“Land ho-o-o.”
It was Ericsson the Swede who gave the cry, and Stanistreet, pacing the deck, hands behind his back, suddenly became galvanised into activity. He sprang with one foot on the port bulwarks and a hand clutching the main ratlins, then, shading his eyes with the other hand, he looked.
Yes, far away ahead, danced void by the sea shimmer, vague, indeterminate, lay something that was not sea and was not sky. The swell, building higher with the flood just setting in, now wiped it away, now showed it again.
Yes, it was the island, far, far away, but surely there, the thing unmapped, uncharted, known only to the gulls and the whale men, and even to the whale men scarcely known.
Away down in Stanistreet’s mind had always lain the shadow of a doubt, a doubt removed by the finding of the dinghy, but somehow illogically returning and lingering. Was the island a figment of old Captain Fountain’s imagination? a vision of the mind, useful only to shipwreck Hope? No, it was there, right before his eyes and true to place.
He dropped on deck. Lestrange was still below and the port watch was forward lazing in the sun. One fellow was standing looking with shaded eyes to get a sight of the land-fall, but the rest seemed indifferent. Then Bowers, rising from the fo’c’sle, broke up their talk, setting them to work on the fore planking with a deck beam. Having seen them busy, he took a glance forward, and then came aft to the captain.
“It’s liftin’, sir,” said Bowers. “You haven’t a chart of the soundin’s by any chance?”
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Stanistreet; “it’s mile-deep water off the reef all round and there’s a clear run through the break. That’s all Fountain said and we’ve got to take his word. Where’s the kid?”
“I’ve give him his breakfast and he’s in the bunk asleep,” said Bowers. “The gentleman was down there reading a book, but he didn’t seem to be takin’ much notice, not of the kid or anything.”
“No,” said the other, “everything’s nothing to him now but just what’s on his mind. You’d have thought their child would have been more to him than them, even, seeing they are dead—but he’s got them fixed in his head—he’s got it screwed down in his nut that he’s going to meet them on that island.”
“Good Lord, sir!” said Bowers. “D’ye mean to say he’s thinkin’ to meet them, knowin’ they’re dead an’ all?”
“I can’t say what he thinks,” replied the other. “He’s had a dream or something, and he’s got it in his head they’re going to meet him on that island. Maybe if you and me had been through the mill he’s been through we’d be just as crazy, but I wish to the Lord he’d chosen some other skipper for this cruise. It’s a heavy responsibility. If he was fighting mad, I could clap him in his cabin and put about for Frisco; but there you are, he’s mild as milk and sensible as Sam on everything but that point, and what’s going to happen when he gets to that infernal island and maybe finds traces of them I don’t know. Bowers, what would you do if you were in my place?”
“I’d carry on, sir,” said Bowers. “Crazy folk are like children. I remember old Sam Hatch; he used to be sittin’ all day watching Sydney Harbour, sittin’ on Circular Wharf waitin’ for his son’s ship to come in, and she lost beyond the Heads and he knowing it. Cross him in his ideas and he’d be the devil, but leave him be and he’d make no trouble. Carry on, sir—there he is.”
Lestrange had come on deck. He took the news from Stanistreet, walked forward a bit, and then, with arm upon the starboard rail, he stood and watched.
The wind had shifted almost dead aft, came stronger and the vast trapezium of the mainsail loomed out, stood rigid against the blue, whilst the Ranatonga, running with swell and wind, laid the knots behind her, swift, gracile, and silent as the gulls that followed on the wind, land gulls that seemed escorting her like spirits white as snow.
And now, minute by minute, rising like Aphrodite from the sea, the island before them bloomed to life. With every lift of the swell, the gull-strewn barrier reef showed its foam, whilst ever more distinctly beyond the reef, green and fair, grew the foliage, changing in depth of emerald to the touch of the wind.
Stanistreet had taken the wheel, Bowers the lookout, and the Ranatonga, no longer dead before the wind, was travelling on a bow line that would take her a mile to eastward of the land. The break in the reef lay to the east.
They held on. The breeze still freshened, and the splendour of the day and the blueness of the sea took on an extraordinary freshness and gaiety. Under the lash of the wind and the sun, the diamond dash and sparkle of northern summer seas lent a heart-catching subtlety to the vision of the island with its coral reef and far trembling palms; and now, across the foam-broken swell, came a sound like the voices of voyage-weary sailor men howling in chorus—it was the gulls of the reef, and another sound like the hush of a mother to her child—the voice of the reef itself.
It was near high tide and the sleeting foam could be seen racing on the coral, as now, with the island almost on the starboard beam, the break came slowly to view, with the palm tree on its northern pier.
A moment more the Ranatonga held on, then, as the wheel went over to the rattle of the rudder chains, the main boom swung, hung for a moment supported by the topping lifts, and then lashed out to port, the bowsprit pointing straight for the break.
Lestrange, his hand on the starboard rail, stood with his eyes fixed on the vision before him—the home of his children. He had never dreamed of anything like this, all his visions of paradise fell to dust before what he saw, what he heard, what he felt, as the schooner, heeling to the wind, made like an arrow for the break.
Gulls raced them and the foam roared aft, rail-high and dashing the decks with spray. Wind, flood, sun and sea, gulls and the waving palm trees—all, with the shifting of the helm, had broken into new life. The glass-green rollers on the outer beach were breaking now to port and starboard, and now, in one miraculous moment, the break was passed and the great sea was gone—transformed into a silent lake of azure.
CHAPTER V
THE GARDEN OF GOD
The Ranatonga on a level keel, and spilling the wind from her sails, came round in a great curve on the dazzling water, her great shadow following her across the coral gardens of the lagoon floor. Then the rumble of the anchor chain echoed and passed away in the woods, and ship and shadow swung slowly to the tide and came to rest.
To port lay the reef booming to the blue and to starboard the island beach of white coral sand, answering the reef with a thudding song, whilst north and south the two arms of the lagoon, curving, lost themselves beyond capes where the banyans and palms trooped to the very water.
“Its emerald shallows calling to the deep
Blue soundings where the soul of Man might sleep
For ever undisturbed but for the song
Of reef and sea—”
Away beyond the hill-borne trees of the island a flight of coloured birds passed like a scarf across the brilliant sky and vanished. Other sign of life there was none.
Stanistreet, having given his last orders, stood for a moment looking around him, the men, grouped forward, stood without a word, some gazing overside at the coral gardens and flights of fish, others with their faces turned shorewards to the groves of cocoanuts and the coloured gloom where the great bread-fruit leaves waved to the wind and the yellow of cassia and scarlet of hibiscus fought for the eye through the foliage shadows.
The schooner and all on board her seemed for a moment waiting, silent, expectant. Lestrange, leaning on the rail, had not turned his head; one might have fancied them waiting for the shore people to put off, watching the canoes