“Yes,” said Aderhold; “it comes by force of association. Dismiss it from your mind.”
“It comes as close as though it were going to be real again.”
“It is the darkness and oppression and the feeling of being pent. It will pass.—Look at the Bird-with-Wide-Wings! She is laughing at us.”
The hurricane raved itself to a close; the light came and the blue sky, the sun shone out. There followed a week of this; then, one morning at sunrise, Joan, coming out of the hut into the space beneath the trees, looked seaward and uttered a cry. “Gilbert—Gilbert!”
Aderhold came to her side. “What is it?”
Her arm was raised and extended, the hand pointing. A ship stood off the island.
All that day it was there; it hovered, as it were, it reconnoitred. It sent out no boats, but there was something that said that it had seen the village. It came near enough, and the clearing would be visible from the rigging. The Indians’ canoes, moreover, were there upon the beach.... It was a ship with dingy sails, with a bravo air, yet furtive, too. Once it clapped on sail and dwindled to a flake, and those who watched from out a screening belt of wood thought that it was gone. But it seemed that it meant only to sail around the island, for presently the outlook in the tallest tree saw its shape, having doubled a long point, enlarge again across this green and silver spit. When the second morning dawned, there it was again, dusky, ill-omened, riding the deep water beyond the reef that somewhat guarded the shore.... Then the air thickened, and there threatened a hurricane. The ship turned and scudded away. While the sky darkened, she vanished, sinking beneath the horizon to the south.
The storm broke, reigned and passed. When it was over, when, save for the myriad small wreckage and the whitened and high-running sea, there was calm again, then fell talk and discussion enough as to that ship, foreboding enough, excitement enough in the village. The Indians made new spears or tried trusted old ones, sharpening afresh every point. They had bows and arrows, though they put more dependence in their spears, and in short hatchets, headed with bits of sharpened rock. Whatever weapons there were were got in order. That done, all that they could do was done. Their not unhealthful clime, their search for food, their fishing, swimming, their games and ceremonial dances kept their bodies, slight and not greatly muscular though they were, yet in a condition of some strength and readiness. Now they had only to wait.... They waited, but no ship came back, nor other ships appeared.
The bad season passed, the good days came around again, and still no fleck of a sail showed on all the round of the blue ocean. The Indians ceased to glance up continually from whatever employment they were about. Now they looked not once a day, now they ceased all active expectation, now the matter grew dim, remote, now it faded almost from mind. The old chief, perhaps, still looked seaward, but the village at large had short memories when immediate anxieties were lifted. Life took up again the old, smooth measure.
But Aderhold and Joan could not forget. Subtly they felt that the current was wearing another channel. There were cloud shapes below the horizon. They were happy. Their joy in each other and in the child was, if that could be, deeper—the very shape of fear gave an intensity, a lambent rose and purple, a richer music—made it deeper. Their service to the folk among whom they had fallen was no less.... But they felt a threat and a haunting and a movement of life from one house to another.