CHAPTER V
THE SOUND OF A DRUM
The next day Dick was sitting under the shade of the artu. He had thebox of fishhooks beside him, and he was bending a line on to one ofthem. There had originally been a couple of dozen hooks, large andsmall, in the box; there remained now only six—four small and twolarge ones. It was a large one he was fixing to the line, for heintended going on the morrow to the old place to fetch some bananas,and on the way to try for a fish in the deeper parts of the lagoon.
It was late afternoon, and the heat had gone out of the day. Emmeline,seated on the grass opposite to him, was holding the end of the line,whilst he got the kinks out of it, when suddenly she raised her head.
There was not a breath of wind; the hush of the far-distant surf camethrough the blue weather—the only audible sound except, now and then,a movement and flutter from the bird perched in the branches of theartu. All at once another sound mixed itself with the voice of thesurf—a faint, throbbing sound, like the beating of a distant drum.
“Listen!” said Emmeline.
Dick paused for a moment in his work. All the sounds of the island werefamiliar: this was something quite strange.
Faint and far away, now rapid, now slow; coming from where, who couldsay? Sometimes it seemed to come from the sea, sometimes, if the fancyof the listener turned that way, from the woods. As they listened, asigh came from overhead; the evening breeze had risen and was moving inthe leaves of the artu tree. Just as you might wipe a picture off aslate, the breeze banished the sound. Dick went on with his work.
Next morning early he embarked in the dinghy. He took the hook and linewith him, and some raw fish for bait. Emmeline helped him to push off,and stood on the bank waving her hand as he rounded the little capecovered with wild cocoa-nut.
These expeditions of Dick’s were one of her sorrows. To be left alonewas frightful; yet she never complained. She was living in a paradise,but something told her that behind all that sun, all that splendour ofblue sea and sky, behind the flowers and the leaves, behind all thatspecious and simpering appearance of happiness in nature, lurked afrown, and the dragon of mischance.
Dick rowed for about a mile, then he shipped his sculls, and let thedinghy float. The water here was very deep; so deep that, despite itsclearness, the bottom was invisible; the sunlight over the reef struckthrough it diagonally, filling it with sparkles.
The fisherman baited his hook with a piece from the belly of a scarusand lowered it down out of sight, then he belayed the line to a tholepin, and, sitting in the bottom of the boat, hung his head over theside and gazed deep down into the water. Sometimes there was nothing tosee but just the deep blue of the water. Then a flight of spangledarrowheads would cross the line of sight and vanish, pursued by a formlike a moving bar of gold. Then a great fish would materialise itselfand hang in the shadow of the boat motionless as a stone, save for themovement of its gills; next moment with a twist of the tail it would begone.
Suddenly the dinghy shored over, and might have capsized, only for thefact that Dick was sitting on the opposite side to the side from whichthe line hung. Then the boat righted; the line slackened, and thesurface of the lagoon, a few fathoms away, boiled as if being stirredfrom below by a great silver stick. He had hooked an albicore. He tiedthe end of the fishing-line to a scull, undid the line from the tholepin, and flung the scull overboard.
He did all this with wonderful rapidity, while the line was stillslack. Next moment the scull was rushing over the surface of thelagoon, now towards the reef, now towards the shore, now flat, now endup. Now it would be jerked under the surface entirely; vanish for amoment, and then reappear. It was a most astonishing thing to watch,for the scull seemed alive—viciously alive, and imbued with somedestructive purpose; as, in fact, it was. The most venomous of livingthings, and the most intelligent could not have fought the great fishbetter.
The albicore would make a frantic dash down the lagoon, hoping,perhaps, to find in the open sea a release from his foe. Then, halfdrowned with the pull of the scull, he would pause, dart from side toside in perplexity, and then make an equally frantic dash up thelagoon, to be checked in the same manner. Seeking the deepest depths,he would sink the scull a few fathoms; and once he sought the air,leaping into the sunlight like a crescent of silver, whilst the splashof him as he fell echoed amidst the trees bordering the lagoon. An hourpassed before the great fish showed signs of weakening.
The struggle had taken place up to this close to the shore, but now thescull swam out into the broad sheet of sunlit water, and slowly beganto describe large circles rippling up the peaceful blue into flashingwavelets. It was a melancholy sight to watch, for the great fish hadmade a good fight, and one could see him, through the eye ofimagination, beaten, half drowned, dazed, and moving as is the fashionof dazed things in a circle.
Dick, working the remaining oar at the stern of the boat, rowed out andseized the floating scull, bringing it on board. Foot by foot he hauledhis catch towards the boat till the long gleaming line of the thingcame dimly into view.
The fight had been heard for miles through the lagoon water by allsorts of swimming things. The lord of the place had got sound of it. Adark fin rippled the water; and as Dick, pulling on his line, hauledhis catch closer, a monstrous grey shadow stained the depths, and theglittering streak that was the albicore vanished as if engulfed in acloud. The line came in slack, and Dick hauled in the albicore’s head.It had been divided from the body as if with a huge pair of shears. Thegrey shadow slipped by the boat, and Dick, mad with rage, shouted andshook his fist at it; then, seizing the albicore’s head, from which hehad taken the hook, he hurled it at the monster in the water.
The great shark, with a movement of the tail that caused the water toswirl and the dinghy to rock, turned upon his back and engulfed thehead; then he slowly sank and vanished, just as if he had beendissolved. He had come off best in this their first encounter—such asit was.