BOOK III

BONE OF CONTENTION

XXIV

They had been three months on the island, and in all that time had never sighted a living ship, though the remains of newly-dead ones were never wanting after bad weather.

It was evident that the men of the sea avoided Sable Island as if it were a pestilence, and came there only when it no longer mattered to them whether they came there or not.

Macro was, by degrees and with never-lessening enjoyment, amassing a very considerable treasure. If ever the chance of getting back to land arrived, and he could get his plunder home, he would have no need to follow the sea for the rest of his life. But, whether or not that crowning good fortune should ever be his, this gathering of spoil was a huge satisfaction to the very soul of him, and he desired no better.

The only flies in his big honey-pot were those rival depredators the birds. He had many a battle royal with them, and came home at times scratched and clawed and furiously comminative, consigning birds of all shapes and sizes to everlasting perdition. Spirits or no spirits, in the day time, and in the prosecution of his work, he would fight them valiantly or trick them cleverly.

But in the black storms that swept over them at times, when the great waves crashed like thunder on the spit, and the sandhills and hummocks melted away under Wulfrey's wondering eyes and built themselves afresh in new places, when the shrieking hosts came whirling round the ship and the sky was full of their raucous clamour, then the darkness came on Macro and he fell again to his seuns, and knew them, beyond all doubt, for things of evil.

When the odds out there on the wreck-pile were too much for him, he learned by experience how to fool them. He would smash furiously at them with his club, shouting in wild exultation as the bashed bodies went tumbling into the sea. If that did not discourage them, and their venom persisted, he would drop quietly into some adjacent hole amid the wreckage where they could not get at him, and wait there till they whirled away after easier prey.

So keen was he on adding to his store that, when their commissariat needed replenishing, Wulfrey found it necessary to accompany him and to insist on his attending strictly to this more important business, or at times they would have gone short. For the rest, Wulfrey left him to the satisfaction of his cravings and interfered with him not at all.

One memorable morning, which broke sweet and clear after two days of stress and storm, the mate set off as usual to find what the gods had sent him; and Wulf, leaning over the side, watched him paddle across to the spit, and land there, and stride away towards the western point from which they always waded out to the wreckage.

But on this occasion, before he disappeared in the distance, he stopped and stood looking out over the sea, and the next moment Wulfrey saw him wading out towards something which only caught his eye when thus directed to it,--something which bobbed up and down among the waves with a glint of white at times.

He saw Macro reach it and lift his arms in a gesture of amazement. Then he bent over it and presently came staggering back up the shore bearing a white burden over his shoulder. It looked at that distance so very like a body that Wulfrey tumbled over on to his raft, and paddled across to the spit, and ran along the shore to where the mate was kneeling now alongside his find.

It was the body of a woman, pallid and sodden, with her long dark hair all astream, her white face pinched and shrunken and blue-veined, with dark hollows round the closed eyes, and colourless lips slightly retracted showing even, white teeth. She was clothed only in a long white nightdress, which the water had so moulded to her shapely figure that it looked like a piece of fair white marble sculpture. In life she must have been beautiful, Wulfrey thought, as he stood panting, and gazed down upon her.

"Dead?" he jerked.

"Ay, sure! She were lashed to yonder spar and I couldna leave her there.... The pity of it! She's been a fine bit."

Wulfrey knelt down, and slipped his hand to the quiet heart, instinctively but without hope, bent closer, gently raised one of the closed eyelids, and said hastily, "There may be a chance. Help me back home with her! Quick! You take her feet...." and he taking her under the arms they hurried back along the spit.

"She is not dead from drowning anyway," he jerked as they went. "The exposure may have killed her.... She must have suffered dreadfully."

It was no easy task to get her on board, but they managed it somehow, and laid her gently among the blankets in Wulfrey's bunk.

"Now.... Bags of hot sand, as quick as you can and as many.... Then mix some hot rum and water--not too strong,"--and Macro found himself springing to his orders with an alacrity which would have surprised him if he had had time to think about it.

Wulfrey, his professional instincts at highest pressure, drew off the clinging garment, muffled the sea-bitten white body in the blankets, and through them set to gentle vigorous rubbing, to start the chilled blood flowing again.

Macro came hurrying in with hot sand from the hearth, wrapped in linen and tied with strands of untwisted rope.

"Good! ... As many more as you can," said the Doctor, and placed them against the cold, blue-white feet, and rubbed away for dear life.

By degrees he packed her all round with hot sand-bags, Macro heating them as fast as they cooled, in a frying-pan over the fire. He placed them under her arms and between her shoulders, and never ceased his vigorous friction except to renew the bags.

Each time the mate came in, his face asked news, and each time Wulfrey shook his head and said, "Not yet," and went on with his rubbing. His own blood was at fever-heat with his exertions in that confined space. But that was all the better. His superfluous warmth might transmit itself in time to the chill white body of his patient.

Macro came in with hot rum and water, and Wulfrey poured a few careful drops between the still-livid lips, watched the result anxiously, and followed them up with more, and then resumed his patient rubbing.

For over an hour they worked incessantly, and then Macro was for giving it up as hopeless.

"'S no good. She's gone, sure," he said.

"I don't think so.... Too soon to give up anyway," and the Doctor worked on tirelessly. "If she should come round----"

"She won't."

"--She'll be starving. You might break up some hard-tack very small and warm it up in some weak rum and water," and he went on with his rubbing.

And at last, when he had almost given up hope himself, he had his reward. The mate, poking in a head deprecatory of further waste of time and energy on so hopeless a job, stood staring amazedly. For the pinched dead look of the pitiful white face had given place to a faint presage of life, like the first flutter of dawn on the pallid darkness of the night. Death had visibly relaxed his chill grip. There was a tinge of colour in the parted lips, and the white teeth inside had come together.

"She lives," said Wulfrey softly. "Her heart is at work again. Warm up that rum and water," and when it came he administered it cautiously in drops again, and this time they were visibly swallowed.

"Have the warm mash ready," he said; and even as he spoke the blue-veined lids fluttered, but so feebly as hardly to lift the long dark lashes from the white cheeks. And through that narrowed window the recovered soul looked mistily out on life once more.

He gave her still a little more hot rum and water, and when the warm mashed biscuit came fed her slowly with that, and she swallowed it hungrily if unconsciously.

Then, well satisfied with his work, he piled more blankets on her and left her to herself.

He had had many a fight with death, but none closer than this. The snatching of a life from the cold hand that was closing on it was always a cause for rejoicing with him. And this life, by reason of its comely tenement, had appealed to him in quite an unusual way.

Who she was, and what manner of woman, was still to be learned. For the moment it was enough that she had been within an ace of death and was alive again, and that she was unusually good to look upon.

XXV

When the Doctor had had a plunge overboard to restore the vitality he had expended on his patient, they sat down to eat, and the mate was inclined to enlarge somewhat exuberantly on the morning's work,--upon his own share in it especially.

"A wonderful fine piece of goods for any man to drag out of the water. I'm doubting if you'd have seen her if you'd bin there, Doctor. Just happened to lift my eye that way, and the white of her caught it, and in I went. Not that I thought she could be living, you understand. She felt like Death itself when I carried her ashore in my arms----"

"She'll be distressed for lack of clothes when she's ready to get up. But that won't be to-day anyway. Do you think you can light on any out yonder?"

"Lit on some last time I was there, but left 'em 'cause they were no use to us. That lot'll mebbe be gone, but there's plenty more for the finding. I'll see to it to-morrow."

"She will be grateful to you, I'm sure."

"She should, for if it hadn't bin for me she'd be tumbling about on yon spar still, and dead by this time, I'm thinking."

"She couldn't have stood much more, that's certain. I was near losing hope myself at times."

"Wouldn't have believed she'd ever come back if I hadn't seen it. It's being a doctor made ye keep on so."

"One feels bound to keep on while there's a possible chance left. In this case one couldn't but feel that there was a chance, if only a small one. We've done a good day's work to-day."

"Ay," said the mate, and presently, "I'm thinking I'll go out there today to get her some clothes. They'll need a lot of drying, you see."

"Can you do it before dark?"

"I'll do it. Ye'll see to her."

"I'll see to her all right. A little more food and then the longer she sleeps the better. If she'd lie where she is for a couple of days it would be all to the good."

"Then I'll go," but he came back to bend down into the little companion-way and say, "If she's asking, ye'll tell her it was me pulled her out the water."

"I'll tell her."

When, presently, Wulfrey went to see how she was going on, he found her sleeping quietly the sleep of utter exhaustion, and as he stood looking at her it seemed to him that she grew more beautiful each time he saw her.

The long wet tresses, whose clamminess he had carefully disposed behind the rolled-up blankets which served as a pillow, were drying to a deep warm brown. As they carried her in he had thought her hair was black. It was very thick and long. The texture of her skin, now that the coursing blood had obliterated to some extent the pinch and the bite of the sea, was fine and delicate, he could see, though suffering still from the salt.

The pink fingers of one hand had pulled down the blankets round her neck as though she had craved more air, and the soft white neck was smooth and white as marble. The one ear turned towards him was like a delicate little pink shell.

All these things he noted before his gaze settled on the quiet sleeping face, and lingered there with a strange new sense of joyous discovery and unexpected increase, as one might feel who suddenly unearths a hidden treasure.

He wondered again who she was and whence she came. Of gentle birth, he was sure. It showed in every feature of the placid face,--in the strong sweet curves of a not too small mouth,--in the delicately-turned nostrils,--in the soft level brows,--in the long fringing lashes which, with the shadows left by her sharp encounter with Death, cast about her closed eyes a misty enchantment full of witchery and allurement. He wondered what colour her eyes would be when they opened.

A wide white forehead, somewhat high cheek-bones, and a round well-moulded chin, added a fine dignity to the sleeping face. He stood so long gazing at its all-unconscious fascination that he feared at last lest the very earnestness of his look might disturb her.

So he picked up her only earthly possession, and leaving her, sleeping soundly, in sole charge of the ship, paddled across to the nearer shore, washed the salt out of her dainty single garment in a fresh-water pool, and spread it in the sun to dry, and then went after rabbits for her benefit when she should waken ravenous.

Returned on board, after a glance at his still-sleeping patient,--who lay so motionless that, but for the slight, slow rise and fall of the blankets over her bosom, one might have deemed her dead,--he set to the making of as tempting a soup as rabbit and rice could furnish, and regretted, more sorely than ever before, his lack of salt and seasoning.

Then he sat waiting for her to awake and for Macro to come home. If she did not wake of her own accord before sunset he decided to wake her himself. Sleep was without doubt the best of all restoratives, but Nature craves sustenance, and she was almost certainly starving. She would recover strength more quickly still if her system had something to draw upon.

Then, too, they had no light but that of the fire. If she woke up in the dark she would be sorely exercised in her mind to know where she had got to. It would be better to satisfy her, mentally and bodily, while still there was daylight to see by.

So, when the sun shone level through the western portholes, he went softly to where she lay, still sleeping soundly, and after watching her again for a moment, he placed his hand gently on her forehead.

She frowned at the touch and moved uneasily among her blankets. Then the heavy eyes opened and she lay staring wonderingly up at him, evidently trying to piece past and present together, and to make out where she was.

"Where am I? ... Who are you?" she jerked, in a voice that would have been rich and full if it had not been a little hoarse and husky. And the pink fingers grasped the blanket and drew it up under the rounded white chin.

"You are quite safe on a ship. I am a doctor. I want you to eat some warm soup and then you shall sleep again as long as you can. Here is your night-rail, washed and dried; perhaps you would like to put it on. I will go and fetch the soup."

When he came back presently she was visibly more at ease with her frills about her neck. She raised herself on her left elbow, and he placed the tin pannikin of soup in front of her, together with some broken biscuit.

"Can you feed yourself?" he asked.

"Oh, yes--if I had a spoon."

"I am sorry to say we have no spoons."

"No spoons?" and she stared at him in vast surprise.

"Perhaps you can make shift to drink it out of the pannikin. You see----"

"What a very odd ship--to have no spoons!" she took a sip of the soup and screwed up her lips. "Would you get me some salt, if you please? This soup----"

"I'm sorry, but we have no salt either. You see----"

"No salt?" and she shot another quick amazed look at him. "Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" at which Wulfrey pricked up his ears. "Whatever kind of a ship--you did say a ship, did you not? Where is it going to?"

"It's not going anywhere. You see, it's practically a stranded ship though it's really afloat----"

She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed it gently, and then clasped it tightly, with her thumb at one temple and her fingers at the other. "I think my head is swimming yet," she said simply. "I cannot follow what you say."

"You'll understand as soon as you get on deck. This ship is bottled up inside a lake on an island. It has been here for probably thirty or forty years----"

"And you--have you been here all that time?"

"No, we were wrecked as you were, I suppose, on the banks out there. We managed to get ashore and found this ship to live on."

"Who are 'we'?"

"The mate of the ship and myself. We were the only ones saved. It was he saw you in the water and went in after you and brought you ashore."

"It was good of him. I will thank him. Where is he?"

"He's out at the wreckage trying to find you some clothes."

"He is a good man.... How long have you been here?"

"About three months."

"And no one has come to you in all that time?"

"You are the first. Now"--as she finished the soup--"take a good drink of this,"--some weak rum and water warmed up in another pannikin, over which she choked and coughed and wrinkled up her pretty nose distastefully. "Then you will go to sleep again, and in the morning I hope you will be all right."

"But there is so much I would like to know----"

"When you have had another long sleep. Are you quite warm?"

"Quite. That horrid stuff was like fire."

"You were cold enough when we found you. In fact we believed you were dead."

She shivered and nestled down among the blankets with a wave of colour in her face.

"I will sleep," she said quietly, and the Doctor left her to herself.

XXVI

It was almost dark before the mate pitched his cargo up on to the deck and came groping up the side after it.

"What luck?" asked Wulfrey, as he came up to help him.

"Brought all I could lay hands on, but I wouldn't like to say they're right kind of things."

"She'll be glad of them whatever they are."

"Has she come round?"

"I wakened her to take some soup and biscuit. Now I hope she will sleep till morning."

"And you told her it was me brought her ashore?"

"Yes, I told her that. She will thank you herself."

"Did you find out who she is and where she hails from?"

"Not yet. There'll be time enough to learn all that. My only desire was to get some nourishment inside her. She'll be building up now all the time she's sleeping."

"An' she's a good-looking bit of goods, eh?" asked the mate, as they sat eating.

"Very good-looking, I should say, and pulling round quickly. A gentlewoman without doubt."

"And how can ye tell that now? There's many a good-looking hussy that's not gentle-born."

"Undoubtedly," said Wulfrey, looking across the fire at him. "But this isn't one of that kind. She's a lady to the finger-tips."

"Ah--too fine a lady to live on a ship with the likes o' you and me, mebbe," growled the mate. "All same, if't 'adn't bin for me her leddyship ud be no more'n a little white corp tumbling about out yonder in its little white shift."

"Quite so," said Wulfrey, on whom this insistence on his sole claim to the salvaging of her was beginning to pall. "And if it hadn't been for me your bringing her ashore wouldn't have been of much service to her. So suppose we say no more about it. We'll divide the honours."

"If I hadn't brought her ashore ye couldn't have brought her round," growled the mate.

"Six of one and half a dozen of the other."

"No six of anything. Ye can't deny I brought her ashore."

Wulfrey lit his pipe and went up on deck, wondering what was working in the curious fellow's brain now.

When he went down again he found that Macro had opened his bundles and spread their contents out to dry, and had turned in. He just glanced at the varied assortment, and then, not to disturb his patient by going anywhere near her, spread some blankets in the room next to the mate's, and turned in himself. But he lay awake for a long time, wondering if the introduction of this new element into the limited circle of their lives was like to make for peace or otherwise.

XXVII

Wulfrey was up early, after a restless night, anxious to see how his patient fared. It was such a morning as usually followed their storms--clear and bright and sunny, with a pale-blue wind-swept sky, and a crisp breeze that tipped the green of the waves outside with white.

The first time he went softly in she was still sleeping, and with much satisfaction he noted the improvement the food and rest had wrought in her. Her face had filled out, the cheek-bones were less prominent, the dark circles round her eyes were not nearly so pronounced as before, though he imagined the long dark lashes and level brows would always lend a sense of depth and witchery to the great dark eyes themselves. The slight salting and roughening of the skin would speedily cure itself under the application of fresh water. She was almost herself again.

Their fire, on its bed of sand, was never allowed to go out. The supply of wood was unlimited and always, in the depths of the heap of white ashes, was a golden core of heat only waiting to be fed. So he set to and prepared coffee for her, and some flour-and-water biscuits, and when he went in again she was awake. She turned her head and looked at him, and his heart beat quicker than was its wont.

Her eyes, he perceived, were very dark blue, almost black, and looked the darker for the dark fringing lashes. They were very beautiful eyes, he decided, and very eloquent,--there was something of apprehension in them when first they met his, but it vanished when he spoke.

"You are better, I can see. You slept well?"

"I have only just wakened. You are the doctor."

"Yes, I am the doctor. I have got some coffee for you and some biscuits. I will get them."

"You are very good," as he came in with them and she raised herself on to her elbow again. "Did your friend get me any clothes? I feel quite well, and I would get up."

