ON THE ROCAS REEF.
The morning light showed several articles on the shore which had been
washed up from the wreck. Some tins of biscuits were likely to be very
useful, and a box of carpenter's tools, most of them sadly rusted, was
welcomed eagerly; but nothing else was found, and the day might have
begun with murmurs of discontent but for a discovery made by Mackay,
which restored satisfaction to the men's faces.
Close by his head in the log hut where he had spent the night, he found
a sort of cupboard--something like a rabbit-hutch. And this cupboard
contained--oh, joyful discovery!--not gold or gems, nor any such useless
glittering lumber, but something far more precious to these weary
mariners--two bottles of brandy and a chest of tea. Perhaps a former
sojourner on the island had placed them in that hiding-place, thinking
compassionately of the voyagers who might in some future day find
themselves in bitter need upon the Rocas Reef. "Whoever it was as left
'em here," said Pollard, "got off safe again, you may depend on it; and
so shall we." Percival said nothing: he had been thinking that perhaps
the former owner of this buried treasure had died upon the island. He
hoped that they would not find his grave.
He measured out some tea for the morning's meal, but decided that
neither tea nor spirits should be used, except on special occasions or
in cases of illness. The men accepted his decision as a reasonable one;
they were all well-disposed and tractable on the whole. Percival was
amazed to find them so easy to manage. But they were more depressed that
morning at the thought of their lost comrades, their wrecked ship, and
the prospect of passing an indefinite time upon the coral-reef, than
they had been on the previous day. It was a relief when they were busy
at their respective tasks; and Percival found an odd kind of pleasure in
all sorts of hard and unusual work; in breaking up rotten planks, for
instance; in extracting old nails painfully and laboriously from them
for future use; and in tramping to and fro between the sea-shore and the
log hut, carrying the driftwood deposited on the sand to a more
convenient resting-place. They had planned to build another hut, as the
existing structure was both small and frail; and Percival laboured at
his work like a giant. In the hot time of the day, however, he was glad
to do as the others did; to throw down his tools, such as they were, and
creep into the shadow of the log hut. The heat was very great; and the
men were beginning to suffer from the bites of venomous ants which
infested the island. In short, as Percival said to himself, the Rocas
Reef was about as little like Robinson Crusoe's island as it could
possibly be. Life would be greatly ameliorated if goats and parrots
could be found amongst the rocks; shell-fish and sea-fowl were a poor
exchange for them; and an island that was "desert" in reality as well as
in name, was a decidedly prosaic place on which to spend a few days, or
weeks, or months. Of course he made none of these remarks in public; he
contented himself with humming in an undertone the words of Alexander
Selkirk, as interpreted by Cowper:--
"I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute--"
a quotation which brought a meaning smile to Mackay's face, whereupon
Percival laughed and checked himself.
"How are you to-day?" he said, addressing the steerage passenger with
some show of good-humoured interest. Mackay was lying on the sand,
propped up against the wall of the hut, and Percival was breaking his
nails over an obstinate screw which was deeply embedded in a thick piece
of wood.
"Better, thanks." The voice was curiously hoarse and gruff.
"Jackson isn't a bad surgeon, I fancy."
"Not at all."
"Lucky for you that he was saved."
"I owe my life twice to him and once to you."
"I hope you think it's something to be grateful for," said Percival,
carelessly. "You've had some escapes to tell your friends about when you
get home."
Mackay turned aside his head. "I have no friends to tell," he said,
shortly.
"Ah! more's the pity. Well, no doubt you will make some in
Pernambuco--when you get there."
"Do you think we ever shall get there?"
Percival shot a rather displeased glance at him. "Don't go talking like
that before the men," he said.
"I am not talking before the men," rejoined the steerage passenger, with
a smile: "I am talking to you, Mr. Heron. And I repeat my question--Do
you think we shall ever get to Pernambuco?"
"Yes," said Percival, stoutly. "A ship will see our signal and call for
us."
"It's a very small flag," said Mackay, in a significant tone.
