was running down the beach toward him, waving a dirty piece of paper. It
was a telegram, transmitted by carrier from Bacolod, which was in cable
communication with Ilo-Ilo. The Maestro read it quickly; then he re-read
it aloud, pausing upon each word as if to sink its dread significance
deep into his dazed brain.
"Have missed you in Ilo-Ilo. Am coming on tomorrow's steamer. Girlie."
Behind the Maestro a cast-up log was bleaching in the sun, and he sat
down upon it very suddenly and limply, as if his bony carcass had turned
to water. "Lordie," he murmured, "and the sky-pilot gone south!"
And truly the situation was a delicate one. For "Girlie" of the telegram
was none other than Miss Florence Yeats, come ten thousand miles over
the sea to wed him. He should have met her in Ilo-Ilo, where the whole
American population had made gleeful preparations for the event; but his
uncalculating impatience and the immoral conduct of the winds had foiled
him in his attempted crossing of the straits from his own town in
Negros; and now she was coming by the day's steamer--with the sky-pilot,
otherwise Rev. David Houston, head of the United Protestant Missions of
Negroes, who might have afforded a much-needed alternative, far, far
away on an inspection tour to the southern stations of the island, and
not likely to be back for a month.
So the Maestro remained on his log, inwardly tossed by a cyclone of
contradictory feelings. He could but admire the splendid confidence of
the girl, coming straight to him without a question after he had failed
her, failed her in an appointment to be classed among those, well, of
higher importance. At the same time it did seem to him that some kind
person in Ilo-Ilo might have warned her of the fact that he was
absolutely the only white man in his town, and at that neither a
clergyman nor justice of the peace. He did not rise and go home, where
he could have spent a very profitable hour changing his bedraggled
garments and washing his salt-grimed face. The crisis was too near for
that. The little wheezy teapot of a steamer, with its precious and
disturbing freight, was due in anywhere from one to four hours; and he
would not have missed the sight of its first smoky signal at the horizon
for luxuries much more dazzling. So, joyful and unhappy, expectant and
horrified, he sat there, while Jack, his little fox terrier, who had
come down with Tolio, romped unappreciated between his legs. Out a few
hundred yards from shore, planted upon a submerged sand bar, a long
bamboo fish-corral screened the horizon; and the Maestro recited metally
to himself the approach of the little steamer. The smoke would first
appear at the lower end, then slowly would crawl along behind the high
paling, slowly, very slowly, till finally the ship itself would burst
into view past the upper end, and stand for shore. And then----
But it was a good hour before the Maestro finally rose to his feet.
"Ah," he said, "here she comes."
Behind the fish-corral, at its lower end, a thin thread of vapour was
mounting toward the sky. The Maestro's heart expanded queerly within his
breast. But as he looked, behind the exasperating barrier a big yellow
ring, as from some gigantic pipe, rose slowly, then another that broke
through the first, and a third that enveloped them all in one ugly
smother.
"Good golly," ejaculated the Maestro, "but the little kettle is
steaming!"
And the smoke, beginning to crawl along the corral, ceased puffing up in
rings; it rose in one dense, funnel-shaped cloud. "It's that soft
Japanese coal," murmured the Maestro, "that darned Japanese coal!"
But with eyes staring ahead, as if hypnotised, he was walking down the
beach. A ripple washed over his feet, then a curling comber splashed up
to his knees; but he took another step, unconscious of the water now
about his hips.
Suddenly he turned, and was running back up the beach toward a shed full
of drying copra. He climbed one of the thick corner-posts to the roof.
The nipa thatch gave beneath his weight, and it was changing ground with
fierce plunging stride that he looked out to sea. But he was not high
enough. The fish-corral still made inscrutable the mystery behind, and
he could see only the smoke, now a sooty black, rising in heavy volutes
to the green sky.
