Maid of the Mist Part 30

"An', for me, I do. An' more I can get, better I'm pleased."

"Each to his taste, and you are very welcome to them all. Now, if you please, we will forget all about them, and speak of pleasanter things,"

and she turned to Wulfrey and began questioning him as to his knowledge of London, which was not nearly so extensive as her own.

The mate smoked and drank and glowered across at them. More than once Wulfrey caught his glance resting balefully on The Girl. More than ever was he thankful that he was there to look after her.

x.x.xI

"No," said The Girl to Wulfrey, as she sat busily sewing at her new dress on deck next morning, "I do not like your mate as much even as I thought. Do you know what I would do if you were not here?"

"What would you do?"

"I would go and live on that other ship, or else among the sandhills."

"Either would be very uncomfortable. I am glad I am here."

"He looks at me as though I were another piece of his treasure-trove, especially when he is getting drunk. If he had tried to wrap me up with the rest in that blue bundle of his I should not have been very much surprised."

"He brought you ash.o.r.e, you see."

"Well? What use would that have been if you hadn't brought me back to life?"

"Not much, I'm bound to say. But I imagine he considers it gives him first claim on you."

"First claim?--for what?" she asked quickly.

"Oh, on your regard, your grat.i.tude,----"

"My grat.i.tude, if you like. My regard--that goes only where I can respect and esteem. And for him--neither. If he were never to come back again from over there I would not in the least regret it."

It was as inevitable that these two should instinctively draw closer to one another, as that their doing so should create something of a breach between them and the mate, and that he should feel and resent it.

Except the untoward circ.u.mstances of their lot there was practically nothing in common between him and them. His outlook and aims were as different from theirs as were his habits and upbringing. Yet it did seem preposterous to them that three persons, situated as they were, should not be able to live together in peace and good-fellowship.

To the ancients, without doubt, the G.o.ds would have been apparent behind the slow-drifting white-piled clouds, and behind the storm-wrack and the mists, laughing at the perverse little ways of men, and watching with interest the inevitable tangle produced among them by the advent of a woman.

Since the year one, two have found themselves good company and the coming of a third has led to mischief. And yet even that depends on the spirit that is in them. More than once, since he landed on the island, Wulfrey had found himself wishing Providence had sent him honest Jock Steele for company, and that it was the mate's bones that were whitening out there in place of the carpenter's.

Whether he himself would have fared so well, if he had not stuck out his leg at risk of his life and helped the mate on to his raft, and so had come ash.o.r.e alone, he was not sure. And again, whether, if he had been alone, he would ever have sighted The Girl on her mast, was doubtful. If they had much to put up with in Macro, they had also much to thank him for. And so--to bear with him as well as they might and give no occasion for offence if that were possible.

But it was no easy matter. They were having a spell of fine weather which enabled him to go out to the wreckage every day. And every night he came home ravenous, and ate and drank and afterwards sat smoking with scarce a word.

If they enquired how he had fared he growled the curtest of answers, and showed plainly that their polite interest in his doings was not desired by him. He showed them none of his finds, but sat smoking doggedly, and occasionally gazing through his smoke at The Girl in a way that distressed and discomforted her.

But there was nothing in it that Wulfrey could openly take exception to. Even a cat may look at a queen. The look in the mate's black eyes was akin to that with which the cat favours the canary, when he licks his lips below its cage;--if he only dared!

Still, they were free of him during the day, and the discomfort of him at other times but drew them closer together. But Wulfrey, watching the man cautiously, saw in him signs and symptoms that he did not like, which bade him be prepared for a possible change for the worse in their relationship.

For one thing, he was drinking more heavily than he had ever done since they landed, and the drink and the brooding of his black thoughts might well hatch out unexpected evil to one or other of them. As he lay there of a night, smoking and drinking, with a face of gloom and smouldering fires in his eyes, he was more than ever like a sleeping volcano which might burst forth in flame and fury at any moment.

But for the lurking possibilities of trouble, the cool way in which he devoted himself to his own private concerns, and left them to attend to all the irksome little details of the common life, would have had in it something of the humorous.

Miss Drummond was indignant and was for leaving him supperless when he came home of a night.

But Wulfrey rigorously repressed his strong fellow-feeling therewith, and determined that no provocation should come from their side. So they continued to make ample provision for all, and the mate helped himself as if by right. If, however, good-feeling on the part of the maker has anything to do with the compounding of cakes, as The Girl averred, those she made for the mate must surely have lacked flavour, for her views on the matter were most uncompromisingly expressed, both by hands and tongue, as she made them.

"Does he look upon us as his servants, then?"--with a contemptuous slap at the innocent dough.--"To do all his work without so much as a 'Thank you'?"--another vicious slap. "--And to be glowered at as if one were a rabbit that he wanted to devour!"--cakes pitched disdainfully into a corner till the time came to cook them.--"No!--for me, I wish he would stop out there among his skeletons and trouble us no more."

Her little tantrums at thought of Macro gave Wulfrey no little amus.e.m.e.nt. The vivacity of her manner as she delivered herself, blended as it was of Scottish frankness and French sparkle, made her altogether charming. He soothed her ruffled feelings, however, by his own eulogistic appreciation of the cakes she provided for their own use, and it was then that she explained to him how intimately the character of a cake is a.s.sociated with the feelings of its maker.

Matters came to a head a few days later, when the commissariat department began to run low in certain essentials.

"We're almost out of flour and pork, Macro," Wulfrey said to him, as the mate was preparing to set off as usual one morning. "Will you bring some back with you?"

The black-faced one hesitated one moment, and then cast the die for trouble.

"Well, you know where to get 'em," he growled.

"Yes, I know where to get them," and Wulfrey braced himself for the tussle. "But----"

"Well, then--get 'em, and be ---- to you!" and he leaped down on to his raft and set off for the sh.o.r.e.

x.x.xII

Wulfrey watched the mate's retreating figure for a minute or two and then turned quietly to The Girl.

"Are you prepared to trust me completely, Miss Drummond?" he asked.

"Absolutely. What is it you want me to do?"

"We cannot go on this way. He is becoming insufferable. Unless you have anything to say against it, we will take possession of the other ship--you and I, and leave him here to himself."

"Yes--let us go. When shall we go? Now?"

"We must make it habitable first. It is as empty as a drum, you know."

"All the better, since we are overcrowded here with that man. It is to get away from unpleasantness that we go."

"We shall need fire,--that means sand for a hearth; and wood--we have heaps here; and cooking things--we will take our fair share, and our blankets. Everything else I can get out yonder."

"Allons! Let us go at once and get them."