The Royal Handmaid by Gilbert Morris

Author:Gilbert Morris [Gilbert Morris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441270566
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-22T18:49:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Bar of Soap

“I wish we’d been able to get some soap off of the ship before it washed away.”

Rena pulled her fingers through her hair, and a grimace marred her face. “I never knew how much I loved soap until I had to do without it.”

Captain Barkley had been whittling some pegs out of hardwood when Rena burst out with this. He leaned back and said, “It’s not as easy as running down to the store, is it? Or having a servant do it for you.”

Rena looked at the captain. He was wearing only a pair of trousers, and his upper body and face had been turned a ruddy bronze by the tropical sun. They had been on the island since early September, and their notches in the tree they used for a calendar indicated that it was now early December.

“I wasn’t complaining, Captain. I was just making an observation. I never thought I’d see the day when soap would be so important.”

“Why don’t you pray for some?” A whimsical expression crossed the captain’s face. “Doesn’t that Bible you read say you can ask for anything you want?”

Rena knew the captain was not a Christian, but he had never made fun of anyone’s religion that she knew of. Still she answered with some asperity. “I don’t think it means exactly that, Captain.”

“Why doesn’t it say what it means, then? That’s one thing that’s always troubled me about the Bible. I just never understood it. Now, you take navigation. Numbers mean something, and they can’t mean anything else. But what little I’ve studied of the Bible makes me wonder how anybody ever could get any sense out of it.”

“A soul isn’t exactly the same thing as a navigational chart.”

“You’ve got that right, Rena. Don’t pay any attention to me. I guess I’m just getting crabby.” He pulled his fingers through the whiskers that had not been cut since he last shaved. “I always said I’d never wear a beard, but that razor of mine’s getting dull, and I don’t like pulling whiskers out with pliers.”

They were interrupted when Travis came up carrying a load of breadfruit in a net. The captain said, “It looks like you got a good harvest there, Travis.”

“We’re not going to starve,” Travis said cheerfully.

As Travis hung the breadfruit on a limb of the tree that Rena and the captain were sitting under, Barkley grinned and said, “We’re having a theological discussion here.”

“Is that right? What’s the topic? Are you trying to figure out what the gray beard of Daniel’s billy goat stands for?”

“Nothin’ that important. Rena here was just wishing for soap when I told her that the Good Book says, if I remember rightly, all she has to do is pray for some.”

Travis’s eyes grew smaller, and wrinkles appeared out at the corners, as they always did, when he grinned. “What did you tell him about that, Rena?”

“I told him it doesn’t mean that exactly.”

“And I was tryin’ to figure out why Jesus didn’t say exactly what He meant.

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