Willatopy followed, and was observed to tuck the discarded shirt and trousers carefully under the stern sheets. He had wrapped them up in a bit of sea cloth.
The boat was swung out and lowered, and the six sailors bent to their oars. Willatopy standing upright on a thwart firmly grasped the eighteen-foot sweep, and flicked the boat this way and that to test her response to his will. He appeared to be satisfied, for his lips opened in a grin of sheer boyish enjoyment.
"Give way," cried Willatopy.
Madame Gilbert, thorough in all that she undertook, had gone right forward, and, seated firmly, gripped a thwart with both hands. She was sure that Willatopy would hold the boat true in the surf, but she felt some small apprehension lest she might herself be pitched out into the mouths of those hungry waiting sharks. At about a hundred yards from the bar, Willatopy cried to the men to hold up the boat and await his orders. He was watching for the big roller which comes at fairly regular intervals, and which was the one to sweep them forward on the furious race through the surf.
"Now," he roared, and the lifeboat rushed upon the bar.
Madame felt her lift, lift, lift until the boat seemed to be poised upon a steep swiftly moving roof edge. She looked forward into the depths of an enormous hollow; she looked back to where Willatopy stood, naked as when he was born, his hands frozen upon the big sweep, the happy grin upon his joyful face. Time stood still. They were travelling at a full twenty knots, but it seemed ages before the lift of the boat ceased, and her bows fell to the level.
"Oars," cried Willatopy, and the men tossed them inboard.
The bows, with Madame clinging to her thwart, toppled steeply forward. The stern rose and rose until Willatopy, standing upright, and clutching the edge of the thwart with his bare, prehensile toes, towered over Madame's wet head. The surf all around boiled and roared and foamed over the gunwale. Madame low down got the worst of it, and wished that she had left that drenched linen coat in her cabin. The bathing dress was enough for decency, and was meant to be wetted. Down the hill of foaming water they raced faster, much faster, than they had climbed it, and always the line held true. Willatopy was always ready. He had played the game so often that his firmly planted swaying body met every jerk and strain of the struggling lifeboat, as if he knew exactly when to expect those desperate efforts to broach and roll over which are the obsession of boats in surf. At the foot of the hill of water Willatopy called again, and the men again obeyed promptly, falling to their oars, and driving the heavy boat down the bay. For half a mile they ran, still tossing through broken water, and Madame, picking the strands of copper hair out of her eyes, looked out towards the sandy beach towards which Willatopy was steering. He drove the boat right up on the sand, splashed over the side, and ran shouting up the beach. Instantly a pale brown figure emerged from the woods, another followed, and Willie was in the arms of two girls, who, save for their banana leaf petticoats, were as bare-skinned as himself. With an arm about the waist of each he marched off towards his home amid the trees. Madame was again forgotten. She, that proud beautiful white woman, was becoming used to being forgotten.
But presently Willatopy came back, and with him walked his mother, the Hula woman of Bulaa whom the Hon. William Toppys had made his lawful wife. Madame advancing looked at her curiously. Although the half-blooded daughters wore nothing but the native petticoats, the mother was clad in a white European blouse and skirt of cotton. She may have put them on for the dignity of the Family, but Madame thinks that she always went clothed.