The two ghastly creatures sat facing each other in their wordless
misery as the wind died away and the tattered remnants of the sail hung
motionless after a last faint flutter. The Thing that sat aft--for
surely so grotesquely horrible a vision could not be a Man--pointed
with hands like the talons of a bird of prey to the purple outline of
the island in the west, and his black, blood-baked lips moved, opened,
and essayed to speak. The other being that, with bare and skinny arms
clasped around its bony knees, sat crouched in the bottom of the boat,
leaned forward to listen.
"Ducie Island, Enderby," said the first in a hoarse, rattling whisper;
"no one on it; but water is there ... and plenty of birds and turtle,
and a few coconuts."
At the word "water" the listener gave a curious gibbering chuckle,
unclasped his hands from his knees, and crept further towards the
speaker.
"And the current is setting us down to it, wind or no wind. I believe
we'll see this pleasure-trip through, after all"--and the black lips
parted in a hideous grimace.
The man whom he called Enderby sank his head again upon his knees, and
his dulled and bloodshot eyes rested on something that lay at the
captain's feet--the figure of a woman enveloped from her shoulders down
in a ragged native mat. For some hours past she had lain thus, with the
grey shadows of coming dissolution hovering about her pallid face, and
only the faintest movement of lips and eyelids to show that she still
lived.
* * * * *
The black-whiskered man who steered looked down for a second upon the
face beneath him with the unconcern for others born of the agony of
thirst and despair, and again his gaunt face turned to the land. Yet
she was his wife, and not six weeks back he had experienced a cold sort
of satisfaction in the possession of so much beauty.
He remembered that day now. Enderby, the passenger from Sydney, and he
were walking the poop; his wife was asleep in a deck-chair on the other
side. An open book lay in her lap. As the two men passed and re-passed
her, the one noted that the other would glance in undisguised and
honest admiration at the figure in the chair. And Enderby, who was as
open as the day, had said to him, Langton, that the sleeping Mrs
Langton made as beautiful a picture as he had ever seen.
* * * * *
The sail stirred, filled out, and then drooped again, and the two
spectres, with the sleeping woman between, still sat with their hungry
eyes gazing over toward the land. As the sun sank, the outlines of the
verdure-clad summits and beetling cliffs stood forth clearly for a
short minute or two, as if to mock them with hope, and then became
enshrouded in the tenebrous night.
* * * * *
Another hour, and a faint sigh came from the ragged mat. Enderby, for
ever on the watch, had first seen a white hand silhouetted against the
blackness of the covering, and knew that she was still alive. And as he
was about to call Langton, who lay in the stern-sheets muttering in
hideous dreams, he heard the woman's voice calling HIM. With panting
breath and trembling limbs he crawled over beside her and gently
touched her hand.
"Thank God, you are alive, Mrs Langton. Shall I wake Captain Langton?
We must be nearing the land."
"No, don't. Let him sleep. But I called you, Mr Enderby, to lift me up.
I want to see where the rain is coming from."
Enderby groaned in anguish of spirit. "Rain? God has forgotten us, I----,"
and then he stopped in shame at betraying his weakness before a
woman.
The soft, tender tones again--"Ah, do help me up, please, I can FEEL
the rain is near." Then the man, with hot tears of mingled weakness and
pity coursing down his cheeks, raised her up.
"Why, there it is, Mr Enderby--and the land as well! And it's a heavy
squall, too," and she pointed to a moving, inky mass that half
concealed the black shadow of the island. "Quick, take my mat; one end
of it is tight and will hold water."
"Langton, La-a-ngton! Here's a rain squall coming!" and Enderby pressed
the woman's hand to his lips and kissed it again and again. Then with
eager hands he took the mat from her, and staggering forward to the
bows stretched the sound end across and bellied it down. And then the
moving mass that was once black, and was now white, swept down upon
them, and brought them life and joy.
Langton, with an empty beef-tin in his hand, stumbled over his wife's
figure, plunged the vessel into the water and drank again and again.
"Curse you, you brute!" shouted Enderby through the wild noise of the
hissing rain, "where is your wife? Are you going to let her lie there
without a drink?"
Langton answered not, but drank once more. Then Enderby, with an oath,
tore the tin from his hand, filled it and took it to her, holding her
up while she drank. And as her eyes looked gratefully into his while he
placed her tenderly back in the stern-sheets, the madness of a moment
overpowered him, and he kissed her on the lips.
