CHAPTER X

ANXIOUS DAYS

For a moment, under the shock of the startling piece of news, Elizabeth was tempted to seize her sisters by the hand and run. Tommy was so practical and unimaginative a young person that she could hardly have been altogether mistaken, and a "little brown face," if face it was, must belong to a native. But Elizabeth thought quickly, and even while her heart was galloping with nervous excitement, she made up her mind that to run away now was not the right course. A show of bravery was much more likely to serve them. If there really was a native in hiding, he would certainly have seen them, and to run or slink away now would merely provoke pursuit, in which the fugitives would be at a great disadvantage. Summoning all her courage, therefore, Elizabeth advanced towards the bush to which Tommy had pointed.

"Don't go, Bess," implored Tommy in an agitated whisper, and Mary, as pale as a sheet, put an arm about the younger girl.

Elizabeth went straight on, looking carefully around.

"Is this it?" she asked quietly, turning towards her sisters, now several yards distant.

Tommy merely nodded; Mary murmured, "How _could_ she do it?"

Elizabeth peered into the bush. There was no little brown face now, nor, though she went to and fro amongst the trees beyond, could she see any one, brown or white, lurking. She listened as the thought struck her that it might have been a monkey, and she had heard monkeys screaming and chattering in the Zoological Gardens in London; but there was no sound, not even the twitter or squawk of a bird.

Brave as she was in outward mien, Elizabeth, after a few minutes' search, returned with hasty step to her sisters.

"My silly heart!" she said, with a faint smile, placing her hand to her side. "I couldn't see anything. Tommy; don't you think you may have imagined it?"

"Just as you did before," added Mary.

"I didn't!" cried Tommy. "Why won't you believe me? I _did_ see a brown face; I am sure I did."

"It is very strange," said Elizabeth. "We were here only a few seconds after you cried out; there wasn't much time for any one to get away."

"You are both horrible," said Tommy, her lips quivering. "Any one would think I was a fool. I'll prove that I was right, whatever happens."

With the courage of indignation she pulled Elizabeth towards the clump of bushes, and began to examine the soft mossy carpet.

"There!" she cried triumphantly, yet fearfully, pointing presently to a mark on the ground. Elizabeth stooped and made out two or three faint impressions of a foot smaller even than Tommy's. And then Tommy's fear returned in full force. With a little cry she dragged Elizabeth from the spot, and since nothing is so catching as fear even Elizabeth's courage gave way, and soon all three girls were running as hard as they could run towards the stream, and did not halt until they came to the boat.

"Oh, dear, how ashamed I am!" panted Elizabeth, as they threw themselves down on the sand to rest.

"You were very brave," said Mary. "I couldn't have gone into those bushes for anything."

"Perhaps they were marks of a monkey's feet," said Elizabeth. "How silly I was not to examine them more closely."

"They weren't," said Tommy. "I saw them quite plainly. They were feet just like yours and mine, only tiny, wee things."

"I wonder if the people here are dwarfs," said Mary. "There must be people. That's certain now."

"If they are dwarfs they must be more afraid of us than we are of them," said Elizabeth.

"Impossible!" said Tommy. "I was never in such a fright in my life. Oh!"

"What is it?" asked Elizabeth, with an anxious look around.

"The oranges! we haven't got any, and I shall be afraid to go there again."

"That's a pity," said Elizabeth; "they looked so nice. Perhaps we can find some in another part of the island."

"I won't look for any," said Tommy. "I won't stir from this place--at least not farther than to the bananas, and they're nearly all gone. What if the savages come and attack us?"

"Some of them have poisoned arrows," said Mary, quaking.

"Really, I think we are crying before we are hurt," said Elizabeth. "We haven't been molested so far, and surely that proves that whatever people there are, they are not very terrible."

"I know I shan't sleep a wink to-night," said Tommy.

"Hadn't we better launch the boat and spend the night on the sea?" said Mary. "They might attack us in the darkness."

"We'll drag it down a little nearer the sea," replied Elizabeth, "and we can take turns to keep watch, if you like; but I'm sure we oughtn't to show the white feather. The best thing we can do is to forget all about it."

"It's easy to say, but I know I shan't forget it as long as I live," cried Tommy. "And we were so jolly; it's all spoilt."

"Well, we _must_ eat," said Elizabeth, afraid of a breakdown. "Let us cook some fish, and be as comfortable as we can."

They spent the rest of that day in a state of nervousness, and although Elizabeth tried to get the others to begin weaving their mat beds for the hut, they had no heart for the work. When darkness fell, they drew the boat down to the very verge of high water, and lay in it, but not to sleep. They had arranged that each should take a turn at keeping watch, but the result was that all were wakeful, and except for a few minutes' uneasy dozing, none of them had any rest.

