Dan of the Beach

by Ralph Stock

 

Dan of the Beach

Showing How the Islands Take
Hold of a Man

By Ralph Stock

Illustrated by Louis Rogers

 

THE Islands take hold of a man. They had long since laid their soft hands on Dan of the Beach and moulded him to their liking. Day by day, year by year they had tightened their insidious grip until now he lay, powerless to move.

Some say that in time these same soft hands crush the life out of a man, This may be so, but those who know the Islands declare that if it be true, they wish for no other death.

Dan had no knowledge of all this. If anyone had suggested that he was not as free as the trades that fanned the screw pines on his beach, or that for one of his age, wealth and education, he was wasting his life, he would have laughed his cackling laugh in that man's face, and probably thumped his puny chest until he coughed.

“Freedom! Life!” he would have chuckled, waving a skinny, well-shaped hand in a gesture embracing sea and sky and palms, “What are they but this? Fifty-five last birthday, sir, and never sounder in my life!”

Then he would have probably gone into the bungalow and—himself to a half cocoanut shell of kava from the carved tanoa bowl that always stood filled on the sideboard. Kava is wonderfully reviving.

But no one on Tai Levu would have dreamed of saying such things to Dan Everett. The people of the Islands are not in the habit of making suggestions until they are asked for—it is too much effort. Neither do they ask awkward questions, and herein lies one of their chief charms. To them Dan Everett was “Dan of the Beach,” one of the countless old settlers who had drifted from the whirlpool of the outside world into the still back-waters of the Islands; who live and move and have their being in peace and sunshine for their allotted span, and finally drift as unobtrusively out of ken as they have drifted into it.

The first moment of restlessness in the last eighteen years of Dan's life came with the receipt of the letter. The postman brought it from the settlement, the six-foot-three postman with the figure of a bronze god and the smile of a child. It was the first letter he had ever delivered to Dan of the Beach and he waited, squatting on the verandah, to see the result. He was never tired of watching the effect of these quaint little scraps of paper and ink on their recipients. He regarded it in something of the light of a conjuring trick that, after looking at them for a space, people laughed or smiled, or muttered to themselves, and sometimes wept.

Dan did none of these things, but the postman noticed that his wrinkled, yellow face turned a shade yellower, and that after looking at this particular species of paper and ink twice he seemed to have shrivelled still further into his starched duck jacket; that was all. It was disappointing.

“Samoce,” (Goodby,) he muttered, and crept from the verandah.

Dan neither saw nor heard. He sat staring at the glittering Pacific for a space, then read the letter again, his dim eyes instinctively darting to the vital passages:

My dear Dan:

I am trusting that this will reach you, that you are still at the same address and in the land of the living, though for all we know you may have been in your grave the last ten years.

..... it is about the boy. He is no longer a a boy, and he is asking questions that have to be answered. What is more he has a will and opinions of his own. .... As you must know by this time Eva and I hate the thought of parting with him. To us he is exactly like the son we longed to have....

The amount you left when you started out on that hair-brained world tour of yours is far too much. It has mounted up absurdly through a few judicious investments, and now brings in ample for any normal young man.... But he is not the kind to be happy doing nothing in particular. He is ambitious in other directions than money grubbing, preferably engineering, but before getting down to it in earnest he is determined to see you.... he seems to have suddenly awakened to the fact that he owes you something, which, if you ask me, is rather unique in the average young man.... The Talbots—Mrs. and Miss—are going out on the Orontes to visit friends in Pago Pago of all places on earth, and he is going with them. Between you and me if things don't eventuate between him and Miss Talbot en route I shall be surprised..... You shouldn't have kept silence so long, Dan. It isn't as if there was any cause for it. He simply, and very rightly, wants to know you. He wants to know if you are alive or dead, well or ill, prosperous or poor, He has written you more than once and received no answer. It is too late to write now; he is going to see for himself....

He shuffled along the beach toward the settlement

The letter was from a brother, a successful business man in a provincial town on the other side of the world, and the young man referred to was Dan's son.

