Page 125 - The English Carnival 7

The other man had been in the fore part of the canoe, closely scrutinising the land. He
had a sheet of yellow paper on his knee.

“Come and look at this, Evans,” he said.

Both men spoke in low tones, and their lips were hard and dry.

The man called Evans came swaying along the canoe until he could look over his
companion’s shoulder.

The paper had the appearance of a rough map. By much folding it was creased and
worn to the pitch of separation, and the second man held the discoloured fragments

together where they had parted. On it one could dimly make out, in almost obliterated
pencil, the outline of the bay.

“Here,” said Evans, “is the reef, and here is the gap.” He ran his thumb-nail over the
chart.

“This curved and twisting line is the river”. I could do with a drink now! And this star
is the place.”

“You see this dotted line,” said the man with the map; “it is a straight line, and runs
from the opening of the reef to a clump of palm-trees. The star comes just where it cuts
the river. We must mark the place as we go into the lagoon.”

“It’s queer,” said Evans, after a pause, “what these little marks down here are for. It
looks like the plan of a house or something; but what all these little dashes, pointing

this way and that, may mean I can’t get a notion. And what’s the writing?”

“Chinese,” said the man with the map.

“Of course! He was a Chinese,” said Evans.

“They all were,” said the man with the map.
They both sat for some minutes staring at the land, while the canoe drifted slowly. Then

Evans looked towards the paddle.

“Your turn with the paddle now, Hooker,” said he.

And his companion quietly folded up his map, put it in his pocket, passed Evans carefully,
and began to paddle. His movements were languid, like those of a man whose strength
was nearly exhausted.

Evans sat with his eyes half closed, watching the frothy breakwater of the coral creep
nearer and nearer. The sky was like a furnace, for the sun was near the zenith. Though
they were so near the treasure he did not feel the exaltation he had anticipated. The
intense excitement of the struggle for the plan, and the long night voyage from the

mainland in the unprovisioned canoe had, to use his own expression, “taken it out of

123
The Englsih Carnival-8