Dolan of Sugar Hills (7 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Not back for a week.

Sheila remained where she was, one soaked shoe on the white sand, the other still in the lapping water, and looked dismayed.

Seven days of nothing but pines and sea and coral reef, she was thinking.

An island ... a man ... a girl, as this man, this Cane Dolan, had taunted.

She became acutely aware of Cane’s eyes upon her.

When he suggested that they clear the boat before they cleared whatever else would have to be cleared up between them, she agreed at once. They went backward and forward until they had removed all that could be taken off. Then, availing themselves of the advantage of an incoming wave, between them they beached the little craft. After that, with much combined effort, they upended it and looked at the hole. It was, as Cane had said, quite big.

Even as they stood considering it, the wind dropped right away again, the seas smoothed over once more, it became apparent that the squall was to be short-lived.

“That’s typical Northern Queensland weather for you,” swore Cane. “I should have my brains brushed for taking notice as I did. If we’d kept on course nothing would have happened. Now through my stupidity we’re faced with this.” He waved a violent arm. “Perhaps something will come along.”

“That’s very unlikely. This passage is a vast passage, and anyway, we’re round a bay. No, my girl, don’t hope for anything like that.”

He bent over the hole again, scowling heavily.

Sheila felt sorry for him; she guessed that without her, without the responsibility of a female passenger, this would not have happened. Apologetically she said as much. “I think,” she ventured, “that if you hadn’t had me you would not have come in when you did.”

“The milk’s spilt,” he shrugged, “the thing’s happened. Let’s think of something else.”

“Like a cup of tea,” murmured Sheila longingly, inspired by his mention of milk. They had started off very early this morning, she recalled. No wonder she felt hollow now.

“Is there water?” she asked hopefully.

“Probably a small stream somewhere between the hills. There usually is—and anyway I stowed a demijohn.”

“Then we drink at least,” Sheila said forlornly.

“We drink and eat, but I warn you that you’ll be very tired of it by the end of the week.”

“Tired of what?” she asked.

“Fish,” replied Cane laconically, “then more Fish.”

“How can you catch them?”

“I’ll be spearing them,” he told her, and he went across to one of his bags and took out an underwater kit.

As he unpacked it, the sling, gun, goggles, mask, flippers and glove, he said with much more cheerfulness, “Thank goodness I didn’t leave this behind, thank goodness I planned to spear Fish at Silverwake. If we were depending on makeshift lines we might be facing a hungry week. Now you, Sheila, collect some tinder while I change, there’s a good Girl Friday.” He grinned. “Does baked snapper appeal?”

“It sounds lovely.”

“No sauce, no trimmings.”

“It still sounds lovely.”

He laughed. “Remind me to ask you that question in a few days’ time.” He walked off.

Sheila ventured a short distance into the jungle and collected a pile of sticks. She walked on a thick carpet of needles. Looking up, she noted that the pines from which they had fallen were different pines from any she knew, that growing between them were palms and casuarina trees.

When she emerged from the forest again, it was like coming out of a cool green cavern. The beach was deserted. She knew a moment of panic as she looked up and then down the sands.

Then Cane called out to her ... his voice seemed to come from the direction of the water. She walked down just as he prepared to submerge into a pool at the bottom of a group of rocks.

“You look like something from Mars,” she called out, regarding the rather fearsome gear he wore.

“Appearances don’t matter,” he retorted. “The important thing now is keeping together our bodies and souls.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to do that?”

He didn’t answer that impertinence, he dived down.

Sheila scarcely had lit the piled sticks with matches she found in the pocket of his coat when he emerged again from the water, holding aloft a silver catch.

“Sorry,” he called, “that it’s not a snapper but a bream. I’ll spear your snapper next.”

He did. Thirteen inches of plump snapper ... a nice three pounds. Sheila just stood and gasped. She watched him as he scaled and filleted the fish, as he placed the fillets on the hot stones.

“Find another stone to do for a plate,” he directed. “Find one for me.”