He slid down and paced the sand, trying to calm himself. But the smoke,
ever more voluminous and threatening, allowed him no peace. He ran back
farther up the shore to a coconut palm and tried to climb the lithe,
slippery trunk. The notches cut by the monkey-like tuba-men were too
far apart; the silvery bark was like a greased pole. Twice he went up
some twenty feet, only to slip, fighting and clawing, clear back to the
ground again. He tore off his shoes and started up again, cutting his
feet, scratching and biting in a frenzy of impotent effort. He went up
higher this time, and then the slender, elastic trunk began to sway back
and forth gracefully, dizzying him, making it difficult merely to hold
on; and with bitterness he realised that the northern monsoon was now
on, the wind for which he had prayed in vain for three days. He could go
no higher, and still he could not see what was happening behind that
stolid barrier of bamboo poles out at sea, only the black threat of the
smoke, now drifting south like a great piratical banner, and he slid
back to the ground full of a terrible unsatiated curiosity.
He looked down at his feet, torn and bloody, at his disordered clothing,
and noticed with strange, objective curiosity that his whole body was
trembling as if palsy-stricken. "Oh, shucks," he said, pulling himself
together; "I guess it's all right. It's that Japanese coal, that darned
Japanese coal." He sat down upon the sand, trying to keep command over
himself, but his hands, independently of his will, began wringing each
other between his knees. And then he was up and running along the crazy,
sagging wharf, his dog barking playfully at his heels. At the end he
found a banca, a little, narrow dug-out, steadied with long outriggers.
He sprang into it, cast off the rotten piece of rope, seized the only
paddle, and shoved off with one big heave. He swirled the boat's nose
around till it pointed at the upper end of the corral, then bent down to
mad toil, slapping the water in vibrating rhythm. And as he strained,
his whole strength in each stroke, his eyes, round with terrible
curiosity, followed the smoke as it crawled slowly along the corral,
blacker, denser, more significant every moment. For a while he was in
the smooth water, in the shelter of the northern cape, but ahead he
could see the monsoon tearing the liquid surface into white shreds. He
bore up and was soon in the midst of it, the short waves pounding the
flanks of the boat, the spray spitting spitefully into his eyes. He
added a new frenzy to his efforts, and then he shot past the end of the
fish-corral and saw.
Not a quarter of a mile away, the ship was coming toward him, and it was
a phantom ship. Of the material thing, of the fabric of wood and iron,
there showed nothing; but from what was about the height of the deck a
cataract of smoke poured down the sides in opalescent plays of grays and
blacks till it met the water and rebounded, banking up in rolling,
shifting gauze about the ship-nucleus hidden within, while, above, the
monsoon seized the vapour, shaping it with twists and whirls into a
huge, flaccid, black hand suspended like a curse in the sky. A sudden
great calmness came over the Maestro. Wavering from side to side, as if
the craft itself were staggering beneath the horror of the thing, the
whole phantasmagoric fabric was coming toward him; and with slow,
deliberate stroke he paddled to meet it, his eyes searching for a clew
of the conditions, his mind working to meet them. The air became vibrant
with a low growl, split with explosive cracklings, and, in the inky
smother at the bow, little red tongues flashed up and out. He twisted
his canoe around till its nose pointed with the course of the
approaching vessel and waited, keyed up to some last possible
opportunity that must be met swiftly and unerringly. And then the
steamer passed slowly above him. A cataract of smoke poured down upon
him, a hot, furnace-breath whelmed him with its fevered exhalation; and
he was paddling madly beneath the stern, peering into the trailing
smoke. A more furious puff of the monsoon tore the thing to shreds, and
then he saw the boat's population. They were clustered at the stern,
hanging to poop-rail and rope and moulding and anchor chain and to each
other, like a troop of panic-stricken apes at a river crossing, snarling
and fighting for the safer positions. But on the deck behind them,
apart in the spiritual retirement of higher nature and greater courage,
was a slim, blue-garbed form. She was standing straight and proudly, her
skirts, gathered in her left hand in a familiar movement, drawn close
about her, away from that defiling moral puddle of humanity.
"Girlie!" he shouted, his whole being going out to her.
"Lad!" came back the answer, clear and true. She moved forward a step,
her arms stretched gropingly before her.
"Jump! Jump! Jump!" he commanded. "Jump!"
She took another step and with unhesitating confidence leaped out into
the void.
She disappeared beneath the water; he sent the banca ahead with two long
strokes, and then she rose to the surface alongside. He leaned over and,
passing both arms below hers, he let her float back to the stern of the
boat. But before raising her he suddenly let go with his right arm,
seized the paddle, and hit at the water a blow that struck some slimy,
slippery body. Then with a great effort he raised her into the boat and
laid her down gently. For a moment he did not look at her, but gazed
behind, shuddering, at a sharp fin cutting the water behind in a circle.
