BOOK II

NO MAN'S LAND

XII

Wulfrey Dale, as he strolled about the Liverpool docks and basins, felt

very much like a schoolboy who had run away from home in search of the

wide free life of the Rover of the Seas.

He had, however, one vast advantage over the runaway, in that he had

money in his pocket and could pick and choose, and there was no angry

master or troubled parent on his track to haul him back to bondage.

He had no slightest regrets in the matter. Under all the circumstances

of the case, he said to himself, he could have done nothing else.

Elinor, left to herself, would undoubtedly have paid with her life,

either on the gallows or in a mad-house, and that was unthinkable. The

inexorable Law would have taken no account of the true inwardness of

the case. He had saved her because he understood, and because the

alternatives had been too dreadful to think of.

As to the cost to himself,--the long blue-green heave of the sea, out

there beyond the point, made little of that, changed it indeed from one

side of the account to the other, and presented it, not as a loss, but

as very substantial gain.

Out beyond there lay the world, the vast unknown, the larger life; and

the windy blue sky streaked with long-drawn wisps of feathery white

cloud, and the tumbling green waves with their crisp white caps, and

the screaming gulls in their glorious free flight, all tugged at his

heart and called him to the quest.

And these cumbered quays, with their heaps of merchandise, and the

jerking ropes and squeaking pulley-blocks that piled them higher and

higher every moment,--the swaying masts up above and busy decks down

below,--the strange foreign smells and flavour of it all,--the rough

tarry-breeks hanging about and spitting jovially in the intervals of

uncouth talk,--all these were but a foretaste of the great change, and

he savoured them all with vastest enjoyment.

He inspected, from a distance, the great clippers that did the voyage

to New York in twenty to twenty-five days, stately and disciplined, in

the very look of them, as ships of the line almost.

There were ships loading and unloading for and from nearly every port

in the world. It was like being at the centre of a mighty spider's web

whose arms and filaments reached out to the extremest ends of the

earth. He had never felt so free in his life before.

He was in no pressing hurry to settle on either his port or his ship,

but in any case it would not be on one of those great packet-boats he

would go. His fancy ran rather to something smaller, something more

intimate in itself and less likely to be crowded with passengers whose

acquaintance he had no desire to make.

He wandered further among the smaller craft, with a relish in the

search that was essentially a part of the new life. He developed quite

a discriminating taste in ships, though it was only by chatting with

the old salts who lounged about the quay-walls that he learned to

distinguish a ship from a barque and a brig from a schooner. His

preferences were based purely on appearances. The sea-faring qualities

of the various craft were beyond him.

But here and there, one and another would attract him by reason of its

looks, and he would return again and again to compare them with still

later discoveries, saying to himself, "Yes, that would do first-rate

now, if she should happen to be going my way. We'll see presently."

He came, in time, upon a brig loading in one of these outer basins, and

even to his untutored eye she was a picture,--so graceful her lines, so

tapering her masts, so trim and taut the whole look of her.

"Where does she go to?" he asked of an old sailor-man, who was sitting

on a cask, chewing his quid like an old cow and spitting meditatively

at intervals.

"Bawst'n, 'Merica, 's where she's bound this v'y'ge, Mister, an' ef she

did it in twenty days I shouldn' be a bit s'prised, not a bit, I

shouldn'."

"Good-looking boat! What does she carry?"

"Miskellaneous cargo. Bit o' everything, as you might say."

"And when does she sail?"'

"Fust tide, I reck'n, ef so be's her crew a'n't been ganged. Finished

loading not ha'f an hour ago she did."

"Does she take any passengers?"

"Couldn' say. Passenger boats is mostly down yonder."

"I know, but I like the look of this one better than the big ones."

"Well, you c'n ask aboard."

"Yes? How can I get on board?"

"Why, down that there ladder," and Wulfrey, following the direction of

a ponderous roll of the old fellow's head and a squirt of

tobacco-juice, came upon some iron rungs let into a straight

up-and-down groove in the face of the quay-wall. By going down on his

hands and knees, and making careful play with his feet, he managed at

last to get on to this apology for a ladder and succeeded in climbing

down it, over the side of the ship on to its deck.

The deck, dirty as it was with the work of loading, felt springy to his

unaccustomed feet. It was the first ship's deck he had ever trodden.

The very feel of it was exhilarating. It was like setting foot on the

bridge that led to the new life.

As he looked about him,--at the neatly-coiled ropes, the rope-handled

buckets, the blue water-casks lashed to the deck below one of the

masts, the masts themselves, massive below but tapering up into the sky

like fishing-rods, the mazy network of rigging, four little brass

carronades and the ship's bell, all polished to the nines and shining

like gold,--the worries and troubles of the last few months fell from

him like a ragged garment. Elinor Carew, and Croome, and Jim Barclay,

and even Graylock and Billyboy, the parting with whom had been as sore

a wrench as any, all seemed very far away, things of the past, shadowy

in presence of these stimulating realities of the new life.

He walked aft along the deck towards a door under the raised poop, and

at the sound of his coming a man came out of the door and said,

"Hello!" and stood and stared at him out of a pair of very deep-set,

sombre black eyes.

He was a tall, well-built fellow of about Wulfrey's own age,

black-haired, black-bearded and moustached, and of a somewhat saturnine

countenance. His face and neck were the colour of dark mahogany with

much sun and weather. He wore small gold rings in his ears, and

Wulfrey set him down for a foreigner,--a Spaniard, he thought, or

perhaps an Italian.

"I was told you were sailing tomorrow for Boston," said Wulfrey. "I

came to ask if you take passengers."

The man's black brows lifted a trifle and he took stock of Wulfrey

while he considered the question. Then he said, "Ay? well, we do and

we don't," and Wulfrey rearranged his ideas as to his nationality and

decided that he was either Scotch or North of Ireland, though he did

not look either one or the Other.

"That perhaps means that you might."

"Et's for the auld man to say----"

"The Captain?"

"Ay, Cap'n Bain."

"Where could I see him?"

"He's up in the toon."

"If you'll tell me where to find him I'll go after him."

The other seemed to turn this over in his mind, and then said, "Ye'd

best see him here. He'll mebbe no be long."

"Then I'll wait. What time do you expect to clear out?"

"We'll know when the old man comes."

"Perhaps you would let me see the rooms, while I'm waiting."

The dark man turned slowly and went down three steps into the small

main cabin. His leisurely manner suggested no more than a willingness

not to be disobliging.

It was a fair-sized room, with a grated skylight overhead, portholes at

the sides, seats and lockers below them, and a table with wooden forms

to sit on. At the far end were two more doors.

"Cap'n's bunk and mine," said his guide, with a roll of the head

towards the left-hand door, and opened the other for Wulfrey to look in

at the narrow passage off which opened two small sleeping-rooms.

"You are then----?" asked Wulfrey.

"Mate."

"You're Scotch, aren't you? I took you at first sight for a foreigner."

"I'm frae the Islands.... Some folks hold there's mixed blood in some

of us since the times when the Spaniards were wrecked there. Mebbe! I

d'n know."

"And Captain Bain? He's Scotch too, I judge, by his name."

"Ay, he's Scotch--Glesca."

"If he'll take me as passenger I'll be glad. This would suit me

uncommonly well."

"Ay, well. He'll say when he comes," and whenever his black eyes

rested on Wulfrey they seemed to be questioning what it could be that

made him wish to travel on a trading-brig rather than on a

passenger-liner.

However, he asked no questions but pulled out a black clay pipe, and

Wulfrey pulled out his own and anticipated the other's search for

tobacco by handing him his pouch. They had sat silently smoking for

but a few minutes when a heavy foot was heard on the deck outside, and

there came a gruff call for "Macro!"

"Ay, ay, sir!" and the doorway darkened with the short burly figure of

a man whose words preceded him, "Tom Crimp'll have 'em all here by ten

o'clock an' we'll---- Wha the deevil's this?"

"Wants to go passenger to Boston," explained the mate, and left Wulfrey

to his own negotiations.

"If you're open to take a passenger, Captain Bain, I've fallen in love

with the looks of your ship."

"What for d'ye no want to go in a passenger-ship? We're no a

passenger-ship," and the Captain eyed him suspiciously.

"Just that I dislike travelling with a crowd, I've been looking round

for some days and your ship pleases me better than any I've seen."

"Where are you from, and what's your name and rating!"

"I'm from Cheshire. Name, Wulfrey Dale. Rating, Doctor."

"An' what for are ye wanting to go to Boston!"

"I'm going out to look round. I may settle out there if I find any

place I like."

"Are ye in trouble? Poisoned ony one? Resurrectionist, mebbe?"

"Neither one nor the other. I've no work here. I'm going to look for

some over there."

"Can ye pay?"

"Of course. I'm not asking you to take me out of charity."

"That's a guid thing."

"How much shall we say? And when do you sail?"

"Et'll be twenty guineas, ped in advance, an' ef ye want ony victuals

beyant what the ship provides, which is or'nary ship's fare same as me

and the mate eats, ye'll provide 'em yourself."

"Understood! And you sail----"

"To-night's flood, ef the men get aboard all safe. They're promised me

for ten o'clock."

"I'll pay you now and go up for my things."

"An' whaur may they be?"

"At Cotton's, in Castle Street."

"Aweel! Juist keep a quiet tongue in your heid, Doctor, as to the ship

ye're sailing on. The 'Grassadoo' doesna tak passengers, ye ken, an' I

dinna want it talked aboot."

"I understand. I've only got a box and a bag, but I'll have to get a

man to carry them."

"Ay--weel!" and after a moment's consideration, "You wait at Cotton's

an' we'll send Jock Steele, the carpenter, up for them at eight

o'clock. Ye can coach or truck 'em as far as he says and carry 'em

between you the rest."

So Wulfrey paid down his twenty guineas, and Captain Bain stowed them

away in his trouser pocket, and buttoned it up carefully, with a dry,

"Donal' Bain's word's his only recip_ee_. You be here before ten

o'clock and the 'Grassadoo' 'll be waiting for you."

"That's all right, Captain," said Wulfrey. "And I'm much obliged to

you for stretching a point and taking me."

"It's me that's doing it, ye understand, not the owners. That's why."

XIII

The 'Grace-a-Dieu' justified Wulfrey's inexperienced choice. She was

an excellent sea-boat, fast, and as dry as could be expected, seeing

that she was chock full to the hatches, as Jock Steele informed him,

while they carried down his baggage.

But after his first four hours on board his personal interest in her

character and performance lapsed for three full days. He had stood

leaning over the side watching the lights of Liverpool as they dropped

away astern, and then those of the Cheshire and North Welsh coasts, and

felt that now indeed he had cut loose from the past and was in for a

great adventure.

It gave, him a curious, mixed feeling of depression and elation. He

felt at once homeless and endowed with the freedom of the universe. He

had burned his boats, he said confidently to himself, and was going

forth to begin a new life, to conquer a new world. And he set his

teeth and hung on to the heaving bulwark with grim determination.

But the sense of elation and width of outlook dwindled with the sinking

lights. The feeling of homelessness and helplessness grew steadily

upon him. He had taken the precaution of stowing away a good meal

before he set foot on board, and he lived on it for three days.

He had never been bodily sick in his life before, but sick as he now

was he was not too far gone to note the wretched peculiarity of his

sensations, and to muse upon them and the ridiculousness of the

provision he had made, at the Captain's suggestion, to supplement the

usual cabin fare.

He could not imagine himself ever eating again, as he lay there in his

heaving bunk, with nothing to distract his mind from the unhappy

vacuums above and below but the heavy tread of feet overhead at times,

and the ceaseless rush and thrash of the waves a few inches from his

ear, and the grinning face of the cabin-boy who came in at intervals to

ask if he would like anything yet.

But by degrees his head ceased to swim if he lifted it an inch off the

pillow. By further degrees he found himself crouching up and clinging

like a cat while he gazed unsteadily out of the tiny round porthole at

the tumbling green and white water outside. Still further

determination got him somehow into his clothes, and he dared to feel

hungry and empty without nausea. Then he crawled out to the deck,

feeling like a soiled rag. But the brisk south-west wind cleaned and

braced him, and presently he nibbled a biscuit and found himself as

hungry as a starving dog.

After that he very soon found his sea-legs, and by the fourth day he

was a new man, eating ravenously to make up for lost time, and keenly

interested in all about him.

So far they had had favourable weather and made good way. But Captain

Bain was a fervent believer in the inevitability of equinoctials, and

prophesied gales ahead, and the worse for being overdue.

Wulfrey learned, from one and another, chatting at meals with the

Captain or Sheumaish Macro, one or other of whom was generally on deck,

or with Jock Steele the carpenter, who also acted as boatswain, that

the 'Grace-a-Dieu' was French-built which, according to Steele,

accounted for the fineness of her lines.

