Foul Play Part 38

"Well, I don't _know_ that they are poison; but travelers give them a very bad name. The birds never peck them; and I have read that even the leaves, falling into still water have killed the fish. You will not eat anything here till you have shown it me, will you?" said he, imploringly.

"No, no," said Helen; and sat down with her hand to her heart a minute.

"And I was so pleased when I found them," she said; "they reminded me of home. I wonder whether these are poison, too?" and she opened her ap.r.o.n wide, and showed him some long yellow pods, with red specks, something like a very large banana.

"Ah, that is a very different affair," said Hazel, delighted; "these are plantains, and the greatest find we have made yet. The fruit is meat, the wood is thread, and the leaf is shelter and clothes. The fruit is good raw, and better baked, as you shall see, and I believe this is the first time the dinner and the dish were both baked together."

He cleared the now heated hearth, put the meat and fruit on it, then placed his great platter over it, and heaped fire round the platter, and light combustibles over it. While this was going on, Helen took him to her bower, and showed him three rusty iron hoops, and a piece of rotten wood with a rusty nail, and the marks where others had been. "There,"

said she; "that is all I could find."

"Why, it is a treasure," cried he; "you will see. I have found something, too."

He then showed her the vegetable wool and vegetable hair he had collected, and told her where they grew. She owned they were wonderful imitations, and would do as well as the real things; and, ere they had done comparing notes, the platter and the dinner under it were both baked. Hazel removed the platter or milk-pan, and served the dinner in it.

If Hazel was inventive, Helen was skillful and quick at any kind of woman's work; and the following is the result of the three weeks' work under his direction. She had made as follows:

1. Thick mattress, stuffed with the vegetable hair and wool described above. The mattress was only two feet six inches wide; for Helen found that she never turned in bed now. She slept as she had never slept before. This mattress was made with plantain-leaves sewed together with the thread furnished by the tree itself, and doubled at the edges.

2. A long shallow net four feet deep--cocoa-fiber.

3. A great quant.i.ty of stout gra.s.s rope, and light but close matting for the roof, and some cocoanut matting for the ground and to go under the mattress. But Hazel, instructed by her, had learned to plait--rather clumsily--and he had a hand in the matting.

Hazel in the meantime heightened his own mud banks in the center, and set up brick fireplaces with hearth and chimney; one on each side; and now did all the cooking; for he found the smoke from wood made Miss Rolleston cough. He also made a number of pigeon-holes in his mud walls and lined them with clay. One of these he dried with fire, and made a pottery door to it, and there kept the lucifer-box. He made a vast number of bricks, but did nothing with them. After several failures he made two large pots, and two great pans, that would all four bear fire under them, and in the pans he boiled sea-water till it all evaporated and left him a sediment of salt. This was a great addition to their food, and he managed also to put by a little. But it was a slow process.

He made a huge pair of bellows, with a little a.s.sistance from Miss Rolleston; the spout was a sago-stick, with the pith driven out, and the subst.i.tute for leather was the skin of a huge eel he found stranded at the east point.

Having got his bellows and fixed them to a post he drove into the ground, he took for his anvil a huge flint stone, and a smaller one for hammer; heated his old iron to a white heat, and hammered it with a world of trouble into straight lengths; and at last with a portion of it produced a long saw without teeth, but one side sharper than the other. This, by repeated experiments of heating and immersing in water, he at last annealed; and when he wanted to saw he blew his embers to a white heat (he kept the fire alive now night and day); heated his original saw red-hot, and soon sawed through the oleaginous woods of that island. If he wanted to cut down a tree in the jungle, he put the bellows and a pot of embers on his cart with other fuel, and came and lighted the fire under the tree and soon had it down. He made his pickax in half an hour, but with his eyes rather than his hands. He found a young tree growing on the rock, or at least on soil so shallow that the root was half above ground and at right angles to the stem. He got this tree up, shortened the stem, shaped the root, shod the point with some of his late old iron; and with this primitive tool, and a thick stake baked at the point, he opened the ground to receive twelve stout uprights, and he drove them with a tremendous mallet made upon what might be called the compendious or Hazelian method; it was a section of a hard tree with a thick shoot growing out of it, which shoot, being shortened, served for the handle.

