Читать книгу The Dark River онлайн

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"All right. I may come out again, later. Wonder what time the bus starts from here?"

"You needn't worry about that. They've probably just started cranking the engine. We can ask Fara to send one of his grandchildren down to tell them you're going."

When McLeod had said good-bye to Fara's household, Hardie went with him to the Chinaman's store, where the driver was preparing his mail coach for the return journey. There were not many passengers from Tautira and most of the cargo was filled with fish and fruit.

"Alan, don't forget your dark glasses," McLeod said.

Hardie smiled. "I won't, Grandma; and my flannel chest protector and the wristlets."

"That's all right, but you wear 'em," McLeod replied grimly. "It's damned important."

"I know. Cheerio, Mac. I'll see you on steamer day, if not before."

* * * * *

Hardie was lonely for a day or two, after McLeod's departure, but he soon found his time passing so pleasantly that he scarcely thought of his friend. Tautira was very different from the cosmopolitan half-civilization of Papeete. It was a purely native community, little influenced by whites or Chinese, almost self-contained in an economic sense, and connected with the rest of the island only by the arrival of the bus. Each morning at dawn the villagers scattered to their self-appointed tasks for the day. Some went inland to cultivate their gardens of yams and taro, to make copra, or to feed their swine. Others set out in canoes to fish along the reefs. By midmorning the day's supplies of food began to come in, each family sharing with others any delicacy that had been secured and receiving other gifts in return. All of these people were landholders and there was an air of peace and prosperity about the settlement that appealed greatly to Hardie. Their world was this one small village, on a crumb of land in the middle of the Pacific, and he realized, much more keenly than the natives themselves, how fortunate they were to be so far removed from the turmoil of great continents. He liked, particularly, the two or three hours in the middle of the day when all the village had the appearance of being sunk fathoms down in silence and sleep. Not even the children would be astir then, but he would see them stretched out in pools of deep shade beneath the mango trees, and old men and women sitting motionless on the shady sides of their little houses, lost in a kind of waking trance. Not being accustomed to the siesta, Hardie would walk abroad at this time, feeling that he had strayed into some enchanted world and would wake up, presently, to find himself still in England. And the enchantment was no less active at night, when the older men carried on endless conversations, seated on the floors of their verandahs with a lamp beside them while the women sewed or ironed near by. The lights of the fishermen would be strung out along the distant reefs, and from some lonely spot along the beach would come bursts of music and laughter, where the taurearea--the young men and unmarried girls--would be dancing by torchlight. To his surprise, Hardie felt a keen desire to join these gatherings, but the language barrier seemed to him an insuperable one, and he was shy about intruding himself where he felt that he might not be welcome.