MAROONED!
Although those who had gone were naturally very much missed, the trio
settled down to their lonely life a good deal more contentedly than
they had anticipated. A more ideal camping-ground could not have been
found, and, for the present, at least, they had all the necessities
of life at their elbows. One of their chief recreations was fishing.
The gear was primitive, Tempest fashioning hooks out of wire with the
aid of a file, but the sport was excellent and provided a welcome
change of diet. They were a little anxious at first about some of their
catches, Tempest doubting whether several of the brilliantly hued fish
were edible, but the Kanaka came to their rescue, picking out those
which were poisonous, and also showing how fish were cooked in native
fashion, by baking them in clay in the ground――a process which both
Dave and Tempest were forced to admit put the old-fashioned frying pan
to shame.
On one occasion a fishing expedition nearly led to disaster. While
Tempest was busy ashore the boy went off in the dory with the Kanaka,
and the sport was so good that they were tempted to remain at anchor
some distance off the shore in spite of a brisk breeze that had sprung
up. At last the weather-wise Kanaka, scenting danger, began to heave
on the anchor. Instead of coming in puffs, the wind was now steady,
dotting the surface of the water everywhere with “white horses.”
The two pulled at the oars for ten minutes until Dave, glancing over
his shoulder, realized that they were making no progress.
Only then did the gravity of the situation dawn upon him. The Kanaka
knew, but he gave no sign. The muscles under his bare arms and back
played like ripples of velvet. He seemed to be made of sinew and steel.
Toughened though Dave was by months of hard work, the strain began to
tell on him before long, but the Kanaka kept plugging away, even when
it became apparent that they were losing ground. The little island,
from which Tempest was doubtless watching the struggle anxiously, was
slowly but surely dropping farther away, and to make matters worse
darkness shut down on the dory, swiftly following the sinking of the
sun as it always does in the tropics.
They were still more or less under the shelter of the land, but the
size of the waves had increased alarmingly, and more than one white
crest toppled into the little craft. Soon they were up to their ankles
in water, about which the dead fish floated.
“Bail um water out,” said the Kanaka, pulling a little harder to make
up for the deficiency when Dave shipped his oars.
The boy seized the tin and bailed furiously, but each time he got the
dory nearly empty another curling wave hit the prow and hissed its way
along the gunwale, slopping over the edge ominously as it went.
The stolid demeanour and dogged perseverance of the Kanaka helped
Dave to keep up his spirits, although there were times when he saw no
earthly hope of their getting back to the shore, especially when one
wave, angrier than the rest, spun the tiny craft half round and left it
half full.
“Bail um,” the Kanaka urged, heading the boat round again into the
teeth of the wind.
“Bail um,” indeed, Dave did, for his very life. Had another wave hit
them at that moment the dory would have sunk, but the fates were kind,
and he got most of the water out before more came in.
When the situation seemed as desperate as it very well could be, the
moon began to show a faint gleam, in which Dave could dimly discern
the outlines of the island, and a little while later, as though tired
of toying with its victims, the wind dropped suddenly. Dave and the
Kanaka had about three miles to row to the beach, and both were utterly
exhausted by the time the dory grounded.
Tempest, who, naturally, had feared they were both blown out to sea,
lectured the pair of them in a fatherly fashion.
“And as for you, Jim,” he said, turning to the Kanaka, “I should have
thought you had more sense than to take such chances with an off-shore
wind like that blowing. If you hadn’t got back with the dory I’d have
pulled your ears off.”
Jim grinned.
“Sea she no tell me about her fool tricks,” he replied in his curious
polyglot English picked up partly from the cosmopolitan crowds in
stokeholds and partly in the Philippines.
The Kanaka was by no means an unwelcome member of the party. He had
intelligence of an unusual order for his kind and displayed great
ingenuity on occasions. What his age was neither Dave nor Tempest
could determine, and Jim certainly did not know. Probably he was in
the neighborhood of forty. He was not particularly communicative, but
piece by piece the other two extracted some of his history. His early
boyhood had been spent in the Sandwich Islands; but being by nature a
roamer, he left there and became stranded at Tahiti, far to the south
of Honolulu. He did not remain there long, however, moving from one
place to another, sometimes as a sailor, sometimes picking up a scant
subsistence as a fisherman, and sometimes living a life which was more
than half savage. His knowledge of the islands in the South Seas was
extensive and peculiar; and like Tempest, he had the trick of making
himself completely at home wherever fate happened to set him down.
