The Takamaka Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

well. He had seen several species which normally spent the winter in East Africa. There was the white stork from mid-Europe, the occasional stray sandwich tern who had overshot South Africa, and the blue-cheeked bee-eater on its way south.
    He marvelled how these birds, some weighing less than an ounce, made the immense journeys across continents and oceans. How could they navigate to make landfall? What instinct enabled them to navigate by the sun and the stars?
    Three months was not long enough to do all the work he planned. How many years would it be before he got another chance to turn his back on civilisation, to immerse himself in a life uncomplicated by people and pressure?
    Yet the unexpected discovery of Sandy had complicated life on La Petite. It was up to him to get her safely to Mahé and to London.
    Then he would leave her in the hands of the experts.
     
    He returned late from an afternoon among the shearwaters on the southeast plateau. Sandy came up the veranda steps, her hair tied back in a scarf, her face flushed from standing over a wood fire. She had a plate.
    “I’ve made you a breadfruit cake,” she said. “As a peace offering for being so childish yesterday.”
    He laughed, and peered at the round object. “And how do you make breadfruit cake?” he asked.
    “Mash up cooked breadfruit, mix in grated coconut, eggs and vanilla, and then sort of bake in the fire. Bella helped me.”
    “Mmm, good,” pronounced Daniel, his mouth full. “A bit chewy, but definitely different. Try some.”
    “There’s masses of things you can do with breadfruit. Boil it, stew it, make it into chips. And you can make sweet things with it, too.”
    “The Seychellois will never starve. That’s why they are not really concerned whether they work or not. Their next meal is always by the wayside—coconuts, paw-paw, mangoes, bananas, and of course the versatile breadfruit. All just waiting to be picked.”
    “I adore paw-paw,” said Sandy. “I could live on it.”
    “Well, don’t eat too much. It’s a fruit that has to be treated with respect.”
    “And tonight for your supper I’m cooking a stuffed bécune. Bella has shown me how to split the fish and stuff it with minced onions and chillies. It’s baking now.”
    “All for a peace offering? You’ll have to be cheeky to me more often,” he mocked. “Or is Bella training you up so that she can have the occasional day off?”
    “Yes, maybe that’s the idea,” she agreed with a twinkling smile. “You’ve been overworking her.”
    Daniel broke off another piece of warm cake and leaned back in his chair. “And you know what a bécune fish is, of course?”
    “No?”
    “Barracuda.”
    “Is that bad?” she asked, bemused.
    “Not bad, but dangerous. I wouldn’t like to meet one. It belongs to the shark family.”
    Her face clouded as if a memory had presented itself. But it was fleeting and she grasped nothing except a moment’s apprehension.
    “And yet you are always trying to get me to swim.”
    “Sharks don’t come into the warm water. You are quite safe within the reefs. And there’s nothing to be afraid of in a little moon butterfly fish, or a blue demoiselle,” he teased.
    “Don’t,” she pleaded. “I want to see them. I want to please you, but I can’t make myself.”
    He leaned forward and took her hand. “I won’t force you,” he said gently. “All in your own good time.”
    She was wearing the daisy-chain bracelet. He noticed that she always wore it. It slipped down her thin wrist to the wider part of her hand. He wondered who gave it to her. Some man perhaps had fastened it on that brown arm the first time. Was it special? Daniel thought it was.
    He dropped her hand. The routine of the evening was beginning. A swim before supper. Then after the meal, a game of chess or draughts on the veranda until the light faded. Then Sandy would retire and leave Daniel to listen to Radio Mahé on his transistor radio. He did not seem to mind