Chương Chương 29 · Chapter XXIX

“Fool!” I cried aloud in my vexation.

I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on the beach,

where I had set about making a camp. There was driftwood, though not

much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee tin I had taken from the

_Ghost’s_ larder had given me the idea of a fire.

“Blithering idiot!” I was continuing.

But Maud said, “Tut, tut,” in gentle reproval, and then asked why I was a

blithering idiot.

“No matches,” I groaned. “Not a match did I bring. And now we shall

have no hot coffee, soup, tea, or anything!”

“Wasn’t it—er—Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?” she drawled.

“But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked men

who tried, and tried in vain,” I answered. “I remember Winters, a

newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian reputation. Met him at the

Bibelot once, and he was telling us how he attempted to make a fire with

a couple of sticks. It was most amusing. He told it inimitably, but it

was the story of a failure. I remember his conclusion, his black eyes

flashing as he said, ‘Gentlemen, the South Sea Islander may do it, the

Malay may do it, but take my word it’s beyond the white man.’”

“Oh, well, we’ve managed so far without it,” she said cheerfully. “And

there’s no reason why we cannot still manage without it.”

“But think of the coffee!” I cried. “It’s good coffee, too, I know. I

took it from Larsen’s private stores. And look at that good wood.”

I confess, I wanted the coffee badly; and I learned, not long afterward,

that the berry was likewise a little weakness of Maud’s. Besides, we had

been so long on a cold diet that we were numb inside as well as out.

Anything warm would have been most gratifying. But I complained no more

and set about making a tent of the sail for Maud.

I had looked upon it as a simple task, what of the oars, mast, boom, and

sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines. But as I was without

experience, and as every detail was an experiment and every successful

detail an invention, the day was well gone before her shelter was an

accomplished fact. And then, that night, it rained, and she was flooded

out and driven back into the boat.

The next morning I dug a shallow ditch around the tent, and, an hour

later, a sudden gust of wind, whipping over the rocky wall behind us,

picked up the tent and smashed it down on the sand thirty yards away.

Maud laughed at my crestfallen expression, and I said, “As soon as the

wind abates I intend going in the boat to explore the island. There must

be a station somewhere, and men. And ships must visit the station. Some

Government must protect all these seals. But I wish to have you

comfortable before I start.”

“I should like to go with you,” was all she said.

“It would be better if you remained. You have had enough of hardship.

It is a miracle that you have survived. And it won’t be comfortable in

the boat rowing and sailing in this rainy weather. What you need is

rest, and I should like you to remain and get it.”

Something suspiciously akin to moistness dimmed her beautiful eyes before

she dropped them and partly turned away her head.

“I should prefer going with you,” she said in a low voice, in which there

was just a hint of appeal.

“I might be able to help you a—” her voice broke,—“a little. And if

anything should happen to you, think of me left here alone.”

“Oh, I intend being very careful,” I answered. “And I shall not go so

far but what I can get back before night. Yes, all said and done, I

think it vastly better for you to remain, and sleep, and rest and do

nothing.”

She turned and looked me in the eyes. Her gaze was unfaltering, but

soft.

“Please, please,” she said, oh, so softly.

I stiffened myself to refuse, and shook my head. Still she waited and

looked at me. I tried to word my refusal, but wavered. I saw the glad

light spring into her eyes and knew that I had lost. It was impossible

to say no after that.

The wind died down in the afternoon, and we were prepared to start the

following morning. There was no way of penetrating the island from our

cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from the beach, and, on either

side of the cove, rose from the deep water.

Morning broke dull and grey, but calm, and I was awake early and had the

boat in readiness.

“Fool! Imbecile! Yahoo!” I shouted, when I thought it was meet to

arouse Maud; but this time I shouted in merriment as I danced about the

beach, bareheaded, in mock despair.

Her head appeared under the flap of the sail.

“What now?” she asked sleepily, and, withal, curiously.

“Coffee!” I cried. “What do you say to a cup of coffee? hot coffee?

piping hot?”

“My!” she murmured, “you startled me, and you are cruel. Here I have

been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are vexing me with

your vain suggestions.”

“Watch me,” I said.

From under clefts among the rocks I gathered a few dry sticks and chips.

These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling. From my note-book

I tore out a page, and from the ammunition box took a shot-gun shell.

