times. Each time she was compelled to stop
Adventure
10
and rewrap the cord.
and the “touch of death” had done.
Then the white blaze of noon came.
Suddenly the island’ calm was
The heat was horrible. It scorched her back broken. Two long white objects shot into
and shoulders. Her arm pained so badly
the lagoon and half-way across to the jetty.
that she had to change the pad on the
When they came to a stop, small boats
wound. It was a long while before she
began to skim shoreward.
finally shot out into the sea and drove the A few minutes later the beach, was
canoe toward Suva.
aswarm with people. Some of the men
The sun was slipping behind the
lugged big bundles of burying mats while
dark hill ranges when Kalputa climbed up
others carried boxes and clothing. They
on the damp green wharf at Suva and sped
followed a woman who ran swiftly ahead
toward the tiny mission house standing in a of them.
clump of lemon bushes. On the cool palm-
“Capt’in Barker! Me here!” cried
shaded verandas on either side of the long
Kalputa, rushing into the grove of paw-paw
street Government officials and their trees. “Me here!”
At the sound of her old watchword,
tables, eating their evening meal and “Me here! ”—the watchword she had used laughing in low voices.
in the trading station during the period they Kalputa ran swiftly, her breath were so happy—Captain Barker opened his coming in short broken gasps. She reached
eyes and stared vaguely at her.
the mission house just as the vesper prayers She leaned over him in the yellow
were being said.
moonlight and slipped her thin arm beneath
his head, raising it until it rested on her NIGHT had come again to Flenga Island.
breast.
Except for the humming water on the coral
The missionaries and the
reefs and the homeless wind beating in
Government officials entered the grove.
from the lonely sea, a dead calm was on all
“Capt’in Barker!” Kalputa’s arm
the island lying low and black like a whale tightened about his huge back as a look of
asleep with its back out of the water. The
understanding came into his eyes. “Capt’in
yellow moon came up. It looked like a
Barker, Kalputa bling two boat un’ fienty
lamp in the hand of the hurricane god who
help from Suva.”
was coming back to see all the damage he