“That was my father’s ship,” she said. “We have believed him lost at sea. Tell me about it, please.” Jim hesitated, reluctant. He felt that he had unveiled a tragedy, that he had struck a deadly blow at this girl who met disaster so bravely. She even smiled at him, wanly but bravely.
“Please,” she repeated and Jim knew then that her voice had power to compel him to do its bidding, now and for always; knew instantly that here was the last girl on earth he would have wounded.
“I know,” she said. “You think he must be dead. But he is not. I have always been sure of that, quite sure.” And despite Jim’s contrary belief her tone carried conviction to him. “I knew he was lost somewhere, but he is not dead. You have brought me the best of news. And you will tell me all about it? It is closing time anyway, and time for lights.”
She closed the door and set the latch, drew down a blind and turned a switch. Two old standing lamps with Chinese shades illuminated the place. She led the way toward the back of the room and motioned to a seat on a settle that formed a screen from the rest of the shop. There was a little table there and a businesslike looking desk.
“I shall be back in a moment,” she said and vanished toward the back of the house. “Smoke, if you want to.”
Jim did not want to smoke. With her departure the momentary belief he had shared with her that her father was not dead oozed out through his pores. The searchlight of his will was summoning details of his discovery in the jungle and now he could see, gleaming white among the ground vines distinctly as if it lay on the floor in front of him, a skeleton, the bones picked clean by ants, the cage of the ribs bound to backbone and pelvis by a network of tendrils—and a skull, with a gold bridge gleaming in its fallen jaw. It was not that of a victim of the sea. The dome had been rudely cleft by a blunt weapon. Surely the skull of a white man.
II
Adventure
The girl came back accompanied by a bony person with a bony face that suggested a horse, a thin, tall austere person who looked as if most of the blood had been drained out of her, and with it all of the milk of human kindness that her veins might have contained. She smiled at Jim, displaying big teeth liberally inset with gold. She was dressed in rusty black material that hung on her like stuff flung hastily over a clothes-rack. Her pale hair had brassy streaks in it. Her eyes were almost colorless, lacking eyebrows. The whole was redeemed, almost nullified, by a voice of wonderful contralto richness, suggesting in its beauty everything that the rest of her did not.
She bore a tray with plates and cups and saucers upon it, napkins of fine old linen, a dish of cake and cookies. The girl brought a pewter trencher bearing a teapot, cream ewer and sugar bowl of old Sheffield plate; the teapot under a quilted cozy shaped like a helmet. These they set down upon the table. To think of tea at a moment tense with the first news after months of suspense—years perhaps, for it was hard to guess how long the ship had lain in its canting jungle bed! The hospitality of gentlewomen. Jim recognized the quality though he was not used to sharing its niceties.
“I am Katherine Whiting,” said the girl. “I should like to introduce you to my cousin, Lynda Warner, Mr. —?”
“Lyman, Jim Lyman.” Jim stood up, heard the marvelous richness of that voice—though it did not seem as sweet to him as the clear, high note of the girl’s—sat down, sipped some tea, broke a cookie and began his yarn. North Street and its unemployed seemed a thousand miles away. The whirligig of time was bringing about its own revenges.
“It’s not much of a yarn—my end of it. It happened on my last voyage. I’ve sailed on both oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, but I like the Pacific best. I was on this side, as it happened, the trip before last, and after we’d landed cargo at Porto Bello, we laid up for repairs. I took a notion to cross to the Pacific side. The skipper was agreeable. The owners were always willing to cut expenses and the ports these days are full of sailormen looking for a berth.
“Things were slack at Panama, but after a bit I shipped on the four-masted schooner Whitewing, bound for Tahiti, a forty-five hundred mile run. We never got there. East of the Paumotus we ran into a wicked storm, a hurricane. They call the group the Dangerous Islands and they’ve named ’em right. The danger is all around ’em. First our mizzen mast smashed off as if some giant had hit it with an axe. All we had set to that gale was a storm staysail and a bit of the spanker, but that was yards too much. That storm fair wrenched us apart. Before we could hack the mizzen clear it had smashed the rudder.
“There we bucked, five foot of water in the hold, and rising, seams opening, three men out of eleven hurt, to say nothing of the skipper himself with his head split by the spanker-boom. We got the steam-pump assembled finally and the water out of her, but not till after we’d been blown way out of our course, far south of Pitcairn, south of Rapa. Twice the jury rudder we had rigged gave way on us, and we were in a sad mess the morning we picked up that bit of land, a mountain top lifting up from the sea in a wrack of vapor clouds, like a finger stuck through a veil—and beckoning. Some of us fancied we saw loom of high land way to the west, but you couldn’t be sure, the weather ’ud open up a bit and shut down again with all the horizon banked up with clouds that looked like dark gray wool.
“It was a lee shore at that, the wind still blowing northeast, and blowing hard. The barometer was jumpy and it looked as if it might boil up and over again into another hurricane any minute. Ordinary times we’d have kept clear of that place, but we had to have water, we needed fresh meat, and we wanted to get a chance to strengthen our rudder a bit. As we got closer we caught glimpses of patches of green. By the looks of the island we hoped to find pigs, doves, fish, and fruit: coconuts, papus, guavas, wild oranges, and bananas. If there were natives they’d do the provisioning, and if not we’d forage for ourselves.
“You must understand, miss, that we’d all, from the skipper down, had a tough time of it; cold victuals for days at a time, no chance to light the galley fire, soaked through, up day and night with just snatches of sleep. Sick and well, we were nigh tuckered out. Thought of getting ashore for the fruit and meat, most of all for some fresh water, got us close to crazy to make it. We discounted the risks. But we might not have, at that, if the sun hadn’t suddenly rent through the sky like it was rotten cloth. For a minute it hung over the jagged peak and turned the green of the trees to emerald before it faded. That settled it. The first mate and myself—I was second—took four men apiece with water barrels, while the old man, with his head tied up, handled the schooner, off and on, outside the barrier reef. We didn’t dare try to get into the lagoon unless it moderated, though we wanted to ’count of fixing the rudder. But we made sure of the water, anyhow.
“We were careful in landing for we didn’t have any guns but a pistol apiece for the first and myself and the skipper’s shotgun that I took along to try to get some fresh meat. My boat hung back a bit like a covering boat. It’s the usual way in the islands, and we figured the natives would argue we were well armed. I show my shotgun barrel plainly enough. There was one freshwater creek opposite the gap in the outer reef, its flow having made the gate in the coral. It looked like another one flowed into the lagoon at the far end of the curving bay. Anyway there were cocoa palms there and we planned for the first mate to tackle the first creek and me the one by the palms. If there was no fresh water we’d get nuts.
“It was a narrow reef, as barrier reefs go, little more than a hundred yards wide but with a mean, jaggy entrance and the waves spouting over the slabs of coral that looked like stone sponge layers. We didn’t see a sign of natives. We worked fast in case of a hurry signal from the ship for, while the sun was blinking in and out, the sea was running high and every now and then the wind would blow in gusts that came like the explosions of big guns.
“There was no creek after all, where my boat went, so we went after the nuts. A native could have climbed the trees and thrown them down but none of us were monkeys enough for that—and we were all battered and bruised up anyhow—so we cut down the palms. I hate to cut down palms like that, they are so mighty useful,