“This is a grand dugout you’ve got!” Johnny enthused.
Smiling, Samatan pulled a line, giving the boat full sail. She tilted sharply. Boy and man settled back against the pull of the sail and sped along before the wind.
Johnny’s eyes took in the whole of the trim little craft, and he smiled, contentedly.
It was indeed a great little dugout. Not so small, either. Fully twenty feet long and six feet wide, it had been hewn from a solid mahogany log. The boy tried to estimate the number of days of hard, careful work that would have required, but gave it up.
The inside surface was polished to the last degree, and the seats were braided, cocoanut fibre. On the prow, carved in the most perfect manner, was the wooden image of a seagull.
All unknown to Johnny, Samatan was keeping an eye on him. His keen old mind read the boy’s thought like a book. One lover of a sailboat recognizes another, and since his tenth birthday, Johnny had been an ardent sailboat enthusiast. At that age he had rigged up a square sail for a rowboat and had known many happy hours on the water. The fact that he had once capsized and barely escaped drowning, had not in the least dampened his ardor.
“We go coral reef. Catchem turtles for stew,” Samatan said at last.
“How do you catch them?” Johnny asked.
“Samatan show you.”
After that there was silence.