They ate the fish to the last melting white morsel. A garnish would have been acceptable, a tartar sauce would have made it irresistible, but still it was food and, this early in a marooned week, very nice food. Sheila sensibly decided that she would not think how she would be regarding fish in seven days’ time.

She leaned back against the broad rock to which Cane had brought their first meal. The sun was pleasantly warm, the wind, reduced now to only a lazy stir, made little curly patterns on the sand. Replete, Sheila half closed her eyes, and through her fanned lashes she saw the upside-down world of this lovely island reflected in a now mirror-like sea. It was all very beautiful; the day was beautiful; she felt her doubts and cares fall away from her like a cloak.

Cane must have felt rather the same way. She heard him sigh deeply and contentedly, and through the fan of her lashes again she saw that his eyes too were half-closed.

The pair of them remained like that in companionable silence for quite a while. When Cane indicated some gamboling dolphins she watched with lazy pleasure as they played gracefully together beyond the fringe of reef.

“What is it like,” she asked dreamily, “under the water?”

“It’s beautiful.” He sat up. “Haven’t you ever been?”

“No.”

“Can you swim?”

“Yes.”

“Get into your togs.”

She looked inquiringly at him.

“Up in Queensland we never say bathsuit, we say togs.”

“It wasn’t that. I was wondering why I should get into them.”

“Don’t you want to see underwater?”

“I do, but—”

“Then you’d be much more comfortable doing it not overdressed,” he advised, and getting up he went across to his gear still spread over the beach. “I’m presuming,” he called over his shoulder, “that you’ve brought your togs?”

“Yes.” She had got up too, and was rummaging in a bag.

When she came a little later from behind a dressing room of clustered palms he was waiting with goggles for her.

She wore a square-necked one-piece of deep blue. It was straight and uncluttered, and though the glance he tossed her was so brief it was scarcely a glance at all, she had the impression that not one detail had escaped him.

“I always carry spares,” he said of the goggles. “With a little altering these should suit you quite well. Now, is that right?”

She nodded carefully so as not to dislodge the goggles, which were far too big for her and rather weighted her down. Their heaviness only permitted the slightest inclination of her head, and she was annoyed when he laughed at her stiffness.

“Just raise or lower your hand next time,” he advised. “Are you ready now?”

He led her down the shelf of beach to the rocks beyond which he had caught their dinner.

She asked a little apprehensively, thinking of grouper and shark, “Is it safe?”

“You’ll meet no monsters in this pool, and even if you did they’d probably only be curious about you. That, anyhow, has been my experience to date.”

He took her hand and together they went into the water. It was mild and pleasant. They waded in waist deep, then dived down.

Once under, Sheila lost her apprehension. Enchantment was instantaneous, it swept everything else aside. She never had seen anything like this in her life. It was a cool, pale-green world she wreathed through, as delicate as though tended by fairies; it was a world apart from the world she came from; it was a garden of dreams.

Cane, swimming beside her, indicated different reef flowers as they passed, blooms as rich and as large as the blooms on chrysanthemums and dahlias; he pointed out sea anemones in full, billowy skirts.

When they came up for air, Sheila could hardly wait to go down again.

At his nod, she submerged once more. It was starfish this time,
sea urchins, beche-de-mer, the fish that took refuge in the beche-de-mer.

Up again for breath, laughing now, laughing with eagerness and excitement, Cane Dolan watching her, watching the drenched short hair, the sun on her wet glistening limbs.

Shellfish, butterfly fish, seaweeds of such beauty that Sheila caught at her companion’s hand in sheer ecstasy, then up again, and Cane saying with finality, “Enough now, don’t forget we have still a week to fill in. We don’t want to use everything up at once.”

Sheila shook herself free of some of the drops, then obediently stood still while he detached her goggles. “Enjoy it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.” It was all she could say, her starry eyes said the rest.

When she emerged from her “dressing room” again he had collected a pile of rock oysters and was opening them and placing them on a large pandanus leaf.

