Maid of the Mist Part 32

"We'll soon see," and he smashed at it with his axe. "Hardware. We'll add to our stock since it's here."

"And this? Oh, I wish I had an axe too. I want to break open every box we come to," and he laughed out at her quick surrender to the riever spirit.

"Why do you laugh at me then? It would surely be helping you."

"I know just how you feel, and now you know just how Macro feels."

"I know just how he feels. It must grow upon one. I don't want any of the things, but still I would like to break open and find."

"We'd better stick to business. When we've got all we come across that will be of service I'll hand you the axe and you can smash away at anything you like, except your toes.... No doubt what's in that box anyway,"--for the ends of rolls of silk were sticking out of it. "I expect Macro has been over this ground already. Shall we take some?"

She picked out several rolls, saying, "They may come in useful, even if it's only to make our cabin as fine as his," and he stacked up the silk along with a raffle of rope, which was always to the good.

They scrambled to and fro, so busily smas.h.i.+ng open cases and discussing their contents that they took no note of the birds gathering above them in ever-increasing numbers. Their ears had grown accustomed to their raucous clamour, and the fact that it had grown louder had not troubled them. But suddenly--they were delving into the side of a huge crate of blankets at the moment--the sky was darkened as by a cloud, and Wulfrey, glancing up in fear of a change in the weather, jerked out a sudden exclamation which made her jump. Then he crushed her roughly down into a narrow black chasm between the blanket-crate and another, and dropped in after her, just as the cloud, grown bold by its increase, came swooping down upon them.

Never in her life had she imagined such a nightmare experience. The bristling confusion of the wreckage, the s.h.i.+mmering blue sea beyond, the very light and peace of day itself, all were blotted out in an instant, and in their place was nothing but a prodigious whirling and swooping of vari-coloured feathered bodies, snaking necks, cold beady eyes, pitilessly craving them as food, cruel curved beaks keen to rend and tear, and a hideous clamour of wild wailings. The flutter and beat of myriad wings set the whole atmosphere throbbing, till the blood drummed furiously in The Girl's ears and her head felt like to burst.

She shrank down on something that crackled and subsided under her, feeling herself terribly bare to their a.s.sault. Wulfrey reached out an arm and groped for a loose blanket and dragged it over them and so hid the nightmare from her. His arm was bleeding when he drew it in.

"They will go presently when they find there is nothing to eat," he said into her ear.

"They looked as if they would tear one to pieces," and he could feel the shudder that shook her.

"They would try if they got the chance."

"They are awful.... Oh, listen!"--as the rest of the cloud, sure that such a clamour portended food, whirled round their shelter, brushed it with wings and feet, shrilled their needs and their disgust more loudly than ever, and swept away to seek more satisfying fare elsewhere.

The sound of them drifted away at last, occasional stragglers still swooped down to make quite sure there was not a sc.r.a.p left, but presently these followed the rest and Wulfrey climbed up and looked about him.

"All right," he said, and reached down a hand to her. "I think they've gone after Macro," and he hauled her up into the light.

"Your arm!" she cried.

"Only scratches. No harm done.... What is it?" for she was staring with tragic face into the hole out of which she had just come.

And looking down into it he saw that he had flung her bodily on to what had been a skeleton, but was now only a confused heap of brittle bones.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but there was no time to pick and choose."

"It's a horrible place. Let us go home!"

"We'll go at once as soon as we've found some coffee ... and I would like another knife or two.... Look in that chest. Macro has opened it for us.... And if you find any tobacco, I'll thank you," and he rooted rapidly through one broken-open seaman's box, while she did the same by another.

"Tobacco--I think," she announced presently, ... "and a knife and a tinder-box."

"Another knife" was his find. "And we'll take these two coats----"

"Whatever for?"

"Well--if any of those screaming deevils, as the mate calls them, should come after us as we go back, you feel them less through a coat than on your bare skin."

"I don't think I'll come again."

"Oh, it's quite easy to avoid them, you see. And they soon go if they find nothing eatable."

"Hideous things! ... Will those cases be coffee?"

"I think so.... We'll chance one anyway.... And those small casks are rice. We're doing famously. Is there anything else you would like?"

"Heaps of things--spoons, forks, plates, stockings----"

"Here are stockings----" and he delved into his chest again.

"Truly--but twenty sizes too large. These boxes all seem to have belonged to men. Let us get home before those awful birds come back."

So they returned to the raft and pushed it slowly along the pile, from place to place, where the various portions of their cargo stood awaiting them, and Wulfrey wrestled manfully with casks and barrels and boxes in a way that would have astonished himself mightily three months before. And The Girl, eager to help as far as she could--brus.h.i.+ng shoulders with him as they hauled and lifted, their hands overlapping at times, their bare arms in closest contact as they struggled with the insensate obstinacy of dead weights,--was very conscious of the play of the corded muscles in his arms and back, and the energy and determination of the quiet resolute face. And she was at once grateful and exultant in the knowledge that all the powers this man possessed were at her service, and that, if occasion should arise, they would be expended for her to the uttermost and without hesitation.

She experienced sensations entirely new to her. She found them good.

They quickened her blood and stimulated her mind. She had seen much of men, more perhaps than most for her years, but men of a very different type,--unmuscular, powdered and peruked and befrilled, with airs and graces and velvet coats which hid the lack of virility within, and did duty for it to the world at large; men of wealth and highest culture and too often of meanest heart, self-seeking, intent only on their personal satisfactions, self-forgetful only in the pursuit of ign.o.ble ends.

In every particular so different from this man. She had met but very few men whom she felt she could trust implicitly. Some of the most apparently sincere had proved the least worthy. And they were the most dangerous. They drew your trust, and so disarmed and then most treacherously betrayed you. Oh, she had seen it, time and again, and so her mind had come to look on men in general as beasts of prey, to be dreaded, and avoided except in the most open and superficial fas.h.i.+on.

But this was a man of another world. She had met none like him. He roused her and soothed her as none of those others ever had done, as no man before had ever done.

She had seen men as good-looking, perhaps, but in a very different way.

Would they have looked as well, stripped of their trappings? She doubted it. And never a man among them could or would, she was sure, have handled these obdurate barrels and boxes as this man did. Truly they seemed to object to removal from their lodging-places as though they were endowed with minds of their own.

And she had trusted him implicitly, from the first moment she had looked into his eyes, and recognised that it must be he who had drawn her back out of the closing hand of death.

"Better put that on," said Wulfrey, dropping one of the coats over her shoulders, when they had got everything aboard.

"Why? I am quite warm."

"We have done our work now till we get to the spit. No good chilling in the wind. We're going to sail home," and he slipped on the other jacket, and proceeded to rig up a sail and a steering plank as he had seen the mate do.

The Girl broke into a laugh at the change for the worse produced in their appearance by the jackets.

"You looked like a Greek or a Roman before," she said. "Now we both look like gipsy tinkers."

"Fine feathers--fine birds?" he smiled, as they hauled out past the end of the pile and began lumbering slowly homewards.

"Those awful birds!" and she glanced anxiously round for them, but they were busy a mile away and troubled them no more.

x.x.xIII

The Girl was glad enough of her old coat before they reached the spit, in spite of its demoralising effect on her appearance,--glad even to snuggle down among the blankets, for, after the hard work of loading, even the south-west wind began presently to feel cool.