Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels Part 18

"Miss Croyden," I said, "we are on an island."

"Is it inhabited?" she asked.

"Once, perhaps, but not now. It is one of the many keys of the West Indies. Here, in old buccaneering days, the pirates landed and careened their ships."

"How did they do that?" she asked, fascinated.

"I am not sure," I answered. "I think with white-wash. At any rate, they gave them a good careening. But since then these solitudes are only the home of the sea-gull, the sea-mew, and the albatross."

The girl shuddered.

"How lonely!" she said.

"Lonely or not," I said with a laugh (luckily I can speak with a laugh when I want to), "I must get to work."

I set myself to work to haul up and arrange our effects. With a few stones I made a rude table and seats. I took care to laugh and sing as much as possible while at my work. The close of the day found me still busy with my labours.

"Miss Croyden," I said, "I must now arrange a place for you to sleep."

With the aid of four stakes driven deeply into the ground and with blankets strung upon them, I managed to fashion a sort of rude tent, roofless, but otherwise quite sheltered.

"Miss Croyden," I said when all was done, "go in there."

Then, with little straps which I had fastened to the blankets, I buckled her in reverently.

"Good night, Miss Croyden," I said.

"But you," she exclaimed, "where will you sleep?"

"Oh, I?" I answered, speaking as exuberantly as I could, "I shall do very well on the ground. But be sure to call me at the slightest sound."

Then I went out and lay down in a patch of cactus plants.

I need not dwell in detail upon the busy and arduous days that followed our landing upon the island. I had much to do. Each morning I took our lat.i.tude and longitude. By this I then set my watch, cooked porridge, and picked flowers till Miss Croyden appeared.

With every day the girl came forth from her habitation as a new surprise in her radiant beauty. One morning she had bound a cl.u.s.ter of wild arbutus about her brow. Another day she had twisted a band of convolvulus around her waist. On a third she had wound herself up in a mat of bulrushes.

With her bare feet and wild bulrushes all around her, she looked as a cave woman might have looked, her eyes radiant with the Caribbean dawn.

My whole frame thrilled at the sight of her. At times it was all I could do not to tear the bulrushes off her and beat her with the heads of them. But I schooled myself to restraint, and handed her a rock to sit upon, and pa.s.sed her her porridge on the end of a shovel with the calm politeness of a friend.

Our breakfast over, my more serious labours of the day began. I busied myself with hauling rocks or boulders along the sand to build us a house against the rainy season. With some tackle from the raft I had made myself a set of harness, by means of which I hitched myself to a boulder. By getting Miss Croyden to beat me over the back with a stick, I found that I made fair progress.

But even as I worked thus for our common comfort, my mind was fiercely filled with the thought of Edith Croyden. I knew that if once the barriers broke everything would be swept away. Heaven alone knows the effort that it cost me. At times nothing but the sternest resolution could hold my fierce impulses in check. Once I came upon the girl writing in the sand with a stick. I looked to see what she had written.

I read my own name "Harold." With a wild cry I leapt into the sea and dived to the bottom of it. When I came up I was calmer. Edith came towards me; all dripping as I was, she placed her hands upon my shoulders. "How grand you are!" she said. "I am," I answered; then I added, "Miss Croyden, for Heaven's sake don't touch me on the ear. I can't stand it." I turned from her and looked out over the sea.

Presently I heard something like a groan behind me. The girl had thrown herself on the sand and was coiled up in a hoop. "Miss Croyden," I said, "for G.o.d's sake don't coil up in a hoop."

I rushed to the beach and rubbed gravel on my face.

With such activities, alternated with wild bursts of restraint, our life on the island pa.s.sed as rapidly as in a dream. Had I not taken care to notch the days upon a stick and then cover the stick with tar, I could not have known the pa.s.sage of the time. The wearing out of our clothing had threatened a serious difficulty. But by good fortune I had seen a large black and white goat wandering among the rocks and had chased it to a standstill. From its skin, leaving the fur still on, Edith had fashioned us clothes. Our boots we had replaced with alligator hide. I had, by a lucky chance, found an alligator upon the beach, and attaching a string to the fellow's neck I had led him to our camp. I had then poisoned the fellow with tinned salmon and removed his hide.

Our costume was now brought into harmony with our surroundings. For myself, garbed in goatskin with the hair outside, with alligator sandals on my feet and with whiskers at least six inches long, I have no doubt that I resembled the beau ideal of a cave man. With the open-air life a new agility seemed to have come into my limbs. With a single leap in my alligator sandals I was enabled to spring into a coco-nut tree.

As for Edith Croyden, I can only say that as she stood beside me on the beach in her suit of black goatskin (she had chosen the black spots) there were times when I felt like seizing her in the frenzy of my pa.s.sion and hurling her into the sea. Fur always acts on me just like that.

It was at the opening of the fifth week of our life upon the island that a new and more surprising turn was given to our adventure. It arose out of a certain curiosity, harmless enough, on Edith Croyden's part. "Mr.

Borus," she said one morning, "I should like so much to see the rest of our island. Can we?"

"Alas, Miss Croyden," I said, "I fear that there is but little to see.

Our island, so far as I can judge, is merely one of the uninhabited keys of the West Indies. It is nothing but rock and sand and scrub. There is no life upon it. I fear," I added, speaking as jauntily as I could, "that unless we are taken off it we are destined to stay on it."

"Still I should like to see it," she persisted.

"Come on, then," I answered, "if you are good for a climb we can take a look over the ridge of rocks where I went up on the first day."

We made our way across the sand of the beach, among the rocks and through the close matted scrub, beyond which an eminence of rugged boulders shut out the further view.

Making our way to the top of this we obtained a wide look over the sea.

The island stretched away to a considerable distance to the eastward, widening as it went, the complete view of it being shut off by similar and higher ridges of rock.

But it was the nearer view, the foreground, that at once arrested our attention. Edith seized my arm. "Look, oh, look!" she said.

Down just below us on the right hand was a similar beach to the one that we had left. A rude hut had been erected on it and various articles lay strewn about.

Seated on a rock with their backs towards us were a man and a woman. The man was dressed in goatskins, and his whiskers, so I inferred from what I could see of them from the side, were at least as exuberant as mine.

The woman was in white fur with a fillet of seaweed round her head. They were sitting close together as if in earnest colloquy.

"Cave people," whispered Edith, "aborigines of the island."

But I answered nothing. Something in the tall outline of the seated woman held my eye. A cruel presentiment stabbed me to the heart.

In my agitation my foot overset a stone, which rolled noisily down the rocks. The noise attracted the attention of the two seated below us.

They turned and looked searchingly towards the place where we were concealed. Their faces were in plain sight. As I looked at that of the woman I felt my heart cease beating and the colour leave my face.

I looked into Edith's face. It was as pale as mine.

"What does it mean?" she whispered.

"Miss Croyden," I answered, "Edith--it means this. I have never found the courage to tell you. I am a married man. The woman seated there is my wife. And I love you."

Edith put out her arms with a low cry and clasped me about the neck.

"Harold," she murmured, "my Harold."

"Have I done wrong?" I whispered.

"Only what I have done too," she answered. "I, too, am married, Harold, and the man sitting there below, John Croyden, is my husband."

With a wild cry such as a cave man might have uttered, I had leapt to my feet.