THE MORNING LIGHT
When the _Portsoy_ had turned her stern to the reef long ago, she had
done more than fire the shot that smashed the canoe of Katafa. She had
logged the position of Palm Tree, and her captain, in his drunken brain,
had logged the fact that it was “full of copra.” He was no trader, but
he drank where traders were, and in Pacific bar-rooms, in a blue haze of
smoke, the fact made itself known after a time. That is how islands were
discovered in the old days that are not so very old; through chance and
schooner captains and the dingy pages of logs, through memories and
conversations and the haze of bar-rooms, the islands unknown came into
the world of the known, and not only the islands but their qualities.
For years Nauru in its desolate beauty laughed at the sun till chance
betrayed it and the phosphates that lay beneath its surface, and for
years the Garden of God might have remained unknown but for what its
palm trees had said to the _Portsoy_, and the fact that copra had taken
the place of sandalwood in the world of trade.
It was from Papeete that the _Morning Light_ set out, a topsail schooner
of a hundred and fifty tons with enough native labour to work the island
if found. Owing to a slight error in the _Portsoy’s_ reckoning, she
nearly missed it and was about to give up the hunt, when one morning,
just as the sun broke above the sealine, it showed, far to the south,
just a point on the new-born blue of the sky.
For an hour and more the favourable wind held strong and the island grew
apace. Then the wind failed and faded, as if in regret at the ruin it
was helping on, the ruin of Nature by trade.
All day long the _Morning Light_ held south under the play of light and
variable winds, making the lagoon only at dusk and entering with the
first of the stars.
Dick had put out the cooking fire; it was after supper, and they were
talking of the day’s work. Over on the southern bank, at certain times
of the tide the fishing was better than anywhere else in the lagoon[3].
The water was deep there and you could reach the place either by
striking across through the woods or going round the lagoon in the
dinghy. This was the longer way but they generally used it for the
convenience of the boat in bringing back the fish. They had seen nothing
of the _Morning Light_, nor had they exchanged a word about Karolin.
Night was the time for talking, as a rule, unless the business of the
day had tired them out, as it had this evening.
Dick, having put out the fire, turned on his side and was just about to
speak to Katafa, when through the woods, from the direction of the
eastern beach, came a sound, a long low rumble, suddenly beginning and
suddenly ceasing, the sound of the anchor chain of the _Morning Light_
running out.
Instantly he was on his feet.
Every sound of the island was known to him. This was something new, new
as the voice of the conch that had roused him from sleep to face Laminai
and his tribe.
“Did you hear?” said Dick.
“Yes,” said Katafa, “I heard.” She was standing close to him, her head
thrown back, listening.
The moon in its first quarter had risen above the trees and a wan, rosy
light fell on Dick, on Katafa, on the house beside which Nan leaned on
his pole and within which could be dimly discovered the outline of the
little ships.
Dick, as though fearful of listeners, raised his finger and then
motioned to Katafa to follow him, leading the way towards the trees on
the opposite side. He had not gone a dozen paces when, remembering his
spear, he turned back for it and then, resuming the lead, plunged
amongst the trees, keeping along the lagoon bank, the glitter of the
water showing through the branches, and the green glow of the forest
lighting them as they walked in single file and silent as Indians on the
war path in a hostile country.
As they drew close to the eastern beach, a red spark of light showed
through the leaves ahead. A fire was burning on the beach and as Dick
parted the last branches and stood, Katafa beside him, the fire blazed
up till the trunks of the coco-palms took the light.
A boat was beached near the fire, around which half a dozen dark, nearly
naked men were busy cooking, whilst two white men, dressed as Kearney
had been dressed, were seated on the sands, knees up and with a bottle
before them. Some drinking nuts lay close to the man on the left.
Away out on the lagoon the _Morning Light_ lay at her moorings, the ebb
showing a silver streak where the chain met it and where it passed away
astern.
Katafa drew closer and drew her arm round Dick.
The dark, naked men swarming about the cooking fire fascinated her.
Never had she seen such faces. The people of Karolin, owing to a
Melanesian taint, were fierce enough, and some of them were plain
enough, but the ugliest man of Karolin would have been handsome compared
with any of these.
Recruited from the New Hebrides and beyond, naked but for a gee string,
with slit ear lobes and nose rings all complete, they seemed less like
men than apes, less like apes than devils.
Sometimes one of the two seated men would cry out a harsh order or rise
to boot one of the ape men, and now, as Katafa watched, something broke
the lagoon near the schooner—another boat, a boat laden with stores,
tent poles, canvas, crawling slowly across the lagoon to beach where the
zone of firelight met the ripples of the outgoing tide.
