"We were eight in the boat:"

"Grimalson,--in command.

Davis, Prout--A.B. seamen.

Webster, Martinez--Ordinary seamen.

Farrell, Santa and I--Passengers."

"Our victuals were:--4 lb. of pork (about) and 7 lb. of ship-bread,

all messed with blood: 3 cans of potted meat, 2 of preserved fruit,

one tin of sardines: for liquid, half a gallon of rum and, in the

breaker, about 3 pints of water.

"We were, as we calculated, four hundred miles at least from any

known land, and we had no chart on board: we might be within a

hundred miles of the fringe of traffic.

"The sea was calm: the wind came in intermittent light draughts from

the north. The sky was a great burning-glass, holding no hint of

rain."

"Now from the very beginning--from the moment we left the ship--I

knew that, if we were to perish of hunger or thirst before sighting

help, I should be the last survivor. No; you needn't stare: it's

perfectly simple. . . . I doubt if I ever told you that in the old

days, when experimenting with the animals, I found that my will--or

brain-power, if you prefer the term--worked torpidly for a while

after meals, although, as you know, I was never what they call a

hearty feeder. So I took to cutting down my rations. Then of course

I discovered that this was all right enough up to a point, beyond

which the stomach's craving made the brain irritable and impatient.

So for a long time I let it go at that, and ate pretty frugally at

fairly long stretches . . . until one day, in some book about Indian

fakirs, I picked up a hint that if this interval of exhaustion were

passed--if I stuck it out--my will might pick up its second wind, so

to speak, and work more strongly than ever. I was curious enough,

anyway, to give it a trial or two. The results didn't amount to

much: but I _did_ discover that I had a rather exceptional capacity

for fasting, and promised myself to practise it further, from time to

time, as an experiment on my own vile body.

"But now we'll come to something more important. In the matter of

thirst I had persevered: being, as you may remember, hot-foot upon

rabies just then and the salivary glands. . . . Well, in the matter

of thirst, I trained myself to do my three days easy without

swallowing a drop. That last night you invited yourself to dinner--

the night I first met Farrell, by the way--you unknowingly ended a

four days' experiment. I told Jimmy Collingwood about it, the

morning he breakfasted with me. . . ."

["I remember Jimmy's telling me something about it, in the taxi," I

put in. "He said you were either the saviour or the curse of

society--he wasn't clear which: wouldn't commit himself until he'd

read your forthcoming treatise on _Thirst, Its Cause and Cure_.

He added that you were mistaken if you thought the topic

non-controversial."]

"He needn't be afraid. . . Farrell smashed me up for good as a

benefactor of my species. . . . I shall put up a brass plate in

Harley Street and end my days as a pottering empiricist--Remember

Jimmy's trouble with that word?--alleviating particular complaints

for cash. If it hadn't been for Farrell--well, just you remember

_that_ when I stand up for judgment! . . .

"Anyhow, that infernal boat gave me all the personal experiment I

wanted. . . . I promised not to tell you all about it. . . . Martinez

went first, of course, being weak as water. He died muttering for

water. Grimalson came next . . . two days later.

"But I shall go on telling you about myself. Physically I suffered

very little, mentally a good deal at sight of the others' torments--

but only from time to time. By the fourth day (the eleventh after

the _Eurotas_ went down) we were all more or less mad, I reckon.

But my lunacy took the form of light-headedness with a strange,

almost persistent, sense of exaltation. I kept my strength so much

better than they that almost unconsciously they left most of the

trimming and steering in my hands. And I sat and steered as a god,

in a world blank of all but miserable happenings. I looked on Santa,

and she was the woman I loved but should never enjoy. I looked on

Farrell: and he was _here_, brought here by _me_. What worse woe

could possibly lie in store for him than this agony over which I

presided it was impossible to tell and hard indeed to imagine. But I

did not want him to die. On the contrary, it was for _him_ that I

searched the horizon, that a ship might rescue us and he might live.

I would see to the rest!

"They say that living with an enemy in a confinement such as ours,

makes you hate him worse and worse. . . . It wasn't so with me.

My hate, by this time, was set and annealed, so to speak; quite cold,

and almost judicial. I had no more jealousy than Jove. The air

that, to the others, quivered so damnably, so insufferably around the

boat under a sky without shade, swam around me like incense. . . .

As for Farrell, his eyes watched mine like a dog's.

"Oh, yes, we went through it all! I'll have to tell you about

Grimalson (as shortly as possible, though), because Farrell gets

mixed up in it, hereabouts. Even in their suffering, the three

seamen--Jarvis, Prout, and Webster--had nursed poor Martinez almost

tenderly; and I suppose, amid their mutterings forward, they had

hatched out their form of protest. And it was fit for comic opera--

ghastly comic opera--if you can imagine Lucifer sitting in the

stalls.

"Noon of the third day it was--I count from the time of our losing

the other two boats. We had lowered Martinez overboard about an hour

before, and the seamen should have been preparing our diminutive

ration. (Salt pork boiled in sea-water, if you can imagine it,

Roddy!) I was steering: Santa sat a foot away, staring over the

waters, sometimes bringing her attention back to a line which

Grimalson had cast overboard, trying for a fish. Grimalson lounged

on the after-thwart--facing me, as you might say, and with his back

to the men, but lolling sideways over the gunwale. He felt the line

with his left hand. Close by his right lay a useless gaff. He had

exhausted our third and last tin of sardines for bait, without

effect, and--what was worse--had drained the oil down his throat

impudently, without an offer to share it. Also he had been drinking

salt water--and I had not troubled to restrain him. Farrell I could

hate, but this man was naught. Farrell lay on the bottom-boards at

my feet, breathing stertorously, with his head in what shade Santa's

gown and the side-sheets together afforded. But this fool seemed

intent on baiting the Pacific with a plummet, a hook, and a lump of

salt pork.

"As if this wasn't enough of grisly opera, of a sudden, in my

light-headedness I saw the three men stand up, join hands solemnly in

a sort of cat's cradle fashion, and advance aft, for all the world

like a comic trio, with the after thwart for footlights. They came

to a halt, close behind Grimalson, and--even as though I had ordered

a burlesque--Jarvis cleared his parched throat painfully, very

formally, and spoke across to me. You must picture the three, if you

will, still holding hands while he spoke.

"'Doctor Foe, sir,' said Jarvis oratorically, 'me and my mates, not

knowing the law, but being wishful to behave conformable as British

seamen, have cast it up together. And we allow 'tis no mutiny, being

situated as we are, to say as this Martinez was a shipmate, when

all's said and done, though a Dago, and Mr. Grimalson, meaning no

disrespect, done him to death by bloody murder. Which, consequently,

attaching no blame, we three, as loyal British seamen, two A.B. and

one ordinary, and giving our opinion for what it is worth, hold that

Mr. Grimalson was probably off his chump when he done it, and hasn't

behaved subsequently in a way to inspire confidence in a crew left as

we are. Whereby, Doctor Foe, not having pen and ink handy to make a

round robin of it, we hereby respectfully depose Mr. Grimalson, and

request of you to take over command of this craft, trusting you to be

a gentleman and being well aware of the consequences and ready to

face 'em. The others having said _Amen_, we'll consider the matter

finished.'

"There's farce somewhere in every tragedy, Roddy. Here, against the

glare on the Pacific, it challenged all doom, broad and unashamed.

I need hardly tell you that Grimalson, at the opening of this

harangue, had dropped his fishing-line, clutched his gaff, and

whirled about furiously. But he faced three determined men, and

Webster's loose hand played with a revolver. Twice or thrice

Grimalson essayed to interrupt; but Jarvis was a man with a prepared

speech: and, backed by Webster's free hand, he delivered it straight

out at me to the last word over Grimalson's shoulder.

"Then, as he concluded, there ensued the beastliest scene of all.

Grimalson, from facing these three slow, determined men, took a swift

turn right about and struck at me with the gaff. They clutched at

him and he faced about again, dropping the gaff, springing to the

thwart and hitting right and left. Webster sprang also to the thwart

and landed him a stunner on the point of the jaw which sent him

overboard from the rocking boat.

"Now Webster was, in ordinary life, a religious man, and a Methodist.

At sight of what he had done he ran to the boat's side, making

ineffectual grabs to recover the body, which floated for a moment or

two, with the senseless hands afloat or spread on the waters, as if

in ghastly benediction. And then, as I put up helm, as if hauled

down on a line, the trunk and head disappeared from view and a bloody

smear came up, oozing and spreading. Jarvis called out that he had

seen a shark's fin.

"I did not see it, being occupied in rounding up the boat to recover

the body: doing this, too, with my left hand, in no small pain.

For Grimalson's stroke with the gaff had lacerated my right fore-arm,

tearing away a strip of my rolled-up shirt-sleeve.

