He worked with desperation until his hands were bleeding, until his eyes were stung and blinded with the streaming sweat. Dizzy with the heat, parched with thirst, and sick with the steam that rose from the damp ground, he was forced again and again to desist and rest. He cut his waistcoat into slips and bound them round his bloody hands; he broke the blades of his penknife on recalcitrant roots that defied the strength of his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him, the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the post captain was forgotten in the man, as he mused on the tragedy of human life, on the mysteries of love and death and destiny, on his own irrevocable youth now so far behind him, when he had forfeited his honor for the dead woman at his feet. He called her aloud by name. He bent down and kissed her mossy bed. He whispered, with a strange conviction that she could hear him, that he had kept his promise to return.
Then, rising to his feet, he turned toward the sea and retraced his steps. The people were still in church, and the village was deserted as before. He walked swiftly lest they might come flocking out before he could reach his boat, to torture him with recognition, with the questions they would ask, with their story of Tehea's death. Then he laughed at his own fears, remembering his white hair and the intervening generation. Time had passed over Borabora, too. The world, he remembered, was older by forty years--older and sadder and emptier.
He swung himself up the ladder, mounted the bridge, and put the vessel on her course. The telegraph rang, the engineers repeated back the signal, and the great battleship, vibrating with her mighty engines, resumed once more her ponderous way.
[Footnote 1: "Existence doubtful; position doubtful," familiar contractions still on any Pacific chart.]
Silver Tongue loved Rosalie, and Rosalie loved Silver Tongue, and ever since they had first met at the Taufusi Club dance their friends had seen the inevitable finish of their acquaintance. They were invited everywhere together, and the affair had progressed from the first or furtive stage to the secondary or solemn Sunday drive about the Eleele Sa. The third, that of carpenters adding a story to the bakery and dressmakers hard at work in Miss Potter's little establishment, was looming up close in view.