"He brought a whole heap of things. They have been spread out all night, but I'm afraid they'll never dry properly till they are washed in fresh water."

"And have you fresh water?"

"Oh, plenty,--Ashore there, in pools. If you can select a few things I will go across and steep them. They will soon dry in the sun."

"You are very good," she said again, and sipped the coffee and glanced up at him with a somewhat wry face. "No, you have no sugar on this strange ship--nor milk. Nor a brush, nor a comb, I'll be bound. Nothing but----"

"A brush and a comb we can provide at all events, and of exceptional quality. They belonged, I believe, to His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent."

"Edward of Kent?" she asked quickly. "Why--how...."

"Some ship, bringing home his belongings from Canada, must have been wrecked here. We have found quite a number of his things."

"Well, he would not mind my using them," she said quietly. "He is of a pleasant temper, quite the nicest of them all"; and as she finished the coffee and biscuits, "If you could find me ... a brooch--no, you will not have a brooch! ... a large pin or two,--but no, you will not have any pins! ... Let me see, then,--a sharp splinter of wood----"

"I can get you all the splinters you want. Might I ask----"

"To pin some of these blankets about me, do you see,--so that I may get up. And if you would get me that royal brush and comb----"

He trimmed up half a dozen sharp little skewers and left them with her, together with the brush and comb, and plunged overboard for his morning swim.

The mate was sitting by the fire at his breakfast when he went down again.

"Well?--how is my lady this morning?" he asked.

"So well that she is getting up."

"Them clothes all right?"

"She will pick out what she wants. But they'll never dry with the salt in them. I'll rinse them in one of the pools as soon as she says which."

"There's more mebbe for the finding----" and then they heard the door of her little room open and she came into the cabin to them.

The mate jumped up and stood staring as if she were a ghost; and even Wulfrey, who had already made her acquaintance, eyed her with surprise, and was confirmed in the idea that had been growing in him that there was foreign blood in her. He doubted if any Englishwoman could have made so brave a showing out of such poverty of material.

Fastened simply with her wooden skewers, she had one blanket draped about her as a skirt, and another covered her shoulders, with a high peak behind her neck, like a monkish cloak. And inside this rough calyx the fair white column of her neck rose out of its surrounding frillery like the stamen of a flower from its nest of petals. Her abundant hair, combed and brushed, but still lacking somewhat of its natural lustre, was coiled about her head in heavy plaits.

Though her garments were only rough blankets they were so disposed about her person that she stood before them tall and slim and graceful. Her eyes and face were all aglow at the novelty of her situation. Her feet were bare.

She sailed up to the mate with outstretched hand.

"It was you who brought me ashore out of that terrible sea," she said, and her voice was no longer hoarse and husky. "I thank you with all my heart."

Macro ducked his head but never took his eyes off her.

"Gosh! Ye looked very different then, miss," he jerked. "We scarce expected ye'd ever come round like this."

"I am the more grateful. But--what a wonderful room you have!"--as she looked round at the mate's barbaric hangings. "Silks and satins!--and such gorgeous colours!"

"There's bales of them about, miss, and you're very welcome to them. They'd look better on you than them blankets."

"But the blankets are warm, and the dreadful chill of the sea is still in my thoughts all the time. Now I would go on deck and understand about this strange ship of yours," and Macro hastened to lead the way and Wulfrey followed.

"But it is truly amazing," she said, as she gazed round at the sandhills and the spit, at the tumbling waves beyond, and the unruffled waters of the lake.

"And another ship! Who lives there?"

"No one. There is not another soul on the whole island but we three," said Wulfrey.

"It sounds dreadfully lonely."

"It is not so lonely as the sea."

"No, it is not so lonely as the sea. The sea is dreadful, and oh, so-o-o cold when you are dying in it slowly, an inch at a time," and she shivered again at the recollection.

"You must try to forget all about it."

"I shall never forget it. That is not possible. The memory of it is frozen into my soul. What noise is that?" she asked, listening intently with her hand uplifted.

"It's a great cloud of sea-birds that haunts the island. All the wrecks come ashore at that end, and they live there most of the time."

"It is like the wailing of lost souls."

"Right, miss!" broke in Macro. "That's what it is. They're only birds, mebbe, but there's the souls of the dead inside 'em, an' sometimes they're fair deevils when they come screaming round in a storm."

"I could believe that,--the souls of the dead without a doubt."

"Suppose we turn to something pleasanter," suggested Wulfrey. "Perhaps you will choose out the things you think most suitable from all that the mate brought over from the wrecks?"

"From the wrecks?" ... and she glanced at him doubtfully with a little shiver. "It does not sound too nice."

"We will bring them up. You will see them better here," and they spread the deck with Macro's latest importations.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" murmured she, as she turned them over with curious fingers, and held them up to adjudge their style and make. "But they are things of the days before the flood! ... They are too amazing! ... They are wonderful beyond words!"

"Could ye no alter them to your needs, mebbe?" suggested Macro hopefully.

"Perhaps--with needle and thread and scissors. But have you these?"

"Mebbe I can find 'em for ye. There's the cargoes of hunderds o' ships out there. Ye can find a'most anything if ye look long enough. And mebbe there's newer things if I can light on 'em."

"And some shoes and stockings, think you? I would be very glad of them. It feels strange to go with bare feet."

"I'll find 'em if there's any there."

"It is very good of you. I thank you. Could I perhaps come too?"

The idea evidently appealed strongly to him. He looked at her eagerly, and hesitated, but finally said, "It's no easy getting there. There's over six miles' walk through the sand, then near a mile of wading up to your neck in the water, and sometimes a bit of a swim, all according to the tide. Some day, mebbe, I'll mek a bit raft to tek ye across from the point there--just to see what it's like. But ye want these things and I'll get along quicker alone."

"I thank you all the same. It will be for some other time then," and Macro let himself down on to his raft and paddled away to the spit. She stood watching him till he landed and set off at speed towards the point.

"He is truly good-hearted," she said, as he disappeared. "He is not all English?"

"He is from the islands off the west coast of Scotland, but he confesses to a strain of Spanish blood also."

"And why confesses? It is not, I suppose, his own doing. One confesses to a fault. Is a strain of foreign blood a sin in your eyes then, Monsieur le Docteur?" she asked, with pointed emphasis.

"By no means. I should have said he rejoices in it."

"We English--British, I should say,"--with a fleeting gleam of a smile--"are too apt to look upon all foreigners as of lower breed than ourselves, which is quite a mistake and leads to much misunderstanding. Every nation has distinctive qualities of its own, is it not so?"

"Undoubtedly. And unless one knows them by personal experience one should not pass judgment. I must confess to being nothing of a traveller."

"How came you here?" she asked abruptly.

"I was bound for America--or Canada, with the intention of settling out there. It looks now, according to the mate, as though this strip of sand has got to suffice us for the rest of our lives."

"Really?" ... with a startled look. "Is there no getting away then? Does no one ever come here?"

"None but dead men, if they can help it, apparently. You were an exception to the rule. So were we. We have none of us any right to be here alive."

"If I had some shoes and stockings, and some proper clothes, I believe I could be quite happy here," she said. "That is if one has not also to starve."

"There is no need to starve. The island is over-run with rabbits. There are fish in the lake here if only we could catch them, and out there among the wreckage are all kinds of things--casks of pork and beef, and coffee, and rum, and flour--enough to last us for hundreds of years."

"It is a most excellent retreat."

"If one were sick of the world. But you surely are too young to have arrived at that stage."

"One may be young and yet be sick of one's world.... Sometime I will tell you.... Now, if you please, I will take a few of these things and you will show me your pool and I will wash them----"

"Oh, I'll do all that for you----"

"Not at all. Besides, with your permission and if you will leave me quite alone, I would like also to wash in fresh water. I too shall never feel quite dry until I have done so."

He assisted her down to the other raft, through a break they had long since made in the side for that purpose, and paddled ashore. There he showed her the pool they had set apart for washing, and told her he would come back for her at whatever time she chose.

"In two hours, please," and he went off into the sand-hills.

But his mind stubbornly refused to interest itself in rabbits. He dropped down on the sunny side of a hummock and let his thoughts run on this most surprising addition to their company. What could possibly explain her,--young, beautiful, of undoubted birth and breeding, yet ready to renounce the world, of which her twenty years or so had apparently given her a surfeit, and to welcome the chance of a hermit life?

It was a puzzle beyond any man's understanding. All his thinking led him only towards shadowy possibilities. And these the thought of her sweet face and clear frank outlook rejected instantly as libels on her fair fame, which he, with no more knowledge than he now had, yet felt himself prepared to defend with all his might against the whole world. If that girl was not all that she seemed and that he believed her to be, he would never trust his own judgment again.

All the same, it was very amazing, and she filled his thoughts to such an extent that the rabbits hopped fearlessly about him as he sat thinking of her; and it was long after the two hours before he came to himself, and rewarded their temerity by knocking a couple on the head and striding away back to find her.

She was sitting waiting for him, with a fresh-water brightness in her face, her hair coiled loosely round her head, and her washing still drying in the sun. She hastily bundled up her things at sight of him and came along to meet him.

"I began to fear you had forgotten me," she said.

"Very much to the contrary. It was our dinner I came near forgetting," and he dangled the rabbits before her. "You feel better for the fresh water?"

"Oh, very much better. And now I am hungry. When does your friend come back?"

"Not till evening as a rule. If he can lay hands on what you want he may come sooner to-day."

"And you--do you never go out there with him?"

"Oh, sometimes. But it doesn't attract me as it does him."

"Why then?"

"We are differently made, I suppose;--which is perhaps a good thing. He delights in finding things out there. I go out only for necessaries."

"What does he find--besides strange old clothes?"

"Oh, heaps of things--treasure. There are the cargoes of very many ships out there. They have been accumulating for hundreds of years, I suppose."

"And it does not attract you?"

"Not in the slightest."

"You are, perhaps, rich."

"I have enough, and I have my profession,--and little chance apparently of making any use of either."

"Ah..." and presently, "As to that, am I wrong then in thinking that if you had not been here I would most likely not have been here either?" and the wind and the sun had whipped a fine colour into her face.

"You would, perhaps, not be very far wrong."

"I remember it dimly, and in broken bits, like a horrible dream,--the crash, the terrible noise of the waves, the shouting and the screaming. It was the Captain himself who tied me to that mast when everything was going to pieces. And when the waves washed over me, and I felt myself slowly dying, I would have loosed myself if I could, to make an end. It was terrible to be so long of dying. And the cold of the sea!--oh, it was a horror," and she shivered again at the remembrance... "Then I died.... And then--long long afterwards--I found myself coming slowly back to life, and beginning to get warm again, with prickly pains like pins and needles all over me----"

"That was your blood beginning to flow again."

"----I felt warm hands rubbing me--rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. They must have rubbed for years, and, all the time, I was slowly coming back. They were very warm and soothing. And at last they rubbed me back to life."

"What was the name of your ship?"

"The 'Ben Lomond,' from Glasgow to New York, and the Captain was John MacDonald. It was a large ship and full of passengers. It is terrible to think of them all gone but me.--Oh, terrible!--terrible!"

"Might I ask your name--since we are like to be neighbours for the rest of our lives?"

"I am Avice Drummond," she said, with a quick glance at him. "And you?"

"Wulfrey Dale."

"And the mate?"

"Sheumaish Macro,--or Hamish, I'm not sure which."

"It is the same. He is a good man?--to be trusted?"

"I have no reason to think otherwise, but I have only known him since we landed here. He is chock full of superstition----"

"That is the Highlander in him."

"A bit hot-blooded too, and apt to boil over."

"That is the Spaniard."

"And he's crazy after the spoil out yonder."

"The Highlander again. It is, as you say, perhaps just as well you do not care for it, or you might have quarrelled."

"He is welcome to it all as far as I am concerned."

"I am of his country. I can understand how he feels. It is the old riever spirit in him finding its opportunity."

XXVIII

He was vitally conscious of her proximity to him as they paced through the soft sand towards the raft. The sight of her pink toes popping in and out from under her blanket-skirt quickened his blood. He knew without looking when she glanced round at him now and again, as when he had asked her name.

He had not thought that the feeling of a woman's eyes upon him could stir him to such an extent, no matter how wonderful they might be in their depths of eloquent darkness. He knew all about women,--physically, organically, professionally, and still held woman in reverence. Experience had taught him also that in reality he and his fellows knew very little about them beyond merest surface indications,--that there were in most women, perhaps in all, deeps beyond man's sounding, heights beyond his attainment,--a general elusiveness mysteriously comprehensive of feelings, instincts, passions, emotions, nerves, moods, humours, vapours, which a wise man accepted without expecting ever fully to understand.

That this shapely girl in her swathed blankets should affect him to such an extent that he was actually conscious of a superb new joy in living, of an absolute rejuvenescence, of a vitalising of all his energies, was a very great surprise to him. He could feel the blood running redder in his veins. His heart beat more briskly than it had done since he landed on the island.

But after three months of nothing but Macro and rabbits and screaming birds, it was not to be wondered at after all, he reasoned to himself. Life had been running on a low level. There had been nothing to lift them above the mere satisfaction of their bodily necessities. Eating, sleeping, getting through the days had sufficed them.

And here, into that rough husk of a life, had suddenly come a soul, to animate them both to higher things, even though it were no more than the ministering to her more delicate necessities.

Even Macro was feeling it, and was toiling out yonder, not for himself but for her. Without doubt life was immensely more worth living than it had been two days ago.

It was a joy even to cook for her, though he had always detested the preparation of food. To know beforehand what one was going to eat was sufficient to reduce one's appetite. To superintend a meal through all its stages, from raw to ready, put anything beyond the mere filling of an internal void out of the question.

But cooking for himself and cooking for her were matters of very different complexion, and he found himself considering culinary enterprises which surprised him greatly.

"You will let me help," she said, when they had climbed on board, and she saw him setting to work on the rabbits.

"Can you make biscuit?"

"If there is anything to make it with," so he provided her with flour and water and a frying-pan, and tackled his own repulsive job, looking forward to the best-made biscuit they had had since they came ashore.

"You have no butter--lard--dripping--fat--nothing?" she asked.

"There is some fat pork. We stew it with the rabbit as a rule."

"Get me some and I will render it down and we shall have much better cakes. Men never know how to cook unless they are trained to it. You have no seasonings of any kind--no? Nor salt?"

"Not a scrap."

"We might find something on shore there. I saw many little plants. We will search next time we go."

Yes, indeed, even the repellent cooking took on quite a new aspect and became a joyous pastime in her company, and they presently sat down to such a meal as he had not tasted since he left Liverpool. Many a more abundant one he had had, but none with such a flavour to it, and that was due entirely to the deft white hands that had helped to prepare it.

Meals hitherto had been in the nature of necessary nuisances. He and the mate had often sat eating without a word between them, and with perhaps less enjoyment in it than the rabbits out there among the sandhills. But, henceforth, meals would be feasts full of delight because of this stranger girl, whose presence would be salt and savour and seasoning to the poorest of fare.

"And he--the mate,--when does he eat?" she asked suddenly, after they had begun.

"Not till he gets back,--at night-fall as a rule. It's a good long way, you see, and he likes to spend all his time working."

"I hope he will find me some shoes,--and some needles and thread. Then I shall feel much happier.... And you really think we shall never get away from here?" she asked, quite cheerfully.

"If we could prevail on Macro to think of building a boat, instead of amassing treasure-trove, we might at all events try it. Nova Scotia is but a hundred miles away, he says,----"

"So close?"

"But he seems to think it a risky voyage, and so far we have come across no tools with which to build. You see, they are not things likely to come ashore."

"For myself, I believe I could be quite content to live here," she said again.

"For ever?--Never to get back to the larger life of the world as long as you lived?"

"Ah--that! ... I do not know.... It is a very hollow life after all, that larger life of the world."

"To grow old here," he said thoughtfully, emphasising his points with slowly nodding head. "To be the last one left alive perhaps.... To be all alone, sick, starving, dying slowly in the dark, unable to lift a finger...."

"I would drown myself if it came to that. It sounds horrible.... Perhaps, after all, we had better build the boat and get away."

"But I don't know that we can. I know nothing about boat-building even if I had the tools, and Macro won't turn to it till he has raked through the wreckage, and that will take him about a hundred years. It grows with every storm, you see."

"We must make him."

"And the tools?"

"We must find them."

"Two difficult jobs, perhaps impossible ones. You might perhaps prevail on Macro, but even he can do nothing without tools.... But, if I may venture to say so--it is surely early days for you to have discovered the hollowness of life, and to feel ready to spend the rest of it on a sandbank. Life should hold more in it than that for you."

She looked meditatively across at him for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind. "It is natural you should wish to know.... I will tell you.... It is a somewhat sorry story, but I think you will understand.... My name told you nothing?"

"Nothing--except that it was a very pretty name."

"I feared it would. It is natural, I suppose, to imagine that the whole world knows of one's misfortunes. Have you ever heard of the Countess d'Ormont?"

"The name is familiar to me in some way," he said, staring at her in surprise at the trend this was taxing.

