CHAPTER VII
THE SCHOONER
They carried the bananas up to the house, and hung them from a branchof the artu. Then Dick, on his knees, lit the fire to prepare theevening meal. When it was over he went down to where the boat wasmoored, and returned with something in his hand. It was the javelinwith the iron point—or, rather, the two pieces of it. He had saidnothing of what he had seen to the girl.
Emmeline was seated on the grass; she had a long strip of the stripedflannel stuff about her, worn like a scarf, and she had another piecein her hand which she was hemming. The bird was hopping about, peckingat a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made theshadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leavesof the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound ofrain-drops falling upon glass.
“Where did you get it?” asked Emmeline, staring at the piece of thejavelin which Dick had flung down almost beside her whilst he went intothe house to fetch the knife.
“It was on the beach over there,” he replied, taking his seat andexamining the two fragments to see how he could splice them together.
Emmeline looked at the pieces, putting them together in her mind. Shedid not like the look of the thing: so keen and savage, and staineddark a foot and more from the point.
“People had been there,” said Dick, putting the two pieces together andexamining the fracture critically.
“Where?”
“Over there. This was lying on the sand, and the sand was all trod up.”
“Dick,” said Emmeline, “who were the people?”
“I don’t know; I went up the hill and saw their boats going away—faraway out. This was lying on the sand.”
“Dick,” said Emmeline, “do you remember the noise yesterday?”
“Yes,” said Dick.
“I heard it in the night.”
“When?”
“In the night before the moon went away.”
“That was them,” said Dick.
“Dick!”
“Yes?”
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know,” replied Dick.
“It was in the night, before the moon went away, and it went on and onbeating in the trees. I thought I was asleep, and then I knew I wasawake; you were asleep, and I pushed you to listen, but you couldn’twake, you were so asleep; then the moon went away, and the noise wenton. How did they make the noise?”
“I don’t know,” replied Dick, “but it was them; and they left this onthe sand, and the sand was all trod up, and I saw their boats from thehill, away out far.”
“I thought I heard voices,” said Emmeline, “but I was not sure.”
She fell into meditation, watching her companion at work on the savageand sinister-looking thing in his hands. He was splicing the two piecestogether with a strip of the brown cloth-like stuff which is wrappedround the stalks of the cocoa-palm fronds. The thing seemed to havebeen hurled here out of the blue by some unseen hand.
When he had spliced the pieces, doing so with marvellous dexterity, hetook the thing short down near the point, and began thrusting it intothe soft earth to clean it; then, with a bit of flannel, he polished ittill it shone. He felt a keen delight in it. It was useless as afish-spear, because it had no barb, but it was a weapon. It was uselessas a weapon, because there was no foe on the island to use it against;still, it was a weapon.
When he had finished scrubbing at it, he rose, hitched his old trousersup, tightened the belt of cocoa-cloth which Emmeline had made for him,went into the house and got his fish-spear, and stalked off to theboat, calling out to Emmeline to follow him. They crossed over to thereef, where, as usual, he divested himself of clothing.
It was strange that out here he would go about stark naked, yet on theisland he always wore some covering. But not so strange, perhaps, afterall.
The sea is a great purifier, both of the mind and the body; before thatgreat sweet spirit people do not think in the same way as they thinkfar inland. What woman would appear in a town or on a country road, oreven bathing in a river, as she appears bathing in the sea?
Some instinct made Dick cover himself up on shore, and strip naked onthe reef. In a minute he was down by the edge of the surf, javelin inone hand, fish-spear in the other.
Emmeline, by a little pool the bottom of which was covered withbranching coral, sat gazing down into its depths, lost in a reverielike that into which we fall when gazing at shapes in the fire. She hadsat some time like this when a shout from Dick aroused her. Shestarted to her feet and gazed to where he was pointing. An amazingthing was there.
To the east, just rounding the curve of the reef, and scarcely aquarter of a mile from it, was coming a big topsail schooner; abeautiful sight she was, heeling to the breeze with every sail drawing,and the white foam like a feather at her fore-foot.
Dick, with the javelin in his hand, was standing gazing at her; he haddropped his fish-spear, and he stood as motionless as though he werecarved out of stone. Emmeline ran to him and stood beside him; neitherof them spoke a word as the vessel drew closer.
Everything was visible, so close was she now, from the reef points onthe great mainsail, luminous with the sunlight, and white as the wingof a gull, to the rail of the bulwarks. A crowd of men were hangingover the port bulwarks gazing at the island and the figures on thereef. Browned by the sun and sea-breeze, Emmeline’s hair blowing on thewind, and the point of Dick’s javelin flashing in the sun, they lookedan ideal pair of savages, seen from the schooner’s deck.
“They are going away,” said Emmeline, with a long-drawn breath ofrelief.
Dick made no reply; he stared at the schooner a moment longer insilence, then, having made sure that she was standing away from theland, he began to run up and down, calling out wildly, and beckoning tothe vessel as if to call her back.
A moment later a sound came on the breeze, a faint hail; a flag was runup to the peak and dipped as in derision, and the vessel continued onher course.
As a matter of fact, she had been on the point of putting about. Hercaptain had for a moment been undecided as to whether the forms on thereef were those of castaways or savages. But the javelin in Dick’s handhad turned the scale of his opinion in favour of the theory of savages.