The old man did not touch the paddle, and he was unregardless of the
lofty-sided steamer as the canoe slipped down the length of it into the
darkness astern. He was too occupied in counting the wealth of tobacco
showered upon him. No easy task, his counting. Five was the limit of
his numerals. When he had counted five, he began over again and counted
a second five. Three fives he found in all, and two sticks over; and
thus, at the end of it, he possessed as definite a knowledge of the
number of sticks as would be possessed by the average white man by means
of the single number _seventeen_.

More it was, far more, than his avarice had demanded. Yet he was
unsurprised. Nothing white men did could surprise. Had it been two
sticks instead of seventeen, he would have been equally unsurprised.
Since all acts of white men were surprises, the only surprise of action
they could achieve for a black man would be the doing of an unsurprising
thing.

Paddling, wheezing, resting, oblivious of the shadow-world of the white
men, knowing only the reality of Tulagi Mountain cutting its crest-line
blackly across the dim radiance of the star-sprinkled sky, the reality of
the sea and of the canoe he so feebly urged across it, and the reality of
his fading strength and of the death into which he would surely end, the
ancient black man slowly made his shoreward way.




CHAPTER III