The Blue Lagoon Part 36

"Yes; but the Polynesians can't be really called savages; they are a very decent lot I've knocked about amongst them a good while, and a kanaka is as white as a white man--which is not saying much, but it's something. Most of the islands are civilised now. Of course there are a few that aren't, but still, suppose even that 'savages,' as you call them, had come and taken the children off--"

Lestrange's breath caught, for this was the very fear that was in his heart, though he had never spoken it.

"Well?"

"Well, they would be well treated."

"And brought up as savages?"

"I suppose so."

Lestrange sighed.

"Look here," said the captain; "it's all very well talking, but upon my word I think that we civilised folk put on a lot of airs, and waste a lot of pity on savages."

"How so?"

"What does a man want to be but happy?"

"Yes."

"Well, who is happier than a naked savage in a warm climate? Oh, he's happy enough, and he's not always holding a corroboree. He's a good deal of a gentleman; he has perfect health; he lives the life a man was born to live--face to face with Nature. He doesn't see the sun through an office window or the moon through the smoke of factory chimneys; happy and civilised too but, bless you, where is he? The whites have driven him out; in one or two small islands you may find him still--a crumb or so of him."

"Suppose," said Lestrange, "suppose those children had been brought up face to face with Nature--"

"Yes?"

"Living that free life--"

"Yes?"

"Waking up under the stars"--Lestrange was speaking with his eyes fixed, as if upon something very far away--"going to sleep as the sun sets, feeling the air fresh, like this which blows upon us, all around them. Suppose they were like that, would it not be a cruelty to bring them to what we call civilisation?"

"I think it would," said Stannistreet.

Lestrange said nothing, but continued pacing the deck, his head bowed and his hands behind his back.

One evening at sunset, Stannistreet said:

"We're two hundred and forty miles from the island, reckoning from to-day's reckoning at noon. We're going all ten knots even with this breeze; we ought to fetch the place this time to-morrow. Before that if it freshens."

"I am greatly disturbed," said Lestrange.

He went below, and the schooner captain shook his head, and, locking his arm round a ratlin, gave his body to the gentle roll of the craft as she stole along, skirting the sunset, splendid, and to the nautical eye full of fine weather.

The breeze was not quite so fresh next morning, but it had been blowing fairly all the night, and the Raratonga had made good way. About eleven it began to fail. It became the lightest sailing breeze, just sufficient to keep the sails drawing, and the wake rippling and swirling behind. Suddenly Stannistreet, who had been standing talking to Lestrange, climbed a few feet up the mizzen ratlins, and shaded his eyes.

"What is it?" asked Lestrange.

"A boat," he replied. "Hand me that gla.s.s you will find in the sling there."

He levelled the gla.s.s, and looked for a long time without speaking.

"It's a boat adrift--a small boat, nothing in her. Stay! I see something white, can't make it out. Hi there!"--to the fellow at the wheel. "Keep her a point more to starboard." He got on to the deck.

"We're going dead on for her."

"Is there any one in her?" asked Lestrange.

"Can't quite make out, but I'll lower the whale-boat and fetch her alongside."

He gave orders for the whale-boat to be slung out and manned.

As they approached nearer, it was evident that the drifting boat, which looked like a ship's dinghy, contained something, but what, could not be made out.

When he had approached near enough, Stannistreet put the helm down and brought the schooner to, with her sails all shivering. He took his place in the bow of the whale-boat and Lestrange in the stern. The boat was lowered, the falls cast off, and the oars bent to the water.

The little dinghy made a mournful picture as she floated, looking scarcely bigger than a walnut sh.e.l.l. In thirty strokes the whaleboat's nose was touching her quarter. Stannistreet grasped her gunwale.

In the bottom of the dinghy lay a girl, naked all but for a strip of coloured striped material. One of her arms was clasped round the neck of a form that was half hidden by her body, the other clasped partly to herself, partly to her companion, the body of a baby. They were natives, evidently, wrecked or lost by some mischance from some inter-island schooner. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell gently, and clasped in the girl's hand was a branch of some tree, and on the branch a single withered berry.

"Are they dead?" asked Lestrange, who divined that there were people in the boat, and who was standing up in the stern of the whale-boat trying to see.

"No," said Stannistreet; "they are asleep."