Front matter (continued 5)

About the only thing really strong in the lives of these islanders was their curious mixture of Polynesian idolatry with degenerate recollections of Christianity. Like a half-truth, their religion in theory seemed to combine the worst elements of the savage inheritance with debased Christianity. They did not indulge in the savage rites of the South Seas, those hideous practices had been abandoned under the influence of civilization, but in theory at least the worst features of that religion persisted.

The only laws upon the island were, first, the law of ceremonial religious observances, which was as easy as it was uncomprehended, and which no one had any interest in violating; and, second, the law which made a taboo of the temple, which was infinitely more important. The more unfamiliar they were with the temple, the more dread with which they regarded it. The mysterious taboo was the most powerful thing in their lives. The temple was, as it should be, the house of their god, but there was a mixture of the stern severity of the Christian--for Christianity was held very strenuously in the days in which that Dutch ship blew to the island--and the tremendous diabolism of the Polynesian Tangaroa. The rule of that compounded god was fear-begotten, a rule of consuming fire. They had by no means learned the perfect love which would cast it out.

When Hano whispered into the ear of Kobo that the taboo had been broken, the shrine had been violated, the sacred--he did not call them books--objects, the property of the god, had been taken from the temple and made a plaything of by the stranger and Truda, the old man's soul fainted within him. So soon as he had realized the purport of Hano's excited words, he had almost collapsed. It had needed the young man's fiery urgency to awaken him to the obligation of doing something.

Just what should be done did not come to old Kobo. It would have to be debated by all the worshipers of the god--the men, that is. But one need was obvious. The blasphemer, the violator of the sanctuary, the breaker of the taboo, must be secured before he could work further mischief. Doubtless into these dark and degenerate minds had lodged the idea--among the very oldest of all religious ideas--of propitiation. They could perhaps placate the angry god and avert from themselves the consequences of his anger by punishing the man who had dared to raise his hand against divinity.

It is on record that One Who His enemies said sought to make Himself equal with God was punished by man, and perhaps for the same reason.

That idea, so agreeable to the natural man, had been strengthened by the struggle which had resulted in the binding of the criminal. Conflict always calls for punishment of the vanquished. Without shedding of blood is no remission. Battles are measured by butchers' bills, and the fact that men fight makes the butcher a welcome assistant.

The women and children of the settlement, not having been summoned to the conference of men which Hano had brought to Kobe's hut, were not fully aware of the reason for the commotion. They clustered about the door of Beekman's hut, peering within, but not daring to enter. Indeed, Hano, at Kobe's direction, drove them back with the curt statement that the men would explain to them later what was the cause of their action and what was toward.

Beekman's glances had eagerly searched the little huddle of women at the door, but he had not found Truda among them, for a very good reason. At Hano's suggestion, Kobo had bade two of the sturdier women keep Truda a close prisoner in her own hut until he should decide what was to be done with her for her participation in the dread crime.

Speaking in Dutch-Polynesian, of which he had easily learned enough for ordinary purposes, Beekman now demanded to know the meaning of the extraordinary assault upon him. The men had been consulting in low tones in the far corner of the hut. Old Kobo detached himself from the group and came forward, Hano following and standing next to him.

"You have broken the taboo. You have taken the treasures of our god. He will be angry with us. We have decided to kill you in order that he may not hurt us."

The conclusion was strictly in accord with the ancient law of self-preservation.

"If he is angry with me," said Beekman at once, perceiving the seriousness of the situation, "he will hurt me, not you. Therefore you have no reason to be afraid. Let the god himself kill me."

It was shrewdly suggested, but there was not wit enough, except perhaps in Hano, to follow the reasoning. Kobo shook his head.

"You have broken the taboo. Who breaks the taboo must die. It is the only way."

There was a simple finality about the statement of the old semi-savage which at last struck terror to Beekman's heart. His blood ran cold. He knew what atrocities were sometimes perpetrated under the name of religion in the South Seas. The situation suddenly seemed to him to be absolutely hopeless. Arguments and appeals flashed through his brain, came to his lips, yet something withheld utterance. In the first place, he was a white man and he would not beg his life of these mongrels. In the second place, the only argument he could think of had been used without effect. Then his mind flashed to Truda. Was she involved? How did these islanders learn of the theft of the books? for of course he knew instantly that was what Kobo meant. And did they know of her part in the adventure? Her absence was convincing proof that she too was suspected and in mortal peril. He must find out for sure, if possible, before anything else.

"You say that I have taken things belonging to the god?" he began.

"Yes, and broken the taboo."

"What things?"

"Things from the taboo house, that lay on the stone at the other end. I have seen them there every time I have gone in."

"And I also," said Hano.

"And we," chimed in the men.

"Where are they now?"

"Hidden in the rocks," answered Hano, "where Truda watches the rising sun."

"How do you know that?"

"I saw them there. I heard you and Truda this morning."

"Impossible!" cried Beekman. "Where were you? I looked everywhere."

"I was hidden below on the face of the rocks. There is a place there."

"I see," said Beekman. "And Truda, what of her?"

"Did she go into the temple?"

"No," said Beekman, quickly and unhesitatingly, lying like a gentleman to save her if he could. "I went alone. She was afraid. She tried to stop me. She begged me not to."

"She should have told me," said Kobo, "but because she did not go, she shall not die."

"Give her to me," cried Hano. "This stranger has cast a spell upon her."

"I shall know how to free her," said Kobo.

"Meanwhile, may I ask what death is designed for me?" asked Beekman.

"You have said it," answered Kobo gravely; "the god will determine that."

He nodded his head to the men. Six of them stepped over and picked Beekman up. They bore him out into the open enclosure. At Kobo's direction Hano summoned the women. Truda did not come, and neither were her guardians present. As those women who had been detailed to watch her were among the most prominent in the settlement, Beekman, lying on the ground with his head and shoulders against a tree, noted their absence. As the islanders assembled Kobo waved his hand for silence.

"This man," he said, not without a certain dignity, "was cast up by the sea upon our shores. We received him kindly. We gave him a house to live in. We supplied him with things to eat. He was free to come and go. In return for our welcome he has broken the taboo." A wail of horror came from one old woman. It was caught up by the others, and even the men and children joined in. It was quite evident that the crime was a real one in the eyes of the people and there would be no hesitation in the most extreme methods. "The god will be angry with us," continued Kobo when he could be heard again. "Perhaps we can please him by giving him this breaker of the taboo."

"What would you do, O Kobo?" asked one of the older women.

"Lay him as he is, bound hand and foot, in the taboo house for the god to dispose of. It wants ten days before we worship in the temple. We will leave him there during that time, bound, alone. If he is alive then we will know the god has pardoned him."

"But if he should get away?" asked one of the men.

"We will be the arms and eyes of the god. We will watch every moment the taboo house."

"And food?" asked one.

"And drink?" asked another.

"If the god wishes him to live, he will provide," said the old man simply. He signed to the bearers. "The taboo is broken, so all may come in this time."

They picked up the absolutely helpless Beekman and bore him to the temple. Kobo unbarred the door. He stood hesitating a moment on the threshold. The taboo was broken indeed, or had been, yet it was a great thing he was about to do. He could only trust to the god that he would understand. With a muttered jargon of prayer, at which the people sank shuddering to their knees, and which to Beekman was grotesquely and horribly Christian, he finally entered the building, beckoning the bearers, who followed, stepping hesitantly and fearsomely with their heavy burden. After them crowded all the rest.

"We will lay him there," said Kobo, pointing to the opening in the railing or balustrade.

He stepped forward to give direction, and as his eyes became accustomed to the dim light he discovered on the altar or table the two books that Hano had declared he had seen in the rocks. He stopped, petrified. Hano had lied. There had been no profanation of the temple. He had broken the taboo himself, and without cause. His veins turned to water within him. He staggered and would have fallen but for the strong arm of the younger man.

"There," he whispered, pointing, "the things of the gods are there. You have lied."

It was Hano's turn to be stricken with terror. Had his eyes deceived him? Could those objects have been duplicated? What mystery, what magic was here? He was younger, stronger, and the sooner realized the necessity for action.

"Out!" he cried, waving his hand.

"Shall we leave him?" asked the first bearer.

"No; bring him, and out, everybody, lest the god strike and spare not."

He suited action to word. Half carrying old Kobo, he drove the rest out of the temple. Kobo dropped on the threshold. Hano had nerve and courage to swing the door, and then he backed up against it, ashy with terror. Old Kobo rose to his feet.

"People of the island," he cried shrilly, "we have broken the taboo. Hano has spoken falsely. The things of the god are there. O Tangaroa, pardon." He bowed his head in his hands. "Woe, woe, woe!" he cried.

For a moment the islanders stood silent, and then they joined his lamentations.