Dan of the Beach walked unsteadily into the bungalow—kava has a disastrous effect on the legs in time—and helped himself to two brimming half cocoanut shells from the tanoa. Then he sat in his favorite wicker chair and stared at a patch of mildew on the opposite wall.

WHAT, exactly, what had happened? He had received a letter, ah yes, and such a letter! For a full five minutes the rusty mechanism of his mind refused to grapple with anything more intricate than the patch of mildew on the wall. It should not be there. It showed the bungalow was damp. He must tell the house-boy to see to it. Then the kava came to his aid. Kava clears the brain—until it has the reverse effect. The letter—but this was terrible; the mere thought of it brought back memories, half-formed, malformed, tumbling, tumbling into his mind like a cataract. The thought of that provincial town sent cold shivers down his spine. And his brother, a tall, rather loud-voiced man with a thin-lipped, creeping-vine type of wife—terrible people. And the boy—good gracious, he had actually forgotten his name! He had thought him well-provided for—he was well-provided for with money and the kind of future that those strange beings on the other side of the world deemed desirable. What in thunder did the boy want to come and disturb other people for, people who had their own ideas of life and how it should be lived? Dan felt it in his bones that his son would be of the vigorous, masterful type. Possibly.... But there his chain of reflection snapped abruptly—it had a knack of doing that lately—and the loose end caught on to the patch of mildew on the wall. It must certainly be seen to....

Unnatural, that a father should not wish to be disturbed by his own son—whom he has not seen for eighteen years? Not at all. Those who think so can have no idea of the strength of the soft hands. To Dan of the Beach it was as though the contents of his brother's letter had rudely pried apart the encircling fingers of those hands, exposing him naked to a chilling blast. He longed to snuggle down and allow them to close gently over him once more.

To his dismay he found this impossible. “It was too late to write,” the letter had said. It was too late to do anything except prepare himself for the ordeal.

He studied his reflection in the glass. For the first time in many a year, he stood, as it were, a detached spectator viewing himself with critical eye. He saw a wizened little old man—a sort of ill-preserved gnome—staring at him with wide, weak eyes from out a white armour of starched duck. A mummy in its case! He He turned away in disgust.

For a wild moment he thought of ridding himself of beard and moustache. He had a vague notion that it had the effect of making a man look younger, better groomed. A man, yes, but he was not a man. He was a mummy in its case.

A tall young man in white flannels came forward in answer to the girl's call of “Dan!” Mr. Collard had started visibly, then glanced about him to discover whether anyone had noticed it

Then, his surroundings. They had become part of Dan of the Beach, but how would they strike a stranger? The bungalow needed painting badly. The compound was in a disgraceful state, and that was all, all except the ever-tidy coral beach, the palms a the Pacific ocean.

For another wild moment he thought of having the bungalow painted, the compound tidied, until revolt took the upper hand. Why should he go to the trouble? If this son of his “simply, and very rightly, wanted to know” his father, let him know him for what he was!

Dan of the Beach surprised his house-boy out of quite ten minutes' sleep by taking his yaka-wood stick from its home on the verandah and going out through the compound gate. Outside, he seemed to hesitate, then turned and shuffled along the beach road in the direction of the settlement. Finally his white ducks twinkled out of sight down the dark green tunnel of the overhanging mangroves. He had no idea of where he was going, but he did so want to think and he had found this impossible under the ever-watchful eye of the mildew on the bungalow wall.

ONCE a month the inter-island steamer came to Tai Levu, and it usually took three days after the event for the inhabitants of the settlement to recover. It was a wonderful affair this steamer, at least 500 tons, and capable of a trembling 10 knots.

It was considered the thing on Tai Levu to “dine aboard” if you were in the habit of making shipments, and sometimes if you were not. You then had an opportunity of unburdening your soul on the subject of copra, banana or shell prices to some misguided tourist, of whom there were always a few, lured by the brightly-coloured steamship—pamphlets and hand bills.

