"Why not wait a little longer?" I argued. "The _Andromeda_ will surely
turn up again, and when she does, it will be up to us to recapture her
at all hazards. When that is done, you can tell the others, if you
still think it necessary."
"But I owe it to you, at least, to tell them now."
"Why to me, especially?"
"For Conetta's sake."
"I'll answer for Conetta."
He sat down on the biscuit box, where he had been sitting when I came
awake, and put his back against a tree.
"I'm a wholesale murderer, Dick; that is about what it comes to!" he
groaned. "I have brought the woman I'd die for down into this devil's
sea to starve her to death. I know you'll say that I meant it all the
other way about, and so I did. But in this world it is only results
that count. I'm a bloody assassin."
I tried sitting up in the hammock, and found that it could be done.
Then I tried standing, and found that this, too, was possible.
"Supposing we go and join the breakfast chase," I suggested, meaning to
interpose a saving distraction; and we did it.
This was the beginning of the fourth act--the most disheartening fourth
act--in our gladsome little Caribbean comedy which was turning out so
tragically. For a day or two we were able to make light of the sudden
change of diet, and even of its scantiness, and to extract some sort of
forced fun out of the oyster dredging and the crabbing; also, out of
our not too successful attempts to vary the menu by fishing, with bent
hat-pins for hooks, in the crystal-clear waters of the lagoon. But in a
short while the laugh came less readily, and the eyes of some--of the
younger women, at least--grew strained from much staring at dazzling,
but empty, horizons, and filled easily with tears.
Yet, on the whole, the revelation of inner egos brought about by this
face-to-face fronting of a desperate extremity was not disappointing.
Stripped now of all the maskings of make-believe, we saw one
another as we were, and much that had been hidden was found to be
heart-mellowing and even inspiring when it was dragged out into the
unsparing light of a common disaster.
The courage of the women, in particular, was the finest thing
imaginable. There were nine of them starving heroically with us, and
they were doing it with a measure of cheer that was beyond all praise.
Even Miss Mehitable refused to figure as an exception. "We must be good
losers," she said to Conetta and me one evening when we were trying to
tempt her with a bit of broiled fish without seasoning. And she did not
resent it when Alicia Van Tromp, thrusting a laughing face in at the
open tent flap, called her "a dear, dead-game old sport."
For the men there is less to be said; partly because it is a man's job
to endure hardness anyway, and partly because three of our nine were
not living up to their privileges. Ingerson was doing a little better,
to be sure; for one thing, he was no longer thrusting himself upon
Madeleine. During the night of the hurricane he had lain out in all
the fury of it, and possibly the pouring deluge had washed some of the
brute out of him. At all events, he was less obnoxious, holding himself
aloof in a half-surly way, and seeming--or so we hoped--to be fighting
a morose battle with his appetite. Once, when I spoke of his changed
attitude to Conetta, she quoted Scripture at me: "'This kind goeth not
out but by fasting and prayer.' I doubt if he is praying much, but he
is certainly fasting."
Major Terwilliger, on the other hand, grew even more contemptible as
the pinch nipped the harder. Ranging the island for edible things, as
we all did, he discovered a wild mango in bearing, and though the
fruit would have been a grateful boon to all as a change, he kept the
discovery to himself for two whole days before Billy Grisdale, who
was trailing him, made him give up and share what was left on the
tree. Holly Barclay had given up his pretense of illness and was less
exacting than before; but he was still utterly useless in any practical
way.
During this interval, in which we were maintaining night and day
watches and patrolling the beaches, Bonteck was still holding his
peace as I had counseled him to, though I could see that his load was
growing heavier day by day. As to the events of the hurricane night,
it was by agreement that no mention of the _Andromeda's_ visit had
been made to the others. This was Bonteck's idea. Since nothing had
come of the yacht's return and our adventure with the five men who
had so mysteriously disappeared, he argued that no good could result
from spreading the news; that the news couldn't well be spread without
adding explanations which I, myself, had advised him to withhold.
It was a week, or perhaps a day or so more than that, after the night
of alarms that Van Dyck took me aside and showed me a piece of light
rope such as is used for signal halliards on board ship; a piece, I
said, but I should have said two short pieces tied together in a hard
knot.
"Do you recognize it?" he asked.