“Looka da ray!” The smallest boy practically fell in the water with all his gyrations.
A broad, dark, triangular shadow drifted by below the boat. The trailing edges of its five-foot wingspan rippled as it glided along, barely moving.
Luke watched it disappear into the sun-glare. “What does that thing eat, do you know?”
“Preachers.”
Once only a blob on the horizon, the little island lay hard before them now. A narrow white beach defined the line where sea ended and land began. A dozen coconut palms clustered along this nearest shore. Bushes and trees crowned the rest of the tiny drop of land with a thick mound of green. Was this how Eden looked?
Burriwi dumped the sail. They skidded to a halt. “Got the tubs, boys?”
Luke had assumed the three tubs stacked by the mast were sponge tubs; they seemed about the size. They weren’t. As Dibbie whipped one up and over the side, Luke could see a glass bottom in it. Dibbie pressed it into the water as he hung over the gunwale and exclaimed nonstop in two languages.
Burriwi’s nephew brought his uncle a tub and scurried forward again.
Burriwi handed it to Luke. “Try it. Tub, it takes away the sun from the surface, you can see like thin air. You boys, you pull the boat over, you swim home, eh?”
Luke mashed it against the water, tipped it slightly to free a trapped bubble, and gazed. They floated in extreme shallows. Inches below the boat, the coral grew in mounds and blocks. A profusion of other forms studded the coral and the brief snips of sandy floor here and there.
And life. Everywhere, life. No matter where Luke looked, no matter which way he tilted the tub, he saw fish. Silver fish, gaily painted fish, somber fish, tiny darting things. Clumsy looking greenish-blue fish two feet long scraped at coral with thick lips. By sticking his head deep in the tub, Luke could actually hear, however faintly, the gritching sound they made.
He sat erect and looked southward to the horizon. “This is overwhelming. The whole reef is like this, isn’t it?—all the way down to Sydney. And north—all the way up the coast. Fish and coral everywhere, for thousands of miles.”
“Out beyond the island there, same for mebbe an hour’s sail. Another island out beyond. Same that way, that way as far as I ever been.”
Luke hauled in his tub. “Here. Your turn.”
Burriwi shook his head. “You look. I seen it.” The smile came back. “You tell me things I never hear before. Jesus, heaven and hell, sin. Some of the things I know about but called them other names. Everything you tell me you get out of a book. Everything you say I need, you got them out of a book. I ask you a question, you show me the answer in a book.
“This. This is my book. We came here today because I want to show you not everything in the world is in your books. Some of it is in my books. Not everything a man needs is in your books; some is in mine. And I read my books as good as you read yours.”
Luke turned his back on the grandeur of Burriwi’s book in order to think. The thoughts fell into line easily because of the beautiful simplicity of Burriwi’s figure. Phrasing his response was the hard part.
He didn’t get the chance, for Burriwi’s elder grandson spotted a shark below. Luke caught a glance of it—a slim, graceful gray shadow perhaps six feet long, cutting a lazy S-curve. White tips on its fins made it a bit more easily followed, pale smudges gliding deep in the water. As the boys clamored encouragement, Burriwi swung the boom out and caught the wind. Their little boat eased forward, leaned aside, took off in gentle pursuit.
The casual pas de deux lasted at most five minutes. Then the final white-tipped gray vestige of their quarry disappeared and they were abreast the south side of the island. With a terse warning about coral cuts, Burriwi nosed the boat onto a patch of sand. Here was a holiday and an adventure, not a theology seminar. Luke abandoned philosophical discussions for the moment and joined the boys as they clambered ashore.
This was not, technically speaking, a shore. It was a reef, coral so near the surface that low tide almost uncovered it. Luke strolled across its jagged flatness with never more than his ankles getting wet.
A score of silver seagulls had just sat down to lunch. They rose and glided away on gleaming wings. They settled a hundred yards off to resume their interrupted dining. A dark, smoky-gray seabird with a white skullcap flew to the far side of the reef.
How Luke wished Burriwi could approach the gospel of Jesus Christ with the same awesome wonder Luke felt upon reading Burriwi’s book. Slim starfish of the most intense blue clung to the shade sides of coral chunks. Dazzling royal blue! An amazing little white clam of some sort had buried itself hinge-down in solid coral rock. It lived in a slotted hole apparently of its own making.
