The Strange Adventure of James Shervinton, page 68 by Louis Becke
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n's eyes had looked into mine. And I had never been a saint, though never a libertine; but between the two courses, I think, I had had as much experience of women as falls to most men, and I had never yet met a woman who seemed to so hold and possess my moral sense as did this semi-savage girl, who, for all I knew, might be no better than the usual run of Polynesian girls with European blood in their veins. But yet at that moment, I felt, ay, I knew, though I could not tell why, that she was not what she might well have been, when one considered her past environment, and her lonely unprotected situation--that is, lonely and unprotected from a civilised and conventional point of view; for with the wild races among whom she had dwelt since her infancy, she had always met with full, deep, and ample protection, and love and respect--and fear.
"Thou art the captain, Simi," she said in Samoan, "and thou alone canst guide us on the sea. And I think, as thou dost, that we must sail before the storm to Apamama; for when the wind comes suddenly and strong from the north, as it has done now, it sometimes lasteth for five days, and the sea becomes very great."
"'Tis well, Niâbon," I answered, with a laugh, meant more for Lucia than for her; "we shall turn the boat's head for Apamama, and lie there in the lagoon in peace till the gale hath died away."
And then we wore ship, and in another hour were racing before the gale under the jib and an extemporised foresail of a mat lashed to two short oars, the lower one fast to the deck, and the upper one, eighteen inches or so higher, to the mast stays. This lifted the boat beautifully, and made her steer ever so much easier than had I tried to run her with a close-reefed mainsail, for the lopping seas would have caught the boom, and either capsized us or carried the mast away, and yet I had to keep enough canvas on her--jib and mat foresail--to run away from the toppling mountains of water behind us. I had never had such an experience