"You can go," he agreed, readily enough. "Nobody there but some
niggers--and maybe a few whites, on the beach. Nothing to see...."
"There's land," she told him, smiling. "And trees, and flowers.... Do
come."
"You go along. I'm--tired, to-day."
"I'd like it so much more if you came with me."
He frowned at her, impatient at her insistence. "Stop the talk," he told
her harshly. "I'm not going. Go if you want to. But be still about it,
let a man rest.... I'm tired, Faith.... I'm getting old...."
"You ought to look after getting the stuff for the ship," she reminded
him. "After all--you are responsible for her...."
"Mr. Ham will do that, better than me," he said. "Go along."
She went out, reluctantly, and sought the mate. His boat and James
Tichel's were to go ashore, leaving Dan'l in charge of the ship. He
grinned cheerfully at Faith's request, and bade his men rig a stool to
lower her into the boat. Faith protested, laughingly. "I can jump down,
as well as a man," she said; and he nodded assent and forgot her.
She was in his boat when they put off presently; she sat astern, while
Mr. Ham stood above her, his legs spread to steady himself against the
movement of the boat, his weight on the long steering oar that he always
preferred to the tiller. The _Sally_ had dropped anchor a mile off
shore, and canoes were already spinning out to her. The island spread
before them, green and sparkling in the sun; and the white beach shone
like silver.... It was more than a coral island; there were two hills, a
mile or so inland; and the white-washed huts of a considerable village
shone against the trees. The canoes met them, whirled about them; the
black folk shouted and clamored and stared.... Mr. Ham waved to them,
talked to them in a queer and outlandish mixture of tongues, bade them
go on to the _Sally_.... "Mr. Tobey'll buy what they've got," he told
Faith, as the whaleboat drove ahead for the shore.
James Tichel's boat was well astern of them, dragging a raft of floating
casks which would be filled with water and towed out to the _Sally_. He
was still far from shore when they drove up on the beach; and the men
jumped out into the shallow water and dragged the boat higher, so that
Faith, picking her way over the thwarts, could step ashore dry shod from
the bow. Her feet left scarce a mark upon the hard, white sand.
Mr. Ham said to her: "You come up to the trees; you can be cool there
while we're at our business."
But Faith shook her head. "I'm going to take a walk," she said. "I want
to get into the woods. How long will you be here?"
He hesitated dubiously. "Guess it's all right if you do," he decided.
"The niggers are friendly.... Most of 'em talk English, in a way. Go
ahead."
"How long have I?" Faith asked again. He said they would be ashore an
hour, perhaps more. "No matter, anyway," he told her. "Stay long as you
like. Do you want I should send a man with you?"
Faith told him she was not afraid; he grinned. She turned southward
along the beach, away from the huddled village. The smooth sand was so
firm it jarred her feet, and she moved up into the shade of the trees,
and followed them for a space, eyes probing into the tangle beyond them,
lips smiling, every sense drinking in the smells of the land.... When
she came, presently, to a well-marked path that led into the jungle-like
undergrowth, she hesitated, then turned in.
Within twenty steps, the trees closed about her, shutting away all sight
of the sea. For a little longer she could hear the long rollers pounding
on the beach; then that sound, too, became indistinct and dim.... It
was drowned in the thousand tiny noises of the brush about her.
Bird-notes, crackling of twigs, stirring of furry things. Once a little
creature of a sort she had never seen before, yet not unlike the
familiar and universal rabbit, hopped out of her path in a flurry of
excitement.
She heard, presently, another sound ahead of her; a sound of running,
falling water; and when she pressed on eagerly, she came out upon the
bank of a clear stream that dropped in bright cascades from one deep,
cool pool to another. She guessed this stream must come down between the
hills she had seen from the ship.... It was all the things she had
unwittingly longed for during the months aboard the _Sally_. It was
cool, and clear, and gay, and chuckling; the sea was always so turbulent
and harsh. She followed the path that ran up the northern bank of the
stream, and each new pool seemed more inviting than the last.... She
wanted to wade into them, to feel the water on her shoulders and her
throat and her arms.... Her smooth skin had revolted endlessly against
the bite of the salt water in which she bathed aboard the _Sally_; it
yearned for this cool, crystal flood....
She put aside this desire. The path she was following was a well-beaten
trail. People must use it. They might come this way at any time.... She
wished, wistfully, that she might be sure no one would come.... And so
wishing, she pressed on, each new pool among the rocks wooing her
afresh, and urging her to its cool embrace....
She heard, in the wood ahead of her, an increasing clamor of falling
water, and guessed there might be a cascade there of larger proportions
than she had yet seen. The path left the stream for a little, winding to
round a tangle of thicker underbrush; and she hurried around this
tangle, her eyes hungry to see the tumbling water she could hear....
Hurrying thus, she came out suddenly upon the lip of the pool.... Broad,
and dark, and deep; its upper end walled by a sheet of plunging water
that fell in a mirror-like veil and churned the pool to misty foam. Her
eyes drank deep; they swung around the pool.... And then, she caught her
breath, and shrank back a little, and pressed her hand to her throat....
Upon a rock, not fifty feet from her, his back half turned as he poised
to dive, there stood a man. A white man, for all the skin of his whole
body was golden-brown from long exposure to the open air.... He poised
there like some wood god.... Faith had a strange feeling that she had
blundered into a secret temple of the woods; that this was the temple's
deity. She smiled faintly at her own fancy; smiled....
God has made nothing more beautiful than the human body, whether it be
man's or woman's. Faith thought, in the instant that she watched, that
this bronzed man of the woods was the most beautiful thing she had ever
seen.... She had no sense of shame in watching him; she had only joy in
the sheer beauty of him, golden-brown against the green. And when, even
as she first saw him, he leaped and swung, smooth and straight, high
through the air, and turned with arms like arrows to pierce the bosom of
the pool, she gasped a little, as one gasps on coming suddenly out upon
a mountain top, with the world outspread below.... Then he was gone,
with scarce a sound.... She saw for an instant the golden flash of him
in the pool's depths....
His brown head broke the water, far across the way.... And he shook back
his hair, and passed his hands across his face to clear his eyes.... His
eyes opened....
His eyes opened, and he saw her standing there....
There were seconds on end that they remained thus, each held by the
other's gaze. Faith could not, for her life, have stirred. The spell of
the place was upon her. The man, for all his astonishment, was the first
to find his tongue. He called softly across the water:
"Good morning, woman...."
His voice was so gentle, and at the same time so gay, that Faith was not
alarmed. She smiled....
"It's after noon," she said. "Good afternoon--man!"