OUT OF THE GLOOM
“God bless my soul!” cried Kearney. “Come in! What are you doin’ there?
Get an oar over if you can. Get an oar over, I tell ye.”
It was three weeks or so after the departure of Lestrange. Kearney, busy
over something near the house, and looking up, had caught sight of Dick.
Dick had got into the dinghy, untied her and pushed out with the boat
hook. That the tide was on the ebb didn’t matter to Dick.
Hanging over the stern and pretending to fish, Kearney’s voice had
roused him and he stood, now, balancing himself and considering the
situation created by his own act.
A little over three and a half years of age, he was as strong and big as
a child of five, but he was neither big nor strong enough to man the
sculls, and the dinghy was drifting towards the cape of wild cocoanuts
beyond which lay the lagoon stretch reaching to the break and the sea.
Then, attending to Kearney’s directions, he got a scull over on the port
side, got it into the cup of the rowlock and, still standing up, tried
to pull, making a terrible mess of the business.
“God’s truth!” cried Kearney. “You’ve done it now—pull it in; that ain’t
no good, you’re getting her farther out.” He came running along the bank
to the little cape, hoping the boat would drift close enough for him to
catch it by the gunnel. He couldn’t swim.
Dick had pulled the scull in and was standing, showing no sign of fear,
as the dinghy which had twisted sideways a bit, owing to the efforts
with the scull, altered its position and came along, bow on, nearing the
cape now, but at least a yard too far away to be seized.
“Boat huk!” cried Kearney. “Stick out the boat huk! Lord alive, look
slippy!”
Before the words were spoken Dick had grasped the idea. He seized the
boat hook, raised it aloft with a mighty effort, and, as the dinghy
closed with the cape, let the end drop into the hands of the sailor.
Kearney drew the boat to the bank. Then getting into the little craft,
he took the sculls and rowed back.
He neither scolded nor shook the child as another might have done. Dick
had acted so sensibly and so pluckily that the sailor had no heart to
“be harsh with him,” but the incident had a profound effect upon the
mind of Kearney and the future of Dick.
The question “what would have happened to the little devil if he’d gone
drifting off” suggested another question to the mind of the sailor: the
question what would happen to the child if he, Kearney, were drifted off
in the dinghy, or if he went west suddenly, like Lestrange.
He knew himself to be in full health and strength. All the same, the
question presented itself and made him consider it.
He pictured to himself Dick starving to death in the midst of plenty
and, unpleasant as the picture was, it gave him something to think about
and something to do. The whole thing was a godsend, in a way, to
Kearney, for the vanishing of Lestrange had begun to weigh on his mind.
If he had seen Lestrange drop dead and had buried him, it would not have
been nearly so bad. It was the thought of him lying somewhere in those
woods, unburied, just as he was, that weighed on him.
The thought poisoned the groves; it maybe would have poisoned the lagoon
and reef, only for Dick.
That evening, an hour or so before sunset, he took the child out in the
boat.
“Now,” said Kearney, “I’m goin’ to teach you how to scull if you ever
get adrift again.”
He drew in the sculls and then put one over the stern, resting it in the
notch in the transom, and began to instruct his pupil how to scull a
boat with a single oar.
Dick watched attentively, and then the sailor, with one hand on the oar,
let his pupil grasp it to show him how it was done. The whole business
was hopeless, for the child had neither the height nor strength for the
work, though he had the spirit. But Kearney was not the man to cast cold
water on a pupil. “That’s grand,” said he; “couldn’t be doin’ it better
meself—that’s the way we do it—”
“Lemme—lemme!” cried Dick, trying to push the other aside and get the
whole business in his own hands, and nearly losing the scull when he
did.
“Ay,” said Kearney, recovering it, “I’ll let you when you’re a bit
bigger—there now, let hold of it and maybe I’ll make you a little one
to-morrow you can get a proper grip of. Now get forward and play with
the boat huk—that’s more your size.”
Next morning, Kearney, pursuing his educational course, made Dick light
the fire. Tried to, at all events. Stanistreet had left two tinder-boxes
with them and a supply of flints, also matches, but the matches had
almost given out, and as Kearney was an expert in the old method, he
generally, now, used the flint and steel. Dick, gravely striking away
with the flint, made a poor hand of the business, though he seemed to
enjoy it, and it took two to do the business at last. All the same it
was a beginning—and something new to do. There was lots to be done in
the ordinary way of life, between fishing and cooking and what not, but
it had grown monotonous from repetition. Teaching Dick gave everything a
new tinge and supplied an impetus that was beginning to fail.
