The Garden of God (Romance Classic). Henry De Vere Stacpoole

to a tree, was in the mood for talk, unknowing of the things that might come, released from that fear of life and the future which is the birthright of every man who changes a dollar. Released from the drudgery of shipboard life, Jim Kearney was as communicative as though he had been in a bar on the Bombay coast. The push of whisky was absent, but—and as this is a story which would fall to pieces at once if truth were absent—the push of Lestrange was present. Lestrange to Kearney was not only a poor gentleman who had to be looked after, but “a wonderful rich man.” A man who could commission a schooner like the Ranatonga was in himself a person to command respect, but the fo’c’sle had embroidered on this, true to the instincts of the mass that will debase an individual or exalt him beyond fact and truth. The fo’c’sle of the Ranatonga had elevated Lestrange to the height of Nobs Hill. He wasn’t as high as this, and—give Kearney his due—the height of Lestrange in the financial world had had nothing to do with his decision to remain with him. That decision had been born in a moment, and maybe sickness of the sea and love of Dick had been the core. All the same, the “richness” of Lestrange was a powerful underlying factor in his present contentment with his surroundings.

      The amber glow of the sunset had faded as these two people, drawn from poles apart, sat towards one side of the little house, Kearney with his back to a bread-fruit, Lestrange more in the open, leaning on his side, plucking at the grass, talking.

      “Ain’t you ever used tobacco, sir?” said Kearney, apropos of some remark of the other.

      “No, Kearney,” replied Lestrange. “I tried it once, many years ago, and it didn’t suit. I like the smell of it, but I can’t smoke. It’s the same with whisky. I’ve tried whisky. I tried it once. I said to myself, ‘I’ll forget things,’ and I went into the Palace at San Francisco—you know that big hotel they have built—and I drank.”

      “Yes, sir,” said the interested Kearney.

      “I did not mean to get tipsy,” went on the other, “but I drank in company with other men, and I forgot. Yes, whisky is a wonderful thing to make you forget for the moment. I remember quite well and quite distinctly the whole of that evening, up to a point. We talked of horse racing—and I knew nothing of horse racing, but it was just as though I knew. It interested me. We talked of other things far worse. I found myself in a billiard room and I was talking to two men and making bets on players and waging money, and then, Kearney, I awoke next morning—I awoke—and there was nothing but a filthy taste on my tongue and the feeling that I had betrayed those I loved—in having forgotten them, if even for a moment.”

      “Well, sir, it ain’t much use to a man, and that’s the truth,” said the sailor, tapping the dottle from his pipe.

      Then the meeting adjourned, leaving the rising moon to rule the unrippled sea.

      The moon was full up when Lestrange, who was asleep in the house, was awakened by a booming sound, measured and rhythmical, that filled the night like the solemn beating of a great drum.

      He rose and, passing the sleeping child, came out on the sward.

      Kearney was out and standing in the moonlight, shading his eyes and staring towards the sea.

      “It’s breakers on the reef, sir!” cried the sailor. “Lord! Look at it!”

      Away over the reef the spray was flying to the even-spaced and ever loudening thunder of the great rollers. The reef seemed on fire and fuming under the moon, whilst jets of spume-drift rose like sheeted ghosts from the hurricane seas bursting on the outer beach—rose and dissolved and vanished in an atmosphere windless and still as crystal.

      It was the dead calm of the night that made the vision appalling, together with the fact that the anger of the sea was still rising. Above the sheeting spray the gulls were flying wildly in the moonlight, and above their voices louder and louder came the thunder of the breakers.

      The woods were now echoing to the sound of it, and now, like a line of crystal above the reef, showed the head of the first beaching wave.

      It broke in snow and smoke, sheeting into the lagoon, and was followed by two others. That was the climax. As the terror came, so it went, dying gradually down, till at last nothing was left but the old eternal murmur of the surf.

      “Well,” said Kearney, “that beats all.—Earthquake?—No, sir. I’m thinking there’s been some big storm up north there, one of them cyclones, and the push of it has come down pilin’ up against tide an’ current. Lord help the schooner if she’s met it. The sea’s big still; listen to that surf. Shall us run over to the reef, sir, and have a look?”

      They took the dinghy. The passage was easy in the moonlight, and on the reef, when they reached it, the coral was still drenched and the rock pools over-flooded.

      On the outer beach the rollers were still coming in, no longer gigantic, yet great, marching beneath the moon to break in thunderbursts that seemed ruled by the beat of a metronome; marching from the north, where, against the sunset of the day before, the sails of the Ranatonga had passed from sight beyond the sea-line.

       BOOK II

      THE CHILDREN RETURN

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