"Perhaps you will release me now," said Beekman at last.

Old Kobo's hand went out to the lashing.

"Forgive me. This liar will take your place."

"Wait," said Hano, his courage coming back. "I saw the things of the god in the rocks. I heard them moving in the hands of this man and Truda. She can testify."

"Where is she?" asked Beekman.

"Let someone go for Truda. Let her be brought here," said Kobo.

One of the younger women started in the direction of Truda's hut, when, from a clump of trees to the right of the temple, around which the path ran, appeared the two women who had been appointed to watch Truda. The girl herself was between them. Each one clasped an arm. She came along the path without reluctance, her head held high. She shot a glance at her lover which reassured him. He instantly realized the explanation of the happy chance which had saved him, temporarily at least.

Truda had somehow escaped, had got the books, entered the church through the rear doorway as before, and had replaced the books on the altar. What it had cost her he could well understand. Old Kobo stared at the three in amazement.

"How did you come here?" he cried to the two women. "I told you to keep Truda in her house."

"While we watched the door, O Kobo, she escaped through the window. When we found out we searched for her."

"And then?"

"We saw her--" the woman hesitated.

"Where was she?"

"At the back of the taboo house," Answered the younger woman in awe-struck voice, "with the things of the god in her arms."

"You see," cried Hano, triumphantly, "I told you the truth. She went to the rock to fetch them. She put them back."

"How did she get in?" asked one old man.

"There is an entrance at the other end, vine-covered and forgotten," answered Kobo, his eyes sparkling. It had been shown him as a boy, and had never been used.

"What then?"

"We were afraid to follow. When she came out we seized her and brought her here."

"What have you to say, Truda?"

"It is true," answered the girl.

"What is the use of questioning Truda?" interposed Beekman, stopping the confession which trembled on her lips. "I took the books; I hid them in the rocks. Through them your God, which is my God, speaks to me. I tried to teach Truda His speech. I will teach you all if you will free me."

"Let us put him back in the taboo house," cried one of the oldest.

"Yes, that will be best," cried a second.

"Leave him with the god," urged a third.

"I, too," cried Truda; "I also--"

"Be silent!" appealed Beekman in the language they two alone understood. "If you love me, say nothing. Alive, you can help me. Dead, and we die together."

"What do you say?" asked Kobo of the men.

"I have a suggestion to make," said Hano.

"What is that?"

"You thought that my tongue was doubled, that I did not speak the truth--"

"We were wrong," said Kobo.

"Let me speak now," said Hano.

"Let us hear him," cried one after another.

"Out of the deep this man came to us. Doubtless his God brought him to our shores. Let us commit him to the deep again. Doubtless his God can take him away."

"What do you mean?"

"Let us cast him down from the cliff into the gulf below."

"That is well," said Kobo.

"It is," shouted one after another.

They loosened the lashings around Beekman's feet, lifted him up, and forced him, surrounded by the men, along the path that led to the little amphitheatre. Everybody followed. This was business of the highest importance, and until it was settled, nothing mattered. When they got to the little amphitheatre, in which all crowded who could possibly enter, the lashings around Beekman's feet were drawn tight again.

"What do you mean to do?" he asked.

"Thrust you over the cliff."

It was a fall of perhaps over five hundred feet sheer down. If he were thrown far enough he might fall into the water, but even that would kill him. In all probability he would drop to the rocks. There was that shelf of which Hano had spoken where he had concealed himself. By bending forward from his place on the brink, Beekman could see it. So could Hano.

"Not here," said the latter, "but there."

They dragged Beekman over to a spot where nothing broke the descent.

"Bring staves for all," said Kobo with obvious meaning.

All the men must join in the thrust, it seemed. It would be the only way to avert the anger of Tangaroa-God from them all. Meanwhile they laid Beekman carefully back against the rocks while some of the men ran back for long pieces of stout bamboo or cane. Their intent was evident. When the time came they would each one seize a staff and together they would thrust him over. So all would participate, and from all the vengeance of the gods would be turned away.

"Truda," began Beekman in that language which they alone understood, "there is no help for it. I must die. It is not the end I expected. I hoped to get away from the island, to take you with me, to teach you of the things that lay beyond, to make you my wife. I love you, facing death as I am I say it with all my heart. You can do nothing for me. But no matter what happens to me or what happens to you, there is another life. I have tried to tell you about it and I shall wait for you there."

"And I love you, Beek-man," answered Truda in return just as simply as he had spoken. "You know that. I would gladly give my life for yours, and I shall follow very soon. You will wait for me?"

"Stop them," said Hano at last.

"Let him talk with his God, if he will, in these last moments," answered Kobo.

"But not with Truda," persisted Hano.

"When Truda is yours you can make her forget what she had learned."

"But I will never belong to Hano," cried Truda.

With a quick movement she broke loose from the women who held her on the outskirts of the crowd. She leaped up the wall of the amphitheatre that wound around a little distance away from the rest, and there she stood poised.

"Truda," cried Beekman, who was placed where he could see her every movement, "what would you do?"

"Stop," cried the girl in the language of the island, as Hano started for her, followed by the others coming up with the staves. "Let no one come near me. Hano and Kobo, stand forth."

Such was her imperious emphasis that her command was at once obeyed. The two addressed separated themselves from the crowd, which halted, but Hano again started for the girl.

"If you come nearer, I shall leap over," she said quickly. "Stand where you are, Hano."

He stopped in the face of this threat and stood as if rooted to the spot.

"Beek-man has broken the taboo," said the girl in the deep silence. "Perhaps you do right to punish him--"

"O Truda," groaned Beekman under his breath, but if the girl heard, she made no sign.

"He came from the deep. You may return him there, but he came alive, and you must return him alive."

"What do you mean?"

"You must send him down through the place where the water falls. You must unbind him. You must give him what he brought, the sharp thing that cuts and the bright thing that strikes. You must give him food."

"But he will come back," said one.

"You can watch the place."

"We can wall it up with stones," said Kobo.

"Will you give this man life?" cried Hano.

"If you do not," continued Truda, "if you do not swear by the god to do as I say--"

"What then?"

"I will throw myself over the cliff before your eyes."

"O Truda!" exclaimed Beekman again, but in a different way, for now he understood.

Now the most determined character of them all was Hano. There was an assurance in the girl's words that carried conviction to his mind, at least. If she threw herself over the cliff, she would be hopelessly lost to him, and the fact that he could wreak vengeance on Beekman would not bring her back.

"Let it be as she says, O Kobo."

The old man was naturally inclined to mercy. The fierce passion of the morning had spent itself. The taboo had been broken, but nothing had happened. The things of the god were back in their places. Truda's suggestion might have persuaded him without the threat. But the threat had persuaded Hano.

"It shall be as you say," answered Kobo.

"Swear it," cried Truda.

"By the broken taboo, by the god whose things you have put back, by the great Tangaroa himself, I swear it," cried Kobo, turning to the others.

"We all swear."

Truda instantly stepped back from the verge.

"And you will marry me, Truda; you will be my woman?"

"We shall see as to that when you have disposed of Beekman," said the girl. "You will wait for me," she said to Beekman; "not in another life, but there." She glanced downward.

Beekman nodded. He understood.

"What do you say?" asked Hano jealously.

"I only gave him a message for his God," answered Truda.

CHAPTER XXIII

TRUDA COMES TO HIS PRISON

And thus it came about that Beekman once more found himself lying on the strand near the waterfall at the foot of the cliff in the great cup-like harbor where he had landed on the island not many months before. Although the lashings had not been cast off by those who had lowered him to the strand, yet they had been loosened in the descent, and he realized that by patient application he could presently free himself from his bonds. That, of course, was the first thing to be done.

When he had finally cast off the loose piece of coir rope, he rose to his feet and looked about him. The place was entirely familiar. It had been etched upon his consciousness in those agonized days when he had dreamed of getting to the top. There had been no change whatever. Indeed, since the blocking up of the original opening through which the Good Intent had been hurled so many years before, there had been no change, unless the slow disintegration of the rock had slightly altered the face of nature.

He had been dropped by the lowering ropes to the very spot where he had found the pineapple bedded in the sand. He had no immediate need of any such providential happening now, for behind him lay one of the cocoanut-fiber sacks or bags which had been packed full of food enough to last him for a week. Truda had insisted upon that, and they had grudgingly consented, all the women in the settlement being more or less openly on her side. But they had failed to give him either boat-hook or sheath-knife.

Beekman had no shelter, but he could get along very well without that. Here were food, water, liberty, life, within the circumscribed limits of the great cylinder. He had stepped back to the extreme edge of the stretch of sand, the tide being low, and scanned the bed of the creek up which he had once before climbed to the top. In the narrowest part he could see the natives piling up huge stones, making an impassable barricade. Of course, any considerable increase in the quantity of water flowing down would eventually roll them away. The island must have a rainy season, but unless or until it came, that wall of rock, especially if it should be guarded, as he fancied it would at first, would render ascent to the upland impossible.