The steamer's monthly visitation was in progress when the mental efforts of Dan of the Beach carried him out at the other end of the beach road. It was a remarkable sight. It brought back memories more memories; would they ever stop pouring into his mind and becoming inextricably mixed with events of the peaceful present day?

The brief twilight of the tropics gave way to blue, transparent darkness and the great ship twinkled with a myriad lights. People came and went up and down the gangway; the sounds of a mouth organ came from the f'castle. To Dan it was a scene of quite unusual animation. He approached a port-hole and stood on the landing looking in. More memories! Of course, this was the dining-saloon, a spacious, warmly lighted place of red carpets, gilded pillars and revolving chairs. There were people eating, other people than the ordinary planter in white ducks. These other people wore evening dress; they looked very remarkable and yet strangely familiar as they toyed with—boiled mutton and—yes, caper sauce. The articles of diet came to Dan's mind mechanically, though he had not tasted either for years. He remembered that he had liked caper sauce. Then it came to him that these were people of another world, a world where there was color in a woman's cheeks, where there were warmly shaded lights and—and caper sauce, Yes, undoubtedly he was on the outside, looking through a round hole into the world. His son would be of that inner world. Dan's gaze became fixed on a young man with a pleated shirt front and brilliantined hair, who alternately ate boiled mutton and conversed with a rather overdressed lady in mauve. For Dan that young man became his son and the lady, Miss Talbot. He tried to picture himself sitting between them, and this was what ruined the mental picture. It was too ludicrous. The mere thought of such a situation propelled Dan from the porthole, and down the moon-mottled tunnel of the beach road.

But the picture returned, and kept returning. Dan knew that unless something were done, sooner or later it would become a reality.

With the cunning of the senile, and with frequent recourse to the carved tanoa bowl, he hit upon the great idea. It was remarkably simple, and after fighting off the bout of fever which naturally followed the recent strain of coherent thought, he proceeded to put it into execution.

First of all he sent the house-boy on some entirely unnecessary errand into the settlement. Then he spent most of his available energy and two hours of the afternoon in turning the fishing canoe bottom upwards and pushing it out into the wide Pacific. After a final leave taking of the carved tanoa he set off along the beach, launched the first small native outrigger canoe he came to and settled down to paddle.

THE Pacific was a sheet of blue glass, the nearest island was a mile distant and Dan of the Beach reached it after dark in an exhausted condition, but the Bull (chief) of the first native village he came to had some of the finest kava Dan had ever tasted, and with a turtle steak to back it up, he felt a new man. The Buli was delighted to show the hospitalities of his village to any unfortunate who lived on Tai Levu. No, he had never been there—it is perfectly possible for two islands to be less than a mile apart and yet for their inhabitants to know nothing of one another—but he had heard. Yes, he would be pleased to convey the white man to Suva in his fastest sailing canoe on the morrow.

See, then, two days later a little, wizened old man in rather creased ducks shuffling along Victoria Parade and turning into the portals of the Bank of Polynesia.

“Mr. Everett,” repeated the immaculate cashier. “Mr. Daniel Everett.” He left his cage and consulted a bulky ledger, with occasional side glances at the quaint little figure on the other side of the counter.

Dan of the Beach had started visibly at mention of his own name, and was wondering if anyone had noticed it.

Presently a door with “Manager” on it opened, emitting a grey-haired gentleman in glasses.

“Mr. Daniel Everett,” he repeated. It seemed to Dan that the whole world was engaged in shouting this extraordinary name of his from the house-tops. “Will you kindly come inside?”

Dan meekly obeyed.

“I'm exceedingly glad to meet you, Mr. Everett,” he said urbanely. “Your account has given us considerable anxiety.”

Dan murmured an apology.

“We have not been able to get into touch with you,” the manager proceeded, “you left no address; consequently we have not known quite what to do.”

“But the money's here, isn't it?” demanded Dan in sudden alarm.

“Oh, yes,” he was assured, “the money is here, Mr. Everett, I may say a considerable sum. That was our difficulty. You drew no cheques, or rather only one and that was personally, nine years ago.... It was for quite a small amount—I mean compared with the balance—it, was, yes, five hundred pounds.”