"And then. . . . My God, Roddy!--Farrell, who had roused himself up

at the scrimmage, had his mouth fastened on my arm, mad with thirst,

sucking the blood! Oh, you have to go through these things to

understand! . . . And I said I wouldn't tell. . . . I beat at him;

but it was Santa who pushed him off.

"Webster had sunk, sobbing, with his face on his hands that gripped

the gunwale. We were all mad. I held out my bleeding fore-arm to

Santa, who was tearing a bandage for it.

"'Your husband has drunk,' I said.

"'Ah, pity!' said she, softly, taking the first deft turn of the

bandage. 'Must you, too, be a beast?'

"Jarvis, meanwhile, like a man dulled to all tragedy had gone to the

boat's side and was hauling in Grimalson's futile line. He brought

up the sinker.

"'God help us all!--there's hope yet!' he barked through his parched

throat, and held up the sinker all clothed about and clogged with

greenish-brown shore-weed."

NIGHT THE EIGHTEENTH.

"AND SO THEY CAME TO THE ISLAND . . ."

(Foe's Narrative Continued)

"That night, as I was steering, I heard a sound as of a bucket dipped

over the bows. Needless to say, we had hoisted no lantern on the

forestay since the night the other boats had driven away from us or

gone down. To help a vessel to pick us up on that expanse of water

it would have been about as useful as the tail of a glow-worm--and

moreover the crew _had drunk all the oil_.

"I had the sheet well out and was running under a light, lazy

night-waft of breeze. A thin moon was setting somewhere behind my

right shoulder, and the glimmer of it played on the canvas. . . .

I had supposed all the others to be sunk in merciful sleep, when

Webster stood up and, staggering forward, ducked under the foot of

the sail, which at once hid him from me. . . . When I heard the

_plunk_ of a bucket--as I supposed--it suggested at the worst that

here was another fool dosing himself mad on sea-water; and, as values

counted by this time, it was not worth while to awake four other

souls to consciousness and misery for the sake of preventing him.

. . . And then the man's face went swimming past me, upturned to the

moonlight, momentarily sinking as I grabbed at his beard which

floated up like seaweed. . . . I grabbed, and missed. God knows what

I should have done had my fingers tangled themselves in that beard,

to get a clutch on it.

"He had slipped himself overboard, to drown quietly. . . . And we

were now five, and Prout was plainly a dying man. (I'd have you

note, Roddy, the order in which the men on board went; for it rather

curiously backs up my theory that there's ever so much more vitality

in what we call brains than in what we call physique.) Martinez was

a weakling, of poor breed: Grimalson, big as bull's beef, had a brain

rotten as a pear: Webster, a docile fellow, was strong as Hercules

and surprisingly stupid. These were gone, in their order.

The two A.B.'s, Jarvis and Prout--canny men, resourceful, full of

seamanship--survived, and we three passengers. What kept Farrell

going, and saved his reason, was a great capacity for sleep.

He slept all the night and most of the day; and though by consequence

he helped us little or nothing, seemed (as he declared himself to be)

constantly dog-tired. His momentary ferocity, when he fastened on my

bleeding forearm, had been a gust only, and after it he sank deeper

and deeper into drowsiness. As for Santa--frankly, I don't know.

They tell us that women sleep more lightly than men, and can endure

suffering far more patiently--which some explain by saying that their

nerves are less sensitive to pain, and (I suppose therefore) to

pleasure. But I don't know: I have never studied the subject.

She sat very quiet, sometimes for hours together, without stirring;

but she took very little actual sleep.

"The end of Jarvis and Prout was one of those inhuman, ghastly farces

which, as I've said, break the spell of a sudden and are worse than

the tragedy itself. They had struck up a quaint, almost canine

friendship--Yes, that's the word, though I can't stop to explain what

I mean by it more than by saying that they would sit together by the

hour, like two dogs before a fire. The odd thing about it was that

they had twice been shipwrecked before on the coast; and had come

through the double experience respecting one another as capable

seamen but forming no attachment until--But it's ludicrous past

guessing. On the second day in the boat it was discovered by a

chance word that they had a common acquaintance in 'Frisco: and he

wasn't much of a friend either. I never heard his name right and

full, and I doubt if they knew it. They called him Uncle Tibe, and I

gathered from their earlier conversations that he was a Jewish dealer

in marine stores and a money-lender; of mature years; and afflicted

with a chronic and most Christian thirst, which he alleviated by

methods derived from the earliest patriarchs of his race. Of these

his favourite was to attach himself to some young seaman with money

in his pocket and, having insinuated concurrently the undoubted

truths that he possessed great wealth but was averse to spending it

(even on Scotch 'smokes'), to insinuate further that the victim had

to an extraordinary degree crept into the affections of a childless

old man,--yea, might hope indeed, by attentions which in practice

worked out to ordering whisky and adding 'Make it two,' to inherit

his real and personal estate.

"Silly as you like!--But the discovery that each had been hoaxed by

Uncle Tibe, and the comparison of their foolish experiences, with

reported tales of the dupes yet more heavily befooled and bled,

caught and bound these men in fellowship. They had both met with

some queer ones in their travels, and they compared notes: but they

always came back to this superlative old fraud. After long wise and

disconnected talk about the set of the wind, or the rates of pay on

various lines, or stowage, or freights, or rigs, or currents, or the

characters of various skippers and mates, or the liveliness or

sulkiness or homeliness or fickleness of this or that kind of cargo,

they would revert extra-professionally to Uncle Tibe: of whom the old

stories would be repeated over and over, with long pauses, chuckles,

slow appreciations--'Ay, Tibe! . . . He was a none-such, if you

like!'

"Will you believe me that, in the end, these two honest fellows

murdered each other over this more-than-half-mythical Tibe? No, you

can't guess what it's like, towards the finish. They sat side by

side on the mid-thwart, fishing over either gunwale--or leaning over,

pretending. They were almost too weak to haul in a fish over four

pounds had they caught one, and for two days their throats had been

parched so that speech came with difficulty. Of a sudden Jarvis let

out 'Tibe!' with a sort of ghostly cackle, and Prout cackled 'Tibe!'

in an echo even thinner. . . . And, with that Jarvis stood up and

started raving of what he would do when the money came to him, as he

allowed it would, after all. Mighty queer ways of spending wealth he

mentioned, too, before Prout was up and, yelling at him for a thief

and supplanter, drove at his throat with a knife. He missed: but the

next instant, these two fond friends, whose friendship had fenced us

others off almost as strangers, were wallowing and knifing one

another on the bottom-boards,--all over the visionary legacy of a

Jew, thousands of miles away, whose picking of their pockets had been

their common reminiscence and their standing joke through days of

horror! And political economists used to tell us that money is a

medium and symbol of exchange!"

"Well, after that we were three in the boat, and I was the only one

strong enough to heft the bodies overboard. If they could only have

held on to their wits for another twenty-four hours, or even for

twelve!

"When I had done this work, and redded up the boat, I looked rather

anxiously at Santa, who had been watching me: for I feared the effect

this scene of shambles might have upon her. She sat, with Farrell's

head resting against her knee, and still gazed unmoved. . . . Then I

knew why. She had passed beyond these vain phenomena. Her eyes saw

them and saw them not. . . . She was dying.

"Yet she sat erect. She even smiled, very faintly, and made a feeble

motion of the hand towards her guitar-case, which I had lifted out of

the reach of the blood and set on the seat at a little distance from

her. Then I understood that she _had_ seen, after all. . . . For I

must tell you that, in the early days, Santa's playing and singing

had brought great cheer to the crews, and our boat was envied for

carrying this music. But there had come a day when Jarvis and Prout

sent aft very respectfully to beg that there might be no more of it,

for it dragged across their raw nerves: and from that hour the guitar

had lain in its case. It could be set free now.

"I took it out, and she half held out her arms for it, as a mother

might for her newly-born child. . . . But she would never play on it

again. The strings were all loose but one, and that one broken.

She had no strength, and I no skill, to re-tune the thing.

"But she thanked me in a sort of throaty whisper, and sat for a while

letting the neck of the guitar lie against her shoulder, while her

left hand went up to clasp it and finger it in the old way. And her

right hand lifted itself once or twice towards the sounding-hole, but

dropped back to her lap.

"'You are very good to me,' she said, after some seconds, still in

the same whisper. 'Why is it that you hate Pete so?' Then, as I did

not answer, she went on, 'I am dying, I think. It would be quite

safe to tell me, now.'

"'When two men love one woman--' I began. But she shook her head,

and her eyes accused me. Santa had very beautiful eyes, and in this

agony they were perhaps deeper in colour and more beautiful than

ever. But they had changed, somehow. . . . I cannot explain it but

they recalled another pair of eyes . . . another woman's. . . .

Whose? . . . I don't know! My mother's, maybe. She died, you know,

when I was quite a small boy. . . . Anyway, these eyes quite suddenly

looked at me out of the past--out of my memory, as it were.

They were Santa's and yet they were not Santa's. . . .

"'Ah,' said she, 'do not lie to me, now! It hurts so!'

