London South Collegiate Institute - Oracle Yearbook (London, Ontario Canada)

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26 fell sobbing on the sand. jim had never seen her cry before. Then as he bent over her he saw the strange look on her face. She loved him and was afraid, afraid for him lest he should touch her, for slowly she opened the numb fingers of her left hand and held it up before her. Jim swayed a little as he looked, for like the beating of a far- off surf, words of his English tongue echoed. in his ears whiter than lep- rosy-leprosy-leprosy. He with- drew his eyes from the stricken girl who still held up that shining diseased hand as if to ward off a blow. With numb fingers jim unbound from his belt the worn white handker- chief and dropped it in her lap. It contained the three sovereigns the captain had given him before he left the Santa Lucia. After that he left blindly, paddled quickly around the point, set his sail and tried to forget. As afternoon wore on, he agonized under the palm-thatch. No wind came, but a gradual shifting current caught the boat and carried it farther seaward. As he felt the dull movement Jim stirred, rose and sud- denly came fully conscious. ' With swift action he turned the canoe to- ward Koh-ring and in spite of the blazing sun on his uncovered head began his return. For an hour he worked against the current, for another and yet another hour he paddled, making little headway. He was coming back to Tama-Tama who had been so careful to wash the knife before he used it. As- if the sea and sky had guessed his purpose a black cloud rose upon his left, black that ate up the day and took the sun at one gulp. A strange strumming, and a harsh wail reached him out of the rising blackness, a sound like that of the great circular saw that bites into a fresh bolt.' And then twenty feet from his boat, the cyclone struck. The sea rose to meet it, sucked up like a gigantic sheaf of wheat with a froth of foam at the top. Far back on the sheltered shore beneath a palm tree Tama- was still weeping over the three sovereigns in her lap. ' T L. s. c. 1. ORACLE CHRISTMAS The world in solemn wonder stood, A deep hush fell, When suddenly its people heard The Christmas bell. Long, long ago o'er lonely stall, A glowing star Appeared and drew the shepherds there From hills afar. All silently those rude men knelt In manger small, Beheld with awe God's Son and Heir And heard His call. -Jean Watt. J x 5' Y rigs 'Q Sai ' l lJ5?ii55i'f fX PX X X ELSIE flhb. THE WHITE MANTLE The soft white snow is falling, The world 'is turning white, And the storm king rides among us In his beauty and his might. He covers the earth with a blanket, The ground is no longer seen, And until the springtime opens It will lie in its sleep serene. The trees were bare and forbidding, Not so many hours ago, But now they are white and lovely With blossoms of flaky snow. It is God Who doth these wonders, He maketh the white snow to fall, . The grass to turn green in the springtime, And the leaves to turn scarlet all. He is closer to us in the winter Than in springtime, summer or fall,- For when His voice through the snow is sounding, 4 We all listen to His call. H --O. Littleford. i

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L. S. C. II. ORACLE A yellow fish! Would he ever see a yellow fish and be able to forget Tama, Tama with her shining head turned from him, bowed over the tiny fire, her smooth golden arms extended, holding something on a forked stick- a yellow fish! When he came out of the canebrake behind her, she had stood up and faced him, her brown eyes unwavering. She had not been afraid nor even startled at the sight of the white man in the torn grey sleeping suit. As she had never seen a white man before, her shy acceptance of him had never been clear to him until to- day when he was leaving forever his life on that cursed island. Useless to try to forget! He could see her still between shut eyes, just as she had stood then, her red and white striped skirt soaked with the sea water, ,her green bodice splashed from the flapping of the fish in her net. That half-cooked catch she shared with him had been the best food he had eaten for weeks. The canned delica- cies of the Santa Lucia cabin had never tasted as good, and during those first three days wandering on Koh-ring, he had only dared to eat small shore shrimps and an unwary oyster which he had wedged open with one of the captain's sovereigns. The tropical fruit, tempting and abundant, was strange, perhaps poisonous. As he had crouched by the fire gulping thebonyfish,Tamahadstudiedhimquiet- ly. She had appeared to compare him intently with something she held crum- pled in the palm of her left hand. He caught her doing this many times during the succeeding weeks. At first this had puzzled and annoyed him: it was like being identified with the past he had escaped. Then he realized that her hand was deformed, and overlooked the odd habit. Since these two had had no common tongue, he had been long learning her name, but by signs he had shown her he wanted a boat to get to the main- land. She had no boat. This was perplexing. How had she come there? She seemed to be well stocked with rice-jars, and lived in a conventional native hut. She was certainly no castaway. Jim had wondered about that as he 25 worked over his hand-made boat, flring the inside from a great stem, shaping the barky sides, rigging a crude bam- boo mast and braiding ropes of reed fibre. He nearly wore out Tama's knife carving himself a stout paddle, MP but when he showed her the twisted blade, she only laughed and, uncovering a bamboo pole in her rush-carpeted fioor, she pointed to a number of not- ches. It was evident that she expected supplies at a future date and jim was still more puzzled. As days and weeks passed over, jim came to the stubborn realization that he did not want to leave this isle-not alone. Hitherto he had, as his need had arisen, broken unflinchingly every tie with man and race. But now he had found strange companionship in the quiet Tama. She was kind, she did many little things to serve him and yet in each he caught a hint of super- stition. She would lend him her knife but she always washed the handle in sea-water first. This he thought must be to ward off evil spirits. At last his boat was done and lay moored like a dead thing upon the sulky tide. Jim had provisioned it as best he could, water in the skin bottles Tama had taught him to sew from the hides of the little rabbit-like creatures he caught in snares. Then he asked Tama to go with him. There must, he thought, be settlements even in these heathen lands where a missionary or French priest could be found to marry them. But when he offered to lift her into the boat, Tama ran up the beach, tripped and

