________________________________________________
_ "Fool!" I cried aloud in my vexation.
I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on the
beach, where I had set about making a camp. There was driftwood,
though not much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee tin I had
taken from the Ghost's larder had given me the idea of a fire.
"Blithering idiot!" I was continuing.
But Maud said, "Tut, tut," in gentle reproval, and then asked why I
was a blithering idiot.
"No matches," I groaned. "Not a match did I bring. And now we
shall have no hot coffee, soup, tea, or anything!"
"Wasn't it - er - Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?" she drawled.
"But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked
men who tried, and tried in vain," I answered. "I remember
Winters, a newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian
reputation. Met him at the Bibelot once, and he was telling us how
he attempted to make a fire with a couple of sticks. It was most
amusing. He told it inimitably, but it was the story of a failure.
I remember his conclusion, his black eyes flashing as he said,
'Gentlemen, the South Sea Islander may do it, the Malay may do it,
but take my word it's beyond the white man.'"
"Oh, well, we've managed so far without it," she said cheerfully.
"And there's no reason why we cannot still manage without it."
"But think of the coffee!" I cried. "It's good coffee, too, I
know. I took it from Larsen's private stores. And look at that
good wood."
I confess, I wanted the coffee badly; and I learned, not long
afterward, that the berry was likewise a little weakness of Maud's.
Besides, we had been so long on a cold diet that we were numb
inside as well as out. Anything warm would have been most
gratifying. But I complained no more and set about making a tent
of the sail for Maud.
I had looked upon it as a simple task, what of the oars, mast,
boom, and sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines. But as I was
without experience, and as every detail was an experiment and every
successful detail an invention, the day was well gone before her
shelter was an accomplished fact. And then, that night, it rained,
and she was flooded out and driven back into the boat.
The next morning I dug a shallow ditch around the tent, and, an
hour later, a sudden gust of wind, whipping over the rocky wall
behind us, picked up the tent and smashed it down on the sand
thirty yards away.
Maud laughed at my crestfallen expression, and I said, "As soon as
the wind abates I intend going in the boat to explore the island.
There must be a station somewhere, and men. And ships must visit
the station. Some Government must protect all these seals. But I
wish to have you comfortable before I start."
"I should like to go with you," was all she said.
"It would be better if you remained. You have had enough of
hardship. It is a miracle that you have survived. And it won't be
comfortable in the boat rowing and sailing in this rainy weather.
What you need is rest, and I should like you to remain and get it."
Something suspiciously akin to moistness dimmed her beautiful eyes
before she dropped them and partly turned away her head.
"I should prefer going with you," she said in a low voice, in which
there was just a hint of appeal.
"I might be able to help you a - " her voice broke, - "a little.
And if anything should happen to you, think of me left here alone."
"Oh, I intend being very careful," I answered. "And I shall not go
so far but what I can get back before night. Yes, all said and
done, I think it vastly better for you to remain, and sleep, and
rest and do nothing."
She turned and looked me in the eyes. Her gaze was unfaltering,
but soft.
"Please, please," she said, oh, so softly.
I stiffened myself to refuse, and shook my head. Still she waited
and looked at me. I tried to word my refusal, but wavered. I saw
the glad light spring into her eyes and knew that I had lost. It
was impossible to say no after that.
The wind died down in the afternoon, and we were prepared to start
the following morning. There was no way of penetrating the island
from our cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from the beach,
and, on either side of the cove, rose from the deep water.
Morning broke dull and grey, but calm, and I was awake early and
had the boat in readiness.
"Fool! Imbecile! Yahoo!" I shouted, when I thought it was meet to
arouse Maud; but this time I shouted in merriment as I danced about
the beach, bareheaded, in mock despair.
Her head appeared under the flap of the sail.
"What now?" she asked sleepily, and, withal, curiously.
"Coffee!" I cried. "What do you say to a cup of coffee? hot
coffee? piping hot?"
"My!" she murmured, "you startled me, and you are cruel. Here I
have been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are
vexing me with your vain suggestions."
"Watch me," I said.
From under clefts among the rocks I gathered a few dry sticks and
chips. These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling.
From my note-book I tore out a page, and from the ammunition box
took a shot-gun shell. Removing the wads from the latter with my
knife, I emptied the powder on a flat rock. Next I pried the
primer, or cap, from the shell, and laid it on the rock, in the
midst of the scattered powder. All was ready. Maud still watched
from the tent. Holding the paper in my lelf hand, I smashed down
upon the cap with a rock held in my right. There was a puff of
white smoke, a burst of flame, and the rough edge of the paper was
alight.