"'Well, then,' I told her, 'your husband once, back in the past, did me

a very great wrong. It--well, it wrecked the work of my life, and I

have never forgiven it. Now let us talk no more about it.'

"A look of relief, almost a happy look, dawned on her face.

'I _knew_ it was not about me! For I saw your two faces when you met

on the hill, under my porchway. . . . Do you know that, at moments,

you are very much alike? . . . Oh, in general, of course, there is no

likeness at all. . . . But at certain moments. . . . And it was so

when you met, there on the hill: I had to look from one to the other.

It was plain in that instant that you hated one another--yes, and it

might have been for a long time . . . ages and ages. But it could

not have been about me, for you had not set eyes on me but within the

minute. . . . I am glad, anyway, that it is not for my sake that you

hate.'

"Her words came in faint, hurrying wafts, much as for days the wind

had been ruffling after us. The sunset struck slantwise across her

cheek and hung entangled in the brown tress that drooped low by her

right temple. I tell you, Roddy, that if the old gods and goddesses

in our school-books ever turned out to be mortal after all, she was

one, and thus looked, and spoke as she died. . . .

"'I understand well enough,' she went on, 'the small things over

which women quarrel. . . . Though they all seem very far away just

now, I was a woman and could be jealous over _any of them_. But I

never understood why _men_ quarrelled, except for me, of course.

. . . Was it over your work, do you tell me?'

"'Surely,' said I, 'a man's work--'

"'Yes. I know that it is so,' she answered me with a small sigh.

'Do you know that, far back, I come down from the Incas? and I dare

say they thought less of work than of other things. . . . It is all

thanks to your working that we three are alive, now. . . . I

understand a little why men so much value their work. . . . But yet I

do not understand why they drop their work to quarrel as they do.

I understand it no better than the fighting of dogs.' She paused on

that last word, and then, as though it had put new life into her, she

sat erect and opened her eyes wider upon the horizon as she put the

amazing question, 'Was it over a dog that you two hated?'

"It staggered me: but I caught at the first explanation. 'Oh, I

see,' said I. 'Your husband has been telling you?'

"She didn't answer this at once. . . . At length, and as though my

voice had taken long in reaching her, far out on the ocean where her

gaze rested--'No,' said she, 'Pete has told me nothing. ... I never

asked. . . . But if it is true, _ay de mi!_ then that which I behold

is not true.'

"'Of what are you speaking?' I asked.

"'I saw an island,' she answered, as one in a dream: 'and again I see

it. It has two sharp peaks and one that would seem to be cut short.

Lawns of green climb up to the peaks between forests. There is a

ring of surf all about the shore . . . but the boat has found a

passage through . . . and you and Pete are landing . . . and--

strangest!--there is a dog leaping about on the shore to welcome

you.'

"I was silent, not caring to break in upon her happy delirium.

'But I am not there,' she whispered, almost in a moan. 'Why should a

dog be there and not I?' Still getting no word from me, she turned

her eyes full on mine and repeated the question imperatively, almost

indignantly. 'Why should it be a dog?--and not _I_, over whom you

never hated?'

"'Santa,' said I, 'if there were such an island as you see--'

"'But there _is_,' she interrupted quick as thought. 'There _is_,

and it is near, though I shall not see it, except from the boat.'

"'Say, then, that there is such an island--' said I. It was just

possible: for during the last two days we had sighted many sea-birds.

"'And near--quite near,' she insisted. 'It has groves of coco-trees,

and streams tumbling down the rocks--on which no boat can row with

men cursing in her and fighting with knives.'

"'Then you shall land on that island, O beloved!' said I, 'and we

will live on it, and love--'

"'Ah, I know what you mean! You mean as they love in heaven? Yes.'

And she added quite simply. 'I have had great trouble with men.'

"'Not exactly as in heaven,' said I, and took out from a

breast-pocket under my jumper a small flask of yellow Chartreuse,

which I had snatched up among other small belongings from my

state-room locker ten minutes before the _Eurotas_ went down.

I had nursed it with a very jealous purpose. . . . Farrell should not

slip through my fingers by dying, while I could yet force a stimulant

down his throat, to linger him out. . . . It was a tiny 'sample'

flask, and had been pressed on my acceptance, as a small flourish of

trade, by a German wine-dealer in Valparaiso. . . . And here at the

crisis, with Farrell dying at my feet, on an instant I renounced my

purpose.

"'Drink this,' I commanded Santa, 'and you shall live some hours yet.

And then, if there _be_ an island--'

"She caught at it with a delighted cry, her hands suddenly vitalised.

The guitar slid down from her lap. She drew out the glass stopper,

holding the flask up a moment to the setting sun and letting it blaze

through the liquid. Then swiftly, as I made sure she would carry it

to her lips, she bent over Farrell and whispered some soft word of

the night that pierced his stupor so that he stirred and lolled his

head around. . . . Yes, and for a farewell kiss--which I watched

without jealousy. . . .

"But as their mouths drew apart, and before his swollen lips could

close again, she had slipped the mouth of the flask between them and

the cordial was pouring down his throat. . . .

"She had defeated me. . . . I watched her without uttering a word.

Farrell let out a guttural sort of _ah-h!_ and sat up somewhat higher

against her knee, opening his chest and breathing in new life as the

Chartreuse coursed through his veins. Santa turned the flask

upside-down, and handed it to me.

"'I have won!' she said softly. 'Men at the last are--what is the

word?--magnanimous, mostly: and that is why a woman can usually win

in the end.'

"'You have thrown away,' said I, 'so much of life as I gave you,

renouncing much. You have sacrificed yourself.'

"'That was _my_ share of the price, my friend. Now continue to be

great, as for these many days you have been good. There is a bad

pain about my heart. With that other small bottle of yours, and with

that needle I have seen you use . . . You will? Ah, how much better

it is to be friends than enemies, when the world--even this little

shrinking world--is so wide yet--so wide--'

"So I took her wrist and, she scarcely wincing, injected the last

drop of my morphia: yes, Roddy, and kissed the spot like any poor

fool, she not resisting! . . . Her last words were that I should lay

the guitar back again on her lap. . . . Oh, damn it, man! it was

everything your damned sneerer would choose to call it. . . . But I

tell you I held my ear close to her breast for hours; and in my

light-headedness I heard the muted music lulling her: and in and out

of her breathing, when she was long past speech--and above the

stertorous snoring of my enemy laid at her feet--I heard distant

waves breaking in a low chime to some words of a verse I had once

quoted to her on a night when her song had made the crews sorrowful

for a while before lifting their hearts again to make them

merry--music to ripple, ripple:"

'--Ripple in my hearing

Like waves upon a lonely beach, where no craft anchoreth;

That I may steep my soul therein, and craving naught, nor

fearing,

Drift on through slumber to a dream, and through a dream to

death.'

"My ear was close to her breast, listening, as the last breath went

out with a flutter . . . and Santa was dead, having conquered me--

conquered me far beyond my guessing; but up to the moment having

subdued me so effectively that my sole kiss of her had been taken,

kneeling, upon the wrist, as one kisses faith to a sovereign, and had

never been returned. Through the night I held her wrist until it was

cold."

"Towards dawn, and just at that moment when a watcher's spirits are

at their lowest, Farrell stirred, stretched out his legs, drew them

up again, and asked how things were? . . . For his part (he added,

sitting up weakly), he felt a different man.

"'It behoves you to be,' said I with some sternness. 'Take the

tiller and--yes, you may hold on to it with some firmness. Your wife

is dead.'

"'Santa!' he gasped. 'Oh, my God!' and cast himself upon her body,

seemly bestowed as I could serve it.

"'Get off of it,' I shouted, 'before I brain you!' I held the very

gaff with which Grimalson had torn my arm. He had plucked the tiller

from the rudder-head, and with these two weapons in our right hands

we faced one another, each with his left feeling for the revolver he

carried.

"Then Farrell, who stood facing the bows, shot out his right as

if jabbing at me with the stick, a foot short of my shoulder.

The action was, as a stroke, so idiotic that, although it might so

easily have meant death to me, I turned half-about to where the stick

pointed, as the helmless boat yawed.

"And there, above the low-lying wisps of morning fog, stood three

peaks: two sharp and the third blunted: and, below the fog, ran a

thin white ribbon of breaking water!

"We had run down upon it so close in those hours of darkness that the

beat of the surf had, as I now recognised, confused itself into

Santa's last breathings: so close that, as the sun took swift mastery

of the mist and dissolved it, disclosing, below the peaks, the

variegated greenery of lawn and forest pouring down to the seamed

cliffs and pouring over them to the very beaches in tapestries of

vines and creepers, we were almost in the ring of the surf: and it

came as a shock to me that the lazy swell on which we had so long

lifted and dropped, heeding it least among many threats, could beat

on this islet so terrifically.

