Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [96]
At three the entire assembly walked slowly down the path to the white sands. Again the gardens were more lovely than a dream of the imagination. The coconut trees alternately stood straight toward the peaks of Vanicoro or inclined at crazy angles toward the sea. A row of papaya trees, newly planted, lifted their snakelike trunks into the air as if to hand each wayfarer a cluster of their delicious melons. It was midafternoon in the tropics, and everywhere the great heat flooded down, but nowhere more torrentially than in the hearts of Lt. Cable and Liat.
Unable to clasp one another fervently as they stood side by side on the rickety pier, they were also not free to indulge in the orgy of gazing that each had to fight against. Liat held out her hand as Cable stepped into the boat.
"Au revoir," she said quietly.
"I will return," Cable whispered.
Then the same improvisator of the morning began to ring the bell up in the school. Thus inspired, Benny grasped his once more and together the two carillonneurs pealed out their fine, lilting, inspired farewell. Again music swept through the narrow channel. Again little boys and old men pushed their outriggers over white sands. Blue water lapped the prow of the small boat, and suddenly the engine exploded! There was a noisy sputtering. The engine coughed like an old man confused by chattering, then caught its breath and hammered out a steady rhythm.
"Cast her loose!" the coxswain cried, and the boat stood out from the pier. The boat's bell rang clearly, conservatively now, for each sound meant a message. But far up on the hillside the native boy pealed his unrestricted bell as if his heart were breaking. And the sound sped down the hillside, over the waters, even up to the peaks of Vanicoro, until everyone's heart was filled with music.
"Goodbye, goodbye!" shouted Benny to all his friends.
"Au revoir!" cried the French women and their daughters.
"Goo'bye!" cried the native girls, and the native boys threw rocks at the wake left by the disappearing boat.
Liat, on the pier, watched her mother and Lt. Cable sail away. Then she turned slowly and walked back to the beach where her father and his nephew and wife waited, each wondering what had happened that morning, up in the red and white hut.
On Vanicoro the silent watchers followed the boat far out to sea. To do so, they had to look directly toward the setting sun, but since the setting sun was holy, they had no mind to consider their own discomfort. Long before these savages left their posts among the shadows of the great volcanoes, each person on Bali-ha'i had forgotten the frail craft. That is, each person but Liat.
Next morning Lt. Cable rose from his sack and stepped out upon the beach as he had done every morning since he arrived on the island. But this morning he stopped sharply. There on the eastern horizon was Vanicoro in complete outline! Down the beach a friend cried out, "Look at that damned island! I've never seen it so bright before. It's like a mirage!"
From their huts other Marines appeared to study the peaks of the mysterious island. All agreed that never before had Vanicoro been so clearly defined. It is a miracle of the South Pacific that islands which are relatively only a few miles away are rarely seen. Hot air, rising constantly from steaming jungles, makes omnipresent clouds hover above each island. So dense are they that usually they obscure and often completely hide the islands they attend. So it is that an island like Vanicoro, only sixteen miles away, might rarely be seen, and then only after torrential rains had swept the sky clear of all but high rain clouds, equalizing temperatures over the entire vast sea. Then, for a few hours, islands far distant might be seen. At times