His Unknown Wife - Louis Tracy (large ebook reader .TXT) 📗
- Author: Louis Tracy
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While placing this treasure-trove above high water mark they saw the two girls examining the stock of underclothes which Providence had literally provided for their needs.
“Gosh!” said Sturgess, almost reverently. “It beats me to know how a couple of delicate women could endure the hardships we have gone through.”
“But women are not delicate. I don’t understand why men invariably harbor that delusion. In passive resistance women are more steadfast, even hardier, than men. That is an essential, don’t you see? The continuance of the race depends far more on the female than on the male. Civilization tries to upset the great principles of life, but fails, luckily. Savage tribes are aware of that elementary fact. Low down in the social scale the women do all the work, while the men loaf around, and only get busy when hunting or fighting.”
“Tell you what, Alec,” said Sturgess admiringly, “once fairly started, you talk like a book.”
Such a remark could hardly fail to act as a gag on one of Maseden’s temperament. By habit a silent man, he shrank from even the semblance of loquacity. Sturgess could extract no further information from him. He in his turn soon learned to guard his tongue when the Vermonter was in the talking vein, and unconsciously pouring out the stock of knowledge and philosophy garnered during those peaceful years on the ranch.
“We had better go this way,” said Maseden, pointing towards the west. “Don’t you think it advisable to search the coast seaward? There have been three tides since the ship struck, and anything likely to come ashore should have shown up by this time.”
“Go right ahead, Alec. “What you say goes.”
Their search was fruitless. Indeed, the position in which the leather trunk was found proved that the set of the current on a rising tide was in the direction of the channel between the two small islands.
Maseden had little or no experience of the sea and its vagaries, or he would have noticed this highly significant fact, and thus saved himself and his companions much hardship and a good deal of needless risk.
Of course, he saw quickly that there was a remarkable absence of wreckage on the north side of the estuary, but he attributed it to the fury of the gale, which must have driven a great body of water far into the network of channels which stretched inland, with a resultant outpouring when the wind pressure was relaxed.
The only satisfactory outcome of a close visit to the bar was the complete vindication of their means of escape from the ledge. It would have been a sheer impossibility to round the point at or slightly above sea-level. The tides of untold ages had literally scooped a chasm out of the cliff, and perversely chosen to batter a passage through the rock rather than take the open path farther south.
They could not see the reef which had destroyed the Southern Cross. But they could hear it. Ever above the clatter of the rollers on the nearer rocks they caught the sullen roar of the outer fury.
“Let’s clear out of this,” said Sturgess suddenly. “That noise sends a chill right down my backbone.”
Maseden turned at once. In any case, they could not have remained there much longer, because the tide was on the flow, and they had yet to discover how swiftly it covered the rock paved foreshore.
They did not hurry, but kept a sharp lookout for seals, seeing several, but at a great distance. While they were yet nearly a quarter of a mile from the camping ground, from which came a pillar of smoke, showing that the fire was not being neglected, they were startled by a gunshot.
It smote the air with a sound that was all the more insistent in that it was wholly unexpected. It drove into the sea, with a loud splash, a seal close at hand which had been hidden by a rock, and even brought a pair of circling bustards from some eyrie high up on the hills.
With never a word to one another, both men began to run.
A series of reefs does not supply the best of surfaces for a sprint. Maseden slipped on a bed of seaweed and fell headlong, fortunately escaping injury. Sturgess, lighter, perhaps more adroit on his feet-it came out subsequently that he was an accomplished skater-stumbled several times, but contrived to keep going.
Thus he was the first to reach Madge Forbes, who hurried to meet them, followed by Nina, the latter walking more leisurely and carrying the rifle.
“What has happened?” gasped Sturgess. He saw that the girl was pale and frightened. She and her sister were continually looking backward, as though expecting to find they were being pursued.
“I think-it is all right-now,” she said brokenly. “Nina shot at it-the most awful monster I have ever seen.”
“Had it two legs, or four?”
Sturgess was incorrigible. Notwithstanding the start caused by the sound of the gun, he grinned. The girl turned to Nina.
“Please tell them, Nina, that we are not romancing,” she cried indignantly.
Nina handed the rifle to Maseden.
“Put this thing right,” she said coolly. “It won’t work, but I’m sure I hit the beast with the first bullet.”
Maseden pressed down the lever, and saw that a cartridge had jammed, as the extractor lever had not been jerked downward with sufficient force. He began adjusting matters with the blade of his knife.
“Were you attacked by an animal!” he inquired.
