Call It Courage Read online

  It was an ominous, oppressive world at this season of storm. Half a mile distant a whale heaved its varnished hulk to the surface, to throw a jet of vapory mist high into the air; then it submerged, leaving scarcely a ripple to mark its passage. A shoal of flying fishes broke water, skimming away in a silver shimmer of flight. A dolphin sped after them, smooth-rolling in pursuit, so close that the boy could hear the sound of its breathing. This world of the sea was ruled by nature’s harsh law of survival. Mafatu knew the sea with an intimacy given to few. He had seen fleets of giant mantas whipping the lagoon of Hikueru to a boiling fury; he had seen the mighty cachalot set upon by killer-whales and torn to ribbons almost in the blink of an eye; once he had seen an octopus as large as the trunk of a tamanu, with tentacles thirty feet long, rise from the mile-deep water beyond the barrier reef. … Ai, this sea!

  Mafatu opened one of the green drinking nuts and tilted back his head to let the cool liquid trickle down his parched throat; more refreshing than spring water, cool on the hottest days, and as sustaining as food. The boy scooped out the gelatinous meat for Uri and the dog ate it gratefully.

  The ocean current which held the canoe in its grip seemed to have quickened. There was a wind rising, too, in little puffs and gusts. Now the canoe heeled over under the sudden attack, while Mafatu scrambled onto the outrigger to lend his weight for ballast; then the wind dropped as suddenly as it appeared, while the canoe righted itself and the boy breathed freely once again. He searched the skies for Kivi. His albatross might have been one of a thousand sea birds flying against the roof of the sky, or he might have vanished utterly, leaving his friends here in solitary space. The bird had led Mafatu out through the reef passage at Hikueru into the open ocean and now, it seemed, had deserted him.

  A storm was making, moving in out of those mysterious belts which lie north and south of the equator, the home of hurricanes. The wind shifted a point, bringing with it a heavy squall. Mafatu lowered the sail on the run and gripped the steering paddle with hands that showed white at the knuckles. All around him now was a world of tumbling water, gray in the hollows, greenish on the slopes. The wind tore off the combing crests and flung the spray at the sky. Like advance scouts of an oncoming army, wind gusts moved down upon the canoe, struck at it savagely. So busy was Mafatu with the paddle that there was no time for thought. He called a prayer to Maui, God of the Fishermen: “Maui é! E matai tu!”

  Somehow the sound of his own voice reassured him. Uri lifted his head, cocked his ears, thumped his tail for a second. The canoe rose to the swells as lightly as a gull and coasted like a sled down the frothing slopes. What skill had wrought this small canoe! This dugout, hewn from the mighty tamanu tree. It swooped and yielded, bucked and scudded, one with the fierce element whose back it rode.

  The sky darkened. A burst of lightning lit up the sea with supernatural brilliance. An instantaneous crack of thunder shattered the world. Lightning again, striking at the hissing water. Mafatu watched it with fascinated eyes. Now it was all about him. It ran to the end of the boom in globes of fire that exploded and vanished, and in the awful moment of its being it revealed mountain shapes of dark water, heaving, shouldering. … How long could this frail craft of wood and sennit resist? Under the combined attack of wind and sea it seemed that something must inevitably give way. The wind shrilled a fiercer note. Spray stung the boy’s flesh, blinded his eyes, chilled his marrow.

  The sail went first—with a split and a roar. Fragments swept off on the back of the wind. The cords that held the mast hummed like plucked wires. Then with a rending groan the mast cracked. Before Mafatu could leap to cut it clear, it snapped off and disappeared in a churn of black water. The boy clung to the paddle, fighting to keep his canoe from turning broadside. Water swept aboard and out again. Only the buoyancy of tamanu kept the craft afloat. Uri cowered in the bow, half submerged, his howls drowned by the roar of the elements. Mafatu gripped his paddle for very life, an unreasoning terror powering his arms. This sea that he had always feared was rising to claim him, just as it had claimed his mother. How rightly he had feared it! Moana, the Sea God, had been biding his time. … “Someday, Mafatu, I will claim you!”

