The Project Gutenberg EBook of Tessa, by Louis Becke

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Title: Tessa
1901

Author: Louis Becke

Release Date: March 15, 2008 [EBook #24838]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TESSA ***

Produced by David Widger

TESSA

By Louis Becke

Unwin Brothers 1901

CHAPTER I

A small, squat and dirty-looking trading steamer, with the name
_Motutapu_ painted in yellow letters on her bows and stern, lay at
anchor off the native village of Utiroa on Drummond's Island in the
Equatorial Pacific. She was about 800 tons burden, and her stained and
rusty sides made her appear as if she had been out of port for two years
instead of scarcely four months.

At this present moment four of her five boats were alongside, each one
piled high over the gunwales with bags of copra, which the steam winch
was hoisting in as quickly as possible, for night was drawing on and
Captain Louis Hendry, who was then ashore, had given orders to the
mate, a burly Yorkshireman named Oliver, to be ready to heave up at six
o'clock.

The day had been intensely hot and windless, the sea lay sweltering,
leaden-hued and misty, and the smoke from the native houses in Utiroa
village hung low down amid the groves of coco-palms which encompassed it
on three sides.

On the after-deck of the steamer, under the awning, a man was lying on
a bed of mats, with a water-bottle and a plate of bananas beside him.
Seated cross-legged beside him was a native boy, about fifteen years of
age, who kept fanning his master's face, and driving away the pestering
flies. It was easy to see that the man was suffering from fever. His
deeply-bronzed cheeks had yellowed and were thin and hollow, and his
eyes dull and apathetic. He looked like a man of fifty, though he was in
reality not more than thirty-two. Every now and then he drank, then lay
back again with a groan of pain. Piled up on the skylight was a heap
of rugs and blankets, for use when the violent chilling attack of ague
would follow on the burning, bone-racking heat of fever.

Presently the mate, accompanied by the chief engineer, came aft. Both
men were very hot and very dirty,