Code of Honor (Australian Destiny Book #1) by Sandra Dengler Page B

called.
    One of the youngsters studied the water. “That way.”
    Burriwi’s nephew scrambled in beside him. “Naw, that’s the way the wind is rippling the top, Dib. Look under at the way the stuff on the bottom is bending.”
    “That way!” Dibbie corrected himself.
    “That’s good!” Burriwi chuckled. He glanced at Luke and the smile faded a bit. “You don’ think so, mebbe?”
    “Sorry. Didn’t mean to stare. It just occurred to me that you and your boys there speak English just as well as any white man. And yet, when you talk to whites and they talk to you, you use that broken English, that blackfeller jibberish. Why?”
    Burriwi shrugged. “Whitefellers, they expect it. They use it on me, don’ make me no difference. Makes ’em feel above me better mebbe. Who knows?”
    “That doesn’t bother you? That they feel and act so very superior to you?”
    The toothy grin burst forth again. “Superior. Tha’s the word I couldn’t think of.” The easygoing grin hardened just a little. “When Mrs. Perkins’ boy, four years old, wandered off, they called me. Getting dark, not much time, no good light no more, and I found him. Gave him back to Mrs. Perkins safe. When the cook wandered off, they call me. I tracked her to the pool. Couple places she coulda gone, but I found where she went.”
    “And as I recall, with the rain coming, you had to do that one quickly, too.”
    Burriwi nodded. “Eight years ago—longer—a ship got off the way and broke up, couple miles down south here. They call me. Nobody can get out to the reef with a boat, pick off the men hanging there; too much wind, rain. I did it. I got there. Got ’em back safe. Y’see, Lucas? They act superior, sling off at me, talk silly talk. Big-note themselves and mebbe even believe it. But when the land is too much for them. When they can’ make it. Who they call? Who’s the real superior, eh? I know who. If they don’ know, tha’s their problem.”
    “Looka da ray!” The smallest boy practically fell in the water with all his gyrations.
    A broad, dark, triangular shadow drifted by below the boat. The trailing edges of its five-foot wingspan rippled as it glided along, barely moving.
    Luke watched it disappear into the sun-glare. “What does that thing eat, do you know?”
    “Preachers.”
    Once only a blob on the horizon, the little island lay hard before them now. A narrow white beach defined the line where sea ended and land began. A dozen coconut palms clustered along this nearest shore. Bushes and trees crowned the rest of the tiny drop of land with a thick mound of green. Was this how Eden looked?
    Burriwi dumped the sail. They skidded to a halt. “Got the tubs, boys?”
    Luke had assumed the three tubs stacked by the mast were sponge tubs; they seemed about the size. They weren’t. As Dibbie whipped one up and over the side, Luke could see a glass bottom in it. Dibbie pressed it into the water as he hung over the gunwale and exclaimed nonstop in two languages.
    Burriwi’s nephew brought his uncle a tub and scurried forward again.
    Burriwi handed it to Luke. “Try it. Tub, it takes away the sun from the surface, you can see like thin air. You boys, you pull the boat over, you swim home, eh?”
    Luke mashed it against the water, tipped it slightly to free a trapped bubble, and gazed. They floated in extreme shallows. Inches below the boat, the coral grew in mounds and blocks. A profusion of other forms studded the coral and the brief snips of sandy floor here and there.
    And life. Everywhere, life. No matter where Luke looked, no matter which way he tilted the tub, he saw fish. Silver fish, gaily painted fish, somber fish, tiny darting things. Clumsy looking greenish-blue fish two feet long scraped at coral with thick lips. By sticking his head deep in the tub, Luke could actually hear, however faintly, the gritching sound they made.
    He sat erect and looked southward to the horizon. “This is overwhelming. The whole reef is