As we approached the campfire the loathsome odour of frying mullet
saluted my nostrils.
Kemper, glancing at Grue, said aside to me:
"That's an odd-looking fellow. What is he? Minorcan?"
"Oh, just a beachcomber. I don't know what he is. He strikes me as
dirty--though he can't be so, physically. I don't like him and I don't
know why. And I wish we'd engaged somebody else to guide us."
Toward dawn something awoke me and I sat up in my blanket under the moon.
But my leg had not been pulled.
Kemper snored at my side. In her little dog-tent the pretty waitress
probably was fast asleep. I knew it because the string she had tied to
one of her ornamental ankles still lay across the ground convenient to my
hand. In any emergency I had only to pull it to awake her.
A similar string, tied to my ankle, ran parallel to hers and disappeared
under the flap of her tent. This was for her to pull if she liked. She
had never yet pulled it. Nor I the other. Nevertheless I truly felt that
these humble strings were, in a subtler sense, ties that bound us
together. No wonder Kemper's behaviour had slightly irritated me.
I looked up at the silver moon; I glanced at Kemper's unlovely bulk,
swathed in a blanket; I contemplated the dog-tent with, perhaps, that
slight trace of sentiment which a semi-tropical moon is likely to inspire
even in a jellyfish. And suddenly I remembered Grue and looked for him.
He was accustomed to sleep in his boat, but I did not see him in either
of the boats. Here and there were a few lumpy shadows in the moonlight,
but none of them was Grue lying prone on the ground. Where the devil had
he gone?
Cautiously I untied my ankle string, rose in my pajamas, stepped into my
slippers, and walked out through the moonlight.
There was nothing to hide Grue, no rocks or vegetation except the
solitary palm on the back-bone of the reef.
I walked as far as the tree and looked up into the arching fronds. Nobody
was up there. I could see the moonlit sky through the fronds. Nor was
Grue lying asleep anywhere on the other side of the coral ridge.
And suddenly I became aware of all my latent distrust and dislike for the
man. And the vigour of my sentiments surprised me because I really had
not understood how deep and thorough my dislike had been.
Also, his utter disappearance struck me as uncanny. Both boats were
there; and there were many leagues of sea to the nearest coast.
Troubled and puzzled I turned and walked back to the dead embers of the
fire. Kemper had merely changed the timbre of his snore to a whistling
aria, which at any other time would have enraged me. Now, somehow, it
almost comforted me.
Seated on the shore I looked out to sea, racking my brains for an
explanation of Grue's disappearance. And while I sat there racking them,
far out on the water a little flock of ducks suddenly scattered and rose
with frightened quackings and furiously beating wings.
For a moment I thought I saw a round, dark object on the waves where the
flock had been.
And while I sat there watching, up out of the sea along the reef to my
right crawled a naked, dripping figure holding a dead duck in his mouth.
Fascinated, I watched it, recognising Grue with his ratty black hair all
plastered over his face.
Whether he caught sight of me or not, I don't know; but he suddenly
dropped the dead duck from his mouth, turned, and dived under water.
It was a grim and horrid species of sport or pastime, this amphibious
business of his, catching wild birds and dragging them about as though
he were an animal.
Evidently he was ashamed of himself, for he had dropped the duck. I
watched it floating by on the waves, its head under water. Suddenly
something jerked it under, a fish perhaps, for it did not come up and
float again, as far as I could see.
When I went back to camp Grue lay apparently asleep on the north side of
the fire. I glanced at him in disgust and crawled into my tent.
The next day Evelyn Grey awoke with a headache and kept her tent. I had
all I could do to prevent Kemper from prescribing for her. I did that
myself, sitting beside her and testing her pulse for hours at a time,
while Kemper took one of Grue's grains and went off into the mangroves
and speared grunt and eels for a chowder which he said he knew how to
concoct.
Toward afternoon the pretty waitress felt much better, and I warned
Kemper and Grue that we should sail for Black Bayou after dinner.
* * * * *
Dinner was a mess, as usual, consisting of fried mullet and rice, and a
sort of chowder in which the only ingredients I recognised were sections
of crayfish.
After we had finished and had withdrawn from the fire, Grue scraped every
remaining shred of food into a kettle and went for it. To see him feed
made me sick, so I rejoined Miss Grey and Kemper, who had found a green
cocoanut and were alternately deriving nourishment from the milk inside
it.
[Illustration: "To see him feed made me sick."]
Somehow or other there seemed to me a certain levity about that
performance, and it made me uncomfortable; but I managed to smile a
rather sickly smile when they offered me a draught, and I took a pull at
the milk--I don't exactly know why, because I don't like it. But the moon
was up over the sea, now, and the dusk was languorously balmy, and I
didn't care to leave those two drinking milk out of the same cocoanut
under a tropic moon.