“Have you ever been to Christmas Island?” Dave once asked him,
wonderingly.
“Lived there two summers,” Jim explained. “Nice place. Not many
people.”
“I should judge not,” Tempest commented. “Did you ever get to Fanning
Island?”
“Know um; not lived there,” the Kanaka said.
“Ha! Ha! The plot thickens,” said Tempest. “You know some of the other
islands round about there perhaps, eh?”
“Some,” said Jim. “Lived in Philippines since then. Lot of years ago.”
“It seems to me that Jim would be a mighty useful man to take along
with us if ever we go hunting for your treasure-ship, Dave,” said
Tempest. “He isn’t a bad old sort, and he might be able to pilot us
around a bit.”
“That’s a good idea,” the boy agreed. “I suppose we aren’t so very far
off the place now, are we?”
“No-o,” replied Tempest, “if you don’t reckon two or three thousand
miles far, and add to that that we’re marooned on an island for an
extremely indefinite period. Outside of that, you can fairly count on
the treasure being ours and make a few inquiries as to to-day’s market
price of platinum to see how much you’re worth.”
“You’re laughing now,” Dave said, “but you won’t laugh once you see me
sitting on the deck of the good ship _Hatteras_ counting up a fortune.”
“She hasn’t any deck left. It’s all been washed away.”
“How do you know? You haven’t seen it. Jim, are you coming with us to
Christmas Island?”
The Kanaka shrugged his shoulders. He thought it was some silly joke.
“I expect we’ll have to bribe him,” Tempest said. “Jim, what would you
like best of all in the world?”
The Kanaka was squatting with crossed legs on the sand, screwing his
eyes into the sun to watch the graceful flight of a gull. He was
wearing all that remained of just two garments――a shirt, the sleeves
of which he had removed by main force, and a pair of cotton trousers
rolled above his knees. Back on one of his beloved islands, where there
was no coal to shovel into greedy furnaces and where time was a word
that had almost ceased to have any meaning, he was fast reverting to
nature. He looked like a person whose highest ambition would be to lie
on his back and bask in the sunshine for ever and ever.
As the gull seemed to disappear in the burning sun Jim turned round
slowly with a lazy smile.
“More than all the other things in the world, um?” he repeated, looking
at Tempest, who nodded.
“One time,” Jim said with quaint gravity, “I sailed on a big ship round
Cape Horn to a place where all the ships come from, bigger’n Manila,
bigger’n Iquique, called Hobroken.”
“Hobroken?” Tempest queried, wrinkling his brows in perplexity. “Where
in the name of fortune is that?”
“Great big place,” declared Jim, extending his arms wide as though to
indicate the size. “Hobroken up a river.”
“You don’t happen to mean Hoboken, by any chance, do you, Jim?” Dave
asked.
“Hobroken――dat’s um, Hobroken,” the Kanaka said, hugely pleased.
Dave rolled backward and roared with laughter.
“That’s almost a part of a place called New York City, Jim,” he said at
last. “Didn’t you ever hear of New York?”
The Kanaka nodded, but looked puzzled. He saw no cause for mirth.
“New York somewhere near there,” he said.
“Well, what about Hoboken, Jim?” Tempest asked.
“One time I’d lika go to Hobroken again,” was the reply, uttered
impressively, “with two three dollars.”
“Funny thing,” said Tempest, blowing rings of smoke; “you’re not the
first person I’ve heard express the desire to go to New York with
dollars, but ‘two three’ wouldn’t carry you very far there, Jim.”
The Kanaka, who had worked wonders on that sum in Manila, was coldly
incredulous.
“What would you do when you got there?” Dave asked.
Again Jim smiled happily. The prospect was evidently one which he had
treasured in his moments of leisure while basking on various islands in
the South Seas.
“Wear clothes like um other peoples,” he said, “and ride in um
trolley-cars.”
“And stop there always?” Tempest suggested.
The Kanaka shook his head slowly, now watching another gull skim the
water.