"We build stouter but we cannot touch them for cut. She's as pretty a

little ship as ever I set eyes on and floats like a gull," was the

character Steele gave her. And he should know, as he'd made four

voyages in her since their owners in Glasgow bought her out of the

Prize Court, and she'd never given them any undue trouble even in the

very worst of weather.

The crew, again according to Steele, were a very mixed lot, a few good

seamen, the rest just lubbers out of the crimp house.

With Captain Bain and Sheumaish Macro, the mate, he got on well enough,

but found both by nature very self-contained and manifesting no

inclination for more than the necessary civilities of the situation.

"And why should they?" he said to himself. "I'm an outsider and they

know nothing more about me than I've told them myself. Another fifteen

or twenty days and we part and are not likely ever to meet again."

He made one discovery about them, however, which disquieted him

somewhat. They were both heavy drinkers, but they usually so arranged

matters, by taking their full bouts at different times, as not to bring

the ship into serious peril.

Wulfrey's eyes were opened to it by the fact of his not being able to

sleep one night. After tossing and tumbling in his bunk for a couple

of hours, and finding sleep as far off as ever, he dressed again

sufficiently to go on deck for a blow. As he passed through the cabin

he found Captain Bain there with his head sunk on his arms on the

table, and, fearing he might be ill, he went up to him. But he needed

no medical skill to tell him what was the matter. The old man was as

drunk as a lord and breathing like an apoplectic hog. So he eased his

neck gear and left him to sleep it off.

Macro was on deck in charge of the ship. Wulfrey simply told him he

had been unable to sleep, but made no mention of the Captain's

condition. And the mate said,

"Ay, we're just getting into thick of Gulf Stream and it tells on one."

Another night he found Steele in charge, and on the growl at the length

of his watch, and gathered from him that both Captain and mate had on

this occasion been indulging in a bit drink and were snoring in their

bunks.

He could only hope that Captain Bain's prognosticated equinoctials,

which were now considerably overdue, would not come upon them when both

their chiefs were incapacitated. And his only consolation was the

thought that this was not an exceptional occurrence but probably their

usual habit when well afloat, and that so far no disaster had befallen

them.

So, day after day, they sped along west-south-west, making good way and

sighting none but an occasional distant sail. Then they ran into mists

and clammy weather, and sometimes had a wind and drove along with the

swirling fog or across it, and sometimes lay rocking idly and making no

way at all.

Wulfrey gathered, from occasional words they let fall between

themselves, and from their answers to his own questions, that this was

all usual and to be expected. They were getting towards Newfoundland

where the Northern currents met the Southern, hence the fog, and it was

too early for icebergs, so there was no danger in pressing on whenever

the wind permitted.

Their seventeenth day out was the dullest they had had, heavy and

windless, with a shrouded sky and a close gray horizon and, to

Wulfrey's thinking, a sense of something impending. It was as though

Nature had gone into the sulks and was brooding gloomily over some

grievance.

Captain Bain stripped the ship of her canvas, and sent down the

topmasts and yards, and made all snug for anything that might turn up.

All day and all night they lay wallowing in vast discomfort, and

Wulfrey lost all relish for his food again.

"What do you make of it, Bo's'un?" he asked, as he clawed his way up to

Steele on the after deck, where he was temporarily in charge again.

"Someth'n's comin', sir," said Steele portentously, "but what it is

beats me, unless it's one o' them e-quy-noctials the skipper's bin

looking for."

In the night the fog closed down on them as thick as cotton wool; and,

without a breath of wind, the long seas came rolling in upon them out

of the thick white bank on one side and out into the thick white bank

on the other, till their scuppers dipped deep and worked backwards,

shooting up long hissing white jets over the deck, and making

everything wet and uncomfortable. Every single joint and timber in the

ship seemed to creak and groan as if in pain, and Wulfrey, as he

listened in the dark to the strident jerkings and grindings and general

complainings of the gear, and pictured the wild sweeps and swoops of

the masts away up in the fog there, wondered how long it could all

stand the strain, and how soon it would come clattering down on top of

them. Once, when a bigger roll than usual flung him against the

mainmast and he clung to it for a moment's safety, the rending groans

that came up through it from the depths below sent a creepy chill down

his spine. It sounded so terribly as though the very heart of the ship

were coming up by the roots.

Sleep was out of the question. His cabin was unbearable. Its dolorous

creakings seemed to threaten collapse and burial at any moment. If

they had to go down he would sooner be drowned in the open than like a

rat in its hole. And so he had crawled up on deck to see what was

towards.

The only comfort he found--and that of a very mixed character--was in

the sight of Captain Bain and the mate, sitting one on each side of the

cabin table with their legs curled knowingly round its stout wooden

supports, which were bolted to the floor, and which they used

alternately as fender and anchor to the rolling of the ship.

They had made all possible provision against contingencies. They could

do no more, and it was no good worrying, so now they sat smoking

philosophically and drinking now and again from a bottle of rum which

hung by the neck between them from a string attached to the beam above

their heads.

Wulfrey stood the discomforts of the deck till he was chilled to the

marrow, then he tumbled into the cabin, and annexed a third leg of the

table and sat with the philosophers and waited events.

"It's hard on the ship, Captain," he said, by way of being

companionable. But the Captain only grunted and deftly tipped some rum

into his tin pannikin as the bottle swung towards him on its way

towards the roof. And the mate looked at him wearily as much as to

say, "Man! don't bother us with your babytalk," and it seemed to him

that they had both got a fairly full cargo aboard.

However, he decided it was not for him to judge or condemn. They knew

their own business better than he did. There was no wind, no way on

the ship, and all they could do was to lie and wallow and wait for

better times. And the fact that they took it so calmly reassured him

somewhat.

The cabin was so full of fog and tobacco-smoke that the light from the

swinging oil-lamp could barely penetrate beyond the table. It made a

dull ghastly smudge of yellow light through which the bottle swung to

and fro like an uncouth pendulum, and he sat and watched it. Now it

was up above his head between him and the mate; now it was sweeping

gracefully over the table; now it was up above the Captain, who reached

out and tipped some more rum into his pannikin.

He watched it till it began to exert a mesmeric influence on, him and

his head began to feel light and swimmy. He knew something about

Mesmer and his experiments from his reading at home. He experienced a

detached interest in his own condition and wondered vaguely if the

bottle would succeed in putting him to sleep. He tried to keep his

eyes on it, but they kept wandering off to the Captain, on whom it had

already done its business, though in a different way.

He was dead tired. It was, he reckoned, quite six-and-thirty hours

since he had had any sleep. What time of night or morning it was he

had no idea. This awful rolling and groaning and creaking seemed to

have been going on for an incalculable time.

What with the heavy unwholesomeness of the atmosphere, and the

monotonous swing of the bottle, and the lethargic impassivity of his

companions, he fell at last into a condition of dull stupidity, which

might have ended in sleep but for the necessity of alternately hanging

on to and fending off the table, as the roll of the ship flung him away

from it or at it. And how long this went on he never knew.

He was jerked back to life by a sudden clatter of feet overhead and a

shout. Then he was flung bodily on to the table, and found himself

lying over it and looking down at Captain Bain, who had tumbled

backwards in a heap into a corner. The rum-bottle banged against the

roof and rained its fragments down on him. The lamp leaned up at a

preposterous angle and stopped there.

"We're done," thought Wulfrey dazedly, and became aware of fearsome

sounds outside,--a wild howling shriek as of all the fiends out of the

pit,--thunderous blows as of mighty hammers under which the little ship

reeled and staggered,--then grisly crackings and rendings and crashes

on deck, mingled with the feeble shouts of men.

Then, shuddering and trembling, the ship slowly righted herself and

Wulfrey breathed again. Outside, the howling shriek was as loud as

ever, the banging and buffeting worse than before.

Macro unhooked his long legs from the table and made for the door. The

Captain gathered himself up dazedly and rolled after him, and Wulfrey

followed as best he could.

But he could see very little. The fog was gone. The fierce rush of

the gale drove the breath back into his throat and came near to choking

him. Huge green seas topped with snarling white came leaping up over

the side of the ship near him. A man with an axe was chopping

furiously at the shrouds of the fallen main-mast amid a wild tangle of

ropes and spars. As they parted, the ship swung free and went

labouring off before the gale under somewhat easier conditions, and

Wulfrey hung tight in the cabin doorway and breathed still more

hopefully. He had thought the end was come, but they were still

afloat, though sadly shorn and battered. What their chances of

ultimate safety might be was beyond him, but while there was life there

was hope.

XIV

For three days life to Wulfrey was a grim experience made up of damp

discomfort, lack of food and rest, and growing hopelessness.

Both their masts had gone like carrots, leaving only their ragged

stumps sticking up out of the deck. "An' if they hadn't we'd bin gone

ourselves," growled the carpenter to him one day. Where they fell the

sides of the ship were smashed and torn, and the hungry waves came

yapping up through the gaps, most horribly close and threatening.

Three men had been washed overboard in that first fierce onrush. The

rest crouched miserably in the forecastle, and no man on board could

remember what it felt like to be dry and warm and full.

Meals there were none. When any man's hunger forced him to eat, he

wolfed sodden biscuit and a chunk of raw pork, and washed it down with

rum.

So ghastly did the discomfort become, as the wretched days succeeded

the still more miserable nights, that at last Wulfrey, for one, was

prepared to welcome even the end as a change for the better.

Observations were out of the question. In these four days they never

once saw sun or moon or star, nothing but a close black sky, gray with

flying spume. The great seas came roaring out of it behind them and

rushed roaring into it in front of them, and where they were getting

to, beyond the fact that they were driving continuously more or less

west-by-north, no man knew.

Captain Bain and the mate and the carpenter had done all that could be

done since the catastrophe, but that was very little. An attempt was

made to rig a jury mast on the stump of the foremast, but the gale

ripped it away with a jeering howl and would have none of it. With

some planking torn from the inside of the ship they barricaded the seas

out of the forecastle as well as they could. It was the carpenter's

idea to fix these planks upright, so that their ends stood up somewhat

above the top of the forecastle, and so great was the grip of the gale

that that slight projection sufficed to keep their head straight before

it and afforded them slight steerage way.

So they staggered along, dismantled and discomfited, and waited for the

gale to blow itself out or them to perdition, and were worn so low at

last that they did not much care which, so only an end to their misery.

And the end came as unexpectedly as the beginning. From sheer

weariness they slept at times, in chill discomfort and dankest

wretchedness, just where they sat or lay. And Wulfrey was lying so, in

a stupor of misery, caring neither for life nor death, when the final

catastrophe came.

Without any warning the ship struck something with a horrible shock

that flung everything inside it ajee. Then she heeled over on her

starboard side, baring her breast to the enemy.

The great green waves leaped at her like wolves on a foundered deer.

They had been chasing her for three days past and now they had got her.

She was down and they proceeded to worry her to pieces. No ship ever

built could stand against their fury. The 'Grace-a-Dieu' melted into

fragments as though she had been built of cardboard.

Wulfrey, jerked violently out of the corner where he had been lying,

rolled down towards the door of the cabin as the ship heeled over. As

he clawed himself up to look out, a green mountain of water caught him

up and carried him high over the port bulwarks which towered like a

house above him, and swept him along on its broken crest.

He could swim, but no swimmer could hope to save himself by swimming in

such a sea, and he was weak and worn with the miseries of the last

three days.

He had no hope of deliverance, but yet struck out mechanically to keep

his head above water, and his thrashing arm struck wood. He gripped it

with the grip of a drowning man and clung for dear life.

It was a large square structure, planking braced with cross-pieces,

almost a raft. He hung to the edge while the water ran out of his

mouth and wits, and then, inch by inch, hauled himself cautiously

further aboard, and, lying flat, looked anxiously about for signs of

his shipmates, but with little hope.

He could see but a yard or two on either side, and then only the

threatening welter of the monstrous green seas, terrifyingly close and

swelling with menace.

Nothing? ... Stay!--a white gleam under the green, like a scrap of

paper in a whirlpool, and a desperate face emerged a yard or so away

and a wildly-seeking hand.

The anguished eyes besought him, and, not knowing what else to do, he

gripped two of the cross-pieces of his raft and launched his legs out

towards the drowning man. They were seized as in a vice, and

presently, inch by inch, the gripping hands crept up his body till the

other could lay hold of the raft for himself. And Wulfrey, turning,

saw that it was the mate, Sheumaish Macro, whose life he had saved.

They drew themselves cautiously up into such further safety as the

frail ark offered and lay there spent. And Wulfrey, for one, wondered

if the quicker end had not been the greater gain.

XV

Sleeping and eating anyhow and at any time, they had lost all count of

time this last day or two. It was, however, daylight of a kind, but so

gray and murky and mixed with flying spume that they could see but

little.

Neither man had spoken since they crawled up on to the raft. Death was

so close that speech seemed futile. They both lay flat on their

stomachs, gripping tight, and peering hopelessly through nearly closed

eyes, expectant of nothing, doubting the wisdom of their choice of the

longer death.