"But I cannot recall----"

"And the Comte d'Artois----"

"Of course!" he nodded. "Now I remember----"

"The Countess d'Ormont was Margaret Drummond, my mother. My father is Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois, brother of the poor King, Louis, whose head they cut off; and I hate and detest him for his treatment of her.... She is dead, my poor dear one! ... She believed at first that she was properly married to him, and I have no doubt she was--in London. He is a poor thing, but he was very fond of her, for a time.... I was born at Chantilly. It was before his quarrel with the Duc de Bourbon, and we lived in Paris and elsewhere according to his caprice. When my mother learned all the truth, and that in Paris she was not legally his wife, it broke her heart, I think. I never remembered her but as sad and troubled. Except on my account she was not sorry to die, I know. I was in Paris all through the Red times, and saw--oh, mon Dieu,--the horrors of it all!--things I could never forget if I lived to be a thousand.... In London we were all very badly off.... But he liked to have me with him, and poor Mme de Polastron was very good to me, but she was a strange, strange woman.... Her death was a great blow to him ... and a great loss to me. He was really very badly off there, and I did not like the people he had about him,--de Vaudreuil, de Roll, du Theil, and the rest, and I made up my mind to seek my own life elsewhere. And that is about all."

"And you have friends in America--relatives perhaps?"

"My mother's people, in Virginia. They have prospered there.... The new life out there, where all men are equal, appeals to me. Now you understand why I would not have cared very much if Mr Macro had not brought me ashore and if you had not rubbed me back to life. I seem to have no place in the world. I hate the aristocrats for what my mother suffered at their hands, and I hate the others for the terrible scenes I passed through as a child. These things are stamped into my heart and brain for ever. And that is why this lonely island, far away from it all, seems better to me than any place I know."

"You would grow tired of it."

"I could never grow as sick of it as I did of what I have left. It is not perhaps a very full life, but neither is it hollow and heartless. You I can trust, and Mr Macro also. It is lonely, but it is sweet and peaceful----"

"Wait till you see it in a storm."

"Storms are nothing when you have seen Paris drunk with blood. Ach!--the horror of it!" and she flung out her hands in a gesture full-charged with terrible memories, and then pressed them over her eyes as though to blot it all out.

"Well, we will do all in our power to make things comfortable for you, for as long as we have to stop here.... For your sake I hope it will not be long. Life should hold more for you than this," said Wulfrey, and mused much on the beautiful stranger and her strange history, and wondered what the future held for them all.

The mate came back when it was growing dark, very tired and in none too good a humour at the poverty of his finds. The results of a hard day's work, so far as he disclosed them, were a number of rusty sail-maker's needles which he had found in a chest, and half a dozen pairs of shoes, sodden almost out of semblance to leather.

Miss Drummond, however, was delighted and thanked him heartily.

"You will lend me a knife, and out of some of your beautiful silks I will make a new dress. I shall like that better than wearing any of those ancient ones which belonged to the dead."

"You're very welcome, miss. I broke into more'n a score of chests and boxes and not a blessed stocking among the lot. And them shoes are pretty bad, but they were best I could find."

"I will rub them with fat and they will return all right, and the needles will come bright with sand. I shall do very well now. Thread I can get from a piece of your linen. I thank you very much. Now you will eat some of my cakes."

"Best cakes ever I tasted," he said with a full mouth. "Takes a woman to cook properly. And best day's work I done since I got here, fishing you out the water."

"Perhaps--I am not yet sure, but I thank you all the same. When will you begin to build a boat for us to get away in?"

"Ah! ... Building a boat needs tools. What for do you want to get away so quick? You're but just got here."

"At present I am content. But--for always? I am not sure."

"Doctor, there, is always wanting to get away. But he knows we can't build a boat without tools. An' I put it to him--has he so much as set eyes on a tool out yonder since we come ashore?"

"I can't say I have, but then I haven't seen as much of the wreckage as you have. There may be any amount of----"

"Oh, ay, there mebbe! But so far we haven't struck 'em, an' it's no good talking o' boats till we got the tools."

"We will look for them," said The Girl confidently.

"Oh, ay, ye can look for 'em, and mebbe sometime a boat'll come ashore ready-made, or one that we can make shift to patch up. Meantime we've got all we want here and there's plenty more for the getting out yonder. So be content, say I, miss, for by rights the Doctor and me ought to be two clean-picked white skeletons out there on the pile, an' you ought to be a little white corp tumbling about on yon spar for the birds to peck at."

"Are there skeletons out there?" she asked with a shiver.

"Heaps."

"I think I will not go. I have seen so much of Death. I would forget it for a time."

"Ye'll meet him sure if ye try to get across from here in any boat we could build," growled the mate, and filled his pipe and his pannikin.

XXIX

Next morning Macro went off as usual to the wreck-pile, and Miss Drummond set to work on her dressmaking. Wulfrey hoisted up out of the hold for her such pieces of silk and linen as she required, and scoured a couple of the smallest needles with sand till they were usable. Then, with the sharpest knife he could find among their stock, he cut out on the deck, under her direction, various lengths and designs which to him were meaningless, but replete with possibilities from her point of view.

But when, presently, she saw him preparing to go ashore for water and rabbits, she threw down her needle and said, "I will go also. You will not mind?"

"On the contrary, I shall mind very much. I shall feel honoured by your company. It is a pleasure to have someone to talk to again," and he helped her down on to the raft, and thought how much less interesting shoes were than little naked feet.

"Do you not then talk much with Mr Macro?"

"Sometimes, and sometimes we hardly spoke all day."

"You quarrelled?"

"Hardly that, but ... well, we had not very much in common, you see. His mind was always full of his discoveries out there, and one got rather tired of it at times."

"I do not think I shall like him as much as I thought."

"Why that? I'm sorry if I have said anything that seems to reflect on him in any way."

"I am used to judging for myself. It is a look that comes into his eyes at times,--like a horse when it is going to bite. No,"--with a decided little nod,--"I shall not like him as much as I hoped; and I am sorry, for I ought to feel grateful to him for pulling me out of the water."

"I'm glad you are feeling grateful for being alive, anyway," he said, with a smile. "That is better than being doubtful about it."

"It is better to be alive than dead. And if we have to live here all our lives--very well, we must put up with it. And if you and he die, and I am left all alone, and get old and sick, as you said yesterday, I will make an end of myself. I was thinking about it all night except when I was sleeping."

"I'm sorry to have troubled you so. We will hope for better things. Anyway I have no intention of dying for some time to come, if I can help it."

"You must not," she said, with sudden deep earnestness. "I count it God's good mercy that you are here, for I can trust you."

"I am used to being trusted," he said quietly.

"I know. I can see it.... If I had been all alone ... with nobody but him ... But, no! I could not..."

"I don't know that there is any harm in him."

She sat nodding her pretty head meaningly.... "You have not seen men loosed from all restraints as I have. I was but a child and did not fully understand. But I see their faces and their eyes still, fierce and wild and hungry for other than bread. When men are answerable to none but themselves they become wild beasts and devils."

"It is a hard saying."

"But it is true. I have seen it."

"And women?"

"They are as bad, but in a different way. Oh, they are terrible."

"And you and I and Macro here? To whom are we answerable?" he asked, to sound her to the depths.

"He is answerable to you," she said quickly. "You and I are answerable to one another, and to God, and to ourselves--to all that has made us what we are. I do not think you could trespass outside all that, any more than I could."

"I do not think I could. I am honoured by your confidence in me."

He helped her ashore, and they filled the buckets at the pools, and then she expressed a wish to see something more of this sandbank where they might have to pass the rest of their lives.

So they threaded their way among the hummocks to the northern shore, and, at the first green valley they came to, she went down on her knees and examined carefully the nestling growths on which the rabbits fed, and found among them certain pungent little plants which she thought might serve for flavouring, and they gathered enough to experiment with.

The firm smooth tidal beach, with the ripples creaming up it in sibilant whispers tempted her to bare feet, and she handed him her shoes and splashed along as joyously as a child.

"It is a most delightful island," she said. "I do not think I would ever tire of it."

"Oh, yes, you would. It is all just the same, you see. You can walk on and on like this and round the other side for forty or fifty miles, and every bit of it is just like the rest."

"I think it is beautiful."

"It gets monotonous in time. The only diversion is the pile of wreckage down yonder. That is constantly changing and growing."

"And discovering more skeletons! It feels odd to think that I should have been one myself if you two had not happened to be here."

"I'm sure it feels very much nicer to be comfortably clothed with flesh," and glancing at her supple grace and entrancing bare feet and ankles, he found himself profoundly grateful for the facts of the case. The thought of her as a skeleton was eminently distasteful to him.

"Yes, it is better. Dead bodies and bones have always had a horror for me; but not the simple fact of being dead, I think.... I do not think I would be afraid to die--if it were not very painful. But ... well, the thought of my dead body is horrid to me. I would not like to see it."

"You're not likely to be troubled to that extent anyway."

"No, one is at all events spared that. But why do you talk of such unpleasant things when the sun is shining and the waves are sparkling? Tell me about yourself. All you have told me so far is that you are a doctor, and that your name is Wulfrey Dale. I never heard the name Wulfrey before. And that you were going out to Canada when you were wrecked here. Why were you going out?"

He would have liked to be as frank with her as she had been with him. But that was impossible. Another woman's good name was too intricately interwoven with his story, and the whole matter was so open to misjudgment. If he tried to explain he must either label that other woman as murderess or himself as an incapable doctor, and he chose to do neither. He wished she had not asked, but found it only natural that she should desire to know all about him.

"I have nothing much to tell," he said. "I come from Hazelford, in Cheshire. My father had the practice there and when he died I succeeded to it. But the wander-spirit seized me. I wanted a larger sphere. The new world called, and I came,--as it turns out to a still smaller place----"

"But we are not going to stop here all our lives. We must build that boat and get away."

"We will live in hope, anyway, but for that we are dependent on Macro, and he's not an easy man to drive."

"We will see," she said confidently. "How do you catch your rabbits?"

"Every one of these little valleys is full of them. As soon as you appear they all bolt for their holes and in the panic they tumble over one another and you pick them up."

"I am always sorry to kill things, and they are so pretty," she said, as they crept cautiously up the side of the nearest hummock. "But they are very good and I suppose one must eat."

"Or starve. Now--see!" and he jumped down into the hollow, which scurried into life under his feet, and came back in a moment with a couple of rabbits which he had already knocked on the head.

"Poor little things!" she said, stroking the soft fur.

"They were dead before they knew it.... Our lake ends there," he said, pointing it out to her from where they stood on top of the hummock. "But the island goes on and on, all just the same as this as far as you can see."

"It looks very lonely ... but I like it," and she sat long, with her hands clasped round her knees, gazing out over the wandering yellow line of sandhills, and the slow-heaving seas which broke in white-fringed ripples along the beach.

"And you left no ties behind you there in England?" she asked suddenly, showing where her thoughts had been.

"No ties whatever. Friends in plenty, but nothing more. When my father died I was quite alone in the world."

She nodded fellow-feelingly, and they sauntered back in a somewhat closer intimacy of understanding and liking for one another.

XXX

Macro had had a good day out there, and returned in the best of humours with himself and as hungry as usual.

As he ate he enlarged on his finds, and when he had finished his supper he piled the fire with light sticks to make a blaze, and spread them out for Miss Drummond's inspection.

He had evidently lighted on the personal baggage of some person of quality. There were rings and brooches and pins and bracelets, of gold and silver, set with coloured stones, a couple of small watches beautifully chased and studded with gems, a small silver-mounted mirror all blackened with sea-water, two gold snuff-boxes with enamelled miniatures on the lids--quite a rich haul and very satisfactory to the craving of his spirit.

The Girl examined them all carefully, and Wulfrey, watching her quietly through the smoke of his pipe, thought she handled them somewhat gingerly and distastefully, and understood her feeling in the matter. And now and again he caught also a glimpse in the mate's black eyes, as they rested on her, of that which she herself had felt and resented.

It might be only the unconscious continuation of the gloating proprietorial look with which he regarded his treasures, which still gleamed in his eyes when they rested on her as though she herself were but one more of them. But whatever it was it was not a pleasant look, and Wulfrey was not surprised at her discomfort under it. He was as devoutly glad that he was there as she could be. Alone with this wild riever, in whom the cross-strain of his wilder forebears was running to licence in its sudden emancipation from all life's ordinary shackles.... It would not bear thinking of. Yes, he was truly glad he was there. And then he remembered, with another grateful throb, that if he had not been there, neither would she have been. For the mate most assuredly would never have brought her back to life.

"Some of these are of value," she was saying. "But they are rather pitiful to me.... Some dead woman has treasured them and she is gone. Perhaps you came upon her skeleton out there.... But they are not all real stones----"

"And how can ye tell that now?" asked Macro gruffly.

"I can tell at once by the feel of them. That now"--pointing to a heavily-gemmed bracelet--"the emeralds are real, the rubies are real, but they are all small. The white stones are not diamonds, but very good imitations. They look almost as well, but they are not diamonds. If they were that bracelet alone would be worth some hundreds of pounds."

"Deil take 'em! And you can tell that by feeling at 'em?"

"I can tell in a moment. You see I have handled many jewels--some of the finest in the world, and I have seen very many imitations of them."

"The deil ye have! How that?"

"I have lived among those to whom they belonged, and I am very fond of precious stones."

He went away to his own cabin and came back presently with a good-sized bundle done up in blue velvet, and opened it before her. Wulfrey was surprised at the extent of his treasure-trove. For these were only his most precious possessions. He knew that he had in addition considerable store of silver articles which he had been allowed to examine from time to time.

If Macro's idea had been to dazzle her with his riches he must have been disappointed. For she greeted the display with a depreciatory "T't--t't!"--and said presently, as she picked out a piece here and there for examination, "It looks like a peddler's pack.... And it makes me sad to think of those to whom they belonged...."

"They've no further use for them. And there's no telling who they belonged to. They're for any man's getting now," said Macro defensively.

"I suppose so. All the same ... For me--no!" with a most decided shake of the head.

"Are they good, or is there false ones among them too?"

"Many are good," she said, passing them rapidly and somewhat distastefully under her delicate fingers, "but not by any means all.... You have laboured hard to accumulate so much."

"Harder than ever I worked in my life before, but it suits me fine."

"But what good is it all unless you can get away from here and turn it to some good use?"

"We'll talk of that when I've got all I want, mebbe."

"You are like a miser then, ever accumulating and loth to spend."

"Just that! Ye see I never had siccan a chance before,--nor many others either. Ye wouldna care for a ring or two, or mebbe a bracelet or a brooch?"

"Oh, I could not. It is good of you to offer, but ... no, I thank you. They would always make me think of the skeletons out there. Poor things!"

"They don't hurt, and they're aye laughing as if 'twas all a rare joke," which made her shiver with discomfort and draw her blanket closer round her neck at the back.

"Well, well!" said he, with a hoarse laugh, as he made up his bundle again. "Folks has queer notions. Ef 't 'adn't been for me----"

"And the Doctor," she interposed quickly.

"Ay--and the Doctor there----"

"I know," she cut him short, "and it is very much nicer to be sitting here by a warm fire than tumbling about on a mast out there. I appreciate it, I assure you."

Perhaps it was to restore the balance of his spirits, which had suffered somewhat from the discovery that his treasure was not all he had thought it, that made him apply himself more heartily than usual to the rum cask that night. By the Doctor's advice any water they drank from the brackish pools was mixed with a few drops of rum. Macro always saw to it that a cask was at hand, and he himself took but small risks as far as the water was concerned. But he could stand a heavy load, and as a rule it only made him sluggish and uncompanionable.

This night, however, as he sat dourly smoking, and taking every now and again a long pull at his handy pannikin, it seemed to set him brooding over things and at times he grew disputatious.

Miss Drummond had turned with obvious relief to the Doctor and said, "These things do not interest you?"

"As curiosities only, not intrinsically. I never had any craving for jewelry!"

"It is a feminine weakness, I suppose, though I have known men who outvied even the women in their display."

"We have simpler ways in the country, and more robust."

"Mebbe you're right, and mebbe you're wrong," growled Macro, as the result of his cogitations. "I d'n know, an' you d'n know, an' Doctor, he d'n know, an' none of us knows.... They're mebbe all right... What the deil wud folks want mixing bad stuff wi' good like that?"

"It is done sometimes to make a larger show, and sometimes as a matter of precaution," said Miss Drummond quietly. "Those who have valuable jewels are always in fear of having them stolen. They have imitations made, and wear them, and people believe they are the real ones. It is commonly done."

"An' is it a thief you wud call me for taking these?"

"These are dead men's goods and dead women's, and you do not know whose they were, so it is not stealing. But, for me, I do not like them."

"An', for me, I do. An' more I can get, better I'm pleased."

"Each to his taste, and you are very welcome to them all. Now, if you please, we will forget all about them, and speak of pleasanter things," and she turned to Wulfrey and began questioning him as to his knowledge of London, which was not nearly so extensive as her own.

The mate smoked and drank and glowered across at them. More than once Wulfrey caught his glance resting balefully on The Girl. More than ever was he thankful that he was there to look after her.