"The sight so vanquished Farrell that he yielded the stick over to

me, obedient as a child. I thrust it back in its socket, hauled

sheet and fetched her up close to the wind outside the surges. . . .

Without a word said, he turned to pointing out this and that inlet

between the reefs where there seemed a chance to slip through.

"For two miles at least we fended off in this way, until we came to

the base of the hill which, from seaward, had appeared so curiously

truncated. As we opened its steep-to sides, they rounded gradually

into a high curve at the skyline, and, at the base, into a foreshore

of tumbled rock through which ran a cleft with still water protected

by sheer rocks--a narrow slit, but worth risking with the wind to

drive us straight through. So I upped helm on the heave of a comber,

and drove her for it, the walls of rock so close on either hand that

twice the end of our short boom brushed them before Farrell, who held

the sheet, could avoid touching. . . . And then, rushed by a heave of

the swell through this gorge, we were shot into a round lake of the

bluest water I ever set eyes on; a lakelet, rather; calm as a pond

except by the entrance, where the waves, broken and spent, spread

themselves in long ripples that melted and were gone.

"You know Lulworth Cove? Well, imagine Lulworth, with a narrower

entrance, its water blue as a sapphire shot with amethystine violet,

its cliffs taller, steeper, hung with matted creeper and, high aloft,

holding the heaven in a three-part circle almost as regular as you

could draw with a pair of compasses. We were floating in the cup of

a dead volcano, broken on the seaward side; and broken many hundreds

of years ago--for on our starboard hand, by the edge of the rent,

swept down a slope of turf, cropped by the gales, green as an English

park; with a thread of a stream dropping to a small wilderness of

ferns, and, through this, to plash upon a miniature beach of pink

sand, on the edge of which the sea scarcely lapped. Sea-birds of

many kinds circled and squawked overhead. Yet it was not our boat

that had frightened them.

"They had risen in alarm at the sound of barking, high up the slope.

A dog came leaping down it, tore through the fern, and, as our boat

drew to shore, raced to and fro by the water's edge, barking wildly

in an ecstasy of welcome. A yellow dog, Roddy--a largish yellow

dog--and, as I live by food, the living image of my murdered Billy!"

NIGHT THE NINETEENTH.

THE CASTAWAYS.

(Foe's Narrative Continued.)

"A miracle? Well, I had always supposed poor Billy to be a mongrel

of such infinite variety of descent that the world might never hope

to behold his like. But, after all, the strains even of dogs are

limited in number; and what Nature has produced she can reproduce.

"But the apparition, just there, and at that moment, was a miracle to

me. I sat staring at it even when the boat's stem took the beach

gently, and it was Farrell who first crawled over her side to land.

His knees shook, and the dog, leaping against him, nearly bowled him

over. Then the sight of water seemed to galvanise his legs, and he

tottered frantically up the small foreshore to the cascade, beside

which he fell and drank, letting the spray drench his head, neck, and

shoulders. The animal had gone with him, gambolling and barking, and

now ran to and fro and leapt over his body three or four times, still

barking. All his welcome was for Farrell. To me, as I followed,

staggering, the animal paid no heed at all, until he saw me drawing

close, when he suddenly turned about, showed his teeth and started to

growl. His tail stiffened, the hairs on his chine bristled up, and I

believe in another moment he would have flown at me.

"Partly of knowledge, however, and partly of weakness, I checked

this. My feet had no sooner felt firm ground than I found myself

weak as a year-old child. The strength of will that had held me up

through that awful voyage--and it was awful, Roddy--went draining out

of me, and the last of my bodily strength with it, like grain through

a hole in a sack. As the dog bristled up, I fell forward on hands

and knees, laughing hysterically, and the dog winced back as if

before a whip, and cringed. . . . You know, I dare say, that no dog

will ever attack a man who falls forward like that, or crouches as if

to sit, _and laughs_? . . . So I dropped from this posture right

prone by the edge of the basin hollowed by the little waterfall, and

drank my fill.

"What next do you guess we did? . . . We rolled over on the sand

under the shade of the cliff, and slept. . . .

"We slept for three mortal hours. I've no doubt we should have slept

oblivious for another three, had not the making tide aroused me with

its cool wash around my ankles. The sun, too, was stealing our

resting-place from us, or the comfort of it, cutting away the cliff's

shadow as it neared the meridian. . . . The boat, utterly neglected

by us, had floated up, broadside on, with the quiet tide, almost to

our feet. The dog sat on his haunches, waiting and watching for one

or other of us to give sign of life.

"I roused up Farrell. . . . My first thought was for Santa's body,

laid within the boat on the bottom-boards. 'Are we man enough,

between us, to lift her out?' I asked. 'Or shall we moor the boat

and climb for help? . . . There are certainly people on this island,

since this dog must have a master somewhere.'

"'She is a light weight,' said Farrell simply. 'Let us try. . . .

Her soul forgive me for leaving her, even so long as I have, in that

horrible boat!'

"So, weak as we were, we managed to lift Santa's body ashore and

carry it up the few yards of sand beyond what we judged to be a faint

tide-mark, close under the ferns. . . . After this we fetched ashore

the tool-chest and some loose articles that we judged to be

necessary--such as the cooking-pot, binoculars, and a spare coil or

two of rope and a ship's mallet; and Farrell searched the undercliff

for sea-birds' eggs, whilst I gave the boat a cleansing with baler

and sponge, redded her up after a fashion, and finally moored her off

with a shore-line, some twenty yards out on the placid water.

While thus occupied, my mind was wondering what kind of people

inhabited this island, and why they kept such poor watch. . . .

We had run in openly in daylight, and yet it would seem that only

this dog had spied us.

"If they were savages, why, then, I had only my revolver with a fair

number of cartridges. . . . Some of my stock I had blazed away during

the last two days in vain attempts upon the life of the sea-birds

that ever wheeled out of fair range. The tool-chest, indeed,

contained a shot-gun, or the parts of one: but I had never pieced

them together, for the simple reason that all the cartridges

belonging to it had, through Grimalson's careless stowage, been

soaked and spoilt during the night of the gale. . . . Somehow, I

could not mentally connect savages with the ownership of this dog.

But the day wore on, and still no one hailed us from the cliffs or

the green slope.

"Now I must tell you that the boat's locker yet held a chunk or

two--less than a pound--of brined pork, hard as wood and salt as the

Dead Sea, that none of the crew at the last had a thought to boil in

the sea water, which only made it more intolerable. None of us,

indeed, after a trial, had been able to get a morsel past our

swollen tonsils. But I had a boxful of matches in my trouser pocket,

half-emptied: and, as it turned out, Farrell had preserved another.

So in this most vital necessary we were well supplied. Therefore,

when Farrell, with the dog at his heels, came back along the shore,

holding up two cray-fish that he had taken in a rock-pool at the turn

of the tide, I tossed the gobbets of pork overboard to desecrate the

clear depth. Indeed, apart from fish and fowl, I had seen as we

neared the island that we had no fear of starving: for an abundance

of cocos and palms grew all around the ridge of the crater and had

but to be climbed for as soon as we found strength. The tool-chest

contained a saw and a hatchet.

"It also contained an engineering-tool, part pick, part digger.

I handed it to Farrell, and he understood. 'But first,' said I,

'let's make a fire and fill the pot. There's a plenty of small dead

wood everywhere, and we're too weak just yet to heave this gear any

distance up the slope before sunset. We'd best light a fire here;

and when we have it started, I'll mount the slope some little way

where I see a plenty of limes growing. I may go some way farther, to

prospect. The smoke of the fire ought to attract the attention of

these very careless islanders; and if they turn out to be unfriendly,

well, I have my revolver and you'll have ample warning to clear off

to the boat.'

"'Savages?' muttered Farrell. 'I never thought of that. . . . Go you

up, if you will, and take the dog for company. You can leave me to

light the fire, and--'tisn't a request I've dared to make to you

since God knows when--but if you've any pity anywhere in your bowels,

just now I'd like to be alone.'

"'I haven't,' said I: 'but I have some sense in my head, and I'm

going to prospect. I'll leave you at anchor here for an hour or so.'

"I whistled to the dog, and the dog, after long hesitation and having

been thrice shoo'd in my wake by Farrell, followed. But he hung some

twenty yards behind, and showed no sign of desire to lead me to the

people to whom he belonged. By and by he came to a dead halt and,

for all my whistling and calling, broke back for the beach again and

disappeared at a gallop. . . .

"I held my ascent, still beside the downward-pouring stream, and on

my way noted fruit-bearing trees in plenty. I reached a point where

the volcanic hill ran down landward in rounded ridges, and crossed

two or three of these: but no sign of human habitation could I

discern.

"When I descended again to the beach, with the lap of my jumper full

of limes and wild grapes, it was to find the dog stretched beside a

sizable fire and Farrell busy nailing together some lengths of long

timber. I had heard the sound of his hammer from half-way down the

slope.