There was absolutely nothing he could do. Unless help came to him from above, or from the sea, he would die of starvation eventually. He did not fear that, however, because he believed that Truda would find some means to get food to him. Indeed, going over the incidents of the afternoon, he marvelled at the resourcefulness and courage she had displayed. If it had not been for her escape from her guardians, and her replacement of the books in the temple, he would be now lying there bound hand and foot, slowly starving to death.

He knew how hard it must have been for Truda to have broken the taboo a second time, and alone. That was the first bold action which had saved him, and the second was when she had stood on the brink of the cliff and threatened to cast herself down unless he were lowered to the beach rather than thrown bodily over. And she would have done it, too, as he very well knew. That was the second time that day she had saved his life. True, she had been compelled to make some kind of a promise to marry Hano, but he knew her well enough to realize that she would never keep it. Love, such as had not been known upon that island for two hundred years of quiet mating, had entered her heart, and she was made of the stuff that would willingly die rather than profane it.

She said that she would join him on the strand, and he was confident that somehow she would, and that her presence would bring him fortune; yet, what would happen if she came? His own condition would be changed for the worse immediately, since he would have no friend above to look after his interests. It was to her influence alone that he could look for food. If she were with him, her open defiance of Kobo, Hano, and the others might, and probably would, result in the abandonment of them both. Yet, illogically, but naturally, he longed for her presence as never before. He was proud of her wit and courage, and he longed to tell her that--and other things. He did not think any of the islanders, unless it were Hano, would dare descend into the harbor, which he shrewdly suspected was as taboo as the temple. If any did come, they would have to come one by one, and he could deal with them, if necessary.

The day was almost gone. Before nightfall he was minded to do one thing. He clambered around the rocks to the outer edge of the island and stared eagerly at the barrier. Yes, there on the reef, where it had been hurled or lifted by an unusually great wave or tide coming at the same time, lay the wreck of the whaleboat. It had been firmly fixed on the jagged rocks of the barrier, and as it was just above the assault of any but the highest seas coming at the full flood of the tide, it was still in much the same condition as when he had left it some months before.

There was no way by which he could repair the boat and make it seaworthy. It was of no earthly use to him, yet the sight of it gave him strange comfort. It was something which somehow tied him to his own land and people. He waded and swam out to it and looked it over carefully, observing before he did so that the copper tanks which he had taken from the boat and put in the niche where he had slept the first night on the island, were still there and apparently in good condition. With some vague idea that it might be well if he replaced them in the boat, he swam back across the lagoon, launched the tanks, which floated, proving that they were air-tight; paddled across the lagoon a third time and set them back in their compartments. In one instance, the after end, he found this difficult as he had been compelled to break the catches aft to get it out, but at the other end, the bow compartment, he experienced no trouble. The boards had warped, but by exerting all his strength he got the clamps caught and the tanks replaced. Exactly why he did it, or what he expected from it, he could not tell, but, at any rate, it was occupation. The boat could not take anyone anywhere, but, unless the clamps broke, the tanks would keep it afloat, even if awash, if it were ever washed off that reef.

He got back to the ledge when night fell with the startling suddenness of the tropics. He had made up his mind to sleep where he had slept before: beneath the ledge; but thought better of it. He decided that he ought to be where he had been seen last in case Truda should make any effort to communicate with him. He reasoned, naturally enough, that such an effort would have to be made in the dark to avoid observation. The air at the bottom of the great cylinder, its sides rising about him like the walls of a tower, was cooler than he had been accustomed to. He emptied the mat-like sack, or basket, piling its precious contents high up on the rocks, above any possible tide, and, after he had made a very frugal meal, although he was ravenously hungry after all he had gone through, he ripped the mat apart, hollowed a place for himself in the sand, drew the mat over him and lay there thinking; and, for the first time in days, Stephanie Maynard came into his mind!

Now, there was no disloyalty to Truda in his thoughts of the other woman. He realized that he never had loved her, and he was pretty confident that she had never loved him. The marriage which had been arranged had been one of convenience, purely. He was glad that he had escaped; glad for every experience except that terrible one in the cabin of the Susquehanna. He wondered if, in her heart, Stephanie would not be glad also, and George Harnash. Little things which he had not noticed at the time bulked larger in his imagination now, and he wondered if his friend had not been more interested in his former betrothed than any one had suspected. He thought whimsically that it would be a strange thing if Stephanie and George married eventually, and then his thoughts went further.

Suppose they could prevail upon old Maynard to consent, they might come to search for him as a wedding trip on the great Maynard yacht, the Stephanie. It would be strange, he thought, lifting his head and peering seaward, to wake up some morning and find the yacht in the offing. He knew that was absurd. If he were to get off that island, it would have to be by some other means, and the possibility of escape had grown much fainter since his present misfortune. Well, whatever had been back of that shanghaiing process, and he was as bitterly resentful over it as if it had not brought him happiness, it had resulted in his meeting with the sweetest and most innocent woman on earth, whose love for him had led her to the most amazing sacrifices and exhibitions of courage.

It was a singular commentary on the man's mind that he was as bitter against the men who had shanghaied him as if only misery and sorrow had come to him. He had promised himself many a time if he ever did get free and could find out who was responsible, it would go hard with that man. He would not let the law take charge of his vengeance. He would make it a personal matter. One does not live in the forecastle of a hell-ship like the Susquehanna, where there is no law but that of force, and no right but that of the strong, without getting a new view of individual relation to individual and to the mass. Nor does one live in a tropic island with no law at all, except the taboos of vague superstition, without intensifying that personal element.

Presently, Beekman's thoughts turned to Truda. Lightly, he forgot Stephanie. All his hardships, the horrors of that forecastle, the tragedy of that cabin, even the events of the day, faded from his mind. He saw her white-skinned, golden-haired, blue-eyed and passing fair. He recalled her passionate devotion, her wit, her courage. He stared upward to the top of the cliff, cutting a black line across the stars at the place where he had seen her for the first time. He could shut his eyes and see her still. He tried it again and again, and by and by his eyes did not open. He fell sound asleep.

He was not aware that in the still watches of the night a figure bent over him. Someone knelt beside him. A listening ear was held close to him as if seeking for reassurance that he breathed, and then there was a stealthy withdrawal and the figure slipped down upon the sand and sat watching him. It was not until the sun struck through the entrance upon his face that he opened his eyes. The first object that met his vision was Truda. She was half seated, half reclining on the sand just out of touch, looking at him as she had watched throughout the night.

"Truda," he cried, raising himself at once and throwing aside the mat, "how did you come here?"

She pointed to the cliff, through which the brook plunged. He noticed a long rope hanging down, buffeted by the leaping waters into which it swayed back from time to time.

"Amazing," he cried, rising to his feet and stepping toward her.

"Do you think anything could keep me there when you were here?" said the girl, stretching out her hands to him, and then he noticed, for the first time, that her palms were cut and scratched and had been bleeding. Her knees, her feet, were in the same sorry condition. He sank down on his knees before her. He took the hands which she yielded to him without question and pressed them tenderly against his cheek.

"You have hurt yourself," he said, that petty little fact bulking larger at the moment than any other; "and for me, my poor child."

"The joy in my heart," said the girl, laying one bruised palm beneath her tender breast, "when I saw you asleep and safe here, made me forget this."

"Why didn't you wake me?" asked the man, looking up at her.

"You were so tired," said the girl, laying her other maimed hand on his head.

He could feel her wince as she did so. He had opened a cocoanut the night before. The broken shell lay at hand. He lifted her up, carried her to the bank of the brook, set her poor, torn feet in the cool water, and, with the shell, laved her hands and knees. It was all he could do. He had nothing else. Then he bent and kissed her lips, her hands, her feet. He strained her to his breast.

"You shall not walk a step or carry a thing until those precious hands and feet are well."

"They are well now since you kissed them. See, I feel no pain."

She took him in her arms, in turn. What mattered that the white hands left little blood marks on his shoulder?

"First, you must eat," said the man, "and then you must tell me how you came."

He pressed upon her the cooked food and fruit which she herself had forced the islanders to provide.

"We may not get any more when this is gone," she said.

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," he quoted recklessly; "eat now."

She did not understand, but the command was simple, and she obeyed. Whatever her lover said was right, of course.

"Now, tell me," he said, when they had stayed their hunger, "how did you come here?"

"They put me in the house with the two women to guard me after they had lowered you down here. I was to be married to Hano today. I would have died rather than that. I had told you I would join you here. I persuaded the women. They like you, Beek-man. They don't like Hano. They let me escape. I went to your house, and brought the bright-tipped staff and the thing that cuts. I crept down the brook where you had come up."

