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

I H.
CHAPTER XVII.
HURRICANE.
Mangani had a larger and more pretentious but
built for his daughter and Bruce, into which they
moved two days after their unceremonious
marriage. Time sped, day following day with
monotonous but blissful regularity. In the early
mornings the lovers would go surfing together,
then after breakfast in their but they would ramble
in shady walks, idling the time away in happy
servitude to each other. The thought of Edith
became a distant dream, unreal. Yet behind it
all Bruce felt that he was passing through a
chimera which must pass in time, leaving him all
the happier for the memory of it. Yet coupled
with this was a haunting fear—consternation of
the resulting issue.
Molota's mind revealed undreamt-of depths, a
never-ending source of wonder and revelation to
her friend. He found the native girl remarkably
intelligent, and, contrary to his anticipation, far
purer-minded than modern girls of his own race.
Even her moral views he found would bear easy
comparison, perhaps go one better than those of
many of the white races. The whole dissimilarity
lay in a different school of thought, and in Molota's
THE FOOT OF TIME 159
case a line of reasoning which fitted with her surroundings.
Bruce taught her some English, in which
she proved an apt pupil, while she, in turn, taught
him to spear sharks; showed her lover which fruits,
roots, and leaves were edible, and also which of the
many fish they caught had to be avoided like the
plague.
The girl delighted in him, and made no secret
of the fact, and putting aside all thoughts of the
future—the foot of time—trod with winged feet
upon a flowered pathway for both Bruce and the
future mother of his child.
Molota evinced great interest and wonder in
some of her lover's pocket possessions. A self-generating
electric flash lamp was regarded as being
little short of a god, while a rather expensive
pocket barometer given Bruce by his mother
Molota felt must surely be alive.
One morning, shortly before the University
vacation terminated and the marooned undergrads
were due to return to Sydney, Bruce glanced at his
small barometer with which Molota toyed. The
reading amazed him. The atmospheric pressure was
but 28.80.
"Why, what is eet, darlinggee?" Molota enquired.
"You look just as eef you 'ad seen one ghost devil!"
Bruce told her that they were in for some rough
weather.
"How can you know eet?" asked Molota. "You
must be devil man, my 'usband."
"This little thing has told me so." Bruce indicated
his pocket barometer.