Foul Play Part 34

"What makes you think that?"

"It is notorious. Naturalists are agreed."

"But I am not. I heard noises all night. And little I expected that anything of me would be left this morning, except, perhaps, my back hair.

Mr. Welch, you are clever at rigging things--that is what you call it--and so please rig me a bell-rope, then I shall not be eaten alive without creating some _little_ disturbance."

"I'll do it, miss," said Welch, "this very night."

Hazel said nothing, but pondered. Accordingly, that very evening a piece of stout twine, with a stone at the end of it, hung down from the roof of Helen's house; and this twine clove the air until it reached a ring upon the mainmast of the cutter; thence it descended, and was to be made fast to something or somebody. The young lady inquired no further. The very sight of this bell-rope was a great comfort to her; it reunited her to civilized life. That night she lay down, and quaked considerably less.

Yet she woke several times; and an hour before daylight she heard distinctly a noise that made her flesh creep. It was like the snoring of some great animals. This horrible sound was faint and distant; but she heard it between the roll of the waves, and that showed it was not the sea roaring; she hid herself in her rugs, and cowered till daybreak. A score of times she was minded to pull her bell-rope; but always a womanly feeling, strong as her love of life, withheld her. "Time to pull that bell-rope when the danger was present or imminent," she thought to herself. "The thing will come smelling about before it attacks me, and then I will pull the bell;" and so she pa.s.sed an hour of agony.

Next morning, at daybreak, Hazel met her just issuing from her hut, and pointing to his net told her he was going to forage; and would she be good enough to make the fire and have boiling water ready? he was sorry to trouble her; but poor Welch was worse this morning. Miss Rolleston cut short his excuses. "Pray do not take me for a child; of course I will light the fire, and boil the water. Only I have no lucifer matches."

"Here are two," said he. "I carry the box wrapped in oil-skin. For if anything happen to _them,_ Heaven help us."

He crossed the prostrate palm-tree, and dived into the wood. It was a large beautiful wood, and, except at the western edge, the trees were all of the palm-tree genus, but contained several species, including the cocoanut tree. The turf ran under these trees for about forty yards and then died gradually away under the same thick shade which destroyed all other vegetation in this wood, and made it so easy to see and travel.

He gathered a few cocoanuts that had burst out of their ripe pods and fallen to the ground; and ran on till he reached a belt of trees and shrubs, that bounded the palm forest. Here his progress was no longer easy. But he found trees covered with a small fruit resembling quinces in every particular of look, taste and smell, and that made him persevere, since it was most important to learn the useful products of the island.

Presently he burst through some brushwood into a swampy bottom surrounded by low trees, and instantly a dozen large birds of the osprey kind rose flapping into the air like windmills rising. He was quite startled by the whirring and flapping, and not a little amazed at the appearance of the place. Here was a very charnel-house; so thick lay the sh.e.l.ls, skeletons and loose bones of fish. Here too he found three terrapin killed but not eaten, and also some fish, more or less pecked. "Aha! my worthy executioners, much obliged," said he. "You have saved me that job." And into the bag went the terrapin, and two plump fish, but slightly mutilated. Before he had gone many yards, back came the sailing wings, and the birds settled again before his eyes. The rest of the low wood was but thin, and he soon emerged upon the open country; but it was most unpromising; and fitter for geese than men. A vast sedgy swamp with water in the middle, thin fringes of great fern-trees, and here and there a disconsolate tree like a weeping-willow, and at the end of this lake and swamp, which all together formed a triangle, was a barren hill without a blade of vegetation on it, and a sort of jagged summit Hazel did not at all like the look of. Volcanic!

Somewhat dismayed at finding so large a slice of the island worthless, he returned through the wood, guiding himself due west by his pocket-compa.s.s, and so got down to the sh.o.r.e, where he found scallops and cray-fish in incredible abundance. Literally, he had only to go into the water and gather them. But "enough" is as good as "a feast." He ran to the pots with his miscellaneous bag, and was not received according to his deserts. Miss Rolleston told him, a little severely, the water had been boiling a long time. Then he produced his provender, by way of excuse.

