Nipek-kem peered cautiously over a ledge of rock, all his movements
stealthy. Below, with her head thrown back, sat the wife of the White
Kami. Her eyes were closed; she appeared to be sleeping. The Ainu gazed
down at her a moment, then crept silently backward and disappeared.
When Stella opened her eyes she started and cried out a little. Tsuda was
squatting near her, looking very mild and child-like.
“You come here often,” he murmured humbly.
“Every day,” she replied. “I come to watch for ships that might pass
by—just to see them—it wouldn’t matter how far off....”
The girl seemed changed; her eyes had a strained look, and she appeared
drawn to a perpetual tension of nervous expectancy; she had aged a
little; there was a new calm about her, too—it was dimly menacing....
King’s revolver lay beside her on the rock. One night she had a faintly
disquieting dream about the Ainu, and seeing her husband’s revolver
with some of his things next day, she decided to carry it with her on
her solitary vigils. However, she carried it, really, not so much for
protection as because it was a weapon with which she could attack the
silence, when it grew too awful to be endured, as King had attacked it
the day he returned home from his first inspection of the fields.
“You will see no ships go by,” said Tsuda with an emphatic shake of his
long head. “Ships don’t leave the course unless they have to—no, _sir_!”
He had heard Captain Utterbourne explain it—a law of least resistance in
ships.
“Are the nearest sailing lanes a long way off?” asked the girl with a
trembling touch of wistfulness in her voice.
Things weren’t going very well on Hagen’s Island. Illusions were rubbing
threadbare. It was a time for spiritual inventories.
“Long way—I should say! Full day steaming head on, mebby more.” There was
evidence here of a slight nautical confusion, though he always paid the
closest attention, too, whenever Utterbourne opened his lips. “Better to
give up look for ships—gn—that don’t ever come,” Tsuda murmured, his eyes
searchingly upon her face.
She looked at him sadly, and he let his gaze fall to the little gleaming
weapon at her side. Presently he lifted his eyes to hers, and, with a
child-like smile, pointed to the revolver.
“It is very pretty,” he said. “I had a fine one, once—a fellow give me
in Benares. But”—he grew a shade petulant—“the Captain wouldn’t let me
keep it—say one gun on the island was enough.” And in a moment he added,
speaking more simply and smiling in his naïve way: “Will you let me take
it in my hand, Wife-of-the-Kami?”
Her lips moved—it was a tiny ghost-smile. “Yes,” she said.
Tsuda took the revolver into his hand, his face quite radiant. Anything
new—anything he didn’t possess.... He examined it minutely and lovingly.
“Do you mind if I shoot?” he coaxed.
“There’s a little patch of white against the rocks, far down there near
the water,” she told him, a vague touch of interest coming for a moment
into her listless voice. “I use it sometimes as a target.”
“Will you show me?” He crept to her side very humbly. She saw that his
hand was a little unsteady.
Tsuda emptied the revolver quickly and deftly, then handed it back to her
with a faint regretful smile. And he said, softly, his eyes agleam as he
spoke, in a cryptic whisper:
“Your husband is a very lucky man, Wife-of-the-Kami....”
V
Returning from his cursory inspection of the opium vat, King entered a
silent house. He had turned one room into a makeshift office; for it had
become his practice to divide his time between fields and desk. He liked
to point out that the principal difference between his job and Tsuda’s
was that the former called for head work.
King did rather a good deal of figuring and scribbling. Until recently
the report had gone along in fine style. It was full of notes and
queries and memos of many sorts, and bristled with little tentative
schemes, sometimes inclined toward extravagance, for bringing water into
the fields during the dry spells. He was also working on percentages
of dross, which might be cut down to the benefit of the more special
product. A little of the output was prepared after an elaborate Bengal
receipt for special trade. Utterbourne disposed of the major part to
Indian agents; the rest disappeared along coasts from which fishing
smacks came plying with devious credentials. These were transactions that
would not bear any very merciless investigation, perhaps, though they
were frequently more remunerative than the regular trade.
King, in role of overseer and general manager, had really gone at it
all rather intelligently, to begin with. The island was a test, and he
intended to make good. However, the business was lagging of late.
Stella, coming in, found her husband sitting at his work table, his head
fallen down on to his arms. Yet he was not asleep, for his eyes were wide
open, staring into space with an almost frantic look.
It seemed to her—came rushing upon her in a romantic wave—that this was a
climax. She ran up to him with a little desperate cry, held his face in
her hands—a real flash of passion; she felt suddenly the stronger of the
two—almost as though he were coming to depend upon her now.... And she
resolutely fought down a vague impulse of shrinking which his altering
presence sometimes aroused.
“What is it?” she asked.
He brought himself round with an effort that beaded his forehead with a
few drops of cold sweat. His look darkened—it was as though he divined
what was in her mind.
“Nothing,” he muttered thickly. “What do you want to interrupt me for?
I’ve told you I can’t be bothered when I’m in here, damn it!”
“But Ferd....” She felt the climax slipping.
“Go on about your work and leave me alone. I’m trying ... I say, I’m
trying to work out a better product for our special trade.”
The effort it took to destroy the illusion in his wife’s mind was so
terrific that it left him shaking. He spoke almost savagely; he was in a
savage frame of mind, for he had overrun his usual hour for indulgence in
drug, and was trying to persuade himself that he was still in control.
The compassionate attitude she had taken could hardly have been more
unhappily timed.
Stella, perceiving the failure of her little desperate move, slipped
away, her heart troubled with a strange conflict of emotions. He had not,
despite his agonizing effort, strengthened her crumbling confidence in
him.
And she knew with a pang that he had not really been working on the
product for the special trade at all.