CHAPTER XIX
THE EXPEDITION
Next morning the light of day filtering through the trees awakenedEmmeline in the tent which they had improvised whilst the house wasbuilding. Dawn came later here than on the other side of the islandwhich faced east—later, and in a different manner—for there is thedifference of worlds between dawn coming over a wooded hill, and dawncoming over the sea.
Over at the other side, sitting on the sand with the break of the reefwhich faced the east before you, scarcely would the east change colourbefore the sea-line would be on fire, the sky lit up into anillimitable void of blue, and the sunlight flooding into the lagoon,the ripples of light seeming to chase the ripples of water.
On this side it was different. The sky would be dark and full of stars,and the woods, great spaces of velvety shadow. Then through the leavesof the artu would come a sigh, and the leaves of the breadfruit wouldpatter, and the sound of the reef become faint. The land breeze hadawakened, and in a while, as if it had blown them away, looking up, youwould find the stars gone, and the sky a veil of palest blue. In thisindirect approach of dawn there was something ineffably mysterious. Onecould see, but the things seen were indecisive and vague, just as theyare in the gloaming of an English summer’s day.
Scarcely had Emmeline arisen when Dick woke also, and they went out onto the sward, and then down to the water’s edge. Dick went in for aswim, and the girl, holding the baby, stood on the bank watching him.
Always after a great storm the weather of the island would become morebracing and exhilarating, and this morning the air seemed filled withthe spirit of spring. Emmeline felt it, and as she watched the swimmerdisporting in the water, she laughed, and held the child up to watchhim. She was fey. The breeze, filled with all sorts of sweet perfumesfrom the woods, blew her black hair about her shoulders, and the fulllight of morning coming over the palm fronds of the woods beyond thesward touched her and the child. Nature seemed caressing them.
Dick came ashore, and then ran about to dry himself in the wind. Thenhe went to the dinghy and examined her; for he had determined to leavethe house-building for half a day, and row round to the old place tosee how the banana trees had fared during the storm. His anxiety aboutthem was not to be wondered at. The island was his larder, and thebananas were a most valuable article of food. He had all the feelingsof a careful housekeeper about them, and he could not rest till he hadseen for himself the extent of damage, if damage there was any.
He examined the boat, and then they all went back to breakfast. Livingtheir lives, they had to use forethought. They would put away, forinstance, all the shells of the cocoa-nuts they used for fuel; and younever could imagine the blazing splendour there lives in the shell of acocoa-nut till you see it burning. Yesterday, Dick, with his usualprudence, had placed a heap of sticks, all wet with the rain of thestorm, to dry in the sun: as a consequence, they had plenty of fuel tomake a fire with this morning.
When they had finished breakfast he got the knife to cut the bananaswith—if there were any left to cut—and, taking the javelin, he wentdown to the boat, followed by Emmeline and the child.
Dick had stepped into the boat, and was on the point of unmooring her,and pushing her off, when Emmeline stopped him.
“Dick!”
“Yes?”
“I will go with you.”
“You!” said he in astonishment.
“Yes, I’m—not afraid any more.”
It was a fact; since the coming of the child she had lost that dread ofthe other side of the island—or almost lost it.
Death is a great darkness, birth is a great light—they had intermixedin her mind; the darkness was still there, but it was no longerterrible to her, for it was infused with the light. The result was atwilight sad, but beautiful, and unpeopled with forms of fear.
Years ago she had seen a mysterious door close and shut a human beingout for ever from the world. The sight had filled her with dreadunimaginable, for she had no words for the thing, no religion orphilosophy to explain it away or gloss it over. Just recently she hadseen an equally mysterious door open and admit a human being; and deepdown in her mind, in the place where the dreams were, the one greatfact had explained and justified the other. Life had vanished into thevoid, but life had come from there. There was life in the void, and itwas no longer terrible.
Perhaps all religions were born on a day when some woman, seated upon arock by the prehistoric sea, looked at her newborn child and recalledto mind her man who had been slain, thus closing the charm andimprisoning the idea of a future state.
Emmeline, with the child in her arms, stepped into the little boat andtook her seat in the stern, whilst Dick pushed off. Scarcely had he putout the sculls than a new passenger arrived. It was Koko. He wouldoften accompany them to the reef, though, strangely enough, he wouldnever go there alone of his own accord. He made a circle or two overthem, and then lit on the gunwale in the bow, and perched there, humpedup, and with his long dove-coloured tail feathers presented to thewater.
