For weeks after that night Kearney, though busy and contented enough, was possessed by the uneasy feeling that maybe they were marooned for good and all. If the Ranatonga never came back, why, then God help them, it might be years before a ship came along.
Working in the patch of yams, fishing, or what not, he worried over this business in private. Not caring to speak of it to Lestrange, he sometimes spoke of it to Dick. Dick, almost as dumb as a dog, had words, but no use for connected speech as yet; sometimes thoughtful, nearly always busy, the child seemed to live a life of his own and, though fast friends with the man, was quite happy when left by himself. All the same, Mr. Kearney would talk to the child sometimes as if he understood, and it was a relief to give voice to his doubts if it was only to Dick.
Sometimes the man would take him out in the dinghy when he went fishing and Lestrange was otherwise employed, and the child with its chin over the gunnel would watch without a word, or crooning to itself, while the bright-coloured fish passed or nosed the bait.
“Ay, them’s big fish,” said Mr. Kearney one morning as three grampuses went by in line of battle and vanished into the world of crystal beyond. “Hullo!” A rock cod had taken the bait; he hauled it, fighting, on board and as it foundered on the bottom boards Dick caught it in his chubby hands.
“Fish!” said Dick.
“Ay, now you’re talking,” said the other, pleased to hear the word he had uttered repeated back to him, and holding up the fish with a finger through the gills. “What’ll you give me for ’m, answer up now, eh? What’ll you give me for ’m, or I’ll chuck him overboard? Answer up now.”
“Sivim!” cried Dick. He had risen and was standing, balancing himself, and holding up his hands for the coloured fish.
Mr. Kearney roared with laughter, so that Lestrange, who was weeding in the taro patch, heard the sound borne to him across the water.
He handed the fish to the child, who, clutching it by the tail and through the gills, placed it carefully in the shadow of the thwart, where the sun could not get at it.
“Well, I’m damned,” said Kearney to himself. If Dick had suddenly made a long oration in Latin the sailor would not have been very much more surprised than he was at this revelation of care and free thought. It was like a flash of light revealing the child’s upbringing and the fact that the people of the wild begin their education in the school of necessity, which is not a school of languages.