"Tortoises again!" said she, and shuddered visibly.

But the quinces and cocoanuts were graciously received. Welch, however, cried out for cabbage.

"What am I to do?" said Hazel. "For every such cabbage a king must die."

"Goodness me!"

"A monarch of the grove."

"Oh, a King Log. Why, then down with them all, of course; sooner than dear Mr. Welch shall go without his cabbage."

He cast a look of admiration on her, which she avoided, and very soon his ax was heard ringing in the wood hard by. Then came a loud crash. Then another. Hazel came running with the cabbage and a cocoa-pod. "There,"

said he, "and there are a hundred more about. While you cook that for Welch I will store them." Accordingly he returned to the wood with his net, and soon came back with five pods in it, each as big as a large pumpkin.

He chucked these one at a time across the river, and then went for more.

It took him all the afternoon to get all the pods across the river. He was obliged to sit down and rest.

But a suggestion of Helen's soon set him to work again.

"You were kind enough to say you would store these for me. Could you not store them so as to wall out those terrible beasts with them?"

"What terrible beasts?"

"That roar so all night, and don't eat us, only because they have not found out we are here yet. But they will."

"I deny their existence," said Hazel. "But I'll wall them out all the same," said he.

"Pray do," said Helen. "Wall them out first, and disprove them afterward; I shall be better able to believe they don't exist when they are well walled out--much."

Hazel went to work, and with her a.s.sistance laid cocoa-pods two wide and three deep, outside the northern and western sides of her leafy bower, and he promised to complete the walls by the same means in two days more.

They all then supped together, and, to oblige him, she ate a little of the terrapin, and, when they parted for the night, she thanked him, and said, with a deep blush, "You have been a good friend to me--of late."

He colored high, and his eyes sparkled with delight; and she noticed, and almost wished she had kept her grat.i.tude to herself.

That night, what with her bell-rope and her little bit of a wall, she was somewhat less timorous, and went to sleep early.

But even in sleep she was watchful, and she was awakened by a slight sound in the neighborhood of the boat.

She lay watching, but did not stir.

Presently she heard a footstep.

With a stifled cry she bounded up, and her first impulse was to rush out of the tent. But she conquered this, and, gliding to the south side of her bower, she peered through the palm-leaves, and the first thing she saw was the figure of a man standing between her and the boat.

She drew her breath hard. The outline of the man was somewhat indistinct.

But it was not a savage. The man was clothed; and his stature betrayed him.

He stood still for some time. "He is listening to see if I am awake,"

said Helen to herself.

The figure moved toward her bower.

Then all in a moment she became another woman. She did not rely on her bell-rope; she felt it was fast to nothing that could help her. She looked round for no weapon; she trusted to herself. She drew herself hastily up, and folded her arms; her bosom panted, but her cheek never paled. Her modesty was alarmed; her blood was up, and life or death were nothing to her.

The footsteps came nearer; they stopped at her door; they went north; they came back south. They kept her in this high-wrought att.i.tude for half an hour. Then they retired softly; and, when they were gone, she gave way and fell on her knees and began to cry hysterically. Then she got calmer, and then she wondered and puzzled herself; but she slept no more that night.

In the morning she found that the fire was lighted on a sort of shelf close to the boat. Mr. Hazel had cut the shelf and lighted the fire there for Welch's sake, who had complained of cold in the night.

While Hazel was gone for the crayfish, Welch asked Helen to go for her prayer-book. She brought it directly, and turned the leaves to find the prayers for the sick. But she was soon undeceived as to his intention.

"Sam had it wrote down how the _Proserpine_ was foundered, and I should like to lie alongside my messmate on that there paper, as well as in t'other place" (meaning the grave). "Begin as Sam did, that this is my last word."

"Oh, I hope not. Oh, Mr. Welch, pray do not leave me!"

"Well, well then, never mind that; but just put down as I heard Sam; and his dying words, that the parson took down, were the truth."

"I have written that."

"And that the two holes was on her port-side, and seven foot from her stain-post; and _I_ say them very augers that is in our cutter made them holes. Set down that."

"It is down."

"Then I'll put my mark under it; and you are my witness."