Stanistreet had wanted to leave a tent, but Jim said the shack was good enough for him. There was lots of room for him besides the stores; Lestrange and the child would have the house.
They worked away at the little jobs to be finished and then came dinner, a sort of picnic on cold stuff brought from the Ranatonga and eaten seated on the sward, Dick sharing with them in the way of bananas and scraps just as a dog might have done.
In some extraordinary way the common sailor and the sensitive, super-civilised Lestrange had almost at once become companions, yet without any alteration in status.
It was always “Yes, sir,” with Jim, with Lestrange it was always “Kearney,” and the power of little things was never more evidenced than in the case of Jim relabelled by the gentle-voiced Lestrange in the first hours of this island life. He had always been “Jim” to himself and others. “Jim” had placer-mined on the hills of California, drunk himself blind, killed a “Chink” in a tong dust-up he had joined in for the fun of the thing, worked for the sandalwood traders and always had come out, to use his own expression, at the little end of the horn. There were rare moments of heart-searching with Jim when he accused himself not of crimes committed but of opportunities let slip, opportunities with women and with Fortune. In those rare moments which yet tinged in some manner his conscious life, the man he knew was “Jim”; the inconsiderable name summoned up his failures. “Kearney” was something new, didn’t seem to fit, yet in some way was not distasteful—almost a title.
Towards evening that day Kearney, who had been prospecting about in the woods and who with his island-trained eye had discovered and noted the places of all sorts of fruit-bearing trees, to say nothing of a patch of yams that showed evidence of cultivation—Kearney, chewing a long straw of maya grass, appeared before Lestrange, who was seated in front of the house reading a book.
“The old hooker was due out at the half ebb, sir,” said he. “She’ll be well to sea by this and bearing north, and I was thinking you’d maybe like to go over to the reefs to have a last look at her.”
“The schooner?” said Lestrange, closing his book. “Yes, I would like to see her on her way. Can you row me over?”
“Yes, sir,” said Kearney, with a half smile, “I can row you all right.” He took a glance into the house where Dick in a corner was asleep under a half kicked off blanket. “And the kid won’t take no harm, he’s sleepin’ like a Dutchman. Ain’t you goin’ to take your coat, sir? It’s breezin’ up out there an’ fresher than here.”
“Yes, Kearney,” replied Lestrange, putting the book and his reading glasses away on a little shelf by the door, a quaint little shelf that the lost ones had put up for who knows what purpose. “Yes, perhaps I had better take my coat.” He put it on and they went down to the water’s edge, where Kearney pulled the new dinghy close up whilst he got in.
Then they pushed off, the sailor sculling with his eye over his shoulder for the reefs.