The Blue Lagoon: A Romance
It was a fact; since the coming of the child she had lost that dread of
the other side of the island—or almost lost it.
Death is a great darkness, birth is a great light—they had intermixed
in her mind; the darkness was still there, but it was no longer
terrible to her, for it was infused with the light. The result was a
twilight sad, but beautiful, and unpeopled with forms of fear.
Years ago she had seen a mysterious door close and shut a human being
out for ever from the world. The sight had filled her with dread
unimaginable, for she had no words for the thing, no religion or
philosophy to explain it away or gloss it over. Just recently she had
seen an equally mysterious door open and admit a human being; and deep
down in her mind, in the place where the dreams were, the one great
fact had explained and justified the other. Life had vanished into the
void, but life had come from there. There was life in the void, and it
was no longer terrible.
Perhaps all religions were born on a day when some woman, seated upon a
rock by the prehistoric sea, looked at her newborn child and recalled
to mind her man who had been slain, thus closing the charm and
imprisoning the idea of a future state.
Emmeline, with the child in her arms, stepped into the little boat and
took her seat in the stern, whilst Dick pushed off. Scarcely had he put
out the sculls than a new passenger arrived. It was Koko. He would
often accompany them to the reef, though, strangely enough, he would
never go there alone of his own accord. He made a circle or two over
them, and then lit on the gunwale in the bow, and perched there, humped
up, and with his long dove-coloured tail feathers presented to the
water.
The oarsman kept close in-shore, and as they rounded the little cape
all gay with wild cocoa-nut the bushes brushed the boat, and the child,
excited by their colour, held out his hands to them. Emmeline
stretched out her hand and broke off a branch; but it was not a branch
of the wild cocoa-nut she had plucked, it was a branch of the
never-wake-up berries. The berries that will cause a man to sleep,
should he eat of them—to sleep and dream, and never wake up again.
“Throw them away!” cried Dick, who remembered.
“I will in a minute,” she replied.
She was holding them up before the child, who was laughing and trying
to grasp them. Then she forgot them, and dropped them in the bottom of
the boat, for something had struck the keel with a thud, and the water
was boiling all round.
There was a savage fight going on below. In the breeding season great
battles would take place sometimes in the lagoon, for fish have their
jealousies just like men—love affairs, friendships. The two great
forms could be dimly perceived, one in pursuit of the other, and they
terrified Emmeline, who implored Dick to row on.
They slipped by the pleasant shores that Emmeline had never seen
before, having been sound asleep when they came past them those years
ago.
Just before putting off she had looked back at the beginnings of the
little house under the artu tree, and as she looked at the strange
glades and groves, the picture of it rose before her, and seemed to
call her back.
It was a tiny possession, but it was home; and so little used to change
was she that already a sort of home-sickness was upon her; but it
passed away almost as soon as it came, and she fell to wondering at the
things around her, and pointing them out to the child.
When they came to the place where Dick had hooked the albicore, he hung
on his oars and told her about it. It was the first time she had heard
of it; a fact which shows into what a state of savagery he had been
lapsing. He had mentioned about the canoes, for he had to account for
the javelin; but as for telling her of the incidents of the chase, he
no more thought of doing so than a red Indian would think of detailing
to his squaw the incidents of a bear hunt. Contempt for women is the
first law of savagery, and perhaps the last law of some old and
profound philosophy.
She listened, and when it came to the incident of the shark, she
shuddered.
“I wish I had a hook big enough to catch him with,” said he, staring
into the water as if in search of his enemy.
“Don’t think of him, Dick,” said Emmeline, holding the child more
tightly to her heart. “Row on.”
He resumed the sculls, but you could have seen from his face that he
was recounting to himself the incident.
When they had rounded the last promontory, and the strand and the break
in the reef opened before them, Emmeline caught her breath. The place
had changed in some subtle manner; everything was there as before, yet
everything seemed different—the lagoon seemed narrower, the reef
nearer, the cocoa-palms not nearly so tall. She was contrasting the
real things with the recollection of them when seen by a child. The
black speck had vanished from the reef; the storm had swept it utterly
away.
Dick beached the boat on the shelving sand, and left Emmeline seated in
the stern of it, whilst he went in search of the bananas; she would
have accompanied him, but the child had fallen asleep.
Hannah asleep was even a pleasanter picture than when awake. He looked
like a little brown Cupid without wings, bow or arrow. He had all the
grace of a curled-up feather. Sleep was always in pursuit of him, and
would catch him up at the most unexpected moments—when he was at play,
or indeed at any time. Emmeline would sometimes find him with a
coloured shell or bit of coral that he had been playing with in his
hand fast asleep, a happy expression on his face, as if his mind were
pursuing its earthly avocations on some fortunate beach in dreamland.
Dick had plucked a huge breadfruit leaf and given it to her as a
shelter from the sun, and she sat holding it over her, and gazing
straight before her, over the white, sunlit sands.
