TIME PASSES

For weeks after that night Kearney, though busy and contented enough, was possessed by the uneasy feeling that maybe they were marooned for good and all. If the Ranatonga never came back, why, then God help them, it might be years before a ship came along.

Working in the patch of yams, fishing, or what not, he worried over this business in private. Not caring to speak of it to Lestrange, he sometimes spoke of it to Dick. Dick, almost as dumb as a dog, had words, but no use for connected speech as yet; sometimes thoughtful, nearly always busy, the child seemed to live a life of his own and, though fast friends with the man, was quite happy when left by himself. All the same, Mr. Kearney would talk to the child sometimes as if he understood, and it was a relief to give voice to his doubts if it was only to Dick.

Sometimes the man would take him out in the dinghy when he went fishing and Lestrange was otherwise employed, and the child with its chin over the gunnel would watch without a word, or crooning to itself, while the bright-coloured fish passed or nosed the bait.

“Ay, them’s big fish,” said Mr. Kearney one morning as three grampuses went by in line of battle and vanished into the world of crystal beyond. “Hullo!” A rock cod had taken the bait; he hauled it, fighting, on board and as it foundered on the bottom boards Dick caught it in his chubby hands.

“Fish!” said Dick.

“Ay, now you’re talking,” said the other, pleased to hear the word he had uttered repeated back to him, and holding up the fish with a finger through the gills. “What’ll you give me for ’m, answer up now, eh? What’ll you give me for ’m, or I’ll chuck him overboard? Answer up now.”

“Sivim!” cried Dick. He had risen and was standing, balancing himself, and holding up his hands for the coloured fish.

Mr. Kearney roared with laughter, so that Lestrange, who was weeding in the taro patch, heard the sound borne to him across the water.

He handed the fish to the child, who, clutching it by the tail and through the gills, placed it carefully in the shadow of the thwart, where the sun could not get at it.

“Well, I’m damned,” said Kearney to himself. If Dick had suddenly made a long oration in Latin the sailor would not have been very much more surprised than he was at this revelation of care and free thought. It was like a flash of light revealing the child’s upbringing and the fact that the people of the wild begin their education in the school of necessity, which is not a school of languages.

He rebaited and dropped his hook, talking to the child as he did so.

“Did your daddy teach you that, eh? Well, you’re a cleverer chap than I thought—don’t be tanglin’ the line; there, you can hold it if you want.” He let the little hand clutch the line without letting go of it himself and they fished in partnership, Dick between his knees and helping to haul in the catches. But from that day he began to take a different and more lively interest in the child, and as the weeks passed the bother about the Ranatonga began to fade. There was no use in bothering, for one thing, and for another the island life was beginning to clutch him.

Time measured by the shadow of a palm tree, days so like that they slipped by uncounted, no watches to be kept, no worry, and food which was just a pleasant exercise to collect, no home to regret—in a month the thought of the Ranatonga had passed away even as the ship herself had passed beyond the sea-line. In two months the fo’c’sle had receded, a dark vision that seemed separated from him by years.

Then, as time went on, the sprouting of Dick became for this common sailor man an interest that beat fishing, spearing grampus on the reef, beating the woods for new fruit patches or speculating on the rumness of Lestrange, whose mild peculiarities seemed spreading in a new direction, to be noted presently.

He heard his own words repeated by the child. It was like teaching a parrot to talk, only with a difference, for under the influence of this conversationalist Dick was beginning to string his words together. He had a little stock of old words collected in his past life—“Dick”—“Em”—“Koko”—“Daddy”—but, whether the strange, new experience of waking to find himself on the schooner had broken the threads or whether his parents had almost forgotten language, he had nothing of connected speech.

The man who takes an interest in a thing has two sets of eyes, and Kearney’s interest in Dick made him see things lost to Lestrange, whose indifference to the child, so far from diminishing, seemed to increase as time went on; one might say that it almost amounted to a dislike—as though the presence of a living child here was distasteful to him who was waiting for the children who were dead.

During the first few months his mind was so busy, so intrigued with the new surroundings, so intent on completing the house, clearing the yam patch of weeds and finishing what the lost children had left undone, that time passed as it passed for Kearney. Then, gradually, and as though time were losing the feathers of his wings one by one, the days began to lengthen for Lestrange.

The glorious vision that had brought him such assurance and comfort, had it been born after all of dementia, of that compensating madness which turns grief sometimes into indifference or laughter? Was it a toy produced by Nature to soothe his mind? He did not ask himself this, he questioned nothing, but fishing began to lose its interest for him and, now that the house was finished, there seemed nothing more to do.

How the children were to come to him he had never tried clearly to imagine—perhaps in dreams—perhaps in a vision or stealing to him as ghosts. Perhaps he would die and they would come to lead him into that glorious country where he had met them—he could not tell, he had only been sure that they would come.

But now, as time went on, it was as though the vaguest tinge of darkness had come upon the blessed assurance—a tinge so vague at first that it only changed contentment into expectancy. The first chill touch, perhaps, of that sanity whose home is the commonplace, the sanity that knows nothing of visions, that questions, turns over and doubts. Who knows? But as time went on, expectancy began to take on the tinge of doubt.

Sitting reading by the house you might have seen Lestrange pause in his reading and glance round—a step—no, only a leaf blown by the wind. Sometimes at night Kearney would see him wandering by the lagoon side, a figure clearly defined in the starlight, walking with head bowed and hands behind its back, not a happy figure.

He talked little nowadays and his face had lost something of that other-world look, but what he said was always definite and to the point, his manner was more normal, and if the sailor had been questioned as to his condition, he would have given it as his opinion that the gentleman was “coming round.”

All the same, this coming-round business made it a dull time for Mr. Kearney, and only for Dick he might have grumbled. As I have said, his interest in the child made him see things lost to Lestrange.

Dick had a hole behind the house where he used to hide his toys, just as a dog hides bones. He was very secretive about this business, putting the things away when no one was looking. Kearney found the cache one day and must have left some marks behind him, for next day the hiding-place was changed. Another queer thing about Dick was the way, changing from one mood to another, he would alter.

Sometimes he would be racing along the lagoon bank or trying to climb trees, full of life and energy. Again, sometimes he would be seated, quiet and brooding, often with his hands folded, as if contemplating some abstract matter—day-dreaming.

A rum child.