"Why, it's war," she said. "I've read enough about war to know that
there are two safe rules to follow. First, declare war yourself while
the other fellow's thinking about it; and then strike him before he's
even heard that you have declared it. That sounds mixed, but it's easy
enough. We'll declare war on the dangerous beasts while I'm still in the
months of hop, skip, and jump."
"A certain woman," said I, "wouldn't let the beasts go down in the old
_Boldero_, as would have been beneficial for all parties."
"This is different," she said. "This island's got to be a safe place for
a little child to play in or Ivy Bower's got to be told the reason why."
"You're dead right, Ivy dear," I says, "and always was. But how? I'm
cursed if I know how to kill a tiger without a rifle.... Let's get fire
first and put the citadel in a state of siege. Then we'll try our hand
at traps, snares, and pitfalls. I'm strong, but I'm cursed if I want to
fall on a tiger with nothing in my hands but a knife or an axe."
"All I care about," said Ivy, "is to get everything settled, so that
when the time comes we can be comfortable and plenty domestic."
She sat in the mouth of the cave and looked over the smooth cove to the
rolling ocean beyond; and she had the expression of a little girl
playing at being married with a little boy friend in the playhouse that
her father had just given her for her birthday.
I got a piece of springy wood to make a bow with, and sat by her shaping
it with my knife. That night we got fire. Ivy caught some fish in the
cove and we cooked them; and--thanks, O Lord!--how good they were! We
sat up very late comparing impressions, each saying how each felt when
the smoke began to show sparks and when the tinder pieces finally
caught, and how each had felt when the broiled smell of the fish had
begun to go abroad in the land. We told each other of all the good
things we had eaten in our day, but how this surpassed them all. And
later we told each other all our favorite names--boy names in case it
should be a boy and girl names in case it shouldn't.
Then, suddenly, something being hunted by something tore by in the
dark--not very far off. The sweat came off me in buckets, and I heaped
wood on the fire and flung burning brands into the night, this way and
that, as far as I could fling them. Ivy said I was like Jupiter trying
to hurl thunder-bolts, after the invention of Christianity, and not
rightly understanding why they wouldn't explode any more.