“And you really didn't care for him, Tessa?”
“Not a bit. How could I? Harvey, I never, never thought about anybody in the world but you,” and she looked into his face with swimming eyes as he pressed his lips to hers. “There, I'll let you go now, dear. I can hear Huka and the others coming for you. But Harvey dear, don't stay away for two whole days.”
An hour after leaving the village the canoes turned aside into a small narrow bay on one of the larger islands. The water was of great depth, from sixty to seventy fathoms, though the bay itself was in no part wider than a hundred yards. A solid wall of coral enclosed it on three sides, rising sheer up from the deep blue, and its surface was now bared and drying fast under the rays of the sun, for the rain had cleared off, and the sky was a vault of unflecked blue once more.
The natives had told Harvey and Roka that this bay was a spot famed as the haunt of a huge species of rock-cod called pura, some of which, they said, “took two strong men to lift,” and they were greatly pleased when they found that both the white man and Roka knew the pura well, and had eagerly assented to Harvey's proposition that they should spend an hour or two in the place, and try and get one or two of the gigantic fish; as they had the necessary tackle—thick, six-plaited lines of coir fibre, with heavy wooden hooks such as are used for shark-fishing by the natives of the equatorial and north-west islands of the Pacific.
Had Harvey and his companions been ten minutes later in turning aside to enter the bay they would have been seen by Chard and Hendry ere they descended the coral mound at the north end of the lagoon, and much of this tale would not have been told. For had the destroyers of poor Oliver and his crew discovered the canoes they probably would at once have launched their boat again, and have put to sea, or at least prepared themselves for an attack. But great events so often come of small things.
For nearly an hour Harvey, Roka, and Huka fished for pura from the coral ledges, but without success. They had baited their hooks with flying-fish, as was the practice of the Pikirami people.
“Master,” said Roka presently to Harvey, “never have I had good luck with flying-fish when fishing for pura in mine own land of Manhiki. 'Tis a feke{*} that the pura loveth.”
* Octopus.