CHAPTER XI
THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE
Months passed away. Only one bird remained in the branches of the artu:Koko’s children and mate had vanished, but he remained. The breadfruitleaves had turned from green to pale gold and darkest amber, and nowthe new green leaves were being presented to the spring.
Dick, who had a complete chart of the lagoon in his head, and knew allthe soundings and best fishing places, the locality of the stingingcoral, and the places where you could wade right across at lowtide—Dick, one morning, was gathering his things together for afishing expedition. The place he was going to lay some two and a halfmiles away across the island, and as the road was bad he was goingalone.
Emmeline had been passing a new thread through the beads of thenecklace she sometimes wore. This necklace had a history. In theshallows not far away, Dick had found a bed of shell-fish; wading outat low tide, he had taken some of them out to examine. They wereoysters. The first one he opened, so disgusting did its appearance seemto him, might have been the last, only that under the beard of thething lay a pearl. It was about twice the size of a large pea, and solustrous that even he could not but admire its beauty, though quiteunconscious of its value.
He flung the unopened oysters down, and took the thing to Emmeline.Next day, returning by chance to the same spot, he found the oysters hehad cast down all dead and open in the sun. He examined them, andfound another pearl embedded in one of them. Then he collected nearly abushel of the oysters, and left them to die and open. The idea hadoccurred to him of making a necklace for his companion. She had onemade of shells, he intended to make her one of pearls.
It took a long time, but it was something to do. He pierced them with abig needle, and at the end of four months or so the thing was complete.Great pearls most of them were—pure white, black, pink, some perfectlyround, some tear shaped, some irregular. The thing was worth fifteen,or perhaps twenty thousand pounds, for he only used the biggest hecould find, casting away the small ones as useless.
Emmeline this morning had just finished restringing them on a doublethread. She looked pale and not at all well and had been restless allnight.
As he went off, armed with his spear and fishing tackle, she waved herhand to him without getting up. Usually she followed him a bit into thewood when he was going away like this, but this morning she just sat atthe doorway of the little house, the necklace in her lap, following himwith her eyes until he was lost amidst the trees.
He had no compass to guide him, and he needed none. He knew the woodsby heart. The mysterious line beyond which scarcely an artu tree was tobe found. The long strip of mammee apple—a regular sheet of it ahundred yards broad, and reaching from the middle of the island rightdown to the lagoon. The clearings, some almost circular where the fernsgrew knee-deep. Then he came to the bad part.
The vegetation here had burst into a riot. All sorts of great sappystalks of unknown plants barred the way and tangled the foot; and therewere boggy places into which one sank horribly. Pausing to wipe one’sbrow, the stalks and tendrils one had beaten down, or beaten aside,rose up and closed together, making one a prisoner almost as closelysurrounded as a fly in amber.
All the noontides that had ever fallen upon the island seemed to haveleft some of their heat behind them here. The air was damp and closelike the air of a laundry; and the mournful and perpetual buzz ofinsects filled the silence without destroying it.
A hundred men with scythes might make a road through the place to-day;a month or two later, searching for the road, you would find none—thevegetation would have closed in as water closes when divided.
This was the haunt of the jug orchid—a veritable jug, lid and all.Raising the lid you would find the jug half filled with water.Sometimes in the tangle up above, between two trees, you would see athing like a bird come to ruin. Orchids grew here as in a hothouse. Allthe trees—the few there were—had a spectral and miserable appearance.They were half starved by the voluptuous growth of the gigantic weeds.
If one had much imagination one felt afraid in this place, for one feltnot alone. At any moment it seemed that one might be touched on theelbow by a hand reaching out from the surrounding tangle. Even Dickfelt this, unimaginative and fearless as he was. It took him nearlythree-quarters of an hour to get through, and then, at last, came theblessed air of real day, and a glimpse of the lagoon between thetree-boles.
He would have rowed round in the dinghy, only that at low tide theshallows of the north of the island were a bar to the boat’s passage.Of course he might have rowed all the way round by way of the strandand reef entrance, but that would have meant a circuit of six miles ormore. When he came between the trees down to the lagoon edge it wasabout eleven o’clock in the morning, and the tide was nearly at thefull.
The lagoon just here was like a trough, and the reef was very near,scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve,it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from thebank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, andhe placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lumpof coral for a sinker. He baited the hook, and whirling the sinkerround in the air sent it flying out a hundred feet from shore. Therewas a baby cocoa-nut tree growing just at the edge of the water. Hefastened the end of his line round the narrow stem, in case ofeventualities, and then, holding the line itself, he fished.
He had promised Emmeline to return before sundown.
He was a fisherman. That is to say, a creature with the enduringpatience of a cat, tireless and heedless of time as an oyster. He camehere for sport more than for fish. Large things were to be found inthis part of the lagoon. The last time he had hooked a horror in theform of a cat-fish; at least in outward appearance it was likest to aMississippi cat-fish. Unlike the cat-fish, it was coarse and useless asfood, but it gave good sport.
The tide was now going out, and it was at the going-out of the tidethat the best fishing was to be had. There was no wind, and the lagoonlay like a sheet of glass, with just a dimple here and there where theoutgoing tide made a swirl in the water.
As he fished he thought of Emmeline and the little house under thetrees. Scarcely one could call it thinking. Pictures passed before hismind’s eye—pleasant and happy pictures, sunlit, moonlit, starlit.
Three hours passed thus without a bite or symptom that the lagooncontained anything else but sea water, and disappointment; but he didnot grumble. He was a fisherman. Then he left the line tied to the treeand sat down to eat the food he had brought with him. He had scarcelyfinished his meal when the baby cocoa-nut tree shivered and becameconvulsed, and he did not require to touch the taut line to know thatit was useless to attempt to cope with the thing at the end of it. Theonly course was to let it tug and drown itself. So he sat down andwatched.
After a few minutes the line slackened, and the little cocoa-nut treeresumed its attitude of pensive meditation and repose. He pulled theline up: there was nothing at the end of it but a hook. He did notgrumble; he baited the hook again, and flung it in, for it was quitelikely that the ferocious thing in the water would bite again.
Full of this idea and heedless of time he fished and waited. The sunwas sinking into the west—he did not heed it. He had quite forgottenthat he had promised Emmeline to return before sunset; it was nearlysunset now. Suddenly, just behind him, from among the trees, he heardher voice, crying:
“Dick!”