Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/48

 She knew that the schooner was too far off and too much sheltered by the southern reef for the people on the north beach to see her, that Taori would be busy with the canoe building, yet the dread at her heart drove her to repeat the words automatically like a parrot. “There is no one here but me—my people are gone; a storm took them—I am here alone.” As she spoke, she watched Peterson with side glances. She had never seen a bearded man before, and this man with the black curling hair reaching almost to his eyes seemed a monster.

Whilst she was speaking, the other kanakas taking two large water breakers from the boat began to fill them at the well, the well into which she had been looking on the day on which she had first seen Taori.

Colin Peterson stood looking at them, he had half turned from Le Moan and seemed to have forgotten her existence; then, shading his eyes, he looked across and about the lagoon, but he was thinking neither of the kanakas nor the lagoon. He was cursing Le Moan.

He had no use for this girl. He had come ashore for water at this uncharted island thinking maybe to find natives, never dreaming that he would be faced by a problem like this. It was impossible to leave the forlorn creature to her fate, yet what was he to do with her on board of the Kermadec? Had it been a man or a boy the matter would have been simple enough, but a girl? If he took her off he would have to find her a home somewhere among the kanakas