West Wind Drift Part 22

She announced her intention to obey any order the "boss" might issue, without recrimination, without complaint. And so, when the day came for her to go forth with other women to do her share of the cooking, washing, cleaning, and later on the more interesting task of putting the huts in order for occupancy, she went with a full understanding of what was required of her and without a word of protest. The women with whom she toiled from early morn till sombre dusk draped the land were under the immediate direction of a stewardess of many years experience, an Englishwoman whose husband, an engineer, had been killed at the time of the explosions.

Each night she returned to the ship tired and sore but uncomplaining.

Her strong young body stood the test with the hardiest; her spirit was unflinching; her heart in the common cause. For she looked ahead with a clear, far-seeing eye, and saw not one but many winters in this vast, unguarded prison. And she wondered,--wondered day and night,--what was ahead of her.

She was young. The young do not dream of death. They dream of life, and of its fullness. What did fate have in store for her? Sometimes she crimsoned, sometimes she paled as she looked ahead.

Bare-armed, her heavy sport skirt caught up with pins, her bonny brown hair loosely coiled, thick golf stockings and st.u.r.dy shoes covering her legs and feet, she presented a figure that caused more than one heart to thump, more than one head to turn, more than one pair of eyes to follow her as she went about her work. Her cheeks and throat and breast and arms were browning under the fire of the noonday sun, her eyes glowed with the fervour of enthusiasm; her voice was ever cheerful and her smile, though touched with the blight that lay upon the soul of all these castaways, was unfailingly bright. And when she returned "home" at night from her wageless day of toil, she slept as she never had slept before.

Her aunt worked in what was known as the salvage corps. She was one of the clerks employed in checking out the cargo and other materials seized by the committee of ten, as the leaders in this singular enterprise were called. Captain Trigger having protested against the dismantling of the vessel and the confiscation of its cargo,--which was as far as he could go,--announced that he would abide by any satisfactory plan to salvage the property. He required an official, doc.u.mentary report, however, in which every item removed was accounted for, with its condition and value set down and sworn to by responsible persons. The purser, Mr. Codge, and First Officer Mott represented the Captain in this operation, while the consignees were properly taken care of by Michael O'Malley Malone, the lawyer, James K. Jones, the promoter, and Moses Block, the rubber importer. It is unnecessary to deal further with this feature of the situation. Suffice it to say, the transaction,--if it may be so denoted,--was managed with the utmost regularity and formality. Elderly men and women were chosen for the clerical work which this rather laborious undertaking entailed.

On the crest of the loftiest hill there was established a permanent observation and signal station. Near the top a sort of combination dug-out and shanty was constructed by order of Captain Trigger, and day and night, week in and week out, watches were kept similar to those maintained on board ship.

While the entire company, high and low, worked with a zeal that eventually resulted in a state of good-natured though intense rivalry in skill and accomplishment,--while they were generally cheerful and courageous,--there was a profound lack of gaiety. In the eyes of each and every one of them lay the never-vanishing shadow of anxiety,--an eternal unspoken question. The hardest, fiercest faces wore a wistful expression; the broadest smile revealed a touch of sadness. Over all, however, the surpa.s.sing spirit of kindness and generosity presided.

Calamity had softened the hearts in the same crucible that hardened the hands. The arrogance of the strong mellowed into consideration for the weak; wisdom and culture went hand in hand with ignorance and brawn; malice and rancour left the hearts of the lowly and met half-way the departing insolence of the lofty; fellowship took root and throve in a field rich with good deeds. The heart of man was master here, the brain its humble servant.

Landover worked hard, doggedly. To all outward appearances, he had resigned himself to the inevitable. He affected a spirit of camaraderie and good humour that deceived many. Down in his heart, however, he was bitterly rebellious. He despised these people as a cla.s.s. In his estimation, all creatures who worked for a living were branded with the obnoxious iron of socialism; he even went so far as to believe that they were, after a fashion, anarchists! His conception of anarchy was rather far-reaching; it took in everything that was contrary to his notion of a satisfactory distribution of wealth. He believed that every man who worked for a wage was at heart an enemy to law and order. He regarded the wage-earner as one whose hand is eternally against the employer, absolutely without honour, justice or reason. The workingman was for self, always for self,--and to Landover that was anarchy.

The thought that people,--men and women,--of the lower cla.s.ses possessed physical and mental qualities similar to those possessed by himself, even in a modified form, was not only repugnant to him but incredible.

They had none of the finer emotions,--such as love, for instance. He could not conceive of a labouring man loving his wife and children; it wasn't natural! He pictured the home-life of the lower cla.s.ses as nothing short of indecent; there couldn't be anything fine or n.o.ble or enduring in the processes of birth, existence and death as related to them. Nature took its course with them, and society,--as represented by the cla.s.s to which he belonged,--provided for the litters they cast upon the world. In a word, Abel Landover's father and grandfather and great-grandfather had been rich men before him.