From pictures, Luke identified this nine-inch black, sausage-shaped glob as a sea cucumber. When he picked it up it draped limp in his hands, then exuded a tangle of long white filaments. Before it did that he had no idea what to do with it; now he had even less. Baffled, he laid it carefully in a puddle and continued his exploration.
“Shark! Here’s a shark!” Dibbie stood staring at the coral, fifty feet from the nearest open water. Shark? Impossible. The water was nowhere deeper than eighteen inches on this reef. Luke sloshed and staggered his way to Dibbie’s side.
The nephew crowded in beside him and grinned. “Whitefellers call it a epaulette shark. Jus’ one of the little wobbegongs. Lotsa kinds of wobbegongs. Don’ hurt nobody.”
At first, Luke couldn’t make out anything resembling a shark amid all the blobs and splashes of earth colors. There it was, a skinny, yard-long fish, tan with brown blotches. Rounded outsized fins broke up the shape even more. It lay motionless in a gentle S-curve among the shallow globes of coral. The water was perhaps six to eight inches deep here in its little pocket of safety; its dorsal fins just barely broke the surface. In textbook discussions of cryptic coloration, Luke had never seen an epaulette shark mentioned. It deserved citation as the classic example.
Burriwi’s grandsons erupted simultaneously. With lightning speed the shark wiggled and whipped away as the boys leaped forth to catch it. Luke found himself ten years old again and caught up instantly in the heady thrill of the chase.
Why were the boys holding back? They were surely quicker than this, and the nephew just said the thing was harmless. Luke made a wild grab; for a moment only he touched it as it slid out from under his fingertips. A startling sensation it was—cool skin, shiny smooth and yet rough, perhaps like greased sandpaper. The very name shark, this slim fish with the outrageously floppy fins, its presence on this exposed reef and its texture all screamed “unreal!” Nothing in this confusion resembled what Luke would have expected, were he simply reading about it in a book.
The coral mounds and flats rose above the surface here, and the lithe little shark ran out of tidepool water to scurry through. It curled around full circle and came snaking back. Luke dived for it and the world spun out.
Salt water lay in puddles in his lungs. It burned his nose. He coughed, hacking and choking, and didn’t budge the puddles the least bit. Whoever was pounding him on the back finally, blessedly, quit. Cradled in warm gentle hands, his head bobbed. Was the owner of those hands laughing or crying? Laughing. He could see now, however poorly; it was Burriwi’s nephew, with a toothy grin spread across his dark face.
Burriwi himself hovered overhead, and he wagged his head even as he smiled. “There you are. Ready to sit up? Wanna wait awhile more?”
Surely this nightmare would right itself if viewed from the vertical. Luke struggled to sit up, but he wouldn’t have made it even that far without strong hands helping. Not just his nose burned. His left arm blazed. His ribs ached. Fire tortured his left shoulder. Blood kept trickling down into his left eye. He sloshed a handful of seawater on his face to wash it clear and looked to Burriwi for some sort of explanation.
The loincloth-clad aborigine hunkered down in front of him. “Coral cuts, they don’ heal up for forever. No worries. Jus’ tell yo
ur grandkids is ’nitiation scars like these.” He thumped the pattern of cicatrices on his own chest. “Is true, eh? Now you’re ’nitiated about coral.”
“You can afford a little optimism. It’s not your blood.” The confusion abated and anger took over as he realized what he had done—and had not done. He would never have made such an off-kilter lunge among rocks back home. Too dangerous. And yet these rocks were just as hard; worse, they claimed the paradox of being at once rounded or flat and very, very sharp. They had torn his left sleeve nearly off in their eagerness to lay open his arm.
The two grandsons, with gleaming grins on their black faces, brandished the little shark between them. Out of the water, it looked even less like a shark, not even a brown-blotched parody of a shark.
Why had Luke worked so vigorously for that? Had he not moved a muscle, the lithe boys would have caught it all the same. His efforts were not only useless but damaging—to him.