"This will never do," thought Elizabeth as it drew towards morning. "We shall all be worn out if we don't get our proper sleep. I do hope the natives will come to us to-morrow so that we can make friends with them."

They all looked very weary and washed-out when daylight came. There was no fish left, and Tommy seemed disinclined to try to catch any, or to go to the banana-trees for food.

"Come, girls, this really won't do," said Elizabeth briskly. "Make some tea, Tommy, while Mary and I go and get a fish."

"There's only enough for about a cup each," said Tommy, looking dolefully into the caddy.

"We shan't get any more by wishing for it," said Elizabeth, "so we'll use it all up and then try to make a sort of cider out of bananas. It will be a change."

"There are hardly any bananas left, either," said Tommy.

"Then we'll go prowling in search of more as soon as we really come to the last of them. Come along, Mary."

"Don't go out of sight, will you?" said Tommy, as they moved away.

"Of course not, we shan't be long."

"I wish we had a change of things, Bess," said Mary, as they hastened towards their fishing rock. "Never in my life have I worn my underwear so long; it's horrid."

"Why shouldn't we have a washing-day?" said Elizabeth. "It will be a novelty, and give us something to do and think about. Rather fun too, with no soap. How can we manage?"

"I've read somewhere that the women in the East wash their clothes by beating them in a running stream with stones," said Mary. "The stream and the stones are handy; we might try that plan."

"Don't the stones knock holes in them?"

"They use flat, round stones, without sharp edges, I think. It will be rather fun to try, anyway. I hope the savages won't come, Bess."

"Do you know, I'm not at all sure that it wasn't the footprint of a monkey or some other animal. It was so very small. I'm not going to think about it. We'd better go on in our ordinary way without troubling; only for Tommy's sake we won't go far from home, for some days at any rate."

They returned with two excellent fish. Elizabeth at once told Tommy of their idea of a washing-day, and, as she hoped, the young girl was so much amused at the novelty of it, that she forgot her alarms for a time. After breakfast they took off their things and donned their dressing-gowns, as Tommy called their macintoshes; and having gathered each a smooth, round stone, laid their linen in the stream at a place where it ran over level rock, and began merrily to pound away. When they had given the clothes a thorough good drubbing, as Tommy worded it, they laid them on the grass in the sun, and within an hour they were quite dry.

"My word! don't they look nice?" cried Tommy in delight. "Old Jane--poor old thing--never got them white at home, did she? We must have a weekly wash, girls; it's great fun."

"There's another thing we might try," said Elizabeth. "I haven't got used to eating fish without salt, yet. Couldn't we make some by evaporation?"

"How would you do that?" asked Tommy.

"Put some sea-water in our cups, and let it evaporate. It would soon do so in this heat, and leave the salt at the bottom."

"H'm! it sounds all right," said Tommy, "but I doubt whether we should get enough salt to put on a bird's tail. Let's try."

They half filled their three cups from the sea, and put them in the full glare of the sun. Every now and then Tommy ran to them to see hew they were getting on, every time becoming more sceptical of success. There was still a good deal of water in the cups at nightfall; but, as Mary said, that didn't matter much, as they had used up all their tea, none of them liking coffee at night; so they left the cups as they were, to evaporate the rest of the water next day. When the cups were at last dry there was no appreciable sediment, and Tommy with great scorn pronounced the experiment a failure.

"The cups don't hold enough," said Mary. "What we want is a large shallow pan, and as we haven't got one, I'm afraid you'll have to go without salt, Bess."

But a day or two after, Elizabeth discovered a wide shallow depression in a rock a little distance above high-water mark.

"This will do for a pan," she said. "We'll fill it with sea-water with our cups, and keep on filling it up as the water evaporates. Then we'll see, my dears."

They followed this plan for several days, and at last were able to collect a fair quantity of salt.

"It isn't table salt, to be sure," said Elizabeth, looking at the dirty-grey powder, "but it is certainly salt enough for anything, and this quantity will last for a week at least."

"We are getting quite clever," said Mary. "I dare say we shall be able to make quite a lot of things by and by."

During these days they had seen no more signs of inhabitants, and their nervousness partially wore off. They were still careful, however, not to stray far beyond the immediate neighbourhood of their camp, and slept every night in the boat, which they left close to the brink of the sea. They devoted a good deal of time to weaving grass mats for the floor of their hut, but had not as yet plucked up courage to spend a night in it. With the boat as a refuge they felt a certain sense of security, though they admitted, when they talked about it, that it would not really be of any great service if they were attacked; for they could only escape by embarking, and then to drift on the sea out of reach of food was a terrible fate to look forward to.

One day, when Mary had been out to gather bananas, she came back with the news that she had gathered the very last one, so that they were faced with the immediate necessity of finding another food supply.

"We must take our courage in both hands," said Elizabeth, "and revisit the land of plenty beyond the ridge."

