SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
The next four days slipped by almost unheeded. Blake saw to it that
not only himself but his companions had work to occupy every hour of
daylight. When not engaged in cooking and fuel gathering, Miss Leslie
was learning by painful experience the rudiments of dressmaking.
At the start she had all but ruined the beautiful skin of the mother
leopard before Blake chanced to see her and took over the task of cutting
it into shape for a skirt. But when it came to making a waist of the
cub fur, he said that she would have to puzzle out the pattern from
her other one. Between cooking three meals a day over an open fire,
gathering several armfuls of wood, and making a dress with penknife,
thorn, and catgut, the girl had little time to think of other matters
than her work.
Winthrope had been gazetted as hunter in ordinary. His task was to
keep Miss Leslie supplied with fresh eggs and each day to kill as many
of the boobies and cormorants as he could skin and split for drying.
Blake had changed his mind about taking him when he went for cocoanuts.
Instead, he had gone alone on several trips, bringing three or four loads
of nuts, then a little salt from the seashore, dirty but very welcome,
and last of all a great lump of clay, wrapped in palm fronds.
With this clay he at once began experiments in the art of pottery. Having
mixed and beaten a small quantity, he moulded it into little cups and
bowls, and tried burning them over night in the watch-fire. A few came
out without crack or flaw. Vastly elated by this success, he fashioned
larger vessels from his clay, and within the week could brag of two pots
suitable for cooking stews, and four large nondescript pieces which he
called plates. What was more, all had a fairly good sand glaze, for he
had been quick to observe a glaze on the bottoms of the first pots, and
had reasoned out that it was due to the sand which had adhered while
they stood drying in the sun.
He next turned his attention to metallurgy. The first move was to search
the river bank for the brown bog iron ore which he believed he had seen
from the farther side. After a dangerous and exhausting day's work in
the mire and jungle, he came back with nothing more to show for his pains
than an armful of creepers. Late in the afternoon, he had located the
hæmatite, only to find it lying in a streak so thin that he could not
hope to collect enough for practical purposes.
"Lucky we've got something to fall back on," he added, after telling
of his failure. "Pass over those keys of yours, Win. Good! Now untangle
those creepers. To-night we'll take turns knotting them up into some
sort of a rope-ladder. I'm getting mighty weary of hoofing it all around
the point every time I trot to the river. After this I'll go down
the cliff at that end of the gully."
Winthrope, who had become very irritable and depressed during the last
two days, turned on his heel, with the look of a fretful child.
To cover this undiplomatic rudeness, Miss Leslie spoke somewhat
hurriedly. "But why should you return again to the river, Mr. Blake?
I'm sure you are risking the fever; and there must be savage beasts in
the jungle."
"That's my business," growled Blake. He paused a moment, and added,
rather less ungraciously, "Well, if you care, it's this way--I'm
going to keep on looking for ore. Give me a little iron ore, and we'll
mighty soon have a lot of steel knives and arrow-heads that'll amount to
something. How're we going to bag anything worth while with bamboo
tips on our arrows? Those boar tusks are a fizzle."
"So you will continue to risk your life for us? I think that is very
brave and generous, Mr. Blake!"
"How's that?" demanded Blake, not a little puzzled. He was fully
conscious of the risk; but this was the first intimation he had received
or conceived that his motives were other than selfish--"Um-m! So that's
the ticket. Getting generous, eh?"
"Not getting--you _are_ generous! When I think of all you have done for
us! Had it not been for you, I am sure we should have died that first day
ashore."
"Well, don't blame me. I couldn't have let a dog die that way; and
then, a fellow needs a Man Friday for this sort of thing. As for you, I
haven't always had the luck to be favored with ladies' company."
"Thank you, Mr. Blake. I quite appreciate the compliment. But now, I
must put on supper."
Blake followed her graceful movements with an intentness which, in
turn, drew Winthrope's attention to himself. The Englishman smiled
in a disagreeable manner, and resumed his work on the bows, with the
look of one mentally preoccupied. After supper he found occasion to
spend some little time among the bamboos.
When at sunset Miss Leslie withdrew into the baobab, Winthrope somewhat
officiously insisted upon helping her set up her screen in the entrance.
As he did so, he took the opportunity to hand her a bamboo knife, and
to draw her attention to several double-pointed bamboo stakes which he
had hidden under the litter.
"What is it?" she asked, troubled by his furtive glance back at Blake.
"Merely precaution, you know," he whispered. "The ground in there is
quite soft. It will be no trouble, I fancy, to put up the stakes, with
their points inclined towards the entrance."
"But why--"
"Not so loud, Miss Genevieve! It struck me that if any one should seek
to enter in the night, he would find these stakes deucedly unpleasant.
Be careful how you handle them. As you see, the sharper points, which
are to be set uppermost, run off into a razor edge. Put them up now,
before it grows too dark. You know how ninepins are set--that shape.
Good-night! You see, with these to guard the entrance, you need not be
afraid to go to sleep at once."
"Thank you," she whispered, and began to thrust the stakes into the
ground as he had directed.
He had not been mistaken. The vague doubts and fears which she already
entertained would have kept her awake throughout the night, but thanks
to the sense of security afforded by the sword-bayonets of her silent
little sentries, the girl was soon able to calm herself, and was fast
asleep long before Blake wakened Winthrope.
Immediately after breakfast, Blake--who had spent his watch in grinding
the edges from a stone and experimenting with split and bent twigs--put
Winthrope's keys in the fire, and began an attempt to shape them into
a knife-blade. To heat the steel to the required temperature, he used
a bamboo blowpipe, with his lungs for bellows.
Winthrope turned away with an indifferent bearing; but Miss Leslie found
herself compelled to stop and admire his dexterous use of his rude tools.
