Chapter 17

"Probably not," I said. "He was just going, when suddenly he said, 'I know there's something my wife wants to say to me.' I said, 'Wake her up and find out what it is.' He said, 'No, she's getting so she can't do without her beauty sleep; I'll just wait around till she wakes of herself.'"

"Sam," said Mrs. Randall, "what has happened to my husband?"

"Nothing much," I said. "He's in the same boat with many others--only it isn't a boat. Don't be alarmed."

"_Where is my husband?_" said she.

"If you are equal to a short, muddy walk," I said, "I will show him to you--Morning, little Miss Tombs--want to see brother and young Fitch? They said they wouldn't go to town till you'd seen them--Morning, Mrs. Giddings--morning, Miss Marshall--I'm not much on breaking bad news, but there's been an accident to all your husbands and brothers and fiances. They're all alive still, so far as I know--but they ought not to last more than five or six days."

"It's proposed," said Sally, "that we all go and see what can be done for them."

We refused to answer any questions. We led the way to the pier and pointed out the float, and the men on it. "There," said Sally, "you can see them quite plainly from here."

"Yes," said I, "and the more plainly you see them, the plainer they are."

"Will you kindly tell me," said Mrs. Randall, "what my husband is doing out there on that float?"

"He is doing nothing," I said. "You can see for yourself. And it isn't a float any more."

"Better tell them what has happened," said Sally.

"No, Sally," I said, "no."

"Yes, Sam," she said.

"Oh, all right," I said, "if you really think it's best. The fact is, ladies, the whole thing is a piece of drunken folly. You know how men are when they get drinking and arguing, and quarrelling. To make a long story short, it came to Billoo's insulting Randall; Randall challenges him; duelling is against the law; they take pistols and witnesses out on the water beyond the jurisdiction of the United States; and they _were_ going to murder each other. But it's all right now--don't be frightened."

Sally had turned her face away, and I'm sure I was serious as a judge. I patted Mrs. Randall on the shoulder.

"Even if your husband isn't brave," I said, "he's clever, clever and deep."

"My husband not brave!" she cried. "I like that; he's the bravest man I ever saw."

"Well, that may be," I said doubtfully, "but, considering that on the way out to the duelling ground, or water, when nobody was looking but Sally and me, he kicked the box of cartridges overboard. But, perhaps they'll agree to use pocket-knives--"

"Sam," said little Miss Tombs, "I'll give you a kiss good-morning if you'll be serious."

"Wait till Fitch is looking," I said.

Then Sally explained what had happened, and edged herself so politely between little Miss Tombs and me that the others laughed.

"They'll float at high tide, won't they?" asked Mrs. Giddings.

"No," I said. "It was high tide when they ran aground. It will take a tugboat to get them off."

The words weren't out of my mouth when a tugboat appeared round the corner of the island, making up the channel. The men on the float began to scream and yell, and jump up and down, and wave their arms. But the tugboat paid no attention. It thought they were drunk. It passed within three hundred yards of them, whistled a couple of times, and became small in the distance.

"Sam," said Sally, "in about an hour they'll be high and dry on the mud. Then not even a boat can get to them. And by the time it's high tide again it will be dark and nobody will see them, and they'll be dying of hunger and thirst."

"That's true," I said. "Sally, you explain that to them, and I'll have the men fetch one of the stable doors, and we'll put a sail on it and provision it and trust to its hitting the middle ground about where they did."

I never worked so hard in my life. I had a stable door taken off its tracks and rigged with the canoe's sail; and we put a case of champagne on board, and a tub of ice, and bread, and cold meat, and butter, and jam, and cigars, and cigarettes, and liquors, and a cocktail shaker, and a bottle of olives stuffed with red peppers, for Billoo, and two kinds of bitters, and everything else to eat or drink that anybody could think of, and some camp-chairs, and cards for bridge, and score-pads, and pencils, and a folding table. Of course, most of the things got soaked the minute we launched the door, but there wasn't time to do the thing over again. So we gave the relief boat three cheers and let her go.

The way the men on the float eyed the course of the door, you would have thought them all nearly half dead with hunger and thirst. We were all excited, too.

At first the door made straight for the float. Then the breeze shifted a little, and it made to the left of the float--then to the right of it--and then straight at it again.

