THE KEEPER OF THE LAGOON

When Lestrange and Stanistreet had been rowed ashore, Bowers set the lads to work clearing up and putting things straight.

The Ranatonga was a schooner of the old Pacific type built at Velego and for the sandalwood trade by men who recognised that speed and cargo space are almost synonymous terms. Her lines were lovely, and her character; never would she play a man false and, to use Bowers’ words, a child might have steered her. He had fallen in love with her and the fo’c’sle hands cursed his passion, which kept them Flemish-coiling, polishing and deck-scrubbing—all but Jim, bo’sun’s mate and second in importance after Bowers.

Kearney was his other name, but it was never used. He had no letters; like Bowers, he could not write his name, but he was great with his fists in an emergency, and he could do anything with his hands.

Jim had been in the gold rush—there were dead men lying in One Horse Gulch and on Dows Flat that had known him, and the scars on his hide were many—but he had made no profit out of the business. Then the sea took him, and drink, and the sandalwood traders used him, so that he was never out of employment one way or another—always in schooner work and escaping by some miracle the whalemen’s crimps at a time when shanghaied men were bringing thirty dollars a head.

When Bowers had bathed and dried off Dick, the child had run to this scamp, clasped him round the legs and looked up into his hard-bitten face laughing and with evident approval.

It was a new moment in the life of Jim and the start of what almost amounted to a quarrel between him and Bowers, for Jim had danced the child in his arms, to say nothing of the fact that the child had shown a predilection for Jim.

Jealousy! No man would ever have suspected such a thing in connection with a leathery old salt like Bowers, yet there it was, the jealousy of a nursery-maid, patent and plain and exhibiting itself now in words.

Work had knocked off, darkness was stealing over the lagoon and the lads were lying on deck, down below, the child was asleep in its bunk, and with his back against the rail, filling a pipe, Bowers was telling off Jim.

“I didn’t say nuthin’ of the sort,” said Jim. “I said Gord A’mighty had given it teeth to chaw with, and you fillin’ it up with pap like that, that’s what I said and that’s what I sticks to.”

“Then what were you sayin’ about goats?” fired Bowers. “Where’s the chawin’ to be done with goat’s milk—”

“Goats, nuthin’! I was talkin’ of Kanakas feedin’ their young uns on goat’s milk. Can’t a man talk without bein’ took up and havin’ his words shoved down his throat?”

“I ain’t shovin’ no words down no throats,” replied the bo’sun, lighting his pipe, “and we’ll leave it there. Bill, ain’t you goin’ to get that ridin’ light fixed?” He stumped forward and the discussion dropped, but the tension remained. Then, as the anchor light cast its amber on the waving lagoon water and the moon was raising her forehead across the reef, a hail came from the shore.

Lestrange and Stanistreet had returned, taking their way along the lagoon bank. The boat put off to their hail, and they came on board.

After supper, and on the moonlit deck, the captain of the Ranatonga went back to the subject they had been discussing on their way to the ship.

“No, sir,” said he. “I don’t like it and nothing will make me like it, sailing off like that and leaving you here. I’m talking as man to man, and you’re not as young as you were. Well, I’ve said my say, and as I was saying on the beach there, I’m willing to take your orders up to a point, and that point is leaving some one with you. Bowers I can’t part with, so it must be one of the others. Question is, which?”

“But what is to harm me?” said Lestrange. “You see a man who only craves for solitude. It is true I am not as young as I was, but I am active and, as you know, I have the simplest tastes. I can get my food without trouble here where there is food on every hand. Before going on that voyage years ago, when the consumption first threatened me, I camped out all alone away in the Adirondacks and kept myself with a gun and a rod. I am more vigorous now than then.”

“Well, sir,” said the sailor, “it’s just myself I’m thinking of. You say I’m to come back in a year, but I wouldn’t have any peace of mind till then, and a year’s a long time.”

“Well, be it so,” said the other, “leave me one of your sailors; after all, these honest fellows are more like children than men, and I would prefer one of them to any other companion—if companion I must have.”

Stanistreet smiled as he mentally reviewed “those honest fellows.” All the same, it was a fo’c’sle tough or nothing, and he had gained his point. Besides, in the depths of his mind he felt that the innocence of Lestrange had touched something of the truth; the worst of those rascals had the salt of the sea on him, and the question was, would any of them remain? Bowers would—he felt that—but he could not run the schooner without him.

He let the question be whilst they discussed other matters. Lestrange, knowing his man and trusting him implicitly, was giving him very wide powers over his affairs. Most of his money was in real estate, and his bankers and lawyers had things in hand, but Stanistreet would have power to draw what money he wanted for the return trip, and he was to receive a salary for the year, or until he left Lestrange’s service, twice the amount of what he was now receiving.

They talked till the moon far above them was preparing to cross the hill-top. The wind had fallen dead and the lagoon water lay still as glass. Under the moonlight the trooping trees, the salt-white beach and the far reef lay clearly visible, as by day, yet ghostly, bathed in the light of dreamland—which is the light of memory.

Stanistreet, when the other had gone below, leaned on the rail, looking at the picture before him. The Garden of God. Yes, if any spot on earth deserved that sacred name, it was this, where sin was not, nor cruelty, nor visible sign of death.

As he gazed, his eyes were drawn to something pale and phosphorescent moving swiftly through the water astern; it vanished, and then across the moon track hinted of itself again in the form of something dark and rapidly moving that passed, leaving a ripple on the glittering surface.