The Garden of God by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Author:H. De Vere Stacpoole [Stacpoole, H. De Vere]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Aventuras, Drama, Romántico
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 1922-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

OUT OF THE GLOOM

When Dick came back to the house, the girl had not returned.

Kearney seemed to have recovered his temper, and presently, putting the ship away on the shelf till to-morrow, he helped the boy to prepare supper. They scarcely spoke over this business; the shadow of the quarrel still hung between them, and that supper, as they sat silent opposite one another, was a mark in the life of Dick. It was his coming-of-age party, for Kearney was treating him as a man with whom he had a difference, not as a boy to be threatened and skelped.

Neither of them saw that far-away scene of the Dick of the Raratonga, the tall sailor dancing the tiny child in his arms and crying out to Bowers: “Says his other name’s M. Sure as there’s hair on his head, he’s been tellin’ me Dick M’s his name. Ain’t it, bo?”

Neither of them saw the early island days when Dick M, left entirely in the sailor’s charge by his grandfather, fished in the lagoon with thread for line and played at fish-spearing on the reef and tried to scull the dinghy, guided and assisted by his big companion.

Dick, sitting there in the sunset this evening, was no longer a child. Not quite a man, he was greater than a man. Fresh from the hand of Nature that had moulded and wrought on his father and mother, not quite civilized, not quite a savage, a poet might have seen in him the youth of the world, the dawn of man before cities arose to cast their shadows on him, before civilisation created savages.

Neither of them saw the long years of companionship during which they had worked as shipbuilders together, the storms and incidents by shore and reef—it was all as nought. Katafa had brought a new interest to Dick. Age and laziness had done their work with Kearney.

As they sat like this, the meal nearly finished, they saw the girl. She had come out from among the trees away on the other side of the sward. She was carrying something under her arm. She stood for a moment shading her eyes against the sunset and looking towards them. Then she vanished back amongst the trees, and Dick, rising to his feet, came running across the sward. He knew where to find her. Since the breaking of the canoe, she had made a shack for herself amongst the trees, and there she was crouched now and dimly to be seen in the fading light.

At the sound of the parting of the leaves, she moved suddenly as if trying to hide something with her body.

“Katafa,” said the boy, speaking in the native, “the food is waiting for you and he is no longer angry.”

“It does not matter, Taori,” replied her voice from the shadows. “I will eat to-morrow.”

“What is that you have beneath you there?”

“A bread-fruit, Taori—I want no better food.”

“Ahai—but you have no fire to cook it.”

“It does not matter, Taori. I will cook it to-morrow.

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