One after another, the keys were welded together, end to end, in a narrow
ribbon of steel. The thinnest one, however, was not fastened to the tip
until it had been used to burn a groove in the edge of a rib, selected
from among the bones which Miss Leslie had thrown out of the baobab.
The last key was then fastened to the others; the blade ground sharp,
tempered, and inserted in the groove. Finally, pieces of the key-ring
were fitted in bands around the bone, through notches cut in the ends of
the steel blade. The result was a bone-handled, bone-backed knife, with a
narrow cutting edge of fine steel.
Long before it was finished Miss Leslie had been forced away by the
requirements of her own work. In fact, Blake did not complete his task
until late in the afternoon. At the end, he spent more than an hour
grinding the handle into shape. When he came to show the completed knife
to Miss Leslie, he was fairly aglow with justifiable pride.
"How's that for an Eskimo job?" he demanded. "Bunch of keys and a
bone, eh?"
"You are certainly very ingenious, Mr. Blake!"
"Nixy! There's little of the inventor in my top piece--only some hustle
and a good memory. I was up in Alaska, you know. Saw a sight of Eskimo
work."
"Still, it is very skilfully done."
"That may be--Look out for the edge! It'd do to shave. No more bamboo
splinters for me--dull when you hit a piece of bone. I'm ready now to
skin a rhinoceros."
"If you can catch one!"
"Guess we could find enough of them around here, all right. But we'll
start in on some of Win's sheep and cattle."
"Oh, do! One grows tired of eggs, and all these sea-birds are so tough
and fishy, no matter how I cook them."
"We'll sneak down to the pool, and make a try with the bows this
evening. I'll give odds, though, that we draw a blank. Win's got the
aim, but no drive; I've got the drive, but no aim. Even if I hit an
antelope, I don't think a bamboo-pointed arrow would bother him much."
"Don't the savages kill game without iron weapons?"
"Sure; but a lot have flint points, and a lot of others use poison. I
know that the Apaches and some of those other Southern Indians used to
fix their arrows with rattlesnake poison."
"How horrible!"
"Well, that depends on how you look at it. I guess they thought guns
more horrible when they tackled the whites and got the daylight let
through 'em. At any rate, they swapped arrows for rifles mighty quick,
and any one who knows Apaches will tell you it wasn't because they
thought bullets would do less damage."
"Yet the thought of poison--"
"Yes; but the thought of self-preservation! Sooner than starve, I'd
poison every animal in Africa--and so would you."
"I--I--You put it in such a horrible way. One must consider others,
animals as well as people; and yet--"
"Survival of the fittest. I've read some things, and I'm no fool,
if I do say it myself. For instance, I'm the boss here, because I'm the
fittest of our crowd in this environment; but back in what's called
civilized parts, where the law lets a few shrewd fellows monopolize the
means of production, a man like your father--"
"Mr. Blake, it is not my fault if papa's position in the business
world--"
"Nor his, either--it's the cussed system! No; that's all right, Miss
Jenny. I was only illustrating. Now, I take it, both you and Win would
like to get rid of a boss like me, if you could get rid of Africa at the
same time. As it is, though, I guess you'd rather have me for boss,
and live, than be left all by your lonesomes, to starve."
"I--I'm sure there is no question of your leadership, Mr. Blake. We
have both tried our best to do what you have asked of us."
"_You_ have, at least. But I know. If a ship should come to-morrow,
it'd be Blake to the back seat. 'Papa, give this--er--person a check
for his services, while I chase off with Winnie, to get my look-in on
'Is Ri-yal 'Igh-ness.'"
Miss Leslie flushed crimson-- "I'm sure, Mr. Blake--"
"Oh, don't let that worry you, Miss Jenny. It don't me. I couldn't
be sore with you if I tried. Just the same, I know what it'll be like.
I've rubbed elbows enough with snobs and big bugs to know what kind of
consideration they give one of the mahsses--unless one of the mahsses
has the drop on them. Hello, Win! What's kept you so late?"
"None of your business!" snapped Winthrope.
Miss Leslie glanced at him, even more puzzled and startled by this
outbreak than she had been by Blake's strange talk. But if Blake was
angered, he did not show it.
"Say, Win," he remarked gravely, "I was going to take you down to the
pool after supper, on a try with the bows. But I guess you'd better stay
close by the fire."
"Yes; it is time you gave a little consideration to those who deserve
it," rejoined Winthrope, with a peevishness of tone and manner which
surprised Miss Leslie. "I tell you, I'm tired of being treated like a
dog."
"All right, all right, old man. Just draw up your chair, and get all
the hot broth aboard you can stow," answered Blake, soothingly.
Winthrope sat down; but throughout the meal, he continued to complain
over trifles with the peevishness of a spoiled child, until Miss Leslie
blushed for him. Greatly to her astonishment, Blake endured the nagging
without a sign of irritation, and in the end took his bow and arrows and
went off down the cleft, with no more than a quiet reminder to Winthrope
that he should keep near the fire.
When, shortly after dark, the engineer came groping his way back up the
gorge, he was by no means so calm. Out of six shots, he had hit one
antelope in the neck and another in the haunch; yet both animals had
made off all the swifter for their wounds.
The noise of his approach awakened Winthrope, who turned over, and began
to complain in a whining falsetto. Miss Leslie, who was peering out
through the bars of her screen, looked to see Blake kick the prostrate
man. His frown showed only too clearly that he was in a savage temper. To
her astonishment, he spoke in a soothing tone until Winthrope again
fell asleep. Then he quietly set about erecting a canopy of bamboos
over the sleeper.
Just why he should build this was a puzzle to the girl. But when she
caught a glimpse of Blake's altered expression, she drew a deep breath
of relief, and picked her way around the edge of her bamboo stakes, to
lie down without a trace of the fear which had been haunting her.