"God!" cried Macro of a sudden, as they swung up the back of a wave.

"Where in ---- ha' we got to?"

And Wulfrey got a glimpse of most amazing surroundings.

Right ahead of them the sea was all abristle with what, to his quick

amazed glance, looked like the bones and ribs of multitudinous ships,

the ruins of a veritable Armada.

Now it was all hidden, as they sank into a weltering green valley with

tumbling green walls all about them. Then the solid green bottom of

their valley was ripped into furious white foam, and stark black baulks

of timber came lunging up through it, all crusted with barnacles,

festooned with hanging weeds, and laced with streaming white. They

looked like grisly arms of deep-sea monsters reaching up out of the

depths to lay hold of them. They seemed intent on impaling the frail

raft. They seemed to change places, to dart hither and thither as

though to head it off, to lie in wait for it, to spring up in its

course. It was frightful and unnerving. Wulfrey shut his eyes tight

and set his teeth, and waited for the inevitable crash and the end.

A great wave lifted them high above the venomous black timbers and,

swinging on its course, dropped them as deftly as a crane could have

done it, into the inside of a mighty cage.

Wave after wave did its best to lift them out and speed them on. Their

raft rose and fell and banged rudely against the ribs of their prison.

Up and down they swung, and round and round, bumping and grinding till

they feared the raft would go to pieces. But the tide had passed its

highest and the storm was blowing itself out, and they had come to the

end of the voyage.

"We're in hell," gasped the mate, as he clung to the jerking

cross-pieces to keep himself from being flung off, and to Wulfrey's

storm-broken senses it seemed that he was right.

XVI

All that night they swung and bumped inside their cage, with somewhat

less of bodily discomfort as the wind fell and the sea went down, but

with only such small relief to their minds as postponement of immediate

death might offer.

Wulfrey lay prone on the raft, grimping to it mechanically, utterly

worn out with all he had gone through these last four days. He sank

into a stupor again and lay heedless of everything.

The tide fell to its lowest and was rising again when dawn came, and

though the huge green waves still rolled through their cage, and swung

them to and fro, and sent them rasping against its massive bars, they

were as nothing compared with the waves of yesterday.

It was the sound of Macro cracking shell-fish and eating them that

roused Wulfrey. He raised his heavy head and looked round. The mate

hacked off a bunch of huge blue-black mussels from the post they were

grinding against at the moment, opened several of them and put them

under his nose. Without a word he began eating and felt the better for

them.

Presently he sat up and looked about him in amazement, and rubbed the

salt out of his smarting eyes and looked again.

"Where in heaven's name are we?" he gasped.

And well he might, for stranger sight no man ever set eyes on.

"Last night I thocht we were in hell," said Macro grimly. "An' seems

to me we're not far from it. We're in the belly of a dead ship an'

there's nought but dead ships round us."

Their immediate harbourage, into which the friendly wave had dropped

them, was composed of huge baulks of timber like those that had tried

to end them the night before, sea-sodden and crusted thick with

shell-fish, and as Wulfrey's eyes wandered along them he saw that the

mate was right. They were undoubtedly the mighty weather-worn ribs of

some great ship, canting up naked and forlorn out of the depths and

reaching far above their heads. There in front was the great curving

stem-piece, and yon stiff straight piece behind was the stern-post.

But when his eyes travelled out beyond these things his jaw dropped

with sheer amazement.

Everywhere about them, wherever he looked, and as far as his sight

could reach, lay dead ships and parts of ships. Some, like their own,

entire gaunt skeletons, but more still in grisly fragments. Close

alongside them a great once-white, now weather-gray and ghostly

figurehead representing an angel gazed forlornly at them out of

sightless eyes. From the position of its broken arms and the round

fragment of wood still in its mouth, it had probably once blown a

trumpet, but the storm-fiends would have no music but their own and had

long since made an end of that.

Close beside it jutted up a piece of a huge mast, with part of the

square top still on and ragged ropes trailing from it. Alongside it a

bowsprit stuck straight up to heaven, defiant of fate, and more

forlornly, a smaller ship's whole mast with yards and broken gear still

hanging to it all tangled and askew. And beyond, whichever way he

looked--always the same, dead ships and the limbs and fragments of them.

"It's a graveyard," he gasped.

"Juist that," said the mate dourly, "an' we're the only living things

in it."

And presently, brooding upon it, he said, "There'll be sand down below

an' they're bedded in it. When tide goes down again maybe we can get

out."

"Where to?"

"Deil kens! ... But it cann't be worse than stopping here."

The slow tide lifted them higher and higher within their cage, hiding

some of the baleful sights but giving them wider view over the whole

grim field. They sat, and by way of change stood and lay, on their

cramped platform. They knocked off shell-fish and ate them. So far,

so water-sodden had they been of late, they had not suffered from

thirst, but the dread of it was with them.

Then, slowly, the waters sank, and all the bristling bones of ships

came up again.

"Can you swim?" asked Macro abruptly at last.

"I can. But I feel very weak. I can't go far I'm afraid."

"We can't stop on here."

"Where shall we go?"

"Over yonder. They're thickest there and they stand out more. Mebbe

it's shallower that way."

"I'll do my best to follow you. If I can't, you go on."

"Nay. You gave me a hand last night. We'll stick together, and sooner

we start the better.... Stay ... mebbe we can----" and he began

pounding at the end planks of their raft with his foot to start them

from the cross-pieces.

"'Twas the roof of the galley," he explained, "and none too well made.

It got stove in last voyage and we rigged this one up ourselves. My

wonder is it held together in the night."

He managed at last with much stamping to loosen four boards.

"One under each arm will help," he said, "An' we can paddle along an'

not get tired."

He let himself down into the water, shipped a board under each arm, and

struck out between two of the gaunt ribs, and Wulfrey followed him,

somewhat doubtful as to what might come of it.

But the mate had taken his bearings and was following a reasoned

course. Over yonder the wrecks lay thick. There might be one on which

they could find shelter--even food. But that he hardly dared to hope

for. As far as he had been able to judge, at that distance, they were

all wrecks of long ago and mostly only bare ribs and stumps.

To Wulfrey, from water-level, the sea ahead seemed all abristle with

shipping, as thick, he thought to himself, as the docks at Liverpool.

But there all was life and bustling activity, and here was only

death,---dead ships and pieces of ships, and maybe dead men. The

feeling of it was upon them both, and they splashed slowly along with

as little noise as possible, as though they feared to rouse the

sleepers who had once peopled all these gruesome ruins.

"See yon!" whispered Macro hoarsely, as he slowed up and waited for

Wulfrey to come alongside, and following the jerk of his head Wulf saw

the figure of a man grotesquely spread-eagled in a vast tangle of

cordage that hung like a net from a broken mast.

"We had better see," said Wulfrey, and kicked along towards it, the

mate following with visible reluctance.

It was the body of Jock Steele, the carpenter, livid and sodden, and

many hours dead.

"I would we hadna seen him," growled Macro.

"He'll do us no harm. He was a decent man. I'm sorry he's gone. Is

there any chance of any of the others being alive?"

"Deil a chance!"

"Still, we are----"

"You had the deil's own luck and it's only by you I'm here. Let's get

on," and they splashed on again.

Past wreck after wreck, grim and gaunt and grisly, mostly of very

ancient date, all swept bare to the bone by the fury of the seas, all

with the water washing coldly through them. Now and again Macro

growled terse comments,--

"A warship,--from the size of her. See those ribs, they'll last

another hundred years. And yon's a Dutchman. They build stout too.

Mostly British though, bound to be, hereabouts."

"Have you any idea where we are, then?"

"An idea--ay! I've heard tell o' this place, but I never met anyone

had been here. They mostly never come back. They call it what you

called it a while ago--'The Graveyard.'"

"And where is it?"

"Sable Island, if I'm right,--'bout one hundred miles off Nova Scotia."

"And is there any island?"

"Ay,--on the chart, but I never met any man had been there. We're

looking for it. There's no depth here or all them ribs wouldn't be

sticking up like that. They're stuck in the sand below. Must be over

yonder where they lie so thick.... An' a fearsome place when we get

there, with the spirits of all them dead men all about it--hundreds of

'em,--thousands, mebbe."

"Do ships ever call there?"

"Not if they can help it, I trow. It's Death brings 'em and he holds

'em tight.... Hearken to that now!"--and he stopped as though in doubt

about going further.

And Wulfrey, listening intently, caught a faint thin sound of wailing

far away in the distance. It rose and fell, shrill and piercing and

very discomforting, though very far away.

"What is it?" he jerked.

"Spirits," breathed Macro, and his face was more scared and haggard

even than before.

"Nonsense!" said Wulfrey, with an assumption of brusqueness for his own

reassurance, for this dismal progress through the graveyard was telling

sorely on him also, and the sounds that came wavering across the water

were as like the shrieking of souls in torment as anything he could

imagine. "There are no such things. Don't be a fool, man!"

"Man alive!--no spirits? The Islands are full o' them, an' this place

fuller still. Yes, indeed!"

But it was obviously impossible to float about there for ever. The

water was not nearly so cold as Wulfrey had expected, but the strain of

the night and of the preceding days of semi-starvation had told on him,

and he was feeling that he could not stand much more. He set off

doggedly again towards the thickest agglomeration of dead shipping in

front, and the mate followed him with a face full of foreboding.

They went in silence, paying no heed now to the things they passed on

the way, though the apparently endless succession of dead ships and the

parts of them was not without its effect on their already broken

spirits.

"Gosh!" cried Macro of a sudden. "I touched ground or I'm a Dutchman!

Ay--sand it is," and Wulfrey sinking his feet found firm bottom.

"Better keep the floats," suggested the mate. "Mebbe it's only the

side of a bank we're on."

They waded on, breast-deep, and presently were out of their depth

again. But the feel of something below them, and the certainty that it

was still not very far away, were cheering. In a few minutes they were

walking again, having evidently crossed a channel between two banks.

And so, alternately walking and swimming, they drew at last towards the

jungle of wreckage; and all the time, from somewhere beyond it, rose

those piercing, wailing screams which Macro in his heart was certain

came from the spirits of the dead.

Here the water was no more than up to their knees and shoaling still,

and they came now upon more than the bones of ships,--chaotic masses of

masts and spars and rigging piled high and wide in fantastic confusion,

and in among them, tangled beyond even the power of the seas to chase

them further, barrels and boxes and crates, some still whole, mostly

broken; rotting bales, and pitiful and ridiculous fragments of their

contents worked in among them as if by impish hands.

"Gosh, what wastry!" said Macro at the sight. "There's many a thousand

pounds of goods piled here,--ay, hunderds of thousands, webbe."

"I'd give it all for a crust of bread," said Wulfrey hungrily.

"An' mebbe there's that too. If any o' them casks has flour in 'em we

needn' starve. It cakes round the sides wi' the wet, but the core's

all right."

Then, beyond the gigantic barrier of wastry, rose again that shrill

screaming and shrieking, louder than ever, and Macro said "Gosh!" and

looked like bolting back into the sea.

Wulfrey, determined to fathom it, hauled himself painfully up a tangle

of ropes and clambered to the top of the pile and saw, about a mile

away, a narrow yellow spit of sand, and all about it a dense cloud of

sea-birds, myriads of them, circling, diving, swooping, quarrelling.

One moment the vast gray cloud of them drooped to the sea and seemed to

settle there, the next it was whirling aloft like a writhing

water-spout, every component drop of which was a venomous bundle of

feathers shrieking and screaming its hardest in the bitter fight for

food. And the harsh and raucous clamour of them, each intent on its

own, had in it something fiendishly inhuman and chilling to the blood.

"It's only sea-birds, man," he cried to Macro. "Come up and see for

yourself," and the mate, with new life at the word, hauled himself up

alongside and stood staring.

"My Gosh! ... I never saw the like o' that before," he said at last.

"There's millions of 'em. They're fighting ... over our shipmates

mebbe.... We needn' starve if we can get at 'em," a sentiment which

somehow, in all the circumstances of the case, did not greatly appeal

to Wulfrey, hungry as he was.

"If they all set on a man he wouldn't have much chance," he said, with

a shiver. "They could pick him clean before he knew where he was."

"It's only dead men they feed on," said Macro, quite himself again,

since it was only birds they had to deal with and not disembodied

spirits. "There's land. Let's get ashore," and they crawled

precariously along over the wreckage, which sagged and dipped beneath

them in places, and in places towered high and had to be scaled as best

they could, and at times they had to wade or swim from pile to pile.

Amazing things they chanced upon in their course, but were too intent

on reaching land to give them more than a passing glance or a shudder.

More than once they came on bones of men, jammed in tight among the

raffle, and slowly picked by the sea and the things that lived in it

till they gleamed white and polished and clean. And their grinning

teeth, set in the awful fixed smile of the fleshless, seemed to welcome

them as future recruits to their company.

"Ah--ah! So you've come at last!" they seemed to say, as they laughed

up at them out of holes and corners. "We've been waiting for you all

these years and here you are at last."

