“I give you to understand, Bud Davis, I won’t be called no names, not by no man,” replied the other. “It ain’t my fault if the girl comes round and there ain’t no harm in her comin’.”
“Well, you’ve picked the prettiest of the lot, anyhow,” said Davis. “Don’t go telling me, girls are girls and men are men; but we’ll leave it there. It’s no affair of mine. I’m not grumbling.”
On he walked, leaving the outraged Harman on the sands, speechless because unable to explain, unable to explain even to himself the something between himself and the wildly beautiful, charming, yet not-quite-there Kinie.
The fascination he exercised upon her would have been even more difficult to explain. Davis was younger and better-looking. Davis had made advances to her which Harman had never done, yet she avoided Davis, never dropped custard apples on his head or sat by him stringing bits of coral or followed him at a distance through the woods.
Nor did she ever try to steal Davis’ pocket-handkerchief.
Harman possessed a blazing parti-coloured bandana handkerchief. It was silk, and had cost him half a dollar at Mixon’s at the foot of Third Street, which adjoins Long Wharf. It was his main possession. He used it not as handkerchiefs are used, but as an adjunct to conversation as your old French marquis used his snuff-box. Stumped for words or in perplexity, out would come the handkerchief to be mopped across his brow.
Kinie from the first had been fascinated by this handkerchief. She wanted it. One day he lost it, and an hour later she flashed across his vision with it bound around her head. He chased her, recaptured it, reduced her to sulks for twenty-four hours, and a few days later she boldly tried to steal it again. Then she seemed to forget all about it; but do women ever forget?
One morning some two months after they had landed, Davis, coming out of the house, found the beach in turmoil. Girls were shading their eyes towards the sea, and young fellows getting canoes in order for launching, while children raced along the sands screaming the news or stood fascinated like the girls, and, like them, gazing far to sea.
A ship had been sighted, and there she was on the far-rippled blue, the tepid wind blowing her to life and growth, the sun lighting her sails and turning them to a single triangular pearl.
Nothing could be more beautiful than the far ship on the far sea with the near sea all broken to flashing sapphire, the whole picture framed between the verdurous cliffs of the harbour entrance and lit by the entrancing light of morning.