When he turned to her she was standing, and the light of their eyes met
in a spiritual caress. Slowly his arms spread out in an unconscious
movement and with a little choking cry she threw herself upon him,
hiding her face on his breast, while his arms closed about her. "I knew
you would be there," she murmured. He clasped her a little closer, and
they stood there on their crazy little craft, in the clash of waters,
wrapped together into one being, the shudder of the past uniting them in
the same thrill, the ecstasy of the present stealing through their veins
like bubbling wine. A squall had the little boat in its grasp; it passed
above in the upper layers of air with great sharp cries; the boat
drifted madly down the coast and away from it; but they knew of no
danger, knew only that they were in each other's arms, that the past was
fading away from them like a gone and impotent nightmare. Vague and
faint, a sound like the bursting of a paper bag came to his ears, and
toward the shore he saw, with eyes that did not understand, incongruous
objects falling from the sky--a twisted smokestack, half of a
jolly-boat, a bucket, boards, a multitude of smaller shredded bits, and
aperch on the reef was a shell of a ship, undecked, the blackened
interior opened to the skies, pouring out a cone of black smoke. He held
her closer, her eyes against his breast, and a palm-lined cape drifted
past, hiding the thing from view, hiding the last vestige of what had
happened, and they slid on into the illimitable sea, into the future of
far horizons.
After a while she disengaged herself a bit and, toying with the middle
button of her jacket, "You love me a whole lot, don't you?" she asked in
a question that was not a question.
"Yes, little girl," he answered obediently.
There was another long silence and the boat drifted another two hundred
yards.
"Oh, what a pretty dog!" she exclaimed, for her eyes had been wandering
below his arms. "Is it yours?"
And then he became aware of Jack beneath the thwart, whining, with eye
apologetic and tail conciliatory, in the warring impulses of
friendliness and reserve. She stooped down with inviting gesture, and
the pup, with a little yelp, leaped into her arms. The Maestro looked
down upon them, a little jealousy in his approving smile. But the
interruption had suddenly made him alive to the situation.
"Jehoshaphat!" he exclaimed, looking at the now distant shore, down
which and away from which they were drifting at a rapid rate; "it's
about time to pull in!"
But this very sane remark was not immediately followed by action. The
Maestro was looking blankly at the bottom of the canoe where lay what
once had been a paddle, but was now only a handle without blade. The
memory of the manner in which this transformation had taken place sent
his eyes back over the water behind, and a frown came on his face. Right
and left, with a movement regular as that of a sentinel pacing his beat,
a black fin like a butcher's cleaver was cutting the water.
"What's the matter, Lad?" asked the young lady, still stooping over the
dog, and astonished at the silence. "Can't you find the oars?"
"Well, no; fact is--these boats have no oars."
"Oh," cried the bride, immediately interested by this picturesque fact,
and rising to her feet; "don't they have any oars? How do you make them
go?"
"Paddle them, usually," answered the groom ruefully.
Her eyes fell upon the lamentable remains of the lone paddle, and
suddenly the air was a-thrill with a joyous laughing peal.
"Oh, how jolly!" she exclaimed. "We're shipwrecked, aren't we? We'll go
away out in the ocean, won't we? Isn't this a land of adventure,
though!"
"Well, rather," said the Maestro dryly.
And, there being nothing else to do, he sat down at the bottom of the
boat and drew her to his knees. She, with feminine altruism, completed
the chain by taking Jack upon hers, and they drifted on upon the
flashing sea. "It's just delicious," murmured the bride, feeling the
warm tropical sun drying her clothes upon her. But the groom did not
chime in. He was thinking.
There was no immediate danger in the situation, but the prospects for
the future were hardly to be termed "delicious." The monsoon that,
probably aided by the tide-current, was sweeping them on, had not yet
kicked up much of a sea and seemed to be abating in strength; and the
little banca, buoyant like a cork upon its outriggers, rode the waves
with cheerful alacrity. The spray that now and then dashed upon them was
blood-warm and occasioned no discomfort, and their wet clothes were
fairly steaming under the rays of the tropical sun. Still they were
drifting steadily, with the island of Panay some thirty miles to their
right, Negros to their left, its shores, diverging from their course,
farther and farther away. They might drift on thus between the islands
without touching either of them for days, till out into the China Sea,
though the lack of food made even that undelightful alternative but a
vague one. As for the chances of meeting a vessel, they were slighter
still, only a few lorchas plying between the islands at long intervals.
