A moment of awful silence followed the destructive work of the boulder.
Even the wind seemed to pause in its flight and the sea in its surging
to behold what man would do in the face of this disaster.
Rowgowskii and the two coolies lay in a heap on a mass of loosened earth
on which they had been swept down the hill in the wake of the rock.
Emily had risen to her feet where Lavelle had left her seated. Her gaze
was fixed on him. He stood with his back to her and facing the boat.
Chang stood to the eastward of her, motionless. His gaze, too, was fixed
on the master.
Lavelle was the first to move. A stride carried him to the boat. A
glance revealed to him a hole in the starboard bilge through which he
might have crawled without difficulty, big man though he was. Four of
the ribs were smashed. The keel was shattered for half its length. Any
but the stoutest heart must have admitted the craft to be an
irreparable, hopeless wreck.
With a weird cry of insensate rage Chang, who had run to Lavelle's side,
turned away toward Rowgowskii and the coolies. No one who saw him and
the manner in which he carried his long knife could have doubted but
that the serang meant to visit instant death upon the mutineers. His
gigantic form trembled with the passionate intention of the slayer.
Rowgowskii and the coolies stood in a paralysis of fear.
A word from Lavelle stopped the serang.
"More better kill! Now!" cried the giant to his master and with a
characterization of the mutineers that was blood-chilling in its
anathema.
"Give me that knife," ordered Lavelle quietly. Meeting his gaze and
holding it for a moment Chang thrust the blade into Lavelle's hand. He
was conquered, but the glow of an heroic splendor was upon him.
"Kill me--kill Chang, your servant, master."
There was a bare note of defiance in the Chinaman's voice. He dropped
his hands at his sides in token of submission and bent his head for the
blow he invited.
"I will kill when I choose to kill. Go. Clear out this boat," said
Lavelle.
"You are master," answered the serang, and he turned to summon the
mutineers.
Rowgowskii and the coolies under Chang's driving began a rapid
transportation of all of the boat's provisions and equipment to a point
halfway up the hillside indicated by Lavelle. The master knew that this
was no time for punishment. He must have every ounce of strength he
could command.
Straightening up from a contemplation of the hole in the boat, his brain
busy with plans of repair, he looked toward the sea.
"I'm not beaten unless you drown me in the next three hours," he flung
in a mutter at the growling deep.
Turning away, he found Emily Granville beside him. She was looking up at
him through a mist of tears. Her own misery of body and soul had been
swept away in the instant she had heard the boulder go crunching through
the boat's thin skin. She could think only of what this cruel stab of
fate must mean to the man captaining the handful of life which he had
been chosen to save. Her capacity to think of another and not of herself
in this common crisis was a sign of growth which would have pleased her
if it had been possible to pause in self-analysis.
And this man, meeting her pitying eyes, smiled at her quizzically! If he
had confronted her with a hopeless curse she would not have been
surprised. Now she could but gasp in amazement. The comforting words
which she had planned to speak would not lend themselves to utterance.
In this second she realized that thus would he meet death--undaunted;
smiling.
"Fate is treating you--very unkindly, Miss Granville," said he. He spoke
in his usual low tone.
"Us," she corrected him, resenting, as she had come to do all that day,
his insistence upon classifying her apart.
"Us, then," he answered with a nod.
"Does this mean----Is this the end?" she asked calmly, and she drew his
eyes to the hole in the boat. His answer was a question.
"Do you feel that it is the end?"
"No," the woman answered, searching his face and reading there a message
of infinite faith.
Yet even as she spoke the island was a-quiver under the increasing force
of the sea's assaults. Nor had it been still at any time since they had
put foot on it.
"No man may tell the life of a floating island," Lavelle explained. "In
weather like this it is very--very short----"
"Can you repair this boat? Do you intend to mend this hole?"
Her eyes opened in wonderment, for he nodded affirmatively.
"Remember what Browning said: 'To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall.
And, baffled, get up and begin again----'"
"All clear, master!" called Chang, interrupting Lavelle and leaping out
of the boat with the mast and oars in his arms.
Lavelle summoned all hands. They heaved the boat over on its undamaged
side. With a strength which peril had trebled, they dragged it out of
the miry, jelly-like ground on which it lay and brought it to a ledge on
the hill. Man's work though it was, Emily Granville gave her hands to
it, with a strange new will, heaving and pulling beside Lavelle until he
called that the task was done. And the while she kept repeating to
herself, "'To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall. And, baffled, get up
and begin again.'"
Just as the boat was laid on the ledge the sun dropped behind the
horizon.
Rowgowskii had seen some wood while he and the coolies had been on the
hilltop. Of his own volition he climbed after it and brought down
sufficient to make a fire. There was driftwood also in the bed of the
creek or gully and Chang sent the coolies to gather it.
As the fire sprang up Lavelle worked the faster where he ripped out the
boat's after air tank. With its metal he planned to cover the hole.
No thought of food nor drink had he, though he ordered Chang to serve
rations to the rest. Emily carried a cracker and a cup of water to him,
but he would not pause.
"Give me plenty of light; that's all," he answered her urging. "Light to
work by----"
A racking shudder passed through the island. It flung Emily headlong.
The earth on which Lavelle knelt slid from under him. The island's
middle, following the base line of the hill, rose like a monster cat
arching its spine and hurled him backward, stunned, breathless,
helpless.
There was a breath-long silence. It ended with a chorus of wild cries.
Then, the great earth mass fell with a thunderous crash, rending the
island in twain. The triumphant sea leaped out of the breach it had made
and swept the crumbling shore with a mighty wave.