The slopes and knolls and palm-fringed cliffs of Ratinga were tipped
with gold by the western sun one evening as he declined towards his bed
in the Pacific, when Marie Zeppa wandered with Betsy Waroonga and her
brown little daughter Zariffa towards the strip of bright sand in front
of the village.
The two matrons, besides being filled with somewhat similar anxieties as
to absent ones, were naturally sympathetic, and frequently sought each
other's company. The lively Anglo-French woman, whose vivacity was not
altogether subdued even by the dark cloud that hung over her husband's
fate, took special pleasure in the sedate, earnest temperament of her
native missionary friend, whose difficulty in understanding a joke,
coupled with her inability to control her laughter when, after painful
explanation, she did manage to comprehend one, was a source of much
interest--an under-current, as it were, of quiet amusement.
"Betsy," said Marie, as they walked slowly along, their naked feet just
laved by the rippling sea, "why do you persist in wearing that absurd
bonnet? If you would only let me cut four inches off the crown and six
off the front, it would be much more becoming. Do let me, there's a
dear. You know I was accustomed to cutting and shaping when in
England."
"But what for the use?" asked Betsy, turning her large brown eyes
solemnly on her companion. "It no seems too big to me. Besides, when
brudder Gubbins give him to me he--"
"Who is brudder Gubbins?" asked Marie, with a look of smiling surprise.
"Oh! _you_ know. The min'ster--Gubbins--what come to the
mission-station just afore me an' Waroonga left for Ratinga."
"Oh! I see; the Reverend Mr Gubbins--well, what did _he_ say about the
bonnet?"
"W'at did he say? ah! he say much mor'n I kin remember, an' he look at
the bonnet with's head a one side--so sad an' pitiful like. `Ah! Betsy
Waroonga,' ses he, `this just the thing for you. Put it on an' take it
to Ratinga, it'll press the natives there.'"
"Impress them, you mean, Betsy."
"Well, p'raps it was that. Anyhow I put it on, an' he looked at me _so_
earnest an' ses with a sigh, `Betsy,' ses he, `it minds me o' my
grandmother, an' she _was_ a good old soul--brought me up, Betsy, she
did. Wear it for her sake an' mine. I make a present of it to you.'"
"Ah! Betsy," said Marie, "the Reverend Gubbins must be a wag, I
suspect."
"W'at's a wag, Marie?"
"Don't you know what a wag is?"
"Oh, yis, _I_ know. When leetil bird sit on a stone an shake hims tail,
I've heerd you an Orley say it wag--but misser Gubbins he got no tail to
wag--so how can he wag it?"
"I didn't say he wagged it, Betsy," returned Marie, repressing a laugh,
"but--you'll never get to understand what a wag means, so I won't try to
explain. Look! Zariffa is venturesome. You'd better call her back."
Zariffa was indeed venturesome. Clad in a white flannel petticoat and a
miniature coal-scuttle, she was at that moment wading so deep into the
clear sea that she had to raise the little garment as high as her brown
bosom to keep it out of the water; and with all her efforts she was
unsuccessful, for, with that natural tendency of childhood to forget and
neglect what cannot be seen, she had allowed the rear-part of the
petticoat to drop into the sea.
This, however, occasioned little or no anxiety to Betsy Waroonga, for
she was not an anxious mother; but when, raising her eyes a little
higher, she beheld the tip of the back-fin of a shark describing lively
circles in the water as if it had scented the tender morsel and were
searching for it, her easy indifference vanished. She gave vent to a
yell and made a bound that told eloquently of the savage beneath the
missionary, and, in another instant was up to the knees in the water
with the coal-scuttle quivering violently. Seizing Zariffa, she
squeezed her almost to the bursting point against her palpitating
breast, while the shark headed seaward in bitter disappointment.
"Don't go so deep agin, Ziffa," said the mother, with a gasp, as she set
her little one down on the sand.
"No, musser," said the obedient child; and she kept on the landward side
of her parent thereafter with demonstrative care.
It may be remarked here that, owing to Waroonga's love for, and
admiration of, white men, Zariffa's native tongue was English--broken,
of course, to the pattern of her parents.
"It was a narrow escape, Betsy," said Marie, solemnised by the incident.
"Yes, thank the Lord," replied the other, continuing to gaze out to sea
long after the cause of her alarm had disappeared.
"Oh! Marie," she added, with a sigh, "when will the dear men come
home?"
The question drove all the playful humour out of poor Marie, and her
eyes filled with sudden tears.
"When, indeed? Oh! Betsy, _my_ man will never come. For Orley and the
others I have little fear, but my Antonio--"
Poor Marie could say no more. Her nature was as quickly, though not as
easily, provoked to deep sorrow as to gaiety. She covered her face with
her hands.
As she did so the eyes of Betsy, which had for some time been fixed on
the horizon, opened to their widest, and her countenance assumed a look
so deeply solemn that it might have lent a touch of dignity even to the
coal-scuttle bonnet, if it had not bordered just a little too closely on
the ridiculous.
"Ho! Marie," she exclaimed in a whisper so deep that her friend looked
up with a startled air; "see! look--a sip."
"A ship--where?" said the other, turning her eager gaze on the horizon.
But she was not so quick-sighted as her companion, and when at length
she succeeded in fixing the object with her eyes, she pronounced it a
gull.
"No 'snot a gull--a sip," retorted Betsy.
"Ask Zariffa. Her eyes are better than ours," suggested Marie.
"Kumeer, Ziffa!" shouted Betsy.