THE voyage passed, like a strange and lovely dream. For days and nights they flew full-sail before the favouring trades; then, for days and nights again, they steamed against contrary winds.
They passed the region of close-lying islands, and seemed alone on vast blue seas, then an island, or a group, would loom up on the horizon, and off they would make for it. Some islands they would leave alone, expecting no profitable business there; some were mere untenanted, lonely reefs, others had a reputation for fierce, or even cannibal inhabitants, and on these the Typee made no call.
There came a morning when, according to the chart, they should be within a day and a night’s journey of Orphan Island. Mr. Thinkwell and Charles began to be excited and anxious, lest the chart should be at fault, or the whole affair a hoax. They had sceptical, excitable natures. William and Rosamond, more placid, were not anxious at all. Besides, Rosamond knew that the chart was quite accurate enough for its purpose and that her great grandfather had not hoaxed them. Always Rosamond believed everything; her nature was credulous.
Rosamond, as we know, was right this time, and when they came on deck early in the pearly loveliness of the morning, what should they see through their glasses but, on the far horizon, a transparent shape that seemed like two islands joined by a thin neck of land.
“That should be it,” said Captain Paul. “It’s the only island for two hundred miles.”
Mr. Thinkwell was relieved and pleased. His grandfather, then, had guided them aright so far.
“Now,” said Charles, loudly and firmly, “now I believe the whole story. Now I believe we shall find the island full of orphans and descendants of orphans.”
“More likely,” said Mr. Merton, who was something of a pessimist, “that the whole crowd of ‘em perished right off, or were massacred by savages. Eaten,” he added, after a pause. “Eaten right up,” and he looked at Rosamond to see how she took that. But Rosamond, who had read such a very great deal of literature about persons who had been eaten right up, or had been in grave danger of being eaten but had escaped, was not in the least shocked by the thought. It seemed to her quite a natural, commonplace end. And, anyhow, she knew well that the orphans had not been eaten. Unless, indeed, the doctor and Miss Smith should have eaten them, when hard pressed for other food. Persons on islands, Rosamond had heard, develop strange tastes. They will eat raw fish sometimes. One may not judge them.
Through the pearly morning the Typee drove before the west wind towards Orphan Island, which grew, moment by moment, less transparent, more coloured, till the voyagers could distinguish the line of reef that circled it, the glisten of white beach, the clustering woods. And then they saw houses. Not the white buildings that Europeans erect on other islands, but wooden dwellings of all sizes, thatched with palm, or little round-topped huts. Obviously habitations put up by people without building resources at command beyond what they could obtain from the woods. But people of intelligence; these were no savage dwellings. Both peninsulas of the island were dotted with them.
It was now the hour of noon, and very warm and still. Orphan Island seemed to sleep. But, as the Typee neared its shores, life woke on it. Through their glasses the travellers saw tiny forms stirring, creeping out of the dwellings, gesticulating, pointing out to sea. Soon a crowd was gathered on the shore, showing every evidence of excitement.
“Can you make them out yet?” Mr. Thinkwell inquired of Captain Paul. “Their colour, I mean?”
After a pause and a long look the captain replied, “Whites. No doubt as to that, Mr. Thinkwell. They are surely a white colony, however they may have got there.”
“One up to great-grandpapa,” said Charles. “This grows interesting. The veritable orphans … and their seed, apparently, is as the sands of the sea.”
“I told you,” said William, “that there would be thousands of them, if any.”
“Trade,” Mr. Merton murmured. “New ground. Pearls—who knows?”
Mr. Thinkwell was firm. “No exploitation, if you please. No trade, even. I must see these people exactly as they are, as they have developed without outside influence.”
“Well, it’s your show. Later, perhaps?”
“Later, we shall see.”
As they steamed nearer, they could see, through their glasses, the forms and faces of the crowd on the beach. Brown faces, freckled faces, red faces, sallow faces, white faces, rosy faces of children—unmistakable faces of white-skinned people who have been for long exposed to fierce suns. Bare brown legs and arms; but, except the small children, the Orphans were not naked; they wore garments of brown stuff which, said Mr. Merton, came from the palm tree, or of a lighter and finer material which might, the trader said, be made from bark. The ladies’ costumes were skirt-shaped, and fell to the knee, where they were tied in, like the Princess dresses of the eighteen-seventies; the gentlemen wore trousers, also only to the knee. Many of the ladies seemed also adorned with coloured feathers. This much the arrivals could plainly see as their schooner neared the island shores.
They dropped anchor at a gap in the coral reef which was the entrance to the lagoon. Here they lowered a boat, in which the Thinkwells, Captain Paul, and Mr. Merton were rowed in.
Strange it was, thought Charles, very lovely and strange, the voyage through that blue and glassy sea, where swam fish more brightly-hued than rainbows, more oddly shaped than Gothic devils, each dip of the oars carrying the boat nearer that land unvisited for close on seventy years. Strange and lovely and exciting to Charles, and like a poet’s dream; strange, exciting, and deeply interesting to Mr. Thinkwell, the sociologist; to William, the youth of science, natural enough, and a new field for exploration and investigation. And to Rosamond this and the whole voyage were like sailing out of an alien, irrelevant world of illusion into reality, to Rosamond it was like coming home. But, seeing so many persons gathered together, Rosamond felt them too many, preferring islands to be solitary. Would the Orphans be bored that they had come, breaking thus into the happy peace of seventy years? Oh, they did not look bored; excited they looked, and pleased and amazed, as they ran out into the lapping waves and helped to pull the boat ashore.
When they were all got out, and stood in a group on the beach, surrounded by the population, there stepped forward a large, handsome, dignified man with sweeping chestnut whiskers (a fashion affected by most of the elder gentlemen, though the majority of the younger were completely shaved) and addressed them with great politeness.
“Good-day, my dear sirs. Good-day, madam. This is an unexpected and a quite unwonted pleasure. No one has called here for a prodigious great while. Very probably you are missionaries.”