XXXI

"No," said The Girl to Wulfrey, as she sat busily sewing at her new dress on deck next morning, "I do not like your mate as much even as I thought. Do you know what I would do if you were not here?"

"What would you do?"

"I would go and live on that other ship, or else among the sandhills."

"Either would be very uncomfortable. I am glad I am here."

"He looks at me as though I were another piece of his treasure-trove, especially when he is getting drunk. If he had tried to wrap me up with the rest in that blue bundle of his I should not have been very much surprised."

"He brought you ashore, you see."

"Well? What use would that have been if you hadn't brought me back to life?"

"Not much, I'm bound to say. But I imagine he considers it gives him first claim on you."

"First claim?--for what?" she asked quickly.

"Oh, on your regard, your gratitude,----"

"My gratitude, if you like. My regard--that goes only where I can respect and esteem. And for him--neither. If he were never to come back again from over there I would not in the least regret it."

It was as inevitable that these two should instinctively draw closer to one another, as that their doing so should create something of a breach between them and the mate, and that he should feel and resent it.

Except the untoward circumstances of their lot there was practically nothing in common between him and them. His outlook and aims were as different from theirs as were his habits and upbringing. Yet it did seem preposterous to them that three persons, situated as they were, should not be able to live together in peace and good-fellowship.

To the ancients, without doubt, the gods would have been apparent behind the slow-drifting white-piled clouds, and behind the storm-wrack and the mists, laughing at the perverse little ways of men, and watching with interest the inevitable tangle produced among them by the advent of a woman.

Since the year one, two have found themselves good company and the coming of a third has led to mischief. And yet even that depends on the spirit that is in them. More than once, since he landed on the island, Wulfrey had found himself wishing Providence had sent him honest Jock Steele for company, and that it was the mate's bones that were whitening out there in place of the carpenter's.

Whether he himself would have fared so well, if he had not stuck out his leg at risk of his life and helped the mate on to his raft, and so had come ashore alone, he was not sure. And again, whether, if he had been alone, he would ever have sighted The Girl on her mast, was doubtful. If they had much to put up with in Macro, they had also much to thank him for. And so--to bear with him as well as they might and give no occasion for offence if that were possible.

But it was no easy matter. They were having a spell of fine weather which enabled him to go out to the wreckage every day. And every night he came home ravenous, and ate and drank and afterwards sat smoking with scarce a word.

If they enquired how he had fared he growled the curtest of answers, and showed plainly that their polite interest in his doings was not desired by him. He showed them none of his finds, but sat smoking doggedly, and occasionally gazing through his smoke at The Girl in a way that distressed and discomforted her.

But there was nothing in it that Wulfrey could openly take exception to. Even a cat may look at a queen. The look in the mate's black eyes was akin to that with which the cat favours the canary, when he licks his lips below its cage;--if he only dared!

Still, they were free of him during the day, and the discomfort of him at other times but drew them closer together. But Wulfrey, watching the man cautiously, saw in him signs and symptoms that he did not like, which bade him be prepared for a possible change for the worse in their relationship.

For one thing, he was drinking more heavily than he had ever done since they landed, and the drink and the brooding of his black thoughts might well hatch out unexpected evil to one or other of them. As he lay there of a night, smoking and drinking, with a face of gloom and smouldering fires in his eyes, he was more than ever like a sleeping volcano which might burst forth in flame and fury at any moment.

But for the lurking possibilities of trouble, the cool way in which he devoted himself to his own private concerns, and left them to attend to all the irksome little details of the common life, would have had in it something of the humorous.

Miss Drummond was indignant and was for leaving him supperless when he came home of a night.

But Wulfrey rigorously repressed his strong fellow-feeling therewith, and determined that no provocation should come from their side. So they continued to make ample provision for all, and the mate helped himself as if by right. If, however, good-feeling on the part of the maker has anything to do with the compounding of cakes, as The Girl averred, those she made for the mate must surely have lacked flavour, for her views on the matter were most uncompromisingly expressed, both by hands and tongue, as she made them.

"Does he look upon us as his servants, then?"--with a contemptuous slap at the innocent dough.--"To do all his work without so much as a 'Thank you'?"--another vicious slap. "--And to be glowered at as if one were a rabbit that he wanted to devour!"--cakes pitched disdainfully into a corner till the time came to cook them.--"No!--for me, I wish he would stop out there among his skeletons and trouble us no more."

Her little tantrums at thought of Macro gave Wulfrey no little amusement. The vivacity of her manner as she delivered herself, blended as it was of Scottish frankness and French sparkle, made her altogether charming. He soothed her ruffled feelings, however, by his own eulogistic appreciation of the cakes she provided for their own use, and it was then that she explained to him how intimately the character of a cake is associated with the feelings of its maker.

Matters came to a head a few days later, when the commissariat department began to run low in certain essentials.

"We're almost out of flour and pork, Macro," Wulfrey said to him, as the mate was preparing to set off as usual one morning. "Will you bring some back with you?"

The black-faced one hesitated one moment, and then cast the die for trouble.

"Well, you know where to get 'em," he growled.

"Yes, I know where to get them," and Wulfrey braced himself for the tussle. "But----"

"Well, then--get 'em, and be ---- to you!" and he leaped down on to his raft and set off for the shore.

XXXII

Wulfrey watched the mate's retreating figure for a minute or two and then turned quietly to The Girl.

"Are you prepared to trust me completely, Miss Drummond?" he asked.

"Absolutely. What is it you want me to do?"

"We cannot go on this way. He is becoming insufferable. Unless you have anything to say against it, we will take possession of the other ship--you and I, and leave him here to himself."

"Yes--let us go. When shall we go? Now?"

"We must make it habitable first. It is as empty as a drum, you know."

"All the better, since we are overcrowded here with that man. It is to get away from unpleasantness that we go."

"We shall need fire,--that means sand for a hearth; and wood--we have heaps here; and cooking things--we will take our fair share, and our blankets. Everything else I can get out yonder."

"Allons! Let us go at once and get them."

He looked carefully round the horizon. "The weather will hold for a day or two still, I think. Today we had better lay our foundations--sand, wood and so on. Then tomorrow we will go out to the pile and take our cargo straight to the other ship."

"What do we do first?" she asked, abrim with excitement.

"We will take a load of wood across at once and then go for sand. We will leave the cabin open to air it and light a fire."

She was as eager as a child going to a new house, and when presently he helped her up over the side of the other schooner, she tripped to and fro delightedly, and could hardly wait till he forced back the rusty bolts of the cabin hatch with a piece of wood, so impatient was she to inspect the new home.

"I like it better than the other," she said, as they stood in the little cabin.

"Why? It seems to me just about the same."

"The man of gloom is not here. It makes all the difference."

They got their wood on board, and he tumbled it down the fore-hatch, which was easier to handle than the main. Then they went ashore, filled a bucket with fresh water, got half a dozen rabbits and a supply of the pungent herbs.... "Why so many?" she asked, and he said quietly, "I don't want to hit him below the belt,"--at which she laughed--"We can afford to be generous. The breach will be wide enough as it is."

Then they loaded the raft with sand, and getting back to the ship, arranged their hearth, and with his flint and steel succeeded at last between them in lighting a thin chip, which he ceremoniously handed to her and begged her to start their fire.

And as she knelt and applied it, and coaxed and blew till the cheerful flames shot up with a crackling shower of sparks, and the thin blue smoke streamed up the companion-way, still kneeling she waved her hands above it and said, "Light and warmth and comfort and peace! God bless the fire!" and he endorsed it with a hearty "Amen!" and thought he had never seen a fairer sight.

When the mate got home that night, he was somewhat surprised to find a supply of food and no objections made to his helping himself. He chuckled grimly, and showed by his face and manner that he considered the matter settled on eminently satisfactory lines.

They made no enquiries as to his doings and he volunteered no information. Wulfrey and Miss Drummond talked together as if he were not there. He lay and smoked, and drank, and glowered at them.

In the morning he set off as usual, and when they had taken their blankets and their fair share of cooking-utensils across to the 'Martha,' and got them all stowed away, Wulfrey turned to The Girl and said, "Now I will go out to the store-house yonder and get all I can lay hands on."

"I will come too. Perhaps I can help. I am very strong, and I would rather go with you than wait here alone. But I do not wish to see any skeletons if you can manage it."

"We will try to keep clear of them,--if you are quite sure----"

"Have we got to swim, as that man said?"

"I may have to. You need not. I will go out to the pile and make a raft, and take you across on it. And all that will take time, so the sooner we're off the better."

They paddled across to the spit and hurried along to the point, as nondescript a pair as could well be imagined in disrespect of clothing, but in all else that mattered--in all the great essentials that make for vigorous life--in health, good looks, and high and cheerful spirit--pre-eminently good to look upon.

For work on the wreck-pile the less one wore the better; and so he was clad in one simple but sufficient garment, which consisted of a long strip of linen wound many times round his waist and falling to the knees like a South Sea Island kilt. And she wore one of the prehistoric woman's sarks which Macro had brought over from the pile, and a similar, but slightly longer, kilt which swung gracefully a foot or so above her ankles as she walked.

He carried an axe in his hand, and had a knife at his back, in a seaman's belt which he had unhooked from its owner's body out there on the pile one day; and his face was somewhat grave and intent, since he was considering the possibilities of Macro's violent rejection of the situation he had himself created, and the consequences that would then ensue. But her bright face was all alive with the spirit of adventure and the novelty of this new departure.

"We look like Adam and Eve turned out of Paradise, and setting out to conquer the world," she laughed excitedly. "What would _your_ friends think if they saw you so?"

"What they thought wouldn't trouble me in the slightest. If they understood they would understand. If they didn't it would not matter. We are doing what has to be done in the only way to do it. See the birds out there!"

"Are those really all birds? I thought it was a cloud whirling about," and she stood and stared in amazement.

"Listen and you'll hear them,"--and every now and again the south-west breeze brought them the thin strident wailing of the hungry myriads as they swooped and fought for their living.

"They sound horrid," said The Girl, with a sudden shadow on her face. "It is like the wailing of lost souls, as he said. Do they never attack you?"

"We have had more than one fight with them. But you can always escape by slipping down into a crack or jumping into the sea. Where did you learn to swim?"

"We had a cottage in the Isle of Wight for a year, when first we came from France, and I grew very fond of the water."

"Do you see Macro over there?" as they came to the end of the point. "He's hard at work. We'll tackle a different part. If you will sit down here and rest, I will get across and be back as soon as I can."

"Could I not come with you?"

"I don't know how deep the channels may be. Sometimes we can wade across, sometimes we have to swim."

"I don't mind. It can't make me any wetter than if I have to jump in because of the birds. And I have been wetter still."

"Very well. It will save much time," and they waded out alongside one another,--The Girl catching her breath at times with spasmodic little jerks of laughter, as she stepped into unexpected depths or a wave came higher than usual;--and he, intent as he was on the business in hand, yet mightily cognisant of her proximity and the penetrating and intoxicating charm of it.

When, at one sudden plunge, she gasped and clutched wildly at his bare arm, her touch sent the blood whirling through his veins. He took her soft wet hand, which was all of a tremble with excitement, in his strong and steady one, and she gripped it tightly and drew new strength from it.

Out on the great pile of wreckage in front, but somewhat towards their right, they caught glimpses now and again of Macro--a wild dark figure silhouetted against the pale-blue sky behind--as he climbed to and fro, and stood at times, and swung up his arms and his club and smashed his way through to the desire of his heart.

Wulfrey worked round to the left, and so came upon a channel which they had to swim. He fastened his axe into his belt at the back and they struck out together. He watched her anxiously at first, but was satisfied. She swam well and knowingly; they soon touched ground again, and another wade and another short swim brought them to the pile.

The Girl had been regarding it with curious eyes and ejaculations of wonder.

"But it is amazing!" she jerked, when at last they clung to a ledge of the chaotic jumble of flotsam and jetsam. "I never saw anything like it in my life."

"That's just as well. Now we'll climb up here, and you will rest while I gather wood and rope and make a raft. Then we'll see what fortune sends us."

"Whatever are all those?" she asked, when they had worked their way to the top, and stood looking round.

"Those are the bones of the ships that have perished here. There are hundreds of them half-buried in the sand."

"It is the most amazing sight I ever set eyes on," she said again, and sat and gazed at it all while he worked busily at the raft.

"Now," he said, climbing up to her again at last, "We will look for necessaries first and take anything else we come upon that may be useful. Those barrels are pork, but they are too heavy for us to handle----"

"Couldn't you break one open?"

"Then the birds would be on us like a shot. Some of them have got their eyes on us already," and he pointed to them swooping watchfully round. "We did that once and had to fight and run for it. Maybe we'll come across some smaller ones before we're done. Here's a small cask of rum. We'll make sure of that," and he rolled and carried it to their landing-place, and they scrambled on.

"These barrels are biscuits. Some of it may be good. We'll bring the raft round for it. Those small casks are flour. It's only good in the middle. We'll come round for one of them presently. We want some coffee. We're sure to come across some sooner or later."

"What is it like?"

"Small square cases about so big."

"Oh, I wonder what's in this great case."

"We'll soon see," and he smashed at it with his axe. "Hardware. We'll add to our stock since it's here."

"And this? Oh, I wish I had an axe too. I want to break open every box we come to," and he laughed out at her quick surrender to the riever spirit.

"Why do you laugh at me then? It would surely be helping you."

"I know just how you feel, and now you know just how Macro feels."

"I know just how he feels. It must grow upon one. I don't want any of the things, but still I would like to break open and find."

"We'd better stick to business. When we've got all we come across that will be of service I'll hand you the axe and you can smash away at anything you like, except your toes.... No doubt what's in that box anyway,"--for the ends of rolls of silk were sticking out of it. "I expect Macro has been over this ground already. Shall we take some?"

She picked out several rolls, saying, "They may come in useful, even if it's only to make our cabin as fine as his," and he stacked up the silk along with a raffle of rope, which was always to the good.

They scrambled to and fro, so busily smashing open cases and discussing their contents that they took no note of the birds gathering above them in ever-increasing numbers. Their ears had grown accustomed to their raucous clamour, and the fact that it had grown louder had not troubled them. But suddenly--they were delving into the side of a huge crate of blankets at the moment--the sky was darkened as by a cloud, and Wulfrey, glancing up in fear of a change in the weather, jerked out a sudden exclamation which made her jump. Then he crushed her roughly down into a narrow black chasm between the blanket-crate and another, and dropped in after her, just as the cloud, grown bold by its increase, came swooping down upon them.

Never in her life had she imagined such a nightmare experience. The bristling confusion of the wreckage, the shimmering blue sea beyond, the very light and peace of day itself, all were blotted out in an instant, and in their place was nothing but a prodigious whirling and swooping of vari-coloured feathered bodies, snaking necks, cold beady eyes, pitilessly craving them as food, cruel curved beaks keen to rend and tear, and a hideous clamour of wild wailings. The flutter and beat of myriad wings set the whole atmosphere throbbing, till the blood drummed furiously in The Girl's ears and her head felt like to burst.

She shrank down on something that crackled and subsided under her, feeling herself terribly bare to their assault. Wulfrey reached out an arm and groped for a loose blanket and dragged it over them and so hid the nightmare from her. His arm was bleeding when he drew it in.

"They will go presently when they find there is nothing to eat," he said into her ear.

"They looked as if they would tear one to pieces," and he could feel the shudder that shook her.

"They would try if they got the chance."

"They are awful.... Oh, listen!"--as the rest of the cloud, sure that such a clamour portended food, whirled round their shelter, brushed it with wings and feet, shrilled their needs and their disgust more loudly than ever, and swept away to seek more satisfying fare elsewhere.

The sound of them drifted away at last, occasional stragglers still swooped down to make quite sure there was not a scrap left, but presently these followed the rest and Wulfrey climbed up and looked about him.

"All right," he said, and reached down a hand to her. "I think they've gone after Macro," and he hauled her up into the light.

"Your arm!" she cried.

"Only scratches. No harm done.... What is it?" for she was staring with tragic face into the hole out of which she had just come.

And looking down into it he saw that he had flung her bodily on to what had been a skeleton, but was now only a confused heap of brittle bones.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but there was no time to pick and choose."

"It's a horrible place. Let us go home!"

"We'll go at once as soon as we've found some coffee ... and I would like another knife or two.... Look in that chest. Macro has opened it for us.... And if you find any tobacco, I'll thank you," and he rooted rapidly through one broken-open seaman's box, while she did the same by another.

"Tobacco--I think," she announced presently, ... "and a knife and a tinder-box."

"Another knife" was his find. "And we'll take these two coats----"

"Whatever for?"

"Well--if any of those screaming deevils, as the mate calls them, should come after us as we go back, you feel them less through a coat than on your bare skin."

"I don't think I'll come again."

"Oh, it's quite easy to avoid them, you see. And they soon go if they find nothing eatable."

"Hideous things! ... Will those cases be coffee?"

"I think so.... We'll chance one anyway.... And those small casks are rice. We're doing famously. Is there anything else you would like?"

"Heaps of things--spoons, forks, plates, stockings----"

"Here are stockings----" and he delved into his chest again.

"Truly--but twenty sizes too large. These boxes all seem to have belonged to men. Let us get home before those awful birds come back."