There were, too, bales and boxes of what had been rich cloths and silks

and satins and coarser stuffs, worried open by the fret of the sea and

reduced to sodden slimy punk, and casks and barrels beyond the counting.

"Wastry! Wastry!" panted Macro. "We'll come back sometime, mebbe."

But, for the moment, their only craving was for dry land, to savour the

solid safety of it, and get something to eat if they could, and a long

long rest.

With desperate determination they dragged their sodden and weary bodies

through the shallows beyond, and blind fury filled them with spasmodic

vigour as they saw what the sea-birds were feeding on.

Over each poor body the carrion crew settled like flies, and tore and

screamed and quarrelled. The two living men dashed at them with angry

shouts, and the birds rose in a shrieking host amazed at their

interference. But only for a moment. They came swooping down again in

a gray-white cloud, with raucous cries and eyes like fiery beads, and

beat at them with their wings, and menaced them with already reddened

beaks. And they looked so murderously intentioned that the men were

fain to bow their heads and run, with flailing arms to keep them off.

And so at last to dry land, and grateful they were for the feel of it,

even though it seemed no more than a waste of sand but a few feet above

tide-level. That last tussle with the birds had drained their strength

completely. They dropped spent on the beach and lay panting.

Their flight had set their chilled blood coursing again, a merciful sun

had come up above the clouds that lay along the horizon, and in spite

of their hunger and the fact that their very bones felt soaked with

salt water, they both fell asleep where they lay.

XVII

Wulfrey was wakened by a sharp stab in the neck, and when he sat up

with a start a huge cormorant squawked affrightedly at the dead man

coming to life again, and flapped away, gibbering curses and leaving a

most atrocious stink behind him.

The mate was still sleeping soundly, and Wulfrey, for the time being

more painfully cognisant of the gnawing emptiness within than of the

miracle that permitted him any sensation whatever, sat gazing anxiously

about and revolving the primary problem of food.

Out there among all that mass of wreckage it would be strange if they

could not find something eatable,--cores of flour barrels, perhaps

pickled pork, rum almost certainly; and the clammy void inside him

craved these things most ardently. But he could not, as yet, imagine

himself venturing out there again to get them. Later on perhaps, but

for the present the land, such as it was, must provide, for him at all

events. He felt that he simply had not the heart or the strength to

make the attempt.

Let me say at once that the trying of these men, which came upon them

presently, was not in the matter of ways and means. It was of the

spirit, not of the flesh. But yet it is necessary to show you how they

came through these lesser trials of the flesh only to meet the greater

trials of the spirit later on. And even these smaller matters are not

entirely devoid of interest.

Many birds came circling round expectantly, and swooped down towards

the dark figures lying in the sand, and went off in shrill amazement

when they were denied. And Macro at last stretched and yawned and sat

up, staring dazedly at Wulfrey.

"Gosh, but I'm hungered," he said at last, as that paramount claim

emphasised itself. "Anything to eat?"

"I'm wondering. Plenty of birds, and very bad they smell. I've seen

nothing else."

The mate got up heavily and found himself sore and stiff. He stood

looking thoughtfully about him.

"What about all that stuff?" and he jerked his head towards the

graveyard wreckage.

"I couldn't go again yet."

"Nor me either.... Ground's higher over yonder," he said. "Let's go

and see," and they set off slowly over the sand.

The level of high water was thickly strewn with seaweed and small

wreckage. The slope of the shore was so long and gentle that no large

object could come in unless it were first broken into fragments outside.

The mate kicked over the sea-weed and found some which he put into his

mouth.

"Any good?" asked Wulfrey anxiously, hungrier than ever at sight of the

other's working jaws.

"Better'n nothing," and he rooted up another piece and handed it over.

Wulfrey found it tough and pungent of the sea and, after much chewing,

capable of being swallowed, but the most he also could say for it was

that it was just that much better than nothing.

They each picked up a piece of wood with which to root in the tangle,

and, bending and picking and munching, made their way slowly towards

the hummocks in front.

These were a low range of sandhills, some of them as much as thirty

feet high, and on the seaward side, which they climbed, they were

sparsely clothed with coarse slate-green wire-grass about a foot in

height, which bristled up like porcupines' quills and helped to keep

the loose soft sand together. They pulled some up to see if the roots

looked edible, and found them spreading far and wide below ground in a

matted tangle of white succulent-looking tendrils, which proved as

tough and unsatisfying as the sea-weed, but had the advantage of a

different flavour.

Grubbing along, they climbed heavily through the yielding sand to the

top of the nearest hummock. Macro, arriving there first, jerked a

gratified "Gosh!" and floundered down the other side whirling his

stick, and Wulfrey was just in time to catch the amazing sight of the

whole surface of the little valley beyond in violent motion.

He thought at first that something had gone wrong with his eyes, for

everywhere he looked the sand seemed to be jumping and skipping and

burying itself in itself. And then from the innumerable little flecks

of white, bobbing spasmodically all over the place, he perceived that

these were rabbits, and the mate was in among them, knocking them on

the head as fast as his stick could whirl. By the time Wulfrey reached

him he was sitting in the sand, skinning one with his knife, and half a

dozen more lay round him.

"Better than roots and seaweed," he said, as he hacked the first in

pieces and stuffed some into his mouth and handed some to Wulfrey.

"There's millions of 'em. We won't starve," and he started skinning

another.

Raw meat was a novelty, to Wulfrey at all events but baby-rabbit flesh

is eatable, even raw, and it put new life into them both.

The little valley in which they sat was like an oasis in the sandy

desert outside. For here, among the wire-grass grew innumerable small

creeping-plants and that so sturdily though so modestly that, in spite

of the vast horde of rabbits, the whole place was carpeted with green,

and right in the centre, where the ground was lowest and the

undergrowth thickest and darkest, was a considerable pool of rainwater,

which they found brackish but drinkable.

"All we want now is shelter and fire, and we'll live like kings and

fighting-cocks," said Macro, when he had time for anything but

rabbit-flesh, and lay back comfortably distent.

"And where shall we find shelter and fire in this place?"

"Man! There's more'n we'll ever need in all our lives, over yonder.

But it'll keep.... I'm not for going back there this day anyway.

To-morrow, mebbe,----" he said drowsily, and presently they were both

fast asleep again. And the rabbits came out at sunset and hopped about

them, and sniffed them with quivering noses and disrelish, and the

heavy dew fell on them, but they never woke. For Nature had now got

all she needed for the reparation of the previous waste, and she was

busily at work making good while they slept.

XVIII

Morning broke dull, and heavy. The air was mild but full of moisture,

and they were chilled with their long sleep in the open.

"Gosh! but I'd like to feel dry again," said Macro, as they sat

munching raw rabbit for breakfast. "D'you feel like going out yonder?"

"I feel three times the man I was yesterday. But should we not go on

further first? There may be someone living on the island."

"Not a soul but us two, I warrant you."

"But since we're here there might be others."

"That's so. There might be, but not likely. It's just luck, deil's

own luck, 'at those screeching deevils out yonder aren't picking us to

pieces like the rest."

"Say Providence, and I'll agree with you," said Wulfrey, who saw no

need to ascribe to the devil so obviously good a work as far as they

were concerned.

"Ca' it what you like, not one man in a thousand comes alive through

what we came through. And I'm not forgetting that but for you I'd no

be here myself. We can take a bit look round, but I'm sore set on a

covering of some kind and a fire, and some rum would be cheerful. It's

in my bones that we'll find all we want out there, and more besides."

So, after breakfast, they set off, carrying a couple of rabbits for

provision by the way.

Looking round from the top of the highest hummock, they saw the great

twisting cloud of sea-birds hovering over the distant wreckage, and the

shrill clamour of their screaming came faintly to them on the still

air. They had cleaned up what the sea had stranded on the spit and had

had to go further afield.

From this vantage point they could to some extent make out the lie of

the island. It ran nearly west and east and the narrow sand-spit on

which they had landed was the extreme western point. Where they stood,

the land was about a quarter of a mile in width and it stretched away

in front further than they could see, in vast stretches of sand with a

line of hummocks all along the northern side. It seemed very narrow,

just a long thin wedge of sand, with illimitable gray sea on each side,

as far as their eyes could reach. Right ahead, and about a mile away,

was a great sheet of water, whether lake or inlet they could not tell.

The hummocks ran along its northern side, and a narrow strip of sand

divided it from the sea on the south.

"We'd best keep to the ridges," said Macro. "Yon spit on the other

side may only end in the sea," so they tramped on along the firm beach

on the seaward slope of the line of hummocks, and every now and again

climbed up to see what was on the other side. When they found

themselves abreast of the sheet of water they went down and found it

salt and very shallow. It stretched away in front as far as they could

see, but Macro thought he could see more sand hummocks at the far end.

Every here and there, when they climbed the ridge to look over, they

came on little basins like their own, comparatively green and populous

with rabbits. But never a sign of human life or habitation, not a tree

or a shrub, not an animal except the rabbits.

"A God-forsaken hole," was the mate's comment, as they stood, after a

couple of hours' trudging, looking out over the interminable ridges in

front, and the great unruffled sheet of water below, and the gray

slow-heaving sea beyond on both sides, and the gray sky enclosing all.

"There's nought here and never has been. Let's go back and get to

work."

"That lake, or inlet, or whatever it is, seems to narrow over there.

Suppose we see where it goes to," suggested Wulfrey.

"Only back into sea, I reckon."

However, they tramped on along the beach, and next time they looked

over the ridge the land below had broadened out. The water had shrunk

to a mere channel which ran, they saw, not into the sea but into a

still larger lake beyond, unless it in turn should prove to be a long

arm of the sea running all through the middle of the island. They

could follow the low sand-spit which divided it from the sea on the

south side, and the long line of hummocks on the north, till they faded

out of sight in the distance.

Right in front of them spread the largest valley they had yet come

across, and the coast ridges ran down into the middle of it and ended

in the highest hill they had seen, and between the hill and the lake

lay a number of large ponds.

"We must get up there," said Wulfrey.

"No manner o' use," growled the mate, who found tramping through the

sand very tiring, and was eager to get back and attack the wreckage for

shelter and fire and food and rum.

"Stop you here then, Macro, and I'll go on. If there's anything to see

I'll wave my arms. You might skin those rabbits too. I'm beginning to

feel empty again."

He struck straight across the valley to the ponds, and was delighted to

find them fresh and much better to the taste than their own little

pool. Then he climbed the hill, which was not far short of a hundred

feet in height. And then Macro, who had been watching him

intermittently as he hacked at the rabbits, saw him wave his arms in so

excited a fashion that he picked up the rabbits and ran, wondering what

new thing he'd found now that set him dancing in that fashion.

And when at last he panted heavily up the yielding side of the hill and

saw, he gasped "Gosh!" with all the breath he had left, and sat down

open-mouthed and stared as if he could not believe his eyes.

Beyond the end of the valley, the great lake stretched away further

than they could see, and in a deep bend on the north side of it lay two

ships.

"Schooners, b' Gosh!" jerked Macro, as soon as he could speak; and eyed

them intently. "How in name of sin did they get there?" and his eye

travelled quickly along the sand-spit that shut out the sea, in search

of the break in it through which the schooners must have entered. But

no break was visible. Still it might well be that this great inland

lake joined the outer sea somewhere over there, beyond their range of

sight, and that this was a harbour of refuge, though he had certainly

never heard of it before.

"We must find out about 'em," he said at last, and they set off at

speed towards the ships to which his eyes seemed glued.

"Not a sign of a man aboard either of 'em," he jerked one time, as he

lurched up out of a rabbit-hole. "Nor ashore either."

And to Wulfrey also there was something strange and uncanny in the look

of them. The absence of any slightest sign of life anywhere about

imparted to them something of a lifeless look also. And their masts

were bare of sails, spars, or even cordage, just bare poles sticking up

out of the hulls like blighted pine trees. The sea outside had a long

slow heave in it, but the water of the lake was smooth as a pond, not a

pulse in it, not a ripple on it, and the two little ships lay as

motionless as toy boats on a looking-glass sea.

Macro was evidently much exercised in his mind. He never took his eyes

off the ships. So intent was he on them that he stumbled in and out of

rabbit holes without noticing them, and the "Gosh!" that jerked out of

him now and again was provoked entirely by the puzzle of the ships.

So they came at last round the curve of the land and stood opposite the

nearer of the two, which lay about a hundred yards out from the shore

of bare sand, and neither on ship nor shore nor water had they

discovered any sign of life.

"Schooner a-hoy!" bellowed the mate through his funnelled hands. And

again. "Schooner a-hoy!"

But no sudden head bobbed up at the hail, and but that they were whole

and afloat the ships looked as dead as those others out past the point.

"Gosh, but it's odd!" and he looked quickly both ways along the shore

and over his shoulders, as though he feared some odd thing might start

up suddenly and take him unawares. "What's it mean?"

