It _was_ raining,--big cold splashes that came faster and faster. I
felt my blouse stick coldly to my shoulder in the places where it
was wet.
"We _can't_ let Greg lie there and have it rain on him," I said.
Jerry and I thought of the pirate cave at the same moment, but we
didn't see how we could possibly carry Greg to it in the dark. We
thought that as it wasn't his legs that were hurt he might be able
to walk there, if we helped him. He was very brave and quite willing
to try, though a little dazed about why we wanted him to, but when
we stood him carefully on his feet, he said, "Chris--no--" and we
had to lay him down again. By this time it was really raining, and I
put the skirt over Greg, instead of under him, while we tried to
think.
"It might work if we made a chair," Jerry suggested.
So we stooped down and clasped each other's wrists criss-cross, the
way you do to make a human chair, and got Greg on to it, with the
arm that wasn't hurt around my neck. The darkness was perfectly
pitchy, and we had to feel for every step to be sure that it was a
solid place and not the slippery edge that went straight down into
the sea. Greg cried a little and said, "_Please--_stop." I could
feel his hair against my face. It was all wet, and his cheek was
wet, too, and cold.
The rain blew a little way into the cave, but not much, and we put
Greg as far back as we could. The bottom of the cave was very jaggy
and not comfortable to lie on, but we made it as soft as we could
with the skirt and the jersey. I tripped and stumbled against Jerry,
and when I caught him I felt that he was shivering. His shirt was
quite wet. When I asked him if he was cold, he said "Not very," and
we crawled into the cave place beside Greg, and sat as close
together as possible to keep warm. We couldn't see the Headland
light, and I was rather glad, because it had made me almost crazy,
flashing and flashing so steadily and not caring a bit.
The rain went _plop_ into the pools, and made a flattish, spattery
sound on the rock. I don't know why I thought of the "Air Religieux"
just then, but I suppose it was because of the rain. I could see the
straight yellow candle-flames all blue around the wick, and Father's
head tucked down looking at the 'cello, and his hands, nice and
strong, playing it; then I got a little mixed and heard him calling
"Christi-ine," fainter and fainter. I think I must have been almost
asleep, because I know the real rain surprised me, like something
I'd forgotten, and a very sharp, cornery rock was poking into my
back.
It was then that Greg said:
"Want--Simpson."
That frightened me more than anything almost, for Simpson was a sort
of stuffed flannel duck-thing that he'd had when he was very little,
and he hadn't thought of it for years. None of us ever knew why he
called it "Simpson," but he adored the thing and made it sleep
beside him in the crib every night. But that was when he was three,
and "Simpson" had been for ages on the top shelf where we keep the
toys that we think we'll play with again sometime before we're
really grown up. We never have done it yet, but there are certain
ones that we couldn't possibly give away, not even to the
Deservingest poor children.
So when Greg said that, in a tired, far-off sort of way, it did
frighten me, because I _had_ heard of people dying when they were
ravingly delirious. Greg wasn't raving exactly, but it was almost
worse, because his voice was so small and different from his own
dear usual one. When I told him I couldn't get Simpson I tried to
make my voice sound soft and cooey like Mother's when she's sorry,
but it went up into a queer squeak instead, and I couldn't finish
somehow. Greg kept saying, "Simpson;--please--" and crying to
himself.
I heard Jerry feeling around in the dark and then the click of his
knife opening. I couldn't think what he was doing, but after quite a
long time he pushed something into my hand and said:
"Does that feel anything like it?"
"Like what?" I said, but the next minute I knew.
It _did_ feel like Simpson--soft and flannelly, with a round, bumpy
sort of head at one end.
"Oh, how did you do it!" I said. "Oh, Jerry, you brick!"
"I chopped a big piece out of your skirt," he said. "I hope you
don't mind. I happened to have the string off the sandwich bundle in
my pocket, and I squeezed up a head and tied it."
Greg was a little frightened when Jerry leaned over him suddenly.
"It's just me, Greg," Jerry said; "just Jerry-o. Here's Simpson, old
lamb."
I'd never heard Jerry's voice at all like that before. I don't know
whether Greg really thought it was Simpson, but he took it and
sighed--a long, quivery sort of sigh, the way very little children
do when they're asleep sometimes.
Then there was no sound at all but the different horrid noises that
the Monster made.
Presently I felt Jerry start, and then he shuffled back a little so
that he was quite tight against my knees. I asked him what was the
matter, and he said "Nothing." After a while, though, he said:
"Chris, I'd better tell you."
