The Pearl Fishers. H. De Vere Stacpoole

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СКАЧАТЬ blue of the sea. This fringe of light cloud often hangs on the skirts of the Trades. Steering, Floyd could hear the tune of the water as it flapped on the boarding and rippled in the wake. The breeze was not strong enough to raise any sea, and the swell was scarcely perceptible unless to the eye.

CHAPTER II

       THE ISLAND

       Table of Contents

      About an hour before noon Floyd, relinquishing the tiller, stood up and, supporting himself by the mast, looked around. Then, sheltering his eyes with his hand, he fixed his gaze straight ahead.

      The sea line at one point was broken, and the sky just above the broken point had a curious and brilliant paleness.

      Once before he had seen a bit of sky like that, and he guessed it at once to be the reflection cast upward from a lagoon island.

      The sight of it dried his lips and made the sweat stand out on the palms of his hands; then, taking his place again at the tiller, he resumed his course.

      The boat was making about three knots, and he reckoned that the island could not be more than ten miles away. Were bad weather suddenly to spring on him Pacific fashion, he might either be driven out of reach of the shelter before him or sunk. But the wind held fair and steady with no sign of squalls, and now, when he looked again, he could see the palm-tree tops raised high above the water, and—what was that—a ship?

      The masts of a ship, all aslant, showed thready near the palms. She was wrecked—of that there could be no manner of doubt.

      The shimmer of the sea cut off everything but the palm tops, the palm stems, and the masts; they seemed based on air.

      In an hour, standing up again, Floyd made out the whole position distinctly.

      The island that lay before him was simply a huge ring of coral clipping a lagoon a mile or more in diameter, as he afterward discovered. It was not an even ring; here and there it swelled out into great spaces covered with palms and artus and hotoo trees. Near the break in the reef for which he was now steering, piled up on the coral literally high and dry, lay the carcass of what had recently been a schooner of some two hundred tons.

      She must have been sent right up by some great lift of the sea.

      As he drew near he could see that the planking had been literally stripped off her from a huge space reaching from the stern post almost to midship; there was no rudder; the sails, he thought, had either blown away or flogged themselves to pieces, taking with them gaffs and booms. Then he remembered that the masts, still standing by some miracle, would certainly have snapped like carrots had sail enough been on her to carry away the spars like that. He could not tell. The thing hypnotized him as he watched it, his hand on the tiller and the opening of the reef before him.

      Though the sea was as calm as the Pacific can ever be, a steady surf was breaking on the reef. The boom of it came to him now against the wind, and the boat heaved to the short sea made by the resistance of the great coral breakwater.

      It was like the bourdon note of an organ, and though it swelled and sank it never ceased, for it was the tune that ringed forever the whole four-mile circuit of the atoll.

      Then as he passed the coral piers and opened the lagoon, the sound of the surf grew less loud and the boat went on an even keel.

      Before him lay the great blue pond, calm as a summer lake; the shore surrounding it showed long beaches of salt-white coral sand and great spaces of foliage; palms and breadfruit, mammee apple bushes and cane, colonies of trees all moving, gently pressed upon by the warm trade wind, whose breath made violet meadows on the broad lagoon.

      It was the most extraordinary place in the world.

      It had a touch of the ornamental, as though some city more vast and wealthy and populous than any city we know of had decreed this great space of water as a pleasure lake, ordered the white of sand and green of foliage, emerald of shallow water and blue of deep, and then vanished, leaving its pleasure place to the wastes of ocean.

      The water at the opening of the lagoon was very deep, but inside it shoaled rapidly, and Floyd, glancing over the thwart, saw the white sand patches and coral lumps of the lagoon floor almost as clearly as though he were gliding over them through air.

      He swept the circular beach with a glance, flung up his hand to shade his eyes, and then with a shout put the helm over and hauled the sheet to port.

      Away on the beach to the right something flapped; it was the sailcloth of a rudely made tent, and by the tent, waving its arm, stood the figure of a man; by the man, squatting on the beach sand, was another figure, small and difficult to distinguish.

      Floyd instantly connected these figures with the wreck; they were evidently the remains of the shipwrecked crew.

      As he drew closer the man on the beach showed up more clearly—a bronzed and bearded man in dubiously white clothes, and the figure seated on the sand revealed itself as a girl; she was almost as dark as the man, and she was seated with her hands clasping her knees.

      He unstepped the mast and took to the sculls; a minute later the stem of the boat was grinding the sand of the beach, and Floyd was over the side helping to pull her up.

      Before they exchanged a word they pulled her up sufficiently to keep her from drifting off with the outgoing tide. It was easy to see they were sailors.

      "She's all right," said the bearded man; "and where in the name of everything have you come from?"

      Floyd flung both hands on the shoulders of the other. It was not till this moment that he had borne in on him the frightful loneliness and the fate from which he had escaped.

      "I'd never hoped to see a living man again," said he. "Never, never, never! You're real, aren't you? Don't mind me. I'm half cracked; your fist—there—I'm better now."

      "Wrecked?" said the bearded man.

      "Yes; wrecked, burned out. The Cormorant was the name, bound from Frisco to Papeetong; drink and fire did for us——"

      He stopped short. He had been staring at the girl. She had shifted her position only slightly, and she was looking at him with eyes that showed little interest and less emotion—the eyes of a person who is gazing at shapes in a fire or at some object a great distance off.

      She was a Polynesian—a wonderfully pretty girl, almost a child, honey-colored, with a string of scarlet beads showing on her neck about the scanty garment that covered her, and with a scarlet flower in her jet-black hair.

      It was a flower of the hibiscus that grew in profusion in all the groves of the atoll.

      "That's Isbel," said the bearded man. "Kanaka, called after the place she came from. Isbel Island in the Marshalls. I'm Schumer, trader and part owner of the Tonga. There she is"—jerking his thumb at the wreck. "Hove up in a gale a month ago; we've been here a month; every man jack drowned but me and Isbel. I've salved a bit of the cargo—foodstuffs and suchlike. What's your name?"

      "Floyd."

      "Well, that's as good as any other name in these parts, anyhow."

      He sat down on the sand near the girl, and СКАЧАТЬ