"There's no one there. They're deserted."

"Deserted? Man alive! Who'd desert ships afloat like that? What in

---- does it mean?" his native fears of the unnatural and inexplicable

getting the better of him.

"We'd better go and see," said Wulfrey.

"Swim?"

"I suppose so. I don't expect we can wade."

The mate shook his head. He had evidently no liking for the job, keen

as was his desire to get to the bottom of it.

"Let's feed first anyway," he said, and produced the rabbits, which he

had held on to in spite of his surprise and many stumblings. So they

sat in the sand and ate raw rabbit, with their eyes on the ships all

the time.

"They're dead ships like all the rest," was the sum of Macro's

conclusions. "But how they got there beats me flat."

"They're afloat anyway and they'll be better to sleep in than the

sandhills."

"Ay--mebbe,--if so be's there's no dead men aboard--or ghosts."

"There's no ghosts anyway. If there are any dead men we'll bury them

decently and occupy their bunks."

At which the mate gave a shiver of distaste and chewed on in silence.

"Isn't it possible there's an opening to the sea over yonder?" asked

Wulfrey, with an eastward jerk of the head.

"Mebbe, but I don't think it. There's no seaweed here, and no move in

the water, and no tide-mark. It's dead level. But what if there is?"

"Why, then they might have got in that way, and then some storm blocked

the opening and they couldn't get out."

"Mebbe. We can find out by travelling along yon spit till we get to

the end of it. I'd liefer do that than go aboard."

"We'll sleep better on board than on the sand."

"Man, ye don't know what ill things may be aboard yon ships! There's a

wrong look about 'em," which was undeniable, but still not enough to

commend the chill sand to Wulfrey as a resting-place when shelter and

possibly bunks might be had on board.

"It seems to me," he said, as they finished their meal, "that it

doesn't matter much how they got there. We can perhaps find that out

later. There they are, and if they're habitable we want to make use of

them. I'm going to swim out to this nearest one and find out what's

the matter."

"If you go I go," grumbled the mate uncheerfully.

"It's evident there's no one aboard or anywhere about, and it's absurd

to sit here looking at them," said Wulf, and began to peel off his

clothes, which had got almost dry with walking. "No good getting them

wet again," he explained. "I've been all of a chill for the last five

days. I'll fasten them on to my head."

"We'll be coming back."

"We might decide to stop there all night. Better take what's left of

the meat."

"Gosh!" with a perceptible shiver of distaste again.

However, he peeled also, and by careful contrivance with belt and

braces they bound their bundles on to their heads and stepped into the

water.

"Phew! It's cold,--colder than the sea," said Wulfrey through

tight-set teeth, as they struck out.

"'Tis that," and the mate's teeth chittered visibly, between the chill

of the water and distaste of the adventure.

"Temperature ought to be same ... if sea comes in," sputtered Wulfrey.

"'Tisn't, all same. It's cauld as death."

They ploughed along till they reached the nearer ship, and swam round

it in search of entrance, and failing other means laid hold of the

rusty anchor-chain, which peeled in ruddy flakes at their touch. By

the time Wulf tumbled in over the bows he was streaked from head to

foot with iron-mould, and presented so ghastly an appearance that

Macro's jaw fell as he came up the side, and he looked half inclined to

drop back into the water.

"Man! You look awful. I tuk you for a ghost," he gasped in a whisper.

"You're nearly as bad yourself, but I took the cream of it. Now let us

see what's what."

The mate's experienced eye showed him at once that the condition of the

ship was not due to storm or accident. She had been deliberately

stripped of everything that could be turned to account elsewhere. She

was bare as a board,--not a rope nor a spar was left. The hatches were

closed and looked as though they had not been touched for years.

They came to the fore-hatch leading down to the fo'c's'le, and he

hauled it up with some difficulty and looked suspiciously down into the

darkness within.

"Below there!" he cried, in a repressed hollow voice. But only the

echoes answered him.

They passed the main-hatch leading to the hold, and went along, past a

grated skylight thick with green mould, to the covered gangway leading

to the officers' quarters. The doors were closed and bolted with rusty

bolts. There could not by any possibility be anyone below, not anyone

alive, that is.

Macro wasted no breath here, when they had managed to undo the bolts,

but he visibly hesitated. Wulf stepped down into the cabin, and he

followed.

Just bare walls, nothing more. Table, stools, lamps, everything

movable or unscrewable had been carried away. In the four small rooms

adjacent there were just four empty bunks and not a thing besides.

"Gosh, but it's queer!" whispered Macro. "Mebbe they're all lying dead

in the hold."

"We'll make sure," and they went up on deck again, and with some

labour, for the wood had swelled and stuck, got up the main hatch and

dropped down into the hold.

But that was bare like the rest. The ship was as empty as a drum.

"Not so much as a rat, b' Gosh!" said the mate, with recovered spirits,

seeing no sign of dead men or ghosts.

"What do you make of it?" asked Wulf.

"She's been stripped bare, that's plain. But why, beats me."

"Anyway, there's no objection to our stopping here now, I suppose.

Bare bunks will be drier than the sand over there."

"That's so.... And I'm thinking that if we can bring over some of the

stuff from that big pile out yonder we can make ourselves mighty

comfortable here."

"We can start on that tomorrow. We've done enough for one day."

"We'll make a raft, like old Robinson Crusoe, and bring the stuff right

down to the spit yonder," said Macro, waxing quite cheerful at the

prospect. "Then we'll make a smaller raft to bring it aboard here."

"We'd better walk along that spit tomorrow and see if there's any

opening to the sea."

"We can do that, but I doubt there's not, else this water wouldn't be

so cold, and there'd be some movement in it. It's all dead like

everything else."

They spent the rest of the daylight poking into every corner of the

ship, and in the dark fo'c's'le Macro made a find of surpassing worth.

He had rooted everywhere, with a natural enjoyment in the process, and

come on nothing but bare boards. "But you never know," he said, and

went on rooting. And in the blackest corner his foot struck something

loose which slid away and eluded him. He went down on his hands and

knees and groped till he found it, and then gave a triumphant shout

which brought up Wulfrey in haste.

It was a small round metal box such as was used for carrying flint and

steel and tinder, well-worn and battered, but tightly closed, and the

mate's fingers trembled with anxiety as he opened it with his knife.

"Thanks be!" he breathed deeply, for there in the little battered box

lay all the possibilities of fire,--warmth, cooked food, life--all

complete.

And--"Thank God!" said Wulfrey also. "That's the best find yet."

"If it'll work it's worth its weight in Guinea gold. But it's old,

old," and he poked the tinder doubtfully with his finger, "as old as

the ship, and that's older than you or me, I'm thinking. It's dropped

out of some old pocket and rolled out of sight. We do have the deil's

own luck."

"Providence!" said Wulfrey. "Can't we make a fire and roast some

rabbit? I'm sick of raw meat."

"Where'd we make it? Galley-stove's gone with all the rest, and galley

too for that matter.... Wouldn't do to set the ship afire.... There's

only one safe way. Soon as we've got a bit of a raft together we'll

bring over sand enough to make a fire-bed in the hold. Then we can

roast all the rabbits in the island."

"What about the cover of the big hatchway there? Wouldn't that carry

one of us and sand enough."

"Might. And there's wood enough and to spare in the skin of her down

below. But it'll be dark in an hour."

"Come on. Let's get it overboard. I'll go. Can you rip up a board

for a paddle?"

The hatch-cover was slightly domed and had four-inch coamings all

round, and when let upside down on to the water made a sufficiently

effective raft for light freight. Macro dropped down into the hold and

ripped up a board and jumped it into pieces, and Wulfrey lowered

himself gingerly down on to his frail craft and set off for the shore,

with roast rabbit in his face.

"Ye'll have to look smart or ye'll be in the dark," Macro called after

him, as he leaned over the side watching his clumsy progression.

"Ay, ay! I'll shout if I get lost," and the mate went down to break up

firewood and shred filmy shavings in default of sulphur sticks.

Wulfrey, wafting slowly ashore, lighted on a colony of rabbits intent

on supper, and was able to capture a couple in their panic rush for

their holes. Then he hastily loaded his float with all the sand it

could safely carry and set off again for the ship in great content of

mind.

The transfer of his cargo to the deck of the ship was a much more

difficult and precarious job than getting it alongside. He tried

throwing it up in handfuls, but that proved slow work and more than

once came near to spilling him overboard. And finally, as the night

was upon them, he took off his coat and sent up larger parcels in it;

and so at last Macro cried enough, and having shown him how to wedge

his float in between the rusty anchor-chain and the bows, so that the

wind should not drift it away in the night, he helped him up over the

side.

It was an anxious moment when the first sparks shredded down into the

ancient tinder. But they caught and glowed, and with tenderest coaxing

lighted the mate's carefully-prepared matches, and these the chips, and

these the faggots, and the mighty cheer and joy of fire were theirs.

They slept that night in great comfort, replete with roasted meat,

roofed from winds and dew, and grateful both, each in his own way, for

the marvellous encouragement of this first day on the island.

Though their beds were but bare boards, they had no fault to find with

them, but slept like tops. And Macro's black head was so full of the

wonderful possibilities of that vast pile of wastry out beyond the

point, in conjunction with this amazing find of the ships, that there

was no room left in it for any thought of ghosts or evil spirits.

XIX

Over their last night's fire they had made provision of roast meat for

breakfast, and after it they paddled precariously across to the other

schooner, a couple of hundred yards away, and explored it thoroughly.

But it was in exactly the same condition as their own, so they closed

all the hatches again and then, after a short discussion, decided to

leave the solution of the puzzle of the ships for the present and

devote the day to the salvage of any necessaries they could discover

among the wreckage.

They paddled across to the southern spit which divided the lake from

the sea, and found it a bare hundred yards in width, and at its highest

point not more than ten feet above high-water level. They walked

briskly along the side of the narrow channel that joined the two lakes,

on past the first one, and in a couple of hours reached the sandy point

where they had landed two days before. Out above the piles of wreckage

the gray cloud of sea-birds swung and whirled, and their shrill

screamings rose and fell with the varied fortunes of their quest.

"Screeching deevils!" was the mate's comment on them, and presently,

"It'll be a long pull back with a log of a raft. It must be six or

seven miles, I reckon."

"Perhaps we'll strike a boat among the wreckage."

"Ah--p'r'aps. We do have the deil's own luck."

It was almost dead low water. The storm of the previous days seemed to

have exhausted the elements for the time being. The sea was smooth,

with no more movement than the long slow heave which curled, as it

neared the shore, into great green and white combers of exquisite

beauty, rushing up the beaches in a dapple of marbled foam, and back

into the bosom of the next comer with a long-drawn sibilant hiss.

There was a soft south-west wind and even a cheering touch of the sun,

and as their work was like to be of the wettest, and dry clothes were a

luxury, they left them above tide-level and went out stripped to the

fight, their only weapon the mate's sailor's-knife in the belt which he

buckled round his waist. But, in view of the screeching deevils

already in possession, they forethoughtfully armed themselves with the

weightiest clubs they could pick out of the raffle of the beach. For

in that countless predatory host, although its components were but

birds, there was menace passing words. It made them feel bare and

vulnerable, and Macro cursed them heartily as he went.

They reached the pile without any difficulty, and the mate's keen eye

raked round for the likeliest stuff for a raft. It was no good

acquiring cargo till they had a craft to carry it.

There was no lack of timber, however, and cordage was to be had for the

cutting, and with these the skilled hands of the seaman soon

constructed a raft large enough for their utmost probable requirements.

Then he turned with gusto to the more satisfying joys of plunder, and

developed new and startling sides to his character.

Wulf laughed, but found him surprising, as the cateran spirit of his

forebears came uppermost with this tremendous opportunity.

He climbed up and down and in and out of the high-piled wreckage like a

hungry tiger, bashed in boxes and cases with a huge club of mahogany

which had once adorned the cabin-staircase of a ship, and raked over

their contents with the avidious claws of a wrecker of the evil coasts.

Now and again strange ejaculations broke from him. More than once, in

the wild glee of pillage and unexpected booty, he shouted snatches of

weird runes and chanties which Wulf supposed were Gaelic. At times he

stood and shook his fist at the screaming birds that swooped about him,

and cursed them volubly. And once, Wulfrey, on the raft below, knitted

his brows and watched him with doubtful perplexity as, in the

disappointment of his hopes respecting one great case which had

resisted his efforts and finally yielded nothing of consequence, he

attacked another with shouts of fury and a Berserk madness that

scattered chips and splinters far and wide. An incautious cormorant

swooped by him. With a stroke he sent it spinning, a bruised and

broken bundle of feathers, and it fell with a dull flop into the sea.

The man seemed demented, drunk with a rage for plunder and the

destruction of everything that stood between him and it. His great

club whirled, and the blows flailed here and there without any apparent

regard to direction. The lust of slaughter and demolishment burst from

him in volcanic fire and fury. For the moment he had reverted to his

elemental type.

