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Tessa, a novel by Louis Becke |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ CHAPTER XI The two canoes were manned by some of the crew of the _Motutapu_ together with six natives of Pikirami; one was steered by Harvey, the other by Huka the Savage Islander; and as they paddled along within a few feet of each other the crews laughed and jested in the manner inherent to all the Malayo-Polynesians when intent on pleasure. That morning Harvey, tiring of the inaction of the past three days, had eagerly assented to a proposal made by Huka that they should make a trip round the lagoon, and spend a day or two away from the village, fishing and shooting. Several young Pikirami natives at once launched two of their best canoes, and placed them at Harvey's and Atkins's service, and offered to go with the party and do all the paddling, cooking, etc. "Ay," said Nena the head-man, a little wizen-faced but kindly-eyed old fellow, whose body was so deeply tatooed in broad vertical bands that scarcely a strip of brown skin could be seen--"ay, ye must take my young men; for are ye not our guests, ye, and the brown sailor men as well? and they shall tend on ye all. That is our custom to strangers who have come to us as friends." Preparations were at once made for a start, and Harvey went to tell Tessa, whom he found in the house allotted to her, listening to Atkins, who was planning some improvements in the interior so as to add to her comfort. "I wish I could go with you, Harvey," said Tessa with a bright smile; "it would be like the old days in Ponape, with you and my brothers. How long will you be away?" "Perhaps two days. Will you come, Atkins?" "Not me! The less salt water I see and the less rain-water I feel for another week the better I'll like it. Besides, I'm going to do a bit of carpentering work for Miss Remington. We may have to hang out here for a month before that Dutch schooner comes along, and I'm just going to set to work and make Miss Remington comfy. And if you had any sense, Harvey, you'd stay under shelter instead of trying to get another dose of shakes by going out and fooling around in a canoe." Harvey laughed. "There's no more fever for me, Atkins. I'm clear of it. That little boat trip of ours has knocked it clean out of my bones, and if you don't believe me, I'm willing to prove it by getting to the top of that coconut-tree outside there in ten seconds' quicker time than you can do it." The boat voyage had certainly done him good, and although he had by no means thoroughly recovered his strength, his cheeks had lost their yellow, haggard look, and his eyes were bright with returning health. Atkins, who knew that Tessa was to become his wife, looked first at him and then at her with sly humour twinkling in his honest grey eyes. Then he took his pipe out of his pocket and put it in his mouth. "Well, I'll come back by and by. Two is company, and three is none. The sooner _I_ go, the better you'll like it, and the sooner _you_ go, Harvey, the sooner I can get to work;" and so saying he walked out. Tessa's dark eyes danced with fun as she walked backwards from Harvey, and leaning against the thatched side of the house, put her finger to her lips. "What a _beautiful_ sensible man he is, isn't he, Harvey?" "He's a man after my own heart, Tessa," and then Maoni, who sat smoking a cigarette in a corner of the room, discreetly turned her back as certain sibilant sounds were frequently repeated for a minute or two. "Harvey, you sinner," she whispered, "I don't like you a bit. Really and truly I don't.... Now,_ now_, no more.... Maoni can hear you, I'm sure. The _idea_ of your going away for two days--two whole days--and marching calmly up to me and telling me of it in such a rude, matter-of-fact manner. You _are_ unkind.... _Don't_.... I don't like you, Harvey... I'll tell father that you went away and left me for two whole days--to go fishing and pig-shooting, and poor Mr. Atkins had to look after me, and... oh, Harvey, Harvey, isn't it lovely! Father will be so glad, and so will Carmela and Jack, and Librada and Ned. Harvey dear, I do hope your sisters will like me. Perhaps they will think I am only a native girl.... Oh, _do_ be careful, I can see Maoni's back shaking. She _knows_ you're kissing me, I'm sure." "Don't care if she does; don't care if she sees me kissing you, like this, and this, _and_ this; don't care if Atkins sees us." Her low, happy laugh sounded like the trill of a bird. "Harvey dear, do you remember the day when we went to Roan Kiti in Ponape--when you were sailing the _Belle Brandon_ for father?" Harvey didn't remember, but, like a sensible lover, said he did, and emphasised his remembrance in a proper manner. "Well, now, listen... Oh, you horrid fellow, why do you look at me as if I were a baby! Now, I shan't tell you anything at all.... There, don't pretend to be sorry, for you know... oh, Harvey dear, I _must_ tell you." "Tell me, dearest." "That's a good boy, a good would-be-climbing-a-coconut-tree youth, who wanted to show off before poor Atkins who told me just now that you were 'the whitest man in the South Seas.' He did really." "Atkins is 'an excellent good man,' and you are the sweetest and most beautiful girl in _all_ the wide, wide Pacific. Come, tell me what it is that you _must_ tell me." "I'll tell you if you don't kiss me any more. Maoni's eyes can see round her shoulders, I believe. I _do wish_ she wasn't