“I've never needed any more,” said Dan. The man was beginning to annoy him.

“Exactly,” replied the manager as though this simple statement completely accounted for a moderately wealthy man living for seven years on five hundred pounds. “Exactly, but it was a deposit account, and—er—it has been accumulating.”

“But is there anything against that—?”

Dan could feel his wretched mentality tottering under the strain. Instinctively he looked round the superlatively tidy office for a tanoa bowl of kava. There was none. He heard the manager's unctuous voice continuing

“Nothing in the world, Mr. Everett, but—er, as I was saying, it is a considerable sum, and we thought you might care for us to invest—”

Dan became aware that the tottering process had increased in momentum.

“Look here,” he blurted suddenly, “I came for some money. I want it now, enough to take me to Sydney and back. I want you to see to it all for me. I'm—I'm not very strong. Do what you think best with my balance; what I want now is a steerage ticket for Sydney by the next boat and under the name of Collard—yes, I said steerage and under the name of Collard.” A fit of peevishness, the same that had caused him to throw a boot at the house-boy on more than one occasion had seized on Dan of the Beach. “Get me a cabin—two cabins, one to eat in and the other to sleep in, but steerage, mind, and under the name of Collard.”

Something was throbbing at his temples now. He hurried on—“And—and I'm staying at the—oh, the hotel nearest this bank under the name of Collard, you can send in for my signature or anything. This is all in confidence. Good afternoon.”

He was gone, leaving the manager of the Suva Branch of the Bank of Polynesia staring after him into the glare of Victoria Parade.

A few hours later the clerk returned bearing a cheque.

“The signatures are identical, sir,” he said.

“Most extraordinary,” mused the manager. “We must carry out instructions. Most extraordinary.”

It was no less extraordinary to Dan of the Beach as he lay on a most uncomfortable bed in a large cheerless room at the hotel. He was under the impression that his sudden plunge into the world was going to be quite as unpleasant as he had expected. Why was everyone like that, so perturbed over matters of no real consequence? He swallowed a cigarette paper pellet of quinine and fell asleep.

IN due course Mr. Collard boarded the Sydney steamer and took up his steerage quarters in the two cabins reserved respectively for sleeping and eating. As he spent most of the day in a semi-trance and ate little except kava root, the steamship company did well out of him. In a moment of inspiration it had occurred to Dan—or rather to Mr. Collard—that travelling in this way would temper his hardships. He had a vaguely-formed plan of beginning his associations with strangers by talking with the natives who always travelled steerage. From them he would pass on to the whites of the second class, and, who knew, perhaps at the end of the voyage he would be in the first class saloon, conversing gaily with young men in pleated shirts and ladies in mauve.

For some unaccountable reason the plan miscarried. If the truth must be told, the steamer reached Sydney without Mr. Collard having addressed a soul except his steward, a pale youth whose every word and action was very properly regulated by possible eventualities.

The three days' wait in Sydney were even worse than Mr. Collard had expected. He hated it all, from the clanging street cars to the droves of harassed-looking people. Also it was June, and inconceivably cold. The mummy shivered, and shrank still further into its case.

The arrival of the Orontes found Mr. Collard on the wharf, watching the stream of inevitably harassed people flowing down the gangway and out into the town. It had never occurred to him that he would not recognize a young man of the “vigorous masterful type,” accompanied by a middle-aged lady and a charming girl with color in her cheeks. Yet he did not. There were so many, all the same, fussing over luggage or porters, or some other trivial detail.

He grasped a hurrying steward by the arm.

“Which is Mr. Everett—Mrs. Talbot?” he asked.

“Gone ten minutes ago,” snapped the steward and flung away from him in search of another victim.

Mr. Collard turned thoughtfully in the direction of the hotel. It made no difference. There were only two steamship lines to the Islands, and he hunted their offices until he found what he sought on the passenger list—Mrs. and Miss Talbot, and Mr. Daniel Everett sailing on the Levuka.

“I want two steerage cabins—” Mr. Collard had begun when the clerk spoke, still staring indifferently out of the office window, as he had stared from the beginning.