"Good Heavens!" burst out Percival, with the first departure from his
good-humoured tone that Mackay had heard from him: "why do you take the
trouble to put that side of the question to me? Don't you think I see it
for myself? There is a chance, if it is only a small one; and I'm not
going to give up hope--yet."
Then he walked away, as if he refused to discuss the subject any longer.
Mackay looked at the sea and sighed; he was sorry that he had provoked
Mr. Heron's wrath by his question. But he found afterwards that it
contributed to form a kind of silent understanding between him and
Percival. It was a sort of relief to both of them, occasionally to
exchange short, sharp sentences of doubt or discouragement, which
neither of them breathed in the ear of the others. Percival divined
quickly enough, that the steerage passenger was not a man of Thomas
Jackson's class. As the hoarseness left his voice, and the disfiguring
redness disappeared from his face, Percival distinguished signs of
refinement and culture which he wondered at himself for not perceiving
earlier. But there was nothing remarkable in his having made a mistake
about Mackay's station in life. The man had come on board the _Arizona_
in a state of wretched suffering: his face had been scorched, his hair
and beard singed, his clothes, as well as his person, blackened by dust
and smoke. Then his clothes were those of a working-man, and his speech
had been rendered harsh to the ear from the hoarseness of his voice. But
he gradually regained his strength as he lay in the fresh air and the
sunshine, and returning health gave back to him the quiet energy and
cheerfulness to which Jackson had borne testimony. He was a great
favourite with the men, who, in their rough way, made a sort of pet of
him, and brought him offerings of the daintiest food that they could
find. And his hands were not idle. He wove baskets and plaited hats of
cocoa-nut fibre with his long white fingers, which were very unlike
those of the working-man that he professed to be. Percival Heron was
often struck by the appearance of that hand. It was one of unusual
beauty--the sort of hand that Titian or Vandyke loved to draw: long,
finely-shaped, full of quiet power, and fuller, perhaps, of a subtle
sort of refinement, which seems to express itself in the form of
tapering fingers with filbert nails and a well-turned wrist. It was not
the hand of a working-man, not even of a skilled artizan, whose hand is
often delicately sensitive: it was a gentleman's hand, and as such it
piqued Percival's curiosity. But Mackay was of a reserved disposition,
and did not offer any information about himself.
One day when rain was falling in sheets and torrents, as it did
sometimes upon the Rocas Reef, Percival turned into the log hut for
shelter. Mackay was there, too; his leg had been so painful that he had
not left the rude bed, which his comrades had made for him, even to be
carried out into the fresh air and sunshine, for two or three days.
Percival noticed the look of pain in the languid eyes, and had, for a
moment, a fancy that he had seen this man before. But the burns on his
face, the handkerchief tied round his head to conceal a wound on the
temple, and the tangled brown beard and moustache, made it difficult to
seize hold of a possible likeness.
Percival threw himself on the ground with a half-sigh, and crossed his
arms behind his head.
"Is anything the matter?" asked Mackay.
Percival noticed that he never addressed him as "Sir" or "Mr. Heron,"
unless the other men were present.
"Jackson's ill," said Percival, curtly.
Mackay started and turned on his elbow.
"Ill?"
"Fever, I'm afraid. Not bad; just a touch of it. He's in the other hut."
"I'm sorry for that," said Mackay, lying down again.
"So am I. He is the steadiest man among them. How the rain pours!
Pollard is sitting with him."
There was a little silence, after which Percival spoke again.
"Are you keeping count of the days? How long is it since we landed?"
"Sixteen days."
"Is that all? I thought it had been longer."
"You were anxious to get to your journey's end, I suppose," said the
steerage passenger, after a little hesitation.
"Aren't we all anxious? Do we want to stay here for ever?" And then
there was another pause, which ended by Percival's saying, in a tone of
subdued irritation: "There are few of our party that have the same
reasons that I have for wishing myself on the way back to England."
"You are not going to stay in South America, then?"
"Not I. There is someone I want to find; that's all."
"A man?"
"Yes, a man. I thought that he had sailed in the _Falcon_; but I suppose
I was mistaken."
"And if you don't find him?"
"I must hunt the world over until I do. I won't go back to England
without him, if he's alive."
