Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/175

 He must get out, get out with the canoe, clear off before the kanakas had any chance of coming across. They had no canoes, but they had the ship’s boats and if they came and caught him, it would be death; he could get drinking nuts from the trees, but first he must untie those cursed children from the gratings. He turned towards the canoe and as he turned something caught his eye away across the water.

The merry west wind had blown out a bunt of the schooner’s hastily stowed canvas in a white flicker against the blue. Were they getting sail on the schooner?

He turned and ran towards the trees. He could climb like a monkey, and heedless of everything but drinking nuts and pandanus drupes, he set to work, collecting them. A mat lay doubled up near one of the deserted shacks; he used it as a basket and between the trees and the canoe he ran and ran, sweating, with scarcely a glance across the water—his only idea the thirst and hunger of the sea which he had to face, the terror of torture and death that lay behind him. There was a huge fig tree, the only one on Karolin, and a tree bearing an unknown fruit in form and colour like a lemon. He raided them, tearing branches down and stripping the fruit off. Before his last journey to the canoe he flung himself down by the little well, the same into which Le Moan had been gazing when she first saw Taori, and drank and drank—raising his head only to drink again.

Reaching the canoe for the last time he threw the