Argosy, Vol. 111, No. 1 — page 116: what you’re looking at

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106 hundred, and the torrid atmosphere sug- gested twenty degrees more. The barom- eter showed no change, no hint of storm. He went on deck. The Wave was chug- ging over a sea of glass, the wide roll of it unbroken, viscous. Nowhere was there a sign of cloud or of wind. Atupa came aft, showing his filed teeth in a grm. He was by way of being a dandy, in imitation of his skipper, and he had a row of cowries about his forehead, with brass rings in the holes he had stretched in his ear lobes. A beautifully polished necklace of Tredacua shells swung low on his chest, and shell armlets were sunk deeply in his flesh. He was quite naked, save for his ornaments, the Solo- mon Islanders hating the feel of cloth. “That Larakini he spout all same whale,” he said. “ My word, I think one barrel of water he throw up. What we do now?” . “Chuck him in his bunk,” said Bligh, “ and have a boy open me a drinking nut.” CHAPTER X. THE BURNING SAND. SIME lay in his bunk, exhausted, while McKay prepared for the wizardry of the burning sand. He took his duck trous- ers and, with a seaman’s neatness, ripped out the cotton pockets. Then he made two others, much longer, conical of shape, out of canvas. The bottom of these he did not sew, but closed with a puckering string, bringing the loose ends with his needle out by the seam of either leg, so that they would hang like short ravelings, unnoticed. Next he made his mixture of chlorate of potash, mixing his granulated sugar with the oxyhalogen salt, and testing the product with his small vial of acid. Satisfied, he put the powdery stuff away in the tin box that had contained the safety crackers, and closed the lid tightly, to prevent any de- terioration from dampness. Finally he lighted his pipe and went up on deck to loll against the rail and think. The vision of the girl was verv clear. McKay had not seen many white girls at close range during his trading days. Ashore THE ARGOSY. at Suva, or other settlements, he went about his business affairs promptly and put out to Hope Island with the least delay. He did not put up at the hotels the tourists frequented. Sometimes he glanced across the lawns at the dim-lit verandas where light laughter sounded from the airily-clad women, the fiery tips of cigars showed, and the clink of glasses proclaimed the presence of men who moved in different ways than he did. He loved his island solitudes, the broad reaches of horizon, the ever-shifting, pearly masses of the trade-wind clouds, the storms, the calms, the flaunting palms, and the scented bush. Some day, he vaguely told himself, when he had struck his rich patch of pearls, when he had made his pile, he would strike out and see the world. But he knew that the glamour of the tropics had gripped him and would always bring him back. Of the women with whom those of his own calling trailed on their trips ashore, he knew little, wished to know no more. There was no lack of manhood nor of manhood’s full desires in McKay, but, until now, his work had satisfied him, and His sex-thoughts had been entirely visionary. The monotony of trading had not yet palled upen him, he had not tired of the little adventures, the spearing for fish or squid in the reef-pools, the hunting of a shark for its skin to use in polishing, the ever-present fascination of voyaging to little-known atolls and pro- specting for pearls. Like the placer-miner, he always found just enough to lure him along in the hope of the big discovery—the perfect pearl. Once he had gone up the Mambare River, gold hunting, before he acquired his island, but they had found nothing. But he had never been discouraged, and it was in a whimsy of optimism rather than the reverse. that he called his little holding Hope Island. Now, for the first time, sex really chal- lenged. Lenna Parks, as she had danced in the moonlight, almost ethereal, yet, in the glance in which their eyes had met, emi- nently human; Lenna, with white limbs gleaming in artistry and modesty, with the glimpses of the moon upon her brown hair, gently gilding it, held more than his MICLOOO @) CO S (CO