THE LAGOON OF FIRE
Ever since the tragedy of six years ago there had been forming in the
mind of Emmeline Lestrange a something—shall I call it a deep
mistrust. She had never been clever; lessons had saddened and wearied
her, without making her much the wiser. Yet her mind was of that order
into which profound truths come by short cuts. She was intuitive.
Great knowledge may lurk in the human mind without the owner of the
mind being aware. He or she acts in such or such a way, or thinks in
such and such a manner from intuition; in other words, as the outcome
of the profoundest reasoning.
When we have learned to call storms, storms, and death, death, and
birth, birth; when we have mastered the sailor’s horn book, and Mr
Piddington’s law of cyclones, Ellis’s anatomy, and Lewer’s midwifery,
we have already made ourselves half blind. We have become hypnotised by
words and names. We think in words and names, not in ideas; the
commonplace has triumphed, the true intellect is half crushed.
Storms had burst over the island before this. And what Emmeline
remembered of them might be expressed by an instance.
The morning would be bright and happy, never so bright the sun, or so
balmy the breeze, or so peaceful the blue lagoon; then, with a horrid
suddenness, as if sick with dissimulation and mad to show itself,
something would blacken the sun, and with a yell stretch out a hand and
ravage the island, churn the lagoon into foam, beat down the cocoa-nut
trees, and slay the birds. And one bird would be left and another
taken, one tree destroyed, and another left standing. The fury of the
thing was less fearful than the blindness of it, and the indifference
of it.
One night, when the child was asleep, just after the last star was lit,
Dick appeared at the doorway of the house. He had been down to the
water’s edge and had now returned. He beckoned Emmeline to follow him,
and, putting down the child, she did so.
“Come here and look,” said he.
He led the way to the water; and as they approached it, Emmeline became
aware that there was something strange about the lagoon. From a
distance it looked pale and solid; it might have been a great stretch
of grey marble veined with black. Then, as she drew nearer, she saw
that the dull grey appearance was a deception of the eye.
The lagoon was alight and burning.
The phosphoric fire was in its very heart and being; every coral branch
was a torch, every fish a passing lantern. The incoming tide moving the
waters made the whole glittering floor of the lagoon move and shiver,
and the tiny waves to lap the bank, leaving behind them glow-worm
traces.
“Look!” said Dick.
He knelt down and plunged his forearm into the water. The immersed part
burned like a smouldering torch. Emmeline could see it as plainly as
though it were lit by sunlight. Then he drew his arm out, and as far as
the water had reached, it was covered by a glowing glove.
They had seen the phosphorescence of the lagoon before; indeed, any
night you might watch the passing fish like bars of silver, when the
moon was away; but this was something quite new, and it was entrancing.
Emmeline knelt down and dabbled her hands, and made herself a pair of
phosphoric gloves, and cried out with pleasure, and laughed. It was all
the pleasure of playing with fire without the danger of being burnt.
Then Dick rubbed his face with the water till it glowed.
“Wait!” he cried; and, running up to the house, he fetched out Hannah.
He came running down with him to the water’s edge, gave Emmeline the
child, unmoored the boat, and started out from shore.
The sculls, as far as they were immersed, were like bars of glistening
silver; under them passed the fish, leaving cometic tails; each coral
clump was a lamp, lending its lustre till the great lagoon was luminous
as a lit-up ballroom. Even the child on Emmeline’s lap crowed and cried
out at the strangeness of the sight.
They landed on the reef and wandered over the flat. The sea was white
and bright as snow, and the foam looked like a hedge of fire.
As they stood gazing on this extraordinary sight, suddenly, almost as
instantaneously as the switching off of an electric light, the
phosphorescence of the sea flickered and vanished.
The moon was rising. Her crest was just breaking from the water, and as
her face came slowly into view behind a belt of vapour that lay on the
horizon, it looked fierce and red, stained with smoke like the face of
Eblis.