The Wings of the Morning Part 28

"No. It is sad. I have often thought he had the 'Sonata Pathetique' in his mind when he wrote it. But the note is mournful all through. There is no promise of happiness as in 'Maud.'"

"Then it is my turn to ask questions. Why did you hit upon that poem among so many?"

"Because it contains an exact description of our position here. Don't you remember how the poor fellow

"'Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor, waiting for a sail.'

"I am sure Tennyson saw our island with poetic eye, for he goes on--

"'No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail."

She declaimed the melodious verse with a subtle skill that amazed her hearer. Profoundly moved, Jenks dared not trust himself to speak.

"I read the whole poem the other day," she said after a silence of some minutes. "Sorrowful as it is, it comforted me by comparison. How different will be our fate to his when 'another s.h.i.+p stays by this isle'!"

Yet neither of them knew that one line she had recited was more singularly applicable to their case than that which they paid heed to.

"The great stars that globed themselves in Heaven," were s.h.i.+ning clear and bright in the vast arch above. Resplendent amidst the throng rose the Pleiades, the mythological seven hailed by the Greeks as an augury of safe navigation. And the Dyaks--one of the few remaining savage races of the world--share the superst.i.tion of the people who fas.h.i.+oned all the arts and most of the sciences.

The Pleiades form the Dyak tutelary genius. Some among a bloodthirsty and vengeful horde were even then pointing to the cl.u.s.tering stars that promised quick voyage to the isle where their kinsmen had been struck down by a white man who rescued a maid. Nevertheless, Grecian romance and Dyak lore alike relegate the influence of the Pleiades to the sea.

Other stars are needed to foster enterprise ash.o.r.e.

CHAPTER X

REALITY _V_. ROMANCE--THE CASE FOR THE PLAINTIFF

Night after night the Pleiades swung higher in the firmament; day after day the sailor perfected his defences and anxiously scanned the ocean for sign of friendly smoke or hostile sail. This respite would not have been given to him, were it not for the lucky bullet which removed two fingers and part of a third from the right hand of the Dyak chief. Not even a healthy savage can afford to treat such a wound lightly, and ten days elapsed before the maimed robber was able to move the injured limb without a curse.

Meanwhile, each night Jenks slept less soundly; each day his face became more careworn. He began to realize why the island had not been visited already by the vessel which would certainly be deputed to search for them--she was examining the great coast-line of China and Siam.

It was his habit to mark the progress of time on the rudely made sun-dial which sufficiently served their requirements as a clock. Iris happened to watch him chipping the forty-fourth notch on the edge of the horizontal block of wood.

"Have we really been forty-four days here?" she inquired, after counting the marks with growing astonishment.

"I believe the reckoning is accurate," he said. "The _Sirdar_ was lost on the 18th of March, and I make this the 1st of May."

"May Day!"

"Yes. Shall we drive to Hurlingham this afternoon?"

"Looked at in that way it seems to be a tremendous time, though indeed, in some respects, it figures in my mind like many years. That is when I am thinking. Otherwise, when busy, the days fly like hours."

"It must be convenient to have such an elastic scale."

"Most useful. I strive to apply the quick rate when you are grumpy."

Iris placed her arms akimbo, planted her feet widely apart, and surveyed Jenks with an expression that might almost be termed impudent.

They were great friends, these two, now. The incipient stage of love-making had been dropped entirely, as ludicrously unsuited to their environment.

When the urgent necessity for continuous labor no longer spurred them to exertion during every moment of daylight, they tackled the box of books and read, not volumes which appealed to them in common, but quaint tomes in the use of which Jenks was tutor and Iris the scholar.

It became a fixed principle with the girl that she was very ignorant, and she insisted that the sailor should teach her. For instance, among the books he found a treatise on astronomy; it yielded a keen delight to both to identify a constellation and learn all sorts of wonderful things concerning it. But to work even the simplest problem required a knowledge of algebra, and Iris had never gone beyond decimals. So the stock of notebooks, instead of recording their experiences, became covered with symbols showing how x plus y equaled x minus 3,000,000.

As a variant, Jenks introduced a study of Hindustani. His method was to write a short sentence and explain in detail its component parts. With a certain awe Iris surveyed the intricacies of the Urdu compound verb, but, about her fourth lesson, she broke out into exclamations of extravagant joy.

"What on earth is the matter now?" demanded her surprised mentor.

"Don't you see?" she exclaimed, delightedly. "Of course you don't!

People who know a lot about a thing often miss its obvious points. I have discovered how to write Kiplingese. All you have to do is to tell your story in Urdu, translate it literally into English, and there you are!"

"Quite so. Just do it as Kipling does, and the secret is laid bare. By the same rule you can hit upon the Miltonic adjective."

Iris tossed her head.

"I don't know anything about the Miltonic adjective, but I am sure about Kipling."

This ended the argument. She knitted her brows in the effort to master the ridiculous complexities of a language which, instead of simply saying "Take" or "Bring," compels one to say "Take-go" and "Take-come."

One problem defied solution--that of providing raiment for Iris. The united skill of the sailor and herself would not induce unraveled cordage to supply the need of thread. It was either too weak or too knotty, and meanwhile the girl's clothes were falling to pieces. Jenks tried the fibers of trees, the sinews of birds--every possible expedient he could hit upon--and perhaps, after experiments covering some weeks, he might have succeeded. But modern dress stuffs, weakened by aniline dyes and stiffened with Chinese clay, permit of no such exhaustive research. It must be remembered that the lady pa.s.sengers on board the _Sirdar_ were dressed to suit the tropics, and the hard usage given by Iris to her scanty stock was never contemplated by the Manchester or Bradford looms responsible for the durability of the material.

As the days pa.s.sed the position became irksome. It even threatened complete callapse during some critical moment, and the two often silently surveyed the large number of merely male garments in their possession. Of course, in the matter of coats and waistcoats there was no difficulty whatever. Iris had long been wearing those portions of the doctor's uniform. But when it came to the rest--

At last, one memorable morning, she crossed the Rubicon. Jenks had climbed, as usual, to the Summit Rock. He came back with the exciting news that he thought--he could not be certain, but there were indications inspiring hopefulness--that towards the west of the far-off island he could discern the smoke of a steamer.

Though he had eyes for a faint cloud of vapor at least fifty miles distant he saw nothing of a remarkable change effected nearer home.

Outwardly, Iris was attired in her wonted manner, but if her companion's mind were not wholly monopolized by the bluish haze detected on the horizon, he must have noticed the turned-up ends of a pair of trousers beneath the hem of her tattered skirt.

It did occur to him that Iris received his momentous announcement with an odd air of hauteur, and it was pa.s.sing strange she did not offer to accompany him when, after bolting his breakfast, he returned to the observatory.

He came back in an hour, and the lines on his face were deeper than before.

"A false alarm," he said curtly in response to her questioning look.

And that was all, though she nerved herself to walk steadily past him on her way to the well. This was disconcerting, even annoying to a positive young woman like Iris. Resolving to end the ordeal, she stood rigidly before him.

"Well," she said, "I've done it!"

"Have you?" he exclaimed, blankly.

"Yes. They're a little too long, and I feel very awkward, but they're better than--than my poor old dress unsupported."

She blushed furiously, to the sailor's complete bewilderment, but she bravely persevered and stretched out an unwilling foot.