'THE TIGER DID THAT'
When the sun began to drop towards where Africa lay, afar off and
invisible, and when (because of the dense foliage which crowned the
slopes of the island that rose behind the beach) that portion where
they sat was rapidly becoming shaded from its burning rays, Stephen
Charke said that the time had come for him to think of making his tour
of the place, or, at least, of accomplishing a part of it. The air, it
is true, still resembled that which one feels when they have
approached too near to a furnace, or, for a further simile, have
descended into the engine-room of a steamer. Yet, now, there would be
no danger of sunstroke, and the expedition, such as it was, might very
well be undertaken.
'My idea is,' Charke said, 'to begin now, this afternoon, by starting
to the left and going on along the shore until I am nearly opposite
this place on the other side of the island; then I will come back
here, crossing it, and to-morrow I will do the same thing with the
other side. That way there cannot be much left unexplored by to-morrow
evening. What do you think?'
'I think,' Bella answered, 'that you are the most unselfish, heroic
man I ever knew. Ah, Mr. Charke,' she continued, 'I know very well
why you are doing this, why you are going to make this journey round
the island. It is to satisfy me, it is for my sake. If you were alone
here you would never do it, but occupy yourself only on thoughts of
how to get away, and----'
'No,' he said, 'no. Had I been the only person who got ashore from the
wreck I should, as a sailor, as a comrade of the others, have deemed
it my duty to make a thorough search through the island ere I took
steps to quit it. I shall have, as the survivor of the _Emperor of the
Moon_, to make a report----'
'I understand,' she said quietly. 'I understand. Nothing that you can
say will make me feel my obligations to you any the less.'
For Bella Waldron knew as well as Stephen Charke himself knew, that
what she had just said was the absolute fact; she knew that he was
going to undertake this fresh toil--for toil it was, after all he had
gone through, after his bruises and buffeting with the waves, and in
this terrible torrid-zone heat--for her and on her account alone. He
was going to undertake it with the desire of easing her heart and
preventing her, in after-years, from being able to reproach herself
with having left the spot while any chance remained of there being one
of those who were dear to her upon it.
She was, too, perfectly aware that he did not for one moment
believe--alas! how could he, a trained, intelligent seaman,
believe?--that there was any other soul left alive out of all those
who had been in the ill-fated vessel when she struck on the rock. And,
being thus unable to believe, could she regard him as aught else than
that which a moment before she had termed him, 'a most unselfish,
heroic man'?
Before he left her he asked if she would not partake of some of the
tinned meats, or sardines, which he had managed to obtain from the
upturned hold, but as the girl replied that it was far too hot to eat
anything but the wild fruit growing in such profusion all around, and
also that she was not hungry, he decided that he would not open one of
the tins for himself. He, too, could do very well on what there was to
their hands for the trouble of picking, since, here, in this tropical,
steaming atmosphere, eating scarcely seemed a necessity of life;
while, if it were, then those glorious bananas whose golden and
crimson hues merged so superbly into each other were amply sufficient.
But, also, he had another reason for not opening the preserved meat.
The odour of it would--might--arouse the cub's desires, and, once
aroused, they would possibly stir the animal almost to frenzy if
ungratified.
He rose now and prepared to set out, there being still two full hours
of daylight left; two full hours ere the sun would be gone and the
swift, dark night had fallen at once upon all around--the outcome of a
dusky veil which the sun appears to fling behind it as it departs, and
out of which emerges black obscurity, lit only by the burning, silvery
constellations. But, ere he went, he asked if she feared to be left
alone for so long.
'No,' she replied, 'no. Why should I? What is there to hurt me here?'
'There may be people on the island all the same,' he replied, 'even if
they have not yet discovered our presence; although I do not think it
likely.'
'Nor do I. If there were they would by now, in two days, have observed
that,'--and she pointed towards the wreck--'and have come down to it.
We are alone,' she concluded with a sigh. 'There is no one else here
but you and I.' And still again she sighed.
'Yes,' he answered, understanding all that her words meant, all the
heartbrokenness that they expressed. 'Yes, we are alone; there are no
others.' After which he left her, saying that, by dark, or very
shortly afterwards, he would be back again.
When he had departed, after looking round once to wave his hand ere a
bend of the shore hid him from her view (and she noticed that, true to
his sailor's instincts, he went towards the boat and inspected it, and
then drew it up a little more on to the white-pebbled beach and made
the painter more secure), she went down to the rivulet and cooled her
face and hands and feet in it, and made some attempt at arranging her
hair, while using the stream as a mirror. Yet it was little enough
that she could do in the way of a toilet, since she had nothing that
would serve as a comb nor any soap or towel. After which, feeling
refreshed, nevertheless, by this attempt, she returned to where she
had been sitting and gazed out seaward, meditating deeply.
'What an end,' she murmured, as she did so, while from her eyes the
tears flowed freely now--the more so because there was none to observe
them--'what an end to all! Gilbert, who was to have been my husband,
dead! Gilbert, whom I so loved with my whole heart and soul, dead! and
lying beneath that ship. Oh, Gilbert, Gilbert, Gilbert, my love, come
back to me. And my poor uncle and aunt, too. Oh, God, what a disaster!
What a disaster!'