Removing the wads from the latter with my knife, I emptied the powder on

a flat rock. Next I pried the primer, or cap, from the shell, and laid

it on the rock, in the midst of the scattered powder. All was ready.

Maud still watched from the tent. Holding the paper in my left hand, I

smashed down upon the cap with a rock held in my right. There was a puff

of white smoke, a burst of flame, and the rough edge of the paper was

alight.

Maud clapped her hands gleefully. “Prometheus!” she cried.

But I was too occupied to acknowledge her delight. The feeble flame must

be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength and live. I fed it,

shaving by shaving, and sliver by sliver, till at last it was snapping

and crackling as it laid hold of the smaller chips and sticks. To be

cast away on an island had not entered into my calculations, so we were

without a kettle or cooking utensils of any sort; but I made shift with

the tin used for bailing the boat, and later, as we consumed our supply

of canned goods, we accumulated quite an imposing array of cooking

vessels.

I boiled the water, but it was Maud who made the coffee. And how good it

was! My contribution was canned beef fried with crumbled sea-biscuit and

water. The breakfast was a success, and we sat about the fire much

longer than enterprising explorers should have done, sipping the hot

black coffee and talking over our situation.

I was confident that we should find a station in some one of the coves,

for I knew that the rookeries of Bering Sea were thus guarded; but Maud

advanced the theory—to prepare me for disappointment, I do believe, if

disappointment were to come—that we had discovered an unknown rookery.

She was in very good spirits, however, and made quite merry in accepting

our plight as a grave one.

“If you are right,” I said, “then we must prepare to winter here. Our

food will not last, but there are the seals. They go away in the fall,

so I must soon begin to lay in a supply of meat. Then there will be huts

to build and driftwood to gather. Also we shall try out seal fat for

lighting purposes. Altogether, we’ll have our hands full if we find the

island uninhabited. Which we shall not, I know.”

But she was right. We sailed with a beam wind along the shore, searching

the coves with our glasses and landing occasionally, without finding a

sign of human life. Yet we learned that we were not the first who had

landed on Endeavour Island. High up on the beach of the second cove from

ours, we discovered the splintered wreck of a boat—a sealer’s boat, for

the rowlocks were bound in sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side

of the bow, and in white letters was faintly visible _Gazelle_ No. 2.

The boat had lain there for a long time, for it was half filled with

sand, and the splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to

long exposure to the elements. In the stern-sheets I found a rusty

ten-gauge shot-gun and a sailor’s sheath-knife broken short across and so

rusted as to be almost unrecognizable.

“They got away,” I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at the heart and

seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones somewhere on that beach.

I did not wish Maud’s spirits to be dampened by such a find, so I turned

seaward again with our boat and skirted the north-eastern point of the

island. There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early

afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the

circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its circumference at

twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two to five miles; while my

most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two hundred thousand

seals. The island was highest at its extreme south-western point, the

headlands and backbone diminishing regularly until the north-eastern

portion was only a few feet above the sea. With the exception of our

little cove, the other beaches sloped gently back for a distance of

half-a-mile or so, into what I might call rocky meadows, with here and

there patches of moss and tundra grass. Here the seals hauled out, and

the old bulls guarded their harems, while the young bulls hauled out by

themselves.

This brief description is all that Endeavour Island merits. Damp and

soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds and

lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the bellowing

of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy and miserable

sojourning-place. Maud, who had prepared me for disappointment, and who

had been sprightly and vivacious all day, broke down as we landed in our

own little cove. She strove bravely to hide it from me, but while I was

kindling another fire I knew she was stifling her sobs in the blankets

under the sail-tent.

It was my turn to be cheerful, and I played the part to the best of my

ability, and with such success that I brought the laughter back into her

dear eyes and song on her lips; for she sang to me before she went to an

early bed. It was the first time I had heard her sing, and I lay by the

fire, listening and transported, for she was nothing if not an artist in

everything she did, and her voice, though not strong, was wonderfully

sweet and expressive.

I still slept in the boat, and I lay awake long that night, gazing up at

the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering the situation.

Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to me. Wolf Larsen had been

quite right. I had stood on my father’s legs. My lawyers and agents had

taken care of my money for me. I had had no responsibilities at all.

Then, on the _Ghost_ I had learned to be responsible for myself. And

now, for the first time in my life, I found myself responsible for some

one else. And it was required of me that this should be the gravest of

responsibilities, for she was the one woman in the world—the one small

woman, as I loved to think of her.