"There was no watcher?"

"Yes."

"Did he let you pass?"

"He could not help it."

"What do you mean?"

"I struck him with the staff, and--" She shuddered and hid her face in her hands.

"Don't cry over that," said the man; "in all probability you only stunned him. He will be all right by now."

"I hope so. He had done nothing to me, but if the whole island had stood in my way, I was determined to come to you."

"What then?"

"I climbed over the rock wall. At first I thought I would push it down, but it was too much for me. Besides, the stones might have fallen upon you. I had a rope with a piece of wood at the end. I fastened the wood in the rock and came down. The rope cut my hands."

"And the staff and the knife?"

"I threw them over. You will find them there."

"Wait." He ran and brought them back. "Arms," he said, shaking them exultingly before her. "With these we can defy everything."

Indeed, the boat-hook and the sheath knife would be invaluable should it come to a fight in the end.

"Yes," said Truda. "In all the days of my life there has been no anger, no bloodshed on this island; but since you came--"

"Are you sorry I came?"

"Glad. You have taught me life, love. They are worth the price we have paid."

"Always a price has to be paid for these things. Whether they are worth it or not is another matter."

The sun was well above the horizon now. Truda glanced upward, stopped, and pointed. In the ravine whence the brook fell, clustered against the wall, stood the islanders. Their cries came faintly into the vast gulf in which the two lovers stood. Their gestures of hatred and scorn were unmistakable, but they made no effort to come down. The rope was still fast. Presently, they observed it, for it was quickly drawn up, and, after a time, the islanders went away, leaving a watcher at the wall.

"This place is like the temple," said Truda; "it is taboo. I think none will come here."

"But you came."

"I would go anywhere for you," said the girl, simply.

CHAPTER XXIV

"SO FARRE, SO FAST THE EYGRE DRAVE"

There was nothing they could do to better their condition, but if there had been, it was not in Beekman's mind to attempt it then. Their near touch with death, Truda's sleepless night, the condition of her hands and feet, the nervous reaction in him, warned Beekman that no demands upon her must be made yet. He decided that they should have one day of complete and utter happiness, whatever the future held for them; so he devoted himself to her.

Again and again he bathed her hands. He tore up the tattered remains of his shirt sleeves to make bandages for her feet. He compassed her with such sweet observances as he could achieve under such conditions. He told her how he loved her. He pictured what their life beyond the seas would be when they got away. He told her that they should escape, although he had no idea how. His determination was contagious. She thought nothing could he impossible, ultimately, to this god-like creature who had come from across the seas to enlighten her as to what love really was, and she believed him.

He carried her around the broken point of rock where she had never been; he showed her the wreck of the whaleboat which had brought him there. He made her a bed for the night in the niche of rocks, facing seaward. He covered her over with the mat he had made for himself. He sat down by her side, holding tenderly the bruised palm, which really appeared to be very much better; clean flesh, such as she had, healed quickly. She went to sleep with the trustfulness of a child, yet not with the emotions of one. Indeed, her strange feelings matched his own as he sat there on the sand by the woman who was his, body and soul.

Was he minded to take her? He prayed God, as he watched through the long hours, that whether he were minded or not, he might be given strength to treat this little child of nature as he would have treated the proudest woman of his own world. Let no man think that he had an easy task, or that he passed pleasant hours. When she was sound asleep he laid her hand gently, palm upward, on the sand, and walked away, pacing up and down the strip of beach the long night through.

It was well that he remained awake, for, just before sunrise, when the short dawn had already come, happening to pass the jutting rocks around which he must go to get into the harbor, he saw the outlines of a dark figure in the gloom; seen faintly against the brighter sand, the figure of a crouching man! Something bright and slender quivered in his hand. He was peering forward eagerly. Beekman snatched the boat-hook and the knife from the sand where he had laid them and ran toward the figure. It was Hano. He rose to his feet as the American approached. He lifted his arm. Something flew through the air and cut a gash along the side of Beekman's face and then struck the rock behind him with a metallic clang, later he found it was an old Dutch knife.

The next moment the American closed with him. Hano, mad with passion, struggled desperately, but he was as a child in the hands of the white man. Beekman broke his hold and dragged the man's arms from about him, lifted him in the air, threw him headlong on the beach. He lay sprawled in a heap, motionless, stunned, apparently, his head bleeding where he had struck an outlying stone on the sand. Beekman was sorry that it had happened. He could enter so fully into the feelings of the man that he could not blame him.

He turned back and awakened Truda. He gave her the knife and boat-hook and told her to watch the prostrate man until he went around the rocks and got the ropes with which he had been bound. He did not think that Hano was likely to recover consciousness, but, nevertheless, he had never gone so fast as he did then. Lightly binding the feet and hands of the man so that he could make no further mischief, he set himself to restore him to consciousness, which he presently accomplished.

Hano would say nothing, nor would he answer questions, not even to Truda. He turned his head away, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. Otherwise, he was as silent as a stoic on the beach before them. After the two made their breakfast on the rapidly diminishing store of food, they brought a share for Hano. Beekman unbound his hands and stood over him while he ate and drank, then he lashed him again and drew him up into the niche where Truda had passed the night. Then he examined the wounded feet and hands of Truda, and found them in much better condition, but he did not allow the girl to walk over the rough and broken rocks. He picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bay, that they might have the benefit of the fresh water of the brook. Then, and not until then, did he take time to look at the sky and observe the weather, which, if he had been a more experienced sailor, he would not have deferred for so long a period.

He was alarmed beyond measure by what he saw. There was no sun visible, yet the sky did not seem heavily overcast. A strange, coppery light seemed to filter through an unusually thin but very absorbing mist that spread over the whole heavens. The sea had been very still throughout the night. Apparently, a calm had extended far and wide over the waters. There was always some slight motion on the shore, and the silken slithering of the waves on the barrier came to him very faintly. The absence of any wind at all had aroused no attention. There was no wind now, yet the surface of the deep was troubled.

After he had washed the girl's feet and hands and had set her down on the sand, his attention was attracted by a sudden resounding crash on that stretch of barrier that he could see through the entrance. It was as if some mighty heave had raised and lowered the surface of the ocean. As he stared seaward, he thought that the mist was thickening on the horizon. It was growing darker there. Indeed, on the line where the sky and sea would have met on the horizon, if he had been able to see, it was suddenly black dark. The sun was more than an hour high, he judged, although he could see nothing but the coppery light through the mist, and the mist was in rapid wraith-like motion far above his head and far beyond the reef. He could see that clearly enough, although even yet no wind came to him.

Presently, there was another of those long, swinging undulations, which broke with tremendous force on the barrier, sending a cloud of water and spray twenty feet into the air. It was uncanny. There was no cause for it. It was as if some subterranean monster had turned over in the depths and upheaved the surface. Truda joined him.

"I never saw anything like that before, and I have seen the sea ever since I was a child," she said. "The waves broke on the rocks, but not like this. It is so still. Oh, look."

Another of the great undulations struck the reef, and a gust of wind from nowhere, apparently, and gone almost as quickly as it had come, carried the spray across the lagoon and into the still harbor. They saw it patter upon the smooth surface. They marked the wide circles spread, interlace, break. It was a warning to the man, at least.

"Some terrible storm is brewing," he said. "If it equals the promise of these waves, it will flood this gulf. We must seek shelter."

Now he had marked before--indeed, in his first exploration he had essayed to get to the top by it--a broad shelf of rock fifty or more feet above the level of the sea. It was inconceivable that any tide or storm could ever reach that shelf.

"We must go there and wait," he said.

The ascent was not particularly difficult for a man alone, but burdened as he was with the girl, it was almost impossible. He carried her up in his arms as far as he could that way and then set her down.

"You can leave me here," she urged.

"Nonsense; I'll have to take you the rest of the way on my back."

So, in the old-fashioned way by which children were carried pick-a-back, her arms and legs tight around him to leave his hands free to help him climb, he scrambled up to the shelf with his burden. It took some time to get her there, and the labor was tremendous. Although there was a strange chill in the air, sweat bedewed his brow.

"It was wonderful," said the girl. "I didn't know you were so strong. No man on the island could have done that."

"Well, we shall be safe here," said Beekman. "Look yonder."

They were directly opposite the entrance. As he pointed seaward the black clouds on the horizon were torn by flashes of lightning. There was a deep sigh of wind in the air, and the next moment, with a terrific roar, the strange and terrible storm broke. Truda shrank closer to the man. She was still sufficiently a child of nature to be awed by this display of its terrible force.

"It's worse than I thought it would be," said Beekman.

They were still more or less sheltered from the wind, and conversation was not yet difficult.

"I must go down again."