“The pandanus is the breadfruit tree,” he told her. “The aborigines frequently pounded it to make a bread of doughlike consistency. However, I don’t think you would find it a very good substitute for the thin brown wafers usually served with these.” He waved an arm to the oysters.

“They’re lovely,” she assured him, having already taken and eaten one, now reaching out for more.

They lay against the rock again, as before not speaking, not needing speech, quietly content. At least Sheila knew she was content, and, peeping through her fringe of lashes to watch him again, she felt that Cane was content, as well.

The sun was still quite high and bright when Cane said, “We’d better get moving, Sheila, and fix things up for the night.”

She was comfortable and did not want to move. Nor did she want to talk ... or think ... about the night. She argued a little agitatedly, “There’s plenty of time.”

“Not when a frigate bird moves in.” Cane pointed to a far speck in the sky. “He only comes in at day’s end,” he told her. “He’s a marauder. He steals from the gulls. Some gull babies will go hungry this evening, I’m
afraid.”

Sheila watched the frigate bird with its outstretched wings, its perfect soaring. From here it seemed poised in space.

But Cane was regarding the island, not the bird.

“I think we’ll climb the hill,” he said, “and make our bed. We want a sheltered spot, and of course, we must be right off the beach.”

“But the sand is soft,” Sheila argued again, still looking at the frigate bird, feeling now an urgent need to avoid this man’s glance.

“So are the pine needles soft if you choose them young enough and collect sufficient,” he returned carelessly. “Anyway, we couldn’t stay here for crabs.”

“Crabs?”

“Giant, pygmy, hermit, soldier—quite nice fellows, but too curious for my liking, especially with the nippers they possess.”

They took what they wanted from the bags, stowed the bags together, then started up the fairly steep mountain.

Cane indicated each tree as they went ... told her that many, many years ago coconut palms had been planted and at the same time goats liberated as a possible source of food for the crews of shipwrecked vessels.

Sheila nodded, but did not listen. With each step up the hill she found that she felt considerably less serene, less uncaring, less what she had felt down on the beach. In short, she thought miserably, she did not feel happy at all.

In that odd way he had of reading her thoughts, Cane suddenly stopped in his ascent and wheeled around on her.

“Don’t worry,” he said abruptly.

“Worry?”

“You’re doing that right now, aren’t you?”

“Listen to me: we’re going to gather a lot of leaves and a lot of needles and we’re going to find two hollows. We’re going to cut down palms and arrange them on top of us for blankets. It will be comfortable and you’ll sleep. You’ll sleep as you’ve never slept before, and it won’t even occur to you to wonder what Miss Whittaker thinks.”

Sheila bit at a suddenly trembling lip. “You’re laughing at me. I don’t mean to be difficult, it’s just... well...”

“I’m not laughing, Shelley.” His voice was gentle. He gave her a long, calm look.

Instantly Sheila found herself calm, as well.

“It’ll be all right, mate,” Cane said.

She felt different after that. She walked beside him, matching her steps with his, a laggard no longer. He had said, “It’ll be all right, mate.”

So it was.

From the top of the hill the view was magnificent. The pattern of little islands seemed never to cease. North, south, east and west, they rose from the blue sea, and they were all identical except in shape ... palm-fringed, coral-reefed, lagoon waters as clear as crystal, sands white as snow.

For some moments Cane stood staring out as Sheila did, drinking it all in, then quite abruptly, almost as though something had unsettled him in the aspect, he turned his back on the scene.

“We’ll gather our beds.” he said briskly, and he began at once. Sheila followed suit.

It was fun collecting the needles, the brackens, the soft leaves. Again and again Cane sent Sheila out for more and more. “Do you want a kapok, an inner spring, or a feather mattress?” he demanded. “Whatever it is you’ve set your heart on that’s not nearly enough.”

She was laughing now, laughing with exhaustion and merriment. Throwing down another armful and turning to inquire whether that was enough at last, she saw to her surprise that what Cane had said of the frigate bird had been right. It was day’s end.