Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/262

 When they had bound him and kept him and flung him in the canoe to take him to the southern beach of Karolin, he had not bothered about the fact that he was naked—it had not troubled him at all till now. Now that sleep had restored him to himself, the fact of his nakedness came to him as a sudden trouble making him forget for the moment everything else, even food.

The trouble was entirely psychical. The climate of the beach was so warm that he did not require clothing as a protection, and there was shade enough to shelter him from the sun if he were too warm. All the same, his nakedness lay on him like a curse. He felt helpless, part of his environment that had clung to him for forty years was gone from him and without it he was all astray; naked as a worm he felt useless as a worm, ready to flinch at anything, without initiative, without power.

Dick had never known the need of clothes, he had never worn them. It was different with Rantan.

The absence of shoes he felt less, though without them he was condemned to keep off the rough coral and keep to the beach sands.

He came along the sands towards the canoe. Had you been watching him and had he been clothed in purple and fine linen you still would have said to yourself “There is something wrong about that man, why does he walk like that?”

When he reached the canoe he looked in at the remains of the fruit all squashed and gone bad from the