Chapter 3

The warm sun and the drowsy chirping and buzzing of insects in the grass
brought on a nap that caught me unaware. It must have been mid-day when
I awoke with a little start, to sit up and rub my eyes, wondering for an
instant where I was. Unloading my gun, I waded out after the decoys and
strung my dead birds on a thong of leather. Then, yielding to a habit of
those days, I climbed to the top of a sand hill, for a look at the
beach. Next moment I nearly shouted aloud in the excitement of what I
saw.

Close inshore, not far beyond the outer line of breaking seas, a
two-masted schooner was rounding into the wind. She was painted white
and her sails shivered crisply in the light air. One needed small
knowledge of ships to appreciate the beauty of the little vessel: the
high sharp bows, the graceful sweep of sheer, the slender masts, the
taut lines of shroud and stay. The sight of a ship was rare along our
stretch of coast. At long intervals we saw a trail of smoke far out to
sea–the steamer trading between San Francisco and the west coast of
Mexico–but this was the first time within my memory that a vessel of
any kind had passed so close to shore. And she was not merely passing,
for I saw now that her crew was sliding a long double-ended boat over
the rail. Three men sprang into the whaleboat: a pair of oarsmen who
seated themselves and began to pull toward shore, and a man in blue, who
stood in the stern, holding a steering-sweep with one hand and waving
good-bye to a gigantic figure at the schooner’s wheel. The giant raised
his hand in an answering wave; the schooner bore off, her sails filled,
and she headed out to sea, heeling gracefully to the breeze.

There had been a storm in the north and the swell was high that day.
Even from my perch on the dune, the approaching boat was invisible each
time it swung down into the trough. It was just beyond the breakers now,
and as it rose on the crest of a wave I saw that the oarsmen had ceased
to pull and that the man with the steering-sweep had turned his head and
was watching the rearing seas astern. The ground swell, as I have said,
was very high, rolling shoreward a good ten feet from trough to ridge,
and I began to wonder how these three men would win the beach through
the turmoil of white water ahead of them. Rearing and tossing as the
water shoaled, three or four great waves passed under the boat and
crashed forward, racing toward the beach in walls of foam. Then, clear
above the thunder of the surf, I heard a vibrant shout–a command in
some strange foreign tongue. The men on the seats tugged with a sudden
desperate effort at their oars; the man astern, with a single heave of
his sweep, turned the boat straight in toward where I lay. He was
smoking a cigar, and I felt a thrill of admiration at the easy, careless
way he stood at his post. A tremendous comber, with patches of foam
beginning to appear along its crest, lifted the boat high in air and
swept it forward tilting on the brink of a foaming wall. The wave
tumbled and crashed and came rushing far up the beach.

The boat grounded with a gentle shock and the two oarsmen leaped
overboard to hold her against the strong backwash. They were brown men,
I saw: great brawny fellows more than six feet tall, with handsome
good-natured faces and teeth that flashed when they smiled. The
steersman sprang out on the damp sand and gave an order, at which his
men dropped a pair of light rollers on the beach and began to drag the
boat up beyond highwater mark. Then he came strolling toward the sand
hill where I lay hidden in the grass.

He was dressed in blue serge–a double-breasted coat with brass
buttons–and a blue yachting-cap with a white crown. His age must have
been forty or forty-five, but he was straight as an Indian and carried
himself like a boy. His face, of a humorous and rather reckless cast,
was tanned almost to the shade of the brown sailors toiling with the
boat, and his black eyes were the most brilliant I have ever seen.

His eyes betrayed him. He tossed away the burned-down cigar, folded his
arms, and came walking slowly toward my hiding-place, gazing about him
with a half-smile on his lips, as if this lonely beach recalled a train
of pleasant memories. I was peering down over a clump of rank salt grass
when he glanced up and looked directly into my eyes.

“Uncle Harry!” I shouted as I came sliding and tumbling down the steep
face of the dune. His strong hands seized me and lifted me to my feet.

“You’re Charlie, eh?” he said, when he had looked me up and down with a
smile that took me back to evenings by our fireside, ten years before.
“You’ve done well to remember me all this time! By Jove! I’d never have
known you in the world! Here, let’s have another look. A chip of the old
block, I reckon–you’re going to have your grandfather’s mouth. Well, I
never liked a soft man. How are you all? Did you sight me from the
house? Been shooting, eh–let’s see your birds.”

I led him across the dunes to where I had left my gun and string of
duck. At his request I undid the throng about their necks and laid them
out on the sand, while he took them up one by one, spreading a wing to
admire the changing colors of the speculum, or smoothing the feathers of
a glossy head. At last he sighed, as he cut the end of a fresh cigar and
looked up at me.

“Ah, Charlie, it takes me back,” he remarked. “Many and many a time
I’ve shot over this pond! I had an old muzzle-loader, twice the weight
of that gun of yours. On a Friday night your grandfather used to say:
‘Which one of you is going down to the marsh to-morrow to get me a mess
of duck?’ and I always landed the job. Your daddy liked to work with the
cattle; he reckoned shooting was a chore, like splitting kindling, or
driving the milk-cows in from pasture. But it’s time for _kaikai_, and
I’m keen to see Ben and Mary after all these years. And Marion–she’ll
be seventeen now, eh? Ill bring my boys up to the house for a bite; the
swell was too high to drop anchor, so I told the mate to stand off and
on till I came out.”

He turned toward the beach and called the sailors in his strong vibrant
voice: “_E Ivi! E Ofai e!_” A moment later I saw the two brown men
trotting across the dunes. Their feet were bare and they wore sailor
jackets and trousers of dungaree. Their round caps bore the schooner’s
name, Tara, woven in silver thread upon the bands.

“Good lads,” remarked my uncle, as they drew near. “Paumotu boys from
Rangiroa–they’ve been with me since the Tara was built. Shake hands
with them before we start.” He spoke to the sailors in their own tongue,
telling them that I was his brother’s son, and they smiled as they gazed
at me with the frank curiosity of savages. At a word from Uncle Harry,
one of them picked up my gun and birds, and I led the way around the
marsh to the Santa Brigida road.

We had not walked more than half a mile when we met my father, who had
sighted the schooner and was now riding down to the beach.