By Reef and Palm Part 18

And Doris, throwing her weak arms round his neck, kissed him with a sob, and lay back again to wait.

With Rua Manu and two others of his faithful native crew, Brantley walked quickly across the island to the lagoon to where the boat lay.

Luita was not there, and the dark eyes of his sailors met his in a responsive glow of hope--she had not died in the boat!

They turned back into the silent aisles of coconut palms, and then Rua Manu loudly called her name.

"Listen," he said.

A voice--a weak, trembling voice--was singing the song of Talaloo.

"Terunavahori, bending low, Bindeth the sandals on Talaloo's feet; 'Hasten, O hasten, lover true, O'er the coral, cruel and sharp, Over the coral, and sand, and rock, Snare thee a turtle for our marriage feast; IA AKOE! brave lover mine.'"

"In the old MARAE, Paranili," said Rua Manu, pointing to the remains of a ruined temple. Motioning to the seamen to remain outside, Brantley entered the crumbling walls of the old heathen MARAE. At the far end was a little screen of coconut boughs. He stooped down and went in.

A few minutes pa.s.sed, and then his hand was thrust out between the branches as a sign for them to follow.

One by one they came and sat beside Brantley, who held the wasted figure of the wanderer in his arms. The sound of his voice had brought back her wavering reason, and she knew them all now. She knew, too, that her brief young life was ebbing fast; for, as each of the brown men pressed their lips to her hand, tears coursed down their cheeks.

"See, men of Vahitahi, my Englishman hath come to me, a fool that fled from his house ... because I thought that he lied to me. Teloma was it who first mocked, and said: ''Tis his wife from Beretania who hath come to seek him;' and then other girls laughed and mocked also, and said: 'AH-HE! Luita, this fair-faced girl who sayeth she is thy husband's sister, AH-HE!' ... and their words and looks stung me ... So at night I took my child and swam to the boat.... My child, see, it is here," and she touched a little mound in the soil beside her.

There was a low murmur of sympathy, and then the brown men went outside and covered their faces with their hands, after the manner of their race when death is near, and waited in silence.

Night had fallen on the lonely island, and the far-off m.u.f.fled boom of the breakers as they dashed on the black ledges of the weather reef would now and then be borne into the darkness of the little hut.

"Put thy face to mine, Paranili," she whispered; "I grow cold now."

As the bearded face of the man bent over her, one thin, weak arm rose waveringly in the air, and then fell softly round his neck, and Brantley, with his hand upon her bosom, felt that her heart had ceased to beat.

The next day he sailed the schooner into the lagoon, and Doris pressed her lips on the dead forehead of the native girl ere she was laid to rest. Something that Doris had said to him as they walked away from her grave filled Brantley's heart with a deadly fear, and as he took her in his arms his voice shook.

"Don't say that, Doris. It cannot be so soon as that. I was never a good man; but surely G.o.d will spare you to me a little longer."

But it came very soon--on the morning of the day that he intended sailing out of the lagoon again, Doris died in his arms on board the schooner, and Brantley laid her to rest under the shade of a giant puka-tree that overshadowed the stones of the old MARAE.

That night he called Rua Manu into the cabin and asked him if he could beat his way back to Vahitahi in the schooner.

"'Tis an easy matter, Paranili. So that the sky be clear and I can see the stars, then shall I find Vahitahi in three days."

"Good. Then to-morrow take the schooner there, and tell such of the people as desire to be with me to come here, and bring with them all things that are in my house. It is my mind to live here at Tatakoto."

As the schooner slipped through the narrow pa.s.sage, he stood on the low, sandy point, and waved his hand in farewell.

A week later the little vessel dropped her anchor in the lagoon again, and Rua Manu and his crew came ash.o.r.e to seek him.

They found him lying under the shade of the puka-tree with his revolver in his hand and a bullet-hole in his temple.