Concerned only with the nectar in the mat, Langton took no regard of
Enderby as he opened the little locker, pulled out a coarse dungaree
jumper, and wrapped it round the thinly-clad and drenched figure of the
woman.
She was weeping now, partly from the joy of knowing that she was not to
die of the agonies of thirst in an open boat in mid-Pacific, and partly
because the water had given her strength to remember that Langton had
cursed her when he had stumbled over her to get at the water in the
mat.
* * * * *
She had married him because of his handsome face and dashing manner for
one reason, and because her pious Scotch father, also a Sydney-Tahitian
trading captain, had pointed out to her that Langton had made and was
still making money in the island trade. Her ideal of a happy life was
to have her husband leave the sea and buy an estate either in Tahiti or
Chili. She knew both countries well: the first was her birthplace, and
between there and Valparaiso and Sydney her money-grubbing old father
had traded for years, always carrying with him his one daughter, whose
beauty the old man regarded as a "vara vain thing," but likely to
procure him a "weel-to-do mon" for a son-in-law.
Mrs Langton cared for her husband in a prosaic sort of way, but she
knew no more of his inner nature and latent utter selfishness a year
after her marriage than she had known a year before. Yet, because of
the strain of dark blood in her veins--her mother was a Tahitian
half-caste--she felt the mastery of his savage resolution in the face
of danger in the thirteen days of horror that had elapsed since the
brigantine crashed on an uncharted reef between Pitcairn and Ducie
Islands, and the other boat had parted company with them, taking most
of the provisions and water. And to hard, callous natures such as
Langton's women yield easily and admire--which is better, perhaps, than
loving, for both.
But that savage curse still sounded in her ears, and unconsciously made
her think of Enderby, who had always, ever since the eighth day in the
boat, given her half his share of water. Little did she know the agony
it cost him the day before when the water had given out, to bring her
the whole of his allowance. And as she drank, the man's heart had
beaten with a dull sense of pity, the while his baser nature called
out, "Fool! it is HIS place, not yours, to suffer for her."
* * * * *
At daylight the boat was close in to the land, and Langton, in his
cool, cynical fashion, told his wife and Enderby to finish up the last
of the meat and biscuit--for if they capsized getting through into the
lagoon, he said, they would never want any more. He had eaten all he
wanted unknown to the others, and looked with an unmoved face at
Enderby soaking some biscuit in the tin for his wife. Then, with the
ragged sail fluttering to the wind, Langton headed the boat through the
passage into the glassy waters of the lagoon, and the two tottering
men, leading the woman between them, sought the shelter of a thicket
scrub, impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and slept. And then for a
week Enderby went and scoured the reefs for food for her.
* * * * *
One day at noon Enderby awoke. The woman still slept heavily, the first
sign of returning strength showing as a faint tinge in the pallor of
her cheek. Langton was gone. A sudden chill passed over him--had
Langton taken the boat and left them to die on lonely Ducie? With hasty
step Enderby hurried to the beach. The boat was there, safe. And at the
farther end of the beach he saw Langton, sitting on the sand, eating.
"Selfish brute!" muttered Enderby. "I wonder what he's got?" just then
he saw, close overhead, a huge ripe pandanus, and, picking up a heavy,
flat piece of coral, he tried to ascend the triplicated bole of the
tree and hammer off some of the fruit. Langton looked up at him, and
showed his white teeth in a mocking smile at the futile effort. Enderby
walked over to him, stone in hand. He was not a vindictive man, but he
had grown to hate Langton fiercely during the past week for his selfish
neglect of his wife. And here was the fellow, gorging himself on
turtle-eggs, and his tender, delicate wife living on shell-fish and
pandanus.
* * * * *
"Langton," he said, speaking thickly and pretending not to notice the
remainder of the eggs, "the tide is out, and we may get a turtle in one
of the pools if you come with me. Mrs Langton needs something better
than that infernal pandanus fruit. Her lips are quite sore and bleeding
from eating it."
The Inner Nature came out. "Are they? My wife's lips seem to give you a
very great deal of concern. She has not said anything to me. And I have
an idea----" the look in Enderby's face shamed into silence the slander
he was about to utter. Then he added coolly--"But as for going with you
after a turtle, thanks, I won't. I've found a nest here, and have had a
good square feed. If the cursed man-o'-war hawks and boobies hadn't
been here before me I'd have got the whole lot." Then he tore the skin
off another egg with his teeth.