“Just for a bit while,” he said, “then p’raps come back here or some
other place.”
“He’s got the New York fever,” Tempest laughed, “but it is the most
comical case I ever heard of. I expect New York would soon cure him,
especially when his two three dollars were gone, and then he’d begin to
pine for something really exciting again, like the fight he had with
that twelve-pound fish yesterday.”
“Never mind him, Jim,” Dave said. “You come to Christmas Island with
us, and after that I’ll take you to Hoboken, where you can ride about
in trolley-cars in a tall silk hat with feathers in it if you like.
Will you come?”
Jim shrugged his shoulders and extended his hands――a gesture with which
he always expressed agreement.
As the days drifted on, and Dave and Tempest grew to know their island
home better, they came to the conclusion that there were worse things
than being shipwrecked under such conditions. As a rule the cooking
was done by Dave, he being the accepted expert, but in the hunting and
fishing they all three joined, and they obtained much excellent sport.
Jim, with a native’s cunning in the chase, devised various methods of
catching birds as a change for their food, but their best sport was
the hunting of pigs. The little wild animals were by no means easy to
catch, and this was only done occasionally, neither Dave nor Tempest
liking the idea of killing them. Excepting the creatures with gorgeous
plumage which still made strident noises when any one approached them,
the birds were remarkably tame, no doubt because the hand of man had
never been raised against them. There were boatswain birds, wideawake
tern, puffins by the thousand, and white-cap noddys, besides others
which Tempest could not name, though the Kanaka had an unpronounceable
name for every kind. Some of the birds were so unused to fear that they
merely strutted out of the way when any one passed.
On one occasion Jim, with great pride, prepared a special dish which
was evidently a sort of islanders’ omelette. It consisted largely of
sea-birds’ eggs and tasted rather like cod-liver oil. Rather than
hurt Jim’s feelings, Tempest and the boy gulped down their share and
congratulated him on his skill, but after that they were careful not to
encourage him in a repetition of the experiment.
Dave’s greatest joy was a pig-hunt. The little wild animals were by no
means easy to catch, but they formed a delicious dish which rewarded
the hunters for their trouble. The chief difficulty in capturing them
was the natural shelter they sought in the thick, tangled undergrowth.
Fully half the island’s surface was covered with impenetrable bush,
intertwined with a fearsome form of cactus whose leaves were like saws.
It was utterly impossible to force an entry into this natural fortress,
through which the small hogs had beaten innumerable run-ways but little
wider than their own bodies. Once a pig got into the maze of run-ways
it was as safe as though in the heart of a jungle, but occasionally
the hunters were able to surprise their quarry in some of the isolated
clumps of bushes. In this the Kanaka’s assistance proved of the utmost
value. Like most other men who have lived in a semi-wild state, his
hearing was extraordinarily acute.
“I’ll get um li’le pig,” he said once when they had tried several times
to make a capture and failed utterly.
“What are you going to do?” asked Tempest. “Make a noise like a sweet
potato and bang ’em on the head while they’re standing still trying to
scent it?”
Jim did not deign to make any reply, but occupied himself during the
greater part of the next few days in making a number of strong nets
from twine, each about five feet square, with small lengths of twine
attached to the corners. While this operation was in progress the other
two, considerably mystified, submitted the Kanaka to good natured
joking.
“I know,” said Dave, “he’s going to fish for them.”
“Great,” commented Tempest. “I hear that pig fishing is one of the
chief sports in the Sandwich Islands. What do you use for bait, Jim?”
Jim, however, worked on stolidly, finally surveying the crude nets he
had constructed, with much satisfaction.
“Now I show you how to catch um li’le pig,” he observed with a grim
smile.
With an ax he cut three formidable looking clubs from a tree, and then
leading the way to a clump of bushes some distance from their camp he
tied the nets loosely across the entrances to the various runways.
“Lie still,” he ordered. “Bimeby we hear him say ‘grump-grump’ maybe
p’raps.”
Each holding one of the murderous clubs, they squatted on the ground.
There seemed to be perfect stillness, such as one can find on an isle
in the Pacific on a calm day. Not even the soft soothing sound of a
ripple on the sea shore reached them. Once or twice the melancholy
call of a distant gull reached their ears, otherwise they were in a
soundless world.