"Don't let's go near the orange-trees," said Tommy anxiously. "Couldn't we try a little to the left? There will surely be some fruit of some sort in other parts."

"I don't see why not," said Mary. "I don't want to go there again, either, in case you were right."

"Of course I was right," declared Tommy. "You aren't going to make out again that I can't believe my own eyes!"

"We'll try another direction," said Elizabeth, anxious to keep the peace. "Let us go northward along the shore. We have never really explored the coast of our island yet."

Accordingly, after breakfast, they set out. There was a long stretch of beach strewn with boulders which had apparently fallen from the cliffs. These rose higher as they proceeded, and jutted out to within twenty or thirty feet of high-water mark. By and by they reached a point where the huge rocky obstacles made further progress impossible. Retracing their steps, they clambered with some difficulty up the face of the cliff, and at last gained the high land above.

All this time they moved very cautiously, careful to make no more noise than they could help, and always on the look-out for danger. But the silence was broken only by the chatter of birds, the warbling of a blackbird now and then, and the harsh screaming of the parrots in the woods, that extended almost to the verge of the cliffs.

"I should like to catch and tame one of those beauties," said Tommy. "Perhaps I might teach him to talk, and that would be a change, wouldn't it?"

"I am sorry we bore you," said Mary. "Wouldn't it be better to find your savage and teach him how to keep up an amiable conversation?"

"Don't be sarcastic; it doesn't suit you," said Tommy cuttingly, and again Elizabeth had to intervene.

"We came out to look for food," she said smoothly, "and I think we had better not think of anything else."

Mary and Tommy separated, and went off at a little distance by themselves, looking among the trees and shrubs for fruits or berries that might seem edible. For a time none of the girls saw anything that appeared promising, but presently Mary called out quite excitedly--

"Here, Bess, I'm sure this is the breadfruit tree. Come and look."

Then, frightened by the sound of her own voice, she suddenly became aware of her indiscretion, and ran fleetly to join Elizabeth.

"You idiot!" said Tommy in a fierce whisper, as she came up with the others.

They stood listening for a while, wondering whether Mary's exclamation had attracted the attention of some inhabitant. But, reassured by the absence of any sign of danger, they hastened to inspect the trees upon which Mary had lighted. Elizabeth noticed that Tommy, who would have died rather than apologize, had slipped her hand into Mary's in token of regret for her sharp speech.

They found themselves in the midst of a little grove of trees, about the size of small oaks, but with much sparser foliage. Peeping out from among the long, indented leaves were several large round fruits with a crinkly rind.

"I know they are breadfruit," said Mary gleefully. "Don't you remember the pictures in that book of Captain Cook's voyages?"

"Let's peel one and see how it tastes," said Tommy.

"You wouldn't like it better than raw dough," said Mary. "It has to be cooked first."

"Bother! You know I don't like cooked fruit. It isn't a fruit at all if you can't eat it raw; it's a vegetable."

Elizabeth smiled at this ingenuous distinction.

"Let us take one each and go and try them," she suggested. "If they are really anything like bread we shall enjoy them, I know."

Laden with the fruits, they returned to their camp.

"Pity the place is so far from home," said Mary. "We must have come more than a mile, I should think."

"If we are satisfied with our bread we might come again and gather a good load that will last some time," said Elizabeth.

When they reached home they lost no time in stripping off the thin rind of one of the fruits, and found beneath it a white doughy substance something like new bread. Tommy could not forbear tasting it, in spite of what Mary had said.

"What horrid, nasty stuff!" she exclaimed, making a wry face. "It's like--what is it like? Taste it, Bess."

Elizabeth pinched off a very small piece and ate it.

"It seems to me like sweetened flour with a smack of artichokes," she said. "I hope it is better cooked; scrape it all out, Mary, while I get the oven ready."

When the pulp was scraped out, Mary kneaded it into a flat cake and cut it into three equal portions. Elizabeth put them into the stone oven, and in about twenty minutes took them out, slightly browned, and smelling somewhat of new bread. Allowing them to cool, the girls each nibbled a little.

"Not half bad," said Tommy. "I suppose we'll get used to it, and like it better. I never liked carrots when I was a child, and I do now. If we only had some butter! Why aren't there any cocoanuts here, I wonder? They have milk, haven't they? If we had some we might make some butter out of the cream."

At this the other girls laughed outright.

"I'm afraid we shouldn't get much cream out of cocoanuts," said Elizabeth. "The milk is a sickly kind of juice, isn't it, Mary?"

"Yes; I had some once, long ago, when Father took me to the fair at Exeter. He knocked down the cocoanut at one of the shies. I didn't like the milk at all."

"We must eat our bread without butter," said Elizabeth. "I do hope, though, that we shall find more bananas, for I'm sure I shall soon get tired of the breadfruit. We must try another part of the island another day."