Tessa

His former surmise proved correct, for about midday the boat was becalmed on an oily, steamy sea under a fierce, brazen sun. This lasted for the remainder of the day, and then was followed by the usual squally night.

And so for three days they sailed, making but little progress during the daytime, for the wind was light and baffling, but doing much better at night.

On the evening of the third day they sighted the northernmost islet of Pikirami lagoon, and stood by under its lee till daylight, little dreaming that those whose life-blood they would so eagerly have shed were sleeping calmly and peacefully in the native village fifteen miles away.

With the dawn came a sudden terrific downpour of rain, which lasted but for a few minutes, and both Chard and Hendry knew, from their own experience and from the appearance of the sky, that such outbursts were likely to continue for at least five or six days, with but brief intervals of cessation.

“We might as well get ashore somewhere about here,” said Hendry; “this is the tail-end of the rainy season, and we can expect heavy rain and nasty squalls for a week at least. It’s come on a bit earlier than I expected, and I think we’ll be better ashore than boxing about at sea. Can you see the land to the south’ard?”

Chard stood up and shielded his eyes from the still falling rain, but it was too thick for him to discern anything but the misty outline of the palm-fringed shore immediately near them.

“We’ll wait a bit till it’s a little clearer, and then we’ll run in over the reef just abreast of us,” said Hendry; “it’s about high water, and as there is no surf we can cross over into the lagoon without any trouble, and pick out a camping-place somewhere on the inner beach.”

They lowered the sail and mast, took out their oars, and waited till they could see clearly before them. A few minutes later they were pulling over the reef, on which there was no break, and in another half a mile they reached the shore of the most northern of the chain of islets encompassing the lagoon, and made the boat’s painter fast to the serried roots of a pandanus palm growing at the edge of the water.

Then they sought rest and shelter from the next downpour beneath the overhanging summits of some huge, creeper-clad boulders of coral rock, which lay piled together in the midst of the dense scrub, just beyond high-water mark.

Bringing their arms and some provisions from the boat, they placed them on the dry sandy soil under one of the boulders, ate their breakfast, and then slept the sleep of men mentally and physically exhausted.

When they awoke the rain had cleared off, and the sun was shining brightly. By the captain’s watch it was a little past one o’clock, and after looking at the boat, which was high and dry on the beach; for the tide was now dead low, Chard suggested that they should make a brief examination of the islet, and get come young drinking and some fully-grown coconuts for use in the boat.

“Very likely we’ll find some turtle eggs too,” he added; “this and next month is the season. We are bound to get a turtle or two, anyway, if we watch to-night on the beach.”

Returning to the camp, they picked up their loaded Winchesters and started off, walking along the beach on the inner side of the lagoon, and going in a northerly direction. The islet, although less than a mile and a half in circumference, was densely wooded and highly fertile, for in addition to the countless coco-palms which were laden with nuts in all stages of growth, and fringed the shore in an unbroken circle, there were great numbers of pandanus and jackfruit-trees growing further back. Here and there were to be seen traces of former inhabitants—depressions of an acre or so in extent, surrounded by high banks of soil, now thickly clothed with verdure, and which Chard, who had had a fair experience of the South Seas, knew were once plantations of puraka, the gigantic taro plant of the low-lying islands of the South and North Pacific.

“It must be a hundred years or more since any one worked at these puraka patches,” he said to Hendry, as he sat upon the top of a bank and looked down. “Look at the big trees growing all around us on the banks. There can’t be natives living anywhere on the atoll now, so I don’t think we need to keep a night watch as long as we stop here.”

But had Harvey Carr or any one of the native crew sat there on the bank, they would have quickly discovered many evidences of the spot having been visited very recently—the broken branch of a tree, a leaf basket lying flattened and rotting, and half covered by the sandy soil; a necklace of withered berries thrown aside by a native girl, and the crinkled and yellowed husks of some young coconuts which had been drunk not many weeks before by a fishing party.

