Into the Primitive Part 20

"How's that?" demanded Blake, not a little puzzled. He was fully conscious of the risk; but this was the first intimation he had received or conceived that his motives were other than selfish--"Um-m! So that's the ticket. Getting generous, eh?"

"Not getting--you _are_ generous! When I think of all you have done for us! Had it not been for you, I am sure we should have died that first day ash.o.r.e."

"Well, don't blame me. I couldn't have let a dog die that way; and then, a fellow needs a Man Friday for this sort of thing. As for you, I haven't always had the luck to be favored with ladies' company."

"Thank you, Mr. Blake. I quite appreciate the compliment. But now, I must put on supper."

Blake followed her graceful movements with an intentness which, in turn, drew Winthrope's attention to himself. The Englishman smiled in a disagreeable manner, and resumed his work on the bows, with the look of one mentally preoccupied. After supper he found occasion to spend some little time among the bamboos.

When at sunset Miss Leslie withdrew into the baobab, Winthrope somewhat officiously insisted upon helping her set up her screen in the entrance.

As he did so, he took the opportunity to hand her a bamboo knife, and to draw her attention to several double-pointed bamboo stakes which he had hidden under the litter.

"What is it?" she asked, troubled by his furtive glance back at Blake.

"Merely precaution, you know," he whispered. "The ground in there is quite soft. It will be no trouble, I fancy, to put up the stakes, with their points inclined towards the entrance."

"But why--"

"Not so loud, Miss Genevieve! It struck me that if any one should seek to enter in the night, he would find these stakes deucedly unpleasant.

Be careful how you handle them. As you see, the sharper points, which are to be set uppermost, run off into a razor edge. Put them up now, before it grows too dark. You know how ninepins are set--that shape.

Good-night! You see, with these to guard the entrance, you need not be afraid to go to sleep at once."

"Thank you," she whispered, and began to thrust the stakes into the ground as he had directed.

He had not been mistaken. The vague doubts and fears which she already entertained would have kept her awake throughout the night, but thanks to the sense of security afforded by the sword-bayonets of her silent little sentries, the girl was soon able to calm herself, and was fast asleep long before Blake wakened Winthrope.

Immediately after breakfast, Blake--who had spent his watch in grinding the edges from a stone and experimenting with split and bent twigs--put Winthrope's keys in the fire, and began an attempt to shape them into a knife-blade. To heat the steel to the required temperature, he used a bamboo blowpipe, with his lungs for bellows.

Winthrope turned away with an indifferent bearing; but Miss Leslie found herself compelled to stop and admire his dexterous use of his rude tools.

One after another, the keys were welded together, end to end, in a narrow ribbon of steel. The thinnest one, however, was not fastened to the tip until it had been used to burn a groove in the edge of a rib, selected from among the bones which Miss Leslie had thrown out of the baobab.

The last key was then fastened to the others; the blade ground sharp, tempered, and inserted in the groove. Finally, pieces of the key-ring were fitted in bands around the bone, through notches cut in the ends of the steel blade. The result was a bone-handled, bone-backed knife, with a narrow cutting edge of fine steel.

Long before it was finished Miss Leslie had been forced away by the requirements of her own work. In fact, Blake did not complete his task until late in the afternoon. At the end, he spent more than an hour grinding the handle into shape. When he came to show the completed knife to Miss Leslie, he was fairly aglow with justifiable pride.

"How's that for an Eskimo job?" he demanded. "Bunch of keys and a bone, eh?"

"You are certainly very ingenious, Mr. Blake!"

"Nixy! There's little of the inventor in my top piece--only some hustle and a good memory. I was up in Alaska, you know. Saw a sight of Eskimo work."

"Still, it is very skilfully done."

"That may be--Look out for the edge! It'd do to shave. No more bamboo splinters for me--dull when you hit a piece of bone. I'm ready now to skin a rhinoceros."

"If you can catch one!"

"Guess we could find enough of them around here, all right. But we'll start in on some of Win's sheep and cattle."

"Oh, do! One grows tired of eggs, and all these sea-birds are so tough and fishy, no matter how I cook them."