And now she wept piteously, so piteously that, if that other man, who
had risked his own chances to save her as well as himself, could have
seen her, the sight would have gone near to break his heart. That
other man! At this moment her thoughts turned to him too. Almost
unconsciously she found herself thinking of him, speculating on what
his future would be. 'He will never marry,' she murmured. 'I know it.
Feel sure of it. It would be the idlest affectation to ignore his
sentiments for me. Yet--yet--how sad, how mournful a life must his be
henceforth; no home to go to, no wife to welcome him, none to make him
happy. Poor Mr. Charke. Poor Stephen. Our lots will be similar, we
must be friends, always friends.'
Meanwhile, he was making his way along the beach, which was still
shaded from the sun and becoming, indeed, more and more so as he
progressed farther round the island, away from the west. And every
step which he took served only to confirm him in what he had believed,
known from the first--the unlikelihood of there being any other person
saved from the wreck.
'Surely,' he muttered to himself, 'if he should have drifted ashore,
it would have been here. The current sets this way, and also the
monsoon blows towards this island. Living or dead, he would have come
to this neighbourhood if he had come at all. The tiger did that, and,
doubtless----'
He paused at those words. 'The tiger did that!' and for a moment it
seemed to him that his heart stood still. 'The tiger did that!' Ay,
but did it? Was he wrong in the surmise, wrong in his deduction? Did
the cub land here or hereabouts? Reflecting, recalling the night
before, the early dawn, when Bella shrieked to him and awoke him
from a half-slumber into which he had fallen, he recollected that the
beast had sprung forth from the copse of orange and lemon trees that
was to the right of the little spot where he had waded ashore with the
girl in his arms, and where, after carrying her up far above the
waterline, he had dropped senseless. It had sprung at them from the
right side, was coming from the right; and it was not to be believed,
it was, indeed, beyond all belief, that it could previously have
passed across where they were from the other side without having been
noticed by one of them, especially by Bella, who was wide awake. It
was coming from the right; it had, doubtless, therefore, got ashore,
been cast ashore, to the right. And he was seeking for signs on--had
set out to--the left! Had he, therefore, chosen the most unlikely
place in which, if, by the most remote chance, any human being should
have been washed ashore, to discover them?
'Shall I go back,' he mused, 'and begin again on the other side? Shall
I?' Yet, as he meditated, he reflected that there would be little use
in doing so; certainly little use in doing so to-day. An hour had now
passed, or nearly so, since he quitted Bella; the sun, he knew, since
he could no longer see it, was sinking fast--over the whole of the
rich, luxurious vegetation that stretched inland there was now the
golden hue, the amber light that, in the tropics, follows after the
dazzling, blinding, molten brilliancy of the noontide, directly the
sun is no longer vertically above the globe. And also, there was the
odour of the coming night all about him, the odour of the declining
day when, from every fruit and flower that has drooped through the
hottest hours of the earlier portions of that day, there exudes the
luscious, sickly scent that travellers know so well.
'No,' he said to himself, 'no. It would be little use to turn back now
or to begin again to-night! And--and,' he murmured, thinking deeply as
he did so, 'even though he had been cast ashore, he could not now be
alive. Blind--unable to see his way--to find any of all the fruit that
grows here in such profusion, poor Bampfyld would succumb to
starvation, even if the life had not been beaten out of him by the
waves.'
It was of Gilbert Bampfyld alone that he thought, of him alone about
whom he speculated, since, of all the others who had been in the
_Emperor of the Moon_, he was the only one whose body could by any
possibility have come ashore. They, those others, Pooley and his wife,
were in the submerged cabin, no power on earth could have got them out
of it; any men left in the galley and the forecastle were in as
equally bad a plight. Nothing could have saved them, or have even
released their bodies. But, as he thought of Gilbert Bampfyld, so he
felt sure that he also must have perished, even though he was not
thus below as those others had been. Still musing on all this, but
with one other image ever present to his mind--the image of the woman
he loved--dishevelled and storm-beaten, but always beautiful--the
woman of whom, now, he began to dream once more, to dream of winning
for his own in some distant day--he went on along the beach, his eyes
glancing everywhere around and near him. Glancing into the wild,
tangled vegetation, along the channels of the rivulet's courses, but
sometimes with them fixed on the beach.
Suddenly he stopped, his heart quivering again, beating fast.
At his feet there lay a sailor's rough jacket, and, a little farther
off, a cap--a common, blue-flannel thing, such as the mercantile
sailor buys for a few pence at a Ratcliffe Highway slop-shop.
He stopped, regarding them--not with that agitation which the greatest
romancer who ever lived has depicted as clutching at Crusoe's heart
when he saw the footmarks, but, instead, with a feeling of
astonishment; yet a feeling of astonishment which, he told himself,
he, a sailor, ought not to experience.
'Do not all wrecks,' he muttered, 'send forth around them countless
articles of débris, countless portions of the raffle that encumbers
their decks? What more likely than that a sailor's jacket and a cap
should have floated ashore?'
Then he stooped, and, feeling them, found that they were thoroughly
dry, so that they must have been ashore for some hours at least, since
even the fierce sun of the now declining day could not have dried them
in less time, all soaked with water as they had been.