And then there was the grim diagnosis of the being with the fin,
swimming back and forth, back and forth, behind the boat, with ominous
patience.
"If we're shipwrecked, we ought to be doing something," said the bride
suddenly, in the tone of one announcing the concluding clause of a
syllogism.
"That's right," acquiesced the Maestro; "we ought to do something."
"We should empanel a jury," said the bride briskly.
"Empanel a jury," repeated the Maestro, somewhat dazed.
"Oh," said the bride, blushing, "I mean a jury-rudder. We should empanel
a jury-rudder."
"You mean rig up a jury-rudder," exclaimed the Maestro, a flashing light
of understanding in his eyes; "rig is the more nautical term."
"Oh, yes," cried the bride delightedly; "that's it; we must rig up a
jury-rudder!"
"Well," said the Maestro, after a moment's thought; "jury-rudders, you
know, are rigged up when the real rudder has been carried away. But we
never had a real rudder; therefore we can't very well have a jury one."
"Oh," said the bride, disappointed.
She was silent a moment; then inspiration again flamed up.
"We should signal a ship," she said decidedly.
"Signal a ship," repeated the Maestro, looking about him idiotically.
"Yes," said the bride; "put up the flag upside down in sign of
distress."
"But we have no flag," said the groom hopelessly.
"Use my kerchief," said the bride resourcefully.
"Upside down?" queried the Maestro. "But there is no mast."
"Put up an oar," she said bravely.
"But there is no oar."
"Oh," she said, again discouraged.
There was another thoughtful silence; but she was not to be overwhelmed.
"We must get food," she said; "we must fish."
"That's right," chimed the Maestro resolutely; "we must fish. Have you
any hooks?"
"I have pins," she said.
"I have string," he said.
He fumbled through his pockets and drew two pieces of sorry twine. She
turned her back upon him, worked mysteriously at her garments, and
handed him five pins. "Bend them into hooks," she said.
He kneeled down and, after pricking his fingers several times, succeeded
in bending two pins against the thwart. He passed them through the ends
of the twine, and they were the possessors of two fishing lines.
"You fish in front and I'll fish in back," she said; "that way we won't
catch the same fish."
"No," said the Maestro, looking behind at the water where the black fin
seemed playfully trying to cut its initials; "you fish at the bow and
I'll fish at the stern."
They took their respective positions and cast conscientiously. Jack,
interested, began to run from one to the other, barking. "S-s-s-h,"
hissed the Maestro; "you'll scare the fish!" But the warning evidently
came too late; the fish refused to bite.
"I'm lonely," finally said a voice at the bow; "come here and talk to me
while I fish."
The Maestro dropped his tackle with suspicious alacrity and went
forward. The bride continued casting with a gradual diminuendo of
enthusiasm.
"I don't think this is much fun, do you?" she pouted. "Let's stop."
So they sat down again, she on his knees, Jack in her arms. The wind was
going down, the sun was less scorching, and it was pleasant and quiet.
To the left the palm-lined shore showed farther and farther away; and
they were still drifting in the grip of some stubborn current. Suddenly
she was laughing, a quiet, self-contained peal at some pleasant thought
hers only.
"It's dinner time," she said between two musical ripples.
"But you didn't catch any fish," he said.
She laughed again. "Bring me my grip," she ordered. And she pointed to a
little dripping satchel, to which, with the tenacity of unconsciousness,
she had clung throughout the crisis, and which now lay, unheeded, at the
bottom of the boat.
He handed it to her; but when they went to open it, they found it
locked, and she had lost the key.
He brought his knife out of his pocket and opened the blade.
"Oh, my poor grip," she exclaimed in dismay. But he slashed at it
unsentimentally.
The interior was only slightly wet. Through the gaping hole she took a
white lace kerchief and spread it upon the centre thwart. Again her hand
went into the grip and successively she drew a little bottle of olives,
four figs, three crackers, and a diminutive flask of milk. She arranged
them daintily upon the cloth and then, sitting at the bottom of the boat
with the table between them, face to face, they gaily dined together.