Luke gestured toward them. “Dinner tonight?”
“There’s better-tasting fish than that one. But that one is caught; that makes it better than all the fish swimming in the coral, eh? Here. You think nothing’s broke mebbe, I give you a hand up.”
Luke surveyed the visible damage and identified by its pain that damage not easily seen. “I don’t read your book very well, Burriwi.”
The bright grin widened. “Naw, is okay. You jus’ skipped a couple pages, eh?”
Chapter Nine
By Hook or Crook
Viewed from afar, from out in the open, the rain forest was not just a smooth green carpet to cover the angular mountains. It was a very nubby blanket, a globby patchwork of many kinds of green. Here and there at random, deep green trees with white limbs stood head high above the jumble. They seemed out of place, too tall for the forest they found themselves in. Palm trees studded the steep slopes with frothy mounds of pale green.
Samantha stood at the south end of Cole Sloan’s latest clearing near the water’s edge. From here she could see not just the clearing but the clearing process. Very near her, workers were churning up the rusty-black forest soil. Moldy loam that had not felt the heat of direct sun in millennia began immediately to dry out under the unbroken sky. Over there they were ripping out brush, pulling big stumps with the big draught horses and smaller roots with Sheba, hacking at mangled low growth with cane knives. On the far side they were just now cutting into virgin forest.
The measured cadence of che, che, che ended. An expectant silence, the passage of a long moment, and one of the palms shimmied. Slowly, gracefully, with an air of disbelief, it tipped out over the clearing. It slammed into the underbrush. Almost instantly the axes’ che, che, che commenced again.
Samantha gave the pot of rice a stir. She dipped out a few grains and pinched them. Ready. “Meg, put the bread and cheese out. Linnet, be the fruit bowls on the table?”
“Almost.”
Samantha rolled her eyes skyward. The easiest job of all, and …
She motioned to Fat Dog and stepped up to the open fire. The aboriginal stable foreman gripped one end of the spit and Samantha took the other. Together they swung the side of roast mutton onto a wooden slab. Fat Dog commenced whacking it apart with his big machete. He was far more efficient with that thing than Samantha could hope to be with a properly honed butcher knife. She cut the savory chunks into serving pieces.
Meg rang the dinner gong just a bit prematurely, but no matter. It would take the workers at the far end of the clearing a while to get here.
Laborers brown, white, and black came crowding around, laughing, jostling, boasting, sweating. None seemed interested in washing. They queued up, tin plates and spoons in hand. Meg plopped great dollops of rice on the plates and Samantha served the mutton. She tried to do it properly and in sanitary fashion, but her apron and hands were greasy in moments.
The line dwindled. The last of the crew arrived, accepted their food and wandered off to eat. There was no such thing here as a properly laid table. The bowl of jam and the bread, cheese and fruit were set out on split logs on the ground, a puncheon table without legs. Men filled their plates and sat about anywhere the notion struck.
By the time Samantha could fill her own plate, the ants had found the jam and cheese, and flies covered the mutton. She was almost accustomed to picking off the bugs before dining. Almost. It would never be easy. She seated herself on the tailgate of Fat Dog’s wagon and ate just as eagerly as the rest.
From beyond the forest wall came Mr. Sloan, riding Gypsy along the rough track. Samantha put her plate aside quickly and tossed a chunk of mutton onto the embers. By the time Mr. Sloan arrived and dismounted, she had warmed up his meat and filled his plate. He perched on the tailgate and watched her curiously.
She hesitated not at all. He knew where she had been sitting. She picked her plate up and settled back into her place.
He poked at the rice. “What’s in it?”
“I’ve nae idea, sir. Fat Dog’s wife showed Linnet this herb and it smelled as if it would complement rice well. So I tried it out because rice gets rather boring after a time.”
“Tastes good.” He smiled. “Very adaptable of you.”
“Until I choose the wrong herb and we all turn shoe soles up one dreadful morning.”
He chuckled. “I’ll risk it for some decent food.” He waved his arm toward the ruined forest. “Not what you’re used to, is it?”
