LITTLE BOB LOST
If Captain Gould was not mistaken in his calculations about the
geographical position of the island, the summer season could not have
more than another three months to run. After that, winter would arrive,
formidable by reason of its cold squalls and furious storms. The faint
chance of attracting the attention of some ship out at sea by means of
signals would have disappeared. In winter sailors avoid these dangerous
waters. But just possibly something would happen before then to modify
the situation.
Existence was much what it had been ever since that gloomy 26th of
October when the boat was destroyed. The monotony was terribly trying to
such active men. With nothing to do but wander about at the foot of the
cliff which imprisoned them, tiring their eyes with watching the ever
deserted sea, they needed extraordinary moral courage not to give way to
despair.
The long, long days were spent in conversation in which Jenny bore the
principal part. The brave young woman loved them all, taxed her
ingenuity to keep their minds occupied, and discussed all manner of
schemes, as to the utility of which she herself was under no
misapprehension.
Sometimes they wondered if the island really lay, as they had supposed,
in the west of the Pacific. The boatswain expressed some doubt on this
point.
“Is it the albatross’s coming that has changed your mind?” the captain
asked him one day.
“Well, yes, it has,” John Block replied; “and I am right, I think.”
“You infer from it that this island lies farther north than we supposed,
Block?”
“Yes, captain; and, for all anybody knows, somewhere near the Indian
Ocean. An albatross might fly hundreds of miles without resting, but
hardly thousands.”
“I know that,” Captain Gould replied, “but I know, too, that it was to
Borupt’s interest to take the _Flag_ towards the Pacific! As for the
week we were shut up in the hold, I thought, and so did you, that the
wind was from the west.”
“I agree,” the boatswain answered, “and yet, this albatross——. Has it
come from near, or from far?”
“And even supposing you are right, Block, even supposing we were
mistaken about the position of this island, and that it really is only a
few miles from New Switzerland, isn’t that just as had as if it were
hundreds of miles off, seeing that we can’t get away from it?”
Captain Gould’s conclusion was unfortunately only too reasonable.
Everything pointed to the probability of the _Flag_ having steered for
the Pacific, far, very far, from New Switzerland’s waters. And yet what
John Block was thinking, others were thinking too. It seemed as if the
bird from Burning Rock had brought hope with it.
When the bird recovered from its exhaustion, which it speedily did, it
was neither timid nor wild. It was soon walking about the beach, feeding
on the berries of the kelp or on fish, which it was very clever in
catching, and it showed no desire to fly away.
Sometimes it would fly along the promontory and settle on the top of the
cliff, uttering little cries.
“Ah, ha!” the boatswain used to say then. “He is asking us up! If only
he could give me the loan of his wings I would willingly undertake to
fly up there, and look over the other side. Very likely that side of the
coast isn’t any better than this one, but at any rate we would know.”
Know? Did they not know already, since Fritz had seen nothing but the
same arid rocks and the same inaccessible heights beyond the bluff?
One of the albatross’s chief friends was little Bob. A comradeship had
promptly been established between the child and the bird. They played
together on the sand. There was no danger to be apprehended from the
teasing of the one or the pecking of the other. When the weather was bad
both went into the cave where the albatross had his own corner.
Serious thought had to be given to the chances of a winter here. But for
some stroke of good fortune they would have to endure four or five
months of bad weather. In these latitudes, in the heart of the Pacific,
storms burst with extraordinary violence, and lower the temperature to a
serious extent.
Captain Gould, Fritz, and John Block talked sometimes of this. It was
better to look the perils of the future squarely in the face. Having
made up their minds to struggle on, they no longer felt the
discouragement which had been caused earlier by the destruction of the
boat.
“If only the situation were not aggravated by the presence of the women
and the child,” Captain Gould said more than once, “if we were only men
here——”
“All the more reason to do more than we should have done,” Fritz
rejoined.
One serious question cropped up in these anticipations of the winter: if
the cold became severe, and a fire had to be kept up day and night,
might not the supply of fuel give out?
Kelp was deposited on the beach by every incoming tide and quickly dried
by the sun. But an acrid smoke was produced by the combustion of these
sea-weeds, and they could not make use of them to warm the cave. The
atmosphere would have been rendered unbearable. So it was thought best
to close the entrance with the sails of the boat, fixing them firmly
enough to withstand the squalls which beset the cliff during the winter.
There remained the problem of lighting the inside of the cave when the
weather should preclude the possibility of working outside.
