Volume II Part 50 (2/2)
”Ay, ay!”
”Where are you going to get in? I see no opening.”
”Ay, ay! There _is_ an opening, though.”
And soon, looking keenly, Eleanor thought she could discern it. Not until they were almost upon it however; and then it was a place of rough water enough, though the regular fall of the surf was interrupted and there was only a general upheaving and commotion of the waves among themselves. It was nothing very terrific; the tide was in a good state; and presently Eleanor saw that they had pa.s.sed the barrier, they were in smooth water, and making for an opening in the land immediately opposite which might be either the mouth of a river or an inlet of the sea. They neared it fast, sailed up into it; and there to Eleanor's mortification the skipper dropped anchor and swung to. She saw no settlement. Some few scattered houses were plain enough now to be seen; but nothing even like a village. Tufts of trees waved gracefully; rock and hill and rich-coloured lowland spread out a variety of beauty; where was Vuliva, the station? This might be the island. Where were the people? Could they come no nearer than this?
Mr. Amos made enquiry. The village, the skipper said, was ”round the pint;” in other words, behind a woody headland which just before them bent the course of the river into a sharp angle. The schooner would go no further; pa.s.sengers and effects were to be transported the rest of the way in boats. People they would see soon enough; so the master of the ”Queen Esther” advised them.
”I suppose the natives will carry the news of the schooner being here, and our friends will come and look after us,” Mr. Amos said.
Eleanor changed colour, and sat with a beating heart looking at the fair fresh landscape which was to be--perhaps--the scene of her future home. The scene was peace itself. Still water after the upheavings of the ocean; the smell and almost the fluttering sound of the green leaves in the delicious wind; the ripple on the surface of the little river; the soft stillness of land sounds, with the heavy beat of the surf left behind on the reef outside. Eleanor drew a long breath.
People would find them out soon, the skipper had said. She was exceedingly disposed to get rid of her sea dress and put on something that looked like the summer morning; for without recollecting what the seasons were in the Southern Ocean, that was what the time seemed like to her. She looked round at Mrs. Amos, who was sitting up and beginning to realize that she had done with the sea for the present.
”How do you do?” said Eleanor.
”I should feel better if I could get on something clean.”
”Come, then!”
The two ladies disappeared down the companion way, into one of the most sorry tiring rooms, surely, that ever nicety used for that purpose. But it served two purposes with Eleanor just now; and the second was a hiding place. She did not want to be taken unawares, nor to be seen before she could see. So under the circ.u.mstances she made both Mrs.
Amos and herself comfortable, and was as helpful as usual in a new line. Then she went to look out; but n.o.body was in sight yet, gentle or savage; all was safe; she went back to Mrs. Amos and fastened the door.
”Let us kneel down and pray together, will you?” she said. ”I cannot get my breath freely till we have done that.”
Mrs. Amos's lips trembled as she knelt. And Eleanor and she joined in many pet.i.tions there, while the very stillness of their little cabin floor reminded them they were come to their desired haven, and the long sea journey was over. They rose up and kissed each other.
”I am so glad I have known you!” said Mrs. Amos. ”What a blessing you have been to us! I wish we might be stationed somewhere together.”
”I suppose that would be too good to hope for,” said Eleanor. ”I am going to reconnoitre again.”
Mrs. Amos half guessed why, and smiled to herself at Eleanor's blus.h.i.+ng shyness. ”Poor child, her hands were all trembling too,” she said in her thoughts. They were broken off by a low summons to the cabin door, which Eleanor held slightly ajar. Through the crack of the door they had a vision.
