FullReads

“Oh, Walter, I can’t let Daisy go again!” cried Mrs. Kirke. “Last time she nearly died in the boat, and you know she wasn’t really herself for weeks and weeks afterwards.”

Daisy heard her name being spoken, and looked up. Her sleek little head and round brown eyes gave her the look of a baby seal. Such a happy baby seal that morning, with a five-shilling magic lantern, twelve biblical slides, a dolly that could squeak in the most lifelike manner, and a darling little chair!

“But leave her?” questioned Kirke, with a hopeless gesture of his hand. “And that with the island full of mutineers, and Heaven only knows to-day what deviltry and carousing?”

Mrs. Kirke thought awhile.

“Twenty miles over there–three hours,” she said at last; “an hour to straighten out the king–four hours; three back, makes seven. That means being home by sundown. We can trust Nantok all right to take good care of her, and then I’ll get Peter to send down an armed guard.”

Kirke acquiesced in silence. He was a tall, thin man, not over-clever, whose fervent Christianity was strangely at variance with a constitutional inclination to see the darker side of things. He distrusted Nantok, distrusted the king’s guard, felt a profound apprehension of that jeering, boisterous mob of sailors, who pigged together in Rick’s old boatshed, and were numerous enough to defy every law of the island. It was terrible to him to leave his little girl in such company. Yet he recalled his last trip across the strait, when she had fainted with the heat–fainted again and again–as they had attempted, with such distress and agony, to screen her from a glare as pitiless as a furnace. He remembered dipping her, naked, all but lifeless, into the milkwarm water, till up from the transparent depths the swift, bluish glimmer of a shark warned him to snatch her in. Remembered the hopelessness of it, the terror, the despair, he himself bending to an oar, and offering every inducement his mind could think of to incite his crew to pull their hearts out. No, all that was a nightmare to look back on–never, never to be repeated.

Daisy was called over and the situation explained to her. Like all only children, living constantly in the society of her parents, and sharing their talk and plans, she was precociously old for her age, and more serious and thoughtful than a little tot ought to be. Though her lower lip trembled, and her eyes flooded with tears, she put on a brave face to it, and protested her willingness to remain with Nantok and be a good little girl.

“And mamma and papa will be back at dusk; and if they are detained, you mustn’t be the least bit worried about them; and you’ll let Nantok put you to bed at eight; and if you wake up and feel frightened, you are to remember the army outside, guarding you in your sleep like a little princess!”

“And Dod, too,” added Daisy piously, though inwardly pleased to have the army as well.

“Oh, my lamb!” cried Mrs. Kirke, clasping her to her breast. “It breaks mamma’s heart to leave her little girl on Christmas Day!”

Altogether it was a damp moment in the Kirke family, and even the missionary’s eyes were suspiciously moist as he knelt beside his wife and talked hurriedly about the magic lantern, and the dolly, and what a jolly evening they’d all have when they got back from Tarawa.

Preparations were soon made. The whaleboat was got ready, and manned by a stout crew of such recent Christians that the demons of the strait had first to be appeased by two tins of salmon and six biscuit, paid secretly in advance to Nebenua, the devil-priest. Then, when all was ready, even to the breaker of brackish water, a forty-pound tin of biscuit, two hundred fresh nuts, medicine chest, compass, and five pounds of niggerhead tobacco by way of petty cash, the whole expedition was tantalized and held back by the non-arrival of the guard, who were frenziedly searching for their boots. Why the army was so ruthlessly condemned to wear boots, is a question that was often asked and never properly answered. Nobody else wore boots–not even the king; but the military caste is proverbially dressy, and it is enough to say that the armed forces of Apiang set immense store by their boots.