Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/54

 She fed with the kanaka crew, who took their meals on deck, and became part of their family and tribe, but she would not go into the foc’sle, nor would she go into the cabin; those holes in the deck leading down below were, for her, mysterious and terrific; she had peeped down the saloon hatchway and seen the steps going down as into a well and the polish of the handrail and a light below shining on a mat. It was light reflected from the saloon, yet none the less mysterious for that and the whole thing struck her with the enchantment that quite commonplace things sometimes possess for little children, but it was an enchantment tinged with the shadow of dread.

She had no fear of the men on board yet she had a dread of the saloon companionway, of the main boom, till it explained itself to her, of the windlass with its iron teeth. The men, in spite of their clothes and strange ways, shook down as human beings, but the wheel that steered the schooner and the binnacle into which the steersman gazed as he stood moving the spokes, forever moving the spokes of the mysterious wheel, those things were mysterious and their mystery was tinged with the shadow of dread. They were part of the unknown that surrounded her: to the savage the thing unknown is a thing to be feared.

One day when Sru was at the wheel and the deck was empty, she ventured to peep into the binnacle and saw beneath the glittering glass like a star-fish in a rock pool the compass cord trembling like a living thing. Had not the deck been empty so that she dared