THE ROLLERS

Next morning Lestrange, asleep in the house, was awakened by a child’s laughter.

Dick had vanished from the corner where he slept, fetched out by Kearney, whose voice could be heard in admonition.

“Now then, Dick M, now then lave that down or I’ll put you back in the house. Lave that down, I tell you.” Silence.

Lestrange peeped out and saw the man and the child.

Kearney must have been up a good while, for a fire was alight in a little slip to the right where there was evidence that the old occupants of the place had often done their cooking, a kettle was on the fire and crockery-ware from the Ranatonga graced the sward close by, and a coffee pot. Kearney was getting breakfast ready whilst the child stood by him; on the sward, a bit away, hopping about and watching the preparations with bright eyes, was a newcomer, a bird with brilliant plumage.

Lestrange dressed himself and came out whilst the coffee was being made, filling the air with its perfume.

“Why do you call him Dick M?” asked Lestrange, taking his seat on the sward as the other went on with his preparations, whilst the child, who had lost interest in the business, was stalking the bird.

“Well, sir,” said Kearney, “it’s just a name he give himself on board the ship. Bowers labelled him Dick and I says to him, ‘What’s your name?’ I says, and ‘Dick M,’ says he, and then he closed up. He’s the silentest kid I’ve ever struck—and I’m thinking those that brought him up mustn’t have had much use for their tongues.” Mr. Kearney, led away by his own tongue, suddenly closed up himself, but Lestrange did not notice; his mind was on other matters. He had taken his seat with his face to the house, and as the meal progressed his thoughts showed themselves.

“Kearney,” said he, “look at that roof and those walls. Can you cut me some canes and get me some of those leaves for thatching? I have been examining the thatch from the inside and it is quite simple. The leaves seem stitched to the big canes that form the beams.”

“Lord, sir,” said Kearney, “you needn’t trouble about that. I’ll do the job when I get things a bit more ship-shape; canvas would be better than them leaves, and there’s a big roll of spare canvas Captain Stanistreet left, thinkin’ I’d like to make a tent.”

“No,” said Lestrange. “I want to do this business myself. There is no hurry about it, but I would like to do it myself. You know, Kearney, all about my children and how they lived here.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kearney. “I’ve heard it from Bowers.”

“They lived here and grew up together,” went on Lestrange, “lived here in the open and in the woods the happy life that people knew before cities were built. I do not know, but I some day shall know, what fatality carried them out to sea; but I do know that shortly before it occurred they began to build that house. Why?”

Kearney, who knew the tropics better than Lestrange, had an answer on his tongue, pat, the sensible answer that maybe a storm had destroyed their first house, but he said nothing, wishing to keep clear of the subject of the children as much as possible, and Lestrange went on:

“Well, it is just my fancy, but it has come to me that they built it unconsciously, instinctively knowing that I was coming, knowing that death was approaching them, leaving it unfinished for me to finish—to complete for them—”

Kearney, distinctly uncomfortable at the turn the talk was taking, still remained mute. From what Bowers had said, and from his own observation, he knew that Lestrange was sane on every point but this. Instinct told him, or hinted to him, that craziness covered with sanity in this fashion might be a worse proposition if it burst loose than the open and general sort of craziness—like that of old Sam Fisher, with whom he had sailed years ago, a man clean cracked, yet harmless and able to do his duty. He had no fear of violence from Lestrange, but visions of the poor gentleman “dashing into the lagoon,” if crossed, made him hold his tongue.

Just at that moment the bird that Dick had been stalking rose in the air and passed over their heads and lit on the roof edge of the house. The child came running after it and, standing beneath, held up his hand.

“Koko!” cried Dick.

But the bird, evidently disturbed and puzzled by the newcomers, resisted all blandishments and after a moment of indecision rose into the air and passed away across the trees.

Lestrange did not notice, he had risen and walked down to the lagoon edge, where the dinghies were moored, the old battered dinghy of the Northumberland and the dinghy of the Ranatonga.

He seemed to have forgotten all about the house-building, a fact comforting to the mind of Mr. Kearney, who didn’t want to cut canes and hunt for palmetto leaves, but to fish.

