Latitude 19 degree Part 14

"Give that fellow up as a bad job," said I. "Did you ever cook anything, Miss Archer?"

"I can make calves'-foot jelly," said Cynthia, "and oley-koeks. I always made those for Christmas dinner at home."

I looked around the sh.o.r.e scrutinizingly.

"I don't see any little calf sticking up his feet to be chopped off--except the Minion," I added, after a moment's survey of the sloping sand, where the cabin boy was disporting himself upon his back with his feet in the air. "I suppose oily what-you-call-'ems need b.u.t.ter and eggs----"

"As I haven't the necessary materials, suppose I cook some pork," said Cynthia. "I suppose"--looking quietly at me--"it isn't so very difficult. You will have to build a fire, you know, and wash the frying-pan and cut the pork."

"And lay it in the spider and let it cook itself," said I. "I am sorry to put you to so much trouble."

"Don't mention it," said Cynthia good-naturedly. "Now, you know, by rights a piece of the old Yankee should come floating ash.o.r.e with a dozen fowls, a pail of milk, and a keg of b.u.t.ter planted safely on the upper side and----"

"A barrel of flour," added I. "Well, stranger things have happened----"

"Not much," said Cynthia.

This silly badinage served to while away the time while I cut the pork, made the fire, and started the breakfast on its way. I brought the water and hard bread, and then told Cynthia that if she would watch the breakfast I would go and take a bath. I had something on my mind which depressed me greatly. When I took the parrot's cage ash.o.r.e on the previous evening, I had hung it on the limb of a ceiba too high for Cynthia to reach. That was very well for the night, but this was the next morning, and, like many another next morning, its light ushered in a day of reckoning. I had told Cynthia, I am ashamed to say, that I would give Solomon his food and water, and I am also humiliated to confess that I did actually fill the bird's cup and take it with a bit of hard bread to the secluded place which I had chosen for the scene of my base deception. Let me state here, with the entire reliability of all explorers, that it was not entirely the fear of what Cynthia would think of me for the part which I had played in what was to me a comedy, and which might prove to her a tragedy, but that I really could not bear the thought of seeing her sorrow when she first heard the dreadful news that Solomon had escaped. I had often longed to wring the neck of the feathered brute, for he had repaid me, as many kindnesses are repaid in this world, by biting my finger to the bone when I had tried to tempt him with some dainty. However, Cynthia loved him, and, notwithstanding his viciousness, I had tried to make friends with him for her sake. Kick a man's dog, and he is done with you. Ill treat a woman's parrot, and if that woman is the woman you adore, you had better be dead. I had left the cover drawn tightly over the cage, telling Cynthia that it would protect the bird from the night dews, _Facilis descensus Averno_. Little Adoniah says that means tell one lie and you will have to tell a hundred. I had stuck to the letter of the truth, but I really cared very little whether the dews of evening or the deluges of the tropics descended in floods upon that wretched bird. When I left Cynthia I walked directly up the bank of the stream, and was soon lost to sight behind the low foliage which fringed its western slope. So soon as Cynthia could no longer see me, I struck to the right, and, circling round, I was again in the vicinity of the camp. I could see that her back was turned toward me as she stooped over the frying-pan, scorching her hands and face doubtless in doing this menial work. I went to the tree where the cage hung, reached up and pulled down the limb, seized upon the cage, loosened the catches, and quietly released the floor.

This I laid upon the ground half upon edge, as if it had fallen so. I then returned to the stream and took my bath, which much refreshed me, and appeared in camp with my guilty heart thumping and my pulses ringing in my ears. The Skipper was narrating a wonderful tale to Cynthia, to which she was listening, as if she wished some confirmatory evidence before quite believing him.

"Oysters growing on trees!" Cynthia exclaimed as I joined them. "Uncle Tony, you should not try to practice upon my credulity in that way, and you a member of the church in good and regular standing! But then you don't carry the deacons to sea with you, or----"

The Skipper a.s.serted his discovery in loud and positive tones, which drowned Cynthia's softer ones.

"Don't be a fool, girl! Shows you never travelled. Here's one now! See it? Sh.e.l.l and all! Here's where I broke it off the branch!"