Suddenly the Kanaka raised a warning finger. The porker had betrayed
its presence to him, though neither of the other two had detected it.
He motioned Tempest and Dave to the place where the animal was most
likely to break away. Once he saw they were ready at their stations he
went round to the other side of the bushes and set up an unearthly din
that was calculated to drive any self-respecting hog out of its senses.
Yelling himself hoarse, and beating on the tangled branches like a
mad thing with his club, he kept up a running fire of warning to the
others, sometimes lapsing into a heathenish tongue in his excitement.
At last, without the slightest warning, an alarmed pig, squealing as
though a pack of hounds were at its trotters, bolted at full gallop.
Full tilt it went at a net near which the boy and his companion were
waiting in breathless suspense. The net came away from its moorings,
as Jim had intended it to, with one or more of the porker’s legs
hopelessly entangled in the meshes; and there ascended heavenwards
a squealing the like of which had probably never been heard on the
island. Over and over the pig rolled, struggling frantically to free
itself. Both Dave and Tempest were rushing towards it, with clubs
upraised, when confusion was added to the situation by another pig
bolting into a second net.
Dave spun round, leaving Tempest to deal with the first animal, and
knocked his captive out with a lucky blow just as the Kanaka came
rushing round the edge of the bushes.
“Hoo-la! hoo-la!” Jim yelled in ecstasy; and rather than take any
chances he despatched the little hog quickly.
Tempest, meanwhile, was in difficulties. Before he could reach his pig
it had extricated all but one foot from the net, and was careering
madly away, dragging the net with it. Tempest tore after the quarry
which was making instinctively for a run-way in the main jungle, but
after he had run a dozen yards he caught his foot in the root of a
tree. By the time he had picked himself up again the porker had bolted
like a rabbit up the tunnel, shedding the net at the entrance as it
went.
He went back to the others and offered his congratulations to the boy.
“That’s one to you, Dave,” he said. “He looks a nice young one, too. If
I’m any judge he’d make a supper for the gods. I don’t believe I could
stop a tortoise in a passage.”
“Never mind,” Dave said. “It will be your turn next time, and anyway
we couldn’t eat two pigs at once, even if we are starving shipwrecked
mariners with only the stores off one ship to keep us alive.”
The prize was conveyed back to the camp, where a heated discussion took
place as to how it should be cooked. Tempest, who confessed he knew
nothing about such matters, argued that it should be done one way.
Dave, whose experience in the galley gave his word a certain degree
of authority, protested that it should be cooked another way. Jim,
on the other hand, declared it should be baked whole, in the ground,
native fashion; and finally the other two gave in to him. They watched
the process with great interest, and when it was ready to eat they
unanimously decided that whatever Jim’s omelettes were like, no Fifth
Avenue chef had anything on the Kanaka when it came to roast pork.
On the morning following the pig hunt Tempest announced that, while
the others were out fishing, he was off on a little exploration tour.
Although the island was so small, there were many parts of it which
they had not yet reached. In places it was difficult to get down to the
beach, and at the northern end there were rugged peaks in a trackless
district, where one had to climb laboriously.
Dave and the Kanaka returned to the shore soon after noon, and were
surprised when Tempest did not arrive for the midday meal. Not until
the swift setting of the sun, however, did Dave grow anxious, and then
he began to realize that something untoward must have happened, for
Tempest had taken no food with him and the boy could think of no reason
why his friend should remain away until after dark.
He and Jim ascended the nearest hill and shouted continually, but no
reply came from the silent jungle nor beyond.
“Come on, let’s get some lanterns,” said the boy at length. “I’m going
to make a search.”
Leaving a light burning at the camp, for there was no moon and the
stars were almost obscured by clouds, they set out in the darkness,
Dave feeling distinctly uneasy. He racked his brain to think of some
plausible explanation of Tempest’s failure to return. Until after
midnight the two searched and called in vain. Then, with a heavy
heart, the boy returned to the camp, to toss about uneasily, fully
dressed, until dawn.
Tempest had disappeared, and Dave was alone now, but for the
half-savage Kanaka. The boy, however, did not think of his own
position. It was the thought of his friend which kept him awake.