“We don’t know exactly what it was,” said Madge. “When you left us we decided to have a bath before putting on dry clothes. As our only towel was the ship’s flag, we arranged that each should rub the other dry with her hands. We had just finished dressing, and Nina had gone to pile fresh logs on the fire, when I heard a splash in the water of the creek. I looked around and saw a fearful creature, bigger than a horse, which barked at me. I shrieked, and Nina ran with the rifle. The thing barked again -it was only a few feet away-so she fired. Then we both made off.”
“You disturbed a seal, I expect.”
“No. If those were seals we saw last night, this was no seal,” said Nina decisively. “It had small, fiery eyes and long tusks. I think it had flappers, though, in place of feet, but it was enormous.”
“Sounds like a walrus,” put in Sturgess.
“There are no walruses in the South Pacific,” said Maseden. “Anyhow, now that the magazine works all right, let’s go and have a look.”
Ample corroboration of the girl’s story was soon forthcoming. The splashing of water behind the group of big rocks sheltering the pool in which they had taken their bath showed that something unusual was going on.
They all reached the spot in time to witness the last struggles of a gigantic sealion, one of the most fearsome-looking of the ocean’s many strange denizens. The shot fired by Nina Forbes had struck it fairly in the throat, inflicting a wound which speedily proved mortal.
The animal was a full-grown male, fully ten feet in length, with a neck and shoulders of huge proportions. Its tusks and bristles gave it a most menacing aspect. The wonder was not that the bathers ran, but that Nina had the courage to face such a monster.
Maseden was delighted, and patted her on the shoulder.
“Well done!” he cried. “You’ve supplied the larder with fresh meat for days. We must even try our ‘prentice hands at curing what we can’t eat to-day or tomorrow.”
The girl herself was not elated by her triumph. The water in which the sealion lay was deeply tinged with its blood, which had also bespattered the rocks.
“I have never before killed any living creature,” she said in a rather miserable tone. “Why did the stupid thing attack us? We were doing it no harm.”
Maseden laughed.
“Off you go, both of you!” he said. “C. K and I have the job of our lives now. It will be no joke disjointing this fellow with a couple of pocket-knives. But if the fact brings any consolation, I may tell you that a sealion when irritated can be a very ugly customer. Probably this one was sleeping in the sun under the lee of a rock, and you may have come unpleasantly near him without knowing it. When he awoke and saw you he was curious. Instead of slinking off, he roared at you, and might easily have killed the pair of you!”
“Can’t we help?” inquired Nina, seeing that Maseden meant to lose no time.
“No.”
“But we ought to,” she persisted. “We must get used to such work.”
“You can do something quite as serviceable by rigging a few lines on stout poles, where there is plenty of sun and air, and seeing that a big fire is kept up…. And, by the way, don’t come this way till we call you. We shan’t be presentable.”
The two disappeared without further question.
“This will be a messy undertaking,” Maseden explained to his assistant. “The best thing we can do is strip, or our clothes will be in an awful state.”
At the outset they abandoned any thought of actually dismembering the colossal carcass. They skinned it with difficulty, and then cut off the flesh in layers. After an hour’s hard endeavor they had gathered a fine store of meat, while the pelt, after being well washed in salt water, was stretched on a flat rock to dry.
They were dressing again when a new trouble arose. From out of the void had gathered a flock of vultures. These fierce, evil-looking birds were so daring in their efforts to raid the pile of meat that two actually allowed themselves to be knocked over by the staves the men carried.
Sturgess remained on guard, therefore, while Maseden took the strips and hung them on the lines the girls had already prepared.
Madge volunteered to do the cooking. She had found two flat, thin stones, somewhat resembling hard slate, and she fancied that by placing some steaks between these and covering them with glowing charcoal the trick would be achieved. As a matter of fact, she succeeded wonderfully well. Even Nina, sniffing her portion, vowed that the shooting of a sealion had its compensations.
More vultures arrived. The sealion’s bones were rapidly picked clean, but one of the men had to keep close watch all day over the curing operations.
An amusing argument arose as to the correct method of drying meat. Maseden held that he distinctly remembered reading that biltong, or South African antelope steak, was prepared by hanging the strips in the sun. The girls were positive that this would cause putrefaction, and that the meat should be placed in the shade.
As Maseden was not quite sure of his facts, he compromised as to a quarter of the supply, with the result that this smaller quantity was rendered uneatable.
The story of Alexander Selkirk has been told so often, and in so many forms, that it will not bear repeating here. During a whole fortnight these four young people devoted their wits and their muscles to the all-important task of feeding themselves and securing some means of escape into the interior. The men soon learned how to circumvent the wily seal, and thus store plenty of meat
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