"'Good Lord, man!' said I, staring. For he had pulled in the boat

and sawn almost the whole of the port-side out of her. 'You have cut

us off now, whatever happens!'

"'You don't imagine,' said he, 'that I'd ever set foot in that

blasted boat again?'

"What is more, he had cut a couple of cloths out of the sail, for a

winding-sheet. . . . But the pot was near to boiling; and after we

had supped on the crayfish and the fruit, he fell to work again,

nailing together a rough coffin. He explained that he had served his

time in quite a humble way before embarking in business, on borrowed

capital, as a tradesman. Then, under the risen moon, by the scarcely

audible plash of the beach, he told me quite a lot about himself and

his early days, as he fashioned a coffin for the woman into whose

arms I had driven him, as I had driven him with her corpse to this

lost isle.

"In the midst of it I said, 'You know, I suppose, that she saved your

life?'

"He checked his hammer midway in a stroke, and stared at me, the

moonlight white on his face.

"'You know,' I repeated, 'that she gave her life to save yours?' and

I told him how. At the end of the tale, if ever hatred shone in a

man's eyes, it shone in Farrell's; and yet there was incredulity in

them too.

"'What!" he gasped. 'And you let her do it, there in front of you,

when with a turn of the hand--O my God!' he broke off. 'I've thought

at times you must be the Devil himself, you Foe: but I never reckoned

you for as bad as all that! The wonder to me is I don't kill you

where you sit.' He clenched the hammer, and twice again he called on

his God. The dog growled.

"'Steady!' said I, showing him the revolver. 'Steady, and sit down.

You can't kill me, my good man, unless you do it in my sleep--against

which I'll take precautions. So you may quit wondering on that

score. . . . And I can't kill you; for you're too precious--doubly

precious now, _having been bought with that price_. . . . Sit down, I

tell you, and order that infernal dog to be quiet: else I'll pump

some lead into him and, dog against dog, you may count it quits.'

"'Quits?' he echoed.

"'In the matter of two yellow dogs only: and I have given up keeping

pets, having _you_. . . . Now listen: Did you ever guess that I

loved your wife?'

"It took him like a blow between the eyes. 'No, I didn't,' he

answered slowly, and then with a sudden rush of malignity, 'I wonder

it didn't occur to you, then--I wonder you didn't try to--to--tamper

with her.'

"'You would,' said I. 'It's the sort of man you are, you Farrell.

The next thing, you'll be capable of wondering if I didn't. . . .

Pah! and _you_ call _me_ Satan!' I spat. 'Now, take hold on your

fool head and think. For _her_ sake I grant you ease of that

suspicion, though in dealing with you it would be priceless to me.

Think what a peck of torture I'm letting run to waste, as that

waterfall yonder runs to waste in its basin. But it wouldn't be

true. Your wife was an angel. Drink that comfort--drink it into

every cranny of your soul. . . . And now hold your head again.

I loved Santa, I tell you.'

"'You let her die,' he muttered sullenly.

"'Think, you fool--think!' I commanded. 'If she had lived, you would

have died, and she would be sitting where you are sitting at this

moment, and I here, and the moon swimming above us two--Would you

have had it so?'

"'My God!' he blurted, wiping the back of a hand across his eyes.

'This is too much for me. . . .'

"I stood and picked up the engineering tool. 'For me, too,' said I,

'it is enough. . . . Now come and choose the spot, and I will fall to

my part of the work.'

"But to this he demurred, saying vaguely that he was upset; that the

spot for the grave must be chosen with care and by daylight; that he

must first finish the coffin, and then take some rest. There would

be time enough after we had breakfasted.

"I believed that I understood. . . . He wished to wash and wind the

body. So at dawn--by which time the coffin was ready--I told him

that he should be alone for a couple of hours, and went up the hill

again in the first light, to prospect. Again I tried to whistle the

dog after me: but this time he refused even to budge.

"I climbed no farther than before; that is, a little beyond the

ridge. For it gave upon a wide undulating valley to the slopes of

the second crater, which again partly overlapped the cone of the

third or highest. To descend and cross this first vale would cost

from two to three hours' hard walking, and my design was merely to

con the prospect for sign of those inhabitants to whom the dog must

belong. For he was little more than a puppy in age. Also, though

lean, he was not at all emaciated: but the traces of rabbit-dung on

the slopes told that a deserted dog might manage to sustain life

here. Also it promised that the island was inhabited, and by white

men, for rabbits are not indigenous anywhere in the South Pacific.

They must be brought.

"I studied the hollow and searched it with my binoculars for some

while: but without picking up any trace of mankind. Far below me a

sizable stream here showed itself through the tropical vegetation as

it hurried down to a hidden cove. The wide ocean spread southward to

my right. Of how far the island might stretch beyond the taller and

more distant cone I could make no guess.

"A desire for sleep came upon me, and I stretched myself in the shade

of a bush under the lee of the ridge. After an hour's nap I rose and

descended again to the beach.

"Farrell sat by the fire, cooking breakfast, the dog watching him.

There was no coffin, nor any sign of a grave, and the tide was

making. He had made haste to bury Santa during my absence. . . .

He said not a word about it, and I did not question him. But he had

played me this trick. Henceforth I felt no further pity."

"You may remember my saying, Roddy, when I first started to tell you

about Santa, that it was impossible for me to hate Farrell worse than

I did. Well, I thought so at the time. But now on the island I was

to find myself mistaken, and this trick of his set me off hating him

in a new and quite different way.

"I believe now, looking back, that this was the real beginning of

Santa's revenge; or the first evident sign of its working; unless you

count the behaviour of the dog--of which I will say more presently.

At any rate I had no longer that cool godlike sense of mastery over

the man which had sustained me in the boat. It may sound incredible:

but whereas, cooped in that narrow shell of boards, I had found his

presence gratifying, here on an island of wide prospects, where we

could have parcelled out a kingdom apiece and lived by the year

without sight of one another, I found it irritating and at times even

intolerably so. He had found power, through her dead body, to give

me a grievance against him, when I had supposed him too low and

myself too high for anything to affect me that he could do. . . .

It is always a mistake, Roddy, to falter once in an experiment.

It is disloyalty in a man of science to renounce one at any point.

Now, I had renounced, in handing Santa the flask; and again I had

faltered, in a moment of generosity when I left him beside her

corpse. . . . And of that act of generosity--and of delicacy, too, by

the way--this thief had taken advantage.

"Oh, yes--I know what you will be wanting to say--that the man was

her husband, hang it all! . . . I answer that he _had been_ her

husband and my darling's flesh I had resigned to him, as was meet and

right. . . . But if you'll understand--if you've ever read what the

Gospel quite truly says about marriage, to take it in--the man had no

tyrant's monopoly beyond the grave. She was mine now--his, too, if

he would--but mine also by right of my great love for her.

"You see, I am shaking, even as I speak of it. I had this grievance,

and it festered and raised the whole temperature of my hate. . . .

And this wasn't the worst, either. The worst was a sense that, lying

somewhere with closed eyes under the ebb and flow of the tide, my

beloved was working against me, watchfully, by unguessable ways, and

weakening me. There was this dog, for example. . . . Yes, _that_ had

been the first token. How had it passed from me--this power over

animals that had used to be exerted so easily?"

"But I had not lost my power over Farrell, although there were times

when I mistrusted it. His eyes had given me the first warning, when

I returned that morning and found myself tricked. They were

half-timorous but also half-defiant, and wholly sly. It disconcerted

him that I made no comment on his silence and asked no questions.

"On the fifth morning--by which time we had picked up enough strength

to attempt a day's exploration of the west side of the island, and

within an hour of the time fixed for our start, he found me fitting

and nailing a short cross-plank to the boat's mast.

"'Hallo!' said he. 'What job are you spoiling there? I'm the

carpenter of this party, or believed I was.'

"'And I'm the captain,' said I; 'and duly appointed--though I have no

witness but you to the fact--if you choose to lie about it. . . .

I'm doing a job which you have neglected: fixing a Cross for Santa.

It will be a comfort, as we fare inland, to know she has a Christian

mark over her grave. . . . You have the bearings accurate no doubt,'

said I, lifting the heavy cross and, as I stooped to shoulder it,

picking up the ship's mallet, which lay at my feet. 'Will it be

here--or here?' I asked, choosing the spot and prodding the sharpened

foot of the cross into the sand. . . . His face blanched.

'You accursed fool!' said I, 'do you suppose I haven't, these four

days, been watching you and the dog?'--and, as I said it, the point

of the mast struck upon timber. 'Come and help me to drive it deep,'

I commanded. 'If we can work it down within reach of mallet, three

taps will drive it so that it will stand firm above such tides as

reach this anchorage of hers.'

"He came down the beach heavily and we heaved our strength together,

driving the cross down by the coffin's head. 'The mallet is handy by

you,' said I. 'Pick it up and use it while I hold steady.'

