lips met the press of mine, and, by what strange trick of the imagination I know not, the scene in the cabin of the Ghost flashed upon me, when she had pressed her fingers lightly on my lips and said, “Hush, hush.”
“My woman, my one small woman,” I said, my free hand petting her shoulder in the way all lovers know though never learn in school.
“My man,” she said, looking at me for an instant with tremulous lids which fluttered down and veiled her eyes as she snuggled her head against my breast with a happy little sigh.
I looked toward the cutter. It was very close. A boat was being lowered.
“One kiss, dear love,” I whispered. “One kiss more before they come.”
“And rescue us from ourselves,” she completed, with a most adorable smile, whimsical as I had never seen it, for it was whimsical with love.
Adventure
Chapter I. Something to Be Done
Chapter V. She Would a Planter Be
Chapter VII. A Hard-Bitten Gang
Chapter IX. As Between a Man and a Woman
Chapter X. A Message From Boucher
Chapter XI. The Port Adams Crowd
Chapter XII. MR. Morgan and Mr. Raff
Chapter XIII. The Logic of Youth
Chapter XV. A Discourse on Manners
Chapter XVI. The Girl Who Had Not Grown Up
Chapter XVII. “Your” Miss Lackland
Chapter XVIII. Making the Books Come True
Chapter XXII. Gogoomy Finishes Along Kwaque Altogether
Chapter XXIII. A Message From the Bush
Chapter XXVI. Burning Daylight
Chapter XXVII. Modern Duelling
| “We are those fools who could not rest In the dull earth we left behind, But burned with passion for the West, And drank strange frenzy from its wind. The world where wise men live at ease Fades from our unregretful eyes, And blind across uncharted seas We stagger on our enterprise.” “THE SHIP OF FOOLS.” |
Chapter I.
Something to Be Done
He was a very sick white man. He rode pick-a-back on a woolly-headed, black-skinned savage, the lobes of whose ears had been pierced and stretched until one had torn out, while the other carried a circular block of carved wood three inches in diameter. The torn ear had been pierced again, but this time not so ambitiously, for the hole accommodated no more than a short clay pipe. The man-horse was greasy and dirty, and naked save for an exceedingly narrow and dirty loin-cloth; but the white man clung to him closely and desperately. At times, from weakness, his head drooped and rested on the woolly pate. At other times he lifted his head and stared with swimming eyes at the cocoanut palms that reeled and swung in the shimmering heat. He was clad in a thin undershirt and a strip of cotton cloth, that wrapped about his waist and descended to his knees. On his head was a battered Stetson, known to the trade as a Baden-Powell. About his middle was strapped a belt, which carried a large-calibred automatic pistol and several spare clips, loaded and ready for quick work.
The rear was brought up by a black boy of fourteen or fifteen, who carried medicine bottles, a pail of hot water, and various other hospital appurtenances. They passed out of the compound through a small wicker gate, and went on under the blazing sun, winding about among new-planted cocoanuts that threw no shade. There was not a breath of wind, and the superheated, stagnant air was heavy with pestilence. From the direction they were going arose a wild clamour, as of lost souls wailing and of men in torment. A long, low shed showed ahead, grass-walled and grass-thatched, and it was from here that the noise proceeded. There were shrieks and screams, some unmistakably of grief, others unmistakably of unendurable pain. As
