Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/49

 on one of the northern islands. He was bound for Amao but he reckoned that place was of no use—the kanakas were a bad lot.

As he stood like this thinking and staring about her, Le Moan still watched him, this terrific man who seemed searching with his eyes for Taori.

Would he believe her story—would he kill her? Old tales of the terrible papalagi chased through her mind like bats in the dusk that had fallen upon her powers of thought—she did not know. She only knew that she did not care whether he killed her or not as long as he believed her story and departed without hurting Taori.

Then, suddenly, the last breaker of water in the boat, Peterson turned on Sru and shouted to him to fetch her on board. Perplexity in Peterson generally expressed itself in blasphemy, and when Big Feller Mass’r Peterson began to talk like that, Sru never waited for the toe of the boot that was sure to follow.

He seized Le Moan by the arm and pushed her to the boat; for a moment she resisted, then she gave up, tumbled in and squatting forward of the mast saw as one sees in a dream the straining shoulders and tense arms of the kanakas, as, bending and clutching the port and starboard gunnels, they ran the boat out; she saw them tumble on board, felt the grating of the sand and then the balloon-like lift of the waterborne keel; she saw the sail above her take the wind and bulge hard against the blue of the sky; she saw the flying gulls and the wheeling lagoon and the trees