IN WHICH WE CROSS THE BARRIER
When day broke I hauled aft the sheet and headed the boat to the
southward, for I had now crossed what I took to be the head of the
island and could run down the other side. By the time it was fairly
dawn I had made enough southing to place the north end of the island
between ourselves and the ship. My calculations had been remarkably
accurate again. I had weathered the islands fairly in good time, and
now as the sun rose I steered the boat directly toward the land, the
changed direction of the morning breeze permitting me to lay the
desired course.
My hopes were high and I felt a kind of exhilaration at our escape,
although I was by no means inclined to minimize the possibilities of
grave peril we might soon be compelled to meet. The island was our
destination, however, and for it therefore I determinedly headed my
small craft with its precious and still peacefully sleeping cargo.
Poor girl, if ever a woman needed sleep and rest it was she. And her
easy slumber pleased me the more for it bespoke not only weariness
amounting to exhaustion but confidence and trust--and in me, and I was
stirred to even greater devotion.
I had sailed in nearly all the waters of the globe, frequented and
unfrequented, and I fancied I had chanced upon most of the odd things
to be seen therein, but I am free to admit that the island was unlike
any I had ever looked upon. The chart should have prepared me for it,
but it had not. In the first place, like most Pacific islands, this was
enclosed by a barrier reef over which the waves broke in white caps as
far as I could see. I supposed that somewhere there would be an opening
in the reef through which we could sail, although the chart, rather
roughly drawn, had showed none. That an opening should exist was so
invariably the case with all such islands as I had ever known or read
about that I counted upon finding one here. But I could not see any
opening from the boat as yet. The lagoon enclosed by the barrier reef
seemed to be from a half to three-quarters of a mile wide.
The strangest part of the whole game was that the island itself looked
like a whitish-gray wall rising straight up from the lagoon for, I
suppose, from one hundred and fifty feet in the lowest parts to three
hundred feet or more in the highest. And the wall appeared to be
without a break. It stood up like a solid rampart of stone, its top
covered with greenery.
From where we were situated at just that moment I couldn’t see on
to the end of the island, although from my inspection of it the day
before, I judged it might be six or eight miles long, and as I had
sailed past it I estimated it was about the same breadth and nearly
circular in shape.
A long distance away on the other side and hard to be seen at all from
the level of the sea in the small boat in which we were, lay other
islands, faintly outlined on the far horizon. I doubt if I could have
seen them at all had not the rising sun smote full upon them. They were
too far away for my purpose, which was to make a landing as soon as
possible and find some concealment or, at worst, some practical place
of defense. I therefore paid no attention to them, not realizing what a
part they were to play in the adventure following.
I suppose I must have threshed about somewhat when I brought the dinghy
to the wind and changed her course, for presently my little mistress
awoke. She sat up instantly and after the briefest acknowledgment of
my good morning and the briefest reply to my inquiry as to how she
did, she stared at the land toward which we were heading in so far as
the wind would allow. It was a bleak, inhospitable looking place, that
gray rough wall, in spite of its infrequent cresting of verdure, I will
admit, and she too found it so. After she had stared hard at the land,
she cast an anxious glance to leeward, but of course could make nothing
definite of the distant islands there.
“We have made good our escape from the ship, since she is not to be
seen,” she began.
“For the present, yes.”
“Do you think that they--”
“They’ll be after us, of course, as soon as the drink wears off.”
“And when will that be?” she asked anxiously.
“This afternoon probably, but we’ve nought to fear from them for hours
yet,” I reassured her.
“Well, Master Hampdon, what do you propose between whiles?” she said.
“We must get ashore,” said I, “as soon as possible. By the time their
debauch will have worn off, they will either bring the ship here or
send the boat after us. Afloat we can do nothing, ashore we may find
some concealment and probably make some defense.”
“It is a forbidding looking shore.”
“Aye,” was my answer, “but any haven is better than none, and it may
prove better than it promises on a nearer view.”
“Have you seen any evidence of human life?” she asked, nodding in
acquiescence to my proposition.
“No,” I replied.
Indeed, not a curl of smoke anywhere betrayed the presence of mankind.
Had it not been for depressions on the top of the wall here and there,
which were filled with vegetation, one might have supposed the island
to be nothing but a desolate and arid rock, but this reassured me.
I thought it strange that there was no mountain or hill rising from
beyond the top of the wall, but I was yet to see how strange the island
was. Indeed, I think there can be no other like it in the world. For I
have inquired of many mariners and they all confess that they have seen
nothing anywhere that in the least resembles it. Some, in truth, seem
incredulous to my tale, though I set down naught but what is true.
