OUT OF THE GLOOM

“God bless my soul!” cried Kearney. “Come in! What are you doin’ there? Get an oar over if you can. Get an oar over, I tell ye.”

It was three weeks or so after the departure of Lestrange. Kearney, busy over something near the house, and looking up, had caught sight of Dick.

Dick had got into the dinghy, untied her and pushed out with the boat hook. That the tide was on the ebb didn’t matter to Dick.

Hanging over the stern and pretending to fish, Kearney’s voice had roused him and he stood, now, balancing himself and considering the situation created by his own act.

A little over three and a half years of age, he was as strong and big as a child of five, but he was neither big nor strong enough to man the sculls, and the dinghy was drifting towards the cape of wild cocoanuts beyond which lay the lagoon stretch reaching to the break and the sea. Then, attending to Kearney’s directions, he got a scull over on the port side, got it into the cup of the rowlock and, still standing up, tried to pull, making a terrible mess of the business.

“God’s truth!” cried Kearney. “You’ve done it now—pull it in; that ain’t no good, you’re getting her farther out.” He came running along the bank to the little cape, hoping the boat would drift close enough for him to catch it by the gunnel. He couldn’t swim.

Dick had pulled the scull in and was standing, showing no sign of fear, as the dinghy which had twisted sideways a bit, owing to the efforts with the scull, altered its position and came along, bow on, nearing the cape now, but at least a yard too far away to be seized.

“Boat huk!” cried Kearney. “Stick out the boat huk! Lord alive, look slippy!”

Before the words were spoken Dick had grasped the idea. He seized the boat hook, raised it aloft with a mighty effort, and, as the dinghy closed with the cape, let the end drop into the hands of the sailor.

Kearney drew the boat to the bank. Then getting into the little craft, he took the sculls and rowed back.

He neither scolded nor shook the child as another might have done. Dick had acted so sensibly and so pluckily that the sailor had no heart to “be harsh with him,” but the incident had a profound effect upon the mind of Kearney and the future of Dick.

The question “what would have happened to the little devil if he’d gone drifting off” suggested another question to the mind of the sailor: the question what would happen to the child if he, Kearney, were drifted off in the dinghy, or if he went west suddenly, like Lestrange.

He knew himself to be in full health and strength. All the same, the question presented itself and made him consider it.

He pictured to himself Dick starving to death in the midst of plenty and, unpleasant as the picture was, it gave him something to think about and something to do. The whole thing was a godsend, in a way, to Kearney, for the vanishing of Lestrange had begun to weigh on his mind. If he had seen Lestrange drop dead and had buried him, it would not have been nearly so bad. It was the thought of him lying somewhere in those woods, unburied, just as he was, that weighed on him.

The thought poisoned the groves; it maybe would have poisoned the lagoon and reef, only for Dick.

That evening, an hour or so before sunset, he took the child out in the boat.

“Now,” said Kearney, “I’m goin’ to teach you how to scull if you ever get adrift again.”

He drew in the sculls and then put one over the stern, resting it in the notch in the transom, and began to instruct his pupil how to scull a boat with a single oar.

Dick watched attentively, and then the sailor, with one hand on the oar, let his pupil grasp it to show him how it was done. The whole business was hopeless, for the child had neither the height nor strength for the work, though he had the spirit. But Kearney was not the man to cast cold water on a pupil. “That’s grand,” said he; “couldn’t be doin’ it better meself—that’s the way we do it—”

“Lemme—lemme!” cried Dick, trying to push the other aside and get the whole business in his own hands, and nearly losing the scull when he did.

“Ay,” said Kearney, recovering it, “I’ll let you when you’re a bit bigger—there now, let hold of it and maybe I’ll make you a little one to-morrow you can get a proper grip of. Now get forward and play with the boat huk—that’s more your size.”

Next morning, Kearney, pursuing his educational course, made Dick light the fire. Tried to, at all events. Stanistreet had left two tinder-boxes with them and a supply of flints, also matches, but the matches had almost given out, and as Kearney was an expert in the old method, he generally, now, used the flint and steel. Dick, gravely striking away with the flint, made a poor hand of the business, though he seemed to enjoy it, and it took two to do the business at last. All the same it was a beginning—and something new to do. There was lots to be done in the ordinary way of life, between fishing and cooking and what not, but it had grown monotonous from repetition. Teaching Dick gave everything a new tinge and supplied an impetus that was beginning to fail.