So they returned to the raft and pushed it slowly along the pile, from place to place, where the various portions of their cargo stood awaiting them, and Wulfrey wrestled manfully with casks and barrels and boxes in a way that would have astonished himself mightily three months before. And The Girl, eager to help as far as she could--brushing shoulders with him as they hauled and lifted, their hands overlapping at times, their bare arms in closest contact as they struggled with the insensate obstinacy of dead weights,--was very conscious of the play of the corded muscles in his arms and back, and the energy and determination of the quiet resolute face. And she was at once grateful and exultant in the knowledge that all the powers this man possessed were at her service, and that, if occasion should arise, they would be expended for her to the uttermost and without hesitation.

She experienced sensations entirely new to her. She found them good. They quickened her blood and stimulated her mind. She had seen much of men, more perhaps than most for her years, but men of a very different type,--unmuscular, powdered and peruked and befrilled, with airs and graces and velvet coats which hid the lack of virility within, and did duty for it to the world at large; men of wealth and highest culture and too often of meanest heart, self-seeking, intent only on their personal satisfactions, self-forgetful only in the pursuit of ignoble ends.

In every particular so different from this man. She had met but very few men whom she felt she could trust implicitly. Some of the most apparently sincere had proved the least worthy. And they were the most dangerous. They drew your trust, and so disarmed and then most treacherously betrayed you. Oh, she had seen it, time and again, and so her mind had come to look on men in general as beasts of prey, to be dreaded, and avoided except in the most open and superficial fashion.

But this was a man of another world. She had met none like him. He roused her and soothed her as none of those others ever had done, as no man before had ever done.

She had seen men as good-looking, perhaps, but in a very different way. Would they have looked as well, stripped of their trappings? She doubted it. And never a man among them could or would, she was sure, have handled these obdurate barrels and boxes as this man did. Truly they seemed to object to removal from their lodging-places as though they were endowed with minds of their own.

And she had trusted him implicitly, from the first moment she had looked into his eyes, and recognised that it must be he who had drawn her back out of the closing hand of death.

"Better put that on," said Wulfrey, dropping one of the coats over her shoulders, when they had got everything aboard.

"Why? I am quite warm."

"We have done our work now till we get to the spit. No good chilling in the wind. We're going to sail home," and he slipped on the other jacket, and proceeded to rig up a sail and a steering plank as he had seen the mate do.

The Girl broke into a laugh at the change for the worse produced in their appearance by the jackets.

"You looked like a Greek or a Roman before," she said. "Now we both look like gipsy tinkers."

"Fine feathers--fine birds?" he smiled, as they hauled out past the end of the pile and began lumbering slowly homewards.

"Those awful birds!" and she glanced anxiously round for them, but they were busy a mile away and troubled them no more.

XXXIII

The Girl was glad enough of her old coat before they reached the spit, in spite of its demoralising effect on her appearance,--glad even to snuggle down among the blankets, for, after the hard work of loading, even the south-west wind began presently to feel cool.

Then came the discharging, and the transporting of their heavy weights to the smaller raft on the lake, which could not take more than half their cargo at a time. So he took her and a portion across to the 'Martha,' and she undertook to have supper ready by the time he got back with the rest.

And surely she wrought pleasanter thoughts even than usual into her cooking that day, for it seemed to him, when in due course he sat opposite to her on the other side of their fire, that he had never enjoyed a meal so much in his life, deficient as it was in many things that he had always regarded as needful.

"We have done a good day's work," he said, as he lit his pipe at her request.

"I wonder what he will say about it."

"We will not let it trouble us. He has only himself to blame."

"I wonder if you and he would have quarrelled if I had never come."

"We certainly would if he had taken the line he has done. As long as he did his fair share of the providing I did not mind. But the position he took up was an impossible one."

They fell into reminiscent talk of that great outer world which seemed so remote, and from which, for all they knew, they were now for ever cut off. She had many strange recollections of her earlier life in France, some very terrible ones of the times of the Red Deluge, very mixed ones of the later times in England.

It was amazing to him to sit in that bare cabin of a deserted ship, on an island shunned by all, listening to her familiar talk of men and women who had been but names to him, until her intimate knowledge of them made them into actual living personages.

Her outlook on life had been very much wider than his own. She had lived among the scenes and people of whom he had only read in the news-sheets. He was immensely interested, both in the things she talked about and the way she talked about them. His questionings towards a clearer understanding on points which were to her matters of simplest elementary knowledge amused her not a little. And he got many a self-revealing glimpse into that strange past life of hers, from which she was so contented to escape, but which was yet so full of colour and contrast and vivid actuality that, in spite of all its discrepancies and disillusionments, it had assumed for her a certain glamour which she averred it had never worn at the time.

"Wait a moment," he would say, breaking into her flow of reminiscence, "'Monsieur' is----?"

"The Comte de Provence, the late King's brother, my uncle. My father, the King's next brother, the Comte d'Artois, is 'Monseigneur.' He has become terribly devout since Mme de Polastron died. The abbè Latil is his heart and mind and conscience. In his way he was fond of me, I believe, but since I came to understand the wrong he did my mother, I have detested him. And I have no doubt he was not sorry when I broke away. I was a perpetual reminder, you see----"

"And there is another Countess d'Artois?"

"Oh, yes,--Marie Thérèse of Savoy, but she is too awful,--a quite impossible woman, one must say that much for him. If ever a man had good excuse for seeking his pleasures elsewhere, he had. She was terrible. She had no more moral feeling than a cat."

"And Madame Adélaide----? Let me see--who was she?"

"My great-aunt--poor old thing! Those atrocious Narbonnes lived on her and turned her round their fingers."

"And Madame Elizabeth? It is terribly confusing."

"Not at all. It is all as simple as can be. Madame Elizabeth was my aunt, my father's sister. She was very sweet. Poor dear! They cut off her head, though she never harmed a soul since the day she was born. She was very good to me. If she had lived I do not think I would be here. She was not like the rest. I could have lived happily with her."

And so she chattered away,--about the late King--her uncle also,--and of the Duc d'Orleans,--"always a self-seeker, and intriguer, with a very sharp eye on the way things might turn to his own benefit. Oh, I am glad they took his head off. It was righteous retribution."--And of the Queen---- "She did foolish things at times, but she meant no harm, and, mon Dieu, how she suffered!"--And of Lafayette, and Talleyrand, and many and many another.

And it was indeed passing strange to lie there listening to it all--she clad in her blankets, for the night air had a chill in it, and he in the sea-damaged coat and small clothes of a gentleman of the Duke of Kent's suite, while between them the thin blue reek of the drift-wood fire on its hearth of sand stole up through the half-closed companion-hatch to the lonely night outside.

XXXIV

"We shall have a visit from our next-door neighbour presently, I expect," said Wulfrey, when The Girl came out of her cabin next morning. "Will you mind stopping below while I dispose of him?"

"But why?"

"He puts things coarsely at times, and he will probably be in a very bad humour at having to get his own meals ready."

"I don't mind him."

"Nor do I, except on your account. But I shall feel happier if you are out of sight and hearing."

"Oh, very well. But nothing he could say would trouble me in the slightest."

So, after breakfast, she sat down on the cabin floor to her sewing, and he lit his pipe and went up on deck carrying his axe. He closed the companion-doors and hatch very quietly--but she heard him--and went forward into the bows, which, since the usual wind blew from the south-west, was the nearest point to the 'Jane and Mary.'

It was a long time before the mate showed any signs, beyond an extra rush of smoke when he made up his fire to cook his breakfast. But he came up at last, caught sight of Wulfrey, and stood scowling across at him for a time. Then he dropped down on to his raft and came wobbling, with quick angry strokes, across to the 'Martha.'

"So that's it, is it?" he growled, with a grim look on his dark face.

"That's it," said Wulfrey coolly.

"And you think you've got her all to yourself?--what you've been plotting for ever since I hauled her ashore."

"Are you speaking of Miss Drummond?"

"I'm speaking of that girl. 'Twas me hauled her ashore an' she's my right if she's anybody's."

"There it is, you see. She is nobody's right but her own. And neither she nor I are your servants, to prepare your food and see to your comfort while you dig treasure out of the wreckage. So we have decided to fend for ourselves and you can fend for yourself."

"Ah! You think so, do you? We'll see about that."

"We undertake not to go aboard your ship if you give your word not to come aboard ours."

"See you ---- first!"

"Thank you! Then now we know how we stand, and will act accordingly."

"Ay, now you know."

"And will act accordingly," emphasised Wulfrey once more. "I must ask you to keep off," as the mate paddled alongside and reached up a rough hairy hand to the side. "I'm sorry it's come to this, but I won't have you on board."

"Won't, eh?" and as he reached up the other hand and prepared to mount, Wulfrey picked up his axe and held it threateningly above the clinging hands, which straightway loosed their hold amid a volley of curses.

"---- ---- ---- ---- you! You'd maim me! ---- ---- ---- ---- me, if I don't pay you for this! The girl's mine. I found her. I'll get her over your dead body if needs be."

"Ah! And who found you? And where would you be if I hadn't helped you on to the raft yon first night? Tell me that, will you? By the same rule you're mine, and all you've got is mine."

"---- ---- ---- ---- you for a ---- ---- ---- sea-lawyer!" foamed the mate, his dark face and eyes all ablaze, his shaking fists hurling curses beyond the compass of his tongue.

Wulfrey, eyeing him professionally, said to himself, "Too much rum. He'll have D.T. if he doesn't slack off--or a fit if he does much of this kind of thing."

The mate thrashed back to his own ship with furious strokes and climbed aboard, and Wulfrey, having watched him safely up the side, went down to The Girl.

"He is very angry," he said quietly.

"He did not whisper. I couldn't help hearing him. What will he do next?"

"We can only wait and see. We shall have to be on our guard, but we won't let him trouble us. He is drinking too much."

They saw nothing more of him all that day, not even his head above the bulwarks. Wulfrey surmised that he was probably treating his wrath with rum, and plotting mischief, or maybe he was lying dead drunk in his cabin. They themselves were well provided in all respects, but he had good reason to know that stocks across there were running low, and that before long the man of wrath would have to go abroad to make up his deficiencies, and that would give them the opportunity of getting in fresh water and rabbit-meat.

He could only hope the mate would not postpone his journey too long, for the weather seemed like changing. There was no sun visible, not a speck of blue sky, but in their place a wan-white opaqueness which looked portentous and might mean anything.

Wulf spent most of the day on the alert, leaving the deck only for meals, and popping up even in the middle of them to make sure that all was right. But Macro made no sign.

There was no knowing, however, what a furious, rum-fuddled man might attempt. His crazy jealousy and anger might stick at nothing, and Wulfrey looked forward to a watchful night as a necessity.

And, as he paced the deck, he ruminated on the handicap imposed by virtue on an honest man when fighting roguery. Here was Macro at liberty to sleep without fear of assault, to go ashore for water and fresh meat, and to the wreckage for everything he wanted, assured in his own mind that no one would rifle his stores, or fire his ship, or play any other dastardly trick, in his absence. While they, if they left their stronghold unguarded for an hour, must be exposed to all these things, and constant watchfulness would be necessary to prevent them.

It was not a pleasant prospect and he did not see how it was going to end. At the same time he did not see what other course had been left to them, and he was determined to go through with this, cost what it might.

The thought of striking down this man with whom he had lived in fellowship, even in fair fight, was abhorrent to him. The thought of being struck down himself made his blood run cold on The Girl's account. Both possibilities must be avoided if possible. The latter at all hazards. If it came to the mate suffering or The Girl, the mate would have to go without compunction.

XXXV

The night passed without disturbance, the morning found them swathed in dense white mist which hid one side of the ship from the other.

"He did not come again?" asked The Girl when they met. "I am ashamed to have slept so soundly. I intended to take my fair share of the watching."

"There was no need. I bolted the doors and slept at the foot of the stairs. It's all cotton-wool outside. You can't see a couple of feet. He won't venture out in that, if I know him. But we need water. I'll go across after breakfast and get some."

"I shall come too. I wouldn't stop here alone for anything."

"All right. Our only difficulty will be in finding the shore and getting back to the ship. Fog is terribly bewildering."

"If you can find the shore we can get back all right," she said, after thinking it over.

"How?"

"We have that heap of rope you brought over. Could we not untwist some and make a cord? Then if we tied one end to the ship and carried the other ashore we could feel our way back by it."

"It will take a lot of untwisting. We're quite two hundred yards from the shore. But it's worth trying."

So they untwisted rope till their fingers were sore, and tied the pieces together till he judged they had enough, and presently they embarked noiselessly on their raft and paddled in the direction in which he believed the shore lay, The Girl paying out the string as they went.

This weird envelopment of dense white mist was a new experience for her. She could barely see the water a foot or two away. The string slipped through her fingers and vanished into the fog-wall. Dale, sweeping the water with his oar, loomed dim and large just above her.

They went on and on, but found no shore.

"The string is nearly all done," she said at last.

"Then we're going wrong," he whispered. "Don't speak loud, we don't know how near we may be to----" and, as if to confirm his fears, a great black bulk appeared in the clammy white above them, and Wulfrey hurriedly checked their way and backed off into the fog again.

"'The Jane and Mary,'" he whispered, when they had put a space between them and it. "We've been circling round. The shore must be this way, I think----" and the cord slacked in The Girl's fingers as he struck off to the right, and in due course they made the beach with cord to spare.

They tied the precious guiding-line to the raft and set off with their buckets, Wulfrey trailing his oar behind him so that by its mark in the sand they might grope their way back. In his belt he carried the only weapon he possessed, his axe, which, as matters stood with the mate, he deemed it advisable always to have at hand.

Keeping along the edge of the lake till he judged they were opposite the ponds, they struck inland, and managing to keep a straighter course than on the water, came at last to their goal.

They filled their buckets and were returning on their trail, bending every now and again to make sure they were right, when, with an abruptness that startled the buckets out of their hands, a dark figure loomed up on them out of the fog and they found themselves face to face with the mate.

He had heard them coming and was ready. Wulfrey had barely time to drop his oar and pluck out his axe when the other sprang at him with his weapon swung up for the blow.

It was very grim. Of all fighting-tools the axe is the most brutal--after, perhaps, the spiked club and the scythe-blade tied on a pole, which are only fit for savages. It is cumbersome and ungainly. It admits of little skill either in attack or defence. Its arguments are final and convincing, and its wounds are very ghastly.

The Girl could barely make out which was which, so thick was the veiling fog. But that did not matter. She sprang in between the two dark figures with arms outspread, at imminent risk of receiving both their blows, crying, "No!--You shall not! You shall not!"

The mate hurled oaths at her. She thought he was going to strike her down. And past her, at Wulfrey,--"---- ye! It's like ye. Steal her first, then hide behind her!"

With one big black hand he gripped her blanket cloak and whirled her away into the mist, and came plunging at Wulfrey, who stood with poised axe and eyes that watched his every movement.

The mate played round him for an opening. Out of the corner of his eye he saw The Girl groping about for the oar. He rushed in to end it with one crushing blow.

But Wulf was ready for him and he was the cooler man. As the mate's axe came swooshing down straight for his shoulder and neck, his own swung round, caught the other full in the blade with its own stout back, and with a ringing click sent it flying, with such a shock to the arm that had held it that the mate believed it was broken. He ducked with an oath and disappeared into the fog.

The Girl came panting up, her face all sanded with her fall, her eyes ablaze. "Did it reach you?"

"Not at all. I'm all right."

"The brute! I feared he would kill you."

"He did his worst.... What were you going to do with that?"--the oar she had picked up.

"I was going to smash him on the head with it, but I couldn't find it at first."

"Two to one!"

"I don't care. I'd have killed him if I could."

"What about our water?"

"It's all spilled."

"We'll go back for more. He won't come back. I doubt if he'll find his axe in this fog. Which way now?" and he stood puzzling, for force of circumstance and much trampling of the sand had lost them their clue. "You cast round that way for the mark of the oar, but don't go far. I'll try this side. Call if you find."

"Here!" she cried, almost at once, and he followed her voice into the fog and found her standing on the line.

But so confused were they that even then they had not an idea which way to follow it.

"Which way?" she asked, staring down at the groove under her feet.

"This, I think.... I don't know," and he stood perplexed, "There is nothing for it but following it up and seeing where we come to."

So they picked up their buckets, and he took the oar, and they set off again,--and came out at last, not on the green undergrowth which flourished round the ponds, but on the bare shore of the lake.

"Now we know where we are at all events. Dare you stop here while I go back?"

"No," she said with a shiver.

"Come along, then!" and they turned and went back, and he discoursed of fogs as they went. "Nothing like a fog for absolutely confusing one's sense of direction. I've known people wander for hours on a common, round and round, quite unable to get anywhere. And one soon gets into a panic and common sense goes overboard."

She had not had much experience of fogs, but expressed herself vehemently on the subject, and so they came to the ponds, and back, in time, to their raft. And Wulfrey was mightily glad to see it again, for the idea had been troubling him that Macro might have found it, and set it adrift, or gone off to their ship to find solace there for his discomfiture ashore.

"I wonder where he's got to?" he said anxiously.

"I don't care. I wish he'd get lost in the fog and never come back."

