THE TURN OF THE TIDE
The change, when it came, came swiftly. It was as though the
All-Powerful bade the waters cease their snarling and stilled the fury
of the reef. During nearly an hour the sea lapped the very thighs of the
four castaways, but the roar of battle between rocks and current had
died down and it was possible to hear the spoken word.
Sturgess was the first to break the spell cast on the whole party by the
seeming imminence of death.
"If ever I set foot in New York again I'll be good and go to church
Sundays," he said. "This is Sunday, February 6, an' I guess I've been as
near Kingdom Come to-day as I'm likely to get on a round trip ticket."
For a little while no one passed any comment. Sunday! The mere name of
the day had a bizarre sound. What had God-given Sunday and its peaceful
associations to do with this grim and savage wilderness?
Suddenly Nina Forbes began to recite the Lord's Prayer. One by
one the others joined in. The concluding petition had a peculiar
appropriateness. If ever four Christian people might appeal to be
delivered from evil, surely these four were in great need of heavenly
succor.
"That's fine!" said Sturgess, almost cheerfully, when a hearty "Amen"
had relieved their surcharged feelings. "Me for the pine pew and the
right sort of preacher when next I stroll out of West Fifty-seventh
Street into Broadway of a Sabbath morning. Anyhow, to-day being Sunday,
and the hour rather early, which way do we head for the nearest church
when the tide falls, commodore?"
Maseden had already weighed that very question, but the utter collapse
of the voyage on which he had founded such high hopes had chastened his
pride.
"I think we had better put it to the vote," he said. "I've led you into
such a death-trap already that I don't feel equal to a decision."
He had been watching a big rock on the opposite shore. A little while
ago it was awash; now it was submerged, yet the water was appreciably
lower where they were standing.
The seeming contradiction was puzzling. He had yet to learn that the
laws governing water in motion are extraordinarily complex--take to
witness the varying levels of the whirlpool in the Niagara River and the
almost phenomenal height of the central stream in the Niagara rapids.
"Guess we're satisfied with your control so far," said Sturgess. "What
are you making a kick about? You prophesied just what would occur, and
that's more than the average wizard can do."
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you tell us we might strike a score of reefs between Providence
Beach and Smyth's Channel, and that we should be lucky if we didn't have
to build 'steen rafts?"
Maseden smiled. The rock he had marked as an index was reappearing, and
the water had sunk another inch below his knees. The tide had
unquestionably turned; the water banked up on the opposite shore was
also yielding to the new force.
"I never anticipated another complete shipwreck," he said. "We have lost
everything, ropes, skins, food--our chief supporter, the broken
foremast--even our flag."
"But we still have the rifle and cartridges, and we're plus a
fortnight's experience. If we don't start life again better fixed than
when we climbed to the ledge in the dark from the forecastle of the
_Southern Cross_, call me a Dutchman."
"I agree with C. K.," Nina chimed in. "Even here there must be some sort
of a passage at low water. Which way shall we go--back or forward?"
"We gain nothing by going back," said Maseden slowly. "For one thing, we
are on the wrong side of the channel. For another, I have been taking
stock of the peculiar vagaries of the tide during the past fifteen
minutes, and I imagine that there is a slight difference in the water
level between this point and that which we left this morning. Still
water attains a dead level, of course, but strong tides have rules of
their own.
"Now, supposing the tide from the Pacific runs into Providence Beach a
few minutes earlier than it reaches Nelson Straits, that would account
for the terrific rush in which we were caught. For the same cause, the
falling tide should be far less strenuous here, but stronger there, and
I do really believe that opposite our camp the ebb tide always developed
a swifter current than the flood."
"I'm sure of it," agreed Sturgess. "They were both pretty hefty, but
this morning's flood didn't begin to compare with last night's ebb. You
ought to know. You went through it alone on board the raft."
"Then the answer is, 'Go forward,'" said Madge.
"I think so. Let us be guided by events. We have the best part of the
day before us. Surely we can find some safer lodgment than this before
night falls."
The others knew that Maseden's voice had lost its confident ring, but
the fact that they had so narrowly dodged death barred all other
considerations.
In his heart of hearts he was deadly afraid that they might indeed be
compelled to return to Hanover Island. The sheer barrenness of the islet
on which they were now stranded was its vital defect. Probably they
would still find shell-fish, still knock an occasional seal on the head,
but wood they must have, both for fire and raft building, and it seemed
to him that there were no trees nearer than the slopes facing Providence
Beach.
However, having come so far, they might at least have a look at the
conditions on the south side, where lay yet another island; and there
was also the unalterable fact that if they must escape by using the
tides, their first day's experiences, though resulting in disaster, had
brought them many miles in the right direction.
