H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ When the great lagoon was emptying or filling to the tide, the water at the pierheads went like a mill race; at slack water it lay gently flowing to the swell of the outside sea as now.
Floyd came from under the tent, glanced round him, stretched himself, and then crossed the reef to the outer beach, where the breakers were coming in—the eternal breakers of the Pacific, leisurely, monotonous, rhythmical, filling the air with their sound and spindrift, their ozone and life.
Nothing could be more extraordinary than the contrast between the inner beach and the outer beach of the island. ”

“ Then she turned, and just as though something were in pursuit of her, she ran, making for the grove, into which she disappeared.
Floyd swore under his breath. That the girl should have been allowed to see such a thing struck him as a monstrous fact. Gentle, kindly, and willing she had been, almost unknown to himself, the one bright spot in his life on the island. The one human thing to keep life warm. Schumer had been a companion who had never grown into anything more than an acquaintance; Isbel, though he had talked to her as little as he would have talked to a dog, had been a friend. ”

“ Schumer had seemed to him at first a simple trader bound up in trade, one of a class that swarms in the Pacific. Bound up in trade he undoubtedly was, but there was all the difference in the world between him and the others of his class that Floyd had come across in his wanderings.
Perhaps the hardest thing in the world to put one's finger on is personality, or the power that tells in a man's appearance, actions, and speech. Its essence lies in complexity, and is born of all the multitudinous attributes that form spirit. ”

“ He went to the seaward side of the reef; the breakers were falling and the gulls flying, but there was no sign of Isbel. She had vanished as completely as though she had never been. Floyd, in perplexity, shaded his eyes and gazed toward the sea line, as though he fancied some ship might have come and taken her off, but the sea line was as empty as the sea, and the only thing visible away out there was a frigate bird sailing on the wind. ”

“ It was necessary, indeed, to unstep the mast and take to the sculls, while Isbel, leaning over the bow, conned them.
The water was so clear that the shadow of the boat showed hard on the sand patches; looking down, the eye was held by a thousand things beautiful and strange. Color dwells like a wizard in tropical and subtropical waters; it seems inherent in those seas. Shells, fish, and coral all are gorgeous, and more than gorgeous—exquisite. Here seem to lie the remnants of a world more beautiful than any world we know—the ruins of a paradise.
Coral alone presents to us a whole world of art ”

“ Schumer was always very punctilious as to the service of meals, laying the cloth himself if no one else were there to do it. He had salved all the Tonga linen, and he would doubtless have insisted on napkins had the Tonga carried them; unable to go as far as napkins, he had contented himself with flowers. He believed in keeping up appearances, even if there were no one to observe these appearances but their two selves and Isbel, and he was right. Slackness is one of the rots of the world, and the least bit of ceremonial is the finest tonic in life. ”

“ There had been strong winds blowing for the last week and big seas tumbling along the reef, the spray finding the oysters that they had put out on the coral, otherwise they might not only have rotted, but dried up. As it was, they were just in the prime of their horribleness.
"Good heavens!" said Floyd, as they set to work. "This is worse than salving cargo—a jolly sight worse even than diving."
"You'll get used to it," said Schumer, "and if it's any comfort to you to know it's worse for me than you, for I have an olfactory sense more acute than ordinary. Get more to windward of your work. ”

“ To get all those things one wants money."
"And all those things come to you if you have power," said Schumer. "It implies everything material, and much more. It's the sense of it, the feeling 'I am the stronger man,' that gives the mind freedom and ease to enjoy what money can bring. You are entirely English; you want enjoyment and luxury without foundation of strength."
"Oh, good heavens!" said Floyd, "I think we have a pretty solid foundation of strength; we own half the earth, and we hold it—why? Simply because we live and let live. ”

“ There was scarcely a trace of morning bank in the east, and the light, now strengthening rapidly, showed the great trapezium of canvas slatting to the faint and favorable wind. Then the foresail took the breeze, dusky forms swarming on the jib boom were casting the gaskets off the jib, now the men on deck were hauling at the jib halyards, and just as a horse answers to the pull of the bit, the Southern Cross veered round to the pressure of the sail, while the voice of Schumer came again, ordering the anchor to be hove up. ”

“ They are pretty well done to death with worry, living in stuffed-up rooms, fighting every moment of the day to keep what they've got, taking their food like medicine, and with gold teeth in their heads to help them chew it; and here am I with every tooth in my head and an appetite like a shark, clear two hundred, without an ache or pain, breathing God's good air, and sailing to belt a chap over the head and collar a pearl lagoon. ”

“ Here and there were streaks of dead and rotten coral of a seaweed brown, and here and there veritable gardens of color. Great shells moved about on the sand patches, crabs scurried hither and thither, globe-shaped jellyfish passed clear as glass, showing up for the moment by reflected light, and then vanishing like ghosts. Schumer, his battered old panama tilted back to protect his neck from the sun, seemed absorbed in the things below; he spoke scarcely a word, unless to give direction to the rower; Isbel, heedless of the sun, was equally absorbed. ”

“ Acres of shell—pearls! We've struck it!" Floyd, as excited as Schumer, drew in his sculls and looked over.
Fortune wears many cloaks, but her ugliest is formed of oysters. As far as Floyd could see, to right, to left, ahead, and astern, the floor of the lagoon was an oyster bed; all beauty of coral had vanished, and the water seemed deserted even by the colored fish that haunted the deeper parts of the lagoon. ”

