When he had finished, and he played the dual part of Jack Sprat and his wife, so far as the meat was concerned, for he cleaned the platter, the old man produced a rudely fashioned pipe made from some wood unfamiliar to him. With the pipe came a wooden box filled with tobacco, and one of the children, at a word, brought him a stick, the end of which was a glowing ember, from a fire in some kind of a stone and clay furnace or oven before the circle of houses. He could not believe his eyes at first, and not until he had lighted the pipe and inhaled the fragrant contents did he know that it was very good tobacco--the last miracle of that morning, he thought, but no. As he leaned back against the palm tree, smoking in perfect content, the girl herself handed him a cocoanut shell filled with, very tolerable native wine. All he needed for absolute happiness was a book of verses, her presence, and the withdrawal of the rest of the crowd, he reflected whimsically, remembering Omar Khayyam. And in all this he had not once thought of Stephanie Maynard.
His material wants having been thus attended to, the old man spoke to the rest, and they slowly withdrew, going about their several vocations. It was yet early in the morning, and he noticed that some of the men and women proceeded in various directions, carrying what seemed to him to be rude primitive agricultural implements. It flashed upon Beekman that they were going to till the fields, which were, after all, only garden patches. No great area under cultivation was required to support that little handful. The dogs, whose bark he had heard, were as friendly as the rest. Such a thing as passion or anger or hatred seemed out of place and as foreign to the spot as they might have seemed in Eden before Eve ate the apple.
The old man, the young girl, and the young man alone remained with him. They spoke to one another now and then, but conversation with him was impossible. They could only express their interest by eager and intense staring. The old man finally came close to him and examined him. He felt of the cloth of his shirt and trousers, looked critically at his stout leather shoes, expressed great interest in the sheath knife, broad-bladed and sharp, which he handed to the young man, who also examined it and who was also much taken with the bright, brass-headed boat hook. Beekman wished that he had some trinket or jewel, something which he could have given to the girl, but, alas, he had nothing; not even a finger ring.