But as it was full morning now, I decided that first of all the
creature comforts had to be thought of. I offered to relinquish the
tiller and prepare something to eat, but Mistress Lucy took that upon
herself. What we had was cold, but there was plenty of it, and at my
urging she ate heartily. For myself I needed no stimulus but my raging
hunger. I wanted her to be in fettle for whatever might happen and
myself too, and so we fed well.
We had not much conversation the while, but I do remember that she did
say she had rather be there alone with me than on the ship, whereat my
heart bounded, but I had sense enough to say nothing. Her loneliness
and helplessness appealed to me. I might have been bold under other
circumstances, but not now. She was dependent upon me and I could not
bring myself to the slightest familiarity, so I only answered that I
would be glad to serve her with my life and I prayed God that we might
come safely out of the whole business, to which prayer she sweetly
added her own amen.
Well, we coasted along that barrier reef a good part of the morning
until we reached the other end of the island, and discovered to our
dismay that there was absolutely no opening, no break in it through
which we could make our way. When we reached the lower end, my lady
was for sailing around on the other side to seek farther, but this I
did not dare. We had heard nothing from the ship or her boats, and I
did not propose to arouse any pursuit by coming within possible range
of her glasses. I did not know where the _The Rose of Devon_ lay; for
aught I knew, they might have put her about and she might be off the
south end of the island. It was better to let sleeping and drunken dogs
lie, I said. After my rather abrupt negative of her proposition she
watched me in silence as with clouded brow I pondered the situation.
“Madam,” said I at last, “there is naught for us but to try to go over
the reef in some fashion. As I scanned the island yesterday through
the glasses I couldn’t see any opening in the reef on that side, and
although I never saw or heard of a case like this before, I make no
doubt but what the reef is continuous and there is no access to the
island except over it. And come to think of it, Sir Philip’s chart
showed no opening either.”
“I recall that the reef completely encircles the island on the little
map,” assented my lady.
“Then we must even pass over it as we can. I have had some experience
in taking a boat through the surf, and although it is a prodigious risk
I believe I can take this one over. For one thing, this dinghy is built
like a whaleboat; we may capsize it, but it is practicably unsinkable.
I propose to take a turn of the painter around your waist. If she goes
over you will not be thrown completely adrift. I am a stout swimmer and
can catch the boat and haul you in it or on it, and whatever happens
our lives will be preserved.”
“Will it be so very dangerous?” she asked me.
I could have minimized the danger, of course, but I thought she was
woman enough to hear the truth. She might have to face even greater
dangers presently and she might as well become accustomed to the idea
sooner or later. So I reasoned, and therefore I told her.
“I don’t see how the danger could possibly be greater, and yet,” I
added, “I think we shall win through if you will sit perfectly quiet
and trust to me.”
“I will do whatever you tell me,” she said, with a most becoming and
unusual meekness. “I think--I know--I trust you entirely, Master
Hampdon.”
“Very well,” said I quietly, “and now may God help us.”
Fortunately, the tide was making toward the shore of the island. I
selected a spot where the huge, rolling waves seemed to break more
smoothly than elsewhere, which argued a greater depth of water over
the barrier, less roughness, and fewer possibilities of being wrecked
on the jagged points of the coral reef. Dousing the sail, unshipping
the tiller and rudder, and pulling the oars with all my strength, after
an unuttered prayer, I shot the boat directly toward the spot I had
chosen. Just before I reached it, I threw the oars inboard, seized one
of them which I wished to use as a steering oar and stepped aft past my
lady, who sat a little forward and well down in the bottom of the boat.
I braced myself in the stern sheets and waited. We were racing toward
that reef with dizzy speed rising with the uplift of the wave. I had
just time for one sentence.
“If we die,” I shouted, “remember that I have been your true servant
always.”
She nodded her head, her eyes glistening, and then I turned to the
business in hand. A huge roller overtook us. The little boat rose and
rose and rose with a giddy, furious motion. Suddenly it began to turn.
If it went broadside to the reef and a wave caught it or one broke over
it, we should be lost; but I had foreseen the danger. I threw out my
oar and with every pound of strength in arm, leg, and body, I thrust
blindly, desperately against the heave of the sea.
It was an unequal combat, a man against the Pacific Ocean. I could
not have maintained it for long. Yet the few seconds seemed hours.
The strain was terrific, of all the tasks I ever attempted that taxed
my strength the most--save one, as you shall see. If the oar broke we
should be lost. It bent and buckled but held like the good honest piece
of English ash that it was. Sweat poured from me, my heart throbbed, my
pulses beat, my head rang. It was not in human power to continue. I was
about to give way and let go all when I cast one glance at my mistress.