Everybody cheered. The relief expedition looked like a success. The men all came to the edge of the float to meet it--and then, just as all seemed well, a dark patch of wind came scudding across the water, filled the door's sail, and sent the door kiting off to the right again. The game was up, The door was going to miss the float by sixty or seventy feet.

Then the men on the float began to toss coins; there was a shout of delight; and Billoo, trumpeting his hands, called to me:

"Make the ladies go behind the boat-house, quick!" And he began to unbutton his coat. I herded the women behind the boat-house and ran back to the pier. Billoo was stripping as fast as he could.

"What's he doing?" Mrs. Giddings called to me.

And I answered, "He seems to be overcome by the heat."

A few moments later Billoo stood revealed, a fat white silhouette against the opposite shore. He stepped from the float into the water; it came to his ankles. Then he waded, gingerly but with determination, toward the passing door. He went as if he expected the water to get suddenly deep, but it didn't. At no time did it reach to his ankles, until, just as he was reaching out his hand to catch hold of the door, and just as the men on the float set up a cheer, he stepped off the middle ground in to deep water.

The splash that he made lifted the door half out of water, and shot it away from him, the wind filled its sail, and when Billoo came to the surface and looked for it, it was thirty feet off. But he set his teeth (I think he set them) and swam after it. Just as he reached it, he fetched an awful yell. He had been seized with cramps. Still, he had sense enough to cling to the door, and, when the first spasm of the cramp had passed, to sprawl himself upon it. There he lay for a while, lapped by the water that came over the door, and writhing in his fat nakedness.

Meanwhile, the door was caught in the full strength of the ebbing tide, and began to make for the open Sound. Poor Billoo was in a bad way--and when he turned the ice-tub upside down for a seat, and wrapped himself in the canoe sail, I invited the women to come out and see for themselves how brave he was.

He waved his hand to us, and just as he and his well-provisioned craft rounded a corner of the island he selected a bottle of champagne and deftly extracted the cork.

I told some of my men to follow along the shore and to let me know what became of him. I couldn't do anything more for Billoo; but I liked the man, and took an affectionate interest in his ultimate fate--_whatever_ it might be. And I call that true friendship.

Pretty soon the middle ground on which the float was stuck began to show above water, and as it was evident that we could do nothing further for the relief of our shipwrecked friends, we decided to go back to the house, change our muddy boots, play a rubber or so, and have lunch. But first little Miss Tombs called to young Fitch, and told him if he found himself starving to dig clams in the mud.

VI

The only fault that I could find with the way things had gone so far was that Sally had a disgusting headache that marred her pleasure and her sense of humor. She hadn't said very much, and had laughed with only a half-heart at things that had seemed to me excruciatingly funny. For instance, when Billoo was seized with the cramps she had barely smiled, and once or twice when I had been doing the talking she had looked pityingly at me, instead of roaring with laughter, the way a wife should do.

And when we got to the house, she said that if we would excuse her she would go to her room and lie down.

"I've just got one of my usual headaches," she said.

That remark worried me, because it was the first headache she had ever complained of to _me_; and when, after she had gone upstairs, Miss Randall said, "Maybe Sally ought to see the doctor," I had a sudden awful, empty, gulpy feeling. Suppose she was going to be really sick! Suppose she was going to have pneumonia or scarlet-fever or spinal meningitis! Here we were, cut off from medical assistance till Wednesday morning. And it was our own fault--mine; mine, for being _too_ funny. Then I thought, "Maybe those men on the float are losing all the money they've got in the world," and that made me feel pretty glum; and then I thought, "Maybe poor Billoo is drowned by now," and I went cold all over.

"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings.

"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm worried about Sally."

Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a glass tube sticking out of her mouth.

"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?"

"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature."

"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried.

"I don't know," she said.

"Oh, Sally--Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me--it's all my fault--and I love you so--My God! what shall I do? I know--"

Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I just swam and swam and swam.

About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and I took the oars, and then we went faster.

When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as he could.

We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor....

The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very solemn, and closed the door behind him.

"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf.

"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom tooth."

"Good Lord!" I said, "is that all?"

"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_."

"Oh!" I said, "oh! What ought I to do?"

"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her."

But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying.

I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad.

When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the _Hobo's_ captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the _Hobo_ back to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than rescue, she brought the evening papers.

There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made, among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still. But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been _on the spot_.

* * * * *

When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money over to my father's secretary and told him to deposit it as a special account.

"What shall I call the account?" he asked.

"Call it," I said, "the account of W. Tooth."