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'FOOL!' I CRIED ALOUD in my vexation.
I had unloaded the boat and carried its contents high up on
the beach, where I had set about making a camp. There was driftwood,
though not much, on the beach, and the sight of a coffee-tin I
had taken from the Ghost's larder had given me the idea of a fire.
'Blithering idiot!' I was continuing.
But Maud said, 'Tut! tut!' in gentle reproval, and then asked
why I was a blithering idiot.
'No matches!' I groaned. 'Not a match did I bring! And now
we shall have no hot coffee, soup, tea, nor anything.'
'Wasn't it er- Crusoe who rubbed sticks together?' she drawled.
'But I have read the personal narratives of a score of shipwrecked
men who tried, and tried in vain,' I answered. 'I remember Winters,
a newspaper fellow with an Alaskan and Siberian reputation. Met
him at the Bibelot once, and he was telling us how he attempted
to make a fire with a couple of sticks. It was most amusing. He
told it inimitably, but it was the story of a failure. I remember
his conclusion, his black eyes flashing as he said: "Gentlemen,
the South Sea Islander may do it, the Malay may do it, but, take
my word, it's beyond the white man."'
'Oh, well, we've managed so far without it,' she said cheerfully;
'and there's no reason why we cannot still manage without it.'
'But think of the coffee!' I cried. 'It's good coffee, too.
I know; I took it from Larsen's private stores. And look at that
good wood.'
I confess that I wanted the coffee badly, and I learned not
long afterward that the berry was likewise a little weakness of
Maud's. Besides, we had been so long on a cold diet that we were
numb inside as well as out. Anything warm would have been most
gratifying. But I complained no more, and set about making a tent
of the sail for Maud.
I had looked upon it as a simple task, what with the oars,
mast, boom, and sprit, to say nothing of plenty of lines. But
as I was without experience, and as every detail was an experiment
and every successful detail an invention, the day was well gone
before her shelter was an accomplished fact. And then that night
it rained, and Maud was flooded out and driven back into the boat.
The next morning I dug a shallow ditch around the tent, and,
an hour later, a sudden gust of wind, whipping over the rocky
wall behind us, picked up the tent and smashed it down on the
sand thirty yards away.
Maud laughed at my crestfallen expression, and I said: 'As
soon as the wind abates I intend going in the boat to explore
the island. There must be a station somewhere, and men. And ships
must visit the station. Some government must protect all these
seals. But I wish to have you comfortable before I start.'
'I should like to go with you,' was all she said.
'It would be better if you remained. You have had enough of
hardship. It is a miracle that you have survived. And it won't
be comfortable in the boat, rowing and sailing in this rainy weather.
What you need is rest, and I should like you to remain and get
it.'
Something suspiciously akin to moistness dimmed her beautiful
eyes before she dropped them and partly turned away her head.
'I should prefer going with you,' she said in a low voice,
in which there was just a hint of appeal.
'I might be able to help you a-' her voice broke- 'a little.
And if anything should happen to you, think of me left here alone.'
'Oh, I intend being very careful,' I answered. 'And I shall
not go so far but what I can get back before night. Yes, all said
and done, I think it vastly better for you to remain and sleep
and rest and do nothing.'
She turned and looked me in the eyes. Her gaze was soft but
unfaltering.
'Please, please!' she said very softly.
I stiffened myself to refuse, and shook my head. Still she
waited and looked at me, I tried to word my refusal, but wavered.
I saw the glad light spring into her eyes, and knew that I had
lost. It was impossible to say no after that.
The wind died down in the afternoon, and we were prepared to
start the following morning. There was no way of penetrating the
island from our cove, for the walls rose perpendicularly from
the beach, and on each side of the cove rose from the deep water.
Morning broke dull and gray, but calm, and I was awake early
and had the boat in readiness.
'Fool! Imbecile! Yahoo!' I shouted, when I thought it was meet
to arouse Maud; but this time I shouted in merriment as I danced
about the beach, bareheaded, in mock despair.
Her head appeared under the flap of the sail.
'What now?' she asked sleepily and, withal, curiously.
'Coffee!' I cried. 'What do you say to a cup of coffee- hot
coffee, piping hot?'
'My!' she murmured, 'you startled me. And you are cruel. Here
I have been composing my soul to do without it, and here you are
vexing me with your vain suggestions.'
'Watch me,' I said.
From under clefts among the rocks I gathered a few dry sticks
and chips. These I whittled into shavings or split into kindling.