To the cooler head below he looked dangerous. Wulfrey's amused

amazement gave place to doubt and a touch of anxiety. He could only

hope that his companion was not often subject to fits such as this.

But the Berserk madness was not wholly without method, and presently

plunder of all kinds came raining down on the raft.

Heralded by a sharp "Below there!" came a roll of linen and one of

woollen cloth, a bale of blankets, more rolls,--this time of silk and

satin and velvet, all more or less damaged by the sea, though they were

the pick and cream of his salvaging, and all no doubt dryable.

"Good heavens! What does he want with these?" thought Wulfrey, but

piled them up obediently.

Then, following the unmistakable course of the marauder up above, and

clawing the raft along to keep in touch with him, down came on his head

a bulging little sack, which felt like beans but proved to be coffee,

and presently, after a pause, necessitated by packing arrangements up

above, a series of soft bundles made up in crimson silk and tied with

slimy rope.

Then, after another pause punctuated by shouts and crashes, down came a

rattling heap of rusty cooking utensils all slung together with more

slimy rope, a rusty axe, four broken oars. Till at last the raft

became so crowded that there was barely standing room left on it.

"Steady, above there! We're full up. I can't take another pound, and

I doubt if we can get this all home safely."

"Just this, man!" and Macro appeared up above with a small keg in his

arms, and let himself and it carefully down on to the raft, with every

appearance of a return to sanity.

"Man!" he said, with the afterglow of it all still in his face. "That

was fine. We'll come again."

"We've got to get all these things home first."

"Easy that. This wind'll carry us fine," and he set to work with a

couple of the broken oars and a blanket, and contrived a sail of sorts.

Then, taking another oar and thrusting one into Wulfrey's hands, he

propelled the clumsy raft along the side of the wreckage till it got

clear, and the wind caught their sail and wafted them slowly towards

the island.

"A grand grand place, yon!" he broke out again.

"There's stuff enough there to load a hundred ships.... Gosh, I've

forgotten the pork!" and he uprooted the sail and began paddling back

to the wreckage. "I stove in the head of a barrel and was smelling at

it when I spied the wee keg."

"Was it eatable?"

"I've eaten worse."

"Couldn't we get it next trip?"

"Man, my stomach's been crying for it ever since I set eyes on it.

'Sides, those deevils of birds will finish it in no time. See them!

They're at it now. Och, ye greedy deevils!"

He clambered up the pile with his oar and laid about him lustily, The

birds rose up from the meat like a dense cloud of flies, and screamed

and raved at him, and swooped at him with vicious eyes and beaks and

claws, so that in a moment he became the centre of a writhing,

fluttering, shrieking mass which threatened to annihilate him

completely.

He flailed blindly at them with his oar, smashing them by dozens. But

they were too many for him. He shouted for help, and when Wulfrey

scrambled up he found him in very sore case, fighting blindly and

streaming with blood.

"Come away, man!" shouted Wulfrey, and thrashed away at the nightmare

of whirling birds. "Come away before they end us!" and in a moment he

found himself the centre of a similar shrieking mass, dazed and blinded

with their numbers and their fury. The terrified glimpse he got of

their cold glittering eyes and gnashing beaks, and the compressed venom

of their overwhelming assault, were too much for him. It was like

fighting single-handed against all the fiends out of the pit.

He hurled his oar overboard, put up his arms to protect his eyes, and

staggered to the edge of the pile, acutely conscious of jags and pecks

and rips innumerable on his bare arms and shoulders. As he flung

himself down into the water and dived under, a plunge alongside told

him that Macro had done the same. A raucous swarm of birds followed

them, but on their disappearance fluttered off to more visible chances

above.

"Man! but that was awful!" gasped the mate hoarsely. "They nigh ate me

alive."

"Let's get aboard or they'll be at us again. There's my oar," and he

swam quietly to it and they climbed back on to the raft.

"An' never ae piece o' pork," lamented Macro. "The poaching deevils!"

"Be thankful you're alive, man! It was a close touch that."

"'Twas that. I'm bit all over. I'd like to end 'em all with one

crack."

Fortunately the birds were too busy quarrelling up above to give them

more than cursory attention. A few came whirling and swooping after

them with greedy eyes and ravening beaks. But it was only in their

multitudes that they were formidable and they soon gave up a chase that

offered no easy prey.

The men, shaken and trembling, clawed along the pile till they caught

the wind again, when Macro readjusted his masts and sail, and they

drifted slowly back towards the island.

"Ye deevils! Ye scratching, scrawming, skelloching deevils!" breathed

Macro deeply, every now and again, and shook his fist at the twisting

column of birds behind. "I wish ye had ae neck and me ma hond on it."

Their weighty progress was of the slowest. When they drew alongside

the yellow spit Macro plunged overboard and waded ashore for their

clothes, and they drifted on along the low southern beach. But it was

well after mid-day before they came abreast of the stark little ships

which stood to them for home.

Then they made busy traffic transporting their salvage to the shore and

carrying it across the bank to the edge of the lake. And when that was

all done Macro unlashed the raft and they carried it over piece by

piece, and roughly put it together there and loaded up again.

"It'll all come in for firing," said the mate. "We can't go on burning

our own inside all the time."

It was no easy work propelling their rough craft with broken oars.

Moreover Macro insisted on taking the hatch-cover in tow. But the

spirit of accomplishment was upon them and the weight they dragged was

a comforting one.

All the way, as they joggled slowly along, the mate never ceased

enlarging on the wonders of the wreckage, nor forgot his one

disappointment, which evoked resentful curses each time he thought of

it.

"Man, but we're doing fine! A roof we've got, and fire, and things to

eat.--There's flour in yon bundles,--just the cores of half a dozen

casks. And yon bag's coffee, but we'll need to roast it and grind it.

And the wee keg's rum, unless I've mistook it. An' there's enough

stuff out yonder to last us for a thousand years. But,

blankety-blank-blank-blank!--my stomach's crying after yon pork that

them screeching deevils took out of our mouths, as you might say.

Blankety-blank-blank 'em all--every red-eyed son o' the pit among 'em!

But we'll try again, and next time I'll not broach the barr'l an'

they'll know noth'n about it."

"Maybe they'll attack us all the same. It was the most horrible

situation I was ever in. One felt so utterly helpless."

"Ay, blank 'em! There was no end to 'em.... They'd have ate me alive

if you hadn't come and helped me tumble overboard. Blank 'em! Blank

'em! Blank 'em!"

"What on earth are all these things for?" asked Wulfrey one time,

kicking a roll of crimson silk with his heel.

"Blankets to sleep on,--better than boards. The others for their gay

gaudery,--the bonny reid and blue o' them. They mek me feel good and

warm just to look at 'em. I just couldna leave them. Man, they're

grand!"

They hoisted all their stuff on board, and found themselves hungry and

thirsty with the heavy day's work. There were but the scantiest

remnants of their breakfast left, and Macro undertook to chop wood and

make a fire, scour some of the rusty cooking-utensils, and make

flour-and-water cakes as soon as he had some water, if Wulfrey would go

across for it and some fresh meat.

So he set off on the hatch-cover with a good-sized kettle, and was back

inside an hour with water from the ponds by the hill and a couple of

young rabbits, and found that the mate had not been idle. He had

transferred a sufficiency of sand to the cabin to make a hearth at the

foot of the steps, and had broken up wood enough to last for a week.

He had spread out all the blankets, scoured most of the rust off a

frying-pan and a small kettle and a couple of tin pannikins, and had

opened the keg and sampled its contents and found it French cognac of

excellent quality.

In the best of spirits he skinned the rabbits and set them roasting,

with an incidental commination of thae screeching deevils that had

robbed them of the pork which would have been such a welcome

accompaniment. Then he compounded cakes of flour and water and fried

them deftly, and set a kettle to boil wherewith to make hot grog, and

boastfully promised coffee for the morrow when he had time to roast and

grind it.

They both ate ravenously, and found great content in the taste of hot

food and drink once more, after all these days of clammy starvation,

and then they slept. And Wulfrey dreamed horribly all night of

fighting helplessly with legions of screeching birds, and several times

fought himself awake, and each time found Macro actively engaged in the

same unprofitable business.

XX

In spite of his torn shoulders and unrestful night, Macro was for

setting off again first thing next morning for more plunder. That huge

pile of wastry drew him like a magnet. He hungered and thirsted to be

at it again.

But Wulfrey flatly refused. They had enough to go on with, and he

claimed at least a day to recover from the effects of the last

excursion. And as Macro declined to tackle the job single-handed he

was fain to agree, though with none too good a grace.

"This weather mayn't last. We'd best get all we can while we can," he

urged.

"The stuff will be there tomorrow. Most of it's been there for years,

you said."

"Ay, but man, there's mebbe things out of the 'Grassadoo,' that'll be

spoiling for want of finding."

"They'll not spoil much more in one day. You're more used to this kind

of work than I am, you see. I must have a rest."

Macro consigned rest to the bottomless pit, but after relieving his

feelings in that way, consented at last to an easy-going exploration of

the southern spit, to see if their lake opened into the sea, though he

expressed himself satisfied, from his observations, that it did not.

First, however, out of the larger raft he constructed a smaller one,

which bore them better than the hatch-cover and was more manageable,

and the hatch they hauled on board again and fitted into its place, so

as to keep the ship dry in case of bad weather. Then they paddled

across to the spit and set off along it, both scrutinising the lie of

the land carefully.

For a good hour they trudged through heavy sand, the sea swirling with

long soft hisses up the yellow beach on their right hand, and on their

left the placid water of the lake without a pulse in it. The dividing

bank was nowhere in all its length more than a hundred yards wide, nor

more than ten feet high at its crown.

More than once Macro stood and studied it in places, and when in time

they came to long ridges of hummocks which stretched as far in front as

they could see, he stood again, looking back from the top of the first

they climbed, and said, "I'm thinking there's no opening this end.

Mebbe it was on the level there. But this stuff shifts so in a gale

you never know where you are."

Presently they came on the shallow rounded end of the lake, with higher

sandhills beyond it, which ran along both sides of the island further

than they could see. In between lay a vast unbroken stretch of level

sand, and when they climbed to the top of the highest hill, they saw

this sandy desert dwindle in the far distance to a point, with the sea

on each side of it, like the one at the other end of the island.

"There's not a sign of anybody else," said Wulfrey.

"If there'd been anyone they'd bin living on them ships. We've got it

all to ourselves, that's certain. And what's more, we'll have it all

to ourselves till Kingdom come. No one else'll ever come, 'cept dead

men."

"Those two ships came."

"Twenty, thirty years ago,--mebbe more. Must have bin an opening then

and it's got silted up. They couldn't have got washed over the spit."

There were several more large fresh-water ponds close to these larger

hills, and rabbits everywhere. They secured a couple and tramped back

the way they had come.

Macro seemed to accept the whole situation and outlook with the utmost

equanimity. They had very much more than they had had any right to

expect; more was always to be had for the fetching from that wonderful

pile out yonder; what that pile might yield in the way of richer

plunder remained to be seen, and he was the man to see to it.

But Wulfrey had been cherishing a hope that the great lake would prove

an inlet from the sea, a harbour of refuge into which other ships might

be expected to run at times. And the fact that it was not, that no

relief was to be looked for in that direction and that this desolate

sandbank, bristling with wrecks, must necessarily be shunned by all who

knew of it, weighed more and more heavily on him as he thought about it.

They were alive, where all their shipmates had perished. They were

provided for beyond their utmost expectation. For all that he was most

deeply grateful. But the prospect of passing the rest of his life on

this bare bank troubled him profoundly and reduced him to silence and

the lowest of spirits.

XXI

They woke next morning into a dense white fog, so thick that they could

not see across the deck. Macro, intent on plunder, hailed it as an

excellent screen from possible attack by the other pillagers of the

wreck-pile, and though Wulfrey had his doubts, he would not counter him

again.

His knowledge of human nature suggested to him the almost impossibility

of two men living alone, in intimacy so close and exclusive, and with

so little outlet for their thoughts and energies, without coming to

loggerheads at times. He determined that, so far as in him lay, the

provocation thereto should not come from him.

So far he had not only had nothing to complain of in his companion's

presence, but, on the contrary, had found himself distinctly the gainer

by it in every material way. But the strange wild outbursts, to which

he had given vent when they were at the wreckage before, warned him of

hidden fires below, and suggested the advisability of non-provocation

of the under-man, if it were possible to avoid it.

So they paddled across to the spit, which they could not well miss, and

set off on foot for the point, steering by the sullen lap and hiss of

the waves as they stole softly up out of the fog on their left hand.

There was a clamminess in the air which commended the idea of clothes

to them while they worked on the pile. So they made their things into

tight bundles, and carried them above their heads as they waded out

neck-deep to their store-house. The shrill cries of the birds came

dull and thin through the fog, more ghostly than ever from their

invisibility. Now and again an inquisitive straggler fluttered down at

them out of the close white curtain, and whirled back into it with a

terrified squawk when it found they were alive.

