“It’s a girl!” cried Kearney.
“What’s a girl?” asked Dick, so filled with excitement over this new find that he was forgetting to steer.
“It’s a female—mind your steerin’—you’re a mile to starboard—there, let it be and I’ll manage meself.”
The girl, as they drew close, ran forward and seized the anchor rope; it had parted a good way from its fastening and there were some four fathoms of it left. She stood with it coiled in her hand and as the dinghy approached, she sent the coil flying towards them, straight and sure. Then, as Kearney caught it, she darted aft and seized the steering paddle, crying out in answer to the sailor’s questions in the same strange bell-like voice, but in a tongue dark to her saviours as Hebrew.
“Kanaka,” said Kearney, “but she knows her business. Dick, leave that boat huk down—we aren’t boardin’ her. We’ll tow her in—catch hold of the rope.”
He got the sculls in, fastened the rope end to the after-thwart, and then started to work towing the canoe’s head round.
Though Dick had asked Kearney what a girl was, it was the word he was enquiring about, not the thing. The stupid old story of the boy who saw girls for the first time at a fair, was told that they were ducks, and then expressed his desire for a duck, has no foundation in psychology. Life is cleverer than that. Dick saw in Katafa a young creature something like himself. Descended from a thousand generations of people who knew all about girls, his subconscious mind accepted Katafa’s structural differences without question; she was far less strange to him than the canoe. His ancestors had never seen a South Sea canoe. This strange, savage, mosquito-like structure, with its bindings of cocoanut sennit and its mat-sail, fascinated the boy far more than its occupant. To him, truly, it was like nothing earthly; the outrigger alone was a mystery and the whole thing a joy, a joy delightfully tinged with uneasiness, for the absolutely new is disturbing to the soul of man or beast. As he rowed, Kearney noticed that the girl was chewing something in the way of food, and once he saw her bend and take up a drinking cocoanut and put it to her mouth, a fact that eased his mind, bothered by the idea that she might be starving. The tide was beginning to flood. It swept them through the break and as the dinghy turned up the right arm of the lagoon, the tow rope now tautening, now smacking the water, it was the girl’s turn to be astonished. The tall trees from outside the reef had seemed monstrous to her eyes, accustomed only to the flat circle of the atoll, but here, inside the reef, the density of the foliage, the unknown plants, the unknown smells, the trees sweeping up to heaven almost terrified her, brave though she was; the only familiar and comforting thing was the reef and its voice—but those trees in their hundreds and thousands, climbing on each other’s shoulders!
Steering with her paddle, she kept the canoe in line with the dinghy, the wild cocoanut almost brushing her as they turned the little cape; then, as they came alongside the bank, she sprang out and stood, her arms crossed and a hand on each shoulder, watching, whilst the others landed and Kearney tied the boats up.
“Now then, Kanaka girl,” said Mr. Kearney, as he rose from this business and approached her, followed cautiously by the boy, “what’s yer name?—Jim,” pointing to his breast with his thumb. “I’m Jim—Jim.—What’s yourn, eh?”
She understood at once.