VII

_Rain_

It was nearly bed-time and when they awoke next morning land would be in
sight. Dr Macphail lit his pipe and, leaning over the rail, searched the
heavens for the Southern Cross. After two years at the front and a wound
that had taken longer to heal than it should, he was glad to settle down
quietly at Apia for twelve months at least, and he felt already better
for the journey. Since some of the passengers were leaving the ship next
day at Pago-Pago they had had a little dance that evening and in his
ears hammered still the harsh notes of the mechanical piano. But the
deck was quiet at last. A little way off he saw his wife in a long chair
talking with the Davidsons, and he strolled over to her. When he sat
down under the light and took off his hat you saw that he had very red
hair, with a bald patch on the crown, and the red, freckled skin which
accompanies red hair; he was a man of forty, thin, with a pinched face,
precise and rather pedantic; and he spoke with a Scots accent in a very
low, quiet voice.

Between the Macphails and the Davidsons, who were missionaries, there
had arisen the intimacy of shipboard, which is due to propinquity rather
than to any community of taste. Their chief tie was the disapproval
they shared of the men who spent their days and nights in the
smoking-room playing poker or bridge and drinking. Mrs Macphail was not
a little flattered to think that she and her husband were the only
people on board with whom the Davidsons were willing to associate, and
even the doctor, shy but no fool, half unconsciously acknowledged the
compliment. It was only because he was of an argumentative mind that in
their cabin at night he permitted himself to carp.

"Mrs Davidson was saying she didn't know how they'd have got through the
journey if it hadn't been for us," said Mrs Macphail, as she neatly
brushed out her transformation. "She said we were really the only people
on the ship they cared to know."

"I shouldn't have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could
afford to put on frills."

"It's not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn't have
been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot
in the smoking-room."

"The founder of their religion wasn't so exclusive," said Dr Macphail
with a chuckle.

"I've asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,"
answered his wife. "I shouldn't like to have a nature like yours, A