I saw her pale face, her bright eyes staring into mine. My strength
then was about gone, but that look of appeal, entreaty, and confidence
nerved me for one last supreme effort.
There are not many men with as little experience in that sort of work
as I had enjoyed who could have done what I did, for I held the boat
steady, her bows fairly and squarely pointed to the reef in spite of
the thrust of the ocean, and I thought triumphantly that I was going to
make it safely in spite of all. I reckoned without my host, however.
The wave we were riding broke just as we reached the top. We sank down
into what seemed a valley of water, the breakers roared in our ears,
the spray fell over us like rain. We sank lower and lower, there was a
sound of grinding along the keel. We had struck the coral evidently.
The boat stopped a moment, motionless.
Unshipping my oar, I thrust it violently at the reef. The blade caught
in the coral. I put all my weight against it. The water rose, the
trough of the sea into which we had fallen suddenly filled. I clenched
my teeth and closed my eyes and thrust again. The boat lifted a little,
moved a little, the keel grating along the reef. I heard a scream
faintly and opened my eyes. I caught a fleeting glimpse of my lady’s
face, but could give her no attention. I struggled desperately to drag
the oar free. The coral rock into which I had jammed it held the blade
like a vise. The boat rose and moved faster. The oar was wrenched from
my hands. The inrushing wave and the moving boat passing reef together,
the great sea finally broke upon us.
We were over, but the wall of water struck the boat, now broached to,
full on the beam. She was lifted up, whirled over and swept inward. The
mountainous sea struck me on the back and side, knocking the breath
out of me and fairly hurling me clear of the boat so that I fell into
the boiling water alongside. My lady had half risen as the boat swung
broadside to the sea and she was also swept into the water. If she had
remained crouched down she would have fallen under it and probably
would have been killed.
The sea rolling inward swept us toward shore. It was well that I had
taken precaution to pass the painter about her waist and tied the
lashing securely. For by means of it she regained the overturned boat
and climbing up clung to its keel in comparative safety for the moment.
I, on the contrary, was driven landward and away from her. I struggled
desperately, half-dazed, to regain the boat. I might better have
attempted other things, but to see my shipmate there on the overturned
boat, so drenched and forlorn, maddened me, and I fought flooding tide
and flooding sea to reach her.
I could not call out, I was too spent and breathless for that, but I
struggled on and on. Whatever the cause, the wave which had so nearly
undone us was followed by a succession of the hugest rollers I have
ever seen. Usually the waters inside such reefs as we had passed are
smooth and calm, but on that day they were scarcely less rough than the
ocean. To attempt to make head against them was vain.
I know now that my lady called to me to desist, seeing from her more
elevated position on the boat’s keel that we were rapidly being driven
toward a strip of sandy beach. But I did not hear. I did not become
aware of our nearness to the shore until my foot actually touched
bottom.
The next wave carried me landward and left me prostrate on the sand.
I scrambled to my feet and leaped to meet the boat, also being rolled
toward the beach.
[Illustration: “Then she bent over me.”]
Mistress Lucy had cast off the lashing and had let herself into the
water, and none too soon, for the capsized boat, I think her mast
catching on the bottom, was suddenly righted by the waves, the mast
carrying away, and before I could avoid it I was struck by the prow
and knew no more.
By this time, as I afterward learned, my brave shipmate had got to her
feet in the shallows. She saw the boat hurled upon me, saw me borne
backward on the beach, saw me carried up the sand, and left lying
senseless by the spent wave.
With feelings which she did not attempt to describe until long after,
she ran to me, and with a strength, the source of which she could not
explain, dragged me further up the beach. I am a large man and with all
my inertness and the weight of my sodden clothes, I know not how she
compassed it.
Then she bent over me. I did not ask her what she said or did until
she chose to tell me later of her own will, but I presently awoke to
find her looking into my face, holding my shoulders with her hands and
frantically calling me by name.
“Master Hampdon! Master Hampdon!”--her voice rose into a scream of
terror.
“Fair and softly, my lady,” I answered slowly, sitting up and looking
about me. “I am dizzy, my head aches from the blow, but I believe
there are no bones broken. Let me see,” I continued, rising and
steadying myself by a great effort by the boat, which luckily enough
lay quietly on an even keel bedded in the sand near by, and unhurt save
for the broken mast. “And you, dear lady?” I asked as soon as I could
command myself.
“Safe, safe, thank God and you!” she cried tremulously.
“Nay,” said I, trembling from the violence of my efforts at control,
“give to Him alone the glory.”
