James Norman Hall - The Hurricane (Charles Bernard Nordhoff, James Norman Hall) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

“Life is good, Father,” he said. “I little believed, last night, that I should see the sun of another day.”

The priest nodded. “It was Mako who spied you.”

Without turning his head, Terangi laid a hand on the boy’s knee. “I saw you at a distance of two miles—three, perhaps. I feared that you would pass to windward of me on the course you followed. I could do nothing; my strength was gone. Two days and a night I had been clinging to the canoe. The outrigger was badly damaged. I had tied it together as well as I could; then I was again capsized in a heavy squall. There was no repairing the outrigger that time. I could do nothing but wait for the end.”

“Nofea mai oé?”

“From Tahiti.”

“You have come from Tahiti? Alone? In that tiny canoe?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Terangi Tané!” Mako exclaimed softly. All the lad’s capacity for wonder, awe, devoted love, was implicit in the exclamation.

“I came by Mehetia, Anaa, Haraiki, Reitoru, Tahéré. I had no compass. I steered by the sun and the stars. I made a little sail of copra sacking. It is six weeks since I left Tahiti. No one has seen me at any island. I landed on the motu far from the village islets. When the weather favored, I went on again. It has been a weary time.”

That is as much as Terangi ever told of his voyage, as remarkable an exploit, I dare say, as one man has ever accomplished in such a tiny, unseaworthy craft. Mehetia, his first island, is about sixty miles from the nearest coast of Tahiti. Anaa, the second, is two hundred miles farther on, and Haraiki the same distance beyond Anaa. Luck was with him, of course, until his final misfortune, and Terangi was too good a seaman to take unnecessary chances, but one needs vastly more than luck to make such a passage as that. Polynesians are still great historians, and Terangi’s voyage is known now, both in song and in story, from one end of Oceania to the other. It is worthy to pass into the legends of the race.

But to get on with the story——He did not speak again for some time, but sat with his hands clasped loosely, staring at the deck beneath his feet. The old priest gazed at him compassionately, observing the gaunt face, the eyes terribly inflamed by sea water, but more than this, the sombre indomitable expression within them.

“Where are we, Father?” he asked, presently.

The priest pointed to the north. “Manukura is there, just over the horizon.”

“And you are waiting here for . . . ?”

“For you. For night, if you would have it so.”

“I escaped from prison three months ago. You knew, on Manukura?”

The priest shook his head. “We have had no news since the Katopua last came. She is expected again soon.”

Terangi was again long silent. At length the priest laid a hand on his shoulder. “My son,” he said, “I first saw you an hour after your birth. I watched you grow from babyhood to manhood. All the events of your life have been open to me. You trust me?”

“I do, Father. Wait before you speak further. When I escaped this last time, a guard of the prison was killed.”

“By you?”

“Yes. He was at the gate of the prison yard. The gate was open to let the prisoners enter who had been working on the roads. It was a chance. I rushed at the guard. He fired his pistol at me and missed. I struck him on the chest, with my fist. Who would believe that such a blow could kill? But so it was. The man was dead when they took him up. This I learned when hiding in the mountains.”

“You were innocent of the wish to kill him?”

“As innocent as I am of the wish to kill Mako. The man had befriended me more than once. I wished only to escape.”

“It is a grievous sin, but with God, the intent is all. He can forgive heavier ones in those who truly repent.”

“But that will not give life to a murdered man, and so it will be judged by those who sent me to prison. If I am caught, I shall be sent to a place they call Cayenne. Where it is I do not know, except that it is far away. And those who are sent there never come back.”

“Terangi . . .”

“Yes, Father?”

“No one knows that you have left Tahiti?”

“No one save you and Mako; that is certain. They must be searching the mountains for me still; but it may be suspected, by this time, that I have escaped elsewhere.”

“What would you do now?”

“I would see my wife once more, and my mother, and the child that I have never seen. Then let what will come. The little daughter is mine?”

“Can you doubt it?”

“I have been eager to believe it. There has been no one else, then?”

“Never! Your wife has thought of no one but you.”

“Six years is a long time, and she is young. I could understand if . . .”

The priest interrupted him sternly. “Never, I tell you! You do her an injustice to hold such a thought!”

“I wished only to make sure.”

“You do not know your wife.”

“And what time have I had to know her? We were but six weeks married when I was put into the prison.”

Father Paul’s stern expression softened to one of compassion. He had no struggle with his conscience in deciding what his attitude toward the fugitive should be. Secular law was one thing, Divine law another. He had nothing to do with the first, everything to do with the second, and he believed, as did everyone else on Manukura, except the Administrator, that Terangi was a deeply wronged man. Secular law could be implacably, inhumanly just. So it had been in Terangi’s case, but he well knew that de Laage took a different view of the matter. The father had little hope that the Administrator could be kept long in ignorance of Terangi’s presence on the island. In a place where everything was known, and quickly known, concealment would be enormously difficult. There was no man or woman on the island who would not guard the secret as carefully as himself, but the children in their innocence might easily betray him. To avoid this possibility it would be best that none should know save Terangi’s nearest relatives: his wife and mother; Fakahau, the chief, his father-in-law; and Fakahau’s brother, Tavi. The priest was careful to impress upon Terangi the great need for caution.

“I have been a hunted man too long to be blind to the danger,” he replied. “I shall be taken again, that is certain; but I shall have some weeks, even months, perhaps, before they learn where I have hidden. The Administrator is now on Manukura?”

“No; but he is expected to return with the Katopua. He has been visiting the islands to the south.”

They then proceeded to discuss plans for the immediate future, and it was decided that Terangi should conceal himself on Motu Tonga, an uninhabited islet eight miles across the lagoon from the settlement. Father Paul would inform only those mentioned of Terangi’s arrival; the family could then take counsel as to what was best to be done. Sail was now gotten on the cutter. A little before sunset they raised the land, but night had long since fallen before they were coasting along the lonely reefs of Motu Tonga. Mako ransacked the scanty supplies on board, preparing a little bundle of things for Terangi’s immediate needs: a waterproof tin containing matches and tobacco, a pareu, a bed quilt, a clasp knife, various other articles. These he rolled into a tight bundle covered with a piece of matting, and Terangi fastened it with a cord, high on his shoulders. The priest steered the cutter to within a few hundred yards of the reef. Great combers were breaking across it, but Low Island folk are as much at home in the surf as the fish themselves, and a night and a day of rest had restored Terangi’s strength. When they had run midway along the islet he shook hands with his rescuers, slipped over the cutter’s side, and struck out for the land. In the faint starlight he was soon lost to view, but they waited until they heard a distant halloo from the beach. The cutter then stood off to the northeast, and at dawn entered the pass by the village islet.