CHAPTER XIX

THE EXPEDITION

Next morning the light of day filtering through the trees awakened

Emmeline in the tent which they had improvised whilst the house was

building. Dawn came later here than on the other side of the island

which faced east—later, and in a different manner—for there is the

difference of worlds between dawn coming over a wooded hill, and dawn

coming over the sea.

Over at the other side, sitting on the sand with the break of the reef

which faced the east before you, scarcely would the east change colour

before the sea-line would be on fire, the sky lit up into an

illimitable void of blue, and the sunlight flooding into the lagoon,

the ripples of light seeming to chase the ripples of water.

On this side it was different. The sky would be dark and full of stars,

and the woods, great spaces of velvety shadow. Then through the leaves

of the artu would come a sigh, and the leaves of the breadfruit would

patter, and the sound of the reef become faint. The land breeze had

awakened, and in a while, as if it had blown them away, looking up, you

would find the stars gone, and the sky a veil of palest blue. In this

indirect approach of dawn there was something ineffably mysterious. One

could see, but the things seen were indecisive and vague, just as they

are in the gloaming of an English summer’s day.

Scarcely had Emmeline arisen when Dick woke also, and they went out on

to the sward, and then down to the water’s edge. Dick went in for a

swim, and the girl, holding the baby, stood on the bank watching him.

Always after a great storm the weather of the island would become more

bracing and exhilarating, and this morning the air seemed filled with

the spirit of spring. Emmeline felt it, and as she watched the swimmer

disporting in the water, she laughed, and held the child up to watch

him. She was fey. The breeze, filled with all sorts of sweet perfumes

from the woods, blew her black hair about her shoulders, and the full

light of morning coming over the palm fronds of the woods beyond the

sward touched her and the child. Nature seemed caressing them.

Dick came ashore, and then ran about to dry himself in the wind. Then

he went to the dinghy and examined her; for he had determined to leave

the house-building for half a day, and row round to the old place to

see how the banana trees had fared during the storm. His anxiety about

them was not to be wondered at. The island was his larder, and the

bananas were a most valuable article of food. He had all the feelings

of a careful housekeeper about them, and he could not rest till he had

seen for himself the extent of damage, if damage there was any.

He examined the boat, and then they all went back to breakfast. Living

their lives, they had to use forethought. They would put away, for

instance, all the shells of the cocoa-nuts they used for fuel; and you

never could imagine the blazing splendour there lives in the shell of a

cocoa-nut till you see it burning. Yesterday, Dick, with his usual

prudence, had placed a heap of sticks, all wet with the rain of the

storm, to dry in the sun: as a consequence, they had plenty of fuel to

make a fire with this morning.

When they had finished breakfast he got the knife to cut the bananas

with—if there were any left to cut—and, taking the javelin, he went

down to the boat, followed by Emmeline and the child.

Dick had stepped into the boat, and was on the point of unmooring her,

and pushing her off, when Emmeline stopped him.

“Dick!”

“Yes?”

“I will go with you.”

“You!” said he in astonishment.

“Yes, I’m—not afraid any more.”

It was a fact; since the coming of the child she had lost that dread of

the other side of the island—or almost lost it.

Death is a great darkness, birth is a great light—they had intermixed

in her mind; the darkness was still there, but it was no longer

terrible to her, for it was infused with the light. The result was a

twilight sad, but beautiful, and unpeopled with forms of fear.

Years ago she had seen a mysterious door close and shut a human being

out for ever from the world. The sight had filled her with dread

unimaginable, for she had no words for the thing, no religion or

philosophy to explain it away or gloss it over. Just recently she had

seen an equally mysterious door open and admit a human being; and deep

down in her mind, in the place where the dreams were, the one great

fact had explained and justified the other. Life had vanished into the

void, but life had come from there. There was life in the void, and it

was no longer terrible.

Perhaps all religions were born on a day when some woman, seated upon a

rock by the prehistoric sea, looked at her newborn child and recalled

to mind her man who had been slain, thus closing the charm and

imprisoning the idea of a future state.

Emmeline, with the child in her arms, stepped into the little boat and

took her seat in the stern, whilst Dick pushed off. Scarcely had he put

out the sculls than a new passenger arrived. It was Koko. He would

often accompany them to the reef, though, strangely enough, he would

never go there alone of his own accord. He made a circle or two over

them, and then lit on the gunwale in the bow, and perched there, humped

up, and with his long dove-coloured tail feathers presented to the

water.