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L. s. C. 1. ORACLE QT RETRIBUTION BY NoRMAN FARROW A boy and a girl strolled silently be- neath the massive old elms of the campus at Traynor College. At first sight they appeared to be merely a pair of co-ed lovers, but an observer with insight would have seen some- thing more in it than that. The boy was tall, dark, rugged, a full-blooded Apache Indian, son of an Arizona chief 3 the girl, petite, fair, her hair almost red, a New York debutante of the year before. No more startling contrast could be imagined. A love such as theirs, to overstep the bounds of race and tradition, was no puppy-love. It was the age-old 'attraction of opposites. They had first met two years before, when both were fresh- men. Alice Bradley, the girl, had for several years been interested in the Western Indians, especially the Apaches of Arizona, then, when she met Naja at college, her interest in Indians in general had changed to love of one Indian in particular. With Naja it had been a case of love at firsr sight, but a love that caused him much pain. The stormy tribal scene caused when he announced his intention of going East to college was still very vivid in his mind, and he knew that to love a white girl was the ultimate sin, utterly incompatible with all tribal ideals. And yet, there was notking he could do about his love for Alice. It was a powerful, living thing, not something to be snuffed out at will, like a candle. And so their love affair progressed, with Alice, in a heav- en of delight, Naja in a sort of fearful daze. However, both knew that soon there must come a crisis, their res- pective families could not be kept in the dark indefinitely, and though Naja and Alice dreaded the day when their love must be exposed, they knew it ,must be faced. At the time the story opens, near the end of their sophomore year, they determined to end the sus- pense. Alice told her family of her love for N aja, and to her surprise they received the news much more easily than she had expected. Of course, they tried to change her mind, but when they saw that her love was really I a deep, spiritual emotion, not merely a passing fancy, they submitted grace- fully. Naja, however, had a much more difficult ordeal. His family, complete- ly unaware of his infatuation, were dumbfounded at his revela-tion. They seemed to consider Naja's deed an insult to the tribe, and although they did him no actual physical violence, he was henceforth looked on with sus- picion by the rest of the tribe, and felt ostracized from his fellow Apaches. He determined to bring Alice to Ariz- ona, if he could, in the hope of making his people feel more friendly toward her, although he knew that they, immersed in the ancient traditions of the tribe, would be terribly hard to convince. As Alice and her family were eager for friendly relations with Naja's people, the next summer Naja, on his return home, was accompanied by Alice and her mother. Meeting the girl whom Naja hoped someday to make his wife seemed to soften somewhat the feeling of the tribe to- ward Naja and his love, but they re- mained suspicious and distant. Alice saw some minor tribal ritual dances always performed for tourists, but these merely increased a secret desire of hers. Since ste had fallen in love with Naja her interest in Apache tribal rites had doubled, and through intensive reading ste had learned of a secret ritual dance never seen by the eyes of a white, to see this dance had become a passion with her. When she told Naja of her desire, he was, natur- ally, horrified. At first he gave her request for information about the dance a flat negative, but her desire was so strong and her pleadings so evidently sincere that he promised to consider. After that, N aja spent several sleepless nights debating with himself this vital question. He knew that her request was contrary to his creed and the in- violable laws of the tribe, but eventu- ally his love for Alice conquered his discretion, and he promised to help her to see the dance. Two weeks later he brought her an Apache cos- tume, told her the time and place of the ritual, and Warned her to be careful. Late that night she silently left the cottage on the edge of the town, in