"Why?"

"I forgot Hano."

"He tried to kill you."

"Yes; but he is lying there, bound hand and foot. He would have no chance at all if the water came flooding in."

"Is that the white man's way?" asked the girl.

"It is the way of the white man's God."

"Has He told you to do this?"

"I think so."

"Go, then."

He kissed her and climbed down the declivity until he reached the sand. It was already covered. The tide was at full flood and the wind was now driving into the gulf with increasing force. The barrier was a mass of white mist and spray shining eerie and ghost-like against the black horizon, torn with lightning, fast merging into the copper-misted sky above.

He must hurry. He scrambled over the rocky promontory with reckless haste. Hano was lying where he had left him. The waves were sliding over the little mound of sand into the hollow. His face was grey with terror. As Beekman bent over him with the sheath-knife, he shrieked, but what he feared did not occur. His lashings were cut. Beekman dragged him to his feet. He pointed to the sea and upward to the rocks. He took him by the hand and started to lead him, but Hano broke away and ran in the other direction. There were ledges of rock there, and, dumbly and dimly alive to the danger, he chose to go that way. Beekman followed, but he could not prevail upon the islander to go with him.

His own position was becoming precarious. The wind was beating upon him with amazing power. The waves were sweeping over the barrier as if it were not there. He must think of Truda. She would be mad with anxiety. He even feared she might attempt to descend if he did not return. He waved his hand at Hano, whom he saw climbing up the rocks, and turned back to the harbor. As he had suspected, Truda had started to come down. She stopped when he appeared, and waited until he joined her. He brought up what he could carry in his hands of the provisions which he had stored in the rock.

"I was coming for you. Where is Hano?" asked the girl as he drew himself up by her side.

"He climbed the cliff and went the other way. I tried to bring him here, for this is the better place."

"He is in the hands of his god," said the girl.

"As we are in the hands of ours," answered Beekman.

He turned toward her, and for a moment his back was to the sea.

"Look," she cried, peering over his shoulder.

He turned his head. What had happened before was child's play to what met them now.

"My God!" cried Beekman, staring into the white mist, appalled by what he saw.

A wall of water thirty feet high, although, to the man, it looked to be a hundred, was rolling in from seaward with the speed of an express train. Its top was curling, the spray whipping from it, but it was yet an unbroken mass. The thoughts of men take strange turns in such emergencies. It reminded him, for a second, of the pictures in his mother's Bible of the passage of the Red Sea, the waters a curling wall, concave over the heads of the pursuing Egyptians, about to break.

"What is it?" screamed the girl.

"A tidal wave."

The words meant nothing to her, but the voice of the man told her that there was death in the moving water.

"Whatever happens, don't let go of me," he shouted.

He stooped and kicked off his heavy shoes, clasped an arm around the girl's waist. Her arms met around his neck. He was staring seaward, ready for a plunge. Woman-like, she kissed him, and then the wave struck the island--wall of water meeting wall of rock. For a second, Beekman thought he could feel the massive cliff on which he stood quivering. The next moment the great bore tore its way into the harbor. It leaped and surged through the narrow entrance in a madly foaming, green avalanche. Constricted by the walls, it rose and rose. He had one glimpse of the mighty wave towering above his head where he stood fifty feet above the sea level, and the next moment it broke, and, with a crash like a thousand thunderbolts, fell upon them.

CHAPTER XXV

THE INDOMITABLE EGO

The crest of the wave was traveling faster than its middle section, which had been retarded by the land. That fact, and that alone, saved the lives of the two poor mites upon whom it fell, for, instead of being dashed back against the rock wall by the terrific surge of the inward sweeping sea, the wave curling above their heads struck the wall a second in advance of the great body of water. It broke, fell upon them, swept them from the shelf, plunged them into the depths with such force and violence that it was the return thrust of the water which finally caught them--the backward undertow, rather than the inward rush.

Beckman had never heard so deafening a roar in all his life. He had, on one occasion, felt a great superdreadnaught roll and quiver under the simultaneous discharge of her own principal batteries under actual service conditions. It was child's play to this. Not that he had any thought about it now. He was only conscious of the roaring in his ears, the awful pressure upon his body, as he was driven down, down, down, until it seemed as if the bowels of the earth had opened before him and swallowed him up; as if he would never be lifted again out of the great deep which had sucked him under.

He held his breath instinctively, of course, but it seemed as if his lungs and heart would burst. His whole being was merged in two frantic desires: to keep on holding his breath, and not to let go of the woman who clung to him. Mercifully, although his body had shielded hers, she had almost lost consciousness. There remained to her only the desperate instinct to cling. She twined her arms and legs about him. He drew her closer and closer, although the tremendous thrust of the sea seemed to be striving to tear them apart as well as draw them under. Thus linked into a human warp and woof, they were hurled down and down, out and out.

Just when he had come to the conclusion that further resistance was impossible, that he must breathe or die, or breathe and die, the two interwoven figures, caught in a mad whirl of the torrent, were thrown upward. Their movements were arrow-like in their swiftness; or, better, they were driven as a stone from a mighty catapult. Swimming was impossible. There was no effort that could be made. There was nothing that he or the woman could do but to cling tighter and tighter. To hold on, that was all!

Truda's grass petticoats were torn to pieces in an instant. The water, in its awful churning, stripped Beekman to his bare skin. It would have torn his shoes off if he had been wearing them. Nothing that he had ever imagined equalled the force, the pressure, the stripping, ripping suction; the driving, beating, thrusting of the sea, unless it was a full-fledged western tornado. He had met such on the plains. Of course, these comparisons did not occur to him then. All he thought of when they were thrown out of the water and into the spray-laden air, which made seeing difficult, but not impossible, was to breathe, to breathe quickly and deep so as to be prepared for the next buffet of fortune.

As soon as he struck the air he opened his eyes. They were still in the very midst of the deep, cylindrical harbor, its dark walls seen vaguely through the spray uptossed by the broken bore. His brain registered impressions almost faster than the afferent and efferent nerves could carry them. The swiftness with which the two bodies, still clinging together, were whirled about in the maelstrom caused by the introduction of these titanic forces within the narrow confines of this gulf alone kept them from sinking. Beekman could not have made a stroke for any reason. He was incapable even of movement of his own.

In the first place, he was so bruised and beaten and exhausted by the tremendous pressure of the water that every muscle was almost useless. In the second place, he could not let go of the girl, even with one arm. He had held her only by a superhuman effort of will and strength which must have been met and equalled by a similar determination on her part. Even to free one hand, meant parting. It flashed into his mind that death was at hand; that no human beings could live in such a sea; that the next second would find them cast beyond the whirling periphery of the vortex and hurled against the rocks. At least, they could, and would, die together.

Yet, Beekman suddenly became aware that the harbor entrance was wider than before. He noticed, too, that the waters appeared to be receding, although the tumult, for instance, of the rapids of the Niagara River, was as nothing to it. The next instant, as if nature had not yet exhausted her malefic powers, a second earthquake, traveling more slowly than the wave which the first shock engendered, reached the island. By chance--or was it God?--the whirling revolution of the two human beings carried them farthest from the nearer shore when this last appalling cataclysm of nature took place. The solid wall before them seemed to melt away before Beekman's eyes and dissolve into the vague mist and foam. The sight terrified him perhaps more than anything else. It benumbed his very soul. Not only had the foundations of the great deep been broken up, but the immutable hills themselves were shaking like the sea. Was it the end of the world, or only the end of Beekman and Truda?

The quivering transmitted even through the boiling water seemed to still the wave for a moment. As Beekman hung poised, almost as a soul might, 'twixt heaven and earth, the moment the mad action of the water stopped they began to sink. Then he did strike out feebly, but desperately. The girl clung to him, half senseless, a perfectly dead weight in his arms. The great wall of rock before him wavered, bent forward. It seemed to rise in the air. It slipped downward with the sound of a mighty rending. Screams as of an earth in labor pains seemed to fill his ear. He caught a glimpse of a great rift, beyond which he could see, as no mortal had ever seen before from where he floated, the palms of the upland. And then the falling rock smote the water.

Being luckily farthest away, and just opposite the entrance, the great wave which was engendered drove the two far out to sea. He had time to note, as he swept through the now strangely widened entrance, that he could not see a trace of the barrier. The water, which barely reached its highest point at the highest tide, had completely buried it. Outside the narrow, enclosed harbor, while the waves still rolled terribly, the sea was smoother. They did not break. The force of the surge which had hurled them seaward being spent, they began to sink again. The instinct of life was still present, and although every motion was anguish, Beekman thought it safe to free one hand with which he continued to strike out boldly.