Perhaps they had met and conquered their greatest danger. They had paid
a dear price for victory, but that was nothing new in war.
Of course there was a long and wearisome wait before they could do other
than sit on the slowly emerging rocks. But it was something gained when
they were free to climb out into the open and see the sky over their
heads. The silent, nerve-racking menace of the canopied rock was quite
as unbearable as the loud-mouthed threats of sea and reef.
Madge, slightly less self-contained than her sister, promptly voiced her
relief.
"If I live to be older than I want to be I shall never forget one awful
crack in the roof just above us," she said. "I couldn't keep my eyes off
it. It seemed to be opening and shutting all the time with a horrible
slowness."
"How old do you want to be?" demanded Sturgess, readily seizing the
chance to divert her thoughts from a nightmare memory.
"Forty-five," she answered without any hesitation.
"Gee! That leaves me less than eighteen years to live!"
"I wasn't thinking of you, C. K."
"But your limit rouses one's curiosity. Why forty-five, any more than
fifty or sixty? Granted good health, heaps of people enjoy life at
sixty."
"At forty-five a woman begins to fade and men grow horrid," she
announced calmly, as though stating an incontrovertible thesis.
"Please don't talk rubbish, either of you," interrupted Nina sharply.
"Alec, can't we dodge along from rock to rock? It seems to be ever so
much more open half a mile ahead."
"Let's try," said Maseden.
He wondered vaguely why Nina broke in on her sister's quaint theorizing.
Any nonsense which took their minds off the troubles of the hour was a
good thing in itself.
They scrambled and slithered through the passage, which resembled the
moraine of a glacier, save that the rocks were on the same plane, and
the central stream was clear and greenish instead of being nearly milk
white. Once they were held up fully fifteen minutes because the channel
ran close to an overhanging rock which really looked as though it might
be brought down by the disturbance of a pebble.
Then Maseden was moved to make investigations, and discovered that the
main waterway was extraordinarily deep. In other words, the sea had
preferred to scoop out a ditch rather than flow through the ample space
bordering Hanover Island. Even at low tide there was deep water here.
"We must go on, one at a time," he said, and led the way.
He found that Nina Forbes was close behind.
"Remain where you are!" he said gruffly. "I'll tell you when to follow
and indicate the best track."
She frowned, and her eyes sparkled, but she obeyed. Sturgess, too,
growled a protest.
"He ought to give me that kind of try-out," he said. "If there's
trouble, and I go under, it won't matter so much. But you girls can't
spare Alec. He's worth twenty of me when it comes to a show-down."
However, they all crossed the danger point safely, and each in turn
noticed that which Maseden alone had been able to see at first--that a
huge buttress had fallen quite recently, probably during the preceding
tide, so the whole mass might crumble into ruin at any moment. As was
their way, once a danger had passed they did not discuss it again.
Sturgess, of course, had something to say, though it only bore
inferentially on this latest risk.
"I always had a notion that the New York Fire Department was a pretty
nervy proposition," he informed all and sundry during a halt on the only
strip of open beach yet encountered in their new exploration, "but I
guess I can show the chief a few fresh stunts first time I blow into
headquarters on East Sixty-seventh Street."
Sturgess's airy references to New York were excellent tonics. He refused
to regard that great city and its ordered life as dreamlike figments of
the imagination. To him the flaring lights of Broadway ever glimmered
above the horizon. Had he sighted the Statue of Liberty around the next
bend _that_ would mean reality; _this_, the dreary expanse of dead
hills, water and black rock, would have been the dream.
Maseden, recovering his poise, had resumed his everyday air of
well-grounded optimism. At any rate, he argued, the four of them were
living and uninjured. They still owned those thrice-precious cartridges,
the rifle and the poncho. They had many hours of daylight before them,
and would surely find drinkable water and food before dark.
Happily the weather was fine, though clouds banking up in the west told
of a possible gale, which might blow itself out in a few hours, or last
as many days, or weeks. In that climate there was no knowing. The
almanac declared that it was high summer, yet it would be no uncommon
event if a snowstorm came from the southwest and mantled all the land a
foot deep.
As for their clothes being wet, these young people thought little of
such a trifle. Their skins were becoming, in the expressive Indian
phrase, "all face."
So they trudged on, heading for the mouth of the defile. In the far
distance they discerned the broken line of another mountainous island,
the lower slopes black with forests.
"That's a good sign, folk," said Maseden, smiling cheerfully once more.
"We're making for a timber belt. When you come to think of it, trees
simply couldn't grow on these rocks, and the watershed seems to fall
away on both sides of the gorge, which must have been cut by an
earthquake."
His eyes had been searching constantly for signs of the raft's wreckage,
but never so much as a splintered log could he see. Nina, not so
preoccupied, was gazing farther afield.
