THE WISH
Island life had not quickened Mr. Kearney’s intellectual powers, and for
eight or nine months after that day things happened to him that he could
not account for. Sometimes fishing lines broke that ought not to have
broken. He would leave a bit of chewing gum on the shelf outside the
house and it would be gone, taken by the birds, maybe—but why did the
birds suddenly develop a desire for gum? The dinghy sprang a leak that
took him two days to mend, and fish spears would become mysteriously
blunted though put away apparently sharp enough.
He never thought of the girl. The feud between them had died down, at
least on his part, and she and Dick seemed getting on well together. Too
well, perhaps, from a civilised person’s point of view. She and Dick
would chatter away together now in the native; the girl had picked up at
first enough English to help them along, but at the end of nine months
it was always the language of Karolin they spoke, and even to Kearney’s
heavy intelligence it was funny to hear them “clacking away” and to
think that she had made him talk her lingo instead of the other way
about. More than that, the boy was altering, losing the fits of
abstraction that had made him seem at times almost the reincarnation of
his mother, losing also the light-heartedness of the child; laughing
rarely, and desperately serious over the little things of life, the
moment seemed to him everything, as it is to the savage.
“She’s turning him into a —— Kanaka,” grumbled Kearney one day as he
watched them starting for the reef, Dick with his fish spears over his
shoulder, the girl following him. “Ain’t to hold on to these days, and
sulks if he’s spoke to crooked or crossed in his vagaries. Well, if he
ain’t careful I’ll l’arn him for once and all.”
But he never put the threat in action—too lazy, maybe, or too
dispirited, feeling himself a back number. He was. The reins had gone
out of his hands, youth had pushed him aside, and the boy, moving away
towards savagery, had left this relict of high civilisation a good piece
astern.
But one day Kearney was roused out of his apathy. Resting in the tree
shadows at the opposite side of the sward, he saw the girl, who fancied
herself alone and unobserved, cautiously approaching the house.
Never for one single day since her landing had she lost the desire to
escape, to find freedom and the great spaces of the sea. Her intercourse
with Dick had attached her neither to Dick nor the island, yet beyond
playing tricks upon Kearney she had shown no sign of the fret that lay
in her soul.
The cannon shot from the _Portsoy_ that had burst the canoe in pieces,
and the report of the gun that had rolled in echoes from the
woods—these, in her firm belief, were the manifestations of the power
and the voice of the shark-toothed one. Just as firmly she believed that
some other god had intervened, frustrating the doings of Nanawa and
spoiling the canoe out of spite.
The idea had come to her that maybe it was the god who presided over the
little ships, that if she got rid of them—not all at once, for that
might make a disturbance with the god, but one by one—the way might be
clear. Kearney had never suspected her of stealing and throwing away his
gum, of breaking the fishing lines or blunting the spears, and if she
took these things off into the wood one by one and smashed them he would
be equally stupid and unsuspicious—perhaps.
It was worth trying, and to-day, finding herself alone, she stole up to
the house and peeped in. There they stood in the twilight on their
shelves, the things whose god had broken her canoe. Impudent, unbroken
themselves, and no doubt manned by sprites, they stood, the schooner,
the frigate, a full-rigged ship and a tiny whaleman with bluff bows,
wooden davits, crow’s nest and try-works, all complete.
An old knife of Kearney’s lay on the little shelf by the door beside the
box of matches. She could not resist that. Leaving the matches
untouched, she picked up the knife and flung it into the lagoon. Then
she entered the house and lifted the whaleman from its shelf. It was the
smallest, and it was just as well to begin with the smallest. She turned
to the door with it and saw Kearney running across the sward, dropped
the whaler, sprang from the doorway, and ran. Another half minute and
she would have been trapped.
Kearney, on seeing her entering the house, had made a bolt from the
trees on the opposite side, thinking he had her bottled, but he was too
late and, as for chasing her, he might as well have tried to course a
hare. Stopping suddenly and picking up Dick’s tia wood ball, which was
lying in his way, he took aim at her as she ran, catching her full in
the small of the back as she dived into the trees.
The sound of the smack of the ball, followed by a gasping cry, came back
to him. Then she vanished, traceless but for the swaying leaves.
“That will l’arn you,” said Mr. Kearney, turning to the house and
picking up the whaler, undamaged but for a broken main-topmast. He knew
now who had stolen his gum, blunted the spears and outraged the dinghy.
