The Wings of the Morning Part 20

This, then, was the _mise-en-scene_.

Iris, seated in the broken saloon-chair, which the sailor had firmly wedged into the sand for her accommodation, was attired in a close-fitting costume selected from the small store of garments so wisely preserved by Jenks. She wore a pair of clumsy men's boots several sizes too large for her. Her hair was tied up in a gipsy knot on the back of her head, and the light of a cheerful log fire danced in her blue eyes.

Jenks, unshaven and ragged, squatted tailor wise near her. Close at hand, on two sides, the s.h.a.ggy walls of rock rose in solemn grandeur.

The neighboring trees, decked now in the sable livery of night, were dimly outlined against the deep misty blue of sea and sky or wholly merged in the shadow of the cliffs.

They lost themselves in the peaceful influences of the hour.

Shipwrecked, remote from human land, environed by dangers known or only conjectured, two solitary beings on a tiny island, thrown haphazard from the depths of the China Sea, this young couple, after pa.s.sing unscathed through perils unknown even to the writers of melodrama, lifted up their voices in the sheer exuberance of good spirits and abounding vitality.

The girl was specially attracted by "The Buffalo Battery," a rollicking lyric known to all Anglo-India from Peshawur to Tuticorin. The air is the familiar one of the "Hen Convention," and the opening verse runs in this wise:

I love to hear the sepoy with his bold and martial tread, And the thud of the galloping cavalry re-echoes through my head.

But sweeter far than any sound by mortal ever made Is the tramp of the Buffalo Battery a-going to parade.

_Chorus_: For it's "Hainya! hainya! hainya! hainya!"

Twist their tails and go.

With a "Hathi! hathi! hathi!" ele-_phant_ and buffa_lo_, "Chow-chow, chow-chow, chow-chow, chow-chow,"

"Teri ma!" "Chel-lo!"

Oh, that's the way they shout all day, and drive the buffalo.

Iris would not be satisfied until she understood the meaning of the Hindustani phrases, mastered the nasal p.r.o.nunciation of "hainya,"

and placed the artificial accent on _phant_ and _lo_ in the second line of the chorus.

Jenks was concluding the last verse when there came, hurtling through the air, the weird cries of the singing beetle, returning, perchance, from successful foray on Palm-tree Rock. This second advent of the insect put an end to the concert. Within a quarter of an hour they were asleep.

Thenceforth, for ten days, they labored unceasingly, starting work at daybreak and stopping only when the light failed, finding the long hours of sunshine all too short for the manifold tasks demanded of them, yet thankful that the night brought rest. The sailor made out a programme to which he rigidly adhered. In the first place, he completed the house, which had two compartments, an inner room in which Iris slept, and an outer, which served as a shelter for their meals and provided a bedroom for the man.

Then he constructed a gigantic sky-sign on Summit Rock, the small cl.u.s.ter of boulders on top of the cliff. His chief difficulty was to hoist into place the tall poles he needed, and for this purpose he had to again visit Palm-tree Rock in order to secure the pulley. By exercising much ingenuity in devising shear-legs, he at last succeeded in lifting the masts into their allotted receptacles, where they were firmly secured. Finally he was able to swing into air, high above the tops of the neighboring trees, the loftiest of which he felled in order to clear the view on all sides, the name of the ship _Sirdar_, fashioned in six-foot letters nailed and spliced together in sections and made from the timbers of that ill-fated vessel.

Meanwhile he taught Iris how to weave a net out of the strands of unraveled cordage. With this, weighted by bullets, he contrived a casting-net and caught a lot of small fish in the lagoon. At first they were unable to decide which varieties were edible, until a happy expedient occurred to the girl.

"The seabirds can tell us," she said. "Let us spread out our haul on the sands and leave them. By observing those specimens seized by the birds and those they reject we should not go far wrong."

Though her reasoning was not infallible it certainly proved to be a reliable guide in this instance. Among the fish selected by the feathered connoisseurs they hit upon two species which most resembled whiting and haddock, and these turned out to be very palatable and wholesome.

Jenks knew a good deal of botany, and enough about birds to differentiate between carnivorous species and those fit for human food, whilst the salt in their most fortunate supply of hams rendered their meals almost epicurean. Think of it, ye dwellers in cities, content with stale buns and leathery sandwiches when ye venture into the wilds of a railway refreshment-room, these two castaways, marooned by queer chance on a desert island, could sit down daily to a banquet of vegetable soup, fish, a roast bird, ham boiled or fried, and a sago pudding, the whole washed down by cool spring water, or, should the need arise, a draught of the best champagne!

From the rusty rifles on the reef Jenks brought away the bayonets and secured all the screws, bolts, and other small odds and ends which might be serviceable. From the barrels he built a handy grate to facilitate Iris's cooking operations, and a careful search each morning amidst the ashes of any burnt wreckage acc.u.mulated a store of most useful nails.