The oarsman kept close in-shore, and as they rounded the little capeall gay with wild cocoa-nut the bushes brushed the boat, and the child,excited by their colour, held out his hands to them. Emmelinestretched out her hand and broke off a branch; but it was not a branchof the wild cocoa-nut she had plucked, it was a branch of thenever-wake-up berries. The berries that will cause a man to sleep,should he eat of them—to sleep and dream, and never wake up again.
“Throw them away!” cried Dick, who remembered.
“I will in a minute,” she replied.
She was holding them up before the child, who was laughing and tryingto grasp them. Then she forgot them, and dropped them in the bottom ofthe boat, for something had struck the keel with a thud, and the waterwas boiling all round.
There was a savage fight going on below. In the breeding season greatbattles would take place sometimes in the lagoon, for fish have theirjealousies just like men—love affairs, friendships. The two greatforms could be dimly perceived, one in pursuit of the other, and theyterrified Emmeline, who implored Dick to row on.
They slipped by the pleasant shores that Emmeline had never seenbefore, having been sound asleep when they came past them those yearsago.
Just before putting off she had looked back at the beginnings of thelittle house under the artu tree, and as she looked at the strangeglades and groves, the picture of it rose before her, and seemed tocall her back.
It was a tiny possession, but it was home; and so little used to changewas she that already a sort of home-sickness was upon her; but itpassed away almost as soon as it came, and she fell to wondering at thethings around her, and pointing them out to the child.
When they came to the place where Dick had hooked the albicore, he hungon his oars and told her about it. It was the first time she had heardof it; a fact which shows into what a state of savagery he had beenlapsing. He had mentioned about the canoes, for he had to account forthe javelin; but as for telling her of the incidents of the chase, heno more thought of doing so than a red Indian would think of detailingto his squaw the incidents of a bear hunt. Contempt for women is thefirst law of savagery, and perhaps the last law of some old andprofound philosophy.
She listened, and when it came to the incident of the shark, sheshuddered.
“I wish I had a hook big enough to catch him with,” said he, staringinto the water as if in search of his enemy.
“Don’t think of him, Dick,” said Emmeline, holding the child moretightly to her heart. “Row on.”
He resumed the sculls, but you could have seen from his face that hewas recounting to himself the incident.
When they had rounded the last promontory, and the strand and the breakin the reef opened before them, Emmeline caught her breath. The placehad changed in some subtle manner; everything was there as before, yeteverything seemed different—the lagoon seemed narrower, the reefnearer, the cocoa-palms not nearly so tall. She was contrasting thereal things with the recollection of
them when seen by a child. Theblack speck had vanished from the reef; the storm had swept it utterlyaway.
Dick beached the boat on the shelving sand, and left Emmeline seated inthe stern of it, whilst he went in search of the bananas; she wouldhave accompanied him, but the child had fallen asleep.
Hannah asleep was even a pleasanter picture than when awake. He lookedlike a little brown Cupid without wings, bow or arrow. He had all thegrace of a curled-up feather. Sleep was always in pursuit of him, andwould catch him up at the most unexpected moments—when he was at play,or indeed at any time. Emmeline would sometimes find him with acoloured shell or bit of coral that he had been playing with in hishand fast asleep, a happy expression on his face, as if his mind werepursuing its earthly avocations on some fortunate beach in dreamland.
Dick had plucked a huge breadfruit leaf and given it to her as ashelter from the sun, and she sat holding it over her, and gazingstraight before her, over the white, sunlit sands.
The flight of the mind in reverie is not in a direct line. To her,dreaming as she sat, came all sorts of coloured pictures, recalled bythe scene before her: the green water under the stern of a ship, andthe word _Shenandoah_ vaguely reflected on it; their landing, and thelittle tea-set spread out on the white sand—she could still see thepansies painted on the plates, and she counted in memory the leadspoons; the great stars that burned over the reef at nights; theCluricaunes and fairies; the cask by the well where the convolvulusblossomed, and the wind-blown trees seen from the summit of thehill—all these pictures drifted before her, dissolving and replacingeach other as they went.
There was sadness in the contemplation of them, but pleasure too. Shefelt at peace with the world. All trouble seemed far behind her. It wasas if the great storm that had left them unharmed had been anambassador from the powers above to assure her of their forbearance,protection, and love.
All at once she noticed that between the boat’s bow and the sand therelay a broad, blue, sparkling line. The dinghy was afloat.