"Oh, I've eaten so much," she sighed at last as she presented the last
fig to Jack, who gulped it down trustingly. "I think I should have a
nap, don't you?"
He took her up in his arms as a child and cradled her, but she did not
sleep right away. Out in the China Sea ahead, the sun was setting in
gloomy splendour. They watched it till it was only a puddle of blood
upon the waters; and then darkness dropped like a leaden curtain upon
the shimmering sea. From all sides the horizon drew near in black walls
across which the heat-lightning wrote in rageful zigzags. The wind had
gone down still more and little waves slapped up against the sides of
the boat like caresses. A great loneliness, half sweet, half bitter,
descended upon them.
"I'm a little afraid, Lad," she murmured. Jack began to whine and she
took him up; then, cuddling closer, she went asleep. And the little boat
drifted on in the illimitable darkness, the girl and the dog asleep, and
the man awake with care and tenderness, while behind a phosphorescence
streaked back and forth, back and forth, in ceaseless vigil.
Toward midnight he saw a light far to the left, fixed as if on shore,
and he began shouting over the water. This awakened the girl and she
joined her melodious halloo to his cries, while Jack barked wildly. But
there came no response, and after a while they stopped and went back to
their first position. Later, a sudden creaking in the silence startled
him, and not a hundred feet away a lorcha was passing like a shadow,
all sails set wing-and-wing, the helm lashed, with no man on the watch.
Again he shouted and the voice of the girl and the bark of the dog
joined him; but again there was no response, and slowly, like some
enchanted fabric, the vessel melted into the darkness ahead. Then again
the girl went asleep in his arms, the dog upon her knees, while he
watched in the night and the silence, a great tenderness at his heart.
Later he must have gone asleep, for, when stirred by a murmur in his ear
and a caress on his brow, he looked up into her eyes, the sky above was
all green and rose with the dawn, and Jack was yelping madly at the bow.
He started to get up but she detained him.
"No, sir; you mustn't look," she said; "I have a surprise for you." She
placed her hands over his eyes and turned his head as he rose to his
knees. "Now look!" she exclaimed, suddenly freeing him. And his eyes
opened upon a line of coconut palms, with a golden thread of beach at
their feet, not a hundred feet away.
He sprang out into the shallow water and pulled the boat up on shore.
The sun was rising and they lay down on the sand, thawing their limbs,
stiffened by the heavy night-dew, while Jack ran up and down the shore,
barking at the rippling waves. It was a balmy morning; before them
stretched the sea, a smooth shimmering gray sheet, with vague
palpitations of darker hues; from behind came the scented exhalation of
the land--and the mad barks of the dog, precipitated one upon the other,
filled the air with a wild tumult of joy. A sweet lethargy stole through
their veins; the problems of their existence, of their whereabouts, of
food and shelter, of their return to his town were things for the
future, for a far, remote, hazy future; the present had them in its
enchantment.
After a while a little brown boy, a net over his shoulder, came singing
down the beach. At the sight of the two strangers he turned and ran, but
the Maestro was up and after him and had him in his strong arms before
he could reach the shelter of the coconuts. A few words in his own
patois and the soft voice of the white lady reassured the little savage,
and he led them along a trail through the trees to a small barrio of
tuba-gatherers. At the door of one of the huts the urchin's mother, an
immense fat crone, greeted them. They climbed the rickety bamboo ladder
into the dwelling and accepted the seat of honour, a sagging bamboo
bench, while with many pitying exclamations at their plight, the rotund
lady busied herself and stirred up a most abominable smoke upon her
cooking platform. When the repast was ready it was seen to consist of
two eggs and a banana swimming in suspicious grease, but the visitors
were not fastidious. Meanwhile the boy outside climbed a tall palm, and
soon the glade was resounding with the whacks of bolos and the crash of
coconuts tumbling to the ground. They drank the milk and ate the white
meat and gently refused some atrociously fermented tuba pressed ardently
to their lips. All this time the Maestro was busy with his questions and
he found that they were on Negros, some thirty miles south of their
town, with Bago, a large village, where they would be able to secure a
carabao and cart, only a few miles away.