Then, after breakfast, Kearney bethought him of the little paddle he had promised to make. He had no wood to make it of and the problem of what to do gave him a comfortable half hour’s meditation over his pipe till he solved it by rooting out the saw and sawing off one of the rail-like branches of a dwarf arm that grew near the water.

Here was a piece of straight wood eight inches thick and over four feet long. It only wanted thinning and shaping, and with a knife in his hand down he sat, Dick disposed before him in various postures as the work went on, sometimes standing, sometimes kneeling or sitting—always absorbed, sometimes helping.

The feature that was beginning to strike out individually in the child was his mouth. Dick was a nose-breather and only opened his mouth to eat, and sometimes to talk in two- or three-word sentences. You could chase him round the sward and his way of breathing would be just the same, and, like the Red Indians, when he laughed he rarely opened his lips. It was a beautiful mouth, firm, well curved and showing the dawn of decision upon it.

“Hold it tight now,” said Mr. Kearney, and he gave one end of the piece of branch to Dick.

“Am,” said Dick.

He held it whilst the man with the knife attacked the bark, the pungent smell of the wood filling the air.

“That’s the way of it,” said Mr. Kearney, talking as he worked; “off with the bark first and then we’ll slope it. That’ll do, I can hold it meself now.” He continued to work, and Dick to watch. Then, getting tired of the monotony of the business, Dick sat down. Presently, folding his hands in his lap, one of his moody fits came on him; his eyes, wide-pupiled, seemed contemplating things at a vast distance, and Kearney, happening to glance up and notice his condition, called to mind what Lestrange had said about the child taking after the mother when he was quiet. He had often noticed the thing before, but now, from what Lestrange had said, it seemed to the simple mind of Kearney that Dick as he sat there was more like a little girl than a boy, that the “mother in him was coming out too much.”

But Kearney, as he worked over the paddle, had other things to think of besides Dick. The tobacco was showing signs indicating that it would not last for ever, and the pipe he was smoking was, so to speak, on its last legs. Stanistreet had left him two beautiful new American briars of the sort they used to sell in Frisco in those days, ornately mounted with chased silver. They had been given to Stanistreet in a moment of expansion by a rich and bibulous friend. The sailor, who was mostly a cigar-smoker, had never used them and as a parting gift had presented them to Kearney.

“There you are, Jim,” said he; “they’ll last you till we come back. No use having tobacco and running short of pipes.”

The sailor had used them, but could never take to them. They didn’t smoke right. The old wooden pipe he had brought off from the Ranatonga was always sweet as a nut, never got plugged, was always cool and “fitted his mouth.” Now it was cracking all down one side, and might go any time. It was like contemplating the death of a wife.

Then there was the bother about Lestrange. It had only just come to him that, supposing by any chance the Ranatonga were to turn up, months overdue as she was, might they think by any chance there had been foul play and that he had done Lestrange in?

He spent half the morning working over the paddle and, later that day, urged by the spirit of restlessness, he determined on an expedition over to the eastern side of the island in search of bananas. He could have gone in the dinghy or have taken his way along the lagoon bank, but at the last moment he decided to make a short cut through the woods, taking Dick along with him.

They started, taking their way through the trees on the side of the sward opposite to the house, Kearney leading. The trees were not dense and the wind from the sea stirred their fronds and branches, bringing with it the murmur of the reef. The twilight was alive with dancing lights and sun-sparkles moving as the foliage stirred to the breeze, and now and then, as they passed along, a bird resting on some branch would take flight with the sound of a fan flirted open.

Then came some giant trees with trunks buttressed like the matamata. They stood in two rows, making an alley across which swung cables of liantasse powdered here and there with the star-like blossoms of some lesser vine, and here and there orchids like vast butterflies and birds in arrested flight.

The trees like the pillars of a cathedral, the twilight and the incense-like odours of tropical flowers gave to this place a solemnity and character all its own. Lestrange, in his wood wanderings, had found it out and had often come here to meditate and dream and sometimes forget, for here the great trees cast their presence as well as their shadow on a man’s soul. Half-way down this alley Kearney halted.

A breath of wind came stealing towards him, stirring the tendrils of the liantasse and bearing with it suddenly an odour of corruption from the flower-decked gloom ahead.

He stood just as though a bar had been placed across his path. Then, taking the child by the hand, he turned and retraced his path to the house.