His Unknown Wife - Louis Tracy (large ebook reader .TXT) 📗

She frowned, and her eyes sparkled, but she obeyed. Sturgess, too, growled a protest.

“He ought to give me that kind of try-out,” he said. “If there’s trouble, and I go under, it won’t matter so much. But you girls can’t spare Alec. He’s worth twenty of me when it comes to a showdown.”

However, they all crossed the danger point safely, and each in turn noticed that which Maseden alone had been able to see at first that a huge buttress had fallen quite recently, probably during the preceding tide, so the whole mass might crumble into ruin at any moment. As was their way, once a danger had passed they did not discuss it again. Sturgess, of course, had something to say, though it only bore inferentially on this latest risk.

“I always had a notion that the New York Fire Department was a pretty nervy proposition, “he informed all and sundry during a halt on the only strip of open beach yet encountered in their new exploration, “but I guess I can show the chief a few fresh stunts first time I blow into headquarters on East Sixty-seventh Street.”

Sturgess’s airy references to New York were excellent tonics. He refused to regard that great city and its ordered life as dreamlike figments of the imagination. To him the flaring lights of Broadway ever glimmered above the horizon. Had he sighted the Statue of Liberty around the next bend that would mean reality;_this,_ the dreary expanse of dead hills, water and black rock, would have been the dream.

Maseden, recovering his poise, had resumed his everyday air of well-grounded optimism. At any rate, he argued, the four of them were living and uninjured. They still owned those thrice-precious cartridges, the rifle and the poncho. They had many hours of daylight before them, and would surely find drinkable water and food before dark.

Happily the weather was fine, though clouds banking up in the west told of a possible gale, which might blow itself out in a few hours, or last as many days, or weeks. In that climate there was no knowing. The almanac declared that it was high summer, yet it would be no uncommon event if a snowstorm came from the southwest and mantled all the land a foot deep.

As for their clothes being wet, these young people thought little of such a trifle. Their skins were becoming, in the expressive Indian phrase, “all face.”

So they trudged on, heading for the mouth of the defile. In the far distance they discerned the broken line of another mountainous island, the lower slopes black with forests.

“That’s a good sign, folk,” said Maseden, smiling cheerfully once more. “We’re making for a timber belt. When you come to think of it, trees simply couldn’t grow on these rocks,and the watershed seems to fall away on both sides of the gorge, which must have been cut by an earthquake.”

His eyes had been searching constantly for signs of the raft’s wreckage, but never so much as a splintered log could he see. Nina, not so preoccupied, was gazing farther afield.

Suddenly she stopped, and something in her manner arrested the others.

“I don’t think I’m mistaken,” she said, “but are not those two points the flanks of these islands?”

“There can be little doubt of that,” agreed Maseden, following her glance towards the gap some three or four miles in front. It was difficult to estimate distance accurately in that region of vast solitudes.

“Then, if that is so,” she went on in a puzzled tone, “where does the remainder of the land go to? The cliffs end not so very far away. Why don’t we see other bits sticking out?”

The underlying sense of the question was clearer than its form. For some undetermined cause the passage between the islands evidently widened considerably before it closed in at the ultimate southern exit. Hopefulness is often a close blend of curiosity and expectation. They pressed on more rapidly, eager as children to see what lay around the corner.

They were soon enlightened, and most agreeably so. They entered a spacious amphitheatre—in its way, almost a place of beauty. Not only were the hillsides clothed with pines and other trees, but, rarest sight of all along that stark coast, strips of white sand bordered the foreshore.

The tidal water, now near the lowest ebb, was placid as a lake, and on its surface disported flocks of many varieties of wild fowl. Moreover, wreckage began to line the beach at highwater mark. They found the planks and spars of many ships, some quite fresh, and evidently the remains of the Southern Cross; others weather-beaten, even crumbling with age.

Remains of the raft were discovered, and Nina shrieked with joy at sight of the ship’s flag, hardly damaged, lying on its hilliard alongside the broken topmast.

Madge claimed the most remarkable bit of flotsam-nothing less than the brandy bottle, unbroken, but nearly full of salt water, half buried in sand.

It was their only drinking utensil, and therefore prized very highly. How it had passed through the turmoil of the rapids was one of those mysteries which voyaging bottles alone can solve; and they, if sometimes eloquent of humanity’s adventures, are invariably silent as to their own.

The skins of the sealion and seals had vanished. Indeed, a very close search of a three mile semi-circular beach, conducted for reasons which shall presently appear, yielded no trace of them.

There was a dramatic fitness in thus reaching a land of plenty after enduring the horrors of the pass.

“It’s like a fairy tale,” cried Nina joyously. “This is the enchanted realm, guarded by dragons which must be slain ere the prince can enter.”

“Gosh!” grinned Sturgess, “she’s calling you a prince now, Alec. Say, Madge, can’t you invent a name for me?”

“Yes, you’re the Ugly Duckling which grew into a Swan.”

