Part 15 (1/2)
On the third day he aith a reat weakness, but otherwise in coale had fallen and Karaki was quietly preparing fresh coconuts Pellett quaffed two before he thought to miss the brandy hich his breakfast draft was always laced But when he remembered the ot'm rum”
Pellett looked forward and aft, to ard and to lee There was a great deal of horizon in sight, but nothing else For the first tieness in events
”What na fella wind,” explained Karaki
Pellett was in no condition to question his state of the proa that they had not been blown to sea on a casual fishi+ng trip Pellett had other things to think of Sos were pink and others purple and others were striped like the rainbow in hly novel and interesting They ca out of the vasty deep to entertain Christopher Alexander Pellett Which they did
You cannot cut off alcohol from a man who has been continuously pickled for two years without results more or less picturesque These were days when the proa went shouting across the e Tied hand and foot and lashed under a thwart, Pellett raved in the nuular hearing had there been any to hear, but there was only Karaki, who did not care for the lesser Cavalier poets and on hole pages of ”Atalanta in Calydon” were quite wasted Now and then he threw a dipper-ful of sea water over the white man, or spread a mat to keep the sun from him, or fed him coconut milk by force Karaki was a poor audience, but an excellent nurse Also, he combed Pellett's whiskers twice every day
They ran into calently, so that Karaki ventured to ht as polished brass
_My heart is within me As an ash in the fire; Whosoever hath seen s, even things that were ill to desire--_
Thus chanted Christopher Alexander Pellett, whose face began to show a little more like flesh and a little less like rotten kelp
Whenever a fair chance offered Karaki landed on the lee of soion is peppered and would make shi+ft to cook rice and potatoes in the tin dipper This was risky, for one day the islet proved to be inhabited Thite men in a cutter came out to stop theer, and he did not try to But when the cutter approached within fifty yards he suddenly announced hiun He left the cutter sinking and one of the side me here,” said Pellett froed it and released his passenger, who sat up and began stretching himself with a certain naive curiosity of his own body
”So you're real,” observed Pellett, staring hard at Karaki ”By George, you _are_, and that's coht Karaki was very real
”What side you take' the native word for Bougainville
Pellett whistled An eight-hundred- It enlisted his respect Moreover, he had just had emphatic proof of the efficiency of this little blackyou?”
”Yes”
”All right, commodore,” said Pellett ”Lead on I don't knohy you shi+pped ely--or perhaps not so strangely--the whole Fufuti interval of his history had been fading fro froed was one from earlier years: pretty much of a wreck, it was true, and a feckless, indolent, paltry creature at best, but ordinarily huent
He was very feeble at first, but Karaki's diet of coconuts and sweet potatoes did wonders for hiood salt taste of the spray on his lips and forget for hours together the crazy craving for stie and convalescent drunkard--but there was never any question as to which was in coman to fail and Pellett noticed that Karaki ate nothing for a whole day
”See here, this won't do,” he cried ”You've given me the last coconut and kept none for yourself”
”Me no like'm eat,” said Karaki shortly
Christopher Alexander Pellett pondered , idle hours while the rush of foaers were the only sounds between sea and sky Sometimes his broas knotted with pain It is not always pleasant to be wrenched back into level contact with one'sbeen drowned He had met the horrors of delirium He had now to face the livelier devils of his past He had fled them before
But here was no escape of any kind So he turned and grappled with them and laid them one by one
When they had been at sea twenty-nine days they had nothing left of their provisions but a little water Karaki doled it out byPellett the shred to suck In spite of Pellett's petulant protest, he would take none hih the last stages of thirst, scraping the staves of the cask and feeding him the ultimate drop of moisture on the point of a knife