Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories / 1898

of Lijibal was slowly lifting and fading before the red arro

st still hovered, so that, were it not for the deadened throbbing beat and lapping murmur of the flowing tide, one might have thought, as he looked across from land to land, that the h

showed out in every nook and bay. And soon the yellow sunlight flashed through the gloomy shadows of the forest, the sleeping pigeons and the green and scarlet-hued parrakeets awoke to life amid the sheltering boughs, and the soft, crooning note of one was answered back by the sharp scream of the other. Along the mountain sides there was a hurried rustling and trampling among the thick carpet of fallen leaves, and a wild boar

o the harbour was the figure of a young boy who bathed by himself. He was the son of the

ng his people, had consented to let him remain on being told by the captain of the ship that the stranger was a skilful cooper, and could also build a boat. It so happened that many of the casks in which the king stored his coconut-oil were leaking, and no one on the island could repair them; and the white man soon gave the native king proof of his craft by producing from his bag some of a cooper's tools, and going int

other, came to the oil shed, looked in, and c

ks for me, and some day build me a boat; but send away the son of the woman fr

send his child away; either the boy remained with him on shore o

he commanded them to provide a house for the white man and his

oy walking along the beach towards a lonely native house on the farthest point. Behind them followed a number of half-nude natives, carrying mats and baskets of food. Only once did the man turn his face towards the ship, and the

o the Bonins and where he came from. He's not a runaway convict, anyway-you can see that by t

in a fairly civilised place like the Bonin Islands as soon as he heard that the Juno, frigate, was lying at anch

s. Perhaps he's one of the seven that ran away from Sir

r from his Majesty William IV.'s ship Tagus. For nearly seven years he had wandered from one island to another, haunted by the fear of recapture and death since the day when, in a mad fit of passio

ht him back to life, for he was all but dead from hunger and exposure. For nearly a year he lived among these people, adapting himself to their mode of life, and gaining a certain amount of respect; for in additio

in addition to his great stature and marked physiognomy, he was fatally marked for identification by a great scar received in honourable fight from the cutlass of the captain of a Portuguese slaver on the coast of Afr

of the island, he may have thought of the bright-faced girl in the little Cornish village who had promised to be

orgotten me by now;

a sort of unspoken affection for her artless and childlike innocence, and this deepened when her first child was born; and som

d sweep past miles away before the strong trade wind, no ship had he seen. And here, on this forgotten island, he might have lived and died, but that one day a sandal-wooding

the brigantine just as night began to fall. The master of the vessel received him kindly

you come? I'm bound to S

can't leave here. I'v

come, but Brandon only shook his head solemnly. "I can't do that, sir. These h

e and bring off some turtle to the ship. It was still a dead calm, and likely to continue so al

ht from the ship, and was instantly struck with alarm at hearing no answer to his call. Running quickly over the few hundred yards t

and Brandon, puzzled at his wife's mysterious disappearance, was about to lead another party himself in another direction to that previously taken, when a woman who lived at a house at the extreme end of the v

swim out to him. The moment he voiced his thought to the natives around him, the men darte

directly for the brigantine, "for," said they, "the current is so strong that Mahia, thy wife, who is but a poor

but noiselessly, the men calling out loudly at brief int

ll to us so that

last the four canoes approached each other, and t

he nearest canoe, "let us to the s

tones, "How can that be, Kariri? Either the child ha

r the ship, the faint outlines of whose canvas was just showing ghostly white half a mile

in hailing distance of the brigantine, and at the same moment the first puff of the

"Did a woman and child swim

om one of the other canoes which had approached the vessel on th

, she's sinking," and then came the sound of tackle as

ddles into the water with lightning strokes, and the little craft swept swiftl

to the man whom she thought had deserted her. With one arm she supported the tiny figure of the child,

in of the brigantine, who stood on the rail holding to the main rigging, and drawin

ean a shriek of mortal agony, and he saw her drop the infant and disappear in a swirl of eddying foam. Ere that awful cry had ceased to vibrate through the morning air, a native had sprung from the canoe and seized the drowning child, and the agonised father, looking down into the b

d Brandon's canoe reached the native simultaneously, and they

ng his arms around the white man, he forced his face awa

ate or the brigantine when he saw that only