Coral Sands/Chapter 10

E cast the paddle down and they stood exhausted, without a word for a moment, their eyes fixed on the wreck of the canoe. They could see the brown sail flat on the water. The mast had been unstepped by the shock and the canoe body smashed just abaft the mast; the body was submerged, but the outrigger showed tilted up, and on the bridge they could still see the drinking nuts secured in their net bag. Even as they looked, they could see the work of the current.

The wreckage was being carried east and it was going quicker than a man could walk.

Fernand broke the silence.

“It was my fault for bringing you out so far,” said he. “Oh, yes, it was my fault—and now, see? Nom de nom!—what have I brought you to?”

“It was no one's fault,” said June, “or only the fault of the men who blinded that shark. There is no use at all in thinking about what has been. The question is, what are we to do now?”

Fernand sighed deeply. It is the situation without precedent that tries the nerve of a man, be he ever so strong.

Fernand had met storm and disaster in his life, he had lived through the great hurricane of five years before when the northern reef was swept, the houses destroyed and half the coconut trees flattened; but that was nothing to him beside this absolutely unimagined happening.

They were without food, without water and at full flood, hours hence, they would be submerged. The water would only be a foot or two high on the back of the bank, but if there was any wind the waves would sweep them.

When they were missed there would be a search, but they might not be missed for hours and the search might go the wrong way. And it was his act that had brought her to this. He ought never to have done it. Leaving other things aside, there was always the chance of squalls. But he had not thought of that; starting from the pearling grounds she had not been to him what now she had suddenly become at the touch of danger, something more precious to him than life itself.

From where they stood the sand bank, white as salt, ran east and west for twenty or thirty yards; it was twenty yards broad, and the wind, gently blowing, passed over it with a sigh like the rustling of silk. Beyond on every side lay an infinite expanse of water, and on the water, growing momentarily less, the wreck of the canoe.

The gulls had flown away, frightened by the presence of the humans on that unfrequented spot, though on the reef they showed far less regard for man—a curious fact illustrating the power of the perplexing to stimulate fear.

The girl was the first to speak. She had kicked off her shoes.

“They'll dry quick,” said she, “in this sun. Fortunate I kept my hat. Oh, I'm all right. I'm almost dry already, and salt water doesn't hurt; but I can't stand soggy shoes. But you have lost your hat.”

“It doesn't matter,” said he. “I'm used to the sun, and, besides, the wind has taken the heat away; it has changed a bit.”

The wind, in fact, had shifted a point and strengthened, blowing now from the south and bringing the cool of the outer sea.

The girl sat down, her feet almost touching the ripples, and, after another glance round, he took his place beside her.

Seen from a distance, they might have been a holiday couple on a white summer beach. It only wanted children digging in the sand to complete the picture. But here there were no children, here there was nothing but the sand and the sea and the wind blowing the sand, and sure death if there were not swift release.

And they knew it, and they could do nothing. They talked a little while of the possibilities.

“Lipi,” said Fernand, “saw us leave the pearling grounds; he saw the direction we took. When we don't come back he will be able to tell them—if he remembers.”

This implied doubt of the mental powers of Lipi did not soothe the girl, but she dared not speak of the subject nor make inquiries. Then came the visions of the California and of Cyrus, absolutely unconscious of her position. What would he do if she never came back, if the wind strengthened that night with the tide and the waves swept them away?

For a moment she almost broke down under this thought. She turned her head away, and Fernand knew. He took her hand as he might have taken the hand of a child and held it in his. Then, as she leaned toward him, he put his arm about her as if to protect her from the brooding Death that stood there, viewless in the brilliant sunlight, yet voiceful in the wind and the silky whisper of the wind-blown sand.

A stray gull in passing hailed them as if in mockery. The girl moved and withdrew her hand, and Fernand rose, standing and looking far and wide across the lagoon. Nothing. Yet stay—what was that? That brown speck away to the west carried as the log had been carried on the sinister current that had taken their broken craft.

He stood, his eyes sheltered by his hand, and the girl, who had risen and was standing beside him, gazed, too.

In the dazzle of the water the thing showed long and narrow and now, as it shifted and bobbed on the little waves that the south wind was creating, it showed—no—yes, there, sure enough, were the curved outrigger bars—a canoe.

