Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/273

 and it seemed a lucky thing to do, for not only had he escaped from the Chilean prison by means of the rope, but he had come on a streak of good luck when free. So, gathering grass, he sat down to weave his rope.

The business was a godsend to him.

He limited the work to a few hours a day so as not to cloy himself, and he would look forward to the work, hours as men look forward to a smoke.

Whilst he worked at it, he wove his thoughts into the rope, his desires, dreams and ambitions all were woven into it, the killing of Peterson went in, and the memory of the dead women on Karolin beach, his hatred of the kanakas and of the red-headed one who had come and looked at him, Dick.

As a woman weaves into her knitting her household affairs and so on, the busy fingers of Rantan wove into his rope visions of ripping the pearls out of Karolin lagoon, of hunting the kanakas to death, of drinking bars and loose pleasures to be had with the pearl money—truly, if an inanimate thing could be evil, it was evil, for it held Rantan’s past. The amount of grass being limited, he sometimes knocked off work for a couple of days; and the days became weeks and the weeks went on and on till one morning, when the grass being nearly finished and the rope almost long enough to hang a man with a six-foot drop, Rantan, coming to his lookout, sighted a ship.

Away towards the north she lay so far that he could only tell she was of fore and aft rig and making either for or away from the atoll. Ten minutes showed her