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

CHAPTER XVIII.
BRUCE OVERSTAYS HIS LEAVE.
So resigned was Bruce to being sent down from the
University, disgraced, that he gave himself up to
the present, and during the long period that followed
both he and Molota lived and trod on flowers.
The sole method of communication with the
neighbouring island of Fungi, where the cross
Pacific vessels called, was by canoe from Tuamonti.
Bruce knew well enough that, apart from the
dangers attendant upon such a hazardous crossing,
his entertainers would put every conceivable difficulty
in the way of his carrying out such a project.
He could neither write nor cable home, and believed
at the best his mother and his sweetheart would
read of the severity of the hurricane and consider
him dead. At the worst they would fear that, not
for the first time, one of the fair daughters of the
South Seas had caught a white man in the toils
of her net, and his social disgrace would follow.
Had Bruce been older other explanations would
have occurred to him, but Bruce's conscience lay
heavy upon him. He made no excuse for himself.
The idea that he had become more the fate of circumstance
than ensnared through his own fault
never entered his head. Most men would have found
THE FOOT OF TIME 167
reason enough to explain away and lift the mental
load lying heavy upon them. Bruce was not built
that way. He had sinned—at least, he thought he
had—was living in sin: at least, he thought he was:
and that was that. All right, Molota was the most
priceless little love of a girl for which any man
could wish. He would take all life had to offer
him and leave the rest to Providence.
But one detail from his past life he found impossible
to neglect—his passion for engineering as
applied to ship construction. He designed for fun
a stout craft from undressed timber on the island,
but it got no further than the design stage, for
not one man would put foot to ground to do anything
towards getting him off the island. At the
same time, the chief, Mangani, was careful to make
it appear that Bruce was as free as the air, and if
he could leave—well, by all means let him do so.
It wasn't their fault that the hired launch had
come to an ignoble end. They had done their part
to safeguard it. The hauling of the boat into the
jungle was explained as having been effected
in the interest of the two Australians, and Bruce
quickly came to realise that he had a losing case
in any retaliatory action against the island. Particularly,
too, since he was Australian and not
French. In any court of French law he was likely
to find prejudice in opposition to him. The French
were ever most jealous of their rights and possessions,
and the fact that he and Pinkerton had, to
an extent, unearthed this jewel of the Republic,
would be misconstrued till it might appear that the