"How will it be with you after the veneer glue lets go?"
"Oh, me?--I'm just a crude little brute, anyway. I don't just see how
I _could_ change for the worse. I'm saying this because I know it is
what you are thinking. But there's one comfort. Billy won't see any
difference in me, no matter what I do. And Billy himself won't change;
he's too obvious."
We prolonged our watch until nearly noon, when the professor and his
wife came out to relieve us. It may say itself that during our two
hours or more of horizon-searching we saw no signs of a rescue vessel.
In the wide three-quarters of a circle visible from the western point
of the island--a point where I had spent many weary hours after the
shipwreck of the _Mary Jane_--there had been only the calm expanse of
sea and sky with nothing to break the monotony.
At the camp under the palms we found things settling into some sort of
routine. A fire was going in the rude fire place built of rough chunks
of the coral, and Mrs. Van Tromp and her athletic eldest were cooking
dinner. The major and Holly Barclay were still loafing on the beach,
both of them smoking as though we had a Tampa cigar factory to draw
upon instead of a strictly limited supply of Van Dyck's "perfectos."
Madeleine and Beatrice Van Tromp, working together, were trying to
fashion a basket out of stripped palm fronds--though just what purpose
a basket would serve I couldn't imagine.
Billy Grisdale, suddenly become useful, was gathering bits of wood
for the cooking fire. Jack Grey, who, besides being a rising young
attorney, had a flair for building things, was adding to the thatch
of the dunnage shelter, and Annette was helping him. Ingerson was
invisible, and so was Van Dyck. Miss Mehitable, whose health may or
may not have been all that it should be, was lying in her hammock, and
Conetta, ever dutiful, was fanning her with a broad palmetto leaf.
Among the workers it was Jerry Dupuyster who appeared in the most
original rôle. In the nattiest of one-piece bathing suits--supplied, as
I made no doubt, out of the luggage of one of the Van Tromp girls--he
had swum the lagoon to the wreck of the _Mary Jane_, where he now
appeared, a symphony in cerise stripes and bare legs, hacking manfully
at the wreck with a hand-axe to the end that we might increase our
scanty stock of firewood.
After the noon meal, at which Van Dyck appeared just as we were sitting
down to it, Jerry and I were told off to go on sentry duty at the
eastern end of the island, where we were to establish another distress
signal.
"Us for the sentry-go, old chappie," said Jerry cheerfully, and
together we took the beach trail for our post.
Reaching the eastern extremity of things after a walk of perhaps
three-quarters of a mile along the beach, we presently had an
improvised flag flying from a lopped tree, and after we had lighted a
smoke smudge there was nothing more to do but to watch for the sail
which I, for one, did not expect to see.
"Jolly rum old go, what?" said Jerry, casting himself full length upon
the sand when our labors were ended. "Shouldn't mind it so much, don't
y' know, if we didn't have the women along. Smoke?" and he handed me
his tobacco bag.
"The women, and one or two others," I qualified, filling my pipe.
"Haw, yes: Hob Ingerson, for one. Actin' like a bally cad, Ingerson is.
Needs to have some chappie give him a wallop or so, what?"
"Yes; and when it comes to the show-down, I rather hope I'll be the
'chappie'," I said.
"Not if I see him first," Jerry cut in, and this, indeed, was a new
development.
"You're under weight, Jerry; you wouldn't make two bites for Ingerson
if you should try to mix it with him."
"Eh, what?" exclaimed the transformed--or transforming--one, sitting
up suddenly. "If he doesn't stop his dashed swearin' before the women,
I'll take him on; believe me, I will, old dear."
"What makes you think you'd last out the first half of the first round
with a big bully like Ingerson?" I asked, grinning at him.
"Number of little things, old top; this, for one," and he opened his
shirt to show me something that looked like a ten-dollar gold piece
suspended by a silken cord around his neck.
"And what might that be?" I inquired, mildly curious.
He pulled the string off over his head and handed me the gold disk. It
proved to be a medal, struck by some gentlemen's boxing club of London,
testifying to the facts that Mr. Gerald Dupuyster was a member in good
standing, and that he had won the medal by reason of his being the
top-notcher in the club's series of light-weight matches.
"I never would have suspected it of you, Jerry," I commented, returning
the medal. "In fact, I should have said you were the last person on
earth to go in for the manly art of self-defense. What made you?"
"Oh, I say!--all the chappies with any red blood in 'em go in for it
over there, y' know. Jolly good sport, too; what?"
"Here's to you, if you conclude to try it on with Ingerson," I laughed.
"I'll be your towel-holder. But Ingerson isn't the only one we could do
without on this right little tight little island of ours, Jerry."
"You're dashed right. There's Barclay, for another."
"Yes; and----"
"Say it, old dear. Don't I know that the old uncle is cuttin' up rusty?
Grousing because he can't sit in an easy-chair and swig toddies no end!
Makes me jolly well ashamed, he does."
Here was another astonishing revelation. From what I had seen on
shipboard--from what we had all seen--there had been ample grounds for
the supposition that Jerry was a mere pawn in any game his uncle might
choose to play. But now there seemed to be quite a different Jerry
lying just under the cracking crust of the conventions. The discovery
took a bit of the bitterness out of my soul. If I couldn't have Conetta
for myself, it was a distinct comfort to know that she wasn't going
to draw a complete blank in the great lottery. Under all of Jerry's
Anglomaniacal fripperies there was apparently a man.
At the refilling of his pipe this changed, or changing, Jerry spoke of
my former immurement on the island, saying that Conetta had told him
a bit about it, and asking if I wouldn't tell him a bit more. So once
again I told the story of the ill-fated voyage of the _Mary Jane_ and
its near-tragic sequel for six poor castaways.
"Rummy old go, that," he commented, when the tale was told. "Dashed
easy to see how a chap might lose out on all the little decencies when
the belly-pinch takes hold. Are we likely to come a cropper into that
ditch before some bally old tub turns up to take us off?"
"I'm hoping not," I said.
He was silent for a time, and when he spoke again it was to say: "We've
eighteen mouths to fill, old dear; how long can we fill 'em out of the
blooming tins; eh? what?"
I shook my head. "Van Dyck and I checked the provisions over this
morning while we were storing them. We shall do well enough for two or
three weeks; maybe longer, if we're careful not to waste any of the
food."
At this my fellow watcher swore roundly in good, plain American.
"Saw Holly Barclay turn up his damned nose and pitch his ship's
biscuits into the lagoon this morning," he explained. "Said something
about their not bein' fit for a human being to eat, by Jove!"
"He'll sing another tune if we have to come down to cocoanuts and
sea worms," I prophesied. Even this early in the game it was plainly
evident that Barclay, the major, and Hobart Ingerson were going to be
our sorest afflictions when the pinch should come.
In such fashion we wore out the afternoon, blinding our eyes, as I had
many times blinded mine in other days, with fruitless searchings of the
unresponsive waste of waters. At dusk we built up the signal fire to
make it last as long as possible and returned to the camp at the other
end of the island. When we came in sight of it, Mrs. Van Tromp and two
of her girls were putting the supper for the eighteen of us on a clean
tarpaulin spread upon the beach. Van Dyck met us just before we joined
the others.
"Nothing?" he queried.
"Nothing," we answered.
And the evening and the morning were the first day.