He began to collect the things, and carry them to the dinghy. He tookthe stay-sail and everything that might be useful; and when he hadstowed them in the boat, he took the breaker and filled it with waterat the water source in the wood; he collected some bananas andbreadfruit, and stowed them in the dinghy with the breaker. Then hefound the remains of yesterday’s breakfast, which he had hidden betweentwo palmetto leaves, and placed it also in the boat.
The water was now so high that a strong push would float her. He turnedback to the hut for Emmeline. She was still asleep: so soundly asleep,that when he lifted her up in his arms she made no movement. He placedher carefully in the stern-sheets with her head on the sail rolled up,and then standing in the bow pushed off with a scull. Then, taking thesculls, he turned the boat’s head up the lagoon to the left. He keptclose to the shore, but for the life of him he could not help liftinghis eyes and looking towards the reef.
Round a certain spot on the distant white coral there was a greatcommotion of birds. Huge birds some of them seemed, and the “Hi! hi!hi!” of them came across the lagoon on the breeze as they quarrelledtogether and beat the air with their wings. He turned his head awaytill a bend of the shore hid the spot from sight.
Here, sheltered more completely than opposite the break in the reef,the artu trees came in places right down to the water’s edge; thebreadfruit trees cast the shadow of their great scalloped leaves uponthe water; glades, thick with fern, wildernesses of the mammee apple,and bushes of the scarlet “wild cocoa-nut” all slipped by, as thedinghy, hugging the shore, crept up the lagoon.
Gazing at the shore edge one might have imagined it the edge of a lake,but for the thunder of the Pacific upon the distant reef; and even thatdid not destroy the impression, but only lent a strangeness to it.
A lake in the midst of the ocean, that is what the lagoon really was.
Here and there cocoa-nut trees slanted over the water, mirroring theirdelicate stems, and tracing their clear-cut shadows on the sandy bottoma fathom deep below.
He kept close in-shore for the sake of the shelter of the trees. Hisobject was to find some place where they might stop permanently, andput up a tent. He was seeking a new home, in fact. But, pretty as werethe glades they passed, they were not attractive places to live in.There were too many trees, or the ferns were too deep. He was seekingair and space, and suddenly he found it. Rounding a little cape, allblazing with the scarlet of the wild cocoa-nut, the dinghy broke into anew world.
Before her lay a great sweep of the palest blue wind-swept water, downto which came a broad green sward of park-like land set on either sidewith deep groves, and leading up and away to higher land, where, abovethe massive and motionless green of the great breadfruit trees, thepalm trees swayed and fluttered their pale green feathers in thebreeze. The pale colour of the water was due to the extreme shallownessof the lagoon just here. So shallow was it that one could see brownspaces indicating beds of dead and rotten coral, and splashes ofdarkest sapphire where the deep pools lay. The reef lay more than halfa mile from the shore: a great way out, it seemed, so far out that itscramping influence was removed, and one had the impression of wide andunbroken sea.
Dick rested on his oars, and let the dinghy float whilst he lookedaround him. He had come some four miles and a half, and this was rightat the back of the island. As the boat drifting shoreward touched thebank, Emmeline awakened from her sleep, sat up, and looked around her.