He despised Captain Trigger for the simple reason that that faithful, gallant sailor was an employee of the company in which he was a director. It meant nothing to him that Captain Trigger came of fine, hardy, valiant stock; it meant less to him that he was a law unto himself aboard the Doraine. For, when all was said and done, Captain Trigger worked for just so much money per month and doubtless hated the men who paid him his wage. On board the Doraine,--as was the case with all other vessels on which he chose to sail,--the banker sat at the Captain's table. But he did not consider that to be a distinction or an honour; it was his due. As a matter of fact, he looked upon himself as the real head of the Captain's table!

Half a dozen persons in all that company comprised Landover's circle of desirables. Of the rest, most of them were impossible, three-fourths of them were "anarchists," all of them were beneath notice,--except as listeners. As for Percival, if that young man was not literally and actually a bandit, at least he had all the instincts of one. In any case, he was a "b.u.m." Whenever Mr. Landover was at a loss for a word to express contumely for his fellow-man,--and he was seldom at a loss,--he called him a "b.u.m."

The women on board were divided into three cla.s.ses in Landover's worldly opinion: the kind you would marry (rare), the kind you wouldn't marry (plentiful), and the kind you wouldn't have to marry (common). He put Olga Obosky and Careni-Amori in this rather extensive third cla.s.s, and even went so far as to set what he considered a fair value upon them as human commodities!

He worked with the gang of "log-toters," a term supplied by Percival.

They were the men who carried or dragged the trimmed tree-trunks from the forest to the camp site, where they were subsequently hewn into shape for structural purposes by the more skilful handlers of ax and wedge and saw.

A certain man named Manuel Crust was the fore-man of this gang. He was a swarthy, powerful "Portugee" who was on his way to Rio to kill the pal who had run away with his wife. He was going up there to kill Sebastian Cabral and live happily for ever afterward. His idea of future happiness was to sit by the fireside in his declining years and pleasantly ruminate over the variety of deaths he had inflicted upon the loathsome Sebastian. In the first place, he was going to strangle him with his huge, gnarled hands; then he was going to cut off his ears and nose and stuff them into the vast slit he had made in his throat; then he would dig his heart out with a machete; then, one by one, he would expertly amputate his legs, arms and tongue; afterwards he would go through the grisly process of disemboweling him; and, then, in the end, he would build a nice, roaring fire and destroy what remained of Sebastian.

Inasmuch as either of these sanguinary and successive measures might reasonably be expected to produce the desired result, it will be seen that Sebastian was doomed to experience at least six horrific deaths before the avenger got through with him. At any rate, if one could believe Manuel,--and there seemed to be no end of conviction in the way he expressed himself,--the luckless home-wrecker, if he lived long enough, was absolutely certain to die.

Landover took a strange fancy to Manuel Crust. He was drawn to him in the first place by the blasphemous things he said about Percival. In the second place, he enjoyed Manuel's vituperative remarks about cutting the liver out of the "boss." Notwithstanding the fact that Manuel was more or less given to cutting the livers out of remote and invisible persons,--including King Alfonso, the Kaiser, Queen Victoria (he didn't know she was dead), King Manuel, the Czar of Russia, the Presidents of all the South American republics, the Sultan of Turkey, President Roosevelt, and Sebastian Cabral,--Mr. Landover positively loved to hear him talk. He made a point of getting him to talk about Percival a great deal of the time. He also liked the way in which the prodigious Manuel deferred to him. It inspired the philanthropic motives that led him to share his very excellent cigars with the doughty foreman. Moreover, he had something far back in his mind, had Mr. Abel Landover.

Percival was indefatigable. He set the example for every one else, and nothing daunted him. The sceptics,--and there were many of them at the start,--no longer shook their heads as they went about what once had loomed as a hopeless enterprise, for to their astonishment and gratification the "camp" was actually becoming a substantial reality.

The small group of men who, for obvious reasons, had courted the favour of Abel Landover at the outset, now went out of their way to "stand in"

with the amazingly popular man of the hour.

He represented power, he stood for achievement, he rode on the crest of the wave,--and so they believed in him! Landover may have been a wizard in New York, but the wizard of Trigger Island was quite another person altogether,--hence the very sensible defection.

These gentlemen openly and ardently opposed him on one occasion, however. It was when he proposed that the island should be named for the beloved Captain. They insisted that it be called Percival Island.

Failing in this, they advocated with great enthusiasm, but with no success, the application of Percival's name to almost every noticeable peculiarity that the island possessed. They objected fiercely to the adoption of such t.i.tles as these: Mott Haven (the basin); Split Mountain; Gray Ridge (after the lamented Chief Engineer); Penguin Rocks; The Gate of the Winds; Top o' the Morning Peak; Dismal Forest (west of the channel); Peter Pan Wood (east of the channel); Good Luck Channel; Cypress Point; Cape Sunrise (the extreme easterly end of the island); Leap-frog River; Little Sandy and Big Sandy (the beaches); Cracko-day Farm; New Gibraltar (the western end of the island); St. Anthony Falls.