They climbed the pile cautiously, but the birds seemed mostly at a

distance; and when they had flung down sufficient timber Macro

proceeded to construct another raft, while Wulfrey poked about up above

on his own account.

And as he climbed about among the chaotic mass of barrels, boxes,

cases, bales, he came to understand the wild craving to get at them, to

bash them open and learn what they contained, which had possessed the

mate that other day. There might be anything hidden there--goods of

all kinds for the easement of their present situation. There might

even be treasure of gold and jewels. It was impossible to say what

there might not be. And though gold and jewels were absolutely useless

to them, placed as they were, and with no prospect, according to Macro,

of rescue or relief, the possibility of such things lying hidden in

untold quantity all about him stirred him strangely.

He recognised feelings so abnormal to himself with no little surprise.

He felt as a penniless small boy might feel if he were given the

freedom of a great shop full of boxed-up toys and told to help himself.

He wanted to smash open very closed case he came to, to see what was

inside it.

The water lapped and clunked dismally in the hollows below, and at

times he had to climb almost down to it, and then up the further side,

to get across faults in the pile. In one such black gully, on what was

usually the leeward side of the pile, he had stepped cautiously from

ledge to ledge, and laid hold of a projecting spar and was hauling

himself up the other side, when he came face up against a dark little

cranny between two great cases. And in the niche sat the skeleton of a

man, all huddled up and jammed together, but grinning at him in so

ferociously jovial a manner, as though he had been expecting him and

was rejoiced at the sight of him, that Wulfrey came near to loosing his

hold and falling into the water. He scrambled hastily past, and saw

grinning faces in every dark corner for the rest of the day, and some

of them were fact and some were only fancy. For the tumbled pile of

wreckage was like a huge trap for the catching of anything the sweeping

gales might bring it.

He heard Macro's voice, dulled by the mist, calling to him, and he

answered but knew not which way to go to get to him. It was only by

constant shouting and long and precarious scrambling that they came

together again.

"We'd best keep close in this fog," said the mate, "or one of us'll be

stopping the night here. Found anything?"

"A dead man----"

"Any of ours?"

"No, he was only bones."

"It's full of 'em. They're no canny, but they'll not harm us.

Where'll we begin?"

"One place is as good as another. Here, I should say, and quietly, or

those fiends of birds will be at us again."

"Bear a hand with this, then," laying hold of a newly-stranded barrel.

"That's pork out of the 'Grassadoo,' so it'll be all right," and

heaving and hauling, they managed to get the barrel down on to the raft.

As they poked about the pile in the mist, it was evident they had

struck a spot where a good portion of the contents of the

'Grace-a-Dieu' had lodged. Macro, having superintended the loading,

recognised many of the marks and in some instances could recall their

contents.

"Women's fallals," he said, with a scornful crack at one large case.

"If they'd been men's, now, they'd have come in handy.... Boots and

shoes, if I remember rightly,"--nodding at another case. "We'll soon

see," and with a chunk of wood he stove in one side and hauled out a

handful of its contents.--"Women's troke again! Mebbe we'll find some

men's stuff in time.... I've seen yon chest before.... Old Will

Taggart's, I think," and he stove it open, and went down on his knees

and raked over the contents. "Seaman's slops, not much account.... A

new pipe and a tin of tobacco! Thanks be! We'll take that ... and

another flint and steel. Always useful! ... Clothes not much good, but

we might be glad of 'em later on.... Yon's a box of tea and it'll be

lead-lined inside. Should be more about. We had two hunderd

aboard.... Glory! yon barrels are hard-tack. These ones are flour.

If we work hard and get 'em ashore before the weather breaks again

we'll live in clover.... What's this now? ... 'Duke of Kent'"--and he

hauled up a stout wooden box by one handle out of a raffle of cordage

and ragged sail-cloth. "Name of a ship--or name of a man? That's no a

ship's box."

A deft blow under the lock and the box lay open, displaying a number of

uniforms, richly decorated with gold braid and lacing, all more or less

damaged by water, but otherwise in good condition.

"Duds enough to keep us going for a couple of years if so be as they

fit," said the mate exuberantly, and Wulfrey laughed out at the idea of

their peacocking about their sandbank rigged out in court costumes.

"He was Governor-General of Canada," he said. "I remember hearing he

lost his baggage on the journey."

"We'll be Governor-Generals here when we're needing a change....

Nothing but his clothes," as he ran his hands all over the box. "Mebbe

we'll find more of 'em lying about. Man! what a place it is! It'd

take a man a lifetime to work through all the stuff there is here."

They worked hard and carried home a huge load, but as there was no wind

they had to paddle all the way, and even Macro acknowledged to being a

bit tired before they got all their plunder across the spit and on

board, the transit across the lake on the smaller raft necessitating

three separate journeys. He was in the highest of spirits however, and

keen to be back at the pile next day. As for Wulfrey, hardening though

he was with all these unusual labours, he found himself almost too

weary to eat.

The fog lay on them like a white pall for six days. Macro predicted

that it would go in a storm, and was urgent on salvaging all they could

before it came.

So, day after day, they went out to the pile, and came back loaded at

night till they had stuff enough in their hold to keep them in comfort

for many months to come.

They had meat and drink, clothes and firing, and comfortable quarters.

What more could any man want, unless it were to get away from it all?

And that, the mate asserted, time after time, was the unlikeliest thing

that could happen.

"We're here till Kingdom come," was the burden of his tune. "So we may

as well be comfortable. And we've had the deil's own luck. We might

ha' been living on rabbits and roots, and sleeping on the sand. Man!

be thankful at being tired to such good purpose!"

"I'm thankful enough and tired enough, and we've got stuff enough for a

year. I'm going to take a rest."

"I'm for the pile again tomorrow. If you won't come I'll e'en make

shift alone," and Wulfrey let him go alone.

XXII

The smothering white fog lay thick on them for six days and then

disappeared in the night. The morning broke dull and heavy, with a

gusty wind from the south-west, and they could hear the waves breaking

on the spit with a sound like the low growl of a menacing beast.

"I'm off to the pile," said the mate.

"Better take a day off. You've been working too hard."

"Not me. I cannot sit here while all yon stuff's crying aloud to be

picked up."

"Well, I'll be on the look-out, and come across to give you a hand from

the spit when you get there."

"I'll lash you up a bit float that'll bring you over, before I go. And

you'll mebbe have some food ready against I get back. It's hungry work

out there."

"I'll be ready for you. If you load up too heavily you'll not get back

at all."

"I'll see to that. Wind's fair, it'll bring me home all right."

So Wulfrey had the day to himself, and had time, which the labours of

the previous days had not permitted him, to consider the situation in

all its aspects.

So far they had been marvellously favoured, without doubt. Ten days

ago they were swinging up and down on the galley-roof inside the cage

of the dead ship's ribs, possessed of nothing but their bare lives, and

those but doubtfully. And here they were, provided for in every

respect, with comforts which shipwrecked men had no right to expect,

and with unlimited further stores to draw upon. They could live

without fear....

But what a life, after all. Eating, drinking, sleeping,--raking over

the wreckage for possible plunder that was useless to them,--rambling

among the rabbits and the sandhills. Quarrelling in time, maybe.

Perhaps it was a good thing there was a ship for each of them.

He was not himself of a quarrelsome disposition. The mate, he thought,

might be difficult to put up with if he took a crooked turn. But it

would be the height of folly for two men, bound together by

ill-fortune, and to this bare bank for all time, to fall out. Every

circumspection within his power he resolved to exercise, and so far,

indeed, his companion had given him no cause to mistrust or doubt him.

But he had a somewhat discomforting feeling that he knew very little of

the real man that lay beneath that saturnine exterior, that there might

be elemental depths there which would surprise him if they came to be

revealed. This Macro that he knew was to him something in the nature

of a sleeping volcano, outwardly quiet but full of hidden fires.

He could imagine no likely grounds for dispute between them. Each

worked for the common good, and so far they had shared all things

equally and without question. But how would it be as the weeks dragged

into months, and the months into years?

So far the rifling of the wreckage had afforded the mate all the outlet

he needed for his activities. In ministering to the cravings of the

riever spirit that was strong in him it had also supplied their wants

in overwhelming abundance. The longer it kept him busy the better, and

if it yielded him plunder of value he was entirely welcome to it.

Wulfrey could not imagine his discovering anything out there which

could by any possibility lead to any serious difference between them.

And yet, in spite of all that, from little glimpses he had caught at

times of the strange wild, hidden nature of the man, he was not without

doubts as to his absolute congeniality as a sole companion for the rest

of his days.

In short he had a vague feeling that, if by any chance they came to

loggerheads, Macro might prove an extremely unpleasant person to be

shut up with, within bounds so limited as this great bank of sand.

He recognised such feelings, however, as unnecessarily morbid, and

ascribed them to the general murkiness of the outlook and

over-weariness from the exertions of the last few days. So he tumbled

overboard on to the new raft and paddled to the nearer shore, and set

off for a brisk walk over the sandhills and along the beach, in search

of a more hopeful frame of mind.

Why could they not build a boat? Macro said the coast of Nova Scotia

was but a hundred miles or so away. A hundred miles was no great

affair, and there was wood among that pile enough to build a thousand

boats. So far, indeed, they had not come upon any tools except the

rusty axe, for tool-chests probably sank at once on the outer banks

where the ships went to pieces.

Still, he would suggest it to Macro. It might prove a further outlet

for his energies. If he should by chance find plunder of value out

there he might, when he was satiated, favour the idea of an attempt at

escape. In fact, plunder without any attempt to utilise it would be

absurd.

The opportunity of making his own position clear, and thereby obviating

any cause for dispute, occurred that same day.

When, in the afternoon, he saw the mate coming slowly along before the

wind, he paddled over to the spit to meet him and found him in great

spirits.

"Man! it's been a great day, and if ye'd been there ye'd have had your

chance. I lit on some graand things. Wait while I show you----"

"Let's get 'em all aboard first. They'll keep, and I'll be bound

you're tired and hungry."

"Hungert as a wolf, but finding siccan things takes the tired out o'

one," and his black eyes sparkled over his finds, and he must go on

telling about them as they worked.

"It was down under where we found yon Duke o' Kent box. I spied

another, and then more, mebbe there's, more yet down below."

"More fancy coats?"

"Ah!--and some with jewelled stars on 'em and swords with fancy hilts.

I'll show you when we get aboard."

"You didn't come across any tools, I suppose?"

"Tools? No. What would we want tools for?"

"I was wondering if it might not be possible to build some kind of a

boat and get across to Nova Scotia."

"We're safer here than trying that, I'm thinking."

"When you've got all there is to be got out there you'll want to get

home and enjoy it----"

"Man! It'd take a hunderd years to go through it all. It's bin piling

up there since ever this bank silted up."

"Oh well, we don't want to stop here a hundred years, that's certain.

What's the good of it all if you can't make any use of it?"

"It's graand to handle anyway."

And when they had eaten, he opened some of his bundles and displayed

his treasures,--a jewelled 'George,' roughly cut from some

Garter-knight's court-coat, several smaller decorations, all more or

less ornamented with precious stones, three dress-swords with

mountings, in ivory and gold, a small wooden box lined with sodden blue

velvet in which were half a dozen rings, some of which from the size of

the stones and the massiveness of their setting, seemed to Wulfrey of

considerable value.

"They're worth something, all those," said Macro, as he handled them

with loving exultation.

"Ay, if you could get them home and turn them into money. I don't see

what use they're going to be to you here," said Wulfrey, fiddling his

own string again.

"They're fine to have anyway."

"I'd sooner have another pipe and some more tobacco than the whole of

them."

"Ye can have that too," and he rooted in another bundle and produced

both. "They're oot a dead man's chest and they're wet. But he's no

use for 'em and they'll dry. So there ye are. Ye dinnot care for

jewels?" and he looked at Wulfrey wonderingly.

"As to that, I don't say I wouldn't pick them up if I came across them,

but I've no hankering for them."

"Ye've plenty money of your own, mebbe."

"As much as I need--if ever I get ashore."

"Ah! It meks a difference, ye see. I never had any to speak of, and

these bonny sparklers pluck at the heart o' me."

"You're welcome to all you can get, as far as I'm concerned----"

"Ay, man, they're mine, for I found 'em."

"But they're no use to you unless we can get away from here. Get

ashore and you can turn them to account. Now why couldn't we build

some kind of a boat and get across to Nova Scotia? There's wood enough

and to spare out yonder----"

"Ay, there's wood, but ef we had the tools 'twould still be no easy

matter. An' then ye've got to reckon wi' the weather. 'Twould be a

bad move to spend our time building a boat only to go to the bottom in

her with all the gear we'd gathered. We're safe here, anyway. Mebbe

some day a boat'll come ashore not so broke but we can patch her up....