“Huh! I’ll think that over. Far be it from me, fair maid, to dispute your views as to my future plumage. Now, Alec, your turn. It’s up to you to christen Nina.”

“Cinderella, maid of all work,” said Maseden promptly. “So, let’s get busy, the lot of us. Girls, you’ll probably find an oyster-bed on that reef over there. Sturgess and I will hunt for water, and bring you a bottleful. Then we must set to work and build a shack above highwater mark before night. We’re going to stop here and launch a more navigable craft next time.”

“Your highness has forgotten one thing,” said Nina, with sudden gravity.

“What is that?”

“It is still Sunday.”

With one accord they dropped to their knees and thanked Providence for the mercy which had been shown them. Such prayers are the spontaneous tribute of the overflowing heart. They are not to be uttered aloud or recorded in the written word.

The men had no difficulty in locating a stream, owing to the “creek,” as Madge had phrased it, which marked the approach of each torrent to the sea. Here, too, were oysters in abundance. Whether or not the bivalves liked a certain admixture of fresh water and brine, their enthusiastic admirers did not know; but certainly the best-stocked beds were invariably situated near the mouth of a mountain stream.

With a plentiful supply of shaped planks, cordage, even rusty nails, they soon knocked together a low hut, not more than breast high, and closed at one end. The ship’s flag curtained off the inner section, which was allotted to the two girls, while the men could sleep, on guard, as it were, in the outer part.

As night came on they started a fire and cooked two birds of the penguin type, which allowed themselves to be chased and captured. The flesh was tough and none too well flavored,but the feasters were not hard to please. When the repast was ended, and they sat on piles of soft sand looking out over the darkening expanse of waters, for the tide was high again, Maseden electrified Sturgess by saying:

“Do you smoke, C. K.?”

“Does a duck swim?” was the prompt reply.

Maseden produced from his coat pocket a pipe and tin of tobacco.

The other eyed them with downright amazement.

“Well, can you beat it!” he cried. “What else have you got in your pocket, old scout? A bottle of rye whisky and a box of chocolates for the girls, or what?”

“I’ve reached the end of my resources now,” laughed Maseden. “I resolved to keep this small stock of tobacco till the time came when we might regard half our troubles as ended. I think we Ve reached that stage tonight. After this morning’s escape I shall never again lose hope until the light goes out forever.”

“Oh,please,don’t put it that way,“said Nina.

“I mean it as an optimist,” he exclaimed. “If I have to swim in the open sea, or am buried under a landslide, I shall still believe, while my senses last, that Providence will see me through. Do you know why? You might supply many good reasons, but not the reason. Ten minutes after we climbed under that overhanging rock,it fell. I happened to look back, and saw it collapse. None of us heard the crash, because we were close to a rather noisy rapid at the moment. But I actually saw the thing happen.”

“Why didn’t you tell us at the time?” inquired Madge.

“I thought our nervous systems, collectively, had borne enough strain just then…. Here you are, C. K. I give you first turn with the pipe.”

“Not on your life!” vowed Sturgess, flaming into volcanic energy. “If I never smoke again, I’ll not touch that pipe until you’ve gone right through a packed bowl-full.”

Maseden knew that his friend meant what he said, so filled and lighted the pipe immediately.

“It’s a moot point,” he commented philosophically, “whether you don’t enjoy smoking more in anticipation than I in actuality. I haven’t smoked now during sixteen days, and I believe I could give it up for sixteen years if need be.”

“Good gracious!” tittered Madge. “Poor C. K. will have only two years of his beloved New York.”

It was a subtle thrust. Sturgess himself was the first to see its point.

“Gosh!” he said. “S’pose we four had to live here straight on for sixteen years!”

Nina Forbes seemed to have a keener sense of the dangerous trend of such careless talk than her sister.

“I do wish you two wouldn’t babble,” she broke in sharply. “Alec is simply chock full of information. I can see it in his calculating eye. For instance-”

Maseden took the cue readily.

“For instance,” he said. “This inland lagoon explains the rush of the tide this morning. The greater part of the water which runs through the pass never goes back. It floods this immense area, is held up by the tide from the south, but goes out that way, because, by some irregular tidal action, the ebb begins in that direction. Therefore, an ideal backwash is set up, which accounts for all the wreckage strewed on the beach. Parts of ships which were lost a century ago will be stored here. The place is a maritime museum.”

“We may find a whole ship,” exclaimed Madge.

“What? After coming through the hell-gate we have left behind?”

“The bottle came through,” she persisted.

“Though it’s a black bottle it must have been white with fear many a score of times. Have you noticed the way in which the logs of our own raft were battered and bruised?… No, the way in was vile, and, I had better warn you now, the way out may be worse.”

“Oh, why?” cried both girls.

“Because of the absence of Indians. Consider what an ideal site this would be for a colony of savages. Plenty of fish, birds and oysters sand—even a