Suddenly she stopped, and something in her manner arrested the others.
"I don't think I'm mistaken," she said, "but are not those two points
the flanks of these islands?"
"There can be little doubt of that," agreed Maseden, following her
glance towards the gap some three or four miles in front. It was
difficult to estimate distance accurately in that region of vast
solitudes.
"Then, if that is so," she went on in a puzzled tone, "where does the
remainder of the land go to? The cliffs end not so very far away. Why
don't we see other bits sticking out?"
The underlying sense of the question was clearer than its form. For some
undetermined cause the passage between the islands evidently widened
considerably before it closed in at the ultimate southern exit.
Hopefulness is often a close blend of curiosity and expectation. They
pressed on more rapidly, eager as children to see what lay around the
corner.
They were soon enlightened, and most agreeably so. They entered a
spacious amphitheatre--in its way, almost a place of beauty. Not only
were the hillsides clothed with pines and other trees, but, rarest sight
of all along that stark coast, strips of white sand bordered the
foreshore.
The tidal water, now near the lowest ebb, was placid as a lake, and on
its surface disported flocks of many varieties of wild fowl. Moreover,
wreckage began to line the beach at high-water mark. They found the
planks and spars of many ships, some quite fresh, and evidently the
remains of the _Southern Cross_; others weather-beaten, even crumbling
with age.
Remains of the raft were discovered, and Nina shrieked with joy at sight
of the ship's flag, hardly damaged, lying on its halliard alongside the
broken topmast.
Madge claimed the most remarkable bit of flotsam--nothing less than the
brandy bottle, unbroken, but nearly full of salt water, half buried in
sand.
It was their only drinking utensil, and therefore prized very highly.
How it had passed through the turmoil of the rapids was one of those
mysteries which voyaging bottles alone can solve; and they, if sometimes
eloquent of humanity's adventures, are invariably silent as to their
own.
The skins of the sea-lion and seals had vanished. Indeed, a very close
search of a three-mile semi-circular beach, conducted for reasons which
shall presently appear, yielded no trace of them.
There was a dramatic fitness in thus reaching a land of plenty after
enduring the horrors of the pass.
"It's like a fairy tale," cried Nina joyously. "This is the enchanted
realm, guarded by dragons which must be slain ere the prince can enter."
"Gosh!" grinned Sturgess, "she's calling you a prince now, Alec. Say,
Madge, can't you invent a name for me?"
"Yes, you're the Ugly Duckling which grew into a Swan."
"Huh! I'll think that over. Far be it from me, fair maid, to dispute
your views as to my future plumage. Now, Alec, your turn. It's up to you
to christen Nina."
"Cinderella, maid of all work," said Maseden promptly. "So, let's get
busy, the lot of us. Girls, you'll probably find an oyster-bed on that
reef over there. Sturgess and I will hunt for water, and bring you a
bottleful. Then we must set to work and build a shack above high-water
mark before night. We're going to stop here and launch a more navigable
craft next time."
"Your highness has forgotten one thing," said Nina, with sudden gravity.
"What is that?"
"It is still Sunday."
With one accord they dropped to their knees and thanked Providence for
the mercy which had been shown them. Such prayers are the spontaneous
tribute of the overflowing heart. They are not to be uttered aloud or
recorded in the written word.
The men had no difficulty in locating a stream, owing to the "creek," as
Madge had phrased it, which marked the approach of each torrent to the
sea. Here, too, were oysters in abundance. Whether or not the bivalves
liked a certain admixture of fresh water and brine, their enthusiastic
admirers did not know; but certainly the best-stocked beds were
invariably situated near the mouth of a mountain stream.
With a plentiful supply of shaped planks, cordage, even rusty nails,
they soon knocked together a low hut, not more than breast high, and
closed at one end. The ship's flag curtained off the inner section,
which was allotted to the two girls, while the men could sleep, on
guard, as it were, in the outer part.
As night came on they started a fire and cooked two birds of the penguin
type, which allowed themselves to be chased and captured. The flesh was
tough and none too well flavored, but the feasters were not hard to
please. When the repast was ended, and they sat on piles of soft sand
looking out over the darkening expanse of waters, for the tide was high
again, Maseden electrified Sturgess by saying:
"Do you smoke, C. K.?"
"Does a duck swim?" was the prompt reply.
Maseden produced from his coat pocket a pipe and tin of tobacco.
The other eyed them with downright amazement.
"Well, can you beat it?" he cried. "What else have you got in your
pocket, old scout? A bottle of rye whisky and a box of chocolates for
the girls, or what?"