  The boy lost all sense of time’s passage. Every nerve became dulled by tumult. The wind howled above his head and still Mafatu clung to the lashed steering paddle; clung fast long after strength had vanished and only the will to live locked his strong fingers about the shaft. Even death would not loose the grip of those fingers. He held his little craft true to the wind.

  There was a wave lifting before the canoe. Many the boy had seen, but this was a giant—a monster livid and hungry. Higher, higher it rose, until it seemed that it must scrape at the low-hanging clouds. Its crest heaved over with a vast sigh. The boy saw it coming. He tried to cry out. No sound issued from his throat. Suddenly the wave was upon him. Down it crashed. Chaos! Mafatu felt the paddle torn from his hands. Thunder in his ears. Water strangling him. Terror in his soul. The canoe slewed round into the trough. The boy flung himself forward, wound his arms about the mid-thwart. It was the end of a world.

  The wave passed. Stunned, gasping, Mafatu raised his head and looked about. For a second he could not believe that he still breathed and had being. He saw Uri wedged under the bow, choking for air. He pulled the dog free. Then he saw that his string of drinking nuts had vanished. His fish spear was gone. The knife that hung about his neck by a twist of bark had been torn away. Even his pareu of fiber tapa fell from his body as water soaked it through. He was naked, defenseless, without food or weapon, hurled forward on the breath of the hurricane. Numb of all feeling, empty as a shell, still he clung to life, and the hours droned by. …

  So gradual was the storm’s easing that at first the boy was unaware of it. The wind was blowing itself out, moving off into the empty spaces of the world. Uri crept toward the prostrate boy, quailing beside him, whimpering softly.

  Night came and passed.

  There was no morning mist to dim the splendor of the sunburst across the swinging seas. Far away the wings of an albatross caught its gold as it wheeled and planed against the roof of heaven. The only hint of recent storm lay in the rough and tumbling waters. As the sun climbed through the hot hours of morning, it burned into the boy’s body like the sacred fires of the great marae of Hikueru. Mafatu’s skin blistered and cracked. His tongue swelled in his throat. He tried to call out a prayer to Maui, but his voice was thick; the sounds which came forth were no more than hoarse cries. The canoe, stripped of sail and mast, without a paddle to guide it in the swift-racing current, twisted and shifted in the rushing waters.

  As one hour merged into another there came moments of fitful, choking slumber, a growing agony of thirst for the boy and his dog. The sun burned into them like an inescapable eye. The current which held Mafatu’s canoe fast in its grip was bearing it swiftly on toward its mysterious destination.

  And thus the day passed, while night once more descended, bringing blessed release from the sun.

  Now the air was luminous with promise of another day. Out of the sultry mists the sea emerged, blue and violet. With the coming of this new day, terror raised its head. Mafatu tried to fight it back, to deny its existence; but it gripped his heart with clammy fingers, tightened his throat. He flung himself flat on the floor of the canoe and buried his face in his arms. He must have cried out then. His voice was but a hoarse croak, yet it stirred Uri to life: the dog’s ragged tail gave one feeble thump. With the ghost of a whimper the animal laid his hot nose against the boy’s hand.

  The brave thump of his dog’s tail touched Mafatu profoundly. He caught the animal to him, while a new assurance, a new strength, flooded his being. If Uri could have courage to die, surely he, Mafatu, could not do less! In that instant he heard a whir and fury in the sky above, a beat of wide wings. … Looking upward, the boy’s dulled eyes made out the widespread wings of an albatross, circling above the canoe.

  “Kivi!” Mafatu cried hoarsely. “Ai Kivi!�
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  Even as he spoke, the bird wheeled slowly, then flew off straight ahead for the distant horizon. The boy noticed then that the sea current was carrying him almost due southwest. Kivi’s flight moved in exact parallel. Once more it seemed as if his albatross were leading him onward, just as he had led the canoe out of the passage of Hikueru.

  Mafatu scanned the rim of the horizon; it looked as hard as the cut edge of a stone. But suddenly the boy’s heart gave a great leap and he started forward. It couldn’t be! It was a cloud. … But the sky was cloudless. Far off in the sea-shimmer lay something that was neither sea nor sky. The swells, lifting higher, now revealed, now concealed it. That shadow on the horizon—it was land! The boy flung himself forward, shaking uncontrollably.