Dick drew Katafa away, the branches closed, and, turning, they made
their way back through the clear, clean night of the woods, the green
gloom of the thickets, the glades where the young moon lit the ferns.
What had happened to the island, to the night, to the very trees, to
life itself? How and in what way did they sense the fact that what they
had seen was bad—they who knew not even the name of evil—and how and in
what way did they know that what had come had come to stay? That
something had broken in on them, incomprehensible but loathsome, that
the island would never be the same again?
Not a word did they speak the whole way back to the house, Dick leading,
Katafa following. The most extraordinary thing in their strange life
alone and cut off from the world was the fact that though they spoke
little to each other with their tongues, they were always conversing
together. A movement, a look, a touch, a change of expression could
convey what would have taken a dozen words to convey, and above and
beyond that they had a mind relationship perhaps purely psychic. They
could think together. Often some wish or want of Dick would be
understood by Katafa, and before he could stretch out his hand for
something it would be handed to him. Or a wish of Katafa’s would become
known to Dick without a word conveying it.
Arrived at the house, they consulted together for a moment.
“From where have they come?” asked Katafa—as though Dick could know.
He shook his head. Then standing, his eyes fixed on the house and his
brow wrinkled, he came to a sudden decision. Everything must be hidden,
even the dinghy; they must take to the trees—and before he had finished
speaking, Katafa, who knew his mind, turned to the house whilst he ran
down to the lagoon bank where the dinghy was moored, saw that the mast
and sail were in her, and that the fishing gear was safe in the locker.
There were three fish spears in the boat; he let them lie. Then running
back to the house, he helped in the removal of the things.
The dinghy of the _Ranatonga_ was an outsized boat of her type,
carvel-built, broad of beam and with plenty of space for their wants.
They brought nearly everything down—Nan and the little ships, which they
placed in the bow, the two mats on which they slept, the axe and saw, a
knife, and a huge bunch of bananas that Dick had cut two days before.
Everything they treasured they took away, leaving everything else—the
plates, the cooking utensils and all the stuff in the shack behind the
house. Then, when they had finished, they got in and Dick, taking the
sculls, brought the boat to the cape, where the wild cocoanut and arita
bushes spread out over the water. Then, taking in the sculls and seizing
the branches, he dragged the boat in, far in, till the branches and
bushes covered her entirely and tied up to a root. Then, avoiding the
house, they made their bed amidst the trees where Katafa had slept once.
Neither of them spoke of the thing that had been in the depths of their
minds since, standing on the hilltop yesterday morning, Dick had pointed
to the stain on the southern sky—Karolin. The call that had come to them
had remained unspoken of; mysterious as the call of the south to the
northern swallow, the call of the great lagoon island would have fetched
them at last, as the suck of the whirlpool fetches flotsam remote from
it and seemingly beyond attraction, but the scene on the eastern beach
to-night had brought them leagues closer to their goal. The instinct to
seek Karolin had been joined to the desire for flight. The _Morning
Light_ and her crew had acted as the touch of cold that intensifies the
swallow’s vision of the palm trees and the south. It was only when, the
dinghy loaded and securely hidden, they laid themselves down in the nest
of fern that Dick spoke.
“If they stay,” said Dick, “we will go there.”
“Karolin?” said Katafa. “But if the big canoe is not gone, how can we
pass it?”
“We will pass it,” said Dick.
He had brought some bananas from the dinghy for their supper. He divided
them, and as they ate he sketched the plan that had formulated itself in
his mind.
If the new people left to-morrow, it would make no difference—they would
start for Karolin; if the new people remained, it would make no
difference—they would start all the same. With the slack of the tide
to-morrow night, late, when the newcomers were asleep, they would put
down the lagoon and make past the big canoe for the break; the big canoe
would not stop them.
He spoke with the assurance of daring and power, but quietly, as though
he were speaking of some ordinary matter.
They would sail for the south, “é Naya.” The wind from the north that
had been dying and waking again all day was blowing strong again. It
would last like that for days; it was the prevailing wind of the year
and the moon was a fair-weather moon.
Then he went calmly to sleep, with Katafa’s arm across him, but she
could not sleep.
She was already in her imagination on her way to her old home. The men
of Karolin were all dead, their bones were whitening in the trees up
there, there was nothing to fear. Only the women and children were left,
and Uta Matu, the old king, worn out and approaching his end.
With her woman’s imagination, she saw Dick, the man she loved and
gloried in, standing on the beach of Karolin, king and ruler.
Perhaps it was a prevision of this and the whitening bones of the men of
Karolin that had made Le Juan years ago urge Uta Matu to destroy Katafa,
and, failing, made her segregate the girl under the tabu of _taminan_.
Who knows?
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Footnote 3:
See “Blue Lagoon”