Lighting his pipe, he followed down to the water’s edge and ten minutes later he had his charge safe out on the lagoon, anchored over a vast deep pool and within eyeshot of Dick.

The child was busy. He had toys of his own hidden in some hole behind the house and which he had unearthed: stones and lumps of coloured coral and oyster shells, with which he was making patterns on the sward. He seemed quite happy and content.

Just at first, on board the Ranatonga, on awakening from that strange dead sleep induced, perhaps, as Stanistreet had suggested, by the poison of the berries, he had seemed to miss his parents, calling out “Daddy” and stretching out his arms to some imaginary person; but whether the drug had drawn some curtain or whether he had been used to long absences of his parents in their wild life on the island, who can say?—but, content with the moment, he seemed soon to forget the burning interest of the decks of the schooner, the masts and sails and crew occupying his mind.

Lestrange, with a piece of crab on his hook, leaned over the gunnel, gazing at the painted world below; just as the child was occupied with its play, so was he and so was Jim Kearney with their fishing. A shoal of tiny fish, the whole school not bigger than one’s hand, would pass like a silver cloud, its shadow following across the coral and sand patches; then a scarus with moving gills would circle, nose the bait and pass, fish and shadow suddenly and utterly dissolved from sight. Everything that moved within a certain distance of the lagoon floor had its shadow, a thing inseparable, blind, yet endowed with movement and duplicating the object that cast it in all things but solidity and colour. These fish shadows seen through water were things quite new to Lestrange, different in some subtle way from terrestrial shadows seen through air. He remarked on them to Kearney, who agreed that they looked rum when you weren’t used to them.

“And who knows,” said Lestrange, remembering a conversation he had had with Stanistreet, “whether we aren’t the shadows of our real selves, Kearney? Knowing nothing, and just following the movements and the dictates of our souls; have you ever thought of these matters, Kearney?”

“No, sir,” replied the sailor. “I was never any good at l’arnin’.”

Lestrange was about to reply when a fish took his bait, a thing like a rock cod with a bright red band across its back, weighing four or five pounds, and beating the water to spray as it was hauled up.

Lestrange, as he brought this “soul” on board, to Kearney’s relief, seemed to have cast speculative philosophy over the other gunnel. Excited as a boy with his catch, he rebaited and the fishing resumed.

Here on this island there was one thing steadfast as the sun, insistent as hunger and merciful as death—sleep. Sleep with no bad taste in its mouth, no feverish dreams in its hand. Sleep as God made it and before man spoiled it.

Dick on board the Ranatonga had astonished Bowers by his capacity for slumber and his facility in “dropping off” even in the midst of play. Here it was the same. This afternoon, dinner over, there was not a conscious soul on the island. Lestrange had retired with a book, and a half a page had drowned him in oblivion; Kearney, under a tree, was lost to the world, and Dick, curled like a leaf, was gripping in oblivion the toy the sailor had cut for him, a tiny boat no bigger than a forefinger, rough-hewn in a few minutes, but still a boat.

Just before sunset that evening the wind fell to a dead calm. Living in the open the faintest breathing of wind makes itself felt; there is no anemometer like the sense of man, and a dead calm affects not only the sense of man, but his soul.

You feel it below decks just as you feel it above. It is the one unnatural thing in Nature whose soul is movement, stress, storm.

The groves stood in stereoscopic stillness and the great sea beyond the reef had lowered its song. The rumour of the surf seemed far away, yet in reality was only diminished.

Lestrange, before going to bed, was sitting having a talk with the sailor.