His painful swimming was aimless. Indeed, it was only the result of a now unconscious determination to keep afloat as long as strength remained. He must go whither the waves carried him. By this time Truda had fainted dead away. Her grasp on his neck relaxed. She straightened out in the water. He turned her on her back, caught her long hair, which had been blown out like a flag, in his teeth and swam on.

While it would only be for a few moments, still the spirit of the race, the indomitable persistence of humanity--that quality by which at least it has some claim to be considered begot of Divinity--made him swim on, driven by wind and sea and tossed helplessly about. He set his teeth more tightly, shut his eyes, and struck out and out and out. He would not give up his own life. He would not desist from the efforts to preserve, even for a few swiftly passing instants, that life, dearer than his own, which trailed behind him as he swam.

But he reached the end of his strength. Some instinct made him open his eyes and lift his head: the old instinct to die with head up, facing the enemy; not to pass with averted countenance and in shrinking posture. Before him he saw something white. He did not know what it was, but the next moment, in the grinding sway of the sea, it struck him hard on the shoulder. He had strength enough to clutch at it ere he went down. It had struck him on the right arm, and the force of the blow had deprived him of the use of that vital member. Ordinarily, he could have swam with one arm, but not now.

As he clutched the object before him, it occurred to him that this was the end. He wished that he could have had another word with Truda; another kiss; but, to his surprise, he found that he was not sinking. To his brain came the consciousness that he was touching something familiar. He looked again. It was dancing and bobbing in the seas, but he was near enough now to recognize what brief stay Providence had thrown to his hand. It was wood, painted white. He saw the boards lap-streaked together. It presented a strangely familiar look.

Through water-filled eye gate, through numbed arm and bruised body gate, it told its story to the man's brain. That he could read the message, was an evidence of his vital force and infinite determination. A ship's boat, the forward part half under water, yet riding singularly light. He could not yet reason as to what boat it was, or how it came to be there, but the fact was indelibly impressed upon his consciousness. It meant a further respite from death; another temporary stay on their dread journey. They were not beaten yet.

His right arm was useless. He tried desperately to lift it, but could not. He thought it might have been paralyzed, but the pain, when he attempted to move it, suggested to him that it might be broken. He did not dare to let go with his left arm, and yet if he did not draw his fainting companion up on that boat, she would die. They were now surging far to sea, the reflex of the great tidal wave rolling them on.

He could turn his head and see Truda's body half buried in the water. Still holding the boat, which lay across him--he had struck it broadside--with his left hand he worked himself around till the sides running aft embraced him. He felt about with his foot and discovered at once that the after part of the boat was gone. He did not yet have wit enough to determine why the forward part of the boat floated so far out of water. At any rate, he was in a much better position for action.

Pulling and swimming, he got himself well between the two sides, with the bow directly in front of him. Then he drew himself to the right, and, although the pressure by which he held himself by hand and shoulder from washing out of the boat induced the most excruciating pain in his arm, he dared to release his grasp on the gunwale with his left hand. Still holding Truck's golden hair in his teeth, he reached out and drew her forward with his left arm. By an effort--he never knew how to account for the feat of strength--he got her to the boat; then, seizing her under the arms with his left arm, he forced her upon the bow of the boat until her head lay back upon a little flat platform, which he soon discovered was a locker, or compartment in the very eyes of the boat. Thus, himself lying across the boat, holding himself steady by the pressure of his knee and back, and the girl lying along the boat lengthwise, her head on the forward compartment, his left arm holding her, he knew he had done all that was possible. The pain in his right arm and shoulder had passed away, leaving a sort of deadness.

There was a broken thwart just back of him, and he found that he could relax his pressure a little and sink back against this jagged piece of wood without slipping into the sea. It was a good thing, he realized, for the tremendous thrust of his legs against the unsupported side of the boat might have torn apart even the frail support that was left.

In all this, Truda had, as yet, made no sign of life. He was sure that she had not been drowned. He thought the shock, and the battering, and the terror had rendered her unconscious. Whatever it was, there was nothing more that he could do except to hold on in his constricted condition and wait. He told himself a thousand times that it was useless; that it would be, perhaps, best in the end to let go, but the indomitable ego did not sanction that.

Rising and falling on the seas, he could catch glimpses of the island. It was so changed by tidal wave and earthquake that he never could have recognized it. The harbor was gone. Here and there, when they rose on the crest of a wave, he could see the barrier reef. A part of it had been torn away. Where had been a wall was a great concavity that led upward and inward. The earthquake had done that. What had it done to the people of the island? He was too far away by this time to distinguish much except the general transformation.

As they floated on, his eye, ceaselessly roving the waters, caught sight of a brown object rising and falling, tumbling and turning with the helpless look of a once living thing driven and tossed. A freak of the sea brought it nearer. Another freak of the sea turned the brown object over. He saw that it was Hano, dead. He wondered if all the other denizens of the island had met a like fate. Of course, the water could not reach them as it had reached Hano, and Beekman, and Truda, but the earthquake--then, as he speculated hazily, the sun suddenly appeared. The black bank of cloud was riven and torn. Its greater moiety drifted to leeward, driven by some strange and powerful wind of the upper air. Fortunately, where they floated there was but a gentle breeze.

The warmth, the rest, it may be, he knew not what, revived the woman. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, his left arm tightened about her. She bent to him.

"Is this another world?" she gasped brokenly.

"Not yet," answered the man.

"How did we come here?" Before he could answer, she cried, "I remember. The wave. What is this?" she asked after a time.

"A boat," he answered, and then he knew that it was the forward half of the wrecked whaleboat which had brought him to the island, had landed on the barrier, had been torn from the pinnacles of rock by the same sea that had overwhelmed them, and which had been thrust into his hand for their salvation.

"We shall die here in the water," said the girl, "but we shall die together."

The man shook his head.

"I think not. God, our God, has preserved us so far. He has given us this poor support. It can not be that this is the end."

It was almost the end of Beekman, in spite of his brave words; for, now that Truda was safe and alive, now that he had achieved the impossible, now that, by God's will and her lover's help, she had been brought through the maelstrom, he fainted dead away. His head fell back. His knees relaxed. His hand unclasped. His arm released her. But for that broken thwart, he would have slid away and out of sight. It was Truda's turn. She caught him by the shoulder. She crouched down on the forward compartment and held him until consciousness returned. When he could think coherently, he remembered how he had put the air-tight tanks back, and he blessed God for having inspired him to that, at the time, useless action. It was that air-tight compartment which held them. Truda dragged his head free of the water and held him there until he recovered his strength a little. The sharp pain in his arm, which had been numbed, helped to keep him from fainting again.

And so they drifted side by side, a naked man and woman, as they might have come from a Garden of Eden, on the poor shattered remains of a small boat, their weight keeping it awash in the long, still rolling, but gradually subsiding waves, thanking God for life, for that poor support, and for love. And by and by the night fell, and still they clung to each other, floating on calming seas, until presently the boat came to a rest beneath the tropic stars staring down upon these jettisoned inhabitants of that island paradise, these bits of human flotsam kept above the waters by love and God.

BOOK IV

"I've a neater, sweeter maiden, In a cleaner, greener land"

CHAPTER XXVI

IN DANGER ALL

It was, indeed, a solemn little group that was seated around the table in the great cabin of the Stephanie. The dominant spirit of the occasion was not the masterful financier, the brilliant young executive, or the beautiful and charming maiden. It was a grizzled veteran sailor who had called the conference in that section of the Stephanie which he rarely entered save for business purposes. The grave anxiety of Captain Weatherby's face was reflected in the faces of John Maynard, George Harnash, and Stephanie Maynard.

"And you think the yacht's condition is serious, do you?" asked Maynard.

"Just about as serious as it could be, Mr. Maynard," answered the captain.

"Yet there's not a better built ship on the seas than this," observed Harnash.

"Granted," said Captain Weatherby; "she's all that money and skill and steel and science could make her, but she's only a manufactured article, after all, and she has just bucked the biggest thing in nature. That she has come off as well as she has is a tribute to her builders."

"And to her sailing master," put in Stephanie deftly.

"If you hadn't handled her just as you did, none of us would be here now," added Harnash heartily.

"That's as may be," answered the captain modestly.

"It's the blessing of God and your own skill," commented Maynard.

But the captain went on.

"We are here, but the yacht is in bad condition. She is making water faster than the pumps can keep it down."

"Is there any immediate danger of our foundering?" asked Maynard.

"Every danger. In fact, it is certain, unless--"

The captain paused.

"Unless what?" asked the owner.

"I've sailed with you a long time, now, Mr. Maynard. I know your temper on land and sea, and that of these young people, as well. What you want is the plain, blunt truth, and you're going to get it. Unless I can beach this yacht somewhere within the next twenty-four hours, send a diver down, and, if necessary, careen her, and come at the leaks, she--"

He paused again. It was not necessary for him to go on. His meaning was obvious to all of them.

