Maid of the Mist Part 38

"It would be horrible to be all alone for all the rest of one's life, but I don't think I would have gone mad. I've no doubt there are books to be found among the wreckage out there. Still ... for the rest of one's life!"--and he shook his head doubtfully. "As things are, however...."

"As things are?" she queried, after waiting for him to finish.

"As things are, I am quite content to stop here for the rest of my life, if that has to be. But that won't stop my doing my best to get away if the chance offers.... And you?"

"If we were delivered from that man I could be content here also....

But I do not say for all my life. That sounds terribly long.... But for that man it would be a welcome retreat from a world of which I had had a surfeit."

He wondered much if she were heart-whole. It seemed almost incredible to him that she could have lived that strange life of hers without some man wanting and touching it. So fair a prize, to go wholly unclaimed and undesired! But never, in all her talk, had she said one word that pointed to anything of the kind. Rather had she held up the men she had met to derogation and contempt. Surely, if there had been anyone to whom her heart turned and clung, some evidence of it would have shown itself.

From all she had said, from all her little unconscious self-revelations, and the wholesome judgment he had formed of her in his own mind, he could well believe that, in that whirlpool of a world in which she had lived, she had come to hold most men in doubt and all at arm's length. And the thought was agreeable to him.

When the slow day broke, dim and clangorous with the gale, they dallied over a meal, talking of many things to pa.s.s the time, and then went up on deck, and with a brandished stick he ridded the s.h.i.+p of the cl.u.s.tering birds. They shrieked threateningly and came swooping at him on the wings of the wind, with hungry beaks and merciless eyes. But here he was at home and would not suffer their invasion, and finally they gave it up and fled to the sandhills, cursing him shrilly as they went.

"Oh, there's one gone downstairs," cried The Girl; and running down after it, he found a great black cormorant squawking fearfully round the cabin and das.h.i.+ng itself against the walls in its wild attempts at escape. At sight of him it grew frantic, but finally found its way out of the hatch again, almost upsetting The Girl in its pa.s.sage, and then tore away to tell its fellows of the awful place it had been in, which smelt so good but was so much easier to get into than out of. Wulfrey had to open one of the lee ports and let the gale blow through to get rid of the smell of it, and then he went up again to The Girl.

They watched the great rollers thundering on the beach beyond the spit, rocketing their white spume high into the grim black sky, and las.h.i.+ng over at times into the lake. And when he called to her to look the other way she watched with amazement sandhills of size melt away before her eyes and re-form themselves in quite different places.

"But it is past words!" she cried into his ear.

They stared long too at the 'Jane and Mary' of Boston, but saw no sign of life aboard of her except the birds that cl.u.s.tered there unmolested.

"It is a most amazing place," she said, when they went down again, as she dusted the saltness out of her hair with her hand. "Is it often like this?"

"Very often in the winter, I should fear. We've had our best weather since you came."

"I don't think I want to live all my life here," she said dejectedly.

"I love the sun."

And he would dearly have liked to tell her that he did the same, but that for him she made more suns.h.i.+ne even than the sun itself.

Instead, he prosaically set her to the making of more fis.h.i.+ng-lines, in case of accident to the one they had, and he himself hammered away at more hooks, burning and ragging his fingers out of knowledge, but producing hooks of a kind somehow.

x.x.xIX

The gale slackened on the third day, and Wulfrey was actually relieved in his mind at the sight of Macro hurrying ash.o.r.e on his raft, after fresh meat, and, from the fact of his buckets, water, which he had probably been too careless, or too drunk, to secure during the storm.

For the thought of his possibly lying there alone and foodless had not been a pleasant one, good reason as he had for disliking the man.

For themselves, he baited and cast his hooks, and landed half a dozen fish as fast as he could haul them out. Their fresh meat supply would have to wait until Macro went out to the wreckage and their minds could be at ease as to the safety of their headquarters. The sea outside was still too high for any possibility of his going that day, and fortunately, thanks to their new source of supply, they could wait with equanimity. Water they had caught in plenty in the buckets slung under the scuppers.

"He's alive at any rate," said Wulfrey, when he went down to breakfast.

"So much the worse for us," said The Girl.

"He's been fasting, I should say, by the way he has gone off after rabbits. We ate our first ones raw, I remember."

"Savages!"

"Savage with hunger. We had had nothing to eat but sh.e.l.l-fish and sea-weed for days."

"Horrible!--raw rabbit and sea-weed!"

"We had no means of making fire, no shelter. We slept out on the sands, and were glad to be simply alive."

"I'm truly thankful you had risen to a higher state before I came."

"So am I. We were not good to look at. We were as men who had died out there among the dead s.h.i.+ps' bones and been born again on this sandbank, lacking everything. Fortunately for us the years that had gone before had been unconsciously making provision for us, and here were houses ready-made and waiting, and out there more than we could use in a lifetime."

They saw the mate return after a time with his supplies, and he never showed head again all day. Wulfrey let The Girl keep a look-out, and tried himself to get some sleep, in antic.i.p.ation of the night-watch which he saw would be necessary.

"He will probably go out to the pile tomorrow," he said. "He must be out of flour and probably of rum. Then we can take a run ash.o.r.e ourselves. When he gets back he will probably be too tired to be up to any mischief."

"I wish he would tame down and let us have peace, or else go and get himself killed," she said anxiously. "We can't go on like this for ever."

"I'm afraid he won't oblige us either way. We can only hang on and hope for the best, and keep our eyes open."

His watch that night pa.s.sed undisturbed. In the morning, as he expected, Macro set off for the wreckage; and, taking some food with them, they went ash.o.r.e for a long day's ramble.

"It is good to feel the width of land under one again," said The Girl, fairly dancing with delight. "I am very grateful for the s.h.i.+p, but truly it is small and cramping."

"Sandhills are good for play-time, but you'd miss the s.h.i.+p when bed-time came. It's cold work sleeping on the sand."

"Almost as bad as sleeping on a broken mast. Which way shall we go?

You are quite sure he has gone to the wreckage?"

"Quite sure. I watched him out of sight. Besides, I am sure he had to go."

"Then let us go the opposite way, as far as we can, and we'll stop out all day long and behave like children. I'm going to walk in the water," and she kicked off her shoes and lifted her blanket skirt and tripped along in the lip of the tide, and he did the same, enjoying her enjoyment.

A watery sun shone feebly through a thin gray sky, the air was still heavy with moisture, the water in which they were walking was warmer than that of the lake. On that side, the island curved like the concave side of a great half-moon. The pale yellow sand stretched on and on as far as their eyes could reach.

"I would like to bathe," said she exuberantly.

"Wait till we get beyond the end of our lake, then you can take this side and I'll go across to the other. You won't go out too far? There may be under-currents that would carry you out."

"I'll be very careful. And you must not come back for an hour... Oh, what are those? ... Dead men?"

In a tiny dent in the long sweep of the curve, made by the sandhills running almost down to the water, were half a dozen dark objects lying on the dry sand and looking for all the world like dead bodies. He had never seen any jetsam of size on that side. The drive of the storms and drift of the currents landed everything on the western spits and banks. Still there was no knowing.

"Wait here!" he said, and set off towards them. And she followed close at his heels.

But before they had gone many paces, one of the bodies set itself suddenly in motion and began to shuffle towards the water.

"Seals," said Wulf, who had never set eyes on a live one in his life, but had a general idea of what they were like.

Before they could reach them, all had flopped away except one, which, when they drew near, raised its head and eyed them piteously and made an effort to rise.