Part 8 (2/2)

The officer in command was a colossal Scotchman with a ruddy face and an honest mouth as stiffly sober as though it had never yielded to the seduction of a smile. He gave me a detail of two kanakas whose brawny arms carried down the chest and its contents.

At last came the moment I had dreaded. I must break the news to these waiting children that the priests from the stars had not come to bring them new and permanent wonders, but to take back to the lands of mystery their G.o.ddess and myself. I wished then for a full knowledge of their tongue, that I might soften the tidings, but I could not bring myself to the mendacity of promising a return, though they pleaded. When it came to parting with Ra Tuiki, I forgot my quasi-divinity and seized the old head-hunter's hand in an unG.o.dlike, Anglo-Saxon grip.

Their island would now be charted. Missionaries would come to them with teachings of a new faith, but treading on their heels would come men of another sort, and as I thought of these I wished that we might be able to leave the place unchronicled. The contract trader would soon arrive, supported if need be by the authority of his flag's navy, bringing to my cannibals, or some of them, long terms of peonage under hard plantation masters.

”What, if I may ask,” suggested the solemn-visaged Scot at the helm, when the bow was turned outward and the boat crew was bending to the oars, ”was all the demonstration of th' n.i.g.g.e.rs?”

”They were saying good-bye,” I explained, ”We came to have a very satisfactory understanding.”

He pondered my answer for a time in sober silence, then dismissed the matter with a single observation.

”They took it cruel hard, sir.”

Over the side of the _Gretchen_ I went to a kindly reception. I told all of my story that I wished to tell, admitting that I had posed as a sort of demi-G.o.d, but breathing no hint of the G.o.ds.h.i.+p which was over my priesthood.

A week of hurricane and storm had tested the s.h.i.+p's endurance, exhausted the crew, and driven the _Gretchen_ into unknown waters.

”If it hadn't been for your signal fires,” the captain told me, ”we might have gone to smash on the outlying needles. Your lights probably saved us as well as yourself.”

This was no larger s.h.i.+p than the _Wastrel_, but when one went to his berth at night it was with confidence that his sleep would not be interrupted by the sudden necessity of getting up to die. She had carried a cargo of trade stuffs south and was returning to Singapore by way of Brisbane, laden with copra and pearl sh.e.l.l. Her direction lay westerly while I wished to go east, but that was secondary. At the Australian port, I could res.h.i.+p. Indeed, I was told our course might shortly cross that of a regular line of steamers between Brisbane and Honolulu. For a few days it was satisfying enough to pick up the lost ends of the world's stale news. While I had been marking time the world had been marching; a hundred paragraphs had been lived into history.

On the fourth day a slender thread of smoke rose over the western horizon which grew into a clean-painted and white-cabined steamer. As the gap closed white-clad men and even women stood crisply out against the deck-rail. Then with much signaling from the halyards the two vessels had converse of which I was the subject, and I with my chest went over the side of the _Gretchen_. I told the steamer's purser as much of my story as I had told on the _Gretchen_, and when that evening I appeared at the captain's table transformed by bathing in a real tub and submission to a real razor in the hands of a real barber, it was to find that my story had traveled forward and aft.

St. Paul was a very good man. He had piety and fervor, but also in a superior and G.o.dly fas.h.i.+on he was a man of the world. Perhaps he gained a firmer grip on his following by reason of his ability to say to the youth of his generation, ”I have been twice stoned and thrice s.h.i.+pwrecked.” I had been only once s.h.i.+pwrecked, yet a ready-made audience awaited entertainment.

It was on the second afternoon that Captain Keller appeared in the smoke-room. He was a man of about my own build and almost as bronzed, but fair haired and his carriage proclaimed the soldier before he introduced himself. I was idly enjoying the comfort of wicker chairs and windows which framed white decks and dancing seas. The few other occupants of the place were lounging about in pongee and linen, chatting lazily of those things which make talk among men coming out of the East: tribal risings in Java, the late race-meet in Melbourne. The military-looking young man dropped into a seat at my table and signaled to the spotless j.a.p, who officiated as smoking-room steward.

”Left you alone yesterday,” he began by way of introduction. ”I saw you didn't relish being treated like the newest and strangest animal in captivity. I guess they're accustomed to you now. What will you have?”

”Brandy and soda,” I decided; then I added, ”Perhaps after being rescued I ought to make myself more volatile and amusing, but the fact is I'm readjusting. Did you ever happen to spend six months on an undiscovered, cannibal island?”

He shook his head and laughed with a pleasant gleam of strong, regular teeth.

”Then,” I a.s.sured him, ”you don't understand the desire to sit still for a while. You don't understand the sheer wonder of a soft chair, white woodwork and the regular throb of engines and the sight of white-skinned, white-clad men and women. Look there.” I held out my copper-colored forearm.

He smiled again and nodded. ”I'm going back to the States,” he said, ”after three years in the Islands, capped with two months in India and Australia. I'm Keller of the 23rd Infantry.”

He paused, then went on in a matter-of-fact way. ”I've been in the jungle three months on end. I know what it means. This is my second term of Philippine service and it's the first time I've gone home quite sane.

After the first three years the melancholia had me. When the transport left Manila, and I thought of the three weeks before I could see the Golden Gate, it took three good huskies to keep me from jumping overboard. It touches one here.” With a finger at the temple, he paused, then added gravely: ”And I know some fellows who weren't stopped in time. One must readjust slowly.”

I nodded, puffing with a sense of supreme luxury at the Cairene cigarette he had offered me, and listening to the tinkle of ice in my tall gla.s.s.

There were some days of almost pure creature contentment and as we sat under deck awnings or burned cigars in the smoking-room our acquaintances.h.i.+p ripened to intimacy. The engines with their m.u.f.fled throb were churning out their fifteen knots an hour and the timbers creaked their complaint to the rise and fall of the prow. Of course all the time during those days was not spent chatting with the infantryman, and of course the point of intimate confidence was not at once established between us. Indeed, I, at first, let him do the talking, and though he was a modest man he had much to tell. But in the hours I spent alone I found my thoughts revolving about many things which I could not generally share. A man may admit to himself without shame that he has fallen in love with a woman of whose very existence he is uncertain, but he hesitates to announce it to another. Now, although the picture which had given me companions.h.i.+p and protection was packed away out of sight; though I was no longer a dweller in fantastic surroundings, I still had that presence with me. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw again the smiling lips and gracious eyes. I knew that I was henceforth destined to scan all faces until I found hers.

So, being unable to discuss matters that were distracting me I found need of an outlet, and sought it in transcribing this diary. Of course the impulse that had stirred me on the island to write down my emotions each day was one I could no longer gratify. Now I must do the thing in retrospect and my pen would lack the force which an impending shadow of fatality might have given it. I had emerged from that pall only to pa.s.s into the shadow of something quite as important. I was dedicated to a quest. When I found Her I wished to have the story ready to present in as convincing a form as possible. Sometimes at night Keller and I hung elbow to elbow over the after-rail, watching the broken phosphorus of the wake.

We were standing so on the night before reaching Honolulu where Keller was to spend a few days while I made immediate connection for the States. He was telling me many things about himself. There was a baby, born after he had left G.o.d's country, now old enough to chatter, and do wonderful things, whom he was to see for the first time when he reached 'Frisco. His confidence invited mine, and over our pipes, I told him the whole and true story of my experiences and of how an unknown G.o.ddess had safeguarded me.

”You spoke of the loneliness,” I said at the end. ”You know now why it didn't slug me into insanity.”

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