here.... Well, that day when you and I were climbing up the mountain-path you let a branch swing back--you careless thing--and it hit me in the face and hurt me terribly, and you took me up in your arms and kissed me. Oh, Harvey, don't you remember? Kissed me, just because I was crying like a baby. Harvey dear, I was only fourteen then, but I loved you then--that was the real, _very_ beginning of it all, I think. And then I went away to school to San Francisco, and _you_ went away--and I suppose you never thought one little bit about me again." "Indeed I did, Tess" (here was a silent but well-employed interlude); "I often thought of you, dear, but not as a lover thinks. For in those days you were to me only a sweet child (if Maoni wasn't here I'd pick you up and nurse you), a sweet, sweet little comrade whose dear, soft eyes used to smile into mine whenever I stepped into your father's house, and----" "Oh, Harvey, Harvey! I have never, never forgotten you. _There!_ and _there!_ and _there!_ I don't care if Maoni, or any one, or all the world sees me," and she flung her soft arms round his neck and kissed him again and again in the sheer abandonment of her innocent happiness. "But you really _love_ me now, Harvey, don't you? And oh, Harvey dear, where shall we live? And your sisters... if they don't like me?" Harvey stroked her soft hair, and pressed his lips to her cheeks. "They won't _like_ you, Tess. They'll just love you--and they'll make me jealous." Again her happy laugh trilled out. "How lovely!... Harvey dear?" "Yes, Tess." "I want to tell you something--something that only mother knows, something about me--and a man." Harvey looked smilingly into her deep, tender eyes, half-suffused with tears. "Go ahead, dear." "Go ahead, indeed! You rough, rude sailor! Any one would think I was a man by the way you speak to me... But, Harvey dear, listen... there was a man who wanted to marry me." Harvey was all attention at once. "Sit down here, little woman, and tell me who the------" "Sh! Don't swear, or I won't tell you anything, not _anything at all_, about it.... Harvey dear, why do you want to go away fishing? Stay here, and help poor Mr. Atkins." "Who was the man, Tess?" "Are you really, really going away for two whole days?" "I am, sweet." "Harvey dear, I'll tell you all about it. You won't be angry?" "All depends. Who was the man?" His laughing eyes belied his assumed sternness of visage, for in her eyes there shone a light so serenely pure that he knew he had naught to dread. "A very, _very_ nice man, sir. Now try and guess who it was?" "Old Schuler, the fat German trader at Yap." "Oh, you wretch, Harvey! He's been married three times, and has dozens and dozens of all sorts of coloured children.... Now there! Guess again or I'll twist this side of your moustache until I make you cry.... Harvey dear, who was the girl whose photograph was over your bunk in father's schooner?" "I forget. Most likely it was my sister Kate," was the prompt reply. "I don't believe you, Mr. Harvey Carr. But I'll find out all about _you_ by and by. You'll have to just tell me _everything_. Now guess again." "The captain of the _Lafayette_. He asked each of your sisters to marry him, I know, and I suppose you followed in turn as soon as you began to wear long dresses." "That horrible man! We all hated him. No, indeed, it was somebody better than the captain of a whaler." "Don't be so superior, Tess. Your brother Ned hopes to be skipper of a whaler some day." "But Ned is very good-looking, and----" "So was old Ayton before he lost his teeth, and one eye, and began 'ter chaw terbacker' and drink Bourbon by the gallon.... Beauty is only skin deep, my child." "Oh, you, you--I don't know what to call you, but I do know that I have a round turn of your moustache in my hand, and could make you go on your knees if I liked. Now guess again; you're getting 'warmer,' because it--_he_ I mean--is a captain. Quick, and don't struggle so. I mean to keep you here just as long as I please." "Well, then, old Freeman. He's a captain, or was one about a hundred years ago, when he was much younger than he is now." (Freeman was a nonogenerian settler on Ponape and a neighbour of Tessa's father.) "Don't be so silly! I've a great mind not to tell you at all, but as you haven't whimpered when I pulled your moustache I _shall_ tell you--it--he, I mean--was Captain Reade, of the United States ship _Narrangansett_. Now!" Then all her raillery vanished in a moment. "He was a great friend of father's, you know, Harvey; and first he asked father, and father said I was too young, and then when I was leaving school in San Francisco to come home he wrote to me and asked me if he could come and see me. And he did come, and asked me to marry him." "And you really didn't care for him, Tessa?" "Not a bit. How could I? Harvey, I never, never thought about anybody in the world but you," and she looked into his face with swimming eyes as he pressed his lips to hers. "There, I'll let you go now, dear. I can hear Huka and the others coming for you. But Harvey dear, don't stay away for two whole days." ***** An hour after leaving the village the canoes turned aside into a small narrow bay on one of the larger islands. The water was of great depth, from sixty to seventy fathoms, though the bay itself was in no part wider than a hundred yards. A solid wall of coral enclosed it on three sides, rising sheer up from the deep blue, and its surface was now bared and