The Portal of Dreams

by Charles Neville Buck

I nodded, puffing with a sense of supreme luxury at the Cairene cigarette he had offered me, and listening to the tinkle of ice in my tall glass.

There were some days of almost pure creature contentment and as we sat under deck awnings or burned cigars in the smoking-room our acquaintanceship ripened to intimacy. The engines with their muffled throb were churning out their fifteen knots an hour and the timbers creaked their complaint to the rise and fall of the prow. Of course all the time during those days was not spent chatting with the infantryman, and of course the point of intimate confidence was not at once established between us. Indeed, I, at first, let him do the talking, and though he was a modest man he had much to tell. But in the hours I spent alone I found my thoughts revolving about many things which I could not generally share. A man may admit to himself without shame that he has fallen in love with a woman of whose very existence he is uncertain, but he hesitates to announce it to another. Now, although the picture which had given me companionship and protection was packed away out of sight; though I was no longer a dweller in fantastic surroundings, I still had that presence with me. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw again the smiling lips and gracious eyes. I knew that I was henceforth destined to scan all faces until I found hers.

So, being unable to discuss matters that were distracting me I found need of an outlet, and sought it in transcribing this diary. Of course the impulse that had stirred me on the island to write down my emotions each day was one I could no longer gratify. Now I must do the thing in retrospect and my pen would lack the force which an impending shadow of fatality might have given it. I had emerged from that pall only to pass into the shadow of something quite as important. I was dedicated to a quest. When I found Her I wished to have the story ready to present in as convincing a form as possible. Sometimes at night Keller and I hung elbow to elbow over the after-rail, watching the broken phosphorus of the wake.

We were standing so on the night before reaching Honolulu where Keller was to spend a few days while I made immediate connection for the States. He was telling me many things about himself. There was a baby, born after he had left God's country, now old enough to chatter, and do wonderful things, whom he was to see for the first time when he reached 'Frisco. His confidence invited mine, and over our pipes, I told him the whole and true story of my experiences and of how an unknown goddess had safeguarded me.

"You spoke of the loneliness," I said at the end. "You know now why it didn't slug me into insanity."

For a long time he stood musing over the recital. He had seen enough of life's grotesqueries to understand it. Finally he asked:

"Will you read me some of your diary?"

I took him to my cabin and for an hour he listened while I read the hastily scrawled pages that I had set down. Of course I read them with a certain diffidence because it had occurred to me that certain phases might strike a man living in civilization as the vagaries of a brain touched with sun and isolation. Indeed, I was surreptitiously watching his face from time to time as a man might watch a jury box when he is on trial for lunacy, but I was reassured to find there no politely veiled judgment against my sanity.

"It's decidedly interesting," he said at last, "though it's one of the things we would rule out as too improbable to believe if we didn't happen to know it was true. In the first place I have been reliably informed by many expert witnesses that the South Seas have long since given up their last secrets as to undiscovered islands."

"I was also convinced of that," I admitted, "until I was cast up on one. I am now prepared to believe there are many others. Whenever I live six months in a place I am ready to admit its existence."