The Gates of Morning

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Why?

He had neither real decency nor shame in his composition, there was no one to see him in his nakedness but the gulls. Why then did he trouble?

Trouble he did and the result was scarcely worth his trouble. Then, and still without eating, he turned to and cleared the rotting pandanus and other fruit out of the canoe—he could not swill her out as he had nothing with which to hold water, but she had brought in a long piece of weed tangled on the outrigger; the sun had dried it, but he wet it again in the lagoon water and used it as a sort of mop.

Having cleaned her and seen that the mast, sail and paddles were all right, he came back to the trees, plucked some pandanus drupes and began to eat.

As he sat down to the food, he made to hitch up his left trousers leg, a habit he had. Before leaving the canoe to come back to the trees he had tried to put his hand in his pocket. In this way and in other ways and incessantly his vanished clothes spoke to him, reminding him that he was naked, worm-naked on the face of the world.

He ate, staring at the lagoon as if hypnotized by its blueness, and as he ate, pictures travelled before his mind’s eye, pictures of Karolin lagoon and the two dead women he had left on the southern beach, and then, as a bird hops from one branch to another, his mind left Karolin and lit on the deck of the Kermadec and from that on to the sands of Levua in whose woods he had slain Peterson.

All his troubles had started from the killing of Peterson. It was just as though Peterson had been following him, stripping him steadily and bit by bit of everything down to his very clothes: of the schooner, of the pearl lagoon, of his sea chest, of the few dollars he had saved, of his hat, his shoes, his trousers, his shirt, his coat—everything. He tried to put away this idea but failed.

It was now only nine o’clock in the morning of a day that would not end at sunset, of a blue and blazing day that, with night intermissions, would last for months and months—for the rainy season was far off. And he was out of trade tracks.

He stood up, looked about him, and then walking carefully, picked his way on to the rough coral above the outer beach. Here on a smooth spot he stood looking over the sea to the northeast.

Nothing.