Coral Sands/Chapter 5

HE sail was brailed up and Topi was paddling while Fernand stood, one foot on the bridge, one hand on the mast, his eyes fixed on the California.

Then, as he came close, his eyes rested on the girl.

June drew slightly back. The fact that he was not a native and the sudden statuesque picture of him there in the last rays of the sun came together to her as a surprise. But June was not the person to be long surprised or to refrain from questions, even had the great god Pan risen from the sea to greet the California.

She watched the canoe come closer and then she went right down the steps and stood on the grating of the landing stage.

The canoe came boldly alongside, Fernand raising his hand to the girl in salutation. Then, with a touch of the paddle on the gratings of the stage, he kept it in position.

“That is an outrigger,” said June.

She had seen an outrigger in a drawing, but never in reality till she saw the pearling fleet, for the California in coming down had touched at no islands, her course being from San Francisco to Lima and from Lima west by south to Araffura.

“Yes,” said Fernand, answering in English. “She is outrigger. She belongs to me and my partner here; we are pearlers.” He touched with his naked foot the heap of shell—and June, standing on the landing grating, her eyes on the heaving canoe, Fernand, the heap of shell and the dripping paddle, the whole picture was caught away for the fraction of a moment into a world absolutely beyond the world of civilization—at least of ours. She might have been on the sea steps of the Piræus in the days of the triremes two thousand years away from the world that holds New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

But this eminently practical person ungiven to dream states was not long in returning to reality.

“Yours is not the same as those little canoes from the beach,” said she. “Yours is bigger and has a mast; is that because she is a pearler?”

“Yes,” said Fernand.

“And the one that has just passed and waved to me, that also is a pearler?”

“Yes,” said Fernand. “She belongs to Lipi, the one who waved his paddle to you.”

“I like yours the best,” said June. “It is better found, better altogether.”

She did not speak in the spirit of compliment; her eyes had taken in the differences between the two craft, between the slack and slovenly and the clean and taut and trim.

Fernand smiled. He understood. Topi, crouching near the mast, smiled too; he did not understand, but he sensed the friendliness of the strange woman who was talking to his pearling mate.

The three of them were at ease at once, and to June, after the first moment, there was no young Greek god, no crouching savage by the shell in the canoe, but two sea workers capable and surely full of lore of which she knew nothing, and there was the canoe, a dream and a wonder to look upon.

The canoe appealed to her more than its occupants. She had fallen in love with it at first sight. She determined to know it better, to sail it and feel its response under the steering paddle.

“To-morrow,” said she, “I would like to see how your canoe sails and I would like to see the pearling beds in her. Will you take me?”

“Oh, yes,” said Fernand. “I will have her cleaned to-night, and to-morrow—at what time?”

“In the morning, any time,” said she, and as she spoke a violet fan of shadow swept across the lagoon. The sun had set.

“When you are ready will be our time,” said Fernand, and as he spoke the rising dusk took the reef and the sea.

“Good night.”

“Good night,” replied Fernand. The canoe was away. She heard the splash of paddles and saw the receding craft vanishing as the sail rose to the wind that had freshened with the coming of night.

Fernand steered for the shore and beached the canoe, helped by Topi.

It was just before the rising of the moon, and the sky, one living mass of stars, showed the palm trees at the break and, farther in, the masts of the yacht whose anchor light had been raised.

Through the warm, sea-perfumed night the outer beach spoke, miles and miles of it answering to the eternal thunder of the breakers, and on the reef against the sea line lights showed—the torches of the fish spearers searching the pools.

Topi went off, but Fernand hung by the canoe. The moon would be up in a minute and give him all the light he wanted for the cleaning of his craft.

In the ordinary way he would have made Topi stop to help, but somehow, in this particular matter, he preferred to work single-handed.

He lit a cigarette.

I have said that in all his life Fernand had never looked at a girl. Well, he had looked at one that evening and, as he stood now smoking and waiting for the moon to rise, he was looking at her again.