Kearney, well fed, with a pipe in his mouth and his back to a tree, was in the mood for talk, unknowing of the things that might come, released from that fear of life and the future which is the birthright of every man who changes a dollar. Released from the drudgery of shipboard life, Jim Kearney was as communicative as though he had been in a bar on the Bombay coast. The push of whisky was absent, but—and as this is a story which would fall to pieces at once if truth were absent—the push of Lestrange was present. Lestrange to Kearney was not only a poor gentleman who had to be looked after, but “a wonderful rich man.” A man who could commission a schooner like the Ranatonga was in himself a person to command respect, but the fo’c’sle had embroidered on this, true to the instincts of the mass that will debase an individual or exalt him beyond fact and truth. The fo’c’sle of the Ranatonga had elevated Lestrange to the height of Nobs Hill. He wasn’t as high as this, and—give Kearney his due—the height of Lestrange in the financial world had had nothing to do with his decision to remain with him. That decision had been born in a moment, and maybe sickness of the sea and love of Dick had been the core. All the same, the “richness” of Lestrange was a powerful underlying factor in his present contentment with his surroundings.

The amber glow of the sunset had faded as these two people, drawn from poles apart, sat towards one side of the little house, Kearney with his back to a bread-fruit, Lestrange more in the open, leaning on his side, plucking at the grass, talking.

“Ain’t you ever used tobacco, sir?” said Kearney, apropos of some remark of the other.

“No, Kearney,” replied Lestrange. “I tried it once, many years ago, and it didn’t suit. I like the smell of it, but I can’t smoke. It’s the same with whisky. I’ve tried whisky. I tried it once. I said to myself, ‘I’ll forget things,’ and I went into the Palace at San Francisco—you know that big hotel they have built—and I drank.”

“Yes, sir,” said the interested Kearney.

“I did not mean to get tipsy,” went on the other, “but I drank in company with other men, and I forgot. Yes, whisky is a wonderful thing to make you forget for the moment. I remember quite well and quite distinctly the whole of that evening, up to a point. We talked of horse racing—and I knew nothing of horse racing, but it was just as though I knew. It interested me. We talked of other things far worse. I found myself in a billiard room and I was talking to two men and making bets on players and waging money, and then, Kearney, I awoke next morning—I awoke—and there was nothing but a filthy taste on my tongue and the feeling that I had betrayed those I loved—in having forgotten them, if even for a moment.”

“Well, sir, it ain’t much use to a man, and that’s the truth,” said the sailor, tapping the dottle from his pipe.

Then the meeting adjourned, leaving the rising moon to rule the unrippled sea.

The moon was full up when Lestrange, who was asleep in the house, was awakened by a booming sound, measured and rhythmical, that filled the night like the solemn beating of a great drum.

He rose and, passing the sleeping child, came out on the sward.

Kearney was out and standing in the moonlight, shading his eyes and staring towards the sea.

“It’s breakers on the reef, sir!” cried the sailor. “Lord! Look at it!”

Away over the reef the spray was flying to the even-spaced and ever loudening thunder of the great rollers. The reef seemed on fire and fuming under the moon, whilst jets of spume-drift rose like sheeted ghosts from the hurricane seas bursting on the outer beach—rose and dissolved and vanished in an atmosphere windless and still as crystal.

It was the dead calm of the night that made the vision appalling, together with the fact that the anger of the sea was still rising. Above the sheeting spray the gulls were flying wildly in the moonlight, and above their voices louder and louder came the thunder of the breakers.

The woods were now echoing to the sound of it, and now, like a line of crystal above the reef, showed the head of the first beaching wave.

It broke in snow and smoke, sheeting into the lagoon, and was followed by two others. That was the climax. As the terror came, so it went, dying gradually down, till at last nothing was left but the old eternal murmur of the surf.

“Well,” said Kearney, “that beats all.—Earthquake?—No, sir. I’m thinking there’s been some big storm up north there, one of them cyclones, and the push of it has come down pilin’ up against tide an’ current. Lord help the schooner if she’s met it. The sea’s big still; listen to that surf. Shall us run over to the reef, sir, and have a look?”

They took the dinghy. The passage was easy in the moonlight, and on the reef, when they reached it, the coral was still drenched and the rock pools over-flooded.

On the outer beach the rollers were still coming in, no longer gigantic, yet great, marching beneath the moon to break in thunderbursts that seemed ruled by the beat of a metronome; marching from the north, where, against the sunset of the day before, the sails of the Ranatonga had passed from sight beyond the sea-line.