By these arts he at last saw a goal to his labors. Animal food, oil, pitch, ink, paper, were still wanting; but fish were abundant, and plantains and cocoanuts stored. Above all, Helen's hut was now weather-tight. Stout horizontal bars were let into the trees, and, being bound to the uprights, they mutually supported each other; smaller horizontal bars at intervals kept the p.r.i.c.kly ramparts from being driven in by a sudden gust. The canvas walls were removed and the nails stored in a pigeon-hole, and a stout network subst.i.tuted, to which huge plantain leaves were cunningly fastened with plantain thread. The roof was double: first, that extraordinary ma.s.s of spiked leaves which the four trees threw out, then several feet under that the huge piece of matting the pair had made. This was strengthened by double strips of canvas at the edges and in the center, and by single strips in other parts. A great many cords and strings made of that wonderful gra.s.s were sewn to the canvas-strengthened edges, and so it was fastened to the trees and fastened to the horizontal bars.

When this work drew close to its completion, Hazel could not disguise his satisfaction.

But he very soon had the mortification of seeing that she for whom it was all done did not share his complacency. A change took place in her; she often let her work fall, and brooded. She spoke sometimes sharply to Mr.

Hazel, and sometimes with strained civility. She wandered away from him and from his labors for her comfort, and pa.s.sed hours at Telegraph Point, eying the illimitable ocean. She was a riddle. All sweetness at times, but at others irritable, moody, and scarce mistress of herself. Hazel was sorry and perplexed, and often expressed a fear she was ill. The answer was always in the negative. He did not press her, but worked on for her, hoping the mood would pa.s.s. And so it would, no doubt, if the cause had not remained.

Matters were still in this uncomfortable and mysterious state when Hazel put his finishing stroke to her abode.

He was in high spirits that evening, for he had made a discovery; he had at last found time for a walk, and followed the river to its source, a very remarkable lake in a hilly basin. Near this was a pond, the water of which he had tasted and found it highly bituminous; and, making further researches, he had found at the bottom of a rocky ravine a very wonderful thing--a dark resinous fluid bubbling up in quite a fountain, which, however, fell down again as it rose, and hardly any overflowed. It was like thin pitch.

Of course in another hour he was back there with a great pot, and half filled it. It was not like water, it did not bubble so high when some had been taken; so he just took what he could get. Pursuing his researches a little further he found a range of rocks with snowy summits apparently; but the snow was the guano of centuries. He got to the western extremity of the island, saw another deep bay or rather branch of the sea, and on the other side of it a tongue of high land running out to sea. On that promontory stood a gigantic palmtree. He recognized that with a certain thrill, but was in a great hurry to get home with his pot of pitch; for it was in truth a very remarkable discovery, though not without a parallel. He could not wait till morning, so with embers and cocoanut he made a fire in the bower, and melted his pitch, which had become nearly solid, and proceeded to smear the inside of the matting in places, to make it thoroughly watertight.

Helen treated the discovery at first with mortifying indifference. But he hoped she would appreciate Nature's bounty more when she saw the practical use of this extraordinary production. He endeavored to lead her to that view. She shook her head sorrowfully. He persisted. She met him with silence. He thought this peevish, and ungrateful to Heaven; we have all different measures of the wonderful; and to him a fountain of pitch was a thing to admire greatly and thank G.o.d for; he said as much.

To Helen it was nasty stuff, and who cares where it came from? She conveyed as much by a shrug of the shoulders, and then gave a sigh that told her mind was far away.

He was a little mortified, and showed it. One word led to another, and at last what had been long fermenting came out.

"Mr. Hazel," said she, "you and I are at cross purposes. You mean to live here. I do not."

Hazel left off working, and looked greatly perplexed; the attack was so sudden in its form, though it had been a long time threatening. He found nothing to say, and she was impatient now to speak her mind, so she replied to his look.

"You are making yourself at home here. You are contented. Contented? You are _happy_ in this horrible prison."

"And why not?" said Hazel. But he looked rather guilty. "Here are no traitors; no murderers. The animals are my friends, and the one human being I see makes me better to look at her."

"Mr. Hazel, I am in a state of mind, that romantic nonsense jars on me.

Be honest with me, and talk to me like a man. I say that you beam all over with happiness and content, and that you-- Now answer me one question; why have you never lighted the bonfire on Telegraph Point?"

