But Palm Tree to her eyes seemed free of anything like this. Amongst the gifts presented by the wreck were three or four tin cases of Swedish matches, enough to last for years. Kearney had discarded the tinder-box and he was lighting the fire with a box of matches, a fact more interesting than bonnets to Katafa as she squatted, watching his every movement.
Then, when the food was ready and Dick had fetched some water from the little spring at the back of the yam patch, Kearney called to the “Kanaka girl” to pull in her chair.
She came within a couple of yards, but would come no further, squatting on her heels in an attitude that gave her freedom to spring away at a moment’s notice. Kearney stretched over with some food on a plate for her, then he handed a cocoanut bowl with some water in it. Then he began on his own meal. He seemed put out.
“She ain’t right,” said Mr. Kearney, as though communing with himself.
“What ain’t right, Jim?” asked the boy, a fish in his fingers. “Why ain’t she right, Jim? What’s the matter she can’t talk?”
The only things he had ever heard Kearney address as “she” were the ships they made. Katafa had in some way taken in his mind a tinge from those delightful ships; she was a “she.” The canoe helped; it was hers. Now that the canoe was half out of sight, hidden by the bank, and Katafa sitting there close to him, she fascinated him. His passionate love of the sea, of the dinghy, of the little ships, of everything connected with the water, all lent colour to this strange new being who had come up out of the sea in that thing—it was almost as if she had a keel on her. He would have loved to make friends, but he was too shy as yet and she couldn’t talk so that he could understand.
“Lord, I dunno,” said Kearney, his recent experience hot in his mind, yet unable to explain it in speech. “She ain’t like other folk. There, don’t be askin’ questions, but get on with your dinner. Maybe it’s just she’s a Kanaka.”
“You get on with your dinner and don’t be askin’ questions.”
The sociable meal proceeded, Katafa “tuckin’ into the food” with a good appetite, but with an eye ever on Kearney. Kearney, by his attempts to clap her on the shoulder, had laid the foundation of a lot of trouble for himself. He had raised against him the something that Le Juan had bred in the subconscious mind of the girl.