Читать книгу The Dark River онлайн

2 страница из 94

On a February afternoon a small canoe with two occupants was skirting this lonely region along the lagoons that border the eastern side of the Taiarapu Peninsula. The man on the stern thwart was a native, about sixty years of age, with a lined, rugged, and kindly face, and the muscular frame common even to the older men of his race. He was naked to the waist and wore a weather-stained pandanus hat pressed over his thick gray hair. He paddled with the unconscious ease of breathing, first on one side, then on the other, and the canoe, slipping along with a faint seething hiss, appeared to be guiding itself through the channels of vivid green water, darkening at times to deepest blue, amongst the scattered coral shoals that rose here and there to within a few inches of the surface of the lagoon. His companion, a girl of sixteen, sat forward, using her paddle with the same effortless skill, scarcely aware of her movements as she dipped her blade into the sunlit water. Presently the man looked over his shoulder as a faint breath of air fanned his cheek.