"You feel strongly," he said, with a smile at her vehemence.

"Yes, I like or I dislike, and both to the full."

The guiding-line led them safely home, and glad they were to get there, for the chill of the fog and the treacheries it held were enough to weigh down the staunchest of spirits.

XXXVI

Their experiences in the fog had occupied many hours, and the unusual strain had left them both somewhat lax and weary. By the time they had prepared and eaten their much-delayed meal, and were enjoying the after-rest, the thick whiteness outside had turned to chiller gray, and the comfort of a blazing fire was eminently agreeable.

Wulfrey closed the companion-doors and hatch, all except the narrowest crack through which the smoke could escape, lit his pipe, and lay at ease, watching the many-coloured tongues of the dancing flames and The Girl who sat gazing dreamily into them on the other side, and wondered how it would have been with them all if Macro's vicious blow had got home on his neck.

She was very good to look upon as she sat there in the flickering half-darkness. The gracious curves of her supple young figure transformed the bare little cabin into a Temple of Youth and Beauty.

The dusky glamour of her hair, the shadowy beauty of her dark soft eyes, the level brows and wide white forehead which gave such strength and dignity to her face--they all held for him an arrest and an appeal such as he had never before experienced.

She had made herself a robe out of a piece of the crimson silk they had brought over from the pile. It was hardly a dress, for it swathed about her in flowing folds rather than fitted to her. But he thought he had never seen so becoming a garment. It was sheer delight to lie and look at her.

But it was a sufficiently difficult problem that faced him. In his present state of mind, the mate seemed determined to make an end of him the first chance that offered. Was there any reasonable hope of a change for the better in him? Were they to live in a perpetual state of defence till one of them went under?--all the advantages of unscrupulous attack being left to the enemy. Was it reasonable? If not, what was to be done, and how?

The man had suddenly become a deadly menace. He was no better, in his unprincipled cravings, than a wild beast. If that girl fell helpless into his coarse hands.... And she knew it and looked to him for protection.

And protection to the utmost of his powers she should have.... Was he justified in slaying the man? ... In view of the deadly intent of this latest attack he thought he was. But whether he could bring himself to it, if the chance offered, he was not by any means sure.... The deliberate killing of one's fellow was a serious matter.... In self-defence of course one was justified.... As to the law--it seemed as though the mate was right in his belief that they were destined to spend the rest of their lives--some of them at all events--on this bare bank of sand, where none ever came who could help it, and where no law but that of Nature obtained.... But there was a higher law. "Thou shalt not kill." ... Yes, it would be very much against the grain of his life and conscience, but it might have to be....

He sat up suddenly, listening intently.

"What is it?" asked The Girl, startled out of her own reverie.

He raised his hand for silence.

"I thought I heard a cry," and he got up, and went up the steps, and opened the door and stood there straining his ears into the clammy darkness. The fog lay thicker than ever. It was like listening into the side of a bale of raw cotton. The faint glow of the fire below died against the opaque wall in front. It could not have been seen a yard away.

The Girl stood on the stairs close behind him.

"I must have been mistaken," he murmured, "or perhaps it was a seagull,"--when, just below and almost alongside them, there came the violent sweep of an oar used as a paddle, and a wild spate of curses like the furious outburst of a panic-stricken brain.

Wulf slipped noiselessly down for his axe and stepped up on deck. If he went past, well and good. If he ran into them----

There came a sudden bump against the side of their ship and the sound of a fall on the raft.

"---- ---- ---- ---- ye, ye ---- ---- rotten old coffin! I've got ye at last, ---- ---- ----!" and right up out of the fog under Wulfrey's nose came two clammy black hands clawing nervously at the bulwark.

"You can't come aboard here, Macro," he said quietly. The grimy hands loosed with a startled oath and the mate dropped back on to his raft.

"----! That you again? ---- ---- ---- ---- you! I thought.... Then my ---- craft must be over there. ---- ---- ----! I'll do for you yet, my cully!" and the oar dashed into the water again and he cursed himself off into the darkness.

"You could have killed him," gasped The Girl at his side, through her chattering teeth.

"I could--but I couldn't."

"We shall have no peace while he lives."

"I fear not. Still--I couldn't cut him down in cold blood like that. What would you have thought of me if I had done so?"

"I should have said you had done well."

"I know you better."

At which she shook her head. "You don't know what horrid thoughts whirl about in my mind. No man really knows what a woman thinks," and the frank dark eyes regarded him solemnly.

"I know you better than you do yourself."

"I doubt it," with another shake of the head. "But, even then, it might have been best,"--with a shiver--"It sounds horrible--but----"

He could understand all her feeling in the matter. In her place he would have felt just the same. The man was a hideous menace--to her especially--and there would be no security for them while he lived. But all the same....

"Let us get back to the fire," he said quietly. "He won't come back tonight. Poor wretch, he's probably been paddling about all day looking for his ship and he's half crazed with it."

"I don't think I am bloodthirsty by nature," she said, with her hands pressed tight to her eyes, when she had sunk down before the fire again. "But I fear that man with all my soul, both for myself and you. He will kill you if he gets the chance. If he kills you I shall kill myself. It is better that one should die than two."

"I agree, but I don't want to have the killing of him if I can help it."

"Killing is horrible," and she shivered again, "But being killed is worse ... and to fall into the hands of a man like that would be even worse still. What will be the end of it all?"

But that was beyond him, and their hearts were heavy over it.

XXXVII

"Is it often like this?" asked The Girl depressedly, on the third day of mist.

"I'm afraid there's a good deal of it. We've had it three or four times since we came. It may be worse in the winter."

"I wish we could get away."

"I wish so too, but I don't see how we're to manage it ... unless, sometime, a boat washes ashore among the wreckage. And even then ... without Macro to manage it..." and he shook his head unhopefully. "... In the meantime I count it marvellous gain that you should have come----"

And at that it was her turn to shake her head. "I don't know. I seem to have brought more harm than good."

"It has made all the difference in the world."

"Yes, it has set you two by the ears and put you in peril of your life. That is not a good work."

"Your company more than compensates. Besides, we should probably have got to loggerheads in any case, and without anything like so good a reason."

"It would have been better, I think, if you had let me go when I was so nearly gone, and not rubbed me back to life."

"I thank God that you came," he said weightily. "Without you we might have sunk into savages, caring only for the lower things. You lift me without knowing it."

"You couldn't sink into a savage. He is one naturally. And I am becoming one, for I am all the time wishing he were dead."

"He must be having a bad time, unless he brought over provisions that last time, and I doubt if he did. He's probably living chiefly on rum. And that won't bring him to any better frame of mind, I'm afraid."

"To think," she mused, "that three people cannot live on an island big enough to hold thousands, without quarrelling to the death!"

"The trouble is not of our making, so we need not blame ourselves."

"Yes, it is. I began it by coming ashore. You ought to have let me stop out there----"

"You are very much better here."

"----And you continued it by bringing me back to life. You ought to have let me die."

"Very well. I accept all the blame and rejoice in it," he said, with a smile. "It is just the fog getting into you. You'll feel differently about it when the sun comes out again."

"Sun? I don't believe we are going to see it again. I don't believe it ever shines here or ever has done since the world began. It is an island of mist ... and we are just vapours----"

"Macro's not anyway. I wish he were. He wouldn't trouble me in the slightest then. He's a solid strong mixture of Spanish buccaneer and Highland robber, with a touch of volcano to keep the mixture boiling."

But the chill of the mist was upon her and nothing he could say availed to cheer her. So he hauled out the rolls of silk they had brought over, and set to work decorating the cabin with them, and interested her out of her depression by the purposed mistakes he made.

It was the ravelling off of a long thread from one of the pieces of silk he was cutting, that showed him the way to a new employment for her and the possibilities of a welcome addition to their meagre larder.

"Do you think you could twist two or three of these into a fishing-line?" he asked her. "I've seen heaps of fish in the lake. We might try for some."

"And hooks?"

"If you could spare me one of your big needles I think I could make something that might do."

She went at once and got him one, and then set to work on the line, and he could hardly get on with his own job for watching her.

She was so eminently graceful in all her movements. Her tall slender figure, supple, shapely, and all softly rounded curves without a discoverable abruptness or angularity anywhere about it, lent itself with singular charm to her present occupation. After thoughtful consideration of the matter, she unrolled one of the pieces of silk the whole width of the cabin, then picking out a thread, she fastened the end of it to the woodwork and travelled along the side of the piece, bending and releasing it as she went. The same with two more threads.

"Three ply will be strong enough?" she asked, straightening up and looking across at him.

"Let me see what three ply feel like," and he went across and watched her while she twisted the threads tightly together with deft soft fingers.

"I should think that would do," he said, running it between his finger and thumb. Their hands met, and the touch of hers sent a quite unexpected thrill of physical delight tingling through his veins. He did not dare to look full at her for the moment, lest she should see it in his eyes. But he was conscious to the point of pain of her close proximity,--somehow conscious too--and that quite unconsciously and without any reasoning on the matter--that, in the twinkling of an eye, she was no longer simply a beautiful and charming girl, but had become for him the most beautiful and charming girl in all the world.

His heart felt suddenly too big for his body. He could have taken her in his arms then and there, and crushed her to him, and smothered her with hot kisses. And he could no more have done it than he could have brained her with his axe. For she trusted him implicitly, and he was himself.

He took a deep breath to give his heart more room, and bent to examine her twist.

"It will do splendidly," he said, and she glanced quickly at him and wondered what had made that curious change in his voice. "How will you keep it rolled tight like that?"

"I've been thinking. If I greased my fingers with some of that pork fat as I roll it, and roll it very tight, it will probably keep so. How long will you want it?"

"As long as you can make it without too much trouble."

"I can make it the full length of that silk as far as I see."

"That will do admirably.... If I can make as good a hook as you have made a line we will have fish for dinner," and he went back to the fire, where, with his axe and his knife and two rusty nails lashed together at the top to act as tweezers, he was endeavouring to bend a portion of her needle into a hook.

At the cost of some burns and cuts he managed at last to make something distantly resembling one.

"It looks horrid," said The Girl when he showed it to her. "I shall be sorry for the fishes if they get that into them."

"So shall I. But we'll not let them suffer long if they give us the chance."

She was as eager as a child with a new toy to put their work to the test. So he cut some small pieces of pork and embedded his hook in one, and dropped it into the bed of mist over the side.

And she leaned over, with her shoulder unconsciously against his,--but he felt it, and rejoiced in the feel as keenly as ever Macro did in his treasure-trove--and peered anxiously down at the line, of which she could see but a couple of feet, and waited impatiently for results.

He put it into her hand, saying,

"If anything comes of it you shall have the honour of catching our first fish," but he held on to the slack behind.

"It's jerking," she whispered breathlessly, "Oh, I'm sure there's something on it..." and as she let go the line he gave it a jerk on his own account, then drew it quickly in and a plump astonished fish lay jumping and twisting on the deck. It was over a foot in length, very prettily coloured, dark blue with many cross-streaks and silvery below.

"Mackerel, I think," he said, and promptly knocked it on the head, to end its troubles and allow him the further use of his hook.

"The poor little thing! I'm so sorry," she said, looking mournfully down at the iridescent beauty. "I don't think I like fishing."

"You'll think better of it when it's fried."

"I couldn't touch it," with a vigorous shake of the head.

So he asked her to go down and make some cakes, and then caught another fish of a different kind the moment the bait reached the water, and a couple more for breakfast next day, and was thereby much reassured as to the future of their larder. He cleaned two of his fish and fried them with some pork fat as soon as she had made her cakes, and proceeded to reason her out of her prejudice.

"You have eaten fish all your life, haven't you?" he asked.

"Ye-es."

"Well, every fish has had to be caught before you could eat it. They generally leave them to die. But even that is probably only similar to our drowning, which is said to be about as pleasant a way as there is of going."

"It's horribly cold if you're lashed to a mast,"--with a reminiscent shiver. "And being rubbed back to life is just as bad."

"And we are more merciful, because we kill them at once."

"It's horrible to think that everything we eat, except things that grow of course, has got to suffer death for us."

"But you have always eaten these things without being troubled about it."

"The killing has never been brought home to me so closely before."

"It's Nature's law, you see. Everything feeds on something else. These fishes feed on smaller things. And how do you know that when you cut a cabbage or a potato----"

"How I wish I had the chance!"

"So do I, most heartily. But how do you know they don't feel it just as much, in their own dull way, as the pig did from which we get our pork?"

She shook her head and sighed. "We can't get away from it, I suppose," and tasted the fish and found it good, and ate quite heartily though with an appearance of protest.

"You see," he said. "Some fishes lay millions of eggs at a time. If they all grew up the sea would be choked with them, as the earth would be with animals if they weren't killed off. Besides, unless I am mistaken in my recollection of our old parson's reading, all these things were expressly provided for man's sustenance, so we are only doing our duty in eating them."

"All the same, I think I will let you do all the catching and killing."

"Of course. That is the man's proper part in the family economy. He is the bread-and-meat winner. And the wife's--the woman's, I mean--is to see to the cooking," and he occupied himself busily with fish-bones, and felt like biting his tongue off for its involuntary slip.

"If you had lived on pork and rabbits for months you would find this fish delicious," he said presently, to break the odd little silence that had fallen on them.

"It is very good. I wonder you never caught any before."

"I did try, but my tackle was too rough. The fish would have none of it. It is your clever line that has done the trick."

"I am glad to be of some use, though I can't help being sorry for the fish."

And if he had dared he would have delighted to tell her of what infinitely greater use she was to him in other and higher ways.

XXXVIII

Wulfrey was awakened in the night by the sounds he had come to recognise as the accompaniments of bad weather. The ship was humming in the wind and straining and jerking restively at the rusty cable which he was always expecting to give way. He wondered sleepily what would happen to them if it did. Wondered also if The Girl was frightened at the changed conditions, or whether she would understand. He slipped on some clothes and went into the cabin, to reassure her if necessary.

The fire was a bed of white ashes and a rose-gold core in the centre. He piled on some chips and the flames broke out with a cheerful crackle. The door of The Girl's little passage way opened an inch or two, and he caught a glimpse of her startled eyes shining in the fire-light.

"I was afraid you might be disturbed by the storm," he said.

She went back for a moment, and then came out with her blanket skirt and cloak swathed about her, and sat down by the fire.

"It woke me, and I cannot get to sleep again. Oh ... what is that?"--as a shrill scream pealed out just above the opening in the companion-hatch.

"It's only those infernal birds. They always come screeching round us in bad weather."

"I had just been dreaming that that horrid man came across in the night and murdered us both. It was such a relief to see you alive again."

"No fear of his venturing out in this weather. Those screaming birds get on his nerves. He'll be sitting drinking, and cursing them in the most awful Gaelic he can twist his tongue to. This weather will probably last a couple of days. Then it will slack up, and just when you're thinking it's all gone it will come back worse than ever. Fortunately we've got---- By Jove!"--and he ran hastily up the companion, unbolted the door and ran out on deck. The gale came whuffling down on the fire and scattered the white ashes in a cloud, and set the silken drapery of the walls rustling wildly. The shrill clamour of the birds sounded very close, and The Girl sat anxiously wondering.

He came back in a minute, empty-handed and disconsolate. "I just remembered my fish. I left two up there for breakfast, but the birds have had them. They're as thick on the deck as bees on a comb, hoping for more."

"Is that all? I was afraid that man was coming and you'd heard him."

"It means living on pork till the storm passes."

"That is nothing. We shall enjoy the other things all the more later on."

"I'm wondering all the time how Macro is getting on----" he said, pulling out his pipe and filling it.

"Why trouble about him? He would not trouble about us if we were starving."

"I don't suppose he would.... I suppose it comes of my being so in the habit of helping people through their bodily troubles."

"It is wasted on him. He would not let you help him if you could."

"I don't believe he would, unless he were helpless.... I wish he'd never come ashore."

"But in that case I would not be here either, and you would have been all alone for the rest of your life."

"Then, after all, I'm glad he came ashore."

"I wonder if you would have gone mad in time with the loneliness of it," she said musingly.

"It would be horrible to be all alone for all the rest of one's life, but I don't think I would have gone mad. I've no doubt there are books to be found among the wreckage out there. Still ... for the rest of one's life!"--and he shook his head doubtfully. "As things are, however...."

"As things are?" she queried, after waiting for him to finish.

"As things are, I am quite content to stop here for the rest of my life, if that has to be. But that won't stop my doing my best to get away if the chance offers.... And you?"

"If we were delivered from that man I could be content here also.... But I do not say for all my life. That sounds terribly long.... But for that man it would be a welcome retreat from a world of which I had had a surfeit."

He wondered much if she were heart-whole. It seemed almost incredible to him that she could have lived that strange life of hers without some man wanting and touching it. So fair a prize, to go wholly unclaimed and undesired! But never, in all her talk, had she said one word that pointed to anything of the kind. Rather had she held up the men she had met to derogation and contempt. Surely, if there had been anyone to whom her heart turned and clung, some evidence of it would have shown itself.

From all she had said, from all her little unconscious self-revelations, and the wholesome judgment he had formed of her in his own mind, he could well believe that, in that whirlpool of a world in which she had lived, she had come to hold most men in doubt and all at arm's length. And the thought was agreeable to him.

