Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

lives. And his last words were, ‘I love you, Tom.’ Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” And with that she gave him the apron, and turned her head away to hide her tears.

Hazel blessed her for the thought, which, indeed, none but a lady would have had; and Welch and he, with the tears in their eyes, strewed the spicy leaves first; and soon a ridge of shingle neatly bound with sea-weed marked the sailor’s grave.

 

Hazel’s next care, and that a pressing one, was to provide shelter for the delicate girl and the sick man, whom circumstances had placed under his care. He told Miss Rolleston Welch and he were going to cross the bay again, and would she be good enough to meet them at the bend of the river where she would find four trees? She nodded her head and took that road accordingly. Hazel rowed eastward across the bay, and, it being now high water, he got the boat into the river itself near the edge of the shore, and, as this river had worn a channel, he contrived with the boat-hook to propel the boat up the stream, to an angle in the bank within forty yards of the four trees. He could get no farther, the stream being now not only shallow, but blocked here and there with great and rough fragments of stone. Hazel pushed the boat into the angle out of the current, and moored her fast. He and Welch then got ashore, and Miss Rolleston was standing at the four trees. He went to her and said enthusiastically, “This is to be your house. Is it not a beautiful site?”

“Yes, it is a beautiful site, but—forgive me—I really don’t see the house,” was her reply.

“But you see the framework.”

Helen looked all about, and then said, ruefully, “I suppose I am blind, sir, or else you are dreaming, for I see nothing at all.”

“Why, here’s a roof ready made, and the frame of a wall. We have only to wattle a screen between these four uprights.”

“Only to wattle a screen! But I don’t know what wattling a screen is. Who does?”

“Why, you get some of the canes that grow a little farther up the river, and a certain long wiry grass I have marked down, and then you fix and weave till you make a screen from tree to tree; this could be patched with wet clay; I know where there is plenty of that. Meantime see what is done to our hands. The crown of this great palmtree lies at the southern aperture of your house, and blocks it entirely up. That will keep off the only cold wind, the south wind, from you to-night. Then look at these long, spiky leaves interlaced over your head. (These trees are screw pines.) There is a roof ready made. You must have another roof underneath that, but it will do for a day or two.”

“But you will wattle the screen directly,” said Helen. “Begin at once, please. I am anxious to see a screen wattled.”

“Well,” said Welch, who had joined them, “landsmen are queer folk, the best of ‘em. Why, miss, it would take him a week to screen you with rushes and reeds, and them sort of weeds; and I’d do it in half an hour, if I was the Tom Welch I used to be. Why, there’s spare canvas enough in the boat to go between these four trees breast high, and then there’s the foresel besides; the mainsel is all you and me shall want, sir.”

“Oh, excuse me,” said Miss Rolleston, “I will not be sheltered at the expense of my friends.”

“Welch, you are a trump,” said Hazel, and ran off for the spare canvas. He brought it and the carpenter’s basket of tools. They went to work, and Miss Rolleston insisted on taking part in it. Finding her so disposed, Hazel said that they had better divide their labors, since the time was short. Accordingly he took the ax and chopped off a great many scales of the palmtree, and lighted a great fire between the trees, while the other two worked on the canvas.

“This is to dry the soil as well as cook our provisions,” said he; “and now I must go and find food. Is there anything you fancy?” He turned his head from the fire he was lighting and addressed this question both to Welch and Miss Rolleston.

Miss Rolleston stared at this question, then smiled, and, in the true spirit of a lady, said, “I think I should like a good large cocoanut, if you can find one.” She felt sure there was no other eatable thing in the whole island.

“I wants a cabbage,” said Welch, in a loud voice.

“Oh, Mr. Welch, we are not at home,” said Miss Rolleston, blushing at the preposterous demand.

“No, miss, in Capericorn. Whereby we shan’t have to pay nothing for this here cabbage. I’ll tell ye, miss: when a sailor comes ashore he always goes in for green vegetables, for why, he has eaten so much junk and biscuit, nature sings out for greens. Me and my shipmates was paid off at Portsmouth last year, and six of us agreed to dine together and each order his dish. Blest if six boiled legs of mutton did not come up smoking hot: three was with cabbage, and three with turmots. Mine was with turmots. But them I don’t ask, so nigh the Line. Don’t ye go to think, because I’m sick, and the lady and you is so kind to me, and to him that is a waiting outside them there shoals for me, as I’m onreasonable; turmots I wish you both, and plenty of ‘em, when some whaler gets driven out of her course and picks you up, and carries you into northern latitudes where turmots grow; but cabbage is my right, cabbage is my due, being paid off in a manner; for the ship is foundered and I’m ashore. Cabbage I ask for, as a seaman that has done his duty, and a man that won’t live to eat many more of ‘em; and” (losing his temper), “if you are the man I take you for, you’ll run and fetch me a cabbage fresh from the tree” (recovering his temper). “I know I didn’t ought to ax a parson to shin up a tree for me; but, Lord bless you, there ain’t no sarcy little boys a-looking on, and here’s a poor fellow mostly dying for it.”

