CHAPTER V.RESCUE.
It was a woman—so much I could make out, in spite of the distance, some three hundred yards as the crow flies, though more, of course, by the dip between the two hills—a woman, by the rounded contours of the silhouette, and a tall one. Of her face, I could as yet say nothing: she was looking out to sea.
A woman, then, but of what tribe? There was no telling by the dress. She wore a petticoat of some dark material, reaching to the knee. It was but a dark patch, of course, as I saw it; and above it was the white one of another garment. At first, that was all I made out—the patch of dark, the patch of white, with the half tint that stood for her bare limbs. She seemed to be shading hereyes with her hand, as she stood in the glare of light.
Suddenly she wheeled round, as though to descend the peak, and, in doing it, saw me. We were now face to face, she on the higher summit, I on the lower, with only the valley between us. I could not see her features, but she seemed rooted to the spot with astonishment.
I instinctively felt for a weapon. I expected a scream or a signal, and savage warriors trooping over the hill. But she made no sign. Hesitation was out of the question: I moved straight towards her. I had no beads about me for a peace-offering, so I fumbled at my watch chain, and wrenched off a propitiatory pencil-case that I hoped might serve.
She advanced too. Then, at every step, the bands of light and dark began to develop into the most majestic shape of youthful womanhood I had ever seen. The white was evidently a sleeveless undergarment reaching, like the petticoat of deep blue, no further than the knee. The naked arms, legs, and feet were no darker than the cheek of a brunette.The chemise was low, and above it rose the glorious bust, almost as broad as a man’s, and with a virgin firmness of line that was strength and softness too. She was very tall for her sex, tall even for mine, but the perfect proportion between body and limbs took off all effect of ungainliness. She moved with the beautiful poise and precision of a mountaineer, brushing hillock, tuft, and boulder in the slope, as though they formed but one level.
Would she attack? It looked so, else why had she met my advance so boldly, without calling her tribe? She seemed to have taken the measure of me for single combat. She would have been a formidable foe, in any case, to say nothing of the handicapping in respect for the sex.
But there was no more of aggression than there was of flight in her attitude, as she paused at last, when but a few feet parted us, and looking down on me in placid wonder, from large and lustrous eyes, showed me the peculiar beauty of her face. Her features were regular, without being faultlessly, or rather, faultily so. Her complexion wouldhave passed muster for fairness in Provence, if not farther north. The only signs of race type were in a certain prominence of the brow, and in the deep liquid softness of the gaze. I had seen such eyes in some of the Coral Islands, and I used sometimes to wish we could take a pair of them back with us, to put the Italian women out of conceit with their own. Her lips were rather full and sensuous, but this did not impair the tender dignity of her expression. Her dark hair, shining, I regret to say, with some native oil, which, even at a distance, I could perceive was scented, seemed to have been caught up with one sweeping gesture, and gathered in a knot behind. Her feet were rather large, though perfectly formed; and she had drawn them close together, as she paused, like a child toeing the line in school. To complete the similitude, she stood perfectly straight, with her arms folded behind her, and her head thrown back—her bosom, the while, gently rising and falling with excitement but half suppressed, and carrying with it, in its motion, her sole ornament, a common English navy button, fastened with ribbon to herthroat. I had looked on other women as beautiful in feature, but never on one so magnificently formed. It recalled poetic ideals of the youth of the race.
Evidently she was waiting for me to say something, but how was I to say it? The whole Melanesian mission might have been at fault in the speech of this solitary isle. So I began toying with the pencil-case once more, and then, in a desperate attempt to recall some characters of a universal sign language, I folded my hands on my breast—as I had once seen it done by savages of wilder aspect, in a ballet in Leicester Square.
No language in the world could do justice to my astonishment at what followed, and therefore I set it down without comment, just as it passed.
‘You speak English, I suppose,’ said the girl. ‘How did you come on the Island?’
The accent was as pure as yours or mine; in fact, there was no accent; and the voice was as soft as the eyes.
For some moments I could utter no word. I went on with the sign language, but then, only to pass my hand over my brow.
‘Who are you? and how did you come here? We saw no ship from the Point!’
‘Madam, I——’
The gravity of the features relaxed, and the girl laughed.
‘I knew you spoke English; but why won’t you go on? Oh, how stupid I am! You are faint and ill. Lean on me, and come and have something to eat.’ In another moment she was by my side, with one strong arm round me, and nearly lifting me off the ground, in the attempt to help me to walk—a most humiliating reversal of protective rôles.
‘I can walk perfectly well, thank you; please let me go,’ I had to say, like some coy schoolgirl in the grasp of a dragoon. It was very ridiculous, but I really could not get free.
‘Very well, then, but I will carry you when you like. Now, tell me who you are, and please don’t call me Madam again. Victoria is my name—after the Queen—“Victoria.”’
—‘By the grace of God,’ I could not help thinking, remembering what I had feared, and what I had found.
‘Victoria, I was nearly dashed to pieces on these rocks last night.’
‘Where is your ship?’
‘It was over there, but it has sailed away.’