“Steerage full up.”

“Two second class—”

“Second class full up.”

Mr. Collard swallowed hard.

“Two first class cabins—”

The clerk permitted his gaze to wander from the street to his customer.

“First class state-rooms full up, sir, except the suite de luxe which, if necessary, will be partitioned off into state-rooms.”

“I'll take it,” said Mr. Collard desperately.

“The entire suite?”

A gleam of positive intelligence illumined the clerk's countenance.

“The entire suite,” repeated Mr. Collard.

Outside on the pavement he wondered what he had done. It meant that he would have to eat boiled mutton and caper sauce with gentlemen in pleated shirts. His son undoubtedly did these things. He sighed and swallowed a quinine pellet.

The first day on the Levuka passed without Mr. Collard discovering his son. It seems almost incredible, but such was the case. He passed through the ordeal of dinner, thanking Providence that there were small tables, and seated opposite an aloof lady in black, but without coming any nearer a solution of the problem. How did one discover one's son on a crowded ship? He thought of questioning the chief steward, but banished the idea as drawing attention to himself.

“My dear,” he heard someone in the ladies' boudoir remark as he passed the open windows, “who is the weird little old man with a face like a—” It sounded like “pom.”

“I don't know,” came the answer; “a planter I fancy. He has the suite de luxe anyway.”

Thereafter, Mr. Collard noted a distinct thawing in the attitude of the aloof lady in black. At the time, he passed on, and shutting the door of the suite de luxe, disturbed the superlative neatness of the bed by lying on it in his boots. He was tired, weary to death of the whole thing. He had plunged into the sea of life, and now ached to come to the surface and breathe.

Suddenly he remembered a recent purchase, and extracting it from his battered tin trunk, placed it on the superlative table. It was a tanoa bowl, very new and raw, but still a tanoa bowl; and before night it stood filled with grateful kava made from the thrice blessed root of the yagona. Mr. Collard fell asleep comparatively happy.

IN the morning fortune favored him. Some extraordinary game, which consisted in pushing wooden discs along the deck with sticks, was in progress, when a pretty girl in a flimsy dress called out “Dan.” Mr. Collard started visibly and glanced about him to discover if anyone had noticed the event. They had not. A tall young man in white flannels came forward in answer to the call, and the two of them proceeded to push wooden discs along the deck with perfect gravity, until a middle-aged lady appeared who was promptly addressed by the young man as “Mrs. Talbot.” It was enough. Mr. Collard leaned heavily on the ship's rail and looked upon his son.

Exactly what emotions he had expected to experience at this meeting it is hard to say. He was not addicted to self-analysis. He was, however, aware that he was not feeling at all as fathers are popularly supposed to feel under such circumstances. Unless he had been told that this was his son, his own flesh and blood, he would never have known it. Now that he did know it, he was quite unimpressed. He merely saw an apparently healthy and happy young man, the same as many others he had seen recently, and no less a stranger. Then, as he noted the young man's purposeful expression, even while pushing wooden discs along a deck, fear came into his perspective. Mr. Collard was aware that for some indefinite reason he feared his son.

He returned to the suite de luxe under the impression that he had passed unnoticed. But in this he was mistaken.

“Did you see that funny old chap looking on?” the young man asked the girl almost immediately after Mr. Collard's departure,

“Yes; he looks an old dear, doesn't he?” said the girl.

“Planter I believe, from the Islands. I'm going to talk to him,” announced he of the purposeful expression.

The girl nodded understandingly.

That was why a few hours later Mr. Daniel Everett strolled past the suite de luxe.

MR. COLLARD was sitting just outside the door in a deck chair smoking a native cheroot.

“Grand day,” remarked Everett carelessly.

Mr. Collard admitted that it was.

“I hope you'll excuse the question, sir, but I'm interested,” Everett came to the point after a few trivialities, “Are you from the Islands?”

Mr. Collard nodded.

“A planter, perhaps?”

“Yes, that is, yes,” faltered Mr. Collard.

