In the moonlight that came in through the window, throwing the shadow of the trunk of the ceiba tree across the wide, white bed, Boise had played with the fruit rats. Leaping and turning, batting them along the floor, and then carrying one away to crouch and rush the other, he had played as wildly as when he was a kitten. Then he had carried them into the bathroom and after that Thomas Hudson had felt his weight as he jumped up on the bed.
“So you weren’t eating mangoes out of trees?” the man had asked him. Boise rubbed his head against him.
“So you were hunting and looking after the property? My old cat and Brother Boise. Aren’t you going to eat them now you have them?”
Boise had only rubbed his head against the man and purred with his silent purr and then, because he was tired from the hunt, he had gone to sleep. But he had slept restlessly and in the morning he had shown no interest in the dead fruit rats at all.
Now it was getting daylight and Thomas Hudson, who had not been able to sleep, watched the light come and the gray trunks of the royal palms show in the gray of the first light. First he saw only the trunks and the outline of their tops. Then, as the light was stronger, he could see the tops of the palms blowing in the gale and then, as the sun began to come up behind the hills, the palm trunks were whitish gray and their blowing branches a bright green and the grass of the hills was brown from the whiter drought and the limestone tops of the far hills made them look as though they were crested with snow.
He got up from the floor and put on moccasins and an old mackinaw coat and, leaving Boise sleeping curled up on the blanket, walked through the living room into the dining room and out through it to the kitchen. The kitchen was in the north end of one wing of the house and the wind was wild outside, blowing the bare branches of the flamboyán tree against the walls and the windows. There was nothing to eat in the icebox and the screened-in kitchen safe was empty of everything but condiments, a can of American coffee, a tin of Lipton’s tea, and a tin of peanut oil for cooking. The Chinaman, who cooked, bought each day’s supply of food in the market. They were not expecting Thomas Hudson back and the Chinaman had undoubtedly gone to the market already to buy the day’s food for the servants. When one of the boys comes, Thomas Hudson thought, I’ll send him into town for some fruit and eggs.
He boiled some water and made himself a pot of tea and took it and a cup and saucer back to the living room. The sun was up now and the room was bright and he sat in the big chair and drank the hot tea and looked at the pictures on the walls in the fresh, bright whiter sunlight. Maybe I ought to change some of them, he thought. The best ones are in my bedroom and I’m never in my bedroom any more.
From the big chair, the living room looked huge after being on the boat. He did not know how long the room was. He had known, when he had ordered the matting, but he had forgotten. However long it was, it seemed three times as long this morning. That was one of the things about being fresh ashore; that and that there was nothing in the icebox. The motion of the boat in the big confused sea the northwester had built up, blowing a gale across the heavy current, was all gone now. It was as far away from him now as the sea itself was. He could see the sea, looking through the open doors of the white room and out of the windows across the tree clumped hills cut by the highway, the farther bare hills that were the old fortifications of the town, the harbor, and the white of the town beyond. But the sea was only the blue beyond the far white spread of the town. It was as distant now as all things that were past and he meant to keep it that way, now that the motion was gone, until it was time to go out onto it again.