Then, after breakfast, Kearney bethought him of the little paddle he had
promised to make. He had no wood to make it of and the problem of what
to do gave him a comfortable half hour’s meditation over his pipe till
he solved it by rooting out the saw and sawing off one of the rail-like
branches of a dwarf arm that grew near the water.
Here was a piece of straight wood eight inches thick and over four feet
long. It only wanted thinning and shaping, and with a knife in his hand
down he sat, Dick disposed before him in various postures as the work
went on, sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling or sitting—always
absorbed, sometimes helping.
The feature that was beginning to strike out individually in the child
was his mouth. Dick was a nose-breather and only opened his mouth to
eat, and sometimes to talk in two- or three-word sentences. You could
chase him round the sward and his way of breathing would be just the
same, and, like the Red Indians, when he laughed he rarely opened his
lips. It was a beautiful mouth, firm, well curved and showing the dawn
of decision upon it.
“Hold it tight now,” said Mr. Kearney, and he gave one end of the piece
of branch to Dick.
“Am,” said Dick.
He held it whilst the man with the knife attacked the bark, the pungent
smell of the wood filling the air.
“That’s the way of it,” said Mr. Kearney, talking as he worked; “off
with the bark first and then we’ll slope it. That’ll do, I can hold it
meself now.” He continued to work, and Dick to watch. Then, getting
tired of the monotony of the business, Dick sat down. Presently, folding
his hands in his lap, one of his moody fits came on him; his eyes,
wide-pupiled, seemed contemplating things at a vast distance, and
Kearney, happening to glance up and notice his condition, called to mind
what Lestrange had said about the child taking after the mother when he
was quiet. He had often noticed the thing before, but now, from what
Lestrange had said, it seemed to the simple mind of Kearney that Dick as
he sat there was more like a little girl than a boy, that the “mother in
him was coming out too much.”
But Kearney, as he worked over the paddle, had other things to think of
besides Dick. The tobacco was showing signs indicating that it would not
last for ever, and the pipe he was smoking was, so to speak, on its last
legs. Stanistreet had left him two beautiful new American briars of the
sort they used to sell in Frisco in those days, ornately mounted with
chased silver. They had been given to Stanistreet in a moment of
expansion by a rich and bibulous friend. The sailor, who was mostly a
cigar-smoker, had never used them and as a parting gift had presented
them to Kearney.
“There you are, Jim,” said he; “they’ll last you till we come back. No
use having tobacco and running short of pipes.”
The sailor had used them, but could never take to them. They didn’t
smoke right. The old wooden pipe he had brought off from the _Ranatonga_
was always sweet as a nut, never got plugged, was always cool and
“fitted his mouth.” Now it was cracking all down one side, and might go
any time. It was like contemplating the death of a wife.
Then there was the bother about Lestrange. It had only just come to him
that, supposing by any chance the _Ranatonga_ were to turn up, months
overdue as she was, might they think by any chance there had been foul
play and that he had done Lestrange in?
He spent half the morning working over the paddle and, later that day,
urged by the spirit of restlessness, he determined on an expedition over
to the eastern side of the island in search of bananas. He could have
gone in the dinghy or have taken his way along the lagoon bank, but at
the last moment he decided to make a short cut through the woods, taking
Dick along with him.
They started, taking their way through the trees on the side of the
sward opposite to the house, Kearney leading. The trees were not dense
and the wind from the sea stirred their fronds and branches, bringing
with it the murmur of the reef. The twilight was alive with dancing
lights and sun-sparkles moving as the foliage stirred to the breeze, and
now and then, as they passed along, a bird resting on some branch would
take flight with the sound of a fan flirted open.
Then came some giant trees with trunks buttressed like the matamata.
They stood in two rows, making an alley across which swung cables of
liantasse powdered here and there with the star-like blossoms of some
lesser vine, and here and there orchids like vast butterflies and birds
in arrested flight.
The trees like the pillars of a cathedral, the twilight and the
incense-like odours of tropical flowers gave to this place a solemnity
and character all its own. Lestrange, in his wood wanderings, had found
it out and had often come here to meditate and dream and sometimes
forget, for here the great trees cast their presence as well as their
shadow on a man’s soul. Half-way down this alley Kearney halted.
A breath of wind came stealing towards him, stirring the tendrils of the
liantasse and bearing with it suddenly an odour of corruption from the
flower-decked gloom ahead.
He stood just as though a bar had been placed across his path. Then,
taking the child by the hand, he turned and retraced his path to the
house.