"This work done, without another word between us, we returned, picked

up axe, saw, and a wallet to collect any specimens of fruit we might

find on our way, and, still without a word, breasted the hill side by

side, the dog running ahead of us.

"We got no farther that day than to the stream which ran between our

hill and the second volcano, the edge of which--like that of our own

broken and truncated one, ran down steeply to the western shore.

The wood beside the stream grew so thick, interlaced with tendrils of

tropical plants, that we were forced to turn aside and make for the

coast in hope to find a crossing.

"We descended into the sound of the beating surf before we found one:

and there an impish fancy took me. I had been losing grip on

Farrell, and despite my small triumph of that morning, I felt a

sudden desire to test him. Pretending that my purpose was only to

cross and report, I waded the stream and dodged upward through the

undergrowth; recrossed it, about a hundred yards above, crawled

another yard and again recrossed, all to baffle the hound's scent,

since from Farrell I could have hidden by this time securely enough.

In a very few minutes I heard his voice hallooing to me, and then the

dog's yelp began to chime in with it. By and by the beast, well

baffled, was baying hard through the undergrowth between me and the

surf.

"After a while of this play I crept out and strolled easily back to

my first ford, my hands in my pockets.

"'What the devil's up with your beast?' I asked, wading across to the

bank on which Farrell stood.

"His face was white. 'My God!' he said. 'I thought, for a while, we

had lost you!'

"Then I knew that he dared not be alone, and that I had him, whatever

happened."

NIGHT THE TWENTIETH.

ONE MAN ESCAPES.

Before continuing Foe's story, I should warn you not to be surprised

that hereabouts it takes on a somewhat different tone. I am trying

to give you the tale as he told it: and so much of it as related to

Santa, he told bravely and frankly, here and there with a thrill

somewhere deep beneath his voice, and exaltation on his face.

He was, in short, the Jack Foe of old days, opening out his heart to

me; and all the more the same because he was different. By this I

mean that never in life had I heard him speak in just that way,

simply because never in life had he brought me this kind of emotion,

to confess it; but, granted the woman and the love, here (I felt) was

the old Jack opening his heart to me. It rejuvenated his whole

figure, too, and, in a way, ennobled it. I forgot--or rather, I no

longer saw--the change in him which had given me that secondary shock

when he walked into the room.

I cannot tell you the precise point at which his tone altered, and

grew hard, defiant, careless and--now and then at its worst--even

flippant. But it was here or hereabouts, and you will guess the

reason towards the end.

Another thing I must mention. You have already guessed that the

tale was not told at one sitting. Between the start and the point

where I broke off last night, we had lunched, taken a stroll

Piccadilly-wards, done some shopping, and chatted on the way about

various friends and what had happened to them in this while--Jack

questioning, of course, while I did almost all the talking. It was

in the emptying Park, as we sat and watched the carriages go by, that

he told me of Santa's burial and what followed it, so far as you have

heard. I broke off last time at the point where he broke off, stood

up, and said he would tell me the end of it all over dinner at the

Cafe Royal, where we had called, on the way, to reserve our old

table.

I saw afterwards why he had arranged it so: as you will see. But for

the present it only needs remembering that what follows was told in a

brilliant, rather noisy room--at an isolated table, but with a throng

of diners all around us.

I had ordered wild duck as part of the dinner: and when it came to be

served he looked hard at his plate, and, without lifting his eyes,

slid from casual talk into his narrative again:

[Foe's Narrative Concluded]

"Wild duck--? good! Yes, we used to have wild duck on the island.

. . . There were lagoons on the east side, fairly teeming with them,

and we fixed up a decoy. I don't pretend that we fixed up an orange

salad like this, with curacao: but in the beginning we practised with

limes, and later on I invented one of sliced bananas, with a sort of

spirit I brewed from the fruit. Also we found bait in the pools, not

so much unlike the whitebait we've been eating--I used to frizzle it

in palm oil. And once I achieved turtle soup. . . . He was the only

fellow that, in two years, we ever managed to collar and lay on his

back; and the soup, after all was no great success. But turtle's

eggs. . . . I can tell you all about turtle's eggs. That dog had a

nose for them like a pig's for truffles.

"Don't be afraid, Roddy. In this sophisticated den of high living

and moderate thinking I'm not going to give you the Swiss Family

Robinson; though I could double no trumps and risk it on the author

of that yarn--whoever he may have been--if he had only dealt from a

single pack, which he didn't. Farrell and I didn't build a house in

a tree, because we didn't need to; and we didn't ride on emus,

because we didn't want to, and moreover there weren't any. But we

did pretty well there for two years, Roddy: and could say as

Gonzalo--was it Gonzalo?--said of another island, that here was

everything advantageous to life. And we found the means to live,

too.

"I may say that I took the role of Mrs. Beeton: hunted for fruits,

fished, told Farrell (of my small botanical knowledge) what to eat,

drink, and avoid, and attended to the high cuisine. Farrell,

reverting to his old journeyman skill, sawed planks and knocked up a

hut. When one hut became intolerable for the pair of us--for in all

that time we never ceased hating--he knocked up a second and better

one for my habitation. He was my hewer of wood and drawer of water.

Also it was he who--since I professed no eagerness to get away--did

the conventional thing that castaways do: erected a flag-staff, and

hauled piles of brushwood up to the topmost lip of our volcano, for a

bonfire to be lit if any ship should be sighted, lest it might pass

in the night. I had resigned the binoculars to him, but he never

brought report of a sail.

"On two points--which served us again and again for furious

quarrels--the fool was quite obstinate. He would not budge from our

first encampment--that is to say, out of sight of Santa's grave; and

he flatly refused to fit new planks to the ruinated boat which now

lay, a thing of ribs, high and dry as we had hauled her close

underneath the fern-brake beside the cascade. Again and again I

pointed out to him that, patched up, she would serve me for fishing.

To this he answered, truly enough, that we had a plenty of fish in

the rock-pools and a plenty of oysters on the shore. Then I urged

that, if we sighted a ship--though it didn't matter to me--we might

need a boat to get out to her. He retorted that, though it mattered

to him, he would never set foot again in that cursed craft or help me

to set foot in her. Finally, one day when I was absent on an

expedition after food, he broke her remains to shreds.

"Upon this we had an insane quarrel--the more insane because it all

turned on my dwelling on the detriment to his chances of escape and

his reminding me of my indifference. We argued like two babies.

But I had now another grievance: though it was the devil to me to be

falling back on grievances.

"I still held the whip-hand over him in this--I could always thong

him by a threat to part company and live by myself on the east side

of the island. He mortally feared to be left, even with the dog for

company.

"The dog remained a mystery. Although, as time went on, we explored

the island pretty thoroughly, we never found his owner, nor any sign

of human habitation. The conies which bred and multiplied on the

hills were our only assurance that man had ever landed here before

us--that is, until we discovered the strange boat: and it was through

the dog that we discovered it."

"During the first three months we made no lengthy excursions, being

occupied in cutting and sawing timber for the two living-huts and a

store-hut; in making a small net (this was my task), and in

sun-drying the fish I caught in it--for, knowing little about these

latitudes, I feared that at any moment the heavenly weather might

break, and we be held prisoners by torrential rains, traces of which

I read in some of the seaward-running gullies. Also Farrell refused

to budge until he had built his bonfire. When this was done we had

another pretty fierce quarrel because, tired of waiting, I took a

humour to punish him by making him wait in his turn while I did some

tailoring. . . . No: we didn't dress in goatskins. There were no

goats. But I had visions of piecing up a rabbit-skin coat and, in

the meantime, of cutting up the boat's sail into drawers and jumpers,

our clothes by this time being worse than a disgrace. But I believe

that I held out chiefly to annoy him; and, having annoyed him

sufficiently, I gave way to his final argument--that our boots were

wearing out fast and, if we didn't make the expedition at once,

likely enough we never should.

"So we started on what proved to be a two days' tramp, and thereby

came pretty near to wrecking ourselves.

"The third cone, which--in that clear atmosphere--seemed to stand

close behind the second, turned out to be separated from it by a good

five miles as the crow flies. But on the north-western shore the sea

had breached the reefs and swept in to form a salt lagoon in the

great hollow, so that we had to fetch a circuit of at least seven

miles to the southward, avoiding a tangle of forest in which the

lagoon ended, and clambering along a volcanic ridge with the sea

often sheer on our right. It was in this lagoon, by the way, that we

afterwards learned to take our wild duck, scores of which paddled

about quite tamely on its surface, their tameness promising poorly

for human hospitality on the farther side of the hill.

"We gained the side of the great cone at length and, rounding it,

beheld all the northern part of the island spread at our feet--in

form a narrow strip of land curving around a delicious bay and ending

in a small pinnacle of high tumbled cliff and wood. Quite obviously

this bay was the one anchorage in the island for any ship of burden;

and no ship could have asked for a better: for it made almost three

parts of a circle, and, while not completely land-locked, held

recesses in which any gale might be ridden out.

