The Wings of the Morning Part 46

"The _Orient_!"

Iris was dazed. The uniforms, the pleasant faces of the English sailors, the strange sensation of hearing familiar words in tones other than those of the man she loved, bewildered her.

"Yes," explained the officer, with a sympathetic smile. "That's our ship, you know, in the offing there."

It was all too wonderful to be quite understood yet. She turned to Robert--

"Do you hear? They say my father is not far away. Take me to him."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WE ARE THE SOLE SURVIVORS," ANSWERED THE SAILOR.]

"No need for that, miss," interrupted a warrant officer. "Here he is coming ash.o.r.e. He wanted to come with us, but the captain would not permit it, as there seemed to be some trouble ahead."

Sure enough, even the girl's swimming eyes could distinguish the grey-bearded civilian seated beside an officer in the stern-sheets of a small gig now threading a path through the broken reef beyond Turtle Beach. In five minutes, father and daughter would meet.

Meanwhile the officer, intent on duty, addressed Jenks again.

"May I ask who you are?"

"My name is Anstruther--Robert Anstruther."

Iris, clinging to his arm, heard the reply.

So he had abandoned all pretence. He was ready to face the world at her side. She stole a loving glance at him as she cried--

"Yes, Captain Anstruther, of the Indian Staff Corps. If he will not tell you all that he has done, how he has saved my life twenty times, how he has fought single-handed against eighty men, ask me!"

The naval officer did not need to look a second time at Iris's face to lengthen the list of Captain Anstruther's achievements, by one more item. He sighed. A good sailor always does sigh when a particularly pretty girl is labeled "Engaged."

But he could be very polite.

"Captain Anstruther does not appear to have left much for us to do, Miss Deane," he said. "Indeed," turning to Robert, "is there any way in which my men will be useful?"

"I would recommend that they drag the green stuff off that fire and stop the smoke. Then, a detachment should go round the north side of the island and drive the remaining Dyaks into the hands of the party you have landed, as I understand, at the further end of the south beach. Mir Jan, the Mahommedan here, who has been a most faithful ally during part of our siege, will act as guide."

The other man cast a comprehensive glance over the rock, with its scaling ladders and dangling rope-ladder, the cave, the little groups of dead or unconscious pirates--for every wounded man who could move a limb had crawled away after the first sh.e.l.l burst--and drew a deep breath.

"How long were you up there?" he asked.

"Over thirty hours."

"It was a great fight!"

"Somewhat worse than it looks," said Anstruther. "This is only the end of it. Altogether, we have accounted for nearly two score of the poor devils."

"Do you think you can make them prisoners, without killing any more of them?" asked Iris.

"That depends entirely on themselves, Miss Deane. My men will not fire a shot unless they encounter resistance."

Robert looked towards the approaching boat. She would not land yet for a couple of minutes.

"By the way," he said, "will you tell me your name?"

"Playdon--Lieutenant Philip H. Playdon."

"Do you know to what nation this island belongs?"

"It is no-man's land, I think. It is marked 'uninhabited' on the chart."

"Then," said Anstruther, "I call upon you, Lieutenant Playdon, and all others here present, to witness that I, Robert Anstruther, late of the Indian Army, acting on behalf of myself and Miss Iris Deane, declare that we have taken possession of this island in the name of His Britannic Majesty the King of England, that we are the joint occupiers and owners thereof, and claim all property rights vested therein."

These formal phrases, coming at such a moment, amazed his hearers. Iris alone had an inkling of the underlying motive.

"I don't suppose any one will dispute your t.i.tle," said the naval officer gravely. He unquestionably imagined that suffering and exposure had slightly disturbed the other man's senses, yet he had seldom seen any person who looked to be in more complete possession of his faculties.

"Thank you," replied Robert with equal composure, though he felt inclined to laugh at Playdon's mystification. "I only wished to secure a sufficient number of witnesses for a verbal declaration. When I have a few minutes to spare I will affix a legal notice on the wall in front of our cave."

Playdon bowed silently. There was something in the speaker's manner that puzzled him. He detailed a small guard to accompany Robert and Iris, who now walked towards the beach, and asked Mir Jan to pilot him as suggested by Anstruther.

The boat was yet many yards from sh.o.r.e when Iris ran forward and stretched out her arms to the man who was staring at her with wistful despair.

"Father! Father!" she cried. "Don't you know me?"

Sir Arthur Deane was looking at the two strange figures on the sands, and each moment his heart sank lower. This island held his final hope.

During many weary weeks, since the day when a kindly Admiral placed the cruiser _Orient_ at his disposal, he had scoured the China Sea, the coasts of Borneo and Java, for some tidings of the ill-fated _Sirdar_.

He met naught save blank nothingness, the silence of the great ocean mausoleum. Not a boat, a spar, a lifebuoy, was cast up by the waves to yield faintest trace of the lost steamer. Every naval man knew what had happened. The vessel had met with some mishap to her machinery, struck a derelict, or turned turtle, during that memorable typhoon of March 17 and 18. She had gone down with all hands. Her fate was a foregone conclusion. No ship's boat could live in that sea, even if the crew were able to launch one. It was another of ocean's tragedies, with the fifth act left to the imagination.

To examine every sand patch and tree-covered shoal in the China Sea was an impossible task. All the _Orient_ could do was to visit the princ.i.p.al islands and inst.i.tute inquiries among the fishermen and small traders. At last, the previous night, a Malay, tempted by hope of reward, boarded the vessel when lying at anchor off the large island away to the south, and told the captain a wondrous tale of a devil-haunted place inhabited by two white spirits, a male and a female, whither a local pirate named Taung S'Ali had gone by chance with his men and suffered great loss. But Taung S'Ali was bewitched by the female spirit, and had returned there, with a great force, swearing to capture her or perish. The spirits, the Malay said, had dwelt upon the island for many years. His father and grandfather knew the place and feared it. Taung S'Ali would never be seen again.

This queer yarn was the first indication they received of the whereabouts of any persons who might possibly be shipwrecked Europeans, though not survivors from the _Sirdar_. Anyhow, the tiny dot lay in the vessel's northward track, so a course was set to arrive off the island soon after dawn.

Events on sh.o.r.e, as seen by the officer on watch, told their own tale.

Wherever Dyaks are fighting there is mischief on foot, so the _Orient_ took a hand in the proceedings.

But Sir Arthur Deane, after an agonized scrutiny of the weird-looking persons escorted by the sailors to the water's edge, sadly acknowledged that neither of these could be the daughter whom he sought. He bowed his head in humble resignation, and he thought he was the victim of a cruel hallucination when Iris's tremulous accents reached his ears--

"Father, father! Don't you know me?"

He stood up, amazed and trembling.

"Yes, father dear. It is I, your own little girl given back to you. Oh dear! Oh dear! I cannot see you for my tears."

They had some difficulty to keep him in the boat, and the man pulling stroke smashed a stout oar with the next wrench.

And so they met at last, and the sailors left them alone, to crowd round Anstruther and ply him with a hundred questions. Although he fell in with their humor, and gradually pieced together the stirring story which was supplemented each instant by the arrival of disconsolate Dyaks and the comments of the men who returned from cave and beach, his soul was filled with the sight of Iris and her father, and the happy, inconsequent demands with which each sought to ascertain and relieve the extent of the other's anxiety.

Then Iris called to him--