When the slow day broke, dim and clangorous with the gale, they dallied over a meal, talking of many things to pass the time, and then went up on deck, and with a brandished stick he ridded the ship of the clustering birds. They shrieked threateningly and came swooping at him on the wings of the wind, with hungry beaks and merciless eyes. But here he was at home and would not suffer their invasion, and finally they gave it up and fled to the sandhills, cursing him shrilly as they went.

"Oh, there's one gone downstairs," cried The Girl; and running down after it, he found a great black cormorant squawking fearfully round the cabin and dashing itself against the walls in its wild attempts at escape. At sight of him it grew frantic, but finally found its way out of the hatch again, almost upsetting The Girl in its passage, and then tore away to tell its fellows of the awful place it had been in, which smelt so good but was so much easier to get into than out of. Wulfrey had to open one of the lee ports and let the gale blow through to get rid of the smell of it, and then he went up again to The Girl.

They watched the great rollers thundering on the beach beyond the spit, rocketing their white spume high into the grim black sky, and lashing over at times into the lake. And when he called to her to look the other way she watched with amazement sandhills of size melt away before her eyes and re-form themselves in quite different places.

"But it is past words!" she cried into his ear.

They stared long too at the 'Jane and Mary' of Boston, but saw no sign of life aboard of her except the birds that clustered there unmolested.

"It is a most amazing place," she said, when they went down again, as she dusted the saltness out of her hair with her hand. "Is it often like this?"

"Very often in the winter, I should fear. We've had our best weather since you came."

"I don't think I want to live all my life here," she said dejectedly. "I love the sun."

And he would dearly have liked to tell her that he did the same, but that for him she made more sunshine even than the sun itself.

Instead, he prosaically set her to the making of more fishing-lines, in case of accident to the one they had, and he himself hammered away at more hooks, burning and ragging his fingers out of knowledge, but producing hooks of a kind somehow.

XXXIX

The gale slackened on the third day, and Wulfrey was actually relieved in his mind at the sight of Macro hurrying ashore on his raft, after fresh meat, and, from the fact of his buckets, water, which he had probably been too careless, or too drunk, to secure during the storm. For the thought of his possibly lying there alone and foodless had not been a pleasant one, good reason as he had for disliking the man.

For themselves, he baited and cast his hooks, and landed half a dozen fish as fast as he could haul them out. Their fresh meat supply would have to wait until Macro went out to the wreckage and their minds could be at ease as to the safety of their headquarters. The sea outside was still too high for any possibility of his going that day, and fortunately, thanks to their new source of supply, they could wait with equanimity. Water they had caught in plenty in the buckets slung under the scuppers.

"He's alive at any rate," said Wulfrey, when he went down to breakfast.

"So much the worse for us," said The Girl.

"He's been fasting, I should say, by the way he has gone off after rabbits. We ate our first ones raw, I remember."

"Savages!"

"Savage with hunger. We had had nothing to eat but shell-fish and sea-weed for days."

"Horrible!--raw rabbit and sea-weed!"

"We had no means of making fire, no shelter. We slept out on the sands, and were glad to be simply alive."

"I'm truly thankful you had risen to a higher state before I came."

"So am I. We were not good to look at. We were as men who had died out there among the dead ships' bones and been born again on this sandbank, lacking everything. Fortunately for us the years that had gone before had been unconsciously making provision for us, and here were houses ready-made and waiting, and out there more than we could use in a lifetime."

They saw the mate return after a time with his supplies, and he never showed head again all day. Wulfrey let The Girl keep a look-out, and tried himself to get some sleep, in anticipation of the night-watch which he saw would be necessary.

"He will probably go out to the pile tomorrow," he said. "He must be out of flour and probably of rum. Then we can take a run ashore ourselves. When he gets back he will probably be too tired to be up to any mischief."

"I wish he would tame down and let us have peace, or else go and get himself killed," she said anxiously. "We can't go on like this for ever."

"I'm afraid he won't oblige us either way. We can only hang on and hope for the best, and keep our eyes open."

His watch that night passed undisturbed. In the morning, as he expected, Macro set off for the wreckage; and, taking some food with them, they went ashore for a long day's ramble.

"It is good to feel the width of land under one again," said The Girl, fairly dancing with delight. "I am very grateful for the ship, but truly it is small and cramping."

"Sandhills are good for play-time, but you'd miss the ship when bed-time came. It's cold work sleeping on the sand."

"Almost as bad as sleeping on a broken mast. Which way shall we go? You are quite sure he has gone to the wreckage?"

"Quite sure. I watched him out of sight. Besides, I am sure he had to go."

"Then let us go the opposite way, as far as we can, and we'll stop out all day long and behave like children. I'm going to walk in the water," and she kicked off her shoes and lifted her blanket skirt and tripped along in the lip of the tide, and he did the same, enjoying her enjoyment.

A watery sun shone feebly through a thin gray sky, the air was still heavy with moisture, the water in which they were walking was warmer than that of the lake. On that side, the island curved like the concave side of a great half-moon. The pale yellow sand stretched on and on as far as their eyes could reach.

"I would like to bathe," said she exuberantly.

"Wait till we get beyond the end of our lake, then you can take this side and I'll go across to the other. You won't go out too far? There may be under-currents that would carry you out."

"I'll be very careful. And you must not come back for an hour... Oh, what are those? ... Dead men?"

In a tiny dent in the long sweep of the curve, made by the sandhills running almost down to the water, were half a dozen dark objects lying on the dry sand and looking for all the world like dead bodies. He had never seen any jetsam of size on that side. The drive of the storms and drift of the currents landed everything on the western spits and banks. Still there was no knowing.

"Wait here!" he said, and set off towards them. And she followed close at his heels.

But before they had gone many paces, one of the bodies set itself suddenly in motion and began to shuffle towards the water.

"Seals," said Wulf, who had never set eyes on a live one in his life, but had a general idea of what they were like.

Before they could reach them, all had flopped away except one, which, when they drew near, raised its head and eyed them piteously and made an effort to rise.

"It is sick or wounded," said Wulf. "Poor beast! Its eyes are like a woman's in----" He bethought himself and bit it off short. He had seen just such a look in many a woman's eyes.

"We won't disturb her," he said, and led the way round to give her wide berth.

"Oh--look! Oh, the little darling! How I would love to cuddle it!" whispered The Girl, for there, on the other side of Mrs Seal, with her front fins clasping it protectingly, was a late-born baby sucking away for dear life.

The Girl's face was transfigured,--ablaze with intensest sympathy and the wonderful light of mother-love. The mother's eyes followed them anxiously, the fear in them died out as they backed slowly away, and she bent her head to her baby and seemed to say, "Thank you so much! You understand, and I am very grateful to you."

"I _am_ so glad we saw them. I like the island better than ever I did before," said The Girl. "What a dear little thing it was! And she was just delightful," and all day long she kept referring to them and to her joy at the sight of them.

They went on again, mile after mile, and whenever he glanced at her, her face was still alight with happiness, and unconscious smiles rippled over it in tune with her thoughts. So inborn and unfailing is the mother-feeling in all true women.

"Now, if you wish to bathe, here is a good place. I will strike across to the other shore and will come back in about an hour. Don't go too far out!" and he strode away across the hummocks.

Under cover of the nearest sandhill she loosed her slender garments, and sped like a sunbeam across the beach and into the water; and her face, as it came up from the kiss of the sea, was like a sweet blush-rose all beaded with morning dew, than which no fairer thing will you find. And as she swam and dived and splashed in the lucent green water, like a lovely white seal, her bodily enjoyment and her mental exhilaration flung wide her arms at times, as though she would clasp all Nature's joys to her white breast, and her eyes shone with a brighter light than had the mother-seal's, and a seal's eyes are deeply, beautifully tender and bright.

She laughed aloud at times, though none but herself could hear it, in the pure physical joy of living and being so very much alive. She was happier than she had ever been in all her life before. And one time, as she lay afloat with her arms outspread, she looked up at the pale sun in the thin gray sky, and all inconsequently said, "Yes--he is good. He is good. He is good," and her face was golden-rosier than ever when she was conscious that she had said it aloud.

She was sitting in the side of the sandhill, combing her hair with her fingers, when she heard his distant hail. And she climbed the hill and waved to him that he might come.

"I don't need to ask if you enjoyed your bathe," he said, as he came up. "I can see it in your face."

"It was delightful. I would like to bathe every day."

"Two days ago?" he laughed.

"No, days like this. Oh, it _was_ so good! And now I am hungry. Let us eat."

So they sat in the wire grass of the hill-top and ate their frugal meal, she with her wonderful hair all astream, the ends spread wide to dry on the sand; and he, clean, and strong, and brown, as fine a figure of a man as she had ever met, though his raiment was nothing to boast of. And he said to himself, "She is the most wonderful girl I have ever seen. I would like to kiss her hair, her hands, her feet."

And she, to herself,--"He is good. He is good. He is good."

And, buried deep in both their minds, yet fully alive, was the thought that it might be that all their lives would have to be passed on that lean bank of sand--together.

XL

On their way back, Wulf lingered behind for a moment or two and came along presently with rabbits enough for their requirements, but did not obtrude them on her notice.

"It has been a day of delight," she said, as they drew to their ship. "Let us do it again.... I wonder if that man has got home."

"Not yet. I can see his raft on the spit. Just as well we're here before him."

"If only he were not here at all----"

"Even the original Paradise had its serpent."

"This one cannot beguile this woman at all events."

It was almost dark when they saw Macro's laden raft lumbering slowly across to the 'Jane and Mary.'

"He won't starve," commented The Girl.

"Nor go dry. I see at least half a dozen kegs there. He's making provision for bad weather. The gale may blow up again during the night. See the birds whirling about over there."

"Will you have to watch again?"

"Safer so, though the chances are the kegs will keep him quiet for a time. He's probably been on short allowance the last day or two."

"It is monstrous that you should have to. I wish----" and the petulant stamp of her stout little brogue conveyed no suggestion of a blessing.

"Time may work for us," he said quietly. "He is our thorn in the flesh----"

"He's a whole axe if you give him the chance."

"I won't, I promise you. I cannot afford to give him any chances," and she knew that in that his thought was wholly for her.

Wulf dutifully patrolled his deck when it grew dark, though he acknowledged to himself that the precaution was probably unnecessary, for this night at all events. Still, he was there to protect The Girl and he would suffer no risks.

It was possibly the distant sight of him, tramping doggedly to and fro in the wan moonlight, that set Macro's rum-heated passions on fire. Wulf heard him spating curses as he tumbled over on to his raft and came splashing across. He went quietly to the companion-way and closed the door, then picked up his axe and stood waiting, with a somewhat quickened heart at the thought that the next few minutes might end the matter one way or the other.

"---- ---- ---- ---- you, you white-livered skunk! Come out and fight for her like a man if you want her," was the mate's rough challenge, supplemented by a broadside of oaths, as he drew near.

Wulf stood looking quietly down at him. Words were sheer waste.

"D'ye hear me? Come down an' fight it out like a' man, an' best man takes her, ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- you!"

He bumped roughly against the side and picked up his axe. Curses foamed out of him in a ceaseless torrent, and he made as though he would come swarming over.

"Keep off," said Wulf. "If you try to come aboard I'll cut you down."

"Come down then and fight it out if you're half a man, ---- ---- ---- ---- you! What right have you to her, I'd like to know, ---- ---- ---- ---- ----!"--he picked up his oar and whirled it round at Wulf's head and it splintered on the hard-wood rail.

"Get back to your ship, man, and don't make a fool of yourself," said Wulf. "I won't fight you. If you try to come on board here I'll make an end of you."

"Ye skunk, ye! Ye ---- ---- ---- white-livered cowardly skunk!"--etc. etc. etc.--to all of which Wulf made no reply, which provoked the furious one more than any words he could have flung at him.

He remained there, hurling abuse and invective at the steady-faced man up above, till the night air cooled the boiling in his brain. Then he seized his splintered oar and thrashed away home. Wulf quietly resumed his sentry-go, watched till all was quiet on the 'Jane and Mary,' and then went down.

To his surprise The Girl was sitting by the fire. He had supposed her in bed, had hoped she was fast asleep and had heard nothing of the bombardment.

"He has gone?" she asked.

"Yes, he has gone home to bed. I was hoping you were asleep."

"Asleep! ... And you did not kill him?"

"He gave me no chance. He invited me on to his raft for a fight----"

"I heard it all."

"I'm sorry. He is hardly suitable for a lady's ears."

"I feel myself a terrible burden to you."

"But you are not. Very much the reverse. You are----" he began impulsively, and stopped short. It was too soon to tell all that she was to him.

"I am a bone of contention. I bring you in peril of your life----"

"And I thank God I am here to protect you. Now, take my advice and go to bed. I will bring my blankets and lie at the foot of the stairs here."

XLI

The next day passed without any sign of the mate, beyond the thin blue smoke that floated up from his hatchway.

Wulf surmised that he was making up his leeway in the matter of food and drink, and would probably not be over-eager for battle for the time being. Nevertheless he relaxed no whit of his vigilance, and after watching on deck for half the night slept the rest at the foot of the companion-way as before.

Contrary to his expectations, the gale did not work itself up again, but the sky was still low and dark and full of thin smoky clouds hurrying along towards the north-east, and he was not at all sure that they had done with it yet.

On the following day, to their great satisfaction, Macro set off early for the wreckage, and when they had watched him out of sight they went ashore for a ramble, and to get water and fresh meat.

The Girl must of course make straight for the place where they had met Mrs Seal and her baby, but, to her great disappointment, there was not a sign of them.

"And I did so want to see them again," said she. "She would have known us by this time and not been afraid. Perhaps she would even have let me touch it."

"They are much happier in the water," he said, with a smile, for her face made him think of a child who had lost its toy.

She would not be satisfied till they had searched far along the shore, but nothing came of it, and she was disconsolate. The day was not cheerful and she would not bathe. They filled their buckets, and he caught some rabbits and they returned early to the ship.

Her humours appealed to him, even though he could not possibly understand them completely. Everything she did, and the way she did it, and indeed everything connected with her, was coming to have a vital interest for him.

He could not know how the anguished fear in that mother-seal's eyes had touched her heart, how she had yearned to pick up that sleek little baby and fondle it in her arms, how she had been hoping and longing to see them again, how great her disappointment had been. She felt bereft and went off early to bed.

Wulf lay smoking and thinking till night fell, and then went up to do sentry. He paced the deck till midnight, saw no sign of movement aboard the 'Jane and Mary,' and went below and was soon sound asleep.

He woke once with a start, believing he had heard a footstep. Then a ripple clop-clopped against the side of the ship and he lay down again satisfied.

He was awakened again by a hand gripping his shoulder, and, starting up, found a ghostly white figure bending over him, and The Girl's voice in his ear,

"There is something wrong. Can you not smell it?"

For a moment he imagined her dreaming. Then his nose warned him that she was right. There was something unusual in the atmosphere.

Even when their fire was no more than a heap of gray ashes with a golden core, and one of their lee ports was open, the faint, not unpleasant smell of wood smoke hung about the cabin. But this was quite different,--an acrid, pungent smell as of burning fat. He glanced at the fire and raked his mind for an explanation of it.

"It is worse in my room," she said, and he went quietly to the sacred little passage off which her sleeping-apartment opened.

Yes, it was worse there, and what it meant he could not imagine.

"You have not been burning anything?" he asked.

"Nothing. The horrid smell wakened me."

He turned and ran up the companion-steps, with a vague idea that something in the hold might have caught fire, though how that could be was beyond him. There was nothing there but their reserve stores, and certainly nothing that could take fire of its own accord. Besides, it was two days since he had been down there, and he never took a light, as the hatch, when shoved askew, gave all that was needed.

He fumbled the bolts of the little doors open, but the doors seemed jammed. He pushed. They remained firm. He made sure of the bolts again and put his shoulder to the doors. They resisted all his efforts.

"Good Lord!" he said, in something of a panic. "What's all this?"

He brushed hastily down past The Girl again, groped for his boots by the side of his blankets, pulled them on, and picked up his axe, with the certainty in his mind that something wrong was toward and it was as well to be fully armed.

Then he smashed away at the woodwork till it was in fragments, and he could climb up through the bristling splinters and over an unexpected plank that had somehow got across the doors and prevented their opening.

The first thing he saw when he got on deck was a faint glow about the main-hatch opening, and smoke pouring out of it. Running to it, a glance showed him a fierce fire roaring somewhere down below. A cry of dismay at his side told him that The Girl had scrambled up after him.

"The buckets," he jerked, and she sped back, tearing skin and garment on the splintered doors, while he sought and found a length of rope.

His voice was steady again, though his hands shook with agitation, as he slipped one end of the rope through the handle of the bucket and held the two ends, while the bucket hung in the bight and so could be released instantly by loosing one end of the rope. He filled both buckets and with a hasty, "Hand them down to me and fill again as I throw them up," lowered himself into the hold.

The fire was burning fiercely against the after starboard bulkhead, which, as it happened, was the one nearest The Girl's sleeping-cabin. Their lighter stores had been moved from their usual places and heaped about it and were blazing furiously. The bulkhead itself was on fire, but had apparently only just caught.

