Part 12 (2/2)
Before the door burned a blink of fire that revealed the dwelling and its tattered alcove of sewn leaves, as if the scene had been set with footlights It was a very simple little doht have been young, but she was old in the native way, flabby, coarse-grained, with sagging wrinkles, with lusterless hair streaed, sleeveless wrapper rendered her precarious service, bulging with flesh At her side squatted a youngster, an iarcane and spat wide the pith The woman kept one hand free to admonish hi pot With the other, tranquilly, she nursed a naked babe
There was no reticence about that firelight, no possible illusion--and certainly no rorim fidelity it threw up each bald detail, the cheerful dirt and squalor, the easy poverty, the clutter--the plain, anie home It touched the bronze skins with splashes of copper, shone in the woenerous swell of her breast And just there it ure in this pantomime--the brown babe Not so brown as he would be some day, indeed quite softly tinted, but unmistakably Polynesian A most elemental mite of huhts A fat little rascal, with a bobbing fuzzy poll and squirry--so very frankly, so very boisterously hungry--!
Miss Matilda went away froht, but her feet were rebellious, and before she had taken twenty steps she was lost Without direction, groping in the darkness, even then by sorowth for hiding That was her only effective io on Under heaven there was no going back People were awake all about her in the huts More people would be strolling and skylarking along the chapel path, supposing she could have found it She had the sole, ht open to receive her
And thus it was chance alone that guided her course through the fringe of the village, through garden and sand strip, and that brought her finally, all unseen, to the wall of a large house, to a post, to a slatted gallery aglow inside with lamps, and to her second discovery
”Curse your black soul!” a voice was saying, with heavy, slow brutality, ”when I tell you to drink--you drink! D'y' hear?”
”No can do, Mahrster,” ca response, in the broken _beche de mer_ that is the token of the white man's do ether”
”What do I care for your taboo? _Drink!_”
Fell an interval of silence
”Drink again--drink hearty!”
Captain Hull Gregson sat leaning forward by the side of his living-roolass that brimmed and sparkled redly On his knee, in a fist like a ham, he balanced a black bottle
His jutted jaw took a line with the outthrust ar brow, as if the whole implacable force and will of thehim, stood Motauri--a different, a sadly different Motauri A Motauri not in the least the joyous woodland faun in his attitude now His proud crest was lowered, stripped of its wreath; his nificent muscles drooped He stood hu feet, as became an inferior He drew the back of his hand across his lips and eyed the white son, and leaned back to set the bottle on the table amid a litter of odds and ends, books, papers, a revolver, a tarred tiller-rope with a roseknot ”Perhaps that'll loosen your tongue First time I ever seen your breed hold off the stuff But then, you're one of these independent lads, ain't you? Old chief stock, you call yourself Plenty wild Kanaka, you Plenty bold, bad fella you--hey?”
”No, Mahrster,” said Motauri, deprecating
Gregson regarded hi to tell ht”
”Me like'o fish,” said Motauri
”You've said that a dozen times, and it's no better It don't pass Go fish? Go soak your black head! What are you up to, hey? Come now--tell”
Motauri made no answer, and the other controlled hi trader was under the empire of soain, tre a little His face shone like wet leather But it was in a tone oddly detached, , that he went on
”You're smart I don't say a Kanaka can't be sered you yet And that's afor you, my boy, d'y' see? Because, if I could once e two nights ago, I'd--” A purplish haze suffused his cheek ”I'd dig the heart out of your carcass with my two hands,” he ended, very quietly, and hit the table so that it jumped ”Was it?” he roared
”No-o, Mahrster,” said Motauri
”You lie--blast you--it was!”
”No, Mahrster”