CHAPTER V—WHAT HAPPENED TO RANTAN (CONTINUED)
He sprang to his feet and came running out on to the sands. For a moment he could not tell where he was, then he remembered. It was past noon and the tide was beginning to ebb. He saw the canoe and he stood, stood for a full minute without moving a single muscle—his mind working furiously, no longer diffident, no longer helpless, as though the dream in restoring his old environment had given him strength, renewed courage and daring.
He must clear out of this place, get to the open sea. The Paumotus were possible, ships were possible, death was possible, but better than this place where nothing was possible, where nothing was but a beach to walk on, blazing sun and jeering gulls.
The ebb was beginning to run, it would take him through the break, he must act at once.
He ran towards the trees and began collecting pandanus drupes and carrying them to the canoe. He climbed like a monkey for drinking nuts, and just as on the Karolin beach he ran, sweating as he came piling the fruit on board; drinking nuts, drinking nuts—he never could have enough of them. Then the last of his frantically collected cargo on board he did what he had also done on the beach of Karolin, flung himself down by the little pool and drank till he nearly burst.
It was all a repetition of that business and only wanted the dead bodies of the women to make the picture complete. Then he came to the canoe.
Here it was the same again. He could not get her off. The dead children no longer weighed down the outrigger, but he had stowed his cargo badly and that did the business; the outrigger was bedded in the sand. He laboured and sweat rearranging the fruit, then at last she began to move; he pushed and drove, the lagoon water took her to amidships—another effort and she was waterborne and he was on board working with a single paddle and getting her farther out.
He was free.
A weight seemed gone from his soul, he no longer felt his nakedness; the power of movement, the escape from the beach and the new hope that lay in the open sea, were like wine to his spirit. It was a move in a new game and daring whispered to him that he would yet beat Peterson.
Working with the paddle from side to side, he got her farther and farther out, and the break lay before him now and beyond the break beckoned the sea.
He had turned sideways to take a last derisive look at the prison house of the trees and beach when—aye, what was that? Water ran over his knees as he knelt to the paddling, water that moved with a slobber and chuckle beneath the nuts.
The canoe was leaking. The sun must have done this business yesterday, craftily, whilst he was asleep. She had been bone dry when he stowed the fruit and now the stuff was awash or nearly so.
The mat sail was brailed ready to be broken out when clear of the lagoon. He looked at it, then his eyes fell again to the interior of the canoe—the water had risen higher still: this was no ordinary leak that immersion would caulk, there was nothing to be done but to return and try to mend it on the beach.
He began to paddle, making frantic efforts to turn the canoe’s head and bring her ashore. He was too late, the ebb had her like a leaf and though he turned her head, it was only to make her float broadside to the spate of the tide.
The only chance was to try and hit the beach near the break.
He worked like a giant.
Only a few minutes before his heart had rejoiced at his escape, now, with the prospect of certain death from drowning in the outer sea, the beach seemed to him the most delectable place in the world.
But he could not reach it. The nearer the break the swifter the ebb; the lagoon water had him like a swiftly running river; the canoe twisted and turned to his efforts but he could not alter the line of its travel sufficiently to hit the beach.
Then, flinging the paddle away he rose, held on to the mast, plunged over the side and struck out for the shore.
When he reached it and stood up, the canoe was gone, swept to sea to be submerged and tossed on the swell.
His last possession had been taken from him. Schooner, money, pearls, clothes and lastly the canoe, all were gone; he had nothing in the world—save the loin cloth made from the bindings of the dead children.
But he was not thinking of that. His life had been saved. He had almost touched death and now as he looked on the boiling current, he saw a shark fin shearing along as though the shark that had missed him was blindly hunting for him.
He came back to the trees, hugging the life that had been spared to him and sat down to rest, Death sitting opposite to him—cheated.
This business brought things to a crisis with Rantan; though robbing him of his last possession, it still had given him a sense of winning a move, and truly, though his luck had been dreadful, there had been an under-current of good luck. He had escaped from Le Moan that night, he had escaped from Nanu and Ona who had him bound hand and foot, he had escaped from the sea coming to this atoll, and he had escaped from the leaking canoe and the shark. His mind took a turn. He felt that he was meant to live, he was sure that now he would be rescued. A ship would come.
And at this thought that seemed clothed in surety, the man’s soul blazed up against Karolin. If she were only a ship with the right sort of people on board, he would find Karolin for them and they would rip the floor out of that lagoon and the hearts out of the kanakas that lived by it.
And the right sort of people would be on that ship and she would come—she would come. He knew it.