Coral Sands/Chapter 4

HIS boat, the California, whose anchor had just fallen in fourteen fathoms by the north beach of Araffura was the last word in sea-going yachts. Built by Simons of Benicia and engined by Dowsett, she could stand a hurricane and make fun of a dead calm. She had a thousand miles of petrol in her and had only used two hundred since leaving the Golden Gate, for Cyrus Hardanger, who had made ten million dollars five years ago at a stroke, as you may say, in one vast deal, was a sailor at heart and by origin.

He had worked before the mast as a young man, he had got a mate's certificate and then a master's, all of which implied brains, and he had educated himself by book reading. One thing only had pulled him back at times, the tendency to be violent if he took drink. But he had overcome that.

He had been captain of a Seattle boat when the great phosphate deal which made his fortune came along, and he had celebrated his acquisition of wealth by marrying a widow, Mrs. Mallory of Oakland, an amazingly good-looking woman with an amazingly pretty daughter of fourteen years. June was the name of this child “taken over” by Hardanger with his wife and the name suited her.

She was the apple of his eye, and when Mrs. Hardanger died two years after marriage, it was June who saved him from flying to drink or taking a dive into Frisco harbor.

Hardanger, six foot two and with a fighting jaw, looked like a strong man. June, slight, graceful and without a trace of the masculine in her composition, was stronger. This girl with gray eyes and phosphor-bronze hair descended from the Mallorys who, in the old days of the covered wagon, had literally fought their way across the plains and the Rockies. She had in her something of the spirit of the pioneers, something of the daring and dash of the eagle.

When Hardanger, wanting a holiday in a hurry, had bought the California off the slips at Simons' and literally shoved her to sea with the fitters and riggers clinging to her till the last moment, June had been hand and fist with the dockyard mateys. This feminine creature had little use for women; she preferred the stancher companionship of men. Railway men, boatmen, the ferrymen of Frisco harbor, where she owned and ran a little power boat of her own—they all knew Cy Hardanger's daughter. She was a character in her way but without a trace of pose.

On board the California she found herself for the first time under the magic of sticks and sails. She was one of the crew and discovered in herself the properties of a faultless steersman. The steersman is born, not made. To hold the California on her course without a tremble of the canvas was a business without any effort on her part.

It had been her privilege to bring the schooner in through the break, handing over the wheel to Sellers, the bos'n, only when the auxiliary was taking charge.

She came forward to the bow when the fellows were getting ready to lower the anchor and stood looking for the first time in her life at the wonders of an atoll island.

The wind that had brought them through the break had fallen to a gentle breathing that made cat's-paws on the mirror of the lagoon; across the still water in the sunset light lay the pearling fleet, some still anchored, some beating up against the dying wind to inspect the newcomer.

The reef ran away into the golden west and the voice of the outer sea beating on it came loud from the near stretches, low from the far, while great flights of birds that had pursued the pearling fleet all day showed like a strew of rosy-and-golden spangles blown on the evening wind.

Now and again their voices came, challenging, and were answered by the voices of the reef birds. Nothing more. Nothing but the sense of vast sea spaces and a silence scarcely broken by the murmur of the reef.

Now as the anchor fell and the California, swinging to her moorings, turned her nose to the reef against the tide, the girl left the bow and came aft to the landing stage.

Several canoes had put off from the shore and were paddling about, holding off and on, the fellows in them holding up drinking nuts for sale and ornaments made of shell, whip-ray walking sticks, coral lumps and conches, all the dust traps in fact that the low islands vie with the high islands in producing. But they couldn't trade till Porges, the French superintendent of the fisheries, had come on board to give a clean bill of health.

June, standing by her father, looked over the side, watching the canoe men. Then, when the stage was lowered and Porges had come aboard and gone down to the cabin, she continued watching, wondering at this new life which she had never seen before.

In one of the canoes that had put off from the beach she saw a stout white man. It was Yakoff, who had been rowed off to inspect the newcomer.

Yakoff looked at the girl and took in the yacht. He saw at once that there was no business for him to do there, nothing to buy, nothing to sell, as yet. He gave orders to the paddle men of his canoe to take him right round the California and then back to shore. In his tour of inspection he noted everything—the large ports, some with silk curtains drawn against the last rays of the sun; the steam pinnace swung at the davits; the crew still busy on deck and aloft, and a large French cook in white and wearing a white paper cap, who had come up for a moment's breath of air.

Dollars, dollars, dollars, millions of dollars—that is what the yacht said to Yakoff as he rowed round it, and the soul of Yakoff revolted.

All his life he had been after the dollars, all his life he had dreamed of wealth like this, and he had never succeeded. He had made out, that was all.

Here he was, fifty years of age and more, in this rotten place, selling shirts and concertinas to Kanakas, making a bit, it is true, but less than many a small tradesman makes in Frisco or New Orleans—and here was this man rolling in the stuff. Inherited, most likely, won without a turn of the wrist.

Yakoff, as he stepped onto the beach, felt bitter; he could have wrecked the California and drowned the unknown man who owned her. Fortunately, he had not the powers of Prospero, but he had a thirst which took him off a way down the beach to Carlon's shack, where the best beer from Papeete could be had at a dollar a bottle.

Meanwhile the girl, leaning on the rail above the boat stake, looked at the canoes as they came and went.

Some of the pearling fleet had turned toward the California and she saw Taori, the son of Lipi, and his partner, Tapu, the laziest pair of scamps in Araffura, who had been only too glad to break away from the pearling ground on any pretense.

They had spent the day mostly smoking cigarettes, playing knucklebones, diving only when the spirit moved them, but like most idlers they were pleasant people, and Taori, having sighted June, waved his paddle as to an old acquaintance, and smiled. June did ditto, waving her hand, and the canoe passed on.

Taori and Tapu might be idlers, but they were gentlefolk and they would not hang about staring at the girl.

Then came along another canoe.

It was Fernand's.