Coral Sands/Chapter 9

HE sail tugged at the sheet and the canoe headed away from the beach. Fernand, steering, talked of the lagoon currents, of the variable winds and the squalls that sprang sometimes from a clear sky. He told of a big spiral current in the lagoon center that twisted this way and that at the dictation of the tides, and he found he was talking to a person who understood—to a practical sailor whose experiences were even broader than his.

She told him about San Francisco Bay, that vast stretch of water of which St. Pablo and Susun Bays are part, of the wonders of the Golden Gate through which the white fogs came rolling in from the Pacific and through which all shapes and forms of ships have come, from the ships of the early Spaniards to the iron grain ships and tankers of to-day.

He knew nothing of these things and San Francisco—well, he had never seen a city. He couldn't imagine a city. He had never seen any houses other than the shacks on the beach. He had seen pictures of houses, but he couldn't visualize streets full of roaring traffic, street cars, crowds.

June, when this fact had been fully borne in on her, was astonished. It could not be otherwise, yet she had not realized it before. Fernand seemed to her a man adrift, cut off, stranger even than Robinson Crusoe, for in Crusoe's days there were no steamships, no telegraphs, no railways, and this talk, as it were across a great abyss, drew them both closer together than a week of ordinary acquaintanceship would have done. Besides that, there was the fact of their youth and their equal love of the sea, powerful bonds made even more powerful by the fact that each was a perfect specimen of humanity.

“Look!” said Fernand.

The sail spilling the wind flapped loose against the mast, and June, turning her head, gazed round her. She knew now what he meant when he had said that about her not having yet seen the lagoon.

To right and left, forward and astern there was nothing but sea. Not a trace of land, not even a palm top. Yet they were still in the lagoon, and around them still stretched the ring of the great reef, yet so far as to be invisible from their low elevation. With a glass they might have made out the topmasts of the California in the sea-shimmer of the far north, but to the naked eye these were invisible.

One thing alone showed firm in that waste of water—a white line to starboard down which gulls were flying swiftly.

“Sand bank,” said Fernand. “The tide is running out. It will be covered again at full tide. All around here the current is running that I told you of; it goes round and round, then when the tide turns it goes round and round the other way about. See?”

He pointed to a log floating near them, half submerged.

“That has been here maybe years; anything caught in the current cannot get away. If we were to lose our oars and our sail, we would be like that log.”

June glanced at the log, at the bits of floating seaweed, evidently prisoners like the log, and at the line of sand bank. Smiling and sinister, the lagoon was showing her another aspect of itself, saying to her: “Well, how would you like to be here with me forever, a prisoner? Mine?”

Suddenly Fernand, half rising, seized a paddle. Something had taken the water to port, something vicious and rushing like a torpedo just released.

“Blind shark!” he cried. “Look out! No—it's gone.” He held for a moment without breathing, paddle in hand, then, turning the canoe, he shook out the sail.

“One of the tiger sharks they blinded last week; it can't steer. No fin. Take the paddle and keep her to the wind. It's playing about right in the current and we had better get away from here.”

June took the paddle. She had scarcely dipped the blade when crash! the canoe was stove as if hit by a bombshell, and she was struggling in the water.

Fernand was holding her up, and she still grasped the paddle; he took it from her, and as they swam, making for the line of the sand bank, he struck the water with it. The blinded brute that had dashed into them and wrecked them had vanished, but there might be others in his wake. As for the canoe, it was a hopeless wreck, half submerged, and to cling to it would be useless.

June felt something hit her knee; it was a ridge of the sand. Another stroke brought them into two-foot water, and Fernand, rising, helped her to her feet.