"What? Oh, what _is_ it?" I said.
"Do you remember how the tide was when we came out?" he asked.
"Yes," I said; "on the ebb. Don't you remember the rocks at
Wecanicut, with bushels of wet sea-weed hanging off?"
"Well?" Jerry said.
I didn't understand for a minute, then I whispered:
"Do--you mean--"
"A wave just hit my foot," said Jerry in a low voice.
The first thing that we did was a lot of quick figuring. We thought
fearfully hard and remembered that Turkshead Rock was just coming
out of water when we left Wecanicut at four o'clock, so that the
tide must have been within about an hour of ebb. Therefore full
flood would be at eleven o'clock. But we hadn't any idea of whether
it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see
Jerry's watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand
Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly
maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at
all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was
the edge of another wavelet.
We knew that if the cave was going to be flooded we must get Greg
out of it before the water came much higher, but it was still
raining pitch-forks outside, and we didn't know whether to risk
waiting a bit longer or not.
"Perhaps there's sea-weed and we can feel high watermark," I said.
"Try, Jerry."
We felt all the way around the sides of the cave toward the bottom,
but as far as we could tell there was no sea-weed at all.
"That doesn't help us much," Jerry said, "because we don't know
whether the tide is really full now and has covered it, or whether
it just doesn't grow here."
We curled our feet under us and waited. We could hear the water
sloshing around very close to us. Once when I put out my hand it
went right into a cold pool. It was then that Jerry had a most
wonderful idea. I heard his knife snap open again and asked him what
it was this time.
"If I take the crystal off my watch," he said, "I can feel where the
hands are."
I heard the little clicking pop that the front of a watch makes when
you pry it off, and I knew he was feeling the hands very gently.
"The little one's in line with the winder stem thing," he said, "and
the big one--Chris, it's about twenty minutes of twelve. The water
_can't_ come any higher. We must have had the worst of it."
It was queer that I cried then, because I hadn't felt at all like
crying when we thought that the cave would be flooded.
Greg had been quiet for so long that it frightened me suddenly, and
I groped after him to be sure that he was all right. I found his
hand, and I couldn't believe that it was really hot when ours were
so cold. His forehead was hot, too, and dry, in spite of his hair
being damp still from the rain. He curled his hand into mine and
said very clearly:
"Will you please bring me a drink of water?"
It was perfectly awful, because he said it so politely and very
carefully, as if he were trying not to bother somebody. And there
was no drink to give him. I thought of the people in stories who lie
on deserts and battle-fields burning in agonies of fever, but I
couldn't remember reading about anybody dying of fever on a rock in
the middle of the sea. I dipped my handkerchief in the pool just
beside me and laid it, all dripping, on Greg's forehead. I didn't
know whether it was a proper First Aid thing to do, but he seemed to
like it and was still again, holding my hand. Presently he said:
"Mother, why isn't there a drink?"
"This is awful, Chris," Jerry said.
Then I thought of the rain-pools. There were lots, of course, in the
hollows of the Monster, but we had nothing to scoop up the water
with. Greg's forehead was just as hot as ever, and he thrashed about
and hurt his shoulder and cried miserably.
I don't know how Jerry could have thought of so many things; for it
was he who thought of very carefully breaking the bottom off the
root-beer bottle and using it for a cup. Of course the bottom might
have cracked all to pieces, but it was quite heavy and Jerry was
very careful. It came off wonderfully well, though rather jaggy.
Jerry tried to grind the cutty edges off by rubbing them against the
rock, but it didn't work. Then we remembered being very thirsty once
on a long picnic-walk ages ago, and Father wrapping his handkerchief
around the top of the tin can the soup had come in and giving us a
drink at a pump. So we knew that we could do that with the broken
bottle. Jerry dodged out into the rain through the tide-pools and
came back after a while with some water.
"I couldn't get much," he said, "because the place I found was very
shallow, but I can go again."
I remembered reading in books that you mustn't give much water to
fever-stricken people in any case. We lifted Greg's head up,--that
is, Jerry did, while I held the root-beer bottle glass, and said:
"Here's the drink, Gregs, dear."
It was very hard to tell what I was doing, and some of the water
trickled over the handkerchief and down the front of Greg's jumper.
But he drank the rest, and said: "Thank you very much" in the same
careful voice.
"Oh, I wish he wouldn't be so blooming polite!" Jerry said sharply,
as we were laying Greg back again, and I felt something wet and warm
splash down on my wrist. But I didn't tell Jerry I'd felt it.