The tide was on the ebb and he was going over to the reef to hunt in the rock pools.
Since the revelation that had come to Lestrange, six months and more had passed, making over twelve months since the Ranatonga sailed, and with the passing of the months the child had grown.
He was now perhaps three and a half years of age, yet he was big as a civilised child of five, the germ of a man full of vigour and daring, restless, a thing actuated entirely by the moment, except when now and then a broody fit would take him.
Kearney had made him a little kilt of grass such as he had seen worn by the natives of Nauru, and Dick in his kilt sat now in the stern sheets watching every movement of the man as he cast off from the bank.
They had only one boat now, for a little while ago the old dinghy of the Northumberland had given up the ghost, opening her seams, which they had no means of caulking, and filling with lagoon water.
It was nine o’clock in the morning, and when they reached the reef and tied up, the sea was half out and the pools showed, flashing like shields in the morning sun.
Spray and the fume of beach filled the air, and the crying of gulls, and the everlasting murmur of the surf. Out here one’s environment was completely altered: the still lagoon, the mirrored trees, the foliage and earth scents changing to thunderous sea, blinding coral and sea breeze scented by beach and wave. There the coloured birds passed softly across the groves, here the sea gulls charged down the wind.
With the breeze blowing their hair about, the man and the child stood for a moment. Kearney was looking about him to right and left; then, deciding on the eastern pools, he turned to the right.
Dick followed, avoiding the sharp places in the coral, disdaining to notice the small scuttling crabs or to pick up the stray shells and cuttle-fish bones that a civilised child would have pounced on; they were after fish, not futilities of that sort, and he carried the cane, cut for him by Kearney, over his right shoulder in exact imitation of the man before him with the fish spears.
The first pool they reached was lovely, like a jeweller’s shop window for colour; rose-red and amber coral, pink and purple sea anemones, tiny shells like golden buttons, and strips of emerald fucus showed up through the diamond-clear water, but there was no game, only a little fish like a sardine that flitted here and there, and a “piker” no bigger than a saucer pumping itself along. Dick took aim at the jellyfish with his pointed cane and speared it plumb through the centre.