Read Online Love Lies Dreaming by C S Forester - Free Book Online Page A

she said, “you don’t need to move. Haven’t we got dear Mr. Trevor here to look after us?”
    That was the sort of women they were.
    Well, to cut a long story short—
    (“Just as well,” said Constance, but of course I ignored her.)
    â€”to cut a long story short, just when our rations were beginning to run low we reached the islands. There were two of them, about a mile apart, just mere coral atolls, but grateful with cocoanut palms and very pleasant to look upon.
    The smaller one we left on our lee, and bore up for the larger. We circled round the ring of the reef, looking for a break. There was only a small one.
    â€œWe’ll have to risk it,” I said, and we made a dart for the tiny entrance. As a matter of fact, I don’t really think a skilled sailor could have managed it, and I was hampered by all the women lying useless in the boat. However it was, we failed to get through. Aswell fell away from under us unexpectedly, and the bottom was torn out of the boat by the jagged coral. It was not too serious for the reef held up firm and allowed us to land without difficulty. So there we were cast away on a coral island and our only means of leaving the place damaged beyond repair.
    We carried what few stores we had ashore—as I said, we carried our stores ashore—
    (“All right,” said Constance, “I expect the kettle’s boiling. You can make the tea and bring in the tray.”)
    â€”we carried our stores ashore and tried to make the best of things. It wasn’t a bad little place, that island. There were plenty of cocoanuts, and fish which we caught on a hook made out of a safety pin of Constance’s, and at the bottom of the lagoon there were oysters! They were delicious—although of course you had to dive for them. Pretty deep, too. There were one or two bread-fruit trees, too. I hadn’t ever seen bread-fruit trees before I reached the atoll, but somehow I knew it was bread-fruit, and I guessed how to cook it. Jolly good stuff, too.
    (“Go easy with the bread and butter,” said Constance, “You’re not on the atoll now.”)
    So we didn’t fare too badly. The trouble was that not one of those women would do anything toward anything. They didn’t mind fishing, in a lady-like sort of way, but they simply would not take the fish off their hook when they caught one. They would shriek for me to do it for them. It was a horrible nuisance if I were on the other side of the atoll and had to run half a mile just to unhook their fish and re-bait their line. I think that why they liked fishing was because it gave them opportunities to take up a graceful attitude and maintain it indefinitely. Their sole purpose in life was to take up attitudes. As for climbing the palms after green cocoanuts, or diving after oysters, they nearly fainted at the bare suggestion. The consequence was that Constance and I spent all our time rushing round collecting food for sixteen persons and then cooking it. It grew wearisome, decidedly wearisome.
    (“You can put your feet up on the chair if you like,” said Constance.)
    At the end of a month or two Constance and I grew fed up with the whole business. I maintained to her that there was a slight improvement in the women, and that they showed signs of eventually becoming bearableto live with, but she couldn’t see it. As a matter of fact they got on my nerves pretty badly. Table manners are admirable enough in their way, but there is a limit to it. To see the delicate grace with which, when they were eating oysters, they would remove the pearls from their mouths if one got in unnoticed (those oysters were full of pearls, of course) grew exasperating in the end. I would have given a week of my life to see one of them spit the things out over her shoulder. And they simply had to have spoons and forks, of course. I spent hours chipping out wooden ones for them with a bit of sharp coral. And