“Meself sat here thinking the very thing when ye rode in. Unimaginable to this Irish city girl. Nae proper furniture, nae proper tableware, few kitchen implements, open fires. And all these mouths to feed. A side of mutton roasted whole, and see—it be nearly gone. What frightens me, may I be so bold, is that ’tis not nearly as alien to me as it ought be. I like the refinements of civilization. I dinnae want to become inured to savagery.”
“Adapting and becoming hardened aren’t the same thing.”
“Too close for me comfort.” She set her empty plate aside and studied for a while the flat wall of forest at the far side of the clearing. “Curious. Here’s meself, preferring all the trimmings of the civil life, and yet … and yet, there be a profound sadness about watching the forest die.”
“Die? Poor choice of words. The forest isn’t dying any more than a caterpillar dies as it turns into a butterfly. ‘Transform’ is the word.”
She looked at the tangled green wreckage and the fallen giants, and kept her tongue in check.
Mr. Sloan pronounced an ugly word. He was staring at the track. From the forest trail came a mill worker pushing a handbarrow heaped high with something. Samantha couldn’t see what, for the barrow was covered with a wet sheet or tarpaulin of some sort. The man brought the barrow almost nigh and unceremoniously dumped it. Short thick chunks of green wood they were. He tugged at the wet sheet until it more or less covered them and turned to leave.
“What’s going on, Dakins?” Mr. Sloan demanded.
“Sir?” The burly man put his barrow down. “Your bananas.”
“I know. Why a hand barrow?”
“Mr. Gantry told me to, sir. Only thing about.”
“Send him up here.”
“Aye, sir.” The man picked up his barrow handles and trundled off, in no hurry.
Samantha looked at her employer quizzically.
Mr. Sloan scowled at his mutton. “Gonna take ’em forever to bring up the banana stocks with a handbarrow. What can he be thinking of?”
“Ye might use Fat Dog’s wagon here, sir, if need be. Meself need not take things back to the house just yet.”
“We have wagons and oxen. Gantry’s out of line.”
The mill foreman appeared in person with the next barrow load, followed by that same burly man and another wheelbarrow. “Ye wished to see me, Mr. Sloan?”
“What’s going on?”
“All our oxcarts are on the road, sir. This is what we got left to haul your rootstocks.”
“On the road carting what?”
“Your downed cane. You
said get rid of it any way I found. I tried dumping it in the sea but it floated back in and the boys say it messes up the fishing too much. Since most of them live on fish, I figured I best find someplace else. I was gonna just go dump it in the bush somewhere, but the oxcarts have trouble getting off the road with it. Then Vinson came along with th—”
“Vinson!”
“Aye. Took it off m’ hands for free. Only charged me for the stuff we’d chopped, because it’s so hard to transport, he says. And so I loaned him use of some oxcarts, since he’s doing us a favor more or less. Carts should be back in a few days.”
“Took it where?!”
“Don’ matter by me, sir. Took it. Between the oxcarts and the sugar trams, he sent it all down to Townsville, I think.”
“And we’re left with two wheelbarrows to plant forty acres of bananas and twenty of cane!”
“Three barrows, sir. And I might with your permission use Fat Dog’s wagon here a few hours. Uh, you say you want to put twenty acres more into sugar?”
“Told you that weeks ago.”
“Aye. Forgot. I think we still got enough if we dig some out of the established fields.”
“You got rid of all the fallen stuff?”
“It’s whatcha said, sir. Don’t worry. I’m sure I can come up with enough good joints to put in twenty acres.” Hastily Mr. Gantry dipped his head and snatched up his empty barrow. Away he went.
Mr. Sloan stared after him. “Vinson!”
“Excuse me ignorance, sir; what would a preacher wish with a mountain of useless green sugar cane?”
“I plan to find out.”
“And ye feel nae gratitude that he solved a weighty problem for ye? Even admiration?”
“Do you admire a fox for his skill at reaching the hens? The meddler’s up to something.” And Mr. Sloan returned to his herb-flavored rice.
In Ireland one might prepare a plot for planting by first removing the tons of rocks and stones. Then one would plow the whole, disk or harrow the rough furrows, and perhaps hand rake it as a last touch. Of course, in that last pass one would remove further tons of rock and stone.
Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) Page 9