Wulf flung his first bucketful at it, and it answered with a hiss like a snarling curse, and showed a red-starred black blotch amid the crawling yellow flames.

He tossed the empty bucket up on deck, and gave the bulkhead another dose with his second, and as he tossed that one up the first came dangling down filled again.

"Good girl!" he shouted exultantly, to reassure her. "Plenty more! We shall do it all right," and the full buckets came dangling down as fast as he could empty them.

A score or so of bucketfuls ended it, and he climbed up, black with smoke and streaked with steam and sweat, and very grateful to be in fresh air again.

The night was just thinning towards the dawn. The Girl was sitting on the coaming of the hatch in a state of collapse, her wet garment clinging clammily about her, her head in her hands, her slender figure shaken with convulsive sobs. His anger boiled furiously at thought of the malice that had planned her suffering--her possible death. Love and pity swelled his heart for her. She looked so utterly forlorn and broken with the fight.

"It is all right, dear!"--he could not help it, it slipped out in spite of him. "Come away down to the cabin. You are shivering. You are wet through and torn to pieces. You have done splendidly, but it was an upsetting piece of business all round. Come!" and he put his arm under hers and drew her up.

She was so limp, however, that he had almost to carry her, and the feel of her unconscious sobs under his enfolding arm quickened his blood again.

At the companion-doors he had to release her and go back for his axe. A stout plank had been cunningly bound against the doors by a rope tied round the companion. His lips tightened sternly as he chopped the rope through and the plank fell to the deck.

He carried her gently down and laid her on his blankets, put some sticks on the fire and blew them into flame, and set on the kettle, which was fortunately full. By the time he had made some coffee and dashed it with rum, she had recovered herself and was sitting up in the blankets with one drawn closely about her.

"That was an unnerving business," he said, as he handed her her cup. "I'm afraid you had the worst of it. You have a lot of scratches--and your hands! Oh, I am truly sorry----"

"It was the rope," she said quietly, looking at the rasped rawness of them. "It was all horrible. How did it get on fire?"

"It was a deliberate attempt on the part of that wretch to make an end of us."

"No!"--and she gazed at him in blankest amazement.

"Without doubt. He blocked our doors here with a plank and a rope, and then started the fire down in the hold."

"Is such wickedness possible?"

"To a madman living chiefly on rum anything is possible."

"He deserves to die."

"Richly. He deserves no mercy. The thought of cutting him down with an axe was horrible. But after this----"

"There is no safety for us while he lives."

"I'm afraid there isn't."

Sleep, he knew, would brace her unstrung nerves better than any thing else, so, after bathing her hands in luke-warm water and anointing them with some of the rendered pork fat she kept for her cooking, he induced her to go and lie down in her bunk. Her other scratches she said she would attend to when she could see them properly.

Then he went on deck and drew up a bucket of water and washed off his own stains, and afterwards smoked many pipes as he pondered the unpleasantly weighty subject of Macro. For that matters could go on like this was out of the question.

XLII

He had cakes made and breakfast all ready long before she came out of her room, still visibly feeling the effects of the night's proceedings.

"I am stiff and sore all over," she said, lowering herself carefully to her seat on the floor. "And you?"

"Sorer in mind than in body."

"What will you do?"

"I shall go over presently and tell him that now he must look out for himself. I will end him, the first chance I get, as I would a wild beast."

"He will try to kill you on the spot."

"He won't get the chance. I'll see to that."

"I shall go with you."

"No."

"Yes, indeed. My heart would thump itself to pieces, waiting here all alone."

"He is dangerous, and he has a vile tongue when it runs away with him----"

"I do not care. It is no more dangerous for me than for you. No--no--no!"--as he was about to argue the matter,--"I cannot be left behind," and nothing he could say could move her.

They saw no sign of life on the 'Jane and Mary,' not so much as a whiff of smoke from the companion-hatch.

"Perhaps he fled when he saw his horrid scheme had failed," suggested The Girl hopefully.

"Not very likely, I'm afraid, but we can go across and see. Won't you be good now and take my advice----"

"I'll be good, but I won't stop here alone."

So perforce he took her with him on the raft, and paddled quietly across to the other ship.

But before they reached it she lifted a warning finger for him to stop paddling and listen. And on their anxious ears there broke the strangest medley of sounds conceivable, and chilled them in the hearing. Wild bursts of laughter, cut short by yells of rage or sudden screams, as of one in mortal fear,--hoarse shouts, torrents of oaths, dull flailing blows which sounded like fists on wood, and, through it all, the never-ceasing yells and screams.

"He has gone mad," panted The Girl, very white in the face, and looked at him with wide anxious eyes.

"Delirium tremens,"--with an understanding nod. "He could stand more than most, but a man cannot live on rum alone," and he paddled slowly towards the ship, his face knitted with doubts as to what he should do.

He was in two minds. If he left the man to himself he would inevitably die in the end, for he had unlimited liquor on board and would turn to it at once, like a hog to its mire, as soon as this bout ran its course. On the other hand, every fragment of professional instinct in him impelled him to the rescue.

Never in his life had he withheld aid from one in extremity. And yet it seemed monstrously absurd--to drag a man back from death solely for the purpose of letting him do his best to kill you, the first chance that offered.

And he had more than himself to think for. Suppose he saved this wretched man, and was worsted by him later on, what of The Girl? She would have reason enough to blame his pusillanimity, and he himself would curse it with his last breath.

But was it fair fighting--to see your enemy in a hole and make no effort to save him? Old-time Chivalry would never even have argued the matter. It would have helped the enemy out, handed him his weapons, and courteously awaited the renewal of the combat. Ah--times were changed.... And this man was compound of treachery and malice.

Thoughts such as these whirled through his brain before he had covered the short space to the other ship.

"Wait here!" he said to The Girl, and climbed through the well-known hole in the side,--and she followed him close in spite of his frowning objection. She had not come thus far to be out of the critical moment.

He ran down to the cabin, and went straight to the mate's door. The dreadful sounds,--the shouts and yells and cries of fear, the furious oaths, the wild thumping blows--filled the cabin with horrors. Even in that anxious moment The Girl was cognisant of a dreary, dirty, repulsive look about it which had not been there before. It was more like the den of a wild beast than a living-room. Some of the silken hangings were torn down, the one or two that were left hung by single pegs. It looked as though a maniac had chased his mad fancies round the room and sought them behind the draperies.

Wulf, gripping his axe, opened the door into the passage, looked in, then went in. And The Girl drew near, to be at hand in case of need, and stood shuddering.

"Keep off! Keep off, ye blank-eyed deevils! ---- ---- ----! Wi' your bloody beaks and tearing claws.... Keep off! Keep off ---- ---- ---- ye!" and the black fists, all bruised and bleeding, whirled and struck at the roof and sides of the bunk as he fought the birds the rum had bred in his brain. Then, as they beat him down in a pestiferous crowd, he gave a shrill scream and doubled himself over in a heap in his bunk, with his hands clasped over his head to save it from their attacks. Then up again, shouting and fighting for dear life, and down flat again with a scream, cowering in uttermost extremity of terror, while oaths dribbled out of him like water out of a spout.

Wulf came out and closed the door, and pushed her brusquely up the stairs to the deck.

"You should not have come down," he said sternly. "This is no place for you," and then, seeing how white her face was, he added more gently, "There is no danger--except to him. He is fighting for his life with the birds. I can do nothing for him--except get rid of all his rum. He would turn to it the moment he comes round, and it is poison in his present state."

He went down again and rooted about everywhere, found two kegs in the cabin under the torn hangings, and another in Macro's room, with a spigot in it. He carried them up on deck, staved in the heads with his axe, and emptied them overboard. In the main-hold he found three more and did the same with them.

"When he gets through, his throat will be like a lime-kiln. There is a bucket of water down there. I will put in it the coffee we left from breakfast and leave it in his cabin. It will be the best thing for him if he will drink it. But he'll be crazy for rum---- I'll take you back and get the coffee. I'm sorry you came."

There was strong disapproval in his tone, but she did not resent it. After all, his thought was entirely for her in the matter.

"You're sure he won't fly at you?" she asked anxiously.

"He's much too busy with the birds. Besides, I shall not touch him or speak to him. It is best to leave him to himself. We will leave some food by him also," and she obediently let herself down before him on to the raft.

"It does seem absurd----" she began impulsively, as they joggled along.

"To keep him alive so that he may try again to kill us,"--he nodded. "I know. But there it is, as the country-folk say. However, he won't live long if he keeps on at the rum. As soon as he gets better he'll go straight out to the pile to get more, unless he's too weak. It's terribly wasteful work, what he's at, and no food to work on."

"Whether it's wrong or not, I cannot help wishing he would die," she said passionately. "It is too dreadful."

"I don't want his blood on my hands if I can help it," he said briefly. But he felt as she did.

XLIII

After carrying supplies to the mate, he came back for her, and they went ashore for fresh water, and he providently secured a couple more rabbits.

The Girl was very quiet, depressed, and very unlike her usual bright self. But he was not surprised. Her anxiety for the future was enough to account for it, and there was, besides, the reaction from the strenuous upsetting through which they had just passed.

Each morning he went across to see how the sick man was getting on, and she let him go alone, but followed him with anxious eyes, and stood in the bows watching till she saw him safely on his way back.

On the third day they took advantage of the enemy's enforced inactivity to go out to the pile and make good the losses caused by the fire. And all the time they were away The Girl was in a state of dire anxiety lest he should have discovered their absence and got across and fired their ship. But to her great relief it was there all right when they got back, and showed no signs of visitation.

On the fourth morning Wulf found his patient sufficiently recovered to be spoken to plainly as to the future, and he did not mince matters. While he spoke, the mate lay watching him through almost closed eyes, just one narrow line between the heavy lids catching the light from the port and imparting a singularly sinister look to the haggard face. The veiled eyes watched him cautiously, charged with what?--suspicion? hatred? treachery? All these, Wulf imagined. But they gave no sign. They were like the eyes of a snake, of a caged beast being rated by its keeper.

"Your dastardly attempt on us failed," said Wulf, to the steely glint of the black soul behind the narrowed lids. "And now,--understand! You are outside the pale. Leave us alone and we leave you alone. Interfere further with us and I will kill you as I would a dangerous beast. Now you are warned, and your blood be on your own head."

The other made no sign. The narrow gleam of the dark eyes out of the rigid impassivity of the dark face was more bodeful than a torrent of curses.

As he left the ship, Wulf picked up and took with him the only two axes he could find. Magnanimity had its limits, but it was wasted here.

"Well?" asked The Girl anxiously, when he returned.

"He is almost himself again, but very much weakened of course. I have given him final warning that if he molests us further I shall kill him."

"It would have been simpler to let him die."

"Simpler--yes, but I could not bring myself to it. We'll fight him fair if fight we must."

The weather still kept dull and gray and heavy, with a reserve of menace and malice in it akin to that of the mate. The sky was veiled with ever-hurrying clouds. The sea was smooth, with something of treachery in its sullen quietude, as though it were only biding its time to break out again and do its worst.

The following morning, to their surprise, they saw Macro start out early for the wreckage. And Wulf, watching him grimly, said, "He's after his poison. And now he'll probably drink himself to death. It's amazing the hold it takes on a man. He won't trouble us much longer."

They spent the day ashore, but the vivacity and enjoyment of that other day were awanting. Perhaps it was the cheerless weather,--the physical and mental strain of these later days,--the thought that their devil was loosed again,--anyhow, a subtle sense of foreboding. Whatever it was it weighed upon their spirits, and a long tramp up the beach, in forlorn hope of meeting Mistress Seal again, did not succeed in raising them.

"What is it, I wonder?" said The Girl. "Something is going to happen, I know. I have felt like this before, and always something dreadful has followed."

"But you never knew what, beforehand? Perhaps you have the gift of prevision,--the second sight."

"I may have, but it doesn't go so far as to explain things. I just feel anxious for it to be over and done with."

"What?"

"What's coming, whatever it is."

"We must be extra careful for a time, till you are sure the trouble is past," he said, with a smile, but he felt the weight on his spirits as she did.

Physically, however, their long tramp did them good, and they returned home with famous appetites.

"I wonder if he's back yet," said The Girl, as they were paddling to the ship. There was no doubt as to where her fears centred.

"I don't see the raft. We'll see better from the deck," and when they had climbed aboard they looked at once towards the spit and saw the mate's raft still lying there. He was not back yet.

They ate, and rested, and until the darkness swallowed the spit, the raft still lay there.

"He's staying late," said Wulf. "Maybe he's broached a keg and taken too much. It would be what I would expect from him under the circumstances."

He patrolled the deck, after she had gone to bed, listening for the sound of the mate's oar. But he heard nothing, and at last made up his mind that the fellow had probably waited too late and had made himself snug out there for the night, though, for himself, the idea would not have commended itself. There was little danger, however, of his coming across in the dark, so he went down and slept soundly at the foot of the companion-steps.

All the next day they were on the look-out for him, but he did not come.

Wulf had told her of his idea that he had probably found means of passing the night out there, in which case he would no doubt put in another long day rooting for treasure. So that it was not until night had fallen again, and the raft still lay waiting on the spit, that he decided in his own mind that something was wrong.

"I shall go across to the pile in the morning to find out," he said, as they sat by the fire.

"I shall go with you."

"I would very much sooner you stopped here."

"And suppose it was all a trick on his part. He may be hiding in the sandhills. He would watch you go and then come out on me. No," with a very decided shake of the head, "I go with you."

So, in the morning, they set off, walked along the spit to the western point and waded and swam to the wreckage, keeping a keen look-out for first sight of the mate.

"Those hideous birds!" panted The Girl, as the skirling, squabbling crew swooped and hovered over the far end of the pile.

"We'll keep as far away from them as possible," and they crept up at a distance, and he proceeded to make a raft, since a supply of further stores was needed to make good their losses by the fire.

So far they had come upon no signs of Macro. From the top of the pile they looked carefully all round, but beyond the usual smashed boxes and cases there was nothing to show that he had ever been there.

"Where on earth can he have got to?" said Wulf.

"Perhaps he's fallen into the sea, or down into some crack," said The Girl, not unhopefully.

"It is always possible. He might not recognise how the fever had pulled him down."

They loaded their raft without any interference from the birds, beyond the blood-curdling clamour of their angry disputations. They were quite ready to go, but still the whereabouts of the mate was a mystery, and Wulf was loth to leave it at that. He might be lying broken in some crack. If he had come to some sudden end it would be best to know it, if that were possible, so that their fears--on their own account as well as his--might be at rest. On the other hand it was quite impossible to rake over the whole pile. That would be a good month's work.

A grim idea shot suddenly into Wulf's mind, as he stood looking keenly round from the highest point he could clamber up to. It came at sight of the birds whirling and clamouring round the end of the pile. Suppose ... oh,--horrible! ... yet it might very well be.

"What is it?" asked The Girl anxiously, for his lips and face had tightened ominously at his thought.

"Nothing, maybe. I'm going over there to see...."

"Can you see anything of him?"

"No."

He poled the raft along the edge of the pile towards the hovering cloud of birds.

"Now, I'm going to swim along here and climb up. I want to see what they're at. You will be quite safe here."

She glanced at him with a startled look, fathoming his grim thought instantly, and it blanched her face for a moment.

"They may turn on you," she jerked.

"They seem too busy."

He let himself down into the water and swam noiselessly along the side of the pile, and she stood watching anxiously.

When he reached the outskirts of the whirling cloud he found a sodden crack, and drew himself in, and disappeared from her sight. Her heart kicked till it felt like choking her. Her face was strained, her eyes wide and fearful. She felt horribly alone.

Inside his niche, Wulf climbed cautiously, the curdling clamour very close. Now and again a feathery fiend with eyes like glass and reddened beak swooped past his hiding-place, with a shrill cry of warning to the rest at sight of him, or it might be of invitation.

He got his eyes above the top at last, in spite of pointed attentions from angry outsiders, scanned the spot where the shrieking crew centred most thickly, and dreamed of what he got a glimpse of there for weeks afterwards.

---- The remnants of what had been a man, all pecked and scratched and torn to shreds,--white, clean-picked bones showing through fragments of his clothing, myriads of squawking birds, of all shapes and sizes, clustered on it like bees on a comb, hustling and fighting one another with shrill screams and thrashing wings and red beaks. It was only when, through some unusually bitter struggle, the mass writhed and rose for a moment, only to settle more closely the next, that he could see. Not far from the body was a broached keg which the birds had overturned in their strife. It explained everything to him.

He dropped back down his cleft, sick at the sight, grateful for the clean feel of the water. He plunged his head under and spat out the feeling of it all. Then he made his way quietly back to The Girl, and she had no need to ask what he had found. He nodded, and climbed up on to the raft and pushed quickly away.

"You are sure he is dead?" she asked, after a time.

"Horribly dead," and told her no more till later, and then not very much. "It is strange to think of it all," he said, in conclusion. "He always feared the birds. In his delirium it was the birds he was fighting. And the birds got him at last."

The manner of his death shocked and horrified them. But the knowledge that the menace of him had passed out of their lives was untellable relief.