Then dawn came. Soogy stopped singing songs. The sight of the child’s bright, fevered eyes and parched lips unnerved us. O’Hara did the worst thing he could do, gave the child a tiny drop of spirit as he lay moaning out on the twisted bamboo grating of the outrigger. Soogy tried hard to buck up, but his small frame hadn’t the lasting power that our larger frames possessed. At the end of the second day, as near as I can remember, we realized our position, and knew that we were floating on the very edge of eternity. The old man became quite brave. His eyes lost all the old cunning and craft that I had so particularly observed in them. Even then, my numbed senses seemed to realize that it was only the worldly world that makes men bad, the earthly values of things inspiring them with greed till their darker passions overgrow their better qualities as weeds overgrow and strangle flowers.
We shared out the last drop of water. The old gentleman gave Soogy a part of his share, and we did likewise. O’Hara became quite religious, in the true sense of that much misused word. Through the whole day and night we never ceased lifting our weary heads to stare on the skyline. But no vessel passed. The old man placed his large red handkerchief over Soogy. It was a terrible sight, as Soogy’s hands tossed, to see the blisters on the little arms. But it was no use waving to the hot tropic sun as it shone up there in the cloudless sky.
“We’re done for,” said O’Hara; then he, too, lay down again, and seemed to grow careless as to whatever might happen.
That night Soogy revived in a wonderful way. I was lying in a semi-conscious state when I felt someone gently touch my arm.
“You sorry for Soogy?” said a far-away-sounding voice. The child was staring in my eyes in a strange, quiet way.
“Perhaps I’m dreaming,” I thought, as a great sense of the unreal came over me. My heart began to thump and my senses to whirl and swim. O’Hara and the old man were lying just beside us, perfectly quiet, as though dead. I stared into the eyes of the wistful little face.
“Is it you, Soogy?” I said in a hushed voice, as I lifted my aching head. “Dear God!” I muttered, as I realized something for the first time, while the child’s eyes stared into my own. I felt that I had never seen such soft, beautiful eyes before. Floating there, under the stars of the tropic seas, nothing seemed too strange or wonderful to occur. A terrible sorrow possessed me as I touched the soft, tiny hand, and pressed my lips to those pleading lips! For a little while, that seemed like a thousand years, Soogy huddled beneath the folds of my coat.
“You come to me if I die, come to heathenland?” Such was what a faint voice, like far-off music, whispered in my ears. I cannot say one word of all that I whispered into the child’s ear. I said mad things, I know.
“I happy now, Papalagi,” whispered that faint, strange voice.
At daybreak Soogy died.