Coincidence - Alan May [90]
“That Man to Man, the worr-uld o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that.”
The words of the Immortal Bard had sprung to his lips unbidden. He looked up, feeling a bit silly, to find Dan and Evan and Chris regarding him with astonishment.
But Pierre grinned and, only a little off-key, took up the chorus:
“For a’ that, an’ a’ that, It’s comin’ yet for a’ that, That Man to Man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that.”
Pierre shrugged.
“Caneff,” he said. “It was required to learn about Canada’s Scots heritage—even for us Québécois.”
The students’ first order of business once Mac dropped them off at the dock was to call their parents. The reaction of Pierre’s mother, Hélène, when he reached her in Québec, was typical. Kathleen Tutty had already talked to her and assured her that everyone on board was safe, yet her maternal radar remained keenly attuned, ready to pick up the slightest sign of stress or trauma in her son’s voice.
“But you are sure you are all right?” she asked, and asked again. “You are absolutely sure?”
When she was at last convinced that Pierre was vraiment unscarred by the experience—that his voice betrayed not the smallest hint of psychological damage—she gave him her blessing to continue the voyage. After all, she told herself, the whole episode had been a fluke, unknown in the entire history of the Blue Water Academy, and to imagine that any such peril would befall the ship again would be to give in to a foolish, irrational anxiety. She’d have liked to give her son a hug before he went on, but … C’est la vie.
Waiting for Melissa’s group to be ferried over, Pierre and his cabinmates went first to the “supermercado” near the town center. The shop was so tiny it was a squeeze for all four of them to fit inside, but they had been warned that Hanga Roa was the only place they’d be able to buy water and food to take with them as they explored the island. There were so many interesting things to see and do they hardly knew where to begin.
Dan, an avid photographer, bought a guidebook and read excerpts aloud as they walked to the artisan market near the church. For him, Easter Island was practically the Holy Grail of photographic opportunities, and he wanted to plan his itinerary with an eye toward getting to each site when the light would be at its most advantageous.
“Okay, we’re going to Te Pito Kura for sure,” he said. “Can’t pass up a shot of you guys with your hands on the Navel of the Universe! And it says here that the big stone there, the one that’s almost a perfect sphere, is made out of some magnetic rock not found anywhere else on the island.
“And of course we have to see Rano Raraku—that’s the main quarry. There are some Moai still attached to the rock—we’d better wait until early tomorrow morning for those; the light’s too high overhead now and all of the detail would be lost. There are other Moai lying around waiting to be moved to their ahus, those platforms they put them on. They got the red stone—man, look at that color!—for the hats some of the Moai wear—pukao they’re called—from another quarry at Puna Pau crater. And look at this!”
He stopped in his tracks, his companions reconfiguring themselves around him.
“Look at the size of this thing!” He pointed to a photo of a man standing next to one of the cylindrical topknots.
“If just the pukao is that much bigger than a man, imagine how big the whole statue must be! I mean, I know Dave told us some of them are huge—the tallest is almost seventy-two feet and weighs like a hundred and fifty tons—but wow! Maybe I should buy some more film.”
Dan continued to flip through the pages as they walked along, punctuating every few steps with another “Wow!”
“Well, this is what I have to see,” Evan said, as he paused in front of a colorful