"I've reached the end of my resources now," laughed Maseden. "I resolved
to keep this small stock of tobacco till the time came when we might
regard half our troubles as ended. I think we've reached that stage
to-night. After this morning's escape I shall never again lose hope
until the light goes out forever."
"Oh, please, don't put it that way," said Nina.
"I mean it as an optimist," he exclaimed. "If I have to swim in the open
sea, or am buried under a landslide, I shall still believe, while my
senses last, that Providence will see me through. Do you know why? You
might supply many good reasons, but not _the_ reason. Ten minutes after
we climbed under that overhanging rock, it fell. I happened to look
back, and saw it collapse. None of us heard the crash, because we were
close to a rather noisy rapid at the moment. But I actually saw the
thing happen."
"Why didn't you tell us at the time?" inquired Madge.
"I thought our nervous systems, collectively, had borne enough strain
just then.... Here you are, C. K. I give you first turn with the pipe."
"Not on your life!" vowed Sturgess, flaming into volcanic energy. "If I
never smoke again, I'll not touch that pipe until you've gone right
through a packed bowl-full."
Maseden knew that his friend meant what he said, so filled and lighted
the pipe immediately.
"It's a moot point," he commented philosophically, "whether you don't
enjoy smoking more in anticipation than I in actuality. I haven't smoked
now during sixteen days, and I believe I could give it up for sixteen
years if need be."
"Good gracious!" tittered Madge. "Poor C. K. will have only two years of
his beloved New York."
It was a subtle thrust. Sturgess himself was the first to see its point.
"Gosh!" he said. "S'pose we four had to live here straight on for
sixteen years!"
Nina Forbes seemed to have a keener sense of the dangerous trend of
such careless talk than her sister.
"I do wish you two wouldn't babble," she broke in sharply. "Alec is
simply chock full of information. I can see it in his calculating eye.
For instance--"
Maseden took the cue readily.
"For instance," he said. "This inland lagoon explains the rush of the
tide this morning. The greater part of the water which runs through the
pass never goes back. It floods this immense area, is held up by the
tide from the south, but goes out that way, because, by some irregular
tidal action, the ebb begins in that direction. Therefore, an ideal
backwash is set up, which accounts for all the wreckage strewed on the
beach. Parts of ships which were lost a century ago will be stored here.
The place is a maritime museum."
"We may find a whole ship," exclaimed Madge.
"What? After coming through the hell-gate we have left behind?"
"The bottle came through," she persisted.
"Though it's a black bottle it must have been white with fear many a
score of times. Have you noticed the way in which the logs of our own
raft were battered and bruised?... No, the way in was vile, and, I had
better warn you now, the way out may be worse."
"Oh, why?" cried both girls.
"Because of the absence of Indians. Consider what an ideal site
this would be for a colony of savages. Plenty of fish, birds and
oysters--sand--even a few level strips which might be cultivated--if
the South American Indian ever does till the land. The logic of the
situation is clear. Our refuge is inaccessible. That is just the
difference between romance and reality. In the fairy tale, once you slay
the dragons guarding the enchanted palace the remainder is a compound of
nectar and kisses. In real life, having stormed the fortress, you find
yourself besieged."
None disputed his conclusions. They were learning to think like him,
and each had been struck by the virgin solitude of this land-locked
sea-lake, which must compare favorably with the most fertile and
exceedingly scarce localities of the kind in an area of many scores
of thousands of square miles.
"Anyhow, while you finish your pipe, it's up to me to fix the fire,"
said Sturgess blithely, leaping to his feet, and beginning to arrange a
number of big flat stones around and above a pile of glowing charcoal
in such wise that rain could not extinguish it, and a few twigs placed
among the embers next morning would quickly burst into a blaze.
They had taught themselves these minor aids to comfort. Madge had
constructed a very creditable field oven, and Nina, with a bit of
sharpened wire and a supply of dried sinews, could sew a skin as a
cobbler stitches the sole on to a boot. Physically all four were in
splendid condition, so it was a sheer impossibility that they should
remain downcast in spirit. Maseden knew that quite well when he recited
the trials they must yet face and conquer. He addressed them as
co-workers, not as pampered young people who must be humored into
putting forth the necessary efforts if they would win through finally.
They slept that night as soundly as though the morning's tribulation
was something they had read in a book. Rain pounded on their shelter,
but it was roofed with pine branches above the planks, and not a drop
entered. They awoke into a world of blue sky and sunshine, and, after
breakfasting on oysters, cold fowl, and good water, spent an idle hour
in watching the tidal race from the north.
Then, after tending the fire, they set off on a tour of the shore,
meaning to note every scrap of wreckage which might be of value.
Moreover, Maseden was specially anxious to have a peep at the southern
exit.
And thus they made the great discovery.