Mr. Everett took a deliberate seat on the deck beside him and crossed his long, flannel encased legs.

“This is great,” he said with the light of enthusiasm in his grey eyes. Mr. Collard noted that they were grey; also that they were remarkably clear and steady. “I hope you don't mind—”

“Not a bit,” said Mr. Collard.

“You don't happen to know the Lau group—Tai Levu to be exact; I don't know if I'm pronouncing it rightly.”

“Yes, I know Tai Levu,” said Mz. Collard, and became immediately aware that the steady grey eyes were boring through him like a gimlet. He was wondering how much longer he could stand it, when Everett turned his attention to the shimmering horizon. His eyes became fixed. The muscles of his jaw were tense as he sat there staring, staring.

“I suppose,” he said presently in a level, expressionless voice, “I suppose you don't happen to know anyone there of the name of Everett—Daniel Everett?”

And it was precisely at that moment that Mr. Collard's uncertain mind refused to act. He struggled out of his chair making absurd, irritable little noises. Everett was on his feet in a moment assisting the old man into the suite de luxe.

“I'm sorry,” he kept saying for no particular reason.

Mr. Collard was aware of a firm hand guiding him to the superlative bed. His mind was a medley of mildew stains, pleated shirts, aloof ladies in black and an overwhelming desire for peace.

“.... not very strong,” he managed to articulate.

Through a mist he saw the tall figure of his son standing hesitantly in the doorway and saying “I'm sorry” with quite unnecessary insistence. Then the figure melted away and the door closed softly.

AFTER three half cocoanut shells of kava and two hours lying on the bed staring at the white enamel ceiling, Collard was extremely annoyed with himself. This was the second time he had admitted that he was not strong. He determined to make up for it at the first opportunity.

It was not long in arriving. Everett haunted the suite de luxe like a particularly healthy ghost.

“I'm sorry to worry you,” he apologized as he entered in answer to Mr. Collard's invitation, “You see it means a lot to me as I'll explain later if you'll let me, but do you happen to know—”

“Dan Everett?” supplied Mr. Collard with a valiant attempt at heartiness of manner, “of course I do, everyone knows Dan Everett.”

The young man went over to the window—there are no port-holes in a suite de luxe—and stood looking out with his hands in his pockets. He whistled a bar of some revue music, then addressed the sea.

“I don't,” he said deliberately, “although he's my father.”

“Your father!” exclaimed Mr. Collard. He flattered himself that it had been well done.

Everett turned from the window.

“Yes,” he said, “my father. What's he like?”

Everett stood contemplating Mr. Collard with a hint of truculence, the manner of one who dares another to say anything against his relative. Mr. Collard actually quailed before the glance.

“Oh, Dan Everett's all right!” he said lamely.

To his intense relief the young man turned away and dropped into a chair. He sat for a while with pursed lips, then burst into a torrent of self-abuse.

“I've been the most self-centered, selfish, self-satisfied whelp unkicked,” he announced bitterly. “I must tell you, Mr. Collard. If I don't get it off my chest I shall burst, and you—oh, I don't know, but you're the sort that will understand. You're—if you don't mind my saying so—what I half expect my father to be at your age; he's only fifty-five now.”

Mr. Collard unconsciously sat more upright in his chair. He was beginning to like this boy. He had, of course, all the pestiferous qualities of the world that Mr. Collard loathed, but there was an air of ingenuous frankness about him that pleased the old man.

“You'll hardly believe it,” he went on leaning forward in his chair and clasping and unclasping his strong young hands, “but I haven't seen my father since I was four. From then until now I've lived an ordinary, comfortable sort of life on his money without hardly thinking about him. It's extraordinary what you can get used to in time. I accepted it all as my due, if you please.”

“Well, wasn't it your due?” suggested Mr.Collard.

“My due?” flashed Everett. “I've done nothing except live and enjoy myself, when he may have needed me for years. He may have been poor, ill, dying—anything and there was I—pah! you don't know how sick of myself I am.”

“But supposing he wasn't poor or ill or dying or anything—Dan Everett wasn't any of these things when I saw him last.”