"Well! It beats Robinson Crusoe," said Cynthia. She turned to me. "Do you believe it, Mr. Jones?"

"It is nothing new," said I. "I will take a pail, if you like, and get some for breakfast."

"I will go with you," said Cynthia. "I know there's some catch about it.

I never saw oysters growing on trees."

"That's strange!" said the Skipper with ill-concealed scorn; "since you have seen everything else in the whole blessed world----"

"Where are they, Captain?" I inquired, interrupting the controversy.

"Along there, where that girl's standing. You go and get 'em, and I'll fry some more pork."

I took the pail which the Bo's'n had left near the fire and we started across the tree and along the beach in the direction which the Hatien girl had taken. When she saw Cynthia approaching, she began to run with the fleetness of a deer.

"I guess she's gone for good," I said.

Long before we reached the low mangrove growth we heard a curious snapping, like quick, sharp taps with a hammer. "Click!" "click!"

"click!" it sounded, until, as we drew close, the noise was confusing, and we had to raise our voices somewhat in speaking. We came to a little inlet, a sort of marshy place, where thousands of the low mangrove trees grew and pushed their roots and hooplike ends into the salt water.

"Now where are your trees?" asked Cynthia.

"Why, there they are, those mangrove trees."

"Oh, you call those trees, do you? Explosion of story number one."

"Story?"

"I didn't like to call it by its real name," said Cynthia, "as Uncle Tony told it. Don't you think, Mr. Jones, that going to sea is very bad for the mor----"

The conversation was taking too personal a turn. I pushed in among the hooplike roots.

"See here!" I said, "and here! and here!" as I pulled the oysters from their holding places and threw them into the pail. All about us the sh.e.l.ls were opening and shutting, as if they longed for the return of the tide, which was about two feet below them.

"Now that's exactly like so many of the stories one hears. I expected to stand under a very high tree and see you climb it as you would a hickory at home. I meant to stand under the branches and hold my dress and catch--Oh, pshaw! Why do I talk to you?"

"You have too much imagination," said I. "Just taste one before you begin to abuse us all so."

"I am not abusing any one, Mr. Jones; I only said----"

"Halloo! Halloo!"

It was the Skipper's voice. Fearing that something of an unpleasant nature had occurred, we started quickly back again.

"Breakfast's ready," said the Skipper, with his mouth full of pork.

As I approached the camp I saw a signal in the distance. I discovered after a moment's scrutiny that it was a signal from the Bo's'n. I beckoned him to come to me, but he only shook his head, and waved more wildly than before, pointing with sharp, quick jerks of his thumb over his shoulder to the westward.

"Are you going to see what that fool wants?" asked the Skipper.

"No," returned I. "I am tired of playing tag with the Bo's'n and the Hatien girl. Besides, I am famished."

We sat down on the rocks and ate our salt pork from a plate made of hard bread. We washed it down with water from the spring at the base of the rocks, and I heard no remarks upon the coa.r.s.e fare.

Cynthia said only that she had never known how good salt pork and s.h.i.+p's biscuits were, and that she should get Aunt Mary 'Zekel to have them three times a week when she got home.

"Where's that Minion?" asked the Skipper, with his mouth full.

As nothing was to be seen of the boy, we left his breakfast with the Bo's'n's share and that reserved for the Hatien girl, and I started to go to the rescue of the Bo's'n, who was still waving violently. I had taken but a few steps when I heard a call from Cynthia.

"Mr. Jones," she called, "bring me a biscuit before you go." My heart sank down like lead. In the pleasure of gathering the oysters and the walk which I had had with her alone I had forgotten that the day of reckoning was near at hand. I took a piece of bread from the cask and ran to meet her.

"Hungry again?" I asked, outwardly smiling. There was a singing in my ears. I could hardly see.

"Oh, no," said she in answer; "but 'a merciful man,' you know, and my poor beast must be starving."

"Yes, I think he is," said I. I forgot the Bo's'n's signal; I forgot everything.

I seated myself miserably on a stone and waited for the deluge. It came.

I heard:

"Oh! Oh! Uncle! Mr. Jones, do come here; Solomon's gone!"