"We'll sneak down to the pool, and make a try with the bows this evening. I'll give odds, though, that we draw a blank. Win's got the aim, but no drive; I've got the drive, but no aim. Even if I hit an antelope, I don't think a bamboo-pointed arrow would bother him much."

"Don't the savages kill game without iron weapons?"

"Sure; but a lot have flint points, and a lot of others use poison. I know that the Apaches and some of those other Southern Indians used to fix their arrows with rattlesnake poison."

"How horrible!"

"Well, that depends on how you look at it. I guess they thought guns more horrible when they tackled the whites and got the daylight let through 'em. At any rate, they swapped arrows for rifles mighty quick, and any one who knows Apaches will tell you it wasn't because they thought bullets would do less damage."

"Yet the thought of poison--"

"Yes; but the thought of self-preservation! Sooner than starve, I'd poison every animal in Africa--and so would you."

"I--I--You put it in such a horrible way. One must consider others, animals as well as people; and yet--"

"Survival of the fittest. I've read some things, and I'm no fool, if I do say it myself. For instance, I'm the boss here, because I'm the fittest of our crowd in this environment; but back in what's called civilized parts, where the law lets a few shrewd fellows monopolize the means of production, a man like your father--"

"Mr. Blake, it is not my fault if papa's position in the business world--"

"Nor his, either--it's the cussed system! No; that's all right, Miss Jenny. I was only ill.u.s.trating. Now, I take it, both you and Win would like to get rid of a boss like me, if you could get rid of Africa at the same time. As it is, though, I guess you'd rather have me for boss, and live, than be left all by your lonesomes, to starve."

"I--I'm sure there is no question of your leadership, Mr. Blake. We have both tried our best to do what you have asked of us."

"_You_ have, at least. But I know. If a ship should come to-morrow, it'd be Blake to the back seat. 'Papa, give this--er--person a check for his services, while I chase off with Winnie, to get my look-in on 'Is Ri-yal 'Igh-ness.'"

Miss Leslie flushed crimson-- "I'm sure, Mr. Blake--"

"Oh, don't let that worry you, Miss Jenny. It don't me. I couldn't be sore with you if I tried. Just the same, I know what it'll be like.

I've rubbed elbows enough with sn.o.bs and big bugs to know what kind of consideration they give one of the mahsses--unless one of the mahsses has the drop on them. h.e.l.lo, Win! What's kept you so late?"

"None of your business!" snapped Winthrope.

Miss Leslie glanced at him, even more puzzled and startled by this outbreak than she had been by Blake's strange talk. But if Blake was angered, he did not show it.

"Say, Win," he remarked gravely, "I was going to take you down to the pool after supper, on a try with the bows. But I guess you'd better stay close by the fire."

"Yes; it is time you gave a little consideration to those who deserve it," rejoined Winthrope, with a peevishness of tone and manner which surprised Miss Leslie. "I tell you, I'm tired of being treated like a dog."

"All right, all right, old man. Just draw up your chair, and get all the hot broth aboard you can stow," answered Blake, soothingly.

Winthrope sat down; but throughout the meal, he continued to complain over trifles with the peevishness of a spoiled child, until Miss Leslie blushed for him. Greatly to her astonishment, Blake endured the nagging without a sign of irritation, and in the end took his bow and arrows and went off down the cleft, with no more than a quiet reminder to Winthrope that he should keep near the fire.

When, shortly after dark, the engineer came groping his way back up the gorge, he was by no means so calm. Out of six shots, he had hit one antelope in the neck and another in the haunch; yet both animals had made off all the swifter for their wounds.

The noise of his approach awakened Winthrope, who turned over, and began to complain in a whining falsetto. Miss Leslie, who was peering out through the bars of her screen, looked to see Blake kick the prostrate man. His frown showed only too clearly that he was in a savage temper. To her astonishment, he spoke in a soothing tone until Winthrope again fell asleep. Then he quietly set about erecting a canopy of bamboos over the sleeper.

Just why he should build this was a puzzle to the girl. But when she caught a glimpse of Blake's altered expression, she drew a deep breath of relief, and picked her way around the edge of her bamboo stakes, to lie down without a trace of the fear which had been haunting her.