"In that case, there are always the boats," observed Harnash.

"Have you been on deck this morning, Mr. Harnash?" asked the captain.

"Yes, I have."

"How many boats did you see?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Harnash, "I forgot that."

"Of course," said the captain, smiling grimly at his own sarcasm; "and a landlubber like you, meaning no offense, sir, wouldn't be apt to notice it, but the deck has been swept clean. The bridge is still there, and the smoke stacks, but pretty much everything else is gone. There's not a boat left at the davits, and even the launch amidships is badly stove up."

"A raft?" said old Maynard.

"There's not much woodwork in this boat fit to make a raft out of, sir," answered the captain, "but I've got the men at work on the wooden fittings and doors trying to patch up something."

"Of course, we're not in any immediate danger," said Stephanie.

"Depends upon what you mean by 'immediate,' Miss Maynard. The yacht will float for twenty-four hours; perhaps thirty-six."

"Then, after that, we shall be in God's hands," said the girl quietly.

It was a platitude, of course; but, in great emergencies, humanity always resorts to platitudes. They are familiar; made to order, as it were; and resorted to as the line of least resistance. There are certain conventional expressions to which man instinctively reverts. Men exclaim, "My God!" in the crisis, even though He be none of theirs and they have not hitherto known Him.

"In His hands, Miss, and mine," said the captain steadily with the assurance of the capable and efficient.

"What else have you done or planned?" asked Maynard.

"I've searched for the leak but we cannot locate it. The hours after the tidal wave were so full that it got a start on us, but we are keeping the pumps going while working away at the raft."

"Of course; but that is a last resort."

"I'm driving the ship as hard as I can, too, sir."

"In the hope of what?"

"There's an uninhabited island to the nor'west of us; hasn't even a name that anyone recognizes. I'm heading for it."

"Can you careen the ship there?"

The captain shook his head.

"The charts say that it is completely surrounded by a barrier reef. It appears to be a volcanic rock about which the coral builders have been busy. But it is the nearest land; the only land we can possibly make in our present condition; and, at least, we won't drown on it. We can save enough from the Stephanie to support life, and I have no doubt we can find some means of getting away or communicating with other ships," continued the veteran sailor confidently, although he knew, and everyone else realized, more or less, that the chance of either was very slim.

"Well, whatever happens to us, Captain Weatherby," said Harnash, "I'll never forget my last glimpses of you on the bridge, jumping the boat at full speed into that tidal wave."

"It was our only chance, Mr. Harnash," said the captain. "If that wave had caught us broadside, or even on the quarter or astern, we would have gone down like a stone."

Indeed, no one aboard the ship would ever forget the approach of that great, roaring, thunderous tidal wave. No one would ever fail to remember how Captain Weatherby, as cool as he was at that moment in the cabin, standing on the bridge, had shifted his helm, had pointed the bows of the yacht at the rushing, whirling water, had signaled for every pound of steam, and had driven the great white ship at full speed fairly and squarely into the midst of it.

Before it broke and fell the three passengers had been ordered--yes, that is the word, ordered--below. Captain Weatherby had been prepared to detail seamen, who would have obeyed him unquestionably, to carry the great magnate who owned the ship and the other two below if they had hesitated a moment in complying with his command. He did not even stop in the emergency to put it in the form of a request or suggestion. John Maynard knew a man when he saw him, and without a moment's hesitation, he went aft and plunged below with the others, just in time, too, for the hatches to be battened down and every opening through which the water could penetrate the ship from above as tightly closed as the wit of man could devise. They would never forget, either, how they stood close together in the cabin, waiting the meeting of ship and sea.

They could not see, but they could feel the appalling shock of the bows of steel encountering the hurtling water wall. They could feel the gigantic wave break over the deck and fall crashing upon the steel ceiling over their heads. So great was the tumult, so loud the smashing falling of the water, that they did not hear the rending and tearing of the upper works of the ship, the boats carrying away, the deckhouse going adrift, and everything movable swept astern; and even the screams of some of the men, washed helplessly away, in spite of the life lines, at which they clutched frantically, were not noticed in the wild tumult of the storm.

Following the great wave came the short but terrible cyclonic disturbance, which almost completed their undoing. It was not until calmer weather supervened and the night fell that Captain Weatherby could take account of his ship and of his crew. He deemed it best to say nothing of his terrifying discoveries until the morning, but at dawn he had awakened his passengers to the melancholy conference in the cabin.

It was rare, indeed, that John Maynard found himself helpless. There were few situations to which his readiness, his resources, his inventiveness were unequal; but this was one. It was Captain Weatherby's field of action. There was nothing that Maynard could contribute, except an example of cheerful willingness to do what he was told without hesitation and without argument. It was a good lesson for the master financier, albeit the price he bade fair to pay for the learning of it might render it of little avail.

"Well, Captain Weatherby," he said, rising, "as my daughter says, we are in God's hands, and, as you justly added, in yours, too. We have every confidence in you that you will do the best for us that humanity can do under God. If it should prove of no avail, it will not be your fault. Meanwhile, this is the first chance I've had to express my admiration and gratitude. My friendship and respect you have had for a long time, but never as today." Maynard extended his hand to him.

"Mine, too," said Harnash, following the older man's example.

Stephanie, more moved than the other two, less restrained, perhaps, slipped her arm about the captain's neck and kissed him on his weather-beaten check.

"As from your daughter at home," she said.

"Here are brave hearts," said the captain, deeply touched. "Good stuff in all of you. We'll all fight harder because of this," he added.

The next moment the hatchway was darkened by one of the junior officers.

"Captain Weatherby," he began.

"What is it, Mr. Lefner?"

"We've made out the wreck of a boat adrift off the starboard bow with two people on her; one of them at least is alive, for through the glass we can see hands waved."

"Have a boat cleared away at--" He stopped. He had forgotten for the moment that there were no boats. He glanced up at the telltale compass above his head and noticed the shifting of the needle. The first officer was changing the course of the yacht to run down the wreck; that would be the only way. "We are still capable of saving life, Mr. Maynard, even though it be for a little space. Perhaps you would like to come on deck. It is safe enough now. I've rigged up a railing of life lines to take the place of those carried away."

He put his foot on the ladder and mounted to the deck, followed by the others. Harnash snatched a glass from the transom as he passed. They knew exactly where to look for the wreck. It was quite visible to the naked eyes. There were no glasses on the bridge. It had been stripped clean of everything by the wave and only stood by a miracle. The whole party moved up toward the bow of the ship and mounted the bridge. Harnash handed the glass to Captain Weatherby. He focused it and fixed his eyes on the rapidly nearing object, now directly over the bows, since the yacht's course had been changed.

"I make out two naked figures on what appears to be the fore part of a whaleboat. One of them is a woman, sir," he observed, handing the glass to Mr. Maynard, who stared and then passed it to the others standing by.

"Ropes to the starboard gangway," said Mr. Gardner, the first officer, after a word with the captain. "Mr. Gersey," he spoke to a veteran seaman, who stood forward, easily balancing himself to the roll of the ship, his arms folded. Instantly the boatswain turned and saluted. "Stand by the starboard gangway. Have some hands ready at the battens with a rope. One of those castaways doesn't look able to help himself, and we'll have to draw him aboard."

"Aye, aye, sir," he answered, turning aft to the gangway, followed by the seamen he summoned to his assistance.

Although she was already deep in the water and sluggish, the Stephanie was under complete command. Nicely steered, she passed the bit of wreck to windward and rounded to. Her engines had been stopped previously, and just as the wreck surged to the gangway she came to a rest in the gently moving sea. Gersey had sent Templin, who had proved himself one of the smartest seamen on the yacht, down the battens of the starboard gangway with a rope's end, in which a bowline had been cast. Standing on the lower batten with the water halfway up to his waist on account of the ever-deepening draught of the leaking yacht, Templin caught the surging boat by the stem and held it firmly.

The woman was sitting crouched down on the forward lockers, or what remained of them. Templin motioned her to try the battens. She shook her head and pointed to the figure of the man, who lay at her feet, his head in the very bows of the boat, his legs dragging in the water. He was alive, but apparently helpless. His face was flushed and his eyes bright with fever. Templin sensed the situation at once.

"The lady wants the man passed aboard first," he called out.

Gersey nodded. He sent another seaman down to help Templin, and although the situation was difficult, the two men worked together intelligently. They passed the bowline around the body of the man, drew it tight, and the next moment willing hands aboard ship hauled away, and while Templin bore the body out so it would not scrape along the sides of the yacht, the man was soon drawn aboard. The girl watched without a word, but in great anxiety, until this rescue had been effected. Then she strove to rise, but she had been so cramped by sitting so long in that position that she could not make it. The seamen helped her to her feet and, half carrying, half urging, they finally got her on the deck. She had no sooner set foot thereon than she collapsed and fell in a dead faint. The officers and men were crowded about the two figures near the gangway, when Maynard, Harnash, and Stephanie approached.

