Under Sail

by Lincoln Colcord

"He advanced toward her, making signs of friendliness—of affection, it's to be supposed. Their hearts were free as the air, and they went naturally, like God's children, into each other's arms. She remained unafraid ... so he discovered that she loved him, too. Their meeting at the head of the beach had been unobserved; they melted together into the jungle like creatures of the light, and the boughs that she'd parted as if opening the door of life silently closed behind them.

"A little later he returned to the beach and aroused his crew; the men had fallen into a sort of stupor as they lay in the hot sun. The girl led them inland to the main village of her people, where they were received like gods dropped from the sky"

Nichols leaned back in his chair, smiling crookedly. "The story of the advance of civilization" said he grimly "is the story of how savages have had to learn that white men aren't gods. It's an old story now—old and threadbare. It's been pretty nearly completely learned.... These people among whom Devereux and his party had fallen had never seen a white man before. The story was all new and fresh to them. But owing to the wholly exceptional circumstances, its ending didn't run according to the usual distressful formula. In fact, it resulted in a real victory.

"The white men were very few, to begin with; and they couldn't call on their governments, at the head of the organized world, to support and further with mechanical engines of destruction their various lusts and designs. Happily, three of them died within a week after they had landed, from the effects of that first drink of water and the intemperate eating that followed. The other three, however, rapidly recovered strength and peccancy, and began casting their eyes on the women of the village. You know the ripe, luxuriant beauty of the Marquesan women: these people were of the same root stock. It wasn't many days before a number of violent outrages had been committed, which rang around the island—a couple of husbands murdered, maidens violated, and wives put to shame.

"Now, these people were moral, of course, after the wise and simple code of nature; and the chief of the village was a man of character and decision. He didn't waste time in parley; when the crimes were brought home beyond peradventure, and it was seen that the gods had turned to clay, he had the offending sailors taken into custody, and himself dispatched all three of them with the same club. Later their best parts were eaten at a feast of fairly legitimate rejoicing. Devereux was spared because he had behaved himself, and because of the love of the girl, who, it appears, was the chief's daughter.

"We've all dreamed of a life of truth and freedom; but few of us have both won it and lost it, in the brief span of a year. You should see Devereux's eyes kindle, while he tells you of it, while he's trying to convince you that he isn't mad. The people of this island had no traditions of their origin, no legends of visits from the outside world. It happens, through the fact of prevailing winds in the Pacific, that no sailing ship route passed near this region; steamers, also, gave it a wide berth, for it didn't lie between anywhere and anywhere. It was a place apart, visited by human agency only on the remotest chance. It may well be that during a period of many years the only two vessels to wander down those particular miles of waters were the ship that left Devereux floating on the ocean and the ship that picked him up in the same spot over a year later. Thus it was that the island had remained undiscovered, peopled by a race without knowledge of the world. They were honest and lovable children—much as God intended all of us to be, I suppose, much as we might have been if we hadn't found a way temporarily to surmount our destiny.

"The island itself was an emerald anchored in a field of cobalt, a jewel floating on the broad bosom of the sea. The rustling palm trees waved day and night before the steady trade winds; the air hung cool in the shadows, the white surf broke on the reefs in constant thunder, and the tropical sunlight surrounded the gem like a halo of misty gold. Devereux lived there a year, and the love that came to him partook of the nature of the place—fresh, divine, alluring, rich with colour and meaning, pure as the light, true as the unchanging wind. A son was born to them. Nothing crossed their lives of sorrow or evil. They had forgotten time and its desperate occasions. The new day was but a repetition of the old.

"But I can't begin to show you half of the peace and beauty of that year. Ask me what the heart of man desires, and I'll answer that every element of it existed there on the island—conquest, honour, joy, creative impulse, love—enough for a dreamer or a doer, the wise design of nature with her uneasy and aspiring offsprings. Devereux grew to love the people; and because he seemed so different, yet conformed naturally to the island proprieties, they exalted him. And, marvellous to relate, he knew the worth of what he had found; he fulfilled the opportunity, he appreciated the honour, he was worthy of the romantic choice"

Nichols struck the table sharply with his fist. "Beware of too much happiness!" he growled "That's another lesson of a jaundiced civilization. It isn't expedient to embrace truth too hard.... Who could have conceived an existence safer than Devereux's, or one more likely to last? The broadest ocean in the world guarded him; the place of his retreat had never been discovered. The people adored him, the arms of a great love enfolded him; and he was glad to stay. What better ramparts could life have built for his defence? But fate, the old destroyer, willed it otherwise; and he was sent back to us, to an unbelieving world—to point some obscure moral, I suppose, perhaps in an attempt to show up all the hollowness and unreality ... if we only had the eyes to see.

"They had saved the whaleboat, of course; Devereux used to cruise about the island in her, catching wonderful fish, for he was a sailor at heart, and couldn't keep off the water. One day something led him far off shore—a speck on the horizon, which he'd no sooner seen than he wished to investigate. It looked like a piece of wreckage, or a boat; he became suddenly excited to think of finding traces of his fellow-men. Thus the devil with a memory lured him to destruction. The object was farther away than he had at first realized; it continued for a long while to look like a boat with a man's figure propped up in one end. But when he finally came up to it, he found nothing more interesting than a tree floating half submerged with a huge root that indeed resembled, even at close range, the fancy his mind had created.