"Indeed I don't know," said he, submissively. "I have been so occupied."

"You have, and how? Not in trying to deliver us both from this dreadful situation, but to reconcile me to it. Yes, sir, under pretense (that is a harsh word, but I can't help it) of keeping out the rain. Your rain is a _bugbear;_ it never rains, it never will rain. You are killing yourself almost to make me comfortable in this place. Comfortable?" She began to tremble all over with excitement long restrained. "And do you really suppose you can make me live on like this, by building me a nice hut. Do you think I am all body and no soul, that shelter and warmth and enough to eat can keep my heart from breaking, and my cheeks from blushing night and day? When I wake in the morning I find myself blushing to my fingers'

ends." Then she walked away from him. Then she walked back. "Oh, my dear father, why did I ever leave you! Keep me here? make me live months and years on this island? Have you sisters? Have you a mother? Ask yourself, is it likely? No; if you will not help me, and they don't love me enough to come and find me and take me home, I'll go to another home without your help or any man's." Then she rose suddenly to her feet. "I'll tie my clothes tight round me, and fling myself down from that point on to the sharp rocks below. I'll find a way from this place to heaven, if there's no way from it to those I love on earth."

Then she sank down and rocked herself and sobbed hard.

The strong pa.s.sion of this. .h.i.therto gentle creature quite frightened her unhappy friend, who knew more of books than women. He longed to soothe her and comfort her; but what could he say? He cried out in despair, "My G.o.d, can I do nothing for her?"

She turned on him like lightning. "You can do anything--everything. You can restore us both to our friends. You can save my life, my reason. For that will go first, I think. What _had_ I done? what had I _ever_ done since I was born, to be so brought down? Was ever an English lady-- And then I have such an irritation on my skin, all over me. I sometimes wish the tiger would come and tear me all to pieces; yes, all to pieces." And with that her white teeth clicked together convulsively. "Do?" said she, darting back to the point as swiftly as she had rushed away from it.

"Why, put down that nasty stuff; and leave off inventing fifty little trumpery things for me, and do one great thing instead. Oh, do not fritter that great mind of yours away in painting and patching my prison; but bring it all to bear on getting me _out_ of my prison. Call sea and land to our rescue. Let them know a poor girl is here in unheard-of, unfathomable misery--here, in the middle of this awful ocean."

Hazel sighed deeply. "No ships seem to pa.s.s within sight of us," he muttered.

"What does that matter to _you?_ You are not a common man; you are an inventor. Rouse all the powers of your mind. There must be some way.

Think for me. THINK! THINK! or my blood will be on your head."

Hazel turned pale and put his head in his hands, and tried to think.

She leaned toward him with great flashing eyes of purest hazel.

The problem dropped from his lips a syllable at a time. "To diffuse--intelligence--a hundred leagues from a fixed point--an island?"

She leaned toward him with flashing, expectant eyes.

But he groaned, and said: "That seems impossible."

"Then _trample_ on it," said she, bringing his own words against him; for she used to remember all he said to her in the day, and ponder it at night--"trample on it, subdue it, or never speak to me again. Ah, I am an ungrateful wretch to speak so harshly to you. It is my misery, not me.

Good, kind Mr. Hazel, oh, pray, pray, pray bring all the powers of that great mind to bear on this one thing, and save a poor girl, to whom you have been so kind, so considerate, so n.o.ble, so delicate, so forbearing; now save me from despair."

Hysterical sobs cut her short here, and Hazel, whose loving heart she had almost torn out of his body, could only falter out in a broken voice, that he would obey her. "I'll work no more for you at present," said he, "sweet as it has been. I will think instead. I will go this moment beneath the stars and think all night."

The young woman was now leaning her head languidly back against one of the trees, weak as water after her pa.s.sion. He cast a look of ineffable love and pity on her, and withdrew slowly to think beneath the tranquil stars.

Love has set men hard tasks in his time. Whether this was a light one, our reader shall decide.

TO DIFFUSE INTELLIGENCE FROM A FIXED ISLAND OVER A HUNDRED LEAGUES OF OCEAN.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE perplexity into which Hazel was thrown by the outburst of his companion rendered him unable to reduce her demand at once to an intelligible form. For some moments he seriously employed his mind on the problem until it a.s.sumed this shape.