The boatswain and Frank, assisted by Jenny and Dolly, made many rude
candles out of the grease from the dog-fish which swarmed in the creek
and were very easy to catch.
John Block melted this grease and so obtained a kind of oil which
coagulated as it cooled. Since he had at his disposal none of the cotton
grown by M. Zermatt, he was obliged to content himself with the fibre of
the laminariæ, which furnished practicable wicks.
There was also the question of clothes, and that was a different
question indeed.
“It’s pretty clear,” said the boatswain one day, “that when you are
shipwrecked and cast on a desert island it is prudent to have a ship at
your disposal in which you can find everything you want. One makes a
poor job of it otherwise!”
They all agreed. That was how the _Landlord_ had been the salvation of
the people in New Switzerland.
In the afternoon of the 17th an incident of which no one could have
foreseen the consequence caused the most intense anxiety.
As already mentioned, Bob found great pleasure in playing with the
albatross. When he was amusing himself on the shore his mother kept a
constant watch upon him, to see that he did not go far away, for he was
fond of scrambling about among the low rocks of the promontory and
running away from the waves. But when he stayed with the bird in the
cave there was no risk in leaving him by himself.
It was about three o’clock. James Wolston was helping the boatswain to
arrange the spars to support the heavy curtain in front of the entrance
to the cave. Jenny and Susan and Dolly were sitting in the corner by the
stove on which the little kettle was boiling, and were busy mending
their clothes.
It was nearly time for Bob’s luncheon.
Mrs. Wolston called the child.
Bob did not answer.
Susan went down to the beach and called louder, but still got no reply.
Then the boatswain called out:
“Bob! Bob! It’s dinner time!”
The child did not appear, and he could not be seen running about the
shore.
“He was here only a minute ago,” James declared.
“Where the deuce can he be?” John Block said to himself, as he went
towards the promontory.
Captain Gould, Fritz, and Frank were walking along the foot of the
cliff.
Bob was not with them.
The boatswain made a trumpet of his hands and called out several times:
“Bob! Bob!”
The child remained invisible.
James came up to the captain and the two brothers.
“You haven’t seen Bob, have you?” he asked in a very anxious voice.
“No,” Frank answered.
“I saw him half an hour ago,” Fritz declared; “he was playing with the
albatross.”
And all began to call him, turning in every direction.
It was in vain.
Then Fritz and James went to the promontory, climbed the nearest rocks,
and looked all over the creek.
Neither child nor bird was there.
Both went back to the others. Mrs. Wolston was pale with fear.
“Have you looked inside the cave?” Captain Gould asked.
Fritz made one spring to the cave and searched every corner of it, but
came back without the child.
Mrs. Wolston was distracted. She went to and fro like a mad woman. The
little boy might have slipped among the rocks, or fallen into the sea.
The most alarming suppositions were permissible since Bob had not been
found.
So the search had to be prosecuted without a moment’s delay along the
beach and as far as the creek.
“Fritz and James,” said Captain Gould, “come with me along the foot of
the cliff. Do you think Bob could have got buried in a heap of
sea-weed?”
“Yes, you go,” said the boatswain, “while Mr. Frank and I go and search
the creek.”
“And the promontory,” Frank added. “It is possible that Bob may have
taken it into his head to go climbing there and have fallen into some
hole.”
So they separated, some going to the right, some to the left. Jenny and
Dolly stayed with Mrs. Wolston and tried to allay her anxiety.
Half an hour later, all were back again, after a fruitless search.
Nowhere in the bay was any trace of the child, and all their calling had
been without result.
Susan’s grief broke out. She sobbed in anguish and had to be carried,
against her will, into the cave. Her husband, who went with her, could
not utter a word.
Outside, Frank said:
“The child can’t possibly be lost! I tell you again, I saw him on the
shore scarcely an hour ago, and he was not near the sea. He had a string
in his hand, with a pebble at the end of it, and was playing with the
albatross.”
“By the way, where is the bird?” Frank asked, looking round.
“Yes; where is he?” John Block echoed.
“Can they have disappeared together?” Captain Gould enquired.
“It looks like it,” Fritz replied.
They looked in every direction, and especially towards the rocks where
the bird was accustomed to perch.
It was not to be seen, nor could its cry be heard—a cry easily
distinguishable from the noises of the divers, gulls, and sea-mews.
The albatross might have flown above the cliff and made for some other
eminence along the coast. But the little boy could not have flown away.
