They came in on a dying wind, the outlying reefs creaming to the
swell and the great high island opening its cañons and mountain
glades as they drew towards it pursued by the chanting gulls.
Le Moan, who had never seen a high island or only the vision of Palm
Tree uplifted by mirage, stood with her eyes fixed on the multitude
of the trees. Palms, breadfruit, tree ferns, aoas, sandalwood
groves, trees mounting towards the skies, reaching ever upwards,
changing in form and misted by the smoke of torrents.
Here there was no freedom, the great spaces of the sea had vanished,
Levua like an ogre had seized her mind and made it a prisoner.
For the first time in her life something came to her heart, terrible
as her grief for the loss of Taori, yet even more far searching and
taking its bitterness from the remote past as well as the present.
It was the homesickness of the atoll-bred islander encompassed by
the new world of the high island; of the caged gull taken from the
freedom of the wind and the sea.
At Karolin you could see the sun from his rising to his setting, and
the stars from sea line to sea line; the reef rose nowhere to more
than twice the height of a man, the sea was a glittering plain of
freedom and a sound and a scent.
Worse even than the monstrous height of Levua, its strange cañons
and gloomy woods, was the scent of the foliage, cossi and vanilla
and sandalwood, unknown flowers, unknown plants, all mixed with the
smell of earth and breathing from the glasshouse atmosphere of the
groves.
An extraordinary thing was the way in which the forms and perfumes
of Levua permeated the _Kermadec_ itself, so that, turning her eyes
away from the land, the deck of the schooner, the rails, masts and
spars, all seemed hostile to her as the land itself. Sru alone gave
her comfort as she watched him superintending the fellows busy with
the anchor—Sru, who had promised that she would return.
The anchor fell in twelve-fathom water and as the rumble-tumble of
the anchor chain came back in echoes from the moist-throated woods,
a boat put out from the beach. It was Sanders the white trader, the
man who lived here alone year in, year out, taking toll of the
sandalwood trees, paying the natives for their labour in trade
goods; cut off from the world, without books, without friends, and
with no interest beyond the zone of sea encircling the island,
except the interest of his steadily accumulating money in the hands
of his agents—the Bank of California.
The face of the white man showed thin and expressionless as a wedge
of ice as he came over the rail like a ghost and slipped down to the
cabin with Peterson to talk business.
Rantan and Carlin leaned over the side and watched the kanakas in
the boat pulling forward to talk to the schooner crew congregated at
the rail by the foc’sle head.
The beach lay only a cable length or two away, empty except for a
couple of fishing canoes drawn up beyond tide mark; no house was to
be seen, the village lying back among the trees, and no sound came
from all that incredible wealth of verdure—nothing, but the far
voice of a torrent, raving yet slumbrous and mixed with the hush of
the surf on the reefs and beach.
“Notice that chap,” said Carlin, “didn’t look to right or left of
him, same’s if he’d been doped. Reckon he’s full of money too if
he’s the only trader here—notice his white ducks and his dandy hat
and the mug under it? I know the sort. Drink turns to vinegar in a
chap like that and that’s the sort that makes money in the islands.”
“Or the fellows that aren’t afraid to put their hands on the stuff
when they see it,” replied Rantan. “Well, what about that pearl
island I was speaking of?”
“And that hooker you were going to take to get there,” cut in
Carlin. “Put me on her deck and I’m with you.”
“You’re on it,” replied Rantan.
Carlin laughed. He had known Rantan’s meaning all along and this
strange game of evasion between the two had nothing to do with the
_Kermadec_, but with something neither dared to discuss one with the
other: Peterson, and what was to be done with Peterson.
“You’re on it,” continued Rantan, “and now what do you say?”
“I’m with you,” replied Carlin, “but I don’t see how you’re to do
it. I’ll have no hand in doing it.”
“Leave that to me,” said the other, “you’ve only to help work the
ship when I’ve taken her.”
“You say Sanders is the only white man here,” said Carlin.
“So Peterson tells me,” replied Rantan.
“Well, one white man is enough to turn on us,” said Carlin.
“He won’t turn on us,” replied Rantan grimly, and Carlin glancing at
him sideways wondered for a moment if he hadn’t the devil in tow
with Rantan. But Carlin was of the type that will take profit and
not care so long as its own hands are clean. I wonder how many of us
would eat meat if we had to do the killing ourselves or make money
from poisonous industries if we had ourselves to face the poison.
What Rantan chose to do was nothing to Carlin so long as he himself
had not to do it or to plan it, but he was cautious.
“How about that chap Sru?” he asked. “He’s boss of the crew and the
only thinking one of them—suppose....”
“Nothing,” replied the other. “He’s with me.”
Fell a silence filled with the voice of the far torrent and the
murmur of the sea, a hush-a-bye sound through which vaguely came the
murmur of voices through the skylight of the saloon where Peterson
and the trader were discussing prices and freights, each absorbed by
the one sole idea, profit at the expense of the other.