"Here, if anywhere, as I told Farrell, we should come upon human life

or the traces of it: here, if anywhere, if vessel ever made this

island, to water, she would drop hook. 'Fools we have been, to waste

months pitching camp on the other side, when this is the place of

places, and this hill gives the citadel prospect of all!'

"Farrell sat down on a rock and broke into curses. 'Damn you,' he

moaned, 'for bringing me so far! I wish I had never seen it.

Wasn't it comfortable enough where we were? . . . And now I can't go

back!'

"I had taken the binoculars and, engaged with the view, for a moment

paid no heed. I was accustomed to his explosions of fury, as he to

mine. But, turning about for a while, I saw that he had unlaced his

left boot and was holding it out. . . . The sole had broken loose in

our scramble over the tufa rocks, and hung parted from its upper.

"'That's bad,' said I. 'Well, I stuck a ship's needle in the

tool-bag here before we started--_you_ never think of anything!

When we get down to the shore we'll see what can be done: that is, if

we don't find a cobbler.'

"'Cobbler? you funny ass!--' he began.

"'Look here,'--I stopped him. 'If you won't attend to me, attend to

Rover. What's up with that dog of yours?'--for the dog which had

been following all day pretty obediently, except for a wild dash down

to the lagoon to scatter the wild duck, had of a sudden picked up

bearings and was running forward, halting, returning, wagging his

tail, running forward again, turning, asking dumbly to be understood,

in the way all dogs have who invite you to follow a trail.

"'Here's business,' said I, and hurried after him, leaving Farrell to

limp down the hill-side in our wake. For once the dog recognised me

as more intelligent or, at any rate, prompter than his master, and

gave his whole attention to me. . . . I tumbled down the hill after

him in a haste that fairly set my temples throbbing. Once sure of

me, he played no more at backwards-and-forwards, but bounded down the

slope towards the innermost southern corner of the bay, where a grove

of coco-trees almost overhung the beach. A curtain of creepers

bunched over the low cliff at their feet and into this he plunged and

disappeared.

"But his barking still led me on; and presently, as I avoided the

undergrowth and creepers to follow the foreshore, sounded back to me

across a low spit of rock. I climbed this and came all unexpectedly

upon a diminutive creek.

"It was really but a fissure between the rocks, with deep water

between them and an abrupt, dolls'-house-beach of sand and shells

above it, terminating in a flat, overhanging ledge. And on this

ledge rested a white-painted boat, high and dry! From the

stern-sheets the dog barked at me joyously, wagging his tail, with

his fore-feet on the edge of the stern-board.

"I ran to it. Within the stern-board, in cut letters from which the

cheap paint had scaled, was a name plain to read--_Two Brothers_.

Two paddles lay in her, neatly disposed: a short mast and sail

tightly wrapped and traced up in its cordage; her rudder, with

tiller-stick, two rusty rowlocks of galvanised iron, and a tin baler,

all trimly bestowed under the stern-sheets--and that was her

inventory, save a pig of iron ballast, much rusted. How long she had

rested there, clean and tidied, half protected from the sun's rays,

there was no guessing. But her seams gaped so that I could push my

little finger some way between her strakes. She had no anchor; and

her painter had been cut short at the ring, sharply. Only the knot

remained.

"I was examining this when Farrell overtook me. He came over the

rocks, limping; halted; and let out a cry at sight of the boat.

Then, as by chance, he peered into the cleft at his feet, into the

fathom-deep water past which I had run; and, with that, let out a

sharper cry, commanding me to him.

"Down in the transparent water, inert but seeming to move as the

ripple ran over it, lay the body of a man, face down, with a trail of

weed awash over its shoulders. Peering down through the weed, I saw

that a cord knotted about its right ankle ended in another pig of

ballast, three-parts covered by the prismatic sand.

"'My God!' said Farrell, and shivered.

"'Well, he's no use to us, even if we do fish him up,' said I, pretty

grimly. 'Here's the dog's owner, and that's as far as we get.

Since a dog--even so intelligent a pup as Rover here--can't very well

attach a weight to his master's ankle and cast him overboard--let

alone pulling his boat above high water and stowing sail--we'll

conclude that this fellow deliberately made away with himself.

As I make it out, the dog, thus marooned, struck pretty frantically

for the high ground. Lost dogs--and lost children, for that matter--

always make up hill, dark or daylight. I suppose it's the primitive

instinct to search for a view. . . . But anyway, here's a boat.

She's unseaworthy, as she lies: but her timbers look sound enough if

we can staunch her, and the first thing is to get her down to the

water and see how fast she fills. We've a baler, to cope with the

leak . . . and when we have her more or less staunch, here's the way

around to our camp. Hurry up your wits!' I added sharply.

"'If we launch her here,' he twittered, 'she'll settle down on

_that_!'

"'Then run,' said I, 'and, with all the knowledge you ever picked up

in Tottenham Court Road, fetch every grass and fibre you can collect,

to stuff her seams. I'll do the sailing while the wind's fair

offshore, as it is at present. When it heads us, I'll do the

pulling. Man alive! think of your burst boot! For my part, I'm

willing enough to stay here as anywhere: or you can stay, and I'll

start back for camp, and we'll share this island like two kings, you

keeping this imperial anchorage.'

"But of course this had him beaten. He helped me launch the boat and

ran to collect stuffing for her seams, while I sat in her and baled,

baled, baled. . . . It was pretty eerie to sit there alone--for the

dog had gone with Farrell--fighting the water, and feel her settling,

if for five minutes I gave up the struggle, down nearer and nearer

upon the shoulders of that drowned corpse with the hidden face.

By sunset Farrell returned with an armful of sun-dried fibre.

We hauled the boat high again and he began caulking her lower seams,

that already had started to close.

"'She'll keep afloat now for a few hundred yards,' he announced after

a while. 'Let's launch her again and run her round the point and

beach her. I left a bundle of bark there that, early to-morrow,

we'll cut in strips and tack over the seams, and she'll do fine to

carry us home.'

"'Home?' echoed I grimly.

"'You know what I mean, you blighter!' he snarled. 'Oh, for God's

sake, no--we mustn't start bickering alongside of _that_!' He forced

his eyes to look down again at the corpse, and shuddered.

'The tide's going down, too.'

"'It won't go down far enough to uncover _him_: and that you ought to

have sense to know," said I.

"'But the farther it goes down the nearer he'll come up, or seem to,'

he argued.

"'Well, night's coming on, and you won't see him,' I suggested,

playing on his nerves.

"'D'you think I'll sit here in the dark, alongside of--oh, hurry, you

devil! Hurry!'

"I chuckled at this. It came into my mind to refuse, and declare I

would sit out the night here by the boat. I knew that the shore

beyond, though it curved for two good miles, would not be wide enough

to contain his agony through the night hours. . . . But I had pushed

him far enough for the time. So we launched the boat again and

paddled her around and beached her on shelving sand: and soon after,

night fell.

"Farrell slept poorly. Three or four times I heard him start up, to

pace to and fro under the starlight: and each time the dog awoke and

trotted with him. . . .

"But he was up, brisk and early, with dawn; and he made quite a good

job of tacking bark over the boat's seams, while I sat and cobbled up

his boot with sailmaker's needle and twine. He made, indeed, and

though swift with the work, so good a job that, inspecting the boat

when he had done, I judged she would stand the strain of sailing--

whereas I had looked forward to a grilling pull in a craft that

leaked like a basket.

"At a quarter to ten, by my watch, we pushed off, stepped mast and

hoisted sail--a small balance-lug. We carried a brisk offshore

wind--a soldier's wind--which southerned as the day wore on, and

again flew and broke off-shore as we neared home. I steered:

Farrell, for the most part, dozed after his labours. He had not, I

may say, one single faculty of a seaman in his whole make-up.

He could mend a boat or make an imitation Sheraton wardrobe; but,

when the both were made, he'd have sailed the one about as well as

the other.

"He dozed uneasily, with many twitchings. Once he woke up and said,

'I thank God he lay so as we couldn't see his face. Would it have

been swollen much, think you? . . . Bleached, I make no doubt. . . .'

"'What about worse?' I answered. 'I noticed a crab or two.'

"He put up his hands to his face. 'How the devil can you talk so!'

he stammered.

"'It was you who started questions,' said I.

"'Suicide, you think?' he asked, after half an hour's silence, during

which his mind had plainly been tugging away from the horrible

subject only to find it irresistible.

"'All pointed to it,' I answered. 'As for the motive, we can only

guess.'

"'Where's the guesswork?' he demanded fiercely. 'Cast here, in this

awful loneliness--' I saw him look around on sea and cliff with a

shiver.

"'He had the dog,' said I. 'You find Rover here a companion, don't

you? I had a notion, Farrell, that you were fond of dogs. . . . I

used to be.'