Not that my interest in Evelyn Grey was other than scientific. But after
all it was I who had discovered her.
We sailed as soon as Grue, gobbling and snuffling, had cleaned up the
last crumb of food. Kemper blandly offered to take Miss Grey into his
boat, saying that he feared my boat was overcrowded, what with the
paraphernalia, the folding cages, Grue, Miss Grey, and myself.
I sat on that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him
Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had
been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue
went aboard his boat.
As for me, I hoisted sail with something so near a chuckle that it
surprised me; and I looked at Evelyn Grey to see whether she had noticed
the unseemly symptom.
Apparently she had not. She sat forward, her eyes fixed soulfully upon
the moon. Had I been dedicated to any profession except a scientific
one--but let that pass.
Grue in Kemper's sail-boat led, and my boat followed out into the silvery
and purple dusk, now all sparkling under the high lustre of the moon.
Dimly I saw vast rafts of wild duck part and swim leisurely away to port
and starboard, leaving a glittering lane of water for us to sail through;
into the scintillant night from the sea sprang mullet, silvery,
quivering, falling back into the wash with a splash.
Here and there in the moonlight steered ominous black triangles, circling
us, leading us, sheering across bow and flashing wake, all phosphorescent
with lambent sea-fire--the fins of great sharks.
"You need have no fear," said I to the pretty waitress.
She said nothing.
"Of course if you _are_ afraid," I added, "perhaps you might care to
change your seat."
There was room in the stern where I sat.
"Do you think there is any danger?" she asked.
"From sharks?"
"Yes."
"Reaching up and biting you?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I don't really suppose there is," I said, managing to convey the
idea, I am ashamed to say, that the catastrophe was a possibility.
She came over and seated herself beside me. I was very much ashamed of
myself, but I could not repress a triumphant glance ahead at the other
boat, where Kemper sat huddled forward, evidently bored to extinction.
Every now and then I could see him turn and crane his neck as though in
an effort to distinguish what was going on in our boat.
There was nothing going on, absolutely nothing. The moon was magnificent;
and I think the pretty waitress must have been a little tired, for her
head drooped and nodded at moments, even while I was talking to her about
a specimen of _Euplectilla speciosa_ on which I had written a monograph.
So she must have been really tired, for the subject was interesting.
"You won't incommode my operations with sheet and tiller," I said to her
kindly, "if you care to rest your head against my shoulder."
Evidently she was very tired, for she did so, and closed her eyes.
After a while, fearing that she might fall over backward into the
sea--but let that pass.... I don't know whether or not Kemper could
distinguish anything aboard our boat. He craned his head enough to twist
it off his neck.
To be so utterly, so blindly devoted to science is a great safeguard for
a man. Single-mindedness, however, need not induce atrophy of every
humane impulse. I drew the pretty waitress closer--not that the night was
cold, but it might become so. Changes in the tropics come swiftly. It is
well to be prepared.
Her cheek felt very soft against my shoulder. There seemed to be a faint
perfume about her hair. It really was odd how subtly fragrant she seemed
to be--almost, perhaps, a matter of scientific interest.
Her hands did not seem to be chilled; they did seem unusually smooth and
soft.
I said to her: "When at home, I suppose your mother tucks you in; doesn't
she?"
"Yes," she nodded sleepily.
"And what does she do then?" said I, with something of that ponderous
playfulness with which I make scientific jokes at a meeting of the Bronx
Anthropological Association, when I preside.
"She kisses me and turns out the light," said Evelyn Grey, innocently.
I don't know how much Kemper could distinguish. He kept dodging about and
twisting his head until I really thought it would come off, unless it had
been screwed on like the top of a piano stool.
A few minutes later he fired his pistol twice; and Evelyn sat up. I never
knew why he fired; he never offered any explanation.
Toward midnight I could hear the roar of breakers on our starboard bow.
Evelyn heard them, too, and sat up inquiringly.
"Grue has found the inlet to Black Bayou, I suppose," said I.
And it proved to be the case, for, with the surf thundering on either
hand, we sailed into a smoothly flowing inlet through which the flood
tide was running between high dunes all sparkling in the moonlight and
crowned with shadowy palms.
Occasionally I heard noises ahead of us from the other boat, as though
Kemper was trying to converse with us, but as his apropos was as
unintelligible as it was inopportune, I pretended not to hear him.
Besides, I had all I could do to manoeuvre the tiller and prevent Evelyn
Grey from falling off backward into the bayou. Besides, it is not
customary to converse with the man at the helm.
After a while--during which I seemed to distinguish in Kemper's voice a
quality that rhymes with his name--his tones varied through phases all
the way from irony to exasperation. After a while he gave it up and took
to singing.
