CHAPTER XVIII
A hot, blazing, and windless day, so hot that the branches of the coco-palms, which at early morn had swished and merrily swayed to the trade wind, now hung limp and motionless, as if they had suffered from a long tropical drought instead of merely a few hours' cessation of the brave, cool breeze, which for nine months out of twelve for ever made symphony in their plumed crests.
On the shady verandah of a small but well-built native house Amy Marston was seated talking to an old, snowy-haired white man, whose bright but wrinkled face was tanned to the colour of dark leather by fifty years of constant exposure to a South Sea sun.
“Don't you worry, ma'am. A ship is bound to come along here some time or another, an' you mustn't repine, but trust to God's will.”
“Indeed I try hard not to repine, Mr. Manning. When I think of all that has happened since that night, seven months ago, I have much for which to thank God. I am alive and well, my child has been spared to me, and in you, on this lonely island, I have found a good, kind friend, to whom I shall be ever grateful.”
“That's the right way to look at it, ma'am. Until you came here I had not seen a white woman for nigh on twenty years, and when I did first see you I was all a-trembling—fearing to speak—for you looked to me as if you were an angel, instead of——”
“Instead of being just what I was—a wretched, half-mad creature, whom your kindness and care brought back to life and reason.”
The old man, who even as he sat leant upon a stick, pointed towards the setting sun, whose rays were shedding a golden light upon the sleeping sea.
“Whenever I see a thing like that, Mrs. Marston, I feel in my heart, deep, deep down, that God is with us, and that I, Jim Manning, the old broken-down, poverty-stricken trader of Anouda, has as much share in His goodness and blessed love as the Pope o' Borne or the Archbishop o' Canterbury. See how He has preserved you, and directed that schooner to drift here to Anouda, instead of her going ashore on one of the Solomon Islands, where you and all with you would have been killed by savage cannibals and never been heard of again.”