  He seized Uri in his arms and lifted him up, laughing, crying: “Uri! Uri! It’s land. Land!”

  The dog sniffed at the air and a little whimper broke from him.

  What island could this be? Was it Tahiti, the golden island, whose language was akin to that of Kikueru? Or was it, perhaps, one of the terrible dark islands of the eaters-of-men?

  Now the current had a westward drift, and it was to the west that the dark islands lay. …

  All day, as the canoe drifted onward, the boy watched the distant shadow-shape of land, not daring to take his eyes from it lest it vanish into the sea. Hunger and thirst were lulled into forgetfulness. There was only this one reality, land—escape from the sea. Weak as he was, he still clung to the thwart, his lips whispering a silent prayer of gratitude. With waning afternoon, the island took more distinct form as the canoe drifted nearer. It was high and peaked, its valleys blue-shadowed against the paler tone of the sky. Hour by hour, with every lift of the swells, the island rose higher and higher, filling Mafatu’s soul with wonder. Hikueru, the only land he had ever seen, was as flat as his hand; but a great single peak crowned this strange island. Trees rose green and fair, tier upon tier of them, from the shoreline into the foothills of the purple mountain. Uri had caught the scent of the land now and was quivering with delight.

  Then from far off came the first muffled thunder of the reef: the boom of the surf high-bursting on the barrier coral. That sound—was it the voice of Moana? “Someday, Mafatu, someday.” Involuntarily the boy shuddered. Would his ears never be free of the Sea God’s threat?

  Mafatu was powerless to guide his craft. He sensed that the current had quickened. He could only watch helplessly as the little canoe, swift as the following gulls, rushed to meet the tides of the island where they met and churned in a cross-sea of conflict. Now across the swells came a sound like a chorus of ghostly fishermen weary with their day’s toil: sea birds, always complaining, never at rest; while softer, yet rising above it was another sound—the voice of the reef itself, quieting with sundown, like the reassuring hush of a mother to her child.

  Night stole up from the face of the sea, enveloping the world. There was no moon, but the black sky was spangled with unguessed millions of stars: other worlds, other suns. To the watching boy, with land in the offing, they seemed closer and more friendly. The bottom star of the Southern Cross pointed to the end of the world. … A soft land breeze, heavy with a scent of flowers, wafted out across the dark waters, tantalizing, bittersweet.

  Weak with thirst, the boy drifted now into a merciful sleep. He struggled against it, like a weary swimmer fighting a riptide, but his head drooped and his eyes closed.

  He was aroused at midnight by a thunderous tumult in his ears. Of a sudden he felt the canoe under him lifted and flung high into the air. Then down it crashed into splinters upon the reef. Boy and dog were hurled headlong into the boiling surf.

  The shock of cold water brought Mafatu half back to consciousness. Blindly he struck out, fighting for survival. Uri—where was he? No sign of the dog. The boy was aware that the canoe must have been flung over the barrier reef, for here the water was scarcely troubled by wind or tide. Now he was swimming, swimming. … Somewhere ahead a strip of beach, salt-white in the darkness, lured him onward. His muscles did it of themselves. Only a will to live. A strip of sand white in the night. … He caught the gleam of a shark’s belly, close at hand, but on he swam. His unhampered limbs moved freely through the water.

  Of a sudden there was something solid beneath his feet. Sand. Mafatu stumbled, staggered, fell to his knees in the shallows. His lips moved in dry, soundless speech. Lying there with the water rippling and breaking over him, he pulled himself half upright, swayed onward. The palms, trooping to the edge of the beach, were motionless in the night air. All the world seemed to hold its breath as this boy climbed up out of the sea.

  He fell to the sand once more, then, guided by he knew not what impulse, he dragged himself to the edge of the jungle. A murmur of water reached his ears, soft as a chuckle of pleasant laughter. Water, sweet water. … Down the face of an age-worn rock a small cascade lost itself amid ferns and cool mosses. A ragged, strangling cry broke from Mafatu’s throat. He stood upright to full height. Then he crashed to the mossy bank. One cheek lay in the cool water.

