The storm broke, reigned and passed. When it was over, when, save for the myriad small wreckage and the whitened and high-running sea, there was calm again, then fell talk and discussion enough as to that ship, foreboding enough, excitement enough in the village. The Indians made new spears or tried trusted old ones, sharpening afresh every point. They had bows and arrows, though they put more dependence in their spears, and in short hatchets, headed with bits of sharpened rock. Whatever weapons there were were got in order. That done, all that they could do was done. Their not unhealthful clime, their search for food, their fishing, swimming, their games and ceremonial dances kept their bodies, slight and not greatly muscular though they were, yet in a condition of some strength and readiness. Now they had only to wait.... They waited, but no ship came back, nor other ships appeared. The bad season passed, the good days came around again, and still no fleck of a sail showed on all the round of the blue ocean. The Indians ceased to glance up continually from whatever employment they were about. Now they looked not once a day, now they ceased all active expectation, now the matter grew dim, remote, now it faded almost from mind. The old chief, perhaps, still looked seaward, but the village at large had short memories when immediate anxieties were lifted. Life took up again the old, smooth measure. But Aderhold and Joan could not forget. Subtly they felt that the current was wearing another channel. There were cloud shapes below the horizon. They were happy. Their joy in each other and in the child was, if that could be, deeper—the very shape of fear gave an intensity, a lambent rose and purple, a richer music—made it deeper. Their service to the folk among whom they had fallen was no less.... But they felt a threat and a haunting and a movement of life from one house to another. At last, on a calm and glorious morning, they saw the ship again—that ship and another. The two lowered sail, down rattled the anchors; they swung at ease in the still water beyond the fringing reef. Their flags were Spanish; they sent a shot from a culverin shrieking across to the land. It sheared the top of a palm tree; the green panache came tumbling to the ground. Birds rose with clamour and fled away; the shot echoed from a low hill back in the island. Forth from the ships’ sides put boats—boat after boat until there were a number—and all filled with armed men. CHAPTER XXIX THE SPANIARDS