But these bare folk had no notion
of it, nor of the Hebrew which Luis tried next. The Latin
did not do, the Greek of which I had a little did not do.
But there is an old, old language called Gesture. If,
wherever there is a common language there is one people,
then in end and beginning surely we are one folk around
the earth!
We were to be friends with these islanders. "Friends
first and last!" believed the Admiral. Indeed, all felt it
so, this bright day. If they were not all we had imaged,
sailing to them, yet were they men, and unthreatening, novel,
very interesting to us with their island and their marvelous
blue water. All was heightened by sheer joy of landing,
and of finding--finding something! And what we found
was not horrible nor deathful, but bright, promising, scented
like first fruits.
To them we found we were gods! They moved about us
with a kind of ceremony of propitiation. Two youths came
with a piece of bark carried like a salver, piled with fruits
and with thin cakes of some scraped root. Another brought
a parrot, a great green and rose bird that at once talked,
though we could not understand his words. Two older
men had balls, as large as melons, of some wound stuff that
we presently found to be cotton loosely twisted into yarn.
The Admiral's eyes glowed. "Now if any bring spices or
pepper--" But they did not, nor did they bring gold.
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