THE GARDEN OF GOD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18387, 1 May 1923, Page 3

THE GARDEN OF GOD.

BY H. DE VERE STACPOOLE. Author of " The Blue Lagoon," Pools of Silence," "The Beef of Stars," etc., etc.

(Copyright.)

BOOK II

THE CHILDREN RETURN.

CHAPTER XIV.

Katafa moved away to the right, and entered analley formed by a double line of rnatamata trees; ferns grew here on either side, and above in the, liquid gloom cables of liantasse swung powdered with starry blossoms. She stood for a moment glancing up at | the orchids that seemed like birds in flight; the bugles of the giant convolvuli and the far-off roof of leaves moving to the wind in trembles of shattered light and shadow. ' Then she went on, reaching at last a little bay in the trees, ferns and bushes, where the glint of something white caught her eye. • It was a skull ; she pushed the leaves aside; the whole skeleton, was there,_ the ribs still articulated, the verbrae intact. Flame lit by mortal hand: could not have calcined the bones mote whitelv, destroyed the flesh more completely than the slow fire of time living here through the years amid the cool green ferns. Katafa, holding the leaves aside, gazed at the skull. Among Le Juan's properties had been a man's skull, used when she was invoking the dark powers against some enemy. As Katafa gazed at the skull, tho thought of Kearney came to her an f the vision of him lying like that—ar.d the wish. When Dick came back to the house the girl had not returned. Kearney seemed to have recovered his temper, and, presently, putting the ship away on the shelf till to-morrow, ho helped the boy to prepare supper. They scarcely spoke over this business. The shadow of the quarrel still hung between them and that supper, as they sat silent opposite one another, was a bad mark in the life of Dick. It was his coming of age party, for Kearney was treating him as a, man with whom he had a difference, not as a boy to be threatened and skelped. Neither of them saw that far-away scene of tho Dick of the "Raratonga," the tall sailor dancing the tiny child in his arms, and crying out to Bowers: " Says his other name's M. Sure as there's hair on his head lie's been tellin' me. Dick M's his name, ain't it, bo?" Neither of them saw the early /.land days when Dick M, left entirely in the sailor's charge by his grandfather, fished in the lagoon with thread for line and played at fish-spearing on the roof and tried to scull the dinghy guided and assisted by his big companion. Dick, sitting there in the sunset this evening, was no longer a child. Not quite a man lie was greater than a man; fresh "from the hand of nature that had moulded and wrought on his father and mother, not quite civilised, not quite a savage, a i poet might have seen in him the youth of | the world, the dawn of man.before cities arose to cast their shadows on him, before civilisation created savages. Neither of them saw the long years of companionship during which they had worked' as shipbuilders together, tho storms and incidents by shore and reefit was all as nought. Katafa had brought a new interest to Dick. Age and laziness had done their work with Kearney. As • they sat like this,, the meal nearly finished, "they saw the girl. She had come out from among the trees, away on the other side of the sward. Sho was carrying something under her arm. She stood for a moment shading her eyes against the sunset, and looking towards them; then she vanished back among the trees, and Dick, rising to his feet, came running across the sward!, tie knew -.where; to find her. Since the breaking of the canoe, sho had made a shack for herself among the trees, arid there «. sho ; was crouched how and dimly to be seen in the fading light. _ • At the sound of the parting of the leaves, she moved suddenly as if trying to hide something with her body. "Katafa," said the boy, speaking in the native, " the food is waiting for you, and he is no longer angry." ■ " It docs not matter, Taori," replied her voice from the shadows. " I will cat to-morrow." " What is that you have beneath you there?"-. A breadfruit, Taori— want no better food." " Ahai— you have no fire to cook it." " It does not matter, Taori. I will cook it to-morrow." " Then eat it raw," said he, angry with her, and off ho went. ... Taori was the name she hod given him. When he had gone she took the skull which she had been hiding, and placed it beside her, then she lay down with her eves fixed on the ruddy-tinted light of the sunset visible through the spaces of the leaves. : . There was no moon that night, and a dead calm had set in an hour before sunset. The heat was oppressive, even the great Pacific seemed drugged and drowsy and the sound of the surf 011 the reef the breathing of a sleeper uneasy in his sleep. Kearney, awaking about midnight, came out for a breath of air. It was almost as oppressive out of doors as in the house, and above the trees the sky. heavy with stars, stood like the roof of a jewelled oven, tho fronds of a palmetto by tho water stood without a tremor and the lagoon lay like a fallen sky of stars, tremorless as itself. Kearney came down to tho bank and sat bathing his feet in the water, the ripples, waving out and shattering the reflected firmament. Ho heard the rustle of robber crabs feeding on tho fallen drupes oi a pandamaa near by, the splash of a heavy fish beyond tho cape of wild ( cocoanut, tho fall of a nut from the grove behind the house, the fret and murmur of the reef—no other sound from land and sea and all that wilderness of stars. Then as lie lay on his elbow yawning and half asleep, a spark of light that was not a star struck his sight. It was on the reef line. Tt died out, came to life again, flickered and grew. Someone was lighting a fire on the reef. Ho sat up, glanced at the dinghy lying safely at her moorings, then out away at the far-off fire. " She ain't taken the boat," said he to himself, " she must have got over swimmin\ Curse that Kanaka, what trick is she up to anywav ? Signalingthat's what she's signaling, that's her game, mavbo to bring a hive of niggers a top of us," His rushed off to sec if the box of matches had been taken; no, it was there, but he knew she could light a fire with a j fire stick. She had taught Dick to do it. He came running back to the dinghy, got in, unmoored her and pushed out. He had always had it in his mind that the fire she had lit long ago was a signal made to attract her people whoever they might be. , ~ , ' The absurdity of this idea never struck ) him; he just " had it in his mind" as an < easy way of accounting for the matter, | and to-night, in face of this second offence, | his wrath rose up against the girl as it 1 had never risen before. Everything conspired. the heat, the want of sleep, the quarrel with Dick, and the long humpbacked antagonism she had constructed against herself by snatching Dick away j into Kanaka- and making him talk j I her lingo; her very youth was against: i her to-night. It was 'her youth that had i I made her companions with Dick. ] i Kearney had killed men in his time and | the vears of soft island life, the comj panionship of the child, the absence of i drink, while softening him, had not de- ; stroyed the fierce something which was | not Kearney and which could wake under ; stimulus to strike regardless of conse- ! quences. * Gaining the dinghy across the water he was steering straight for murder. Not intentionaf murder, but the murder we come on in the slums when men of Kearney's type, urged to the deed by a nagging wife or gone-wrong daughter and assisted maybe by alcohol, suddenly giy^ 100£0 to themselves and maim or kill. ,