How'd ye like to be afloat in a home-made boat a night like this?"

For while they sat, eating and talking, the day had darkened, and now

and again there came a menacing whuffle down the open hatch, and the

little ship was filled with a tremulous humming as the rising wind

played on their bare masts, and the growl of the spit had deepened into

a long hoarse roar.

"It'll be a bitter bad night I'm thinking. I saw it coming away out

yonder. Mebbe it'll add some to our pile of stuff. Mebbe it'll bring

us a boat."

"We will not hope for either," said Wulfrey soberly, "for that means

more deaths out yonder----"

A long shrill scream outside sent a creepy chill down his spine for a

moment. He glanced apprehensively across at Macro in the flickering

light of the fire, and saw his face livid, his eyes like great black

wells, his jaw dropped.

"The spirits o' the dead!" jerked the mate. "There's a hantle o' them

out there.... They're mebbe after me for these things...." and he

rocked himself to and fro, where he sat on the floor, and muttered

strange words,--"An ainm au Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid

Naoimh,"--in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy

Ghost.

The weird shrieking waxed louder and shriller. Wulfrey got up and

climbed the steps, and found the stormy twilight gray with that vast

cloud of birds, all fleeing blindly before the gale and each one

screaming its loudest.

It was a fearsome, blood-curdling clamour, an ear-splitting

pandemonium, a whirling Sabbat, as if all the demons of the pit had

broken loose and clothed themselves in wings and shrieks and deadly

fear.

"It's only those damnable birds," he bent and shouted gruffly down to

Macro, vexed with himself at his own momentary fright.

But the mate was not for accepting any such simple explanation as that.

"Man!" he said hoarsely. "Birds ye may think 'em, but I know better.

It is spirits they are,--spirits of all the dead that ever died in this

dread place,--a great multitude--their bones are white out there, but

the spirits of them cannot rest. A Mhoire ghradhach! 'Twas under the

Dark Star we were born, and here we'll die and leave our bones to

whiten in the sand, and the spirits of us will go screeching and

scrauchling wi' the rest. Come away, man, and shut the doors tight or

they'll be in on us!"

Wulfrey had never seen anything like it. Those myriads of fluttering

wings looked as though the whole gray sky had come tumbling down in

fragments. It was like a snowstorm on a gigantic scale, every whirling

flake a bundle of wildly screaming feathers.

He stood watching for a time and listening to the growing thunder of

the rollers on the spit. He imagined their crashing in white foam-fury

among the stark ribs of the dead ships out there on the banks.

He shivered as he recalled the chill horrors of their own undoing and

deliverance. It was wonderful beyond words, with that in his mind, to

be standing there, safe and warm, and well provided, and his heart was

full of gratitude.

"God help any who are out there this night!" he said to himself, and

closed the doors on the storm-fiends, and squatted on the floor over

against the mate, who sat rocking slowly to and fro in great discomfort

and muttered Gaelic seuns as a protection against the unholy things

that wandered outside.

All night long their little ship was filled with the hum of the

shuddering masts, broken now and again with the creaking and jerking of

their rusty cable. And whenever Wulfrey, warm in his bunk with many

blankets, woke up for a moment, he heard the deep thunder of the waves

on the spit, and the howl of the wind, outside, and the thrashing of

the rain on deck; and he thanked God for warmth and shelter, and lay

listening for a moment, and then rolled over and went to sleep again.

The storm lasted three full days, during which they never once left the

ship. They had all they needed, and fresh water was obtainable in any

quantity by slinging an empty keg outside one of the scupper-holes

through which the rain drained off the deck.

Macro's gloomy humour lasted, off and on, as long as the storm. The

birds had mostly hidden themselves in sheltered nooks among the

sandhills. But every now and again the evil in them, or maybe it was

hunger, would stir them up and set them whirling and shrieking round

the ship, and sometimes lighting on it in prodigious numbers, and the

mate would curse them long and deep and fall once more to his spells

and invocations. The fury of the storm did not trouble him, but the

screaming of the birds seemed to touch the superstitious spot in his

nature and set all his nerves jangling.

It was during one of the lull times that he astonished Wulfrey by

hauling out his rolls of silks and velvets, and with an elemental,

almost barbaric, delight in their rich colourings, he cut them into

long strips, which he fixed neatly to the walls of the cabin by means

of wooden pegs. The gorgeous results afforded him the greatest

satisfaction, which nothing but the wailing of the birds could damp.

Whenever their shrill clamour broke out the darkness fell on him again.

He hurled uncouth curses at them and no arguments availed against his

humour.

To Wulfrey, on the other hand, the birds and their dismal shriekings

were but an incident, the fury of the storm a wonder and a revelation.

All through that former time of stress, which had ended in their

undoing, his powers of observation and appreciation had been dulled by

his fears of disaster. Then, the howl of the gale and the onslaught of

the seas had been like hungry deaths close at his heels. But here, in

the perfect security of the land-locked lake, he was free to watch and

to wonder.

At times, indeed, it seemed to him that the terrible force of the wind

might lift them bodily, ship and all, and hurl them into the turmoil

beyond. Then he remembered that many such storms must have swept the

island and still the ships were there.

The waves that broke on the spit seemed to him higher than tall houses,

and the weight of them, as they curled and crashed on the sand, made

the whole island tremble, he was certain. The uproar was deafening,

and at times great lashes of white spray came hurtling over into the

lake, and scourging it into sizable waves of its own.

When Wulfrey woke on the fourth morning he was conscious of a change,

and running up on deck he found the sun shining in a pale-blue,

storm-washed sky, and nothing left of the gale but the great green

waves breaking sullenly on the beach beyond the spit.

He stripped and plunged overboard, and climbed up again full of the joy

of life and physical fitness.

XXIII

The days crept into weeks, the weeks into months, with nothing to break

the monotony of their life but visits to the wreckage, an occasional

skirmish with the birds, rabbit-hunts, rude attempts at fishing, which

met with so little success from lack of anything approaching proper

material that they gave it up in disgust, and rambles among the

sandhills.

They got along companionably enough; the mate's only complaint,--and

that not untinged with satisfaction, and obviously prompted more by a

desire for his help than from any wish to halve his spoils--that

Wulfrey showed so poor a spirit in the matter of plunder, and so

shamefully neglected the opportunities of a lifetime.

For himself, if he could have found safe lodging out there, he would

have lived on the wreck-pile, to save the time and trouble of going to

and fro. The riever spirit of his forefathers was kept at

boiling-point by the possibilities of fortune which lurked there. The

search in itself at once satisfied and stimulated the natural craving

for booty which rioted in his Highland-Spanish blood, and he never

tired of it.

He came back laden every time with things for the common good, and

rarer pickings for his private hoard, over which he exulted like a

chieftain returned from a successful foray.

Wulfrey was on the whole not ungrateful to the pile for affording him

such distraction. He discussed the latest additions to his

treasure-trove with him, as they sat by the fire of a night, and

speculated with him on their probable origin and value, and the higher

he assessed this the more the mate's black eyes glowed.

He would sit watching Wulfrey as he turned the latest find over and

over, and weighed it in his hand, and polished a bit of it to get at

its basic metal, and mused on its shape and endeavoured to arrive at

its history. And at such times there was in the sombre black eyes

something of the look of an uncertain-tempered dog whose lawful bone is

in jeopardy.

Once or twice, Wulfrey, glancing up as he passed an opinion, caught

that curious suspicious look bent on him, and was amused and annoyed at

it, and also somewhat discomfited. Did the man think he coveted his

useless little gauds?--useless in their present extremity, though some

of them doubtless valuable enough if they could be sold. Why, he

esteemed a dryable twist of tobacco infinitely more highly than any

silver candlestick or shapely silver cup that the other could fish up

from the depths. It seemed to him just as well that the plunder-fever

had attacked only one of them, for he doubted if his companion would

willingly have shared with another. For the fever grew with his finds.

Once they came within an ace of a quarrel, and though it blew over, the

seeds remained.

Where the mate hid his spoil, Wulfrey neither knew nor cared nor ever

troubled his head about. He would no more have occupied his thoughts

with it than he would have taken more than his proper share of the food

or tobacco.

But increase breeds suspicion, and suspicion clouds the outlook. Among

other things, Macro one day brought home a small crucifix and some

strings of beads, which he believed to be of gold, while Wulfrey, from

their hardness to the touch of the knife, pronounced them only brass.

They were all curiously carved or cast, however, and, whatever the

metal of which they were made, he expressed his admiration of the

workmanship.

A night or two later, to his amazement, Macro came out of his own cabin

more black-a-vised than he had ever seen him, and asked abruptly,

"Where's that cross?"

"What cross?"

"You know what cross. Yon gold cross I showed you two nights ago.

Where is it?" and he lowered at Wulfrey like a full-charged

thunder-cloud.

"I know nothing of your cross, man. I suppose you put it with the rest

of your things."

"I did that, and it's gone. Where is it?"

"Don't speak to me like that, Macro. I won't have it. I know nothing

about your cross or any of your plunder. I've told you before, it is

nothing to me. If I wanted it I'd go and get it for myself."

"It was there with the rest and it's no there now. And----"

"---- ---- ----!" cried Wulfrey, springing up ablaze with indignation.

"Do you dare to think I would touch your dirty pilferings?" and it

looked as though the next instant would find them at grips.

But the mate had broken out in the sudden discovery of his loss. Wulf

stood full as tall as himself. He looked very fit and capable, and

looked, moreover, as the mate's common sense told him, as soon as it

got the chance, the last person in the world to tamper with another

man's goods--even though he might be the only one circumstantially able

to have done so.

"It's gone anyway," he growled. "But it's no good fighting about it."

"That's not enough. Your greed for gain has blinded you. Till you

come to your senses I've nothing more to do with you," and for two days

not a word passed between them.

Each prepared his own food as and when he chose, and ate it apart from

the other. The mate hung about as though loth to leave Wulfrey in sole

charge at home, and the atmosphere of the little cabin was murky and

charged with lightning.

On the third day Wulfrey ostentatiously set off for the wreck-pile by

himself. He was running out of tobacco and would not have accepted any

from the mate if it had been offered.

He waded out, made a rough raft on Macro's lines, and smashed open such

seamen's chests as he could discover, for it was always in them that

they found tobacco.

He got several small lots, and a couple of new pipes, and a flint and

steel, charged his raft with a keg of rum and a case of hard-tack, and

managed to get it all back to the spit and to the ship single-handed.

As he came up the side, the mate met him, with the missing crucifix in

his hand.

"The little deevil of a thing," he said, with quite unconscious

incongruity, "had slipped down a crack, back o' the locker, and I were

wrong to think ye could have taken it."

"Well, don't play the fool again," said Wulfrey shortly. "If your

greed for other folk's goods hadn't blinded you, you would understand

that a gentleman does not stoop to stealing."

"I've seen some I wouldn't trust further'n I could see 'em, and then

only if their hands were up over their heads. But ye're not that kind,

an' I was wrong. So there 'tis, an' no more to be said. What have ye

found?"

"Pipes and tobacco. That is all I went for."

After his two days of enforced silence Macro was inclined to expand,

but found his advances coldly received. Wulfrey's pride was in arms

and the insult rankled.

By degrees, however, the storm-cloud drifted by, and matters between

them became again much as they had been, with somewhat of added

knowledge, on each side, of the character of the other.

The mate had learned that the Doctor, quiet as he might appear, was not

a man to suffer injustice or to be meddled with. And Wulfrey had got a

further warning of the possibilities of trouble should he and the mate

come to serious differences.

It seemed absurd that two men, stranded, perhaps for life, on this bare

sandbank, should be unable to live together in amity. Yet, his

experience of men told him that it was just such enforced close

intimacy--the constant rubbing together of very divergent natures, with

nothing in common between them but the necessities entailed by their

common misfortune--that might, nay almost certainly must, come to

explosion at times, unless they both set themselves sedulously to the

keeping of the peace.

If any actual rupture took place between them, he foresaw that the mate

might develop phases of character which would be exceedingly awkward

and difficult to deal with. Freedom from all the ordinary restraints

which civilisation imposed upon the natural inner man might easily run

to wildest licence.

At bottom this man was just a wild Highland cateran with a dash of

Spanish buccaneer, hot-blooded, avid of gain under circumstances so

propitious, insatiable. The chance of a lifetime had come to him and

he was exultantly set on making the most of it. He was like a

cage-bred wolf set down suddenly into the midst of an unprotected flock

of sheep. There was his natural prey in profusion and there was none

to stay him. To be dropped unexpectedly on to this enormous pile of

plunder was like the realisation of a fairy tale. No wonder he was

inclined to lose his head.

It was fortunate, thought Wulfrey, that they were built on different

lines, and that the plunder-pile made absolutely no appeal to himself

beyond the necessaries of life.

He determined, as far as in him lay, to walk warily and to avoid, as

far as possible, any just cause of offence on his side.