Maud clapped her hands gleefully. "Prometheus!" she cried.
But I was too occupied to acknowledge her delight. The feeble
flame must be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength and
live. I fed it, shaving by shaving, and sliver by sliver, till at
last it was snapping and crackling as it laid hold of the smaller
chips and sticks. To be cast away on an island had not entered
into my calculations, so we were without a kettle or cooking
utensils of any sort; but I made shift with the tin used for
bailing the boat, and later, as we consumed our supply of canned
goods, we accumulated quite an imposing array of cooking vessels.
I boiled the water, but it was Maud who made the coffee. And how
good it was! My contribution was canned beef fried with crumbled
sea-biscuit and water. The breakfast was a success, and we sat
about the fire much longer than enterprising explorers should have
done, sipping the hot black coffee and talking over our situation.
I was confident that we should find a station in some one of the
coves, for I knew that the rookeries of Bering Sea were thus
guarded; but Maud advanced the theory - to prepare me for
disappointment, I do believe, if disappointment were to come - that
we had discovered an unknown rookery. She was in very good
spirits, however, and made quite merry in accepting our plight as a
grave one.
"If you are right," I said, "then we must prepare to winter here.
Our food will not last, but there are the seals. They go away in
the fall, so I must soon begin to lay in a supply of meat. Then
there will be huts to build and driftwood to gather. Also we shall
try out seal fat for lighting purposes. Altogether, we'll have our
hands full if we find the island uninhabited. Which we shall not,
I know."
But she was right. We sailed with a beam wind along the shore,
searching the coves with our glasses and landing occasionally,
without finding a sign of human life. Yet we learned that we were
not the first who had landed on Endeavour Island. High up on the
beach of the second cove from ours, we discovered the splintered
wreck of a boat - a sealer's boat, for the rowlocks were bound in
sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side of the bow, and in
white letters was faintly visible Gazelle No. 2. The boat had lain
there for a long time, for it was half filled with sand, and the
splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to long
exposure to the elements. In the stern-sheets I found a rusty ten-
gauge shot-gun and a sailor's sheath-knife broken short across and
so rusted as to be almost unrecognizable.
"They got away," I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at the
heart and seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones somewhere
on that beach.
I did not wish Maud's spirits to be dampened by such a find, so I
turned seaward again with our boat and skirted the north-eastern
point of the island. There were no beaches on the southern shore,
and by early afternoon we rounded the black promontory and
completed the circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its
circumference at twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two
to five miles; while my most conservative calculation placed on its
beaches two hundred thousand seals. The island was highest at its
extreme south-western point, the headlands and backbone diminishing
regularly until the north-eastern portion was only a few feet above
the sea. With the exception of our little cove, the other beaches
sloped gently back for a distance of half-a-mile or so, into what I
might call rocky meadows, with here and there patches of moss and
tundra grass. Here the seals hauled out, and the old bulls guarded
their harems, while the young bulls hauled out by themselves.
This brief description is all that Endeavour Island merits. Damp
and soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds
and lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the
bellowing of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy
and miserable sojourning-place. Maud, who had prepared me for
disappointment, and who had been sprightly and vivacious all day,
broke down as we landed in our own little cove. She strove bravely
to hide it from me, but while I was kindling another fire I knew
she was stifling her sobs in the blankets under the sail-tent.
It was my turn to be cheerful, and I played the part to the best of
my ability, and with such success that I brought the laughter back
into her dear eyes and song on her lips; for she sang to me before
she went to an early bed. It was the first time I had heard her
sing, and I lay by the fire, listening and transported, for she was
nothing if not an artist in everything she did, and her voice,
though not strong, was wonderfully sweet and expressive.
I still slept in the boat, and I lay awake long that night, gazing
up at the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering the
situation. Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to me.
Wolf Larsen had been quite right. I had stood on my father's legs.
My lawyers and agents had taken care of my money for me. I had had
no responsibilities at all. Then, on the Ghost I had learned to be
responsible for myself. And now, for the first time in my life, I
found myself responsible for some one else. And it was required of
me that this should be the gravest of responsibilities, for she was
the one woman in the world - the one small woman, as I loved to
think of her. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXX
Read previous: CHAPTER XXVIII
Table of content of Sea Wolf
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
