The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pakia, by Louis Becke

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Title: Pakia
1901

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: April 19, 2008 [EBook #25105]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAKIA ***

Produced by David Widger

PAKIA

From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"

By Louis Becke

C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.

1901

Late one evening, when the native village was wrapped in slumber, Temana
and I brought our sleeping-mats down to the boat-shed, and spread them
upon the white, clinking sand. For here, out upon the open beach, we
could feel a breath of the cooling sea-breeze, denied to the village
houses by reason of the thick belt of palms which encompassed them on
three sides. And then we were away from Malepa's baby, which was a good
thing in itself.

Temana, tall, smooth-limbed, and brown-skinned, was an excellent savage,
and mine own good friend. He and his wife Malepa lived with me as a sort
of foster-father and mother, though their united ages did not reach mine
by a year or two.

When Malepa's first baby was born, she and her youthful husband
apologised sincerely for the offence against my comfort, and with many
tears prepared to leave my service. But although I was agreeable to let
Malepa and her little bundle of red-skinned wrinkles go, I could not
part with Temana, so I bade her stay. She promised not to let the baby
cry o' nights. Poor soul. She tried her best; but every night--or rather
towards daylight--that terrible infant would raise its fearsome voice,
and wail like a foghorn in mortal agony.

We lit our pipes and lay back watching a moon of silvered steel poised
'midships in a cloudless sky. Before us, unbroken in its wide expanse,
save for two miniature islets near the eastern horn of the encircling
reef, the glassy surface of the sleeping lagoon was beginning to quiver
and throb to the muffled call of the outer ocean; for the tide was about
to turn, and soon the brimming waters would sink inch by inch, and
foot by foot from the hard, white sand, and with strange swirlings and
bubblings and mighty eddyings go tearing through the narrow passage at
eight knots