"THERE," said he. "Now the latitude I must guess at by certain
combinations. In the first place, the slight variation in the length of
the days. Then I must try and make a rough calculation of the sun's
parallax. And then my botany will help me a little; spices furnish a
clew; there are one or two that will not grow outside the tropic. It was
the longitude that beat me, and now we have conquered it. Hurrah! Now I
know what to diffuse, and in what direction; east, southeast; the ducks
have shown me that much. So there's the first step toward the impossible
problem."
"Very well," said Helen; "and I am sure one step is enough for one day. I
forbid you the topic for twelve hours at least. I detest it because it
always makes your poor head so hot."
"What on earth does that matter?" said Hazel, impetuously, and almost
crossly.
"Come, come, come, sir," said Helen authoritatively; "it matters to me."
But when she saw that he could think of nothing else, and that opposition
irritated him, she had the tact and good sense not to strain her
authority, nor to irritate her subject.
Hazel spliced a long, fine-pointed stick to the mast-head, and set a
plank painted white with guano at right angles to the base of the mast;
and so, whenever the sun attained his meridian altitude, went into a
difficult and subtle calculation to arrive at the latitude, or as near it
as he could without proper instruments. And he brooded and brooded over
his discovery of the longitude, but unfortunately he could not advance.
In some problems the first step once gained leads, or at least points, to
the next; but to know whereabouts they were, and to let others know it,
were two difficulties heterogeneous and distinct.
Having thought and thought till his head was dizzy, at last he took
Helen's advice and put it by for a while. He set himself to fit and
number a quantity of pearl-oyster shells, so that he might be able to
place them at once, when he should be able to recommence his labor of
love in the cavern.
One day Helen had left him so employed, and was busy cooking the dinner
at her own place, but, mind you, with one eye on the dinner and another
on her patient, when suddenly she heard him shouting very loud, and ran
out to see what was the matter.
He was roaring like mad, and whirling his arms over his head like a
demented windmill.
She ran to him.
"Eureka! Eureka!" he shouted, in furious excitement.
"Oh, dear!" cried Helen; "never mind." She was all against her patient
exciting himself.
But he was exalted beyond even her control. "Crown me with laurel," he
cried; "I have solved the problem." And up went his arms.
"Oh, is that all?" said she, calmly.
"Get me two squares of my parchment," cried he; "and some of the finest
gut."
"Will not after dinner do?"
"No; certainly not," said Hazel, in a voice of command. "I wouldn't wait
a moment for all the flesh-pots of Egypt."
Then she went like the wind and fetched them.
"Oh, thank you! thank you! Now I want--let me see--ah, there's an old
rusty hoop that was washed ashore, on one of that ship's casks. I put it
carefully away; how the unlikeliest things come in useful soon or late!"
She went for the hoop, but not so rapidly, for here it was that the first
faint doubt of his sanity came in. However, she brought it, and he
thanked her.
"And now," said he, "while I prepare the intelligence, will you be so
kind as to fetch me the rushes?"
"The what?" said Helen, in growing dismay.
"The rushes! I'll tell you where to find some."
Helen thought the best thing was to temporize. Perhaps he would be better
after eating some wholesome food. "I'll fetch them directly after
dinner," said she. "But it will be spoiled if I leave it for long; and I
do so want it to be nice for you to-day."
"Dinner?" cried Hazel. "What do I care for dinner now? I am solving my
problem. I'd rather go without dinner for years than interrupt a great
idea. Pray let dinner take its chance, and obey me for once."
"For once!" said Helen, and turned her mild hazel eyes on him with such a
look of gentle reproach.
"Forgive me! But don't take me for a child, asking you for a toy; I'm a
poor crippled inventor, who sees daylight at last. Oh, I am on fire; and,
if you want me not to go into a fever, why, get me my rushes."
"Where shall I find them?" said Helen, catching fire at him.
"Go to where your old hut stood, and follow the river about a furlong.
You will find a bed of high rushes. Cut me a good bundle, cut them below
the water, choose the stoutest. Here is a pair of shears I found in the
ship."
She took the shears and went swiftly across the sands and up the slope.
He watched her with an admiring eye; and well he might, for it was the
very poetry of motion. Hazel in his hours of health had almost given up
walking; he ran from point to point, without fatigue or shortness of
breath. Helen, equally pressed for time, did not run; but she went almost
as fast. By rising with the dawn, by three meals a day of animal food, by
constant work, and heavenly air, she was in a condition women rarely
attain to. She was _trained._ Ten miles was no more to her than ten
yards. And, when she was in a hurry, she got over the ground by a grand
but feminine motion not easy to describe. It was a series of smooth
undulations, not vulgar strides, but swift rushes, in which the loins
seemed to propel the whole body, and the feet scarcely to touch the
ground. It was the vigor and freedom of a savage, with the grace of a
lady.