Michael O'Malley Malone christened the turbulent little waterfall up in the hills. He liked the sound of the name, he claimed, and besides it was about time the stigma of shame that had so long rested upon the poor old saint was rewarded by complete though belated vindication.

Strange to say, no name was ever proposed for the "camp." Back in the mind of each and every member of the lost company lay the unvoiced belief,--amounting to superst.i.tion,--that it would be tempting fate to speak of this long row of cabins as anything more enduring than "the camp."

Notwithstanding his dominant personality and the remarkable capacity he had for real leadership, Percival was a simple, sensitive soul. He writhed under the lash of conspicuous adulation, and there was a good deal of it going on.

The satiric Randolph Fitts, notwithstanding his unquestioned admiration for the younger man, took an active delight in denouncing what he was p.r.o.ne to allude to as Percival's political aspirations. It is only fair to state that Fitts confined his observations to a very small coterie of friends, chief among whom was the subject himself.

"You are the smartest politician I've ever encountered, and that's saying a good deal," he remarked one evening as he sat smoking with a half dozen companions in front of one of the completed huts. They were ranged in a row, like so many birds, their tired backs against the "facade" of the cabin, their legs stretched out in front of them.

"You're too deep for me. I don't see just what your game is, A. A. If there was a chance to graft, I'd say that was it, but you could graft here for centuries and have nothing to show for it but fresh air.

Even if you were to run for the office of king, or sultan or shah, you wouldn't get anything but votes,--and you'd get about all of 'em, I'll say that for you. To a man, the women would vote for you,--especially if you were to run for sultan. What is your game?"

Percival smoked in silence, his gaze fixed on the moonlit line of trees across the field.

"And speaking of women, that reminds me," went on Fitts. "When does my lord and master intend to transplant our crop of ladies?"

"What's that, Fitts?" said Percival, called out of his dream.

"Ladies,--what about 'em? When do they come ash.o.r.e to occupy the mansions we have prepared for them?"

"Captain Trigger suggests next week."

"What's he got to do with it? Ain't you king?"

"He's got a lot to do with it, you blithering b.o.o.b."

"Besides," drawled Peter Snipe, the novelist, picking doggedly at the calloused ridges on one of his palms, "some of the women object to moving in the dark of the moon. They say it's sure to bring bad luck."

"There's quite a mixup about it," observed Flattner. "Part of 'em claim it's good luck. Madame Obosky says she never had any good luck moving by the light of the moon, and Careni-Amori says she doesn't blame her for feeling that way. Sort of cattish way of implying that the fair Olga could get along without any moon at all. Professional jealousy, I suppose."

"I was speaking to Miss Clinton about it today," remarked Michael Malone.

"What does she think about it?" from Percival.

"I don't know. She asked me what I thought about it."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I told her I wasn't a woman, and that let me out. Being a man, I'm not ent.i.tled to a vote or an opinion, and I'd be very much obliged to her if she'd not try to drag me into it,--and to answer my question if she could. Whereupon she said she was in favour of moving by the light of the sun, and payin' no attention at all to the moon. Which I thought was a very intelligent arrangement. You see, if they move in the daytime the d.a.m.ned old moon won't know anything about it till it's too late and--"

"You're the first Irisher I've ever seen who wasn't superst.i.tious, Mike," broke in Fitts, with enthusiasm. "It takes a great load off my mind. Now I can ask you why the devil you've never returned that pocket-knife of mine. I thought you had some sort of superst.i.tion about it. A good many people,--really bright and otherwise intelligent people,--firmly believe it's bad luck to return anything that's been borrowed. I suppose I've owned fifty umbrellas in my time. The only man who ever returned one,--but you know what happened without my telling you. He got caught in a sudden shower on his way home from my apartment after making a special trip to return it, and died some three years later of pneumonia. Sick two days, I heard. So, as long as you're not a bit superst.i.tious about it, I'd thank you--"

"I'd have you know that I never keep anything I borrow,--that is, never more than a day. It's against my principles. Don't ask me for your dommed old knife. I lent it weeks ago to Soapy Shay."

"You did?" cried Fitts, incredulity and relief in his voice. "Much obliged. I haven't been able to look Soapy in the face for a month. Did he recognize it?"

"I think he did. He kissed it."

"Landover tried to borrow my lead pencil yesterday," remarked Flattner.

"Finally offered to put up his letter of credit as security. I gave him the laugh. That lead pencil is worth more than all the letters of credit lumped together. He wanted to write a note. So I agreed to let him use it if he wouldn't take it out of my sight and on condition that he didn't write more than five or six line's. But when he made as if he was going to sharpen it, I threatened him with an ax. Can you beat that for wastefulness? These low-down rich don't know the meaning of frugality.

Why, if I hadn't stopped him he might have whittled off five thousand dollars' worth of lead, just like that. I also had to caution him about bearing down too hard while he was writing."

"What was he wanting to write a note for?" demanded Malone. "Has he lost his voice?"

"It was a note of apology. He says he never fails to write a note of apology when he's done something he's ashamed of, or words to that effect. Lifelong practice, he says."