NANAWA SPEAKS

“Now then, Dick, l’ave her alone and don’t get lookin’ at her,” said Mr. Kearney. “She’s been misbehavin’.”

“What’s she been doin’, Jim?” asked the boy.

“Playin’ with the matches,” replied the other, thinking it just as well not to go into full particulars that were sure to bring a string of Dick’s endless questions.

They were seated at breakfast and Katafa had drawn close for her food. Katafa could be ugly, she could be pretty; never was anything more protean than the looks of this Spanish girl who was yet in all things but birth and blood a Kanaka. This morning, as she sat in the liquid shadow of the trees, she was unpaintably beautiful. She had run away beyond the cape of wild cocoanuts and taken a dip in the lagoon, and now, fresh from sleep and her bath, with a red flower in her hair and her hands folded in her lap, she sat like the incarnation of dawn, her luminous eyes fixed on Kearney.

But Kearney had no eye for her beauty.

“When was she playin’ with them, Jim?” asked the boy, a piece of baked bread-fruit in his fingers.

“Never you mind,” replied the other. “Get on with your breakfast and hand us that plate—I’ll l’arn her.”

He passed a plateful of food to the girl and then helped himself and the meal proceeded, Dick attending to business, but with an occasional side-glance at the criminal.

Playing with the matches was a hideous offence for which he had been whacked twice in earlier days. He reckoned Kearney would whack her, and he looked forward to the business with an interest tinged, but not in the least unsharpened, by his sneaking sympathy with the offence and the offender.

But, the meal finished, the sailor, instead of setting to, simply walked to the dinghy, beckoning the girl to follow him. He got in, took the sculls, and as she stepped after him, taking her seat gingerly in the stern sheets, pushed off.

The pair landed on the reef, Kearney leading the way and glancing about him till they came on the remains of the fire.

“Now,” said Kearney, halting and pointing to the ashes and the scorched coral, “that’s what you’ve been doin’, is it? What made you light that fire for, eh?”

Although the language of Kearney was to her as Double Dutch to a Chinese, she knew quite well his drift. He had discovered the fact that she had lit the fire. How? Maybe the god of the little ships had told him. She said nothing, however, as he went on, his voice rising in anger with every word.

“What made you touch them matches for, smellin’ round when I was asleep and makin’ off with the matches? I’ll l’arn you.”

He picked up a stalk of seaweed and make a “skelp” at her. She was quite close and it was impossible to miss her. All the same, the stalk touched nothing; she had skipped aside.

Trees had once grown here on the reef and the coral was smooth, and round and about this smooth patch Kearney, blazing with righteous wrath, pursued her. It was like trying to whip the wind. He tried to drive her on to the rough coral, but she wasn’t to be caught like that. She kept to the smooth, and in three or four minutes he was done.

Flinging the stick of seaweed away, he wiped his brow with his arms. Dick was watching them from the sward, and he felt that he had been making a fool of himself.

“Now never you do that no more!” said Mr. Kearney, shaking his finger at her. “If you do, b’gosh, I’ll skelp you roun’ the island.” He nodded his head to give force to this tremendous threat and was turning to the dinghy when something caught his eye.

Away to the east, across the sparkling blue, stood a sail.

The dead calm had broken an hour ago and a merry breeze was whipping up the swell. The ship, lying beyond the northern drift current, must have been within sight of the island all night. Had she seen the fire?

Kearney, shading his eyes, stood watching her. A splash from the lagoon made him turn. Katafa had taken to the water, ridi and all, and was swimming back to the shore, evidently determined not to trust herself with him in the dinghy. He looked at her for a moment as she swam; then he turned his gaze back to the ship.

She showed, now, square-rigged and close-hauled. Yes, she was beating up for the island. Would she put in at the break? Was she a whaler, a sandalwood trader, or what?

In those days of Pease and Steinberger, a ship in Pacific waters had many possibilities, and if Kearney had known that he was watching the Portsoy, captained by Collin Robertson, who feared neither God nor the Paumotus, he would not have waited on the reef so calmly.

No, she was not making for the break, but to pass the island close to northward. She was no whaler, and, relieved of this dread, he stuck to his post as she came, every sail drawing, listed to starboard with the press of the wind and the foam bursting from her forefoot.

Now she was nearly level with him, less than a quarter of a mile away. He could see the busy decks and a fellow running up the ratlins, and at the sight of the striped shirts and the old familiar crowd, the sticks and ropes, the white-painted deck-house and the sun on the bellying canvas, Kearney, forgetting ease and comfort and the hundred good gifts God had bestowed on him, sobriety included, sprang into the air and flung up his arms and yelled like a lunatic.

The answer came prompt in a burst of sound, like the outcrying of gulls. The helm went over and the brig, curving under the thrashing canvas, presented her stern to the damned castaway on the reef.

He saw the glint of a long brass gun, a plume of smoke bellying over the blue sea, and, as the wind of the shot went over him the report shook the reef like the blow of a giant’s fist, passing across the lagoon to wake the echoes of the groves.

Aimed at nothing, fired for the fun of the thing, the shot had yet found its mark, bursting the canoe of Katafa into fifty pieces.