From my notebook I tore out a page, and from the ammunition-box
took a shotgun shell. Removing the wads from the latter with my
knife. I emptied the powder on a flat rock. Next I pried the primer,
or cap, from the shell, and laid it on the rock in the midst of
the scattered powder. All was ready. Maud still watched from the
tent. Holding the paper in my left hand, I smashed down upon the
cap with a rock held in my right. There was a puff of white smoke,
a burst of flame, and the rough edge of the paper was alight.
Maud clapped her hands gleefully. 'Prometheus!' she cried.
But I was far too busy to acknowledge her delight. The feeble
flame must be cherished tenderly if it were to gather strength
and live. I fed it shaving by shaving and sliver by sliver, till
at last it was snapping and crackling as it laid hold of the smaller
chips and sticks. To be cast away on an island had not entered
into my calculations, so we were without a kettle or cooking-utensils
of any sort; but I made shift with the tin used for baling the
boat, and later, as we consumed our supply of canned goods, we
accumulated quite an imposing array of cooking-vessels.
I boiled the water, but it was Maud who made the coffee. And
how good it was! My contribution was canned beef fried with crumpled
sea-biscuit and water. The breakfast was a success, and we sat
about the fire much longer than enterprising explorers should
have done, sipping the hot black coffee and talking over our situation.
I was confident that we would find a station in some one of
the coves, for I knew that the rookeries of Bering Sea were thus
guarded; but Maud advanced the theory- to prepare me for disappointment,
I do believe, if disappointment were to come- that we had discovered
an unknown rookery. She was in very good spirits, however, and
made quite merry in accepting our plight as a grave one.
'If you are right,' I said, 'then we must prepare to winter
here. Our food will not last, but there are the seals. They go
away in the fall, so I must soon begin to lay in a supply of meat.
Then there will be huts to build, and driftwood to gather. Also,
we shall try out seal fat for lighting purposes. Altogether, we'll
have our hands full if we find the island uninhabited. Which we
shall not, I know.'
But she was right. We sailed with a beam wind along the shore,
searching the coves with our glasses, and landing occasionally,
without finding a sign of human life. Yet we learned that we were
not the first that had landed on Endeavor Island. High up on the
beach of the second cove from ours, we discovered the splintered
wreck of a boat- a sealer's boat, for the rowlocks were bound
in sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side of the bow, and
in white letters was faintly visible Gazelle No. 2. The boat had
lain there for a long time, for it was half filled with sand,
and the splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to
long exposure to the elements. In the stern-sheets I found a rusty
ten-gauge shotgun and a sailor's sheath-knife broken short across
and so rusted as to be almost unrecognizable.
'They got away,' I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at
the heart and seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones
somewhere on that beach.
I did not wish Maud's spirits to be dampened by such a find,
so I turned seaward again with our boat and skirted the northeastern
point of the island. There were no beaches on the southern shore,
and by early afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed
the circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its circumference
at twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two to five miles;
while my most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two
hundred thousand seals. The island was highest at its extreme
southwestern point, the headlands and backbone diminishing regularly
until the northeastern portion was only a few feet above the sea.
With the exception of our little cove, the other beaches sloped
gently back for a distance of half a mile or so, into what I might
call rocky meadows, with here and there patches of moss and tundra
grass. Here the seals hauled out, and the old bulls guarded their
harems, while the young bulls hauled out by themselves.
This brief description is all that Endeavor Island merits.
Damp and soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm-winds
and lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with
the bellowing of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy
and miserable sojourning-place. Maud, who had prepared me for
disappointment, and who had been sprightly and vivacious all day,
broke down as we landed in our own little cove. She strove bravely
to hide it from me, but while I was kindling another fire I knew
she was stifling her sobs in the blankets under the sail-tent.
It was my turn to be cheerful, and I played the part to the
best of my ability, and with such success that I brought the laughter
back into her dear eyes and song on her lips, for she sang to
me before she went to an early bed. It was the first time I had
heard her sing, and I lay by the fire, listening and transported;
for she was nothing if not an artist in everything she did, and
her voice, though not strong, was wonderfully sweet and expressive.
I still slept in the boat, and I lay awake long that night,
gazing up at the first stars I had seen in many nights and pondering
the situation. Responsibility of this sort was a new thing to
me. Wolf Larsen had been quite right. I had stood on my father's
legs. My lawyers and agents had taken care of my money for me.
I had had no responsibilities at all. Then, on the Ghost, I had
learned to be responsible for myself. And now, for the first time
in my life, I found myself responsible for some one else. And
it was required of me that this should be the gravest of responsibilities,
for she was the one woman in the world- the one small woman, as
I loved to think of her.
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