Page 5 (1/1)
Born of these things there re Dick Mrs Stannard, her uncle, the dim people she had known in Boston, all had passed away out of her life like a dream and shadows The other one too, most horribly What if Dick were taken fro trouble had been with her a long tio it had beenleft alone But lately it had altered and becoed in her eyes, and the fear was now for hied in his The idea of life without him was unthinkable, yet the trouble remained, a menace in the blue
Some days it would be worse than others To-day, for instance, it orse than yesterday, as though soht Yet the sky and sea were stainless, the sun shone on tree and flower, the ind brought the tune of the far-away reef like a lullaby There was nothing to hint of danger or the need of distrust
At last Dick finished his spear and rose to his feet
"Where are you going?" asked E out"
"I'll go with you," said she
He went into the house and stowed the precious knife away Then he came out, spear in one hand, and half a fathom of liana in the other The liana was for the purpose of stringing the fish on, should the catch be large He led the way down the grassy sward to the lagoon where the dinghy lay, close up to the bank, and ot in, and, taking the sculls, he pushed off The tide was going out
I have said that the reef just here lay a great way out frooon was so shallow that at low tide one could have waded alht across it, were it not for pot-holes here and there--ten-feet traps--and great beds of rotten coral, into which one would sink as into brushwood, to say nothing of the nettle coral that stings like a bed of nettles There were also other dangers Tropical shallows are full of wild surprises in the way of life and death
Dick had long ago oon, and it was fortunate that he possessed the special sense of location which is the e, for, from the disposition of the coral in ribs, the water froe to the reef ran in lanes Only two of these lanes gave a clear, fair way froe to the reef; had you followed the others, even in a boat of such shallow draught as the dinghy, you would have found yourself stranded half-way across, unless, indeed, it were a spring tide