IV

I've often noticed that when things happen it's in bunches. The tenth

day south of the line we had a look at almost all the sea-events that

are made into woodcuts for the high-school geographies. For days we'd

seen nothing except sapphire-blue sea, big swells rolling under a satin

finish without breaking through, and a baby-blue sky. On the morning of

the tenth the sea was streaked with broad, oily bands, like State roads,

and near and far were whales travelling south at about ten knots an

hour, as if they had a long way to go.

We saw heaps of porpoises and heaps of flying-fish; some birds; unhewn

timber--a nasty lot of it--and big floats of sea-weed. We saw a whale

being pounded to death by a killer; and in the afternoon as perfect an

example of a brand-new coral island as was ever seen. It looked like a

ring of white snow floating on the water, and inside the ring was a

careened two-master--just the ribs and stumps left. There was a

water-spout miles off to port, and there was a kind of electric jump and

thrill to the baked air that made these things seem important, like

omens in ancient times. Besides, the beasts, from Bahut the elephant to

little Assam the mongoose, put in the whole day at practising the noises

of complaint and uneasiness. Then, directly it was dark, we slipped into

a "white sea." That's a rare sight and it has never been very well

explained. The water looks as though it had been mixed with a quantity

of milk, but when you dip it up it's just water.

About midnight we ran out of this and Ivy and I turned in. The sky was

clear as a bell and even the beasts were quiet. I hadn't been asleep

ten minutes and Ivy not at all, when all at once hell broke loose. There

was a bump that nearly drove my head through a bulkhead; though only

half awake I could feel to the cold marrow of my bones that the old

_Boldero_ was down by the head. The beasts knew it and the Chinks. Never

since Babel was there such pandemonium on earth or sea. By a struck

match I saw Ivy running out of the cabin and slipping on her

bath-wrapper as she went. I called to her, but she didn't answer. I

didn't want to think of anything but Ivy, but I had to let her go and

think of the ship.

There wasn't much use in thinking. The old _Boldero_ was settling by the

head and the pumps couldn't hold up the inflood. In fifteen minutes I

knew that it was all up with us--or all down, rather--and I ordered the

boats over and began to run about like a maniac, looking for Ivy and

calling to her. And why do you suppose I couldn't find her? She was

hiding--hiding from me!

She'd heard of captains of sinking ships sending off their wives and

children and sweethearts and staying behind to drown out of a mistaken

notion of duty. She'd got it into her head that I was that kind of

captain and she'd hid so that she couldn't be sent away; but it was all

my fault really. If I'd hurried her on deck the minute I did find her

we'd have been in time to leave with the boats. But I stopped for

explanations and to give her a bit of a lecture; so when we got on deck

there were the boats swarming with Chinks slipping off to windward--and

there at our feet was Yir Massir, lying in his own blood and brains, a

wicked, long knife in his hand and the thread outpiece of a Chink's

pigtail between his teeth.

I like to think that he'd tried to make them wait for us, but I don't

know. Anyhow, there we were, alone on a sinking deck and all through

with earthly affairs as I reckoned it. But Ivy reckoned differently.

"Why are they rowing in that direction?" she says. "They won't get

anywhere."

"Why not?" says I.

She jerked her thumb to leeward.

"Don't you feel that it's over there?--the land?" she says. "Just over

there."

"Why, no, bless you!" says I. "I don't have any feeling about it.... Now

then, we've got to hustle around and find something that will float us.

We want to get out of this before the old _Boldero_ goes and sucks us

down after."

"There's the life-raft," says she; "they left that."

"Yes," says I; "if we can get it overboard. It weighs a ton. You make up

a bundle of food on the jump, Ivy, and I'll try to rig a tackle."

When the raft was floating quietly alongside I felt better. It looked

then as if we were to have a little more run for our money.

We worked like a couple of furies loading on food and water, Ivy

lowering and I lashing fast.

"There," says I at last; "she won't take any more. Come along. I can

help you down better from here."

"We've got to let the beasts loose," says she.

"Why?" says I.

"Oh, just to give 'em a chance," she says.

So I climbs back to where she was standing.

"It's rot!" I says. "But if you say so----"

"There's loads of time," says she--"we're not settling so fast. Besides,

even if I'm wrong about the land, they'll know. They'll show us which

way to go. Big Bahut, he knows."

"It don't matter," I says. "We can't work the raft any way but to

leeward--not one man can't."

"If the beasts go the other way," says she, "one man must try and one

woman."

"Oh, we'll try," says I, "right enough. We'll try."

The first beast we loosed was the python. Ivy did the loosing and I

stood by with a big rifle to guard against trouble; but, bless you,

there was no need. One and all, the beasts knew the old _Boldero_ was

doomed, and one and all they cried and begged and made eyes and signs to

be turned loose. As for knowing where the nearest land was--well, if

you'd seen the python, when he came to the surface, make a couple of

loopy turns to get his bearings and his wriggles in order, and then hike

off to leeward in a bee-line--you'd have believed that he--well, that he

knew what he was talking about.

And the beasts, one and all, big and little, the minute they were

loosed, wanted to get overboard--even the cats; and off they went to

leeward in the first flush of dawn, horned heads, cat heads, pig

heads--the darnedest game of follow-my-leader that ever the skies looked

down on. And the birds, white and colored, streaked out over the beasts.

There was a kind of wonder to it all that eased the pinch of fear. Ivy

clapped her hands and jumped up and down like a child when it sees the

grand entry in Buffalo Bill's show for the first time--or the last, for

that matter.