Some fishing canoe drifted away from the beach, maybe weeks, maybe months ago, drifted out, caught in the mazy current and held, always moving, always drifting, yet unable to escape.

It was coming toward them, but it would not ground on the sand bank; it would pass a cable-length away. But that was nothing; Fernand could swim.

Plainly visible now, it was a small canoe, different from the one just wrecked in the connection with the outrigger.

There was no bridge. Just two curved sticks, and there was no trace of mast; but she was big enough to hold two—that was the main thing.

“She comes!” said Fernand at last. “I have to strike out against the current and meet her, taking the paddle with me. It's well we brought it ashore; it is likely there is not a paddle in her.”

He gazed for a moment, judging the distance and speed of the oncoming canoe. Then, paddle in hand, he waded in and struck out.

June watched him, scarcely breathing, her lips dry. The thought of being left here alone, should anything happen to him, gripped her literally by the throat. Should the current be too strong for him, should a shark

His head vanished for a moment—no!—it had reappeared and now the canoe was bearing down on him, it was over him, it had run him down, he was lost. No, the canoe was rotating; driving stern first it was twisting round to an opposite position with regard to the run of swell and a hand was clinging to the gunwale.

He had dived to get to the opposite side from the outrigger, that was all.

Now she saw him working his way aft a bit and then getting on board, a delicate job but nothing to such a practiced canoe man.

He waved the paddle to her and she cried out in answer, hailing him across the wind-swept water. A month of companionship could not have joined them together more firmly than those few hours of tense life, with Death fishing for them and Thirst standing before them with his grim smile and empty jug.

She could have flung her arms around Fernand as he brought the canoe's nose onto the sands and, helping her on board, pushed off again, but her arms were required for other work.

There was a spare paddle and an unstepped mast in the derelict, but no sail. She was, in fact, as Fernand had imagined, the property of some fisherman, drifted off from either the northern beach or the village that lay on the southern. However that may have been, the spare paddle was a godsend; it gave them two arms instead of only one; also, the wind was with them. The steadily blowing south wind had increased into a strong sailing breeze, and between breeze and paddles they were making a full four knots.

June, on the sand bank, had begun to feel the first threatening pangs of thirst. She felt thirsty no longer and said so.

“It is the mind,” said Fernand. “Men's minds get thirsty before their bodies. Look! It will not be long now.” He pointed to where the palm tops were showing, and a bit to starboard to where the masts of the California were clearly visible.

It was only a matter of an hour or so now and she would be on board again, and this thought, acting upon the practical mind of June, brought the material side of the adventure uppermost before her.

Fernand had lost his canoe.

Also he had a partner and the partner would have had a share in the craft.

Neither of them could afford to lose over this business, yet she did not like to offer him money. After all that had happened, how could she bring up the subject of dollars? She felt his arm about her still, that strong, protecting arm; she saw again his form swimming out, fearless of sharks, heedless of all things but her rescue. How could she offer to pay him for that canoe? No, she couldn't.

But Cyrus could. Cyrus could put the matter right—yes, if she told her stepfather, he could in his business way make everything good. And yet, curiously enough, the idea of speaking to Cyrus on the matter at all was repugnant to her. She would have to speak of Fernand as though he were an ordinary common boatman.

He was not that. Not that to her. Her heart had gone out to him. He was the only man who ever had made her feel like that. The only man who had ever tied a string round her heart, a string that distance could not break nor the shears of Atropos sever.

And they had known each other only a few hours, but it was as though all their lives they had been coming one toward the other, each incomplete, each bearing something that the other lacked.

Fernand knew this just as she did, but he said nothing and she said nothing.

As a matter of fact, it was not the hour for speech. The handling of the canoe had become more difficult, owing to a slight cross sea made by the wind piling against a streak of rapidly flowing current. And when they had reached the smoother-going shore water and were almost in hail of the California, there was no time.

The landing stage was still down and Fernand brought them alongside it and held fast while she stepped onto the gratings.

“I want to see you again to-morrow, to thank you,” said she, leaning down slightly toward him and dropping her voice ever so little. “But I never can thank you enough.”

Fernand looked up and into her eyes and told her everything that was in his heart without uttering a word.

“To-morrow, yes, to-morrow,” he said. “But there is nothing to thank me for. To-morrow”

He glanced up again and pushed off and she watched him go, and as she watched him the world was filled with a new light more strange and wonderful than the light of the sun.