But she shook her head. I reached down my hand toward her and lifted
her up and for the first time got sight of her. She had worn a dress
of some silken stuff, over a petticoat, or skirt, of darker, heavier,
woolen cloth. Her overdress had been torn to rags by the sea. There was
a great rip in her underskirt, which she caught on a nail or splinter
when she slid from the boat into the water. Both her buckled shoes
were gone and one stocking had been stripped from her by the seas. Her
little bare foot gleamed whitely on the golden sands. Her hair was
undone, water dripping from her sodden raiment.
Under my steady inspection she colored violently and instinctively
sought to conceal that bare foot beneath her tattered clothing. She
hath protested often since as to how she must have looked, but to me
then as ever, she was beautiful in her disarray and disorder and as to
her sweet, white foot I longed to kiss it; aye, and take no shame to
myself in this confession, either. And I have done so since, not once
but many times.
Obviously the first thing was to provide her with clothes. She had her
other apparel in a little chest which I had lashed to the thwarts, but
when I searched for it in the boat it was gone, and the thwart too. The
weight of it and the final buffeting had wrenched both clear. In fact,
the boat was swept clean save for the weapons, which I had thrust under
the thwarts and lashed there, and the contents of the lockers. Even the
sail had been dragged clear of the boom which still clung to the foot
of the broken mast.
The sea had gone down a little and as I stared out across the lagoon
I caught sight of the sail. Fortunately it had got foul of the broken
thwart, which had been wrenched loose by the drag of the box that had
been lost, and it was still afloat. It was a light canvas. It flashed
into my mind that it would do. Without a word I plunged into the lagoon
and a few strokes brought me to it. I dragged it ashore and spread it
in the sun before the inquiring gaze of my shipmate.
“What is that for, a tent?” she asked.
“Your clothes,” said I. “The first thing for me to do is to turn
cobbler and tailor. You couldn’t go about, like a South Sea islander,
bare armed and barefooted,” I continued calmly. “Out of the sailcloth
we can make you some sort of a dress.”
“But my shoes and stockings,” she said facing me bravely, although the
color came and went at the untoward situation for a modest maiden.
“I can manage the shoes,” said I, “but the stockings--” I paused. “When
we have made the dress,” I continued “you won’t need that red skirt and
you can make shift to slit it into lengths and wrap them about your
legs. They will protect you better than what you have lost.”
Fortunately I brought along with me a sailor’s needle and palm with
stout thread aplenty still safe with other contents of the lockers.
It was intensely hot in the sun and it did not take the canvas spread
out upon the sand long to dry. Picking it up we moved inward across
the narrow strip of beach to the cool shadow of the cliff. There was
much to be done, but clothes and footgear for her had to be attended to
first of all. And as we had seen no one, we went about making them with
energy and a good heart.
Here my little mistress could help. I am as good a tailor, I dare say,
as any man that sails the seas, but feminine rigging had never been my
experience or endeavor. Between us, with the aid of my sheath knife,
which I ever kept sharp, we managed to cut out a plain loose dress like
a tunic. Fortunately, she being but a small woman and understanding how
to use all the goods to the best advantage without wasting any, we were
able to get out a suitable garment which fell below her knees halfway
to the ground.
While she was busy cutting it I had taken off my vest or jerkin of
stout leather, and with her remaining shoe as a model for shape and
size, I contrived the sort of a foot covering that the savages of North
America call a moccasin. It was shapely enough too, and I made the
soles of several thicknesses of leather, and protected the heel and toe
by additional strips. So I managed to knock together a very serviceable
pair of loose shoes. By the time I had finished them my lady had got
her pieces laid out, and the sewing of them devolved upon me, for she
could by no means with her small hands manage the rough cloth and large
needle. I worked hard and before noon I had the garment fit for her to
wear.
My mistress then retired behind the protecting rock and donned the
tunic. She had taken my sheath knife with her and had made herself some
kind of a girdle which she had cut from her now useless skirt. She had
put on the shoes, and with further strips from the cloth had replaced
the stocking that she had lost, and the other one also. She must have
seen the admiration in my eyes as she came rather timidly forward to
my gaze. I suppose she had some doubts as to her appearance, but my
tailoring and cobbling became her vastly, I avowed. The canvas was new
and white, the scarlet about her waist, even the brown leather of my
moccasins with the red above, added a charming touch.
From a woman of the world and society she became in one hour, it would
seem, a creature of simplicity, like the ancient Romans of whom I had
read. She still possesses that garment and those shoes, and sometimes
in the privacy of her chamber she dons them for me. The sight brings
back old days and brave days of hard fighting and true comradeship and
great adventure on that far-off island set in that tropic sea under
those blue skies. And I love her better than when in the diamonds and
powder and silk and brilliant array with which nowadays beauty obscures
itself under the demand of fashion.