"We downed sail hereabouts, and pulled in for the cleft and the

anchorage we called home. The sea under the smoothing land-wind ran

through the passage as calmly as through a miller's leat: and I will

own it was happier to be by that shore where my cross still stood

over Santa than by the other, where that other body lay, face-down,

with the weight whipped to its ankle. "'Wonder who he was?' said

Farrell late that evening, as we parted to go to our quarters.

'A missionary, I shouldn't be surprised.'

"'If so,' said I, 'he tumbled on a sinecure. Since your mind runs on

him and you want to sleep, make it out that he was a bishop, and

home-sickened for the Athenaeum.'"

"I'm coming to the end, Roddy; and you shall have it sharp and quick,

as it happened. . . . As I've said, we stuck it out on that island

for two years, and a little over, hating one another as two lonely

men will come to hate, on island or lighthouse, even when they don't

start on a sworn enmity. Oh, you must have been through it to

understand! . . . We even quarrelled--and came almost to blows--over

the day of the month; though God knows what it helped either to be

right or wrong, and, as it happened, we were both wrong by a

fortnight or so."

"And then Farrell took ill.

"It was a kind of fever he caught while duck-snaring in the lagoon.

He'd start off there for a long day with his dog, the two practising

cleverness at the sport. I always felt somehow that, when his grief

came, it would come through the dog. . . . Well, he took a fever

which I couldn't well diagnose, to say whether it was rheumatic

or malarial. It ran to sweats and it ran to dry skin with

shivering-fits, the deuce of a temperature, and wild delirium.

"I nursed him, of course, and doctored him, keeping the fever at bay

as well as I could with decoctions of bark--quassia for the most

part--and fresh juice of limes. But it was the vigour of his frame

that pulled him through--as I believe all the skill in London could

not have availed to do in the days of his prosperity when he was fat

and fleshy. Hard life on the island had thinned him down and

tautened and toughened him so that I wondered sometimes, washing his

body, if this was indeed the man with whom I had vowed my quarrel.

"His ravings in delirium, however, left no doubt on that score!

I tell you I had to listen to some fairly obscene descriptions of

myself and his feelings for me--all in the best Houndsditch. . . .

Yet here again was a queer thing--again and again this gutter-flow

would check itself, drop its Cockney as if down a sink, and, bubbling

up again, start flowing to the language of an educated man. . . . The

first time this happened it gave me a shock, less the abruptness of

the break than by its sudden assault upon my memory. All insensibly,

and unmarked by me, Farrell's accent and way of speech had been

nearing those of decent folk. They were by no means perfect, but

they had amazingly improved. . . . Now, when his delirium plunged him

back to Houndsditch, though it gave me a jerk, I could account for it

as reversion to an old habit that had been put off before ever we

met. What beat me was, that his second style, accent and choice of

words--though still fluent in cursing--far surpassed in purity any

speech I had heard from him in health.

"And there was something else about it. . . . While the gutter ran

Houndsditch, the man was a cur, cowering and yelping out terror under

strokes of a whip-lash. When it shifted accent, he lost all this and

started to _threaten_. Something like this it would run: 'Gawd!

Oh, Gawd, he's after me again. . . . See his rosy eyes follerin' like

rosy naphthas. . . . Oh, Gawd, hide me from this blighter. . . . Look

here, damn you! I'll trouble you to know who's master here.

You will halt where you are, you Foe, and not wag a tail until I give

you leave. That's better! Now, if you will kindly state your

business at that distance I'll state mine. . . . Is that all?

Quite so: and now you'll listen to me, and maybe reconsider yourself

. . .' That, or something like that, is the way it would go.

"I had a sense all the while, Roddy, that he was almost slipping

through my fingers, and I fairly dug in my nails to hold him to life.

On that point my conscience is clear, anyhow. No man ever had a

doctor to battle harder for him, or a more devoted nurse.

"Well, I pulled him through, and nursed him to convalescence.

I thought I knew something of the peevishness of convalescents: but

Farrell beat anything I had ever seen, or heard, or read of. By this

time I was worn weak as a rat with night-watching and day-watching:

but of this he made no account whatever. He started by using his

greater weakness for strength, and he went on to dissemble his

growing strength, hiding it, increasing it, still trading it as

weakness upon my exhaustion. He came back to life with a permanent

sneering smile, and a trick of wearing it for hours at a stretch as

he leaned back on the cushions I had painfully made for him of

plaited flax and stuffed with aromatic leaves, daily renewed. . . .

Yes, Roddy, as a doctor I played full professional service on him,

and piled it up with every extra kindness one castaway man could

render another. . . . And the devil, as he recovered, lay watching

me, under half-closed eyes, with never a sign of gratitude, but, for

all my reward, this shifty sneer.

"There came a day when his new insolence broke out with his old hate.

'You Foe,' said he, 'I reckon you're priding yourself on your bedside

manner, eh? . . . I can't keep much account of time, lying here.

But, when I get about again, I'll have things in this camp a bit more

shipshape, I promise you. . . . I've been thinking it out, lying

here: and my conclusion is, you're too much of the boss without doing

your job. . . . How long is it since you've strolled up to the

look-out?'

"'About a fortnight,' said I.

"'And that's a pretty sort of watch, eh?' he continued irritably:

'--when you know that I never missed a day. . . . I tell you, Foe,

that, after this, we'll have to come to a reckoning. One or other

has to be master on this island, and it isn't going to be _you_!

"I went up the hill obediently with the binoculars. I went up

thoughtfully. . . ."

"I came back some fifty minutes later, and said, 'You're too weak to

walk; too weak even to crawl.'

"'What's the use to tell me that?' he asked, still keeping his air of

insolence. 'Drop your bedside manner, and present your report.'

"'I will,' said I. 'One of us two has to be master on this island?

So you said, and you shall be he; sole master, Farrell, with your

damned dog. . . . There's a schooner at this moment making an offing

from the anchorage where, as I've always told you, we'd been wiser to

pitch our camp. I guess she put in to water, and I've missed her

whilst I was busy curing your body. . . . Well, better late than

never! She's hauling to north'ard, well wide: so you'll understand

I'm in something of a hurry. . . . You're on the way to recovery,

Farrell, and this makes twice that I've saved your life: but as yet

you can neither walk nor crawl, and I give you joy of your bonfire,

up yonder. In five minutes I push off, alone.'

"He raised himself slowly, staring, and fell forward grovelling,

attempting vainly to catch me by the ankles.

"'You won't--you can't! Oh, for God's pity say you don't mean it!

Say it's a joke, and I'll forgive you, though it's a cruel one.'

Then, as I broke away from the door--'Have mercy on me, Foe--have

mercy and don't leave me! _I can't do without you!_'"

"These were his last words that I heard as I plunged down the sand

and pulled in the boat's shoreline handover-fist. I had just time to

jump in and thrust off before the dog came bounding after me, barking

furiously. The brute was puzzled, but knew something to be wrong.

He even swam a few strokes, but turned back as I hit at him with a

paddle. He made around the curve of the shore, still barking. But I

had sculled through the narrows of the passage before he could reach

it. I had a sight, over my shoulder, of Farrell, who had crawled to

the doorway: and with that I was through the strait and sculling for

open water, while the baffled dog raced to and fro on the spits and

ledges astern, pausing only to bark after me as though he would cough

his heart out.

"In the open water I hoisted sail, with the wind dead aft, and soon,

beyond the point, caught sight of the schooner. After running out

almost three miles, she had hauled close to the wind and was now

heading almost due north. . . . She could not miss me, and yet I had

made almost two miles before she got her head-sheets to windward and

stood by for me.

"As I drew close, a thin-faced man with a pointed beard hailed me

from her after-deck.

"'Ahoy, there! And who might _you_ be, mistaking the Pacific for

Broadway, New York?'

"'I'm from the island,' I answered.

"'What ship's boat is that you've gotten hold of?' he bawled.

"The _Two Brothers_.'

"'Lordy! I _thought_ I reckernised her. . . . Then you're old Buck

Vliet's missionary, that he marooned.' . . . Shall I go on, Roddy?"

I dropped my cigar into the ash-tray. "You may stop at that," I

answered, unable (that's the queer part of it) to lift my eyes and

look him in the face, although I knew very well that he was leaning

back in his chair, eyeing me steadily, challenging the verdict.

"Yes," said I, slowly turning the cigar-stump around in its ash,

"I'm sorry, Jack . . . but I don't want to hear any more."

"I knew you would take it so," said Jack quietly, with a sort of

sigh.

"Well," said I, "how else? Of course I know you'd had a damnable

provocation, to start with. And I'm no man to judge you, not having

been through the like or the beginnings of it. . . . You were

rescued, for here you are. That's enough. But--damn it all!--you

left the man!"

"--And the dog. While we are about it, don't let us forget the dog,"

said Jack wearily. "Shall we toss who pays the bill? Here--waiter!"

We parted under the porch-cover, in the traffic of Regent Street.

I have told you that, in our best of days, Jack and I never shook

hands, meeting or parting. It saved awkwardness now.