You'd think anxiety about Ivy'd have been the hardest thing to bear in
the life we were living; and so it would have been if she'd showed any
anxiety about herself. Not she. You might have thought she was looking
forward to a Christmas-box from home. If she was ever scared it was
when I wasn't looking. No--it was the beasts that made us anxious.
At first we'd go for long walks and make explorations up and down the
island. The beasts hid from us according to the wild nature that's in
them. You could only tell from fresh tracks in damp places that they
hadn't utterly disappeared. Now and then we saw deer and antelopes far
off; and at night, of course, there was always something doing in the
way of a chorus. Beasts that gave our end of the island the go-by
daytimes paid us visits nights and sat under the windows, you may say,
and sang their songs.
It seemed natural after a time to be cooped up in a big green prison
with a lot of loose wild things that could bite and tear you to pieces
if they thought of it. We were hard to scare. What scared me first was
this: When we got to the island it was alive with goats. Well, these
just casually disappeared. Then, one morning, bright and early, I came
on the big python in the act of swallowing a baby antelope. It gave me a
horrid start and set me thinking. How long could the island support a
menagerie? What would the meat-eaters do when they'd killed off all the
easy meat--finished up the deer and antelopes and all? Would they fight
it out among themselves--big tiger eat little tiger--until only the
fittest one survived? And what would that fittest one do if he got good
and hungry and began to think that I'd make a square meal for him--or
Ivy?
I reached two conclusions--and the cave about the same time. First, I
wouldn't tell Ivy I was scared. Second, I'd make fire by friction or
otherwise--or bust. Once I got fire, I'd never let it go out. I set to
work with the firesticks right off, and Ivy came and stood by and looked
on.
"Never saw you put so much elbow-grease into anything," she said.
"What's the matter with you, anyway?"
"It's a game," I grunted, "and these two fellows will have me beat if I
don't look lively."
"Right Bower," she says then, slow and deliberate, "I can see you're
upside down about something. Tell Ivy."
"Look," says I--"smoke! I never got it so quick before." I spun the
pointed stick between the palms of my hands harder than ever and gloated
over the wisp of smoke that came from where it was boring into the flat
stick.
"Make a bow," says Ivy. "Loop the bowstring round the hand-piece and
you'll get more friction with less work."
"By gorry!" says I; "you're right. I remember a picture in a
geography--'Native Drilling a Conch Shell.' Fool that I am to forget!"
"Guess you and I learned out of the same geography," said Ivy.
"Only I didn't learn," said I. "I'm off to cut something tough to make
the bow."
"Don't go far," she says.
"Why not?" said I--the sporty way a man does when he pretends that he's
going to take a night off with the boys and play poker.
"Because," she says smiling, "I'm afraid the beasts will get me while
you're gone."
"Rats!" says I.
"Tigers!" says she. "Oh, Right, you unplumbable old idiot! Do you think
you can come into this cave and hide anything from me under that
transparent face of yours? The minute you came in and hemmed and hawed,
and said as you had nothing to do you guessed you'd have a go with the
firesticks--I knew. What scared you?"