Dick was different. For all his red head and straight nose and strange-coloured eyes he might have been a boy of Karolin.
She finished her food. Kearney had given her a plate, one of the few unbroken of those Stanistreet had left behind for them. It had flowers painted on it and the thing intrigued her vastly. It seemed to her a new sort of shell, and when the sailor rose, replete and drowsy, and went off for his siesta in a comfortable spot amidst the trees, Dick, who had received instructions to “clear up them things an’ give’s a call if she tries to meddle with the boats,” saw Katafa furtively trying to scratch one of the flowers off the plate.
“They’re painted on,” said Dick, suddenly losing his shyness. “You can’t get them things off.” Finding his voice gave him courage, and getting on his legs, he ran off to the house, returning in a minute with one of the ships, a frigate. Kearney had made rests for each one to stand on, and he carried the frigate, rest and all, and placed it close by her on the ground.
“Ain’t like yours,” said Dick, reclining beside it and handling the tiny spars so that she might see how they swung. “It’s a fridgit.”
The girl, appealed to in the language of ships and sitting on her heels, regarded the little vessel with interest. In Karolin lagoon, two miles beyond the break and in ten-fathom water, lay the hull of a sunk ship that the Kanakas had burnt. She had knocked a hole in herself by drifting on a reef, and the flames had only time to bring the masts down before she sunk, and there she lay on an even keel, clear to be seen in the crystal water and with the fish playing round her stern post.
The Karolin boys called her the big canoe of the papalagi. Katafa knew nothing of her history or of its connection with herself, but the shape was the same as the shape of the “fridgit”; only the masts were wanting.
“Look!” said Dick, showing how the yards were swung. “She’s square-sailed, all but the mizzen, same’s your boat. You could reef ’em up, only there ain’t any reef points; she’s too small, Jim says. This is the rudder an’ tiller. You ain’t got no rudder to yours.” He looked up at her. From her face and the interest in it, she seemed to understand. She leaned forward and moved the tiny tiller with her finger tip. A wheel was beyond Kearney’s art and the steering gear of Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s ships had to suffice. Then she leaned further forward and blew hard at the tiny main topsail, slinging the yard round.
“Matagi,” cried she, “O he amorai—Matagi.”
“That’s the way it goes!” cried Dick, pleased to find her so apt, and talking just as though she were able to understand every word. “And when you’re sailin’ close to the wind you haul it that way. That square rig—wait a minit.”
He rushed off to the house and returned with the schooner, dumping it before her.