they came in on a dying wind, the outlying reefs creaming to the swell and the great high island opening its cañons and mountain glades as they drew towards it pursued by the chanting gulls.
le moan, who had never seen a high island or only the vision of palm tree uplifted by mirage, stood with her eyes fixed on the multitude of the trees. palms, breadfruit, tree ferns, aoas, sandalwood groves, trees mounting towards the skies, reaching ever upwards, changing in form and misted by the smoke of torrents.
here there was no freedom, the great spaces of the sea had vanished, levua like an ogre had seized her mind and made it a prisoner.
for the first time in her life something came to her heart, terrible as her grief for the loss of taori, yet even more far searching and taking its bitterness from the remote past as well as the present. it was the homesickness of the atoll-bred islander encompassed by the new world of the high island; of the caged gull taken from the freedom of the wind and the sea.
at karolin you could see the sun from his rising to his setting, and the stars from sea line to sea line; the reef rose nowhere to more than twice the height of a man, the sea was a glittering plain of freedom and a sound and a scent.
worse even than the monstrous height of levua, its strange cañons and gloomy woods, was the scent of the foliage, cossi and vanilla and sandalwood, unknown flowers, unknown plants, all mixed with the smell of earth and breathing from the glasshouse atmosphere of the groves.
an extraordinary thing was the way in which the forms and perfumes of levua permeated the kermadec itself, so that, turning her eyes away from the land, the deck of the schooner, the rails, masts and spars, all seemed hostile to her as the land itself. sru alone gave her comfort as she watched him superintending the fellows busy with the anchor—sru, who had promised that she would return.
the anchor fell in twelve-fathom water and as the rumble-tumble of the anchor chain came back in echoes from the moist-throated woods, a boat put out from the beach. it was sanders the white trader, the man who lived here alone year in, year out, taking toll of the sandalwood trees, paying the natives for their labour in trade goods; cut off from the world, without books, without friends, and with no interest beyond the zone of sea encircling the island, except the interest of his steadily accumulating money in the hands of his agents—the bank of california.
the face of the white man showed thin and expressionless as a wedge of ice as he came over the rail like a ghost and slipped down to the cabin with peterson to talk business.
rantan and carlin leaned over the side and watched the kanakas in the boat pulling forward to talk to the schooner crew congregated at the rail by the foc’sle head.
the beach lay only a cable length or two away, empty except for a couple of fishing canoes drawn up beyond tide mark; no house was to be seen, the village lying back among the trees, and no sound came from all that incredible wealth of verdure—nothing, but the far voice of a torrent, raving yet slumbrous and mixed with the hush of the surf on the reefs and beach.
“notice that chap,” said carlin, “didn’t look to right or left of him, same’s if he’d been doped. reckon he’s full of money too if he’s the only trader here—notice his white ducks and his dandy hat and the mug under it? i know the sort. drink turns to vinegar in a chap like that and that’s the sort that makes money in the islands.”
“or the fellows that aren’t afraid to put their hands on the stuff when they see it,” replied rantan. “well, what about that pearl island i was speaking of?”
“and that hooker you were going to take to get there,” cut in carlin. “put me on her deck and i’m with you.”
“you’re on it,” replied rantan.
carlin laughed. he had known rantan’s meaning all along and this strange game of evasion between the two had nothing to do with the kermadec, but with something neither dared to discuss one with the other: peterson, and what was to be done with peterson.
“you’re on it,” continued rantan, “and now what do you say?”
“i’m with you,” replied carlin, “but i don’t see how you’re to do it. i’ll have no hand in doing it.”
“leave that to me,” said the other, “you’ve only to help work the ship when i’ve taken her.”
“you say sanders is the only white man here,” said carlin.
“so peterson tells me,” replied rantan.
“well, one white man is enough to turn on us,” said carlin.
“he won’t turn on us,” replied rantan grimly, and carlin glancing at him sideways wondered for a moment if he hadn’t the devil in tow with rantan. but carlin was of the type that will take profit and not care so long as its own hands are clean. i wonder how many of us would eat meat if we had to do the killing ourselves or make money from poisonous industries if we had ourselves to face the poison. what rantan chose to do was nothing to carlin so long as he himself had not to do it or to plan it, but he was cautious.
“how about that chap sru?” he asked. “he’s boss of the crew and the only thinking one of them—suppose....”
“nothing,” replied the other. “he’s with me.”
fell a silence filled with the voice of the far torrent and the murmur of the sea, a hush-a-bye sound through which vaguely came the murmur of voices through the skylight of the saloon where peterson and the trader were discussing prices and freights, each absorbed by the one sole idea, profit at the expense of the other.
