It was eleven o’clock in the morning when all was finished. Dick was playing about in the sun under the eye of Kearney, pipe in mouth and hands in pockets, and Lestrange was saying good-bye to his skipper.
Stanistreet was downcast. The very beauty of the morning, the loveliness of the sward with its protecting trees, the lagoon with its coloured shadows and depths, the remote reef and the perfect sky above it, all this only served to deepen the depression that had come upon him.
Now, at the moment of parting, the feeling came to him that he would never see Lestrange again, that on the child playing on the sward, Kearney, and the grey-haired man with those strange eyes that seemed fixed upon another world, Fate was preparing to drop a curtain that it would never be his part to lift.
For a moment and to his plain, simple mind the tragedy of the lost children seemed part of this new happening and the hand that had shaped their fate not yet finished with its work.
The fellows in the whale boat that was hanging onto the bank ready to take him round the lagoon back to the ship, seemed under the same blanket; Jim, for all his rating them over the drink business, had been a favourite, and here they were leaving him, marooned, so to speak. Bowers, who had left the boat to give some last instructions to Jim, returned to his place in the stern sheets, and Stanistreet cast his eye over the house with its open doorway, over the child, over Jim.
“Well, sir,” said he, “I don’t think we’ve forgotten anything, and I’ve got your orders safe in mind and pocket—and—” He held out his hand and gripped that of the other.
“Good luck,” said Lestrange.
The boat shoved off, some of the fellows shouting, “Bye, Jim!” others nodding their heads at him.
Then, just before rounding the cape to the right, the oars came in and the crew, scrambling to their feet, gave a cheer that roused the echoes in the trees. Then the boat passed away for ever beyond the cape.
“Kearney,” said Lestrange, “those are good men—would that there were more like them in this strange world.”