There was some talk of taking a tow-line from around Bahut's neck to the

raft; but the morning breeze was freshening and with a sail rigged the

raft would swim pretty fast herself. Anyway, we couldn't fix it to get

big Bahut overboard. The best we could do was to turn him loose, open

all the hatches, and trust to his finding a way out when the _Boldero_

settled.

He did, bless him! We weren't two hundred yards clear when the _Boldero_

gave a kind of shudder and went down by the bows, Bahut yelling bloody

murder. Then, just when we'd given him up for lost, he shot up from the

depths, half-way out of water. After blowing his nose and getting his

bearings he came after the raft like a good old tugboat.

We stood up, Ivy and I did, and cheered him as he caught up with us and

foamed by.

The worst kind of remembering is remembering what you've forgotten. I

got redder and redder. It didn't seem as if I could tell Ivy; but I did.

First I says, hopeful:

"Have you forgotten anything?"

She shakes her head.

"I have," says I. "I've left my rifle, but I've got plenty of

cartridges. I've got a box of candles, but I've forgotten to bring

matches. A nice, thoughtful husband you've got!"

V

The beasts knew.

There was land just around the first turn of the world--land that had

what might be hills when you got to 'em and that was pale gray against

the sun, with all the upper-works gilded; but it wasn't big land. You

could see the north and south limits; and the trees on the hills could

probably see the ocean to the east.

They were funny trees, those; and others just like them had come down

to the cove to meet us when we landed. They were a kind of pine and the

branches grew in layers, with long spaces between. Since then I've seen

trees just like them, but very little, in florists' windows; only the

florists' trees have broad scarlet sashes round their waists, by way of

decoration, maybe, or out of deference to Anthony Comstock.

The cove had been worked out by a brook that came loafing down a turfy

valley, with trees single and in spinneys, for all the world like an

English park; and at the upper end of the valley, cutting the island in

half lengthwise, as we learned later, the little wooded hills rolled

north and south, and low spurs ran out from them, so as to make the

valley a valley instead of a plain.

There were flocks of goats in the valley, which was what made the grass

so turfy, I suppose; and our own deer and antelopes were browsing near

them, friendly as you please. Near at hand big Bahut, who had been the

last but us to land, was quietly munching the top of a broad-leafed tree

that he'd pulled down; but the cats and riffraff had melted into the

landscape. So had the birds, except a pair of jungle-fowl, who'd found

seed near the cove and were picking it up as fast as they could and

putting it away.

"Well," says I, "it's an island, sure, Ivy. The first thing to do is to

find out who lives on it, owns it, and dispenses its hospitality, and

make up to them."

But she shook her head and said seriously:

"I've a feeling, Right," she says--"a kind of hunch--that there's nobody

on it but us."

I laughed at her then, but half a day's tramping proved that she was

right. I tell you women have ways of knowing things that we men haven't.

The fact is, civilization slides off 'em like water off a duck; and at

heart and by instinct they are people of the cave-dwelling period--on

cut-and-dried terms with ghosts and spirits, all the unseen sources of

knowledge that man has grown away from.

I had sure proofs of this in the way Ivy took to the cave we found in a

bunch of volcano rock that lifted sheer out of the cove and had bright

flowers smiling out of all its pockets. No society lady ever entered her

brand-new marble house at Newport with half the happiness.

Ivy was crazy about the cave and never tired of pointing out its

advantages. She went to house-keeping without any of the utensils, as

keen and eager as she'd gone to it on the poor old _Boldero_, where at

least there were pots and pans and pepper.

We had grub to last a few weeks, a pair of blankets, the clothes we

stood in, and an axe. I had, besides, a heavy clasp-knife, a watch, and

seven sovereigns. The first thing Ivy insisted on was a change of

clothes.

"These we stand in," says she, "are the only presentable things we've

got, and Heaven only knows how long they've got to last us for best."

"We could throw modesty to the winds," I suggested.

"Of course you can do as you please," she said. "I don't care one way or

the other about the modesty; but I've got a skin that looks on the sun

with distinct aversion, and I don't propose to go through a course of

yellow blisters--and then turn black."

"I've seen islanders weave cloth out of palm fibre--most any kind," I

said. "It's clumsy and airy; but if you think it would do----"

"It sounds scratchy."

"It is, but it's good for the circulation."

Well, we made a kind of cloth and cut it into shapes, and knotted the

shapes together with more fibre; then we folded up our best and only

Sunday-go-to-meeting suits and put the fibre things on; and then we went

down to the cove to look at ourselves in the water. And Ivy laughed.

"We're not clothed," she said; "we're thatched; and yet--and yet--it's

accident, of course, but this skirt has got a certain hang that----"

"Whatever that skirt's got," I said, "these pants haven't; but if you're

happy I am."

Well, there's worse situations than desert-islanding it with the one

woman in the world. I even know one man who claims he was cast away with

a perfect stranger that he hated the sight of at first--a terribly

small-minded, conventional woman--and still he had the time of his life.

They got to like each other over a mutual taste for cribbage, which they

played for sea-shells, yellow with a pink edge, until the woman went

broke and got heavily in debt to the man. He was nice about it and let

her off. He says the affair must have ended in matrimony, only she took

a month to think it over; during that month they were picked up and

carried to Honolulu; then they quarrelled and never saw each other

again.

"Ivy," said I one day, "we'll be picked up by a passing steamer some

day, of course, but meanwhile I'd rather be here with you than any place

I can name."

"It's Eden," she said, "and I'd like to live like this always. But----"

"But what?"

"But people grow old," she said, "and one dies before another. That's

what's wrong with Eden."