"Friend or enemy?" said Mackay, fixing his eyes on Percival's face with
a look of interest. At any other time Percival might have resented the
question: here, in the log hut, with a tempest roaring and the rain
streaming outside, and the great stormy sea as a barrier between the
dwellers on the island and the rest of the civilised world, such
questions and answers seemed natural enough.
"Enemy," said Percival, sharply. It was evident that some hidden sense
of wrong had sprung suddenly to the light, and perhaps amazed him by its
strength, for he began immediately to explain away his answer. "Hum! not
that exactly. But not a friend."
"And you want to do him an injury!" said Mackay, with grave
consideration.
"No, I don't," said Percival, angrily, as if replying to a suggestion
that had been made a thousand times before, and flinging out his arm
with a reckless, agitated gesture. "I want to do him a service--confound
him!"
There was a silence. Percival lay with his outstretched hand clenched
and his eyes fixed gloomily on the opposite wall: Mackay turned away his
head. Presently, however, he spoke in a low but distinct tone.
"What is the service you propose doing me, Mr. Heron?"
"Doing you? Good Heavens! You! What do you mean?"
"I suppose that my face is a good deal disfigured at present," said the
steerage passenger, passing his hand lightly over his thick, brown
beard; "but when it is better, you will probably recognise me easily
enough. But, perhaps, I am mistaken. I thought for a moment that you
were in search of a man called Stretton, who was formerly a tutor to
your step-brothers."
Percival was standing erect by this time in the middle of the floor. His
hands were thrust into his pockets: his deep chest heaved: the bronzed
pallor of his face had turned to a dusky red. He did not answer the
words spoken to him; but after a few seconds of silence, in which the
eyes of the two men met and told each other a good deal, he strode to
the doorway, pushed aside the plank which served for a door, and went
out into the storm. He did not feel the rain beating upon his head: he
did not hear the thunder, nor see the forked lightning that played
without intermission in the darkened sky; he was conscious only of the
intolerable fact that he was shut up in a narrow corner of the earth, in
daily, almost hourly, companionship with the one man for whom he felt
something not unlike fierce hatred. And in spite of his resolution to
act generously for Elizabeth's sake, the hatred flamed up again when he
found himself so suddenly thrust, as it were, into Brian Luttrell's
presence.
When he had walked for some time and got thoroughly wet through, it
occurred to him that he was acting more like a child than a grown man;
and he turned his face as impetuously towards the huts as he had lately
turned his back upon them. He found plenty to do when the rain ceased.
The fire had for the first time gone out, and the patience of Jackson
could not now be taxed, because he was lying on his back in the stupor
of fever. Percival set one of the men to work with two sticks; but the
wood was nearly all damp, and it was a weary business, even when two dry
morsels were found, to get them to light. However, it was better than
having nothing to do. Want of employment was one of their chief trials.
The men could not always be catching fish and snaring birds. They were
thinking of building a small boat; but Jackson's illness deprived them
of the help of one who had more practical knowledge of such matters than
any of the others, and threw a damp over their spirits as well.
Jackson's illness seemed to give Percival a pretext for absenting
himself from the hut in which the so-called Mackay lay. He had, just at
first, an invincible repugnance to meeting him again; he could not make
up his mind how Brian Luttrell would expect to be treated, and he was
almost morbidly sensitive about the mistake that he had made respecting
"the steerage passenger." At night he stayed with Jackson, and sent the
other men to sleep in Mackay's hut. But in the morning an absolute
necessity arose for him to speak to his enemy.
Jackson was sensible, though extremely weak, when the daylight came: and
his first remark was an anxious one concerning the state of his
comrade's broken leg. "Will you look after it a bit, sir?" he said,
wistfully, to Heron.
"I'll do my best. Don't bother yourself," said Percival, cheerfully. And
accordingly he presented himself at an early hour in the other
sleeping-place, and addressed Brian in a very matter of fact tone.
"Your leg must be seen to this morning. I shall make a poor substitute
for Jackson, I'm afraid; but I think I shall do it better than Pollard
or Fenwick."
"I've no doubt of that," said the man with the brown beard and bright,
quick eyes. "Thank you."