  The moon lifted above the rim of the palms. It outlined in silver the form of a boy thin with hunger, naked as the day-star. It revealed a small wet dog, dragging himself across the beach to his master’s side.

  Mafatu lay without moving. Before Uri drank, he touched the boy’s cheek with his hot muzzle.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE ISLAND

  There was a fan of light spreading in the east. Mafatu stirred and opened his eyes. For a moment he lay there motionless in the cool mosses, forgetful of the events which had cast him up on this strange shore. Then it all came crowding back upon him, and he scarcely dared to believe that there was earth, solid earth beneath him; that once more Moana, the Sea God, had been cheated. He struggled to sit upright, then fell back upon one elbow. Uri lay close at hand, holding a robber-crab in his forepaws, cracking the tough shell and extracting the meat with gusto. There was Kivi, too, with his beak tucked back under his wing in sleep. Kivi, who had led his friends to this island. …

  Mafatu pulled himself to a sitting position. The action called for more strength than he realized. He was giddy with thirst and there was an odd weakness in his limbs. His right leg was swollen and painful. He remembered then that he had banged it against the coral when the canoe struck. He discovered that there was a gash on his calf; he must take care of it, for coral wounds were poisonous.

  The chuckle of the cascade reached his ears and made him aware of a stabbing need of water. He plunged his face into the pool and drank deeply. Then, prompted more by instinct than by conscious thought, he withdrew, to let the water run down his swollen throat sparingly, with caution. Its cool magic stole through his tissues, bringing with it new life and restoring force. He sighed, and sank back on the mossy bank, relishing the strength that quickened his tired body. Soon he must find food. … There were thousands of coconut trees on every hand, rich with green fruit; but Mafatu was not yet strong enough to climb. Later he would try it. Then he would make a fire, too; and he must search the island to find out if it was inhabited; and there was a shelter to build. Oh, there was much to do! He hardly knew where to begin. But now it was enough just to lie there and feel strength returning, to know that he was safe from the sea. The sea. … He shuddered. Maui, God of the Fishermen, had carried him safely across the ocean currents.

  “Uri,” the boy muttered thickly, “we’re alive! It wasn’t all a bad dream. It really happened.”

  The answering wag of his dog’s tail was further assurance of reality. As Mafatu’s brain cleared of cobwebs, a sudden thought brought him up swiftly: this silent island was not Tahiti. What island was it then? Did it . . . oh! did it belong to the black eaters-of-men? Were they even now watching him from secret places in the jungle, biding their time? He glanced about in apprehension. But the solitude was unbroken save for the soft cooing of ghost-terns and the gentle plash of the cascade.

  On his left hand, far offshore, the reef boomed t
o the charging surf; the curve of the beach reached out like two great arms to enclose the lagoon. Coconuts and pandanus trooped in shining legions to the very edge of the sea. A flight of green-and-purple parakeets flashed across the sky and vanished. There was no other sign of life. No voices of men; no laughter of children; no footprint in the sand.

  The volcanic peak that formed the background of the island rose perhaps three thousand feet straight up out of the sea. It was the cone of a volcano long extinct. From its base, ridges of congealed lava flowed down to the distant shore. Once, in the dim beginnings of the world, this mountain had belched forth fire and brimstone, spreading destruction over the land. But the forgiving jungle through fertile centuries had crept back up the slopes, clothing them in green, green.

  The boy rose and stood stretching his stiff limbs. The water had restored him and he felt much stronger. But he found that the earth heaved with the sea’s own motion, and he swayed to keep his balance. His leg still pained, and he would need the juice of limes to cauterize the coral wound, and purau leaves to make a healing bandage. Nearby was a tree loaded with wild limes. He plucked half a dozen of the fruits, broke them on a bit of coral, and squeezed the juice into the wound. He winced as the caustic stung; but when he had bound on the leafy bandage with a twist of vine, it seemed that already his leg felt better. Soon the swelling would be gone.

  Close at hand he discovered a rude trail made by wild pigs and goats in their wanderings across the mountain. The trail led up through the foothills to a high plateau which, the boy decided, would make a splendid lookout. From that point of vantage he would be able to survey his entire island and the sea for a distance of many miles.