In the near darkness, Fanny threw a holoku over her head, pulled the blanket from her berth, then felt her way along the passage leading to the companionway. Her bare feet found the steps, counted them. Up on deck, she made out the figure of her husband in his striped trader’s pajamas, sitting cross-legged near the railing. She sank down next to him, wrapped them both in her blanket, and rested her head on his shoulder. The only sounds were the lapping of waves against the hull and the cry of a single bird flying overhead. As first light came up on the little island of Hiva Oa, they sat there together like theatergoers, silent and watching.
“It’s yet another restaging of the Creation,” he whispered. “Are you weary of the same old thing?”
She laughed. “I never grow tired of it.”
The island’s mountains, darkly furred with foliage, formed a silhouette behind two strips of clouds. A veil of mist covering the peak loomed gray as lead. But on the water’s surface, cloud wisps lit white by the hidden sun danced across the glittering waves. All parts of the picture—clouds, waves, light and dark air, even the mountains—appeared to be undulating together.
“I think I could live and die here,” she said.
“You smell like coconut.” His fingers stroked her neck, then sought her breasts. He groped around in the folds of fabric. “Does that thing you wear have a drawstring at the bottom as well as the top?” he asked.
“Let’s go to your berth, love.”
“You said you felt odd about—”
“They’re not up yet.”
Louis’s tiny cabin had a narrow bed with a blanket and a finely woven little pillow made from pandanus leaves that a Marquesan had presented to him. Immediately beside the bed was a projecting shelf that served as a desk. The porthole in his room was open, and a cool breeze blew across her face. She heard sheep bleating hungrily on the hillside near Anaho beach, heard the chink of crockery in the galley as she felt the pulse of his heart quicken against hers.
It was Louis who broke the silence afterward. “I woke up this morning,” he said softly, “and I had to convince myself yet again that this whole spectacle”—he pointed toward the window—“this morning in eternity is not a dream. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? To be here, living an adventure bigger than anything I dreamed of as a boy is one thing, but to be here and be well, not just well but feeling positively spruce, is beyond all—”
His voice cracked. A ray of sun shot through the window and lit tears rolling down his cheeks. She squeezed his hand to comfort him but, in the next moment, saw him smiling broadly. “Do you see what an infant I’ve become? Yesterday I stood in the surf and let the waves simply knock me over. I picked up shells like those children I used to watch on the beach at Bournemouth. And do you know, a little sea creature crawled out of his house to have a look at me. No child could have been more wonderstruck than I at that tiny speck of life. I have spent most of my days on this planet trying to get well. And now, to have hope of good health? It is a whole new world for me, Fanny.
“I want to write a book on the South Seas,” he said as he pulled on his clothes. “There is so much here. The history of these people, their myths, the language subtleties. I will write chapters and take parts of what I write to send McClure as travel letters. Two birds with one stone. I can already see it’s going to be a devil of a big book.”
“I haven’t seen you this well in such a long time.” She embraced him. “You’ve never had such rich characters to write up.”
Louis’s strength had grown steadily from the moment the sea air hit his lungs. He pranced around the Casco as it heeled and heaved, surefooted as a mountain goat. He looked different. There was meat on his bones, though anyone seeing him for the first time would take him for a starveling. But to Fanny, who had lifted and turned his body through long, terrifying nights in Oakland and Hyères and Bournemouth, he was a new man. To see the wind billowing his shirt as he clung to a shroud, to see such wild joy in his eyes, was something she had frankly despaired of ever witnessing again. The wonder of his good health struck her as it struck him: a miracle.
It wasn’t only Louis who had been altered by the trip. Maggie Stevenson had shown herself to be a woman Fanny hadn’t known existed. “She’s returned to the girl she was before her marriage, I think,” Louis observed. “It makes me realize how heavily my father influenced her.” And Lloyd—how changed he was. He seemed charged with excitement. He was making photographs, writing stories, participating as an adult in the gatherings they’d had with natives.
Fanny had been taking notes on an irregular basis, and she sat down now to try to capture what she was feeling.
Louis says he feels alive in an entirely new way, and I must say I share the feeling. I am freer now, to be sure. There is no house to keep and I am able to explore as I choose, so long as Louis is well. I do feel healthier, as he does. My headaches are gone. Only the seasickness remains a constant. It will never let up, I am quite certain. But the wretchedness of a sick stomach is overshadowed when I witness the happiness of my two boys.
Oh, the things we all have seen! In the two months we’ve been in the Marquesas, most of it was spent on the island of Nuka Hiva. When we departed, we gave a ride to Frère Michel to the island of Hiva Oa, where we are anchored now. Just yesterday Louis and he rode up the green hills on horseback, a feat that would have been unthinkable six months ago in England.
How far away Bournemouth seems, how distant the people we knew there. Henley no longer shadows me now. He grows smaller and smaller as the world gets bigger and bigger. I feel as if Louis and I have survived a terrible test of some kind. Going away on the cruise has brought us back together.
Yesterday, when I came down to my berth for a nap, I found a poem Louis wrote attached to the inside of my bed curtain.
Fanny went to the back of the box where she kept her correspondence, pulled out the note, and pinned it to the page she had just written.
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life;
Heart-whole and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.