“I'm glad,” said his son, '“'but it doesn't make any difference. My place was beside my father and that's where I'm going to be.”

“And what are you going to do when you get there?”

“Do?” Everett's seamless brow contracted into a frown. “Work.”

“But what if there isn't any? Dan Everett doesn't work for a living.”

“Oh, I'll find something—planting, anything—you don't seem to realize, Mr. Collard, he's my father.”

“Perhaps I don't,” sighed the old man. “Perhaps I don't. But I don't see what you could do on Tai Levu all the same. An engineer—”

THE mechanism inside Mr. Collard's head stopped with a jolt. There was a hopeless jarring of wheels. Then to his intense relief it resumed its functions.

“An engineer told me that there is nothing to be done in Tai Levu,” he ended with an effort.

“That's funny,” said Everett, “engineering's what I fancy. But you can't tell me that a young man with a sensible—with the best wife in the world—can't be of use to his father. I—”

“Wife!” echoed Mr. Collard. “You can't take a white woman to live on Tai Levu. They die; they just fade out. Climate, you know.”

Everett tilted back his chair and whistled the same bar of revue music. Suddenly he let the chair legs fall with a thud.

“Then I'll drag him out of the beastly Islands,” he declared. “If the climate's not good enough for my wife, it's not good enough for my father. Look here, I don't mind telling you that's what I had at the back of my mind. It's wonderful what a woman can do. She'll persuade him, and if she doesn't I'll carry him out with these two hands.”

Mr. Collard contemplated the members indicated. They looked capable of all their owner claimed for them.

“That's what it is,” Everett rambled on enthusiastically. “He's rusticated in those cursed Islands. Men do get like that I believe. He'll have to be got out of them.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Collard.

As he was going towards the door, Everett noticed the tanoa.

“What's this?” he demanded with the bluntness of youth.

“Kava,” said Mr. Collard.

“May I try some?”

“I think not,” said Mr. Collard, “You wouldn't like it—at first,” he added after the door had shut.

Later that evening he came upon his son and the girl with color in her cheeks kissing behind the wheel-house. They were quite sure he had not seen them because they had sprung apart and looked over the ship's rail so cleverly.

Mr. Collard returned to the suite de luxe, closed the door, and smiled.

So, either he was to be the death of a charming girl with color in her cheeks and the stumbling-block of his son's career, or be dragged—or was it carried?—out of “those cursed Islands.”

Mr. Collard had come to love his son, yet he still smiled. He thanked Providence and kava for the strength to do what he had done.

At Suva the party broke up. The Talbots went to Pago Pago, and Everett left the ship and took the inter-island steamer—she of the 500 tons and 10 trembling knots—for Tat Levu.

Mr. Collard occupied his cheerless room at the hotel and waited.

In rather less than a fortnight Everett returned, and appeared at the hotel with a black band round his left arm.

“My father is dead,” he told Mr. Collard.

“Dead!” repeated the old man.

“Yes, it appears Everett paused, and his lips tightened. It was evident that something had “appeared” not altogether satisfactory. “It appears he led the life of a recluse. They found his fishing canoe turned bottom upwards half a mile out to sea.” Suddenly he looked up. His steady grey eyes met Mr. Collard's dim ones. “Do you know,” he said, “I feel beastly about it—although never knew him.”

“I don't see why you should,” said Mr. Collard.

“Perhaps, you don't understand,” muttered Everett, “but—never to have seen him—”

“You'll get over it,” said Mr. Collard.

“Perhaps,” mused Everett, and sat silent for a space. “I say,” he said suddenly, “how do I get from here to Pago Pago?”

A WEEK later Dan of the Beach passed through his compound gate, up the verandah steps and dropped into his favortie wicker chair. Before him stretched the palms, the curve of coral sand, and the blue Pacific. A minah bird fluttered down from a screw pine and strutted about the compound. The boom of the surf on the barrier reef chanted a benediction.

“Whew,” sighed Dan of the Beach, and smiled.

The Islands take hold of a man.