Chapter 12. TAIL-PIECE

On a very bright, hot, lusty, strongly blowing noon, a fortnight after

the events recorded, and a month since the curtain rose upon this

episode, a man might have been spied, praying on the sand by the lagoon

beach. A point of palm trees isolated him from the settlement; and from

the place where he knelt, the only work of man's hand that interrupted

the expanse, was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and

rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon.

The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island;

the nearer palm trees crashed and whistled in the gusts, those farther

off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities; and yet, to any

man less absorbed, there must have risen at times over this turmoil

of the winds, the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement.

There all was activity. Attwater, stripped to his trousers and lending

a strong hand of help, was directing and encouraging five Kanakas; from

his lively voice, and their more lively efforts, it was to be gathered

that some sudden and joyful emergency had set them in this bustle; and

the Union Jack floated once more on its staff. But the suppliant on the

beach, unconscious of their voices, prayed on with instancy and fervour,

and the sound of his voice rose and fell again, and his countenance

brightened and was deformed with changing moods of piety and terror.

Before his closed eyes, the skiff had been for some time tacking towards

the distant and deserted Farallone; and presently the figure of Herrick

might have been observed to board her, to pass for a while into the

house, thence forward to the forecastle, and at last to plunge into the

198

The Ebb-Tide