Miss Rolleston looked at Mr. Hazel with alarm in every feature; and whispered, “Cabbage from the tree. Is he wandering?”

Hazel smiled. “No,” said he. “He has picked up a fable of these seas, that there is a tree which grows cabbages.”

Welch heard him and said, with due warmth, “Of course there is a tree on all these islands that grows cabbages; that was known a hundred years before you was born, and shipmates of mine have eaten them.”

“Excuse me, what those old admirals and buccaneers, that set the legend afloat, were so absurd as to call a cabbage, and your shipmates may have eaten for one, is nothing on earth but the last year’s growth of the palmtree.”

“Palmtree be –-!” said Welch; and thereupon ensued a hot argument, which Helen’s good sense cut short.

“Mr. Hazel,” said she, “can you by any possibility get our poor friend the thing he wants?”

“Oh, that is quite within the bounds of possibility,” said Hazel dryly.

“Well, then, suppose you begin by getting him the thing. Then I will boil the thing; and he will eat the thing; and after all that it will be time to argue about the name we shall give to the thing.”

The good sense of this struck Mr. Hazel forcibly. He started off at once, armed with the ax, and a net bag Welch had made since he became unfit for heavy labor. He called back to them as he went, to put the pots on.

Welch and Miss Rolleston complied; and then the sailor showed the lady how to sew sailor—wise, driving the large needle with the palm of the hand, guarded by a piece of leather. They had nailed two breadths of canvas to the trees on the north and west sides and run the breadths rapidly together; and the water was boiling and bubbling in the balers, when Miss Rolleston uttered a scream, for Hazel came running over the prostrate palmtree as if it was a proper bridge, and lighted in the midst of them.

“Lot one,” said he cheerfully, and produced from his net some limes, two cocoanuts, and a land-turtle; from this last esculent Miss Rolleston withdrew with undisguised horror, and it was in vain he assured her it was a great delicacy.

“No matter. It is a reptile. Oh, please send it away.”

“The Queen of the Island reprieves you,” said he, and put down the terrapin, which went off very leisurely for a reprieved reptile.

Then Hazel produced a fine bream, which he had found struggling in a rock-pool, the tide having turned, and three sea crayfish, bigger than any lobster. He chopped their heads off outside, and threw their tails into the pots; he stuck a piece of pointed wood through the bream, and gave it to Welch to toast; but Welch waved it aside.

“I see no cabbage,” said he, grimly.

“Oh, I forgot. But that is soon found,” said Hazel. “Here, give me the fish, and you take the saw, and examine the head of the palmtree, which lies at Miss Rolleston’s door. Saw away the succulent part of last year’s growth, and bring it here.”

Welch got up slowly.

“I’ll go with you, Mr. Welch,” said Miss Rolleston.

She will not be alone with me for a moment, if she can help it, thought Hazel, and sat moody by the fire. But he shook off his sadness, and forced on a cheerful look the moment they came back. They brought with them a vegetable very like the heart of a cabbage, only longer and whiter.

“There,” said Welch, “what d’ye call that?”

“The last year’s growth of the palm,” said Hazel calmly.

This vegetable was cut in two and put into the pots.

“There, take the toasting-fork again,” said Hazel to Welch, and drew out from his net three huge scallop shells. “Soup-plates,” said he, and washed them in the running stream, then put them before the fire to dry.

While the fish and vegetable were cooking, he went and cut off some of the leafy, piunuated branches of the palmtree, and fastened them horizontally above the strips of canvas. Each palm branch traversed a whole side of the bower. This closed the northern and western sides.

On the southern side, the prostrate palmtree, on striking the ground, had so crushed its boughs and leaves together as to make a thick wall of foliage.

Then he took to making forks; and primitive ones they were. He selected a bough the size of a thick walking-stick; sawed it off the tree; sawed a piece six inches long off it, peeled that, split it in four, and, with his knife, gave each piece three points, by merely tapering off and serrating one end; and so he made a fork a minute. Then he brought all the rugs and things from the boat, and the ground being now thoroughly dried by the fire, placed them for seats; gave each person a large leaf for a plate, besides a scallop-shell; and served out supper. It was eaten with rare appetite; the palmtree vegetable in particular was delicious, tasting between a cabbage and a cocoanut.

When they had supped, Hazel removed the plates and went to the boat. He returned, dragging the foremast and foresail, which were