Electronic Resource
E-book South sea tales
Despite the heavy clumsiness of her lines, the Aorai handled easily in
the light breeze, and her captain ran her well in before he hove to
just outside the suck of the surf. The atoll of Hikueru lay low on the
water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty
miles in circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water
mark. On the bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl
shell, and from the deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of
the atoll, the divers could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no
entrance for even a trading schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters
could win in through the tortuous and shallow channel, but the
schooners lay off and on outside and sent in their small boats.
The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the
oars, while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young
man garbed in the tropic white that marks the European. The golden strain of Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin
and cast up golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of
his eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul,
the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen trading
schooners similar to the Aorai.
Tidak tersedia versi lain