His project was to land unobserved if possible, and ■ then go for her with a scull, bowl her over and then beat, the devil out of her .once and for all with his fists. He'd " l'arn " her this time, sure. Less then half-way across ho drew in his sculls and then with a single scull at the stern, began.working the boat almost;. -• noiselessly toward tho reef. Ho could see her now standing by tho fire and folding it, the cairn-gorm light of the flames upon her face and arms. It was a big firo and lit the reef, the lagoon water and the foam of the gently curling waves. Great fish attracted by the light were swimming in the waters of the lagoon nosing about the reef. Tho news had gone far and wide that something was doing . and could Nature, who has her own methods.of warning men and beasts, have expressed herself in writing with fire for ink above the 1 breaking foam, would have appeared the words: "The Reef is Dangerous To-night." Then as Kearney drew closer, the girl, who had suddenly turned and sighted him. broke away from the fire and ran. Ho drew in the scull, took his seat and seizing the other scull, rowed as if rowing a race. Tho nose of the dinghy crushed against, (.he coral. Ho sprang out. secured her. and turned, scull in hand. The girl was gone. Beyond the fire glow he thought he saw her for a moment, but the light dazzled his eyes, and x when he put it behind him he could see nothing but the starlit coral, its humps and dips and pools, the foam of the waves and the tranquil mirror of the lagoon. He knew quite well what had become of her, she had dipped into one of tho reef pools; they were the only possible: places of concealment;. She bad not taken to' the lagoon, he could sec that at a glance, for the water lay unrippled and a swim* mer's head would have shown even more clearly than by day. He came along grasping the scull, with the anger of the balked hunter now at his heart. He looked into the first great nothing, only a trapped fish flitting like a ghost . here and there, its shadow ghost following it across the whit© coral sand of the bottom. He rose and was moving on when a great undulation came in tho lagoon water flowing from behind him and spreading to the west. Kearney turned; the firo still gave tt good light, and between him and tho fire something had heaved itself on to the coral. Attracted by the firo light it had left the lagoon, soundless as a crawling cat, yet tons in weight- It was only some 30 feet away from him, yet it seemed formless, a long heaped mass covered with " shiny tarpaulin. Then suddenly it took form, extending itself liko a slug, lamps, like the headlights of" a locomotive, b'nzed out and around tho lamps great serpents curled like the locks of Medusa. _ For one fatal moment he stood staring at the thing beforo him, Then a rope - slashed round his waist and tightened. . - lie was caught. • Katafa had taken refuge in the second great pool, a pool some four feet deep and largo enough for a person to swim y in- The water was tepid, and the floor of soft sand, and as slie slipped into it gracilc as a serpent, she did not look to see what fish there might be there- ' A small : whip ray. an electric eel. or a stinging jelly fish would have made the pool untenable, she knew, hut. chanced ' it, and, lying submerged to the chin, waited and listened. She. felt an eel pass liko a cold, waving > ribbon over her thighs; it touched the I outer side of her left log as it mado its I way along the sand, and was gone. Then sho felt the tap of small sharp-pointed fingers here and there on her body. Fish were muzzling her, yet she dared not move for dread of setting tho water waving. Instinct told her that Kearney was more ? to bo feared than fish or eels, or the groat crab of the terfj and even when a sting like- a hot needle sticking in her side, told her that a ban da fish had attacked her flesh her only movement was the drift of her right hand like floating ' seaweed towards her ride, and the sudden snap of the fingers as th© banda fifth, -■ caught by the hand, was crushed to death- : Sho kneaded tho fragments viciously, between her fingers. Mien, as sho released them, sudden : and sharp came a cry, tho ■ picrcing cry of a man who has been speared or stabbed with a sharktoothed dagger, liaising her head swift v• as 8. lizard, sho glanced, shuddered, una • dived again. She had seen Nanawk. Katafa knew the soas and its creatures with an intimacy given to fow naturalists. She had seen great fleets of giant whip rays enter Karolin lagoon disporting under the stars and filling the night with a sound liko the thun.ler of big guns at battle practice. Sho had seen a cachelot driven by destroyers to its death, and an octopus with 60-foot tentacles floating like a burst balloon i.ear tho palu bank, , driven up from mile-deep water by. some . submarine disturbance, the sharks tearing at it, and tho eyes still living, lugubrious and staring at tho sky as if fn astonishment. But she had never seen the most terrible of nil sea'things, tho giant c.ecapod, barrel shaped, great as an oak tree, with two backs, a tonguo armed with teeth, eyes a foot broad, and ten tcntaclos two of thirty or forty feet m length. Snuggling into the tepid wider she lay listening—nothing, only tho sound of tho surf rising and falling to tho puke of . tho isea whilst tho untroubled stars shone down 011 her and tho minutes passed, bringing not another sound to tell of - what was happening—of what had happened. . ■'« Then, raising herself gently, she looked again. The reef showed nothing but the last embers of tho tire. The dinghy was lying still just where she had been moored, but of the mini who brought her across, there was no. trace. - CHAPTER XV. NAN. " Jim !" cried " Dick, " hal amonai—Jim Where you gone to?" He was standing before the house in the early sunlight, he had just como out and Kearney was nowhere to be «e?u. A breeze had broken tho heat, and the absolute lovliness of tho morning found reflection in the soul of the boy. The far-off sea that would be purple at noon, lay like smauhed sapphires beyond the reef, the lagoon whipped by the breezo showed colour# unimaginable by man, colours that seemed to live Iby their own intrinsic brillancy, stretching from the luminous blue of the near {tools, to the purples and mauve.h of the submerged rotten coral beyond which lay the dancing sapphire that washed the reef line. Over all the breeze, the flower blue sky, and the gulls. But Kearney waft nowhere to be seen. Then, as Dick called again, the girl came out from the trees at the opposite side of the sward, fresh from a dip in the lagoon beyond the cape, and with a searkt flower in her hair, which was tied back with a bit of thread lirfna. She crossed the sward, and the boy. seeing her. bothered himself no longer about Kearney, and set to preparing for breakfast. 11.id he riot been so busy, he | might have noticed a difference in her. J She walked assuredly and with a careless- - 1 rcess ffnd an ease that were new to her. In ordinary tim'-.i &he would came for her - food as an animal might come, »n animal not quite tamed and vaguely distrustful, take her seat at a little distance, and wait meekly, yet watchfully, for the dispensation of Providence. It was different now. ' She came close up to Dick, and, withemt offering in the least to help, stood watching him, taking her wait when meal was ready as close as- " Kea'ney' had sat, and helping herself to the food without waiting to be helped. Even Dick( satisfying his voracious appetite, noticed the change in her now. \ He did not know what it was in. the j least, and he didn't bother to think, yetj in some curious war it disturbed him. ! With Kearney there he and Katafa had [always been subordinates, between subordinates there is always a bond, a hsfg&) however vague and unwritten against the I master. Youth had helped, and the two J had made a little society of their own with Dick as leader. This relationship j had been strangely disturbed this morn- | ing by the absence' of Kearney and hv the ' actions of Katafa. who was doing thing* , i she had never done before, sitting in a. ' I different attitude and speaking m a new ' tone of assurance and indifference. Diei ■ 1 almost felt that something had happened , j to —something had. | Flo bo ccctiauod diilrdi V;