Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/268

 down by the little pool and drank till he nearly burst.

It was all a repetition of that business and only wanted the dead bodies of the women to make the picture complete. Then he came to the canoe.

Here it was the same again. He could not get her off. The dead children no longer weighed down the outrigger, but he had stowed his cargo badly and that did the business; the outrigger was bedded in the sand. He laboured and sweat rearranging the fruit, then at last she began to move; he pushed and drove, the lagoon water took her to amidships—another effort and she was waterborne and he was on board working with a single paddle and getting her farther out.

He was free.

A weight seemed gone from his soul, he no longer felt his nakedness; the power of movement, the escape from the beach and the new hope that lay in the open sea, were like wine to his spirit. It was a move in a new game and daring whispered to him that he would yet beat Peterson.

Working with the paddle from side to side, he got her farther and farther out, and the break lay before him now and beyond the break beckoned the sea.

He had turned sideways to take a last derisive look at the prison house of the trees and beach when—aye, what was that? Water ran over his knees as he knelt to the paddling, water that moved with a slobber and chuckle beneath the nuts.

The canoe was leaking. The sun must have done