The pressing need for a safe yet accessible bathing place led him and the girl to devote one afternoon to a complete survey of the coast-line. By this time they had given names to all the chief localities. The northerly promontory was naturally christened North Cape; the western, Europa Point; the portion of the reef between their habitation and Palm-tree Rock became Filey Brig; the other section North-west Reef. The flat sandy pa.s.sage across the island, containing the cave, house, and well, was named Prospect Park; and the extensive stretch of sand on the south-east, with its guard of broken reefs, was at once dubbed Turtle Beach when Jenks discovered that an immense number of green turtles were paying their spring visit to the island to bury their eggs in the sand.

The two began their tour of inspection by pa.s.sing the scene of the first desperate struggle to escape from the clutch of the typhoon. Iris would not be content until the sailor showed her the rock behind which he placed her for shelter whilst he searched for water. For a moment the recollection of their unfortunate companions on board ship brought a lump into her throat and dimmed her eyes.

"I remember them in my prayers every night," she confided to him. "It seems so unutterably sad that they should be lost, whilst we are alive and happy."

The man distracted her attention by pointing out the embers of their first fire. It was the only way to choke back the tumultuous feelings that suddenly stormed his heart. Happy! Yes, he had never before known such happiness. How long would it last? High up on the cliff swung the signal to anxious searchers of the sea that here would be found the survivors of the _Sirdar_. And then, when rescue came, when Miss Deane became once more the daughter of a wealthy baronet, and he a disgraced and a nameless outcast--! He set his teeth and savagely struck at a full cup of the pitcher-plant which had so providentially relieved their killing thirst.

"Oh, why did you do that?" pouted Iris. "Poor thing! it was a true friend in need. I wish I could do something for it to make it the best and leafiest plant of its kind on the island."

"Very well!" he answered; "you can gratify your wish. A tinful of fresh water from the well, applied daily to its roots, will quickly achieve that end."

The moroseness of his tone and manner surprised her. For once her quick intuition failed to divine the source of his irritation.

"You give your advice ungraciously," she said, "but I will adopt it nevertheless."

A harmless incident, a kindly and quite feminine resolve, yet big with fate for both of them.

Jenks's unwonted ill-humor--for the pa.s.sage of days had driven from his face all its harshness, and from his tongue all its a.s.sumed bitterness--created a pa.s.sing cloud until the physical exertion of scrambling over the rocks to round the North Cape restored their normal relations.

A strong current raced by this point to the south-east, and tore away the outlying spur of the headland to such an extent that the sailor was almost inclined to choose the easier way through the trees. Yet he persevered, and it may be confessed that the opportunities thus afforded of grasping the girl's arm, of placing a steadying hand on her shoulder, were dominant factors in determining his choice.

At last they reached the south side, and here they at once found themselves in a delightfully secluded and tiny bay, sandy, tree-lined, sheltered on three sides by cliffs and rocks.

"Oh," cried Iris, excitedly, "what a lovely spot! a perfect Smugglers'

Cove."

"Charming enough to look at," was the answering comment, "but open to the sea. If you look at the smooth riband of water out there, you will perceive a pa.s.sage through the reef. A great place for sharks, Miss Deane, but no place for bathers."

"Good gracious! I had forgotten the sharks. I suppose they must live, horrid as they are, but I don't want them to dine on me."

The mention of such disagreeable adjuncts to life on the island no longer terrified her. Thus do English new-comers to India pa.s.s the first three months' residence in the country in momentary terror of snakes, and the remaining thirty years in complete forgetfulness of them.

They pa.s.sed on. Whilst traversing the coral-strewn south beach, with its patches of white soft sand baking in the direct rays of the sun, Jenks perceived traces of the turtle which swarmed in the neighboring sea.

"Delicious eggs and turtle soup!" he announced when Iris asked him why he was so intently studying certain marks on the sand, caused by the great sea-tortoise during their nocturnal visits to the breeding-ground.

"If they are green turtle," he continued, "we are in the lap of luxury.

They lard the alderman and inspire the poet. When a ship comes to our a.s.sistance I will persuade the captain to freight the vessel with them and make my fortune."

"I suppose, under the circ.u.mstances, you were not a rich man, Mr.

Jenks," said Iris, timidly.

"I possess a wealthy bachelor uncle, who made me his heir and allowed me four hundred a year; so I was a sort of Croesus among Staff Corps officers. When the smash came he disowned me by cable. By selling my ponies and my other belongings I was able to walk out of my quarters penniless but free from debt."

"And all through a deceitful woman!"

"Yes."

Iris peeped at him from under the brim of her sou'wester. He seemed to be absurdly contented, so different was his tone in discussing a necessarily painful topic to the att.i.tude he adopted during the attack on the pitcher-plant.

She was puzzled, but ventured a further step.

"Was she very bad to you, Mr. Jenks?"

He stopped and laughed--actually roared at the suggestion.

"Bad to me!" he repeated. "I had nothing to do with her. She was humbugging her husband, not me. Fool that I was, I could not mind my own business."

So Mrs. Costobell was not flirting with the man who suffered on her account. It is a regrettable but true statement that Iris would willingly have hugged Mrs. Costobell at that moment. She walked on air during the next half-hour of golden silence, and Jenks did not remind her that they were pa.s.sing the gruesome Valley of Death.