And that was all that passed between them.
It was wonderful to see the determined, unsparing way in which Percival
worked that day. His energy never flagged. He was a little less
good-tempered than usual; the upright black line in his forehead was
very marked, and his utterances were not always amiable. But he
succeeded in his object; he made himself so thoroughly tired that he
slept as soon as his head touched his hard pillow, and did not wake
until the sun was high in the heaven. The men showed a good deal of
consideration for him. Fenwick watched by the sick man, and Pollard and
Barry bestirred themselves to get ready the morning meal, and to attend
to the wants of their two helpless companions.
It was not until evening that Brian found an opportunity to say to
Percival:--
"What did you want to find me for?"
"Can't you let the matter rest until we are off this ---- island?" said
Percival, losing control of that hidden fierceness for a moment.
And Brian answered rather coldly:--"As you please."
Percival waited awhile, and then said, more deliberately:--
"I'll tell you before long. There is no hurry, you see"--with a sort of
grim humour--"there is no post to catch, no homeward-bound mail steamer
in the harbour. We cannot give each other the slip now."
"Do you mean that I gave you the slip?" said Brian, to whom Percival's
tone was charged with offence.
"I mean that Brian Luttrell would not have been allowed to leave England
quite so easily as Mr. Stretton was. But I won't discuss it just now.
You'll excuse my observing that I think I would drop the 'Mackay' if I
were you. It will hurt nobody here if you are called Luttrell; and--I
hate disguises."
"The name Luttrell is as much a disguise as any other," said Brian,
shortly. "But you may use it if you choose."
He was hardly prepared, however, for the round eyes with which the lad
Barry regarded him when he next entered the log hut, nor for the awkward
way in which he gave a bashful smile and pulled the front lock of his
hair when Brian spoke to him.
"What are you doing that for?" he said, quickly.
"Well, sir, it's Mr. Heron's orders," said Barry.
"What orders?"
"That we're to remember you're a gentleman, sir. Gone steerage in a bit
of a freak; but now you've told him you'd prefer to be called by your
proper name. Mr. Luttrell, that is."
"I'm no more a gentleman than you are," said Brian, abruptly. "Call me
Mackay at once as you used to do."
Barry shook his head with a knowing look. "Daren't sir. Mr. Heron is a
gentleman that will have his own way. And he said you had a big estate
in Scotland, sir; and lots of money."
"What other tales did he tell you?" said Brian, throwing back his head
restlessly.
"Well, I don't know, sir. Only he told us that we'd better nurse you up
as well as we could before we left the island, and that there was one at
home as would give money to see you alive and well. A lady, I think he
meant."
"What insane folly!" muttered Brian to himself. "Look here, Barry," he
added aloud, "Mr. Heron was making jokes at your expense and mine. He
meant nothing of the kind; I haven't a penny in the world, and I'm on
the way to the Brazils to earn my living as a working-man. Now do you
understand?"
Barry retired, silenced but unconvinced. And the next time that Brian
saw Percival alone, he said to him drily:--
"I would rather make my own romances about my future life, if it's all
the same to you."
"Eh? What? What do you mean?"
"Don't tell these poor fellows that I have property in Scotland, please.
It is not the case."
"Oh, that's what you're making a fuss about. But I can't help it," said
Percival, shrugging his shoulders. "If you are Brian Luttrell, as Vasari
swears you are--swearing it to his own detriment, too, which inclines me
to believe that it is true--the Strathleckie estate is yours."
"You can't prove that I am Brian Luttrell."
"But I might prove--when we get back to Scotland--that you bore the name
of Brian Luttrell for three or four-and-twenty years of your life."
"I am not going back to Scotland," said the young man, looking steadily
and attentively at Percival's troubled countenance.
"Yes, you are. I promised that you should come back, and you must not
make me break my word."
"Whom did you promise?"
"I promised Elizabeth."
And then the two men felt that the conversation had better cease.
Percival walked rapidly away, while Brian, who could not walk anywhere,
lay flat on his back and listened, with dreamy eyes, to the long
monotonous rise and fall of the waves upon the shore.