all such things on the same string and to be avoided.
CHAPTER IX
THE ROLLERS
Next morning Lestrange, asleep in the house, was awakened by a child’s laughter.
Dick had vanished from the corner where he slept, fetched out by Kearney, whose voice could be heard in admonition.
“Now then, Dick M,