On deck he took his seat on an old box upended close to the mainmast stump, and considered the thing he had just witnessed in a philosophical spirit.
It was like seeing a chrysalis crack and a butterfly’s wing protruding.
If Jude had not been admiring herself in that hat, then sight was a liar and its evidence worthless. But Jude was as honest as the day. She had greeted the thing with derision, brought it on deck to show as an object of mirth, and flung it down the skylight opening with contempt—yesterday morning.
What had happened since then to make her consider the thing at all, let alone wear it before a looking-glass?
Had she put it on in derision and to see what a guy she looked? Not a bit! She had made friends with that hat! Those few movements of the head spoke of consideration not derision, in a language old as the earliest feather headdress and more universal than Esperanto.
Then he remembered last evening on the sandspit and her sudden passage from despondency to high spirits; he remembered her queer little laugh as she removed his hand from round her waist,—had that been the sound of the rift coming in the chrysalis casing?
For a moment he almost yielded to the desire to go below and see if the butterfly had really arrived. Then he checked himself. There was time, plenty of time; besides, Satan was putting off again in the dinghy for another load.
Satan, over this business, like a man in drink or a lunatic, had his hot fits and cold fits. A hot fit had suddenly come on him.
The petrol-paraffin engine had begun suddenly to shout to him that it must be taken. A glorious idea, too, had evolved itself in his brain,—why not fit it to the Sarah; not there in the lagoon, of course, but in some port? All that was required would be some structural alterations and a shaft-hole in the quarter; he reckoned the fitting would cost under three hundred dollars.
He didn’t want the thing, really,—masts and sails were good enough for his pottering-about work,—it was the passion of a woman for jewelry. The Sarah would be a nobbier boat with an auxiliary,—sea swank, purely, exhibiting the only apparent weak spot in his character.