‘On the south side. But don’t you know that the landing-place is on the north?’
‘I know nothing. I never thought to find a living, still less a civilised, soul in this place. Tell me where I am.’
‘You don’t seem to know much geography,’ she said, with an offended air. But she was mollified in a moment. ‘How faint you must be! Lean on me. If you don’t, I will carry you, whether you like it or no. Poor thing!’
I wanted no support, but I was nothing loath to lean upon Victoria. So we walked away, with an arm round each other’s waist, as innocently affectionate as the primal pair.
She led me towards another slope of the Peak, and, all too soon for me, with such leading, we reached the top.
The whole island lay before me, from sea to sea, quivering with life in the morning sun. In its irregular outline, it seemed like some quaint sea monster that had shot up from thedepths of the Pacific to take a look round, and that might instantly disappear. It was head and shoulders out of the water, joining the sea almost everywhere at the base of perpendicular rocks rising to heights of from four to six hundred feet, and it had little or no beach. On all sides, the wave seemed in fretful strife with the rock, but beyond the broken lines of surf lay the calm of the immeasurable ocean, with nothing in the way, it seemed, between this and the next world. The range of hills cutting the island in half from east to west sloped to the edge of the cliff; on the southern side, in deep valleys, filled with plantation plots; on the northern, into two terraced spaces, one above the other, commanding a view of the sea. On the highest of these lay a settlement of civilised men, its cottages lapped warm, like birds in their mosses, in exquisite vegetation—palms, and banyans, and cocoa-nut trees, and, as I might guess, by what was nearer to the view, passion-flowers, and trumpet vines, and creeping plants of infinite variety, the rich growth clothing even the adjacent summits and hillsides, and the sharp inaccessible slopes, rightdown to the water’s edge. Below the settlement, on the lower terrace, was a grove of cocoa-trees, with no habitation, and below this again, a little bay, evidently the landing-place, and the only one on this cruel shore. All this beauty of nature and homely sweetness of ordered life, lying to the north of the dividing ridge, had been hidden from me in my rude landing-place, even the cultivated valleys being shut out by a transverse section of the rock.
We were still standing on the hill when, from a clump of cocoa at its foot, a little girl came running towards us—a reduced copy, to scale, of Victoria, in build and strength and perfect animal grace. Without standing in the least upon ceremony, she gave me a most hearty kiss, and asked me my name.
‘I wonder now if you could read it,’ I said, feeling in my pocket for the card-case which I had kept by me in all my wanderings, and extracting from it a card that showed woeful traces of the ducking of the night before. The little one’s eyes dilated in wonder as she read the inscription, and in one swift glance took me in from head to foot. Then sheturned, and started for the village, at breakneck speed down the steep incline, shouting as she went, ‘Mother! mother! Here’s a lord!’
In a few moments she was mounting the hill on the other side, to the first terrace, and I lost her for a moment in the cocoa grove. She emerged into the second steep path that led to the settlement, still uttering her strange cry. I could see the doors opening, the people turning out, the terrified flutter of domestic fowl.
‘Come!’ said Victoria, and she strode on in the track of the child, turning now and then to help me. We soon reached the level of the grove, a majestic scene, roofed with branches, and carpeted with shrubs spangled with the sunshine that shot through the trees.
I sank down in the delicious shade, not caring to go farther, not caring to speak. I was more faint than ever, for, in spite of the excitement of the adventure, my long fast began to tell.
An opening in the trees showed the path to the settlement, with fifteen or twenty villagers trooping down under the leadershipof the infant herald, who waved them on with my card. There were women and children, and, this time, men, most of the latter fit mates for Victoria in frame and stature. Their shirts were armless, their trousers reached only to the knee, all beyond was bare bronzed skin. They looked all strength, suppleness, and abounding health.
A dozen began to talk at once. ‘How did you get him, Victoria?’—‘All last night!’—‘Oh, the poor thing!’—‘How white his skin is!’—‘Is he a real lord?’—‘Let me give him a kiss!’—‘Has he had his breakfast?’—‘He must stay with us.’—‘No, you had the last one.’—‘With me!’—‘Me! Me!’—It was like a clamour of children, but it was stilled in a moment on the arrival of an elder, dressed rather differently from the others, and for whom they all made way.
‘Father,’ said Victoria, addressing the old man, ‘I won’t give him up to anybody. I found him, and he belongs to me.’
‘Take him to my house,’ said the Ancient, ‘and none of you speak a word to him till he has had something to eat. Here, Reuben, lend a hand;’ and he nodded to a youngfellow standing at least six foot two, who lifted me to my feet as one might lift a child.
It was time, for their talk began to come to me like a far-off buzzing. I walked as in a dream, but I was aware of a hushed crowd, a beautiful path through the trees, a green lawn on the summit, bordered on three sides with houses of dark wood and thatch, embowered in gardens that scented all the air. Into one of these houses I was taken, and laid on a comfortable couch.
‘Where am I?’
‘Hush!’ said Victoria. ‘You are in the house of the chief magistrate of Pitcairn.’