“ As they approached the fishing beach they could see the enemy scuttering about in alarm. Fellows came out of the tents, shaded their eyes for a second, and then darted off into the grove. In less than a minute not a soul was in sight.
"There'll be no fighting," said Schumer as the boat came to the beach, and they sprang out. "Floyd, you stay here with the men and I'll take Mountain Joe up to the wood edge and have a palaver. I'll leave my gun with you so they may see we've come for peace, not war. They are sure to be peeping and spying from the trees." ”

“ There was a great deal of mystery about Isbel, centuries and centuries of the unknown and unrealized gazing from those eyes so dark and unfathomable.
"Well," said Schumer, breaking the silence at last, "that's a decent pile, and what are you going to do with it?"
"Well, it's Coxon's," said Floyd, "and now he's dead it will belong to his next of kin; he hadn't a wife and family, so he told me, but he's sure to have relations."
"Every man has who dies worth a cent," said Schumer. ”

“ But for the noise of the surf the silence was now absolute and complete.
It held so till noon, when a wind began to stir the palm tops; a wind that seemed to come from nowhere, rocking them and tossing them hither and thither, making cat's-paws on the lagoon, and flicking at the tent canvas like a worrying hand.
Schumer took down the tent.
He had already placed the valuables in a place of safety. He had dug out a hole beneath one of the trees and buried the cash box containing the money and pearls.
"You never know," he said, "if it's a cyclone that's coming. Nothing is safe above ground. ”

“ It is the sign mark of the Anglo-Saxon and Celts and all breeds that spring from their mixture, that they go laughing into battle, die jesting, and carve their enemies with epigrams as well as swords; battle brings a levity of spirit that in its turn brings victory, and Floyd, now that war was declared, moved lightly and felt a liveliness at heart such as he had not experienced since boyhood. ”

“ The two men on the beach sat smoking and watching the schooner as she rode to her anchor, with a single light showing. The Kanaka crew, whom Schumer had always kept apart from the labor men, were on deck, and their forms could be seen indistinctly in the starlight as they lounged about, smoking and yarning. A fellow was fishing over the after rail, and now and then one could see a splash in the water and a streak of silver, as a groper was hauled up. ”

“ The air of the room was already turned to a gray haze of smoke, smoke that made the eyes smart, the smoke of burning hibiscus and poison oak and bay cedar bush, choking and suffocating fumes, followed now by flames as the wretches outside flung coconut shells on the fire, shells that blazed like flare lamps once ignited.
"The place will burn like a torch," said Floyd, "once the scantling gets alight. Listen! What's that above? They have got on the roof; they are lighting it. We must quit and make a dash for the dinghy. It's our only chance. ”

“ The events of the day, the tension of waiting, and that shout, cruel as a barbed spear coming out of the night, had raised the fierce fighting spirit of his race, a spirit all the more potent and terrible from the underlying sobriety that tempers its fierceness and levity.
"It's funny to think we may be knocked out before the sun rises again," said he. "What do you think happens to a man when he's dead, Isbel?" ”

“ She's not bad, but she's a savage, and nothing will make a savage anything else than a savage, except, maybe, on the outside."
"She seems pretty faithful and helps us all she can," said Floyd.
"Oh, she's not bad," yawned Schumer; "and she's a good deal of use in her way, and she's company of a sort, same as a dog or a cat. Well, I'm going to turn in."
He rose up and stretched himself, and looked at the starlit lagoon.
"It's funny to think there's maybe a fortune in pearls under all that," said he, "no knowing—but it will take some getting." ”

“ I've heard foreigners wondering how it is we hold India—all those hundreds of millions of natives under the rule of a few thousand white men. As a matter of fact, we don't hold it at all; it holds itself. A native in Bombay is as free as a duke in Piccadilly; that's our secret."
Schumer laughed.
"And at any moment," said he, "those very free natives are ready to rise in their hundreds of millions and cut your throats."
"I don't think so," said Floyd. "Men don't cut the throats of their best friends." ”

“ Foam caps showed, and in the west the setting moon hung, ghostlike, in a sky that suggested millions and millions of miles of depth and blueness.
All the east was hard and bright; all the west was blue and subtle and tender; and between the east and the west lay the sea like a country carved from sapphire and tourmaline, with the green hills of earth sinking slowly but surely away beyond the foam in the schooner's wake. ”

“ Floyd said nothing. He was not a psychologist or a philosopher, but a man of action; yet he gauged something of the strange make-up of Schumer's mind. Here was a man of keen intelligence, a quoter of Scheffel, an appreciator of beauty, apparently a kindly individual, but in some respects apparently hard beyond belief, and in others apparently blind.
Floyd had some knowledge of the Polynesian natives, he was gaining some knowledge of Schumer, and he was to gain more knowledge of both—of the civilized man and the savage and their respective worth. ”

“ Schumer and his companion, instead of going down below, were bending over the hatch. They were closing it.
Cardon drew in his breath.
He saw at once their object. Instead of going down to kill the man they imagined to be below, they were bottling him up. No man, however strong, could force his way on deck through that hatch once closed.
Again he felt Floyd's toe, as if it were inquiring if all was right, and, again reaching back, he signaled an answer. His eyes were glued to the malefactors, who were now at the main hatch removing the tarpaulin. ”