On the deck of the ”Queen Esther” stood a specimen of the native inhabitants of the land. A man of tall stature, n.o.bly developed in limbs and muscles, he looked in his native undress almost of giant proportions. His clothing was only a long piece of figured native cloth wound about his loins, one end falling like a train to the very sloop's deck. A thorough black skin was the only covering of the rest of his person, and shewed his breadth of shoulder and strength of muscle to good advantage; as if carved in black marble; only there was sufficient graceful mobility and dignified ease of carriage and att.i.tude; no marble rigidity. Black he was, this savage, but not negro. The features were well cut and good. What the hair might be naturally could only be guessed at; the work of a skilful hair-dresser had left it something for the uninitiated to marvel at. A band of three or four inches in breadth, completely white, bordered the face; the rest, a very luxuriant head, was jet black and dressed into a perfectly regular and smooth roundish form, projecting everywhere beyond the white inner border. He had an uncouth necklace, made of what it was impossible to say, except that part of it looked like sh.e.l.ls and part like some animal's teeth; rings of one or two colours were on his fingers; he carried no weapon. But in his huge, powerful black frame, uncouth hair-dressing, and strange uncoveredness, he was a sufficiently terrible object to unused eyes. In Tonga the ladies had seen no such sight.
”Do shut the door!” said Mrs. Amos. ”He may come this way, and there is n.o.body that knows how to speak to him.”
Eleanor shut the door, and looked round at her friend with a smile.
”I am foolis.h.!.+” said Mrs. Amos laughing; ”but I don't want to see him just yet--till there is somebody to talk to him.”
The door being fast, Eleanor applied herself to a somewhat large knot-hole she had long ago discovered in it; one which she strongly suspected the skipper had fostered, if not originated, for his own convenience of spying what was going on. Through this knot-hole Eleanor had a fair view of a good part of the deck, savage and all. He was gesticulating now and talking, evidently to the captain and Mr. Amos, the former of whom either did not understand or did not agree with him.
Mr. Amos, of course, was in the former condition. Eleanor watched them with absorbed interest; when suddenly this vision was crossed by another, that looked to her eyes much as a white angel might, coming across a cloud of both moral and physical blackness. Mr. Rhys himself; his very self, and looking very much like it; only in a white dress literally, which in England she had never seen him wear. But the white dress alone did not make the impression to her eyes; there was that air of freshness and purity which some people always carry about with them, and which has to do with the clear look of temperance as well as with great particularity of personal care, and in part also grows out of the moral condition. In three breathless seconds Eleanor took note of it all, characteristics well known, but seen now with the novelty of long disuse and with the background of that huge black savage, to whom Mr.
Rhys was addressing some words, of explanation or exhortation--Eleanor could not tell which. She noticed the quiet pleasant manner of his speech, which certainly looked not as if Mrs. Amos had any reason for her fears; but he was speaking earnestly, and she observed too the unbending look of the savage in answer and a certain pleasant deference with which he appeared to be listening. Mr. Rhys had taken off his hat for a moment--it hung in his hand while the other brushed the hair from his forehead. Eleanor's eye even in that moment fell to the hand which carried the hat; it was the same,--she recognized it with a curious sense of bringing great and little things together,--it was the same white and carefully looked-after hand that she remembered it in England. Mr. Rhys's own personal civilization went about with him.
Eleanor did not hear any of Mrs. Amos's words to her, which were several; and though Mrs. Amos, half alarmed by her deafness, did not know but she might be witnessing something dreadful on deck, and spoke with some importunity. Eleanor was thinking she had not a minute to lose. Beyond the time of Mr. Rhys's talking to the other visitor on the schooner's deck, there could be but small interval before he would learn all about her being on board; two words to the skipper or Mr.
Amos would bring it out; and if she wished to gain that first minute's testimony of look and word, she must be beforehand with them. She thought of all that with a beating heart in one instant's flash of thought, hastily caught up her s.h.i.+p cloak without daring to stop to put it on, slipped back the bolt of the door, and noiselessly pa.s.sed out upon the deck. She neither heard nor saw anybody else; she was conscious of an intense and pitiful shame at being there and at thus presenting herself; but everything else was second to that necessity, to know from Mr. Rhys's look, with an absolute certainty, where _he_ stood. She was not at that moment much afraid; yet the look she must see. She went forward while he was yet speaking to his black neighbour, she stood still a little behind him, and waited. She longed to hide her eyes, yet she looked steadfastly. _How_ she looked, neither she nor perhaps anybody else knew. There was short opportunity for observation.
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