Yet he might have been capable of climbing along the promontory after
the bird. This explanation was hardly admissible, however, after the
search that Frank and the boatswain had made.
Yet it was impossible not to see some connection between Bob’s
disappearance and that of the albatross. They hardly ever separated, and
now they were both lost together!
Evening drew on. The father and mother were in terrible grief. Susan was
so agitated that they feared for her reason. Jenny, Dolly, Captain Gould
and the others, did not know what next to do. When they reflected that
if the child had fallen into some hole he would have to stay there all
night, they began to search again. A fire of sea-weed was lighted at the
far end of the promontory, to be a guide for the child in case he should
have gone to the back of the creek. But after remaining afoot until the
last possible minute of the evening, they had to give up hope of finding
Bob. And what were the chances of their being more successful next day!
All went back into the cave, but not to sleep. How could they sleep?
First one, and then another went out, watched, listened through the
rippling of the tide, and then came back and sat down again without
saying a word.
It was the most sorrowful, heart-breaking night of all that Captain
Gould and his company had passed upon this deserted coast.
About two o’clock in the morning, the sky, which had been brilliant with
stars until then, began to be overcast. The breeze was now in the north,
and the clouds from that quarter gathered overhead. Not yet very thick,
they chased each other with ever increasing speed, and east and west of
the cliff the sea must certainly be rough.
It was the time when the flood brought up on to the beach the rollers of
the rising tide.
Just at this moment Mrs. Wolston got up, and before she could be stopped
she rushed out of the cave in delirium, shrieking:
“My child! My child!”
Force had to be used to get her back again. James, who had caught his
wife up, took her in his arms and carried her back, more dead than
alive.
The unhappy mother remained stretched out on the heap of kelp where Bob
usually slept by her side. Jenny and Dolly tried to bring her round, but
it was only after great efforts on their part that she recovered
consciousness.
Throughout the remainder of the night the wind moaned incessantly round
the top of the cliff. A score of times the men searched all over the
shore, fearing always that the incoming tide might lay a little corpse
upon the sand.
But there was nothing, nothing! Could the child have been carried out to
sea by the waves?
About four o’clock when the ebb tide was just setting in after the
slack, light appeared in the east.
At this moment Fritz, who was leaning against the back of the cave,
thought he heard a kind of cry behind the wall. He listened, and fearing
that he might be mistaken, went up to the captain.
“Come with me!” he said.
Without knowing, without even asking what Fritz wanted, Captain Gould
went with him.
“Listen!” said Fritz.
Captain Gould listened intently.
“I can hear a bird’s cry,” he said.
“Yes, a bird’s cry!” Fritz declared.
“Then there is a hollow behind the wall.”
“There must be; and perhaps a passage communicating with the outside;
how else is it to be explained?”
“You are right, Fritz!”
John Block was told. He put his ear against the wall, and said
positively:
“It’s the albatross’s cry: I recognise it.”
“And if the albatross is there,” said Fritz, “little Bob must be there
too.”
“But how could they both have got in?” the captain asked.
“That we will find out,” John Block replied. Frank and Jenny and Dolly
were now told. James and his wife recovered a little hope.
“He is there! He is there!” Susan said over and over again.
John Block had lighted one of the thick candles. That the albatross was
behind the wall nobody could doubt, for its cry continued to be heard.
But just before looking to see if it had slipped in by some opening
outside, it was necessary to make sure that the back wall had no
orifice.
Candle in hand, the boatswain began to examine this wall.
John Block could only see on its surface a few fissures which were too
narrow for the albatross or Bob to get through. But at the bottom a
hole, twenty to twenty-five inches wide, was hollowed out in the ground,
a hole big enough to take the bird and the child.
Meantime, however, the albatross’s cry had ceased, and all were afraid
that Captain Gould, the boatswain, and Fritz must have been mistaken.
Then Jenny took John Block’s place, and stooping down level with the
hole, she called the bird several times. The albatross knew her voice as
well as it knew her caress.
A cry answered her, and almost immediately the bird came out through the
hole.
“Bob! Bob!” Jenny called again.
The child did not answer, did not appear. Was he not with the bird
behind the wall? His mother could not restrain a cry of despair.
“Wait!” said the boatswain.
He crouched down and enlarged the hole, throwing the sand out behind
him. In a few minutes he had made the hole large enough for him to
squeeze into it.
A minute later he brought out little Bob, who had fainted, but who was
not long in recovering consciousness under his mother’s kisses.