THE GODDESS
The pull was a long one, even in the cool of the night. I knew my way,
by the stars, if necessary, but the moonlight made my steering easy.
For half an hour the goddess was silent, sighing now and again, and
crying a bit, as if deliverance had broken down some barrier to all her
emotions, letting floods of pent up feelings free at once.
“It doesn’t seem possible,” she told me finally.
“What doesn’t?” said I, though I knew very well what she meant.
“This boat,” she answered, “and you—a man—in this terrible place. It
doesn’t seem really true that I have escaped from those awful creatures;
I didn’t believe I should ever get away. Oh, how did you do it?”
“Perhaps you’d better tell me first how you got there,” I made answer.
“How long have you been in the place?”
“I—don’t know,” she faltered. “It must be months and months. I lost all
account, but it seems like an age. I didn’t seem to care about the
dates, there have been such lots of awful things to think of all the
while. What month is it now?”
“Lord bless you, that’s more than I know,” I admitted shamelessly. “I
couldn’t keep track; things have been too hot. I should say, though,
it’s probably getting along toward summer.”
Although she was deeply concerned with herself and all the troubles
which for long she had endured, she realised that I too had been lost in
this land of jungle. She made me tell my story first. I boiled it down
to the bones, being anxious to hear how it was she came to be there.
This she told me, brokenly, before we landed from the boat.
She was a cosmopolitan sort of a girl, born and raised in Australia,
educated partially in England and partially in Massachusetts. Her father
was an Englishman, a scientist, her mother American, of fine old Puritan
stock. This mother had died in Sydney. The father and daughter having
spent much of their time together, had grown to be great companions. She
had long been interested in all his work, in which she had learned to be
of great assistance. Thus it came about that when he determined to visit
certain of the smaller Banyac Islands, for the purpose of collecting
flora and fauna for preservation, she accompanied him as a matter of
course. From a private steam yacht, placed at the professor’s disposal,
and also from the coast settlements, the two had made daily excursions,
in a ship’s yawl in which they could make a careful survey of all the
shore.
Engaged in their work, one warm afternoon, they had moored the yawl
among a lot of weed-covered rocks. This had been accomplished by
securing the painter to one of the oars and wedging this oar down
between a pair of boulders. The tide was ebbing when they landed.
In a short time her father had secured a medium-sized anaconda, which
having recently fed, was dull and half asleep. This serpent he had given
to his daughter, who carried it back to the boat and nailed it in a box
provided for any such emergency. Feeling slightly fatigued and
unenthusiastic she had then sat down in the yawl, raised her sun-shade
and taken out a book to read.
She described the soporific effect of the heat and the lapping of the
water about the boat, which had begun soon to affect her senses when she
had settled down to rest. Before she knew it she had gone fast asleep.
She believed that finally the tide had risen and floated the oar from
between the rocks. Then doubtless a breeze had sprung up and the boat
had been drifted away.
“Anyway I know I must have slept for hours.” she said, “but when I did
wake up—oh dear! The sky was black, and I couldn’t see any island, or
anything but water, and a terrible storm was coming, and the darkness
was all about me, and then—well, it was simply the awfullest wind in the
world that commenced to blow!”
The storm which she now described had probably been a regular monsoon.
It lasted for hours, she said, and the yawl was driven wildly about on
the angry sea. Like many a yawl, this craft had been broad of beam and
it was therefore as seaworthy as a life-belt. It had ridden like a duck
throughout the night.
When at last the light returned, the girl had found herself stranded in
a singular place. Not a sign could she see of the ocean, but the yawl
had been driven inland on what had appeared to be a great lagoon. This
water-way, the edges of which were bordered thickly with a dense,
jungle-like growth, had become as calm as a mill-pond.
While she still sat in the boat she had suddenly discovered a score of
“horrid black brutes” descending upon the place. She had found the task
of pushing off to be quite beyond her strength, in addition to which she
had been so bewildered as not to know in the least where she had
arrived. The creatures—the Black Missing Links—had appeared of
threatening aspect, yet she had soon been made to realise that they were
delighted to see her among them and that all regarded herself as a prize
belonging to the tribe.
With her snake, of which they had immediately manifested a fear, she had
followed where these monsters led, although unwillingly. They had given
her food, but they had appeared to have no thought or consideration of
her weakened condition, nor even of the fact that she was a woman and
therefore not as strong as themselves. In consequence of this, she had
been obliged to march through the jungle till nearly ready to drop from
sheer weariness of body. Her clothing had been torn to tatters on the
brush; her shoes had been all but ruined, and her flesh had been
scratched and bruised.
“That is all there is to tell,” she concluded. “It has been a horrid,
desperate existence ever since. The monsters have never been cruel, but
I have been burned in the sun, and I have shivered in the rain and chill
of night. I have been trembling at the thought of some terrible death,
and then praying that I might really die and end all the wretched
horror. I couldn’t tell where I was,—you say you don’t even know
yourself,—and day and night I have been in a condition of dread
bordering on insanity. It has all been so terribly hopeless—so
loathsome. Oh how I have suffered! And that horrible old woman has
watched me like a hawk, and I couldn’t have escaped if I had tried, and
I didn’t know where to get a boat, and I couldn’t make anything—not even
clothes,—and the horrid female creatures stole nearly all I had left,
and I didn’t even have a needle, or a piece of soap, or a toothbrush!”
“Perhaps I could make you a comb,” I suggested, to drive away her
dreadful thoughts, if possible, but she appeared not to hear.
“Poor Papa,” she resumed, “I don’t know what he ever thought, or where
he is, or anything about anything.”
“Oh well,” said I, “we’ll soon be getting away from here now, and
perhaps the trip will turn out pretty well after all. You’ll probably be
at home in a month, forgetting all about this expedition to the land of
Missing Links.”
She shook her head, the wild look in her eyes came back. “That is too
good a dream to come true,” she said. “It doesn’t seem as if we can ever
get away,—but oh, Mr. Nevers—I do hope you will never let them get me
back,—oh if only you will take me away—if only you will!” and again she
broke down and sobbed, as if it had been a thousand times too much to
bear.
“I’ll do it or bust!” I assured her with much enthusiasm. “I couldn’t
say more than that if I tried. We’ll come out all right, don’t you
worry.”