"Take the woman to my cabin," said Stephanie. She turned to her maid, who had also come on deck, as two of the seamen picked up the fainting castaway and bore her aft. "Celeste, you and I will look after her, with Dr. Welch's help."

"At your service, Miss Maynard," said the ship's surgeon, following her.

"Take the man aft to the spare cabin," said Maynard, as the others moved away. "Dr. Welch, you'd better examine him as soon as you can. Harnash--"

But Harnash did not hear. He was bending over the prostrate man. The man's face was covered with a thick, short, dark beard and mustache, but there was no mistaking him. Harnash had been struck by something familiar in his appearance as the wreck lay alongside, and when he bent over him on the deck he knew at once who it was, in spite of his beard.

"This is the man we have been seeking," he said to Mr. Maynard.

"Good God!" exclaimed Maynard, looking hard in turn. "Yes," he added, "it's Beekman!"

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SPEECHLESS CASTAWAYS

It was broad daylight by this time, and the high peak of the island was already visible, although low on the horizon. Ordinarily, the arrival of the castaways would have been a matter of deepest interest to Captain Weatherby, his officers and the men on the ship, but under the circumstances their presence simply meant two more persons to feed and care for. His owner could look after them. Indeed, Captain Weatherby had not left the bridge as the two had been passed aboard, and he had not heard that one of the persons he had picked up was the man for whom they had been combing the seas in an exhaustive search of every island in Polynesia.

He was engaged in the desperate task of getting the sluggish ship to the island, if possible, before she sank. The existence of that island was charted, but it was marked as uninhabited, desolate, completely encircled by a formidable reef and very dangerous. Ships avoided it, giving it a wide berth. It promised them little. Still, in their condition, perhaps a very little meant the wide difference--or is it narrow?--between life and death. A good sailor, like a good doctor, never gives up entirely until the very end. While the ship floats she has life, and while she has life there is hope; but Captain Weatherby was forced to admit to himself that the amount of hope was very small, indeed; that is, for the ship, and not much more, he feared, for her people.

Ordinarily, he could have made the run to the island in half a day. It seemed to him under present conditions he would be fortunate if he reached it by evening, and yet he must reach it before dark if he were to save the lives committed to his care and skill. To make a landing through the breakers on a reef-encircled island by means of an improvised raft would be an almost impossible task in daylight, and under the most favorable circumstances, and quite an impossible task at night in any sort of sea. Consequently, he drove the waterlogged Stephanie as fast as she could be driven in her condition, his chief engineer ably seconding him, employing every expedient to keep up steam and to increase the speed.

Weatherby was a resourceful man. He had spent some years in Cramp's shipyard in Philadelphia, after retiring from the command of great liners. The love of the sea was strong upon him, however, and he had been tempted to the easy and pleasant work of commanding the Stephanie by the munificent offers of Maynard, who, since he owned the biggest yacht afloat, was not satisfied with any but the best captain. Therefore, if Captain Weatherby could find a suitable strip of sand on which to beach the ship, if necessary to careen her, he believed that with his carefully selected force of engineers and mechanics and seamen he could stop the leak and put her in seaworthy condition again. However, that was not to be thought of. That desolate, reef-guarded island toward which they were heading was the only one they could by any possibility hope to reach, and if the charts were true, as they undoubtedly were, it would not afford any facilities whatsoever for such work as would be necessary. It never occurred to him that the earthquake which had raised the tidal wave which had wrought their undoing might have broken the barrier and have changed conditions at the island, so as to provide him with the beach he craved. He was simply going to the island, because, when the ship sank, it would at least enable them to keep alive, for a little while longer, at any rate. Consequently, he paid no attention whatever to the pair he had rescued as he put the ship on her course again.

There were plenty of people capable of looking after them better than he. Indeed, to his casual inspection they seemed to be two islanders, rather fairer of skin than those whom he knew. He wondered how they came to be where they were. He had seen that the wreck which had kept them up was part of a ship's boat and not the remains of a native vessel. It did, indeed, occur to him that possibly they might have come from that island for which he was heading, which might not be uninhabited, after all, but time would soon settle those problems. In the meantime his duty was clear.

Beekman was incapable of recognizing any one. He had been silent enough in the water, but when they got him on deck he had begun to mutter incoherently things they could not understand. Harnash, after his discovery of his identity, seemed incapable of action. The sight of his friend brought back vividly his own perfidy, and the desperate condition in which he saw Beekman to be intensified the swift and sudden recollection of his own baseness. Mr. Maynard had nothing with which to reproach himself, of course, and it was he who first recovered himself and repeated his order that Beekman should be taken to the cabin.

For a moment Harnash found himself wishing they had not found Beekman, and for a moment Maynard, in whose good graces Harnash had become more and more solidly entrenched, had the same thought; on his young subordinate's account only, of course. As the days of the cruise had passed without any tidings of the missing man, and as the possibilities of their search grew smaller and smaller, they both became resigned to and in a measure satisfied with the situation, even if Stephanie had not shared in their feelings.

Harnash had made a grievous error; he had done an unworthy thing. The consequences had been such as no one had dreamed of, but Harnash had manfully confessed and he had done his best to atone. Mr. Maynard could not be in the presence of Harnash and his daughter without realizing the depth and permanence of their devotion. It was deplorable, of course, that Beekman had been sacrificed to their happiness, but there was no use blinking the facts. Here was Beekman alive and on the ship. Maynard never dreamed but that he would at once claim Stephanie for his wife, and by putting himself in Beekman's position, Maynard could easily imagine what his feelings toward Harnash would be when he knew. Whatever happened, Beekman had to be told if he lived. It was all terribly awkward and embarrassing and quite an impossible situation.

Nor was Maynard unmindful of the fact that the naked man before him, over whom a coat had been hastily thrown, had been found adrift with a woman. He had no doubt that some irregular connection had been entered into, or some sort of relationship had grown up between the castaways. This woman was presumably a native, but that would be no ultimate barrier toward Beekman's claim to marriage with Stephanie. At any rate, the situation, which had gradually been clearing because they had not found him, became suddenly more complex than ever when they did. Both Harnash and Maynard were ashamed of their feelings, and that very shame, the personal humiliation a man experiences who has given way momentarily to unworthy thoughts or impulses, made them more resolutely determined to do everything in their power for him.

The yacht carried a surgeon, of course, who messed with the officers, and was scarcely admitted to any more social intimacy with the owner and his party than the others. Dr. Welch had met the party in the gangway, and in obedience to the suggestion from Stephanie, he had followed her into the cabin. The maid's cabin was abaft the bathroom and dressing room, which separated it from Stephanie's luxurious cabin. There was a spare berth in Celeste's cabin and there the unconscious Truda was bestowed. The doctor made a swift personal examination.

"There's nothing very much the matter with her," he said at last; "exposure, cold, lack of food or drink, prolonged nervous strain, and surprise probably account for her collapse."

He administered proper restoratives, directed that she be well rubbed down and wrapped in blankets and given suitable food and drink, and predicted that in a day or two she would be all right, which, indeed, proved to be the case.

"Remarkably light colored for a Polynesian," he observed professionally to Stephanie as he turned away to leave his patient in the care of the two women.

"Yes, and with a distinctly European cast of countenance," answered the girl.

She bent over her as the doctor left the room in obedience to a summons from Harnash that he come to the other cabin to look at the other castaway immediately.

Stephanie was the exact antithesis of Truda; dark where the other was fair, brown eyed where the other was blue eyed. To be sure, Truda's dazzling fairness had been modified by the sun under which she lived, and Stephanie's complexion was clearer, if darker, owing to her more sheltered habit of life, but Stephanie recognized to the full the extraordinary beauty of the sea nymph before her.

Truda, who had never seen so splendid a brunette, made the same unconscious acknowledgment as her civilized sister. The yacht, its sumptuous fittings, the wonderful things about her, this extraordinary being bending over her in her unusual clothes, all added to the poor little islander's dismay. Even Celeste, by no means unpleasing in her trim maid's dress, was a thing for Truda to wonder over. These were the women of that other faraway world of which Beekman had told her. It could not be that in their presence he could continue to love her, and so Truda, agonizingly jealous, was afraid. Everything was new and strange; the yacht itself, the deep throbbing of the hard-pushed engines, the very bed on which she lay, the expensive furnishings of the cabins, added to her trepidation and alarm. Save so far as mental habit and life had been altered by intercourse with Beekman and what he had taught her, she was still, in many of her instincts and habits, a savage, and a savage suddenly and with no warning introduced to the highest civilization.