At the extreme northern point of the islet there stood a mound of coral slab, piled up by the action of the sea, and similar to the much larger one fifteen miles away at the other end of the lagoon. With some difficulty the two men succeeded in gaining the summit, and from there, at a height of fifty feet, they had a view of the greater portion of the atoll, and of some of the green chain of islands it enclosed. On no one of them could they discern signs of human occupancy, only long, long lines of cocos, with graceful slender boles leaning westward to the sea, and whose waving crowns of plumes cast their shadows upon the white sand beneath. From the beach itself to the barrier reef, a mile or two away, the water was a clear, pale green, unblemished in its purity except by an occasional patch of growing coral, which changed its colours from grey to purple and from purple to jetty black as a passing cloud for a brief space dimmed the lustre of the tropic sun. Beyond the line of green the great curving sweep of reef, with the snow-white, ever-breaking, murmuring surf churning and frothing upon it; and, just beyond that, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific.

“There’s no natives here, Louis,” said Chard confidently, as his keen, black eyes traversed the scene before them; “we can see a clear seven or eight miles along the beaches, and there’s not a canoe to be seen on any one of them. We’ll spell here for a day or two, or more, if the weather has not settled.”

Hendry nodded in his usual sullen manner. “All right. We want a day to overhaul the boat thoroughly; the mainsail wants looking to as well.”

“Well, let us get back, and then we’ll have a look over the next islet to this one before dark. We may come across some turtle tracks and get a nest of eggs.”

They descended the mound, and set out along the outer beach on their way back to the camp.

Had they remained but a few minutes longer they would have seen two canoes come into view about three miles to the southward, paddling leisurely towards the northernmost islet.

CHAPTER XI

The two canoes were manned by some of the crew of the Motutapu together with six natives of Pikirami; one was steered by Harvey, the other by Huka the Savage Islander; and as they paddled along within a few feet of each other the crews laughed and jested in the manner inherent to all the Malayo-Polynesians when intent on pleasure.

That morning Harvey, tiring of the inaction of the past three days, had eagerly assented to a proposal made by Huka that they should make a trip round the lagoon, and spend a day or two away from the village, fishing and shooting. Several young Pikirami natives at once launched two of their best canoes, and placed them at Harvey’s and Atkins’s service, and offered to go with the party and do all the paddling, cooking, etc.

“Ay,” said Nena the head-man, a little wizen-faced but kindly-eyed old fellow, whose body was so deeply tatooed in broad vertical bands that scarcely a strip of brown skin could be seen—“ay, ye must take my young men; for are ye not our guests, ye, and the brown sailor men as well? and they shall tend on ye all. That is our custom to strangers who have come to us as friends.”

Preparations were at once made for a start, and Harvey went to tell Tessa, whom he found in the house allotted to her, listening to Atkins, who was planning some improvements in the interior so as to add to her comfort.

“I wish I could go with you, Harvey,” said Tessa with a bright smile; “it would be like the old days in Ponapé, with you and my brothers. How long will you be away?”

“Perhaps two days. Will you come, Atkins?”

“Not me! The less salt water I see and the less rain-water I feel for another week the better I’ll like it. Besides, I’m going to do a bit of carpentering work for Miss Remington. We may have to hang out here for a month before that Dutch schooner comes along, and I’m just going to set to work and make Miss Remington comfy. And if you had any sense, Harvey, you’d stay under shelter instead of trying to get another dose of shakes by going out and fooling around in a canoe.”

Harvey laughed. “There’s no more fever for me, Atkins. I’m clear of it. That little boat trip of ours has knocked it clean out of my bones, and if you don’t believe me, I’m willing to prove it by getting to the top of that coconut-tree outside there in ten seconds’ quicker time than you can do it.”

The boat voyage had certainly done him good, and although he had by no means thoroughly recovered his strength, his cheeks had lost their yellow, haggard look, and his eyes were bright with returning health. Atkins, who knew that Tessa was to become his wife, looked first at him and then at her with sly humour twinkling in his honest grey eyes. Then he took his pipe out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.