The oarsman kept close in-shore, and as they rounded the little cape

all gay with wild cocoa-nut the bushes brushed the boat, and the child,

excited by their colour, held out his hands to them. Emmeline

stretched out her hand and broke off a branch; but it was not a branch

of the wild cocoa-nut she had plucked, it was a branch of the

never-wake-up berries. The berries that will cause a man to sleep,

should he eat of them—to sleep and dream, and never wake up again.

“Throw them away!” cried Dick, who remembered.

“I will in a minute,” she replied.

She was holding them up before the child, who was laughing and trying

to grasp them. Then she forgot them, and dropped them in the bottom of

the boat, for something had struck the keel with a thud, and the water

was boiling all round.

There was a savage fight going on below. In the breeding season great

battles would take place sometimes in the lagoon, for fish have their

jealousies just like men—love affairs, friendships. The two great

forms could be dimly perceived, one in pursuit of the other, and they

terrified Emmeline, who implored Dick to row on.

They slipped by the pleasant shores that Emmeline had never seen

before, having been sound asleep when they came past them those years

ago.

Just before putting off she had looked back at the beginnings of the

little house under the artu tree, and as she looked at the strange

glades and groves, the picture of it rose before her, and seemed to

call her back.

It was a tiny possession, but it was home; and so little used to change

was she that already a sort of home-sickness was upon her; but it

passed away almost as soon as it came, and she fell to wondering at the

things around her, and pointing them out to the child.

When they came to the place where Dick had hooked the albicore, he hung

on his oars and told her about it. It was the first time she had heard

of it; a fact which shows into what a state of savagery he had been

lapsing. He had mentioned about the canoes, for he had to account for

the javelin; but as for telling her of the incidents of the chase, he

no more thought of doing so than a red Indian would think of detailing

to his squaw the incidents of a bear hunt. Contempt for women is the

first law of savagery, and perhaps the last law of some old and

profound philosophy.

She listened, and when it came to the incident of the shark, she

shuddered.

“I wish I had a hook big enough to catch him with,” said he, staring

into the water as if in search of his enemy.

“Don’t think of him, Dick,” said Emmeline, holding the child more

tightly to her heart. “Row on.”

He resumed the sculls, but you could have seen from his face that he

was recounting to himself the incident.

When they had rounded the last promontory, and the strand and the break

in the reef opened before them, Emmeline caught her breath. The place

had changed in some subtle manner; everything was there as before, yet

everything seemed different—the lagoon seemed narrower, the reef

nearer, the cocoa-palms not nearly so tall. She was contrasting the

real things with the recollection of them when seen by a child. The

black speck had vanished from the reef; the storm had swept it utterly

away.

Dick beached the boat on the shelving sand, and left Emmeline seated in

the stern of it, whilst he went in search of the bananas; she would

have accompanied him, but the child had fallen asleep.

Hannah asleep was even a pleasanter picture than when awake. He looked

like a little brown Cupid without wings, bow or arrow. He had all the

grace of a curled-up feather. Sleep was always in pursuit of him, and

would catch him up at the most unexpected moments—when he was at play,

or indeed at any time. Emmeline would sometimes find him with a

coloured shell or bit of coral that he had been playing with in his

hand fast asleep, a happy expression on his face, as if his mind were

pursuing its earthly avocations on some fortunate beach in dreamland.

Dick had plucked a huge breadfruit leaf and given it to her as a

shelter from the sun, and she sat holding it over her, and gazing

straight before her, over the white, sunlit sands.

The flight of the mind in reverie is not in a direct line. To her,

dreaming as she sat, came all sorts of coloured pictures, recalled by

the scene before her: the green water under the stern of a ship, and

the word _Shenandoah_ vaguely reflected on it; their landing, and the

little tea-set spread out on the white sand—she could still see the

pansies painted on the plates, and she counted in memory the lead

spoons; the great stars that burned over the reef at nights; the

Cluricaunes and fairies; the cask by the well where the convolvulus

blossomed, and the wind-blown trees seen from the summit of the

hill—all these pictures drifted before her, dissolving and replacing

each other as they went.

There was sadness in the contemplation of them, but pleasure too. She

felt at peace with the world. All trouble seemed far behind her. It was

as if the great storm that had left them unharmed had been an

ambassador from the powers above to assure her of their forbearance,

protection, and love.

All at once she noticed that between the boat’s bow and the sand there

lay a broad, blue, sparkling line. The dinghy was afloat.