The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

142 THE FOOT OF TIME
invariably are, the closer you get down to Mother
Nature.
Had those pure Polynesians travelled to countries
where other climates, other conditions prevailed,
then let them follow the dictates of Rome. Rome
probably had the best of good reasons for the slow
evolution of them. But under their own conditions
don't dare to presume to pollute their habits with
yours, for of the two (in more cases than half)
their usages are preferable and more natural than
are your artificial ones.
The Pacific rollers came in with easy indifference.
The protecting coral reef, extending in a huge
semi-circle (like any shark-proof net) a few hundred
yards out, breaking their anger, acclimatised
them to the unpleasant fact that they had come
up against the habitation of man. Their day as
waves was done, their power spent. But the rollers
gathered their fragments together, after pounding
lazily up the golden brown sand, and returned to
the ocean that sent them. Returned, to come
again another day, in a different mood, supported
by cyclonic wind, tearing up trees, bowling over
huts like ninepins, then rushing inland as tidal
waves, all-enveloping.
But a more present subtle danger in this supposed
Eden came in the form of scratches from coral. It
looked innocent enough, pretty to a degree, sparkling,
rainbow-hued with the wet of the salt water
and the glittering lights of the sun. But it was
septic. Everything is in those lands, and every
scratch meant weeks, or more likely months, of
THE FOOT OF TIME 143
obstinate, never-healing sores. One should wear
shoes in Polynesia, in season and out of it—shoes
and a hat.
Then there were the sea snakes. You simply had
to risk them. Brian warned Bruce that there was
always just the chance, and if one did inadvertently
bite you—well, say fifteen minutes, Edith Burne,
and there will be no longer cause for worry as to
the surmounting of obstacles to your marriage.
The sea scorpions, again, might taste well, cooked
for breakfast—they did—but it's not pleasant to be
touched by one in the surf. But it is perhaps better
to be sent west by the bite of an invariably fatal
sea snake than to be caught in the tentacles of a
South Sea octopus.
Bruce was swimming lazily to the left of the
others, near some rocks. He should have avoided
attractive-looking rocks; they give deep water
diving (if foot-protected from the coral) , but to
dive into the deep, dark pools inhabited by the
most unspeakable terror of the Southern Seas is
beyond imagination, a habit best broken. Bruce
climbed out of the water, grazing his shin as he did
so—a detail he was to remember long afterwards—
and was about to take a header.
The boy was fond of diving, prided himself
upon it, and not without reason. He poised for
the dive; perhaps he waited a moment or two
longer than usual, feeling the eyes of the others
upon him. Underneath two enormous eyes watched
unmoving. Just as the boy was about to dive, the