drying fast under the rays of the sun, for the rain had cleared off, and the sky was a vault of unflecked blue once more. The natives had told Harvey and Roka that this bay was a spot famed as the haunt of a huge species of rock-cod called _pura_, some of which, they said, "took two strong men to lift," and they were greatly pleased when they found that both the white man and Roka knew the _pura_ well, and had eagerly assented to Harvey's proposition that they should spend an hour or two in the place, and try and get one or two of the gigantic fish; as they had the necessary tackle--thick, six-plaited lines of coir fibre, with heavy wooden hooks such as are used for shark-fishing by the natives of the equatorial and north-west islands of the Pacific. ***** Had Harvey and his companions been ten minutes later in turning aside to enter the bay they would have been seen by Chard and Hendry ere they descended the coral mound at the north end of the lagoon, and much of this tale would not have been told. For had the destroyers of poor Oliver and his crew discovered the canoes they probably would at once have launched their boat again, and have put to sea, or at least prepared themselves for an attack. But great events so often come of small things. For nearly an hour Harvey, Roka, and Huka fished for _pura_ from the coral ledges, but without success. They had baited their hooks with flying-fish, as was the practice of the Pikirami people. "Master," said Roka presently to Harvey, "never have I had good luck with flying-fish when fishing for _pura_ in mine own land of Manhiki. 'Tis a _feke_{*} that the pura loveth." * Octopus. "Ay, Roka, _feke_ is a good bait for the _pura_ and all those great fish which live deep down in their _fale amu_" (houses of coral). "Let us seek for one on the outer reef. Then we shall return here. It is in my heart to show these our good friends of Pikirami that there is one white man who can catch a _pura_." Roka showed his white teeth in an approving smile. "Thou art a clever white man, and can do all those things that we brown men can do. Malua hath told me that there is no one like thee in all the world for skill in fishing and many things. Let us go seek _feke_." The rest of their party--the men from the _Motutapu_ and the Pikirami people--were busily employed in preparations for cooking, some making ready an oven of red-hot stones, others putting up fish and chickens in leaf wrappers, and Malua and two Pikirami youths of his own age were husking numbers of young drinking-nuts. Telling his native friends that he would return in an hour or two, or as soon as he had caught some _feke_. Harvey set off, accompanied by Roka and Huka, the latter carrying a heavy turtle-spear, about five feet in length from the tip of its wide arrow-headed point to the end of the pole of ironwood. Turning to the eastward, they struck into the cool shade of the narrow strip of forest which clothed the island from the inner lagoon beach to the outer or weather side, and Harvey at once began to search among the small pools on the reef for an octopus, Huka with Roka going on ahead with his turtle-spear. In the course of a quarter of an hour they were out of sight of each other. For some time Harvey, armed with a light wooden fish-spear, carefully examined the shallow pools as he walked along over the reef, and after he had progressed about a mile he at last saw one of the hideous creatures he sought lying on the white sandy bottom of a circular hole in the reef, its green malevolent eyes looking upward at the intruder. In an instant he thrust the spear through its horrible marbled head, and drew it out upon the rocks, where he proceeded to kill it, a task which took him longer than he anticipated; then carrying it back to the shore, he threw the still quivering monster upon a prominent rock and set out again in search of another, intending to follow his native comrades, who were in hopes of striking a turtle. As he tramped over the reef, crushing the living, many-coloured coral under his booted feet, his eyes were arrested by some objects lying on the bottom of a deep pool. He bent down and looked carefully--five magnificent orange cowries were clinging closely together upon a large white and sea-worn slab of dead coral. An exclamation ot pleasure escaped from him as he saw the great size and rich colouring of these rare and beautiful shells. "What a lovely present for Tessa!" he thought; and taking off his shirt he dived into the clear water and brought them up one by one. Then with almost boyish delight he placed them beside him on the reef, and looked at them admiringly. "Oh you beauties!" he said, passing his hand over their glossy backs; "how delighted Tessa will be! No one else has ever had the luck to find five such shells together. I'm a _tagata manuia lava_,{*} as Malua says." * A man with extraordinary good luck. He picked the shells up carefully, put them into his wide-brimmed leaf hat, which he then tied up in his shirt, and taking his spear again made towards the shore, too pleased at his good fortune to trouble any further about another _feke_ and only anxious to let Roka and Huka see his prizes. Half-way to the shore he paused and looked along the curving line of beach to see if either of them were in sight; then from behind a vine-covered boulder not fifty yards away a rifle cracked, and he fell forward on his face without a cry. _ |
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