The flight of the mind in reverie is not in a direct line. To her,
dreaming as she sat, came all sorts of coloured pictures, recalled by
the scene before her: the green water under the stern of a ship, and
the word _Shenandoah_ vaguely reflected on it; their landing, and the
little tea-set spread out on the white sand—she could still see the
pansies painted on the plates, and she counted in memory the lead
spoons; the great stars that burned over the reef at nights; the
Cluricaunes and fairies; the cask by the well where the convolvulus
blossomed, and the wind-blown trees seen from the summit of the
hill—all these pictures drifted before her, dissolving and replacing
each other as they went.
There was sadness in the contemplation of them, but pleasure too. She
felt at peace with the world. All trouble seemed far behind her. It was
as if the great storm that had left them unharmed had been an
ambassador from the powers above to assure her of their forbearance,
protection, and love.
All at once she noticed that between the boat’s bow and the sand there
lay a broad, blue, sparkling line. The dinghy was afloat.
CHAPTER XX
THE KEEPER OF THE LAGOON
The woods here had been less affected by the cyclone than those upon
the other side of the island, but there had been destruction enough. To
reach the place he wanted, Dick had to climb over felled trees and
fight his way through a tangle of vines that had once hung overhead.
The banana trees had not suffered at all; as if by some special
dispensation of Providence even the great bunches of fruit had been
scarcely injured, and he proceeded to climb and cut them. He cut two
bunches, and with one across his shoulder came back down through the
trees.
He had got half across the sands, his head bent under the load, when a
distant call came to him, and, raising his head, he saw the boat adrift
in the middle of the lagoon, and the figure of the girl in the bow of
it waving to him with her arm. He saw a scull floating on the water
half-way between the boat and the shore, which she had no doubt lost in
an attempt to paddle the boat back. He remembered that the tide was
going out.
He flung his load aside, and ran down the beach; in a moment he was in
the water. Emmeline, standing up in the boat, watched him.
When she found herself adrift, she had made an effort to row back, and
in her hurry shipping the sculls she had lost one. With a single scull
she was quite helpless, as she had not the art of sculling a boat from
the stern. At first she was not frightened, because she knew that Dick
would soon return to her assistance; but as the distance between boat
and shore increased, a cold hand seemed laid upon her heart. Looking at
the shore it seemed very far away, and the view towards the reef was
terrific, for the opening had increased in apparent size, and the great
sea beyond seemed drawing her to it.
She saw Dick coming out of the wood with the load on his shoulder, and
she called to him. At first he did not seem to hear, then she saw him
look up, cast the bananas away, and come running down the sand to the
water’s edge. She watched him swimming, she saw him seize the scull,
and her heart gave a great leap of joy.
Towing the scull and swimming with one arm, he rapidly approached the
boat. He was quite close, only ten feet away, when Emmeline saw behind
him, shearing through the clear, rippling water and advancing with
speed, a dark triangle that seemed made of canvas stretched upon a
sword point.
* * * * * *
Forty years ago he had floated adrift on the sea in the form and
likeness of a small shabby pine-cone, a prey to anything that might
find him. He had escaped the jaws of the dog-fish, and the jaws of the
dog-fish are a very wide door; he had escaped the albicore and squid:
his life had been one long series of miraculous escapes from death. Out
of a billion like him born in the same year, he and a few others only
had survived.
For thirty years he had kept the lagoon to himself, as a ferocious
tiger keeps a jungle. He had known the palm tree on the reef when it
was a seedling, and he had known the reef even before the palm tree was
there. The things he had devoured, flung one upon another, would have
made a mountain; yet he was as clear of enmity as a sword, as cruel, and
as soulless. He was the spirit of the lagoon.
* * * * * *
Emmeline screamed, and pointed to the thing behind the swimmer. He
turned, saw it, dropped the oar and made for the boat. She had seized
the remaining scull and stood with it poised, then she hurled it blade
foremost at the form in the water, now fully visible, and close on its
prey.
She could not throw a stone straight, yet the scull went like an arrow
to the mark, balking the pursuer and saving the pursued. In a moment
more his leg was over the gunwale, and he was saved.
But the scull was lost.
CHAPTER XXI
THE HAND OF THE SEA
There was nothing in the boat that could possibly be used as a paddle;
the scull was only five or six yards away, but to attempt to swim to it
was certain death, yet they were being swept out to sea. He might have
made the attempt, only that on the starboard quarter the form of the
shark, gently swimming at the same pace as they were drifting, could be
made out only half veiled by the water.
The bird perched on the gunwale seemed to divine their trouble, for he
rose in the air, made a circle, and resumed his perch with all his
feathers ruffled.
Dick stood in despair, helpless, his hands clasping his head. The shore
was drawing away before him, the surf loudening behind him, yet he
could do nothing. The island was being taken away from them by the
great hand of the sea.
Then, suddenly, the little boat entered the race formed by the
confluence of the tides, from the right and left arms of the lagoon;