“I don’t think you do. This is something quite strange. I am fifty, and in fifty years a man has experienced, as a rule, all the ordinary and most of the extraordinary sensations that a human being can be subjected to. Well, I have never felt this sensation before; it comes on only at times. I see, as you might imagine, a young baby sees, and things are before me that I do not comprehend. It is not through my bodily eyes that this sensation comes, but through some window of the mind, from before which a curtain has been drawn.”
“That’s strange,” said Stannistreet, who did not like the conversation over-much, being simply a schooner captain and a plain man, though intelligent enough and sympathetic.
“This something tells me,” went on Lestrange, “that there is danger threatening the—” He ceased, paused a minute, and then, to Stannistreet’s relief, went on. “If I talk like that you will think I am not right in my head: let us pass the subject by, let us forget dreams and omens and come to realities. You know how I lost the children; you know how I hope to find them at the place where Captain Fountain found their traces? He says the island was uninhabited, but he was not sure.”
“No,” replied Stannistreet, “he only spoke of the beach.”
“Yes. Well, suppose there were natives at the other side of the island who had taken these children.”
“If so, they would grow up with the natives.”
“And become savages?”
“Yes; but the Polynesians can’t be really called savages; they are a very decent lot. I’ve knocked about amongst them a good while, and a kanaka is as white as a white man—which is not saying much, but it’s something. Most of the islands are civilised now. Of course there are a few that aren’t, but still, suppose even that ‘savages,’ as you call them, had come and taken the children off—”
Lestrange’s breath caught, for this was the very fear that was in his heart, though he had never spoken it.
“Well?”