The flinging of that knife into the lagoon had told him everything, and
as he sat down by the door to repair the broken spar he took an oath to
be even with her.
“Break the fish lines, would you?” said he as he sat with the whaler
clipped between his knees as in a vise, and his fingers busy unrigging
the mast. “Fling me knife into the water? Well, you wait. Not another
bite or sup will you have that you don’t get yourself, or me name’s not
Jim Kearney. Not another bite or sup till you go down on your marrow
bones and beg me pardon.” He worked away, his soul raging in him, his
mind fumbling round and remembering other things to be laid to her
account. Gum that had vanished, a saw that had gone west, spirited off
as if by pixies—he had put these levitations down to his own
carelessness or forgetfulness, quite unable to imagine a human being’s
tricky malevolence as the agent.
As he worked, the splash of oars came from the lagoon, and Dick landed
with three red-backed bream strung on a length of liana. Seeing Kearney
alone, he looked round for Katafa, but could see no sign of her.
“Where’s she gone?” asked Dick.
Kearney looked up; the back number had taken fire at last. “Get off with
you and don’t be askin’ me questions!” he shouted, just as if he were
speaking to a man, not a boy. “Go ’n’ look for her if you want to find
her, throwin’ me knife in the water and smashin’ me lines! The pair of
you is one as bad as the other, always tinkerin’ together, you and her.”
The boy drew back, staring at the other with wide-pupilled eyes.
“What’s she been doin’?” he asked.
“Doin’!” cried Kearney. “I’ve told you what she’s been doin’. Go ’n’
hunt for her in the wood if you want to know what she’s been doin’! Well
you know what she’s been doin’, standin’ there like the —— Kanaka she’s
turned you into and askin’ me what she’s been doin’—clear off with you!”
The boy flung down the fish and started off, running towards the trees
to the right of the sward. As he vanished, Kearney heard his voice
crying out in the native: “Katafa, hai amanoi Katafa, hai, hai!”
“Bloody Kanaka,” grumbled Kearney.
Katafa, deep in the gloom of the groves, heard the call but she made no
answer. Her mind was in a turmoil.
Once, long ago on Karolin, a stone thrown by a child had struck her
accidentally, rousing in the dark part of her mind a confusion and
resentment that almost upset her reason. As in the case of Kearney, the
child had been behind her, she had not seen the stone coming, and the
sudden blow was as though some one had struck her with a fist. It was
the same now. Though she had recognised instantly that it was only the
ball that had struck her, the shock remained.
She stood for a while listening to the far-off calling of Dick. “Katafa,
hai! amanoi Katafa! hai!” It grew fainter; he was taking the wrong
direction and now, with the suddenness of a clapped door, silence cut
him off.
That was a trick of the woods caused maybe by the upward trend of the
land; a person calling to you and moving away in a horizontal direction
would suddenly be cut off.
Katafa had never been alone in the woods before this; she had always
gone accompanied by either the boy or Kearney. Never had she grown
accustomed to these vast masses of trees, their gloom, their congregated
perfumes, the strange lights and shadows made by the moving branches and
fronds, the sense of being surrounded; always amongst them the great
distances of the atoll cried louder to her to come back, and the
heartache and homesickness grew more intense.
But to-day she had lost her fear of the trees, and the call of Karolin
had lost for a while its power. The outrage committed by Kearney had
shaken her away from all other considerations, all other pictures but
that of the first man who had struck her.
She moved away to the right and entered an alley formed by a double line
of matamata trees. Ferns grew here on either side, and above in the
liquid gloom cables of liantasse swung, powdered with starry blossoms.
She stood for a moment glancing up at the orchids that seemed like birds
in flight, the bugles of the giant convolvuli and the far-off roof of
leaves moving to the wind in trembles of shattered light and shadow.
Then she went on, reaching at last a little bay in the trees, ferns and
bushes, where the glint of something white caught her eye. It was a
skull. She pushed the leaves aside; the whole skeleton was there, the
ribs still articulated, the vertebrae intact. Flame lit by mortal hand
could not have calcined the bones more whitely, destroyed the flesh more
completely than the slow fire of time burning here through the years
amidst the cool green ferns.
Katafa, holding the leaves aside, gazed at the skull. Amongst Le Juan’s
properties had been a man’s skull, used when she was invoking the dark
powers against some enemy.
As Katafa gazed at the skull, the thought of Kearney came to her, and
the vision of him lying like that—and the wish.