“I’m clearing out to-day. I’ve hired a fine outrigger-canoe that’s big enough to hold twenty.” Then he looked square into the aged fugitive’s face, and asked him if he was coming along with us.
He was as pleased to get away from that place as we were, that was very evident, for he decided to go away with O’Hara and myself at once. There was no need for secrecy, the shanty was quiet as the grave; for the sleeping reprobates were making up by day for sleep lost through the night. Only the forest banyans sighed as we three crept away into the shadows, and then even the wail of the derelict captain’s concertina faded away as we plunged into the dense wood. When we arrived at the native village we found, to our disgust, that the man who had promised to lend us the canoe was out fishing in it.
“It’s no good getting ratty, guv’nor,” said O’Hara, as the old fellow began to swear, and said he’d go back to the Organization. We breathed a sigh of relief when the native boat-owner at length returned. In a moment we were off, bound for the shore. The old man dropped his walking-stick in his hurry; we were all anxious to get away. As we went down the long grove of feathery palms and giant breadfruits the stars were shining over the sea. We could feel the cool drifts of wind coming in as they stirred the wild odours of half-dead forest flowers and decaying pineapples. As we tramped down the soft shore-track we saw the fireflies dancing in the bamboos that grew high up on the edge of the rocky slope above us, far ahead. It seemed as though we were looking through a telescope and could see myriads of tiny worlds sparkling and dancing far away in infinite space.
When we arrived down by the big shore lagoon, there lay the large outrigger, floating on the still water, just as the native told us it would be. He trusted us. For were we not “noble Papalagis”?
Not a soul was in sight as we stepped into that strange craft. In a minute or two we had pushed off into the deeper water. We were both dab hands at paddling. The scene looked like some picture of enchantment, some picturesque landscape out of an Arabian Nights’ entertainment. Only the dipping of the paddles which rippled the glassy oil-painting-like stillness of the creek’s water gave a certain reality to the mystic scene. The old man might have been some weird old “Pasha of many tales” starting off on a voyage into fairy-land with a clerical hat on. It was only the swelling on the side of his head where he had been thrust into the emergency barrel that reminded one of gross, mundane things.
It was a terrifically hot night. The sea just outside was perfectly calm and wonderfully bright. On the horizon shone the large, low, yellow moon, bringing into relief the wild inland shores, gullies, buttressed banyans, and belts of mangroves that grew down to the ocean’s edge.
The moon looked like some far-off, phantom tunnel-way as the ornamental prow of our canoe turned and glided silently, making straight for its ghostly rim, due south. The old fellow’s face was turned towards its magnificent mystery; O’Hara sat in the centre of the canoe, and I aft. We were not more than twenty yards from the shore then. It really did look as though we were paddling away from some enchanted isle; only the cry of some strange night-bird and the leap of a tidal wave over the reefs, as it splashed into the lagoon’s still water, made a feeble, ghost-like noise.
“It’s quite safe, fellows, I suppose?” queried the old man, as he looked anxiously about him.
“Safe as houses,” O’Hara replied. Then he said, “What’s that?”
We all looked shoreward. Out by the edge of the promontory we distinctly saw a tiny phosphorescent splash as though some strange animal had darted from the forest and dived into the deep water.