There was a moon, and I suppose he thought he had a voice. It didn't
strike me so. After several somewhat melancholy songs, he let off his
pistol two or three times and then subsided into silence.
I didn't care; neither his songs nor his shots interrupted--but let that
pass, also.
We were now sailing into the forest through pool after pool of
interminable lagoons, startling into unseen and clattering flight
hundreds of waterfowl. I could feel the wind from their whistling
wings in the darkness, as they drove by us out to sea. It seemed to
startle the pretty waitress. It is a solemn thing to be responsible for
a pretty girl's peace of mind. I reassured her continually, perhaps a
trifle nervously. But there were no more pistol shots. Perhaps Kemper had
used up his cartridges.
We were still drifting along under drooping sails, borne inland almost
entirely by the tide, when the first pale, watery, gray light streaked
the east. When it grew a little lighter, Evelyn sat up; all danger of
sharks being over. Also, I could begin to see what was going on in the
other boat. Which was nothing remarkable; Kemper slumped against the
mast, his head turned in our direction; Grue sat at the helm, motionless,
his tattered straw hat sagging on his neck.
When the sun rose, I called out cheerily to Kemper, asking him how he had
passed the night. Evelyn also raised her head, pausing while bringing her
disordered hair under discipline, to listen to his reply.
But he merely mumbled something. Perhaps he was still sleepy.
As for me, I felt exceedingly well; and when Grue turned his craft in
shore, I did so, too; and when, under the overhanging foliage of the
forest, the nose of my boat grated on the sand, I rose and crossed the
deck with a step distinctly frolicsome.
Kemper seemed distant and glum; Evelyn Grey spoke to him shyly now and
then, and I noticed she looked at him only when he was gazing elsewhere
than at her. She had a funny, conciliatory air with him, half ashamed,
partly humorous and amused, as though something about Kemper's sulky
ill-humour was continually making tiny inroads on her gravity.
Some mullet had jumped into the two boats--half a dozen during our
moonlight voyage--and these were now being fried with rice for us by
Grue. Lord! How I hated to eat them!
After we had finished breakfast, Grue, as usual, did everything to the
remainder except to get into the fry-pan with both feet; and as usual he
sickened me.
When he'd cleaned up everything, I sent him off into the forest to
find a dry shell-mound for camping purposes; then I made fast both
boats, and Kemper and I carried ashore our paraphernalia, spare
_batterie-de-cuisine_, firearms, fishing tackle, spears, harpoons,
grains, oars, sails, spars, folding cage--everything with which a
strictly scientific expedition is usually burdened.
Evelyn was washing her face in the crystal waters of a branch that flowed
into the lagoon from under the live-oaks. She looked very pretty doing
it, like a naiad or dryad scrubbing away at her forest toilet.
It was, in fact, such a pretty spectacle that I was going over to sit
beside her while she did it, but Kemper started just when I was going to,
and I turned away. Some men invariably do the wrong thing. But a handsome
man doesn't last long with a pretty girl.
I was thinking of this as I stood contemplating an alligator slide, when
Grue came back saying that the shore on which we had landed was the
termination of a shell-mound, and that it was the only dry place he had
found.
So I bade him pitch our tents a few feet back from the shore; and stood
watching him while he did so, one eye reverting occasionally to Evelyn
Grey and Kemper. They both were seated cross-legged beside the branch,
and they seemed to be talking a great deal and rather earnestly. I
couldn't quite understand what they found to talk about so earnestly and
volubly all of a sudden, inasmuch as they had heretofore exchanged very
few observations during a most brief and formal acquaintance, dating only
from sundown the day before.
Grue set up our three tents, carried the luggage inland, and then hung
about for a while until the vast shadow of a vulture swept across the
trees.
I never saw such an indescribable expression on a human face as I saw
on Grue's as he looked up at the huge, unclean bird. His vitreous eyes
fairly glittered; the corners of his mouth quivered and grew wet; and to
my astonishment he seemed to emit a low, mewing noise.
"What the devil are you doing?" I said impulsively, in my amazement and
disgust.
He looked at me, his eyes still glittering, the corners of his mouth
still wet; but the curious sounds had ceased.
"What?" he asked.
"Nothing. I thought you spoke." I didn't know what else to say.
He made no reply. Once, when I had partly turned my head, I was aware
that he was warily turning his to look at the vulture, which had alighted
heavily on the ground near the entrails and heads of the mullet, where he
had cast them on the dead leaves.
I walked over to where Evelyn Grey and Kemper sat so busily conversing;
and their volubility ceased as they glanced up and saw me approaching.
Which phenomenon both perplexed and displeased me.