And so it was she swept across the sands and up the slope,
_"Et vera incessu patuit Dea."_
While she was gone, Hazel cut two little squares of seals' bladder, one
larger than the other. On the smaller he wrote: "An English lady wrecked
on an island. W. longitude 103 deg. 30 min., S. latitude between the 33d
and 26th parallels. Haste to her rescue." Then he folded this small, and
inclosed it in the larger slip, which he made into a little bag, and tied
the neck extremely tight with fine gut, leaving a long piece of the gut
free.
And now Helen came gliding back, as she went, and brought him a large
bundle of rushes.
Then he asked her to help him fasten these rushes round the iron hoop.
"It must not be done too regularly," said he; "but so as to look as much
like a little bed of rushes as possible."
Helen was puzzled still, but interested. So she set to work, and, between
them, they fastened rushes all round the hoop, although it was a large
one.
But, when it was done, Hazel said they were too bare.
"Then we will fasten another row," said Helen, good-humoredly. And,
without more ado, she was off to the river again.
When she came back, she found him up, and he said the great excitement
had cured him--such power has the brain over the body. This convinced her
he had really hit upon some great idea. And, when she had made him eat
his dinner by her fire, she asked him to tell her all about it.
But, by a natural reaction, the glorious and glowing excitement of mind
that had battled his very rheumatic pains was now followed by doubt and
dejection.
"Don't ask me yet," he sighed. "Theory is one thing; practice is another.
We count without our antagonists. I forgot they will set their wits
against mine; and they are many, I am but one. And I have been so often
defeated. Do you know I have observed that whenever I say beforehand, Now
I am going to do something clever, I am always defeated. Pride really
goes before destruction, and vanity before a fall."
The female mind, rejecting all else, went like a needle's point at one
thing in this explanation. "Our antagonists?" said Helen, looking sadly
puzzled. "Why, what antagonists have we?"
"The messengers," said Hazel, with a groan. "The aerial messengers."
That did the business. Helen dropped the subject with almost ludicrous
haste; and, after a few commonplace observations, made a nice comfortable
dose of grog and bark for him. This she administered as an independent
transaction, and not at all by way of comment on his antagonists, the
aerial messengers.
It operated unkindly for her purpose; it did him so much good that he
lifted up his dejected head, and his eyes sparkled again, and he set to
work, and, by sunset, prepared two more bags of bladder with inscriptions
inside, and long tails of fine gut hanging. He then set to work, and,
with fingers far less adroit than hers, fastened another set of rushes
round the hoop. He set them less evenly, and some of them not quite
perpendicular; and, while he was fumbling over this, and examining the
effect with paternal glances, Helen's hazel eye dwelt on him with furtive
pity; for, to her, this girdle of rushes was now an instrument that bore
an ugly likeness to the scepter of straw, with which vanity run to seed
sways imaginary kingdoms in Bedlam or Bicetre.
And yet he was better. He walked about the cavern and conversed
charmingly; he was dictionary, essayist, _raconteur,_ anything she liked;
and, as she prudently avoided and ignored the one fatal topic, it was a
delightful evening. Her fingers were as busy as his tongue. And, when he
retired, she presented him with the fruits of a fortnight's work, a
glorious wrapper made of fleecy cotton inclosed in a plaited web of
flexible and silky grasses. He thanked her, and blessed her, and retired
for the night.
About midnight she awoke and felt uneasy. So she did what since his
illness she had done a score of times without his knowledge--she stole
from her lair to watch him.
She found him wrapped in her present, which gave her great pleasure; and
sleeping like an infant, which gave her joy. She eyed him eloquently for
a long time; and then very timidly put out her hand, and, in her quality
of nurse, laid it lighter than down upon his brow.
The brow was cool, and a very slight moisture on it showed the fever was
going or gone.
She folded her arms and stood looking at him; and she thought of all they
two had done and suffered together. Her eyes absorbed him, devoured him.
The time flew by unheeded. It was so sweet to be able to set her face
from its restraint, and let all its sunshine beam on him; and, even when
she retired at last, those light hazel eyes, that could flash fire at
times, but were all dove-like now, hung and lingered on him as if they
could never look at him enough.
Half an hour before daybreak she was awakened by the dog howling
piteously. She felt a little uneasy at that; not much. However, she got
up, and issued from her cavern, just as the sun showed his red eye above
the horizon. She went toward the boat, as a matter of course. She found
Ponto tied to the helm. The boat was empty, and Hazel nowhere to be seen.
She uttered a scream of dismay.
The dog howled and whined louder than ever.