Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/59

 foc’sle, there curled up in his bunk in the gloom he lay to consider this matter.

It was useless to speak of it to Peterson, he would never put the ship back; even if he did he, Sru, would profit little by the matter. He would maybe get a few sticks of tobacco for telling of it, or a knife. Peterson, though kind-hearted enough to rescue Le Moan, was a hard man where bargaining with natives was concerned. Sru had an intimate knowledge of white men, or at least white traders and their ways, and Peterson was a white man to the core.

Then as he lay facing this fact, the idea of Rantan came before him.

Rantan who could talk to him in his own tongue like a brother, who was half a native as far as language and ideas went, and yet was a white man.

Though Rantan had no power to put the ship back, it came into Sru’s mind that somehow or in some way this man, clever as all the papalagi were, might be able to do something in the matter. Eased by this idea he turned out of the bunk and came on deck.

The sunset was just vanishing from the sky where in the pansy dusk the constellations were sketching themselves above the vague violet of the sea. Then, suddenly, like the closing of a door, the west went dark and the stars blazed out and bloomed in full sight. The wind, moist, and warm, blew steadily, and Sru, standing in the draught from the head sails, looked about him, forward at the bowsprit rising and falling against the sea stars and aft where the white decks