“Well, I’ll come back by and by. Two is company, and three is none. The sooner I go, the better you’ll like it, and the sooner you go, Harvey, the sooner I can get to work;” and so saying he walked out.

Tessa’s dark eyes danced with fun as she walked backwards from Harvey, and leaning against the thatched side of the house, put her finger to her lips. “What a beautiful sensible man he is, isn’t he, Harvey?”

“He’s a man after my own heart, Tessa,” and then Maoni, who sat smoking a cigarette in a corner of the room, discreetly turned her back as certain sibilant sounds were frequently repeated for a minute or two.

“Harvey, you sinner,” she whispered, “I don’t like you a bit. Really and truly I don’t.... Now, now, no more.... Maoni can hear you, I’m sure. The idea of your going away for two days—two whole days—and marching calmly up to me and telling me of it in such a rude, matter-of-fact manner. You are unkind.... Don’t.... I don’t like you, Harvey… I’ll tell father that you went away and left me for two whole days—to go fishing and pig-shooting, and poor Mr. Atkins had to look after me, and… oh, Harvey, Harvey, isn’t it lovely! Father will be so glad, and so will Carmela and Jack, and Librada and Ned. Harvey dear, I do hope your sisters will like me. Perhaps they will think I am only a native girl.... Oh, do be careful, I can see Maoni’s back shaking. She knows you’re kissing me, I’m sure.”

“Don’t care if she does; don’t care if she sees me kissing you, like this, and this, and this; don’t care if Atkins sees us.”

Her low, happy laugh sounded like the trill of a bird. “Harvey dear, do you remember the day when we went to Róan Kiti in Ponapé—when you were sailing the Belle Brandon for father?”

Harvey didn’t remember, but, like a sensible lover, said he did, and emphasised his remembrance in a proper manner.

“Well, now, listen… Oh, you horrid fellow, why do you look at me as if I were a baby! Now, I shan’t tell you anything at all.... There, don’t pretend to be sorry, for you know… oh, Harvey dear, I must tell you.”

“Tell me, dearest.”

“That’s a good boy, a good would-be-climbing-a-coconut-tree youth, who wanted to show off before poor Atkins who told me just now that you were ‘the whitest man in the South Seas.’ He did really.”

“Atkins is ‘an excellent good man,’ and you are the sweetest and most beautiful girl in all the wide, wide Pacific. Come, tell me what it is that you must tell me.”

“I’ll tell you if you don’t kiss me any more. Maoni’s eyes can see round her shoulders, I believe. I do wish she wasn’t here.... Well, that day when you and I were climbing up the mountain-path you let a branch swing back—you careless thing—and it hit me in the face and hurt me terribly, and you took me up in your arms and kissed me. Oh, Harvey, don’t you remember? Kissed me, just because I was crying like a baby. Harvey dear, I was only fourteen then, but I loved you then—that was the real, very beginning of it all, I think. And then I went away to school to San Francisco, and you went away—and I suppose you never thought one little bit about me again.”

“Indeed I did, Tess” (here was a silent but well-employed interlude); “I often thought of you, dear, but not as a lover thinks. For in those days you were to me only a sweet child (if Maoni wasn’t here I’d pick you up and nurse you), a sweet, sweet little comrade whose dear, soft eyes used to smile into mine whenever I stepped into your father’s house, and–”

“Oh, Harvey, Harvey! I have never, never forgotten you. There! and there! and there! I don’t care if Maoni, or any one, or all the world sees me,” and she flung her soft arms round his neck and kissed him again and again in the sheer abandonment of her innocent happiness. “But you really love me now, Harvey, don’t you? And oh, Harvey dear, where shall we live? And your sisters… if they don’t like me?”

Harvey stroked her soft hair, and pressed his lips to her cheeks.

“They won’t like you, Tess. They’ll just love you—and they’ll make me jealous.”

Again her happy laugh trilled out. “How lovely!… Harvey dear?”

“Yes, Tess.”

“I want to tell you something—something that only mother knows, something about me—and a man.”