British -- Oceania -- Fiction; Missionaries -- Fiction
They had a busy three days preparing for the long voyage. Captain
Cathie reckoned they might make the Marquesas in twelve days with good
weather. So they made provision for twenty, out of the stores they had
brought from Kanele and Anape. He had borrowed Evans's pocket compass,
but vowed he could find his way without it.
"If we go west with a touch of south in it we're bound to hit either
the Marquesas or Paumotus," he said cheerfully. "You may look for that
schooner here in six weeks from to-day--that is, if there's one to be
had, and if I can find a trader who'll negotiate the drafts."
Jean had been racking her brains as to how they were to get hold of
some of the money waiting to be used in London, for all her papers had
disappeared in the deluge. But Blair had thought the whole matter out,
and had brought over paper and pens and a bottle of ink. And among
them they drew up a number of documents which, with Captain Pym's
verification of the circumstances, would, they thought, procure for
Captain Cathie all the money he needed as soon as he reached Sydney,
and possibly before that.
And a very busy man would Captain Cathie be, if ever he reached Sydney.
For he had to buy a new _Torch_ and a multitudinous cargo; engage new
hands--to a limited extent, however, this time, for henceforth they
hoped to utilise largely the services of the brown men; and last, but
by no means least, to provide, so far as money could do it, adequate
recompense for the families of the men whose lives had been given in
the service of the Dark Islands. So far as forethought and hard
thinking could do it they had attended to everything, and Captain
Cathie's programme might have daunted a less valiant man.
And so, very early one morning, before the sun had topped the hills
behind, though the outer sea danced and sparkled merrily, there was a
great leave-taking on the white beach at the mouth of the valley where
the old village used to stand. The _Kenni-Kenni_ had brought them all
up the day before, with all their belongings, in a couple of trips, and
they were among their own brown people once more, ready and anxious to
be at their work again.
The last hearty handshakes had been given and the last words said. The
shallop they had built for use with the larger boat, and which was to
be left behind, had just put Captain Pym and Captain Cathie on board.
The sails ran up, and the _Kenni-Kenni's_ nose turned determinedly for
the passage and the long journey westward.
Kenneth Blair and his wife Jean, and Aunt Jannet Harvey stood in the
centre of a line of brown folk and waved the farewells and benedictions
their voices could no longer carry, and little Kenni-Kenni waved and
shouted because the others did. His namesake bobbed and rose to the
swell of the passage and was lost to sight behind the spouting jets of
the reef.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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