Front matter (continued 6)

"It is either the 21st or 22nd or 23rd," she said very definitely.

"You have kept count?"

"Except the time I was on the mast and before I came to life again."

"Two days probably."

"I imagined so. In that case it is the 21st."

"And we must be ready for November and bad weather. Would you sooner stop here or go back to the 'Jane and Mary'?"

"We could not be more comfortable than we are here. But I will do whatever you wish."

He glanced at her through the wreathing smoke of fire and pipe, for nothing they could do would make it all go up the chimney.

Would she say as much if he asked her more? he wondered.

Was she ready to be asked? Or was it still too soon?

If he told her all that was in his heart, would he startle her out of this most pleasant companionship?

She sat gazing quietly into the fire of scraps of old ship's timber. Those leaping tongues of blue and green and yellow and crimson flame were a never-failing joy to her. Many a curious thing had she seen in them, and thought many strange thoughts to the tune of their merry dance.

She was winsome beyond words when she sat so, with the lights and shadows playing over her face, and about the misty dark eyes in which her clear soul dwelt and shone without disguisements.

Suppose he said to her—here and now,—"Avice, dearest, do you know what you are to me? I cannot possibly tell you in words, but—do you know?..." And she said "I know,"—and said again, "I will do whatever you wish...."

Ah—God! ... If that could be he would ask no more of life.... One word from her and this bare bank would be swept with golden fires; in the twinkling of an eye it would become a Paradise for him and her to dwell in....

If he sat there looking at her it must out. He could not keep it in. And why should he? Why not tell her, here and now? ...

He got up quietly and strode out into the night. A smile hovered in the corners of her lips, as, without looking, she caught sight of his face. Then she rose also and stole out after him.

She was causing him pain when she wished him only joy. His thought, she knew, was all for her. She would think and act for them both. If he had sat there like a pent-up volcano for another second the hot lava would have come rushing out. She had felt it all in the air. Her heart too was so full of expectant joy that the tension was akin to pain.

It was very dark, with only throbbing stars in a velvet sky and the white gleam of the foam along the beach. She did not know which way he had gone, but he would come back presently, all himself again. She sank down into the side of a hummock and waited.

He came at last, slowly, heavily, with bent head.

He stopped quite close to her, where the way led to the house, and stood looking out over the darkness of the sea. Then he heaved a great sigh and turned to go back to the house.

"God!" she heard him mutter. "If I dared but tell her!"

She rose swiftly out of her form and caught him by the arm, with something between a laugh and a cry, "Tell me, then!"—and the mighty arms of his love were round her, gripping her to him till she was squeezed almost breathless.

"Avice! Avice!—and you knew! Oh, thank God for you!"

"Of course I knew," she gasped. "And I want you as much as you want me."

"Thank God for you, dearest!" he said deeply. "We will thank Him all our lives. He has given us with a full hand.... I have nothing left to ask Him ... except your fullest happiness, now and always."

"And I yours. You are my happiness. You give me Heaven."

"God requite me ten times over if ever you rue this day. I have longed for you till my heart was sick with the pain of longing——"

"Foolish! Why did you not tell me before?"

"I could not. Until I knew.... Placed as we are, you see, it felt like forcing you.... You might not have felt free to say no.... It might have put an end to all our comradeship...."

"You don't know me. I'd have said no quickly enough if I hadn't wanted you. But I do, and you make me very happy."

He led her into the house and held her there at arm's length in the firelight, as though he could hardly believe it all true, and looked deep into the dark eyes and rosy face and kissed it rosier still.

And the blue and yellow and green and crimson flames danced their merriest, as these two sat hand in hand watching them, and talking softly by snatches with long sweet silences in between.

LIII

"I was so afraid there might be some other to whom you were bound," she said, as she lay there in the firelight, with her head against his arm and his right hand smoothing her hair, that wonderful hair which had been to him as the aureole of a saint and was more to him now than all the gold in all the world.

"There is no other, my dear one. Not a soul on earth has any claim on me except that of friendship.... It was inevitable that we should both have that fear. Four months ago we did not know of one another's existence——"

"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "I wonder if we had never met if you would have found someone else——"

"Never anyone to fill my heart as you do. I cannot even imagine it."

"And if I should have found someone else?"

"That is possible, but no one who could feel for you all that I do, or could want you as much as I do. You are to me the one supreme good," and the clasp of his arm told her even more than his words.

"You do not ask me if I had any ties in the old life," she began.

"You would not be lying in my arm like this if there were. I know you too well."

"That is true and I thank you. It is good to be taken on trust. But indeed there were none. The men one met there—faugh!—they were masquers, puppets, dandies;—some had brains, but few had hearts, and they were most dreadful liars. Such talents as they possessed were devoted to finesse and intrigue, and the turning of everything to their own satisfaction and advantage."

"Thank God you are out of it all."

"Yes, I do thank God,—for the shipwreck and everything else, but chiefly that He sent you here to meet me and took that other one away."

The weather held still for a few days, and he spent them in providing for her future comfort in every way he could think of.

He chopped logs enough to last them through the winter, and piled them in stacks about the house. He got over from the ship supplies in abundance. As the result of much labour and many failures he constructed a primitive lamp out of the silver mug from which Macro used to swill his rum. He distorted a beak out of one side of it, and contrived a wick which passed through a hole in a piece of beaten copper, and if the light was not brilliant it was at all events steadier to read by than the dancing flames.

He had lighted quite by accident on Macro's hidden hoard in the hold of the 'Jane and Mary.' He was rooting in a corner there for his knife, which had worked out of its sheath at his back as he hoisted out provisions, and found it sticking point downwards in a plank. As he pulled it out, the plank gave slightly, and lifting it he found, underneath, the useless treasure.

He wanted none of it, was indeed loth to touch it, but, on consideration, took out two more silver mugs for their daily service and half a dozen gold pins and brooches for Avice's use, since she was always needing such things and regretting her lack of them.

The long spell of mild soft weather—which had come at last to have in it a sense of sickness and decay—broke up in the wildest storm they had yet seen.

The birds came whirling in in a shrieking cloud, but the wind out-shrieked them. It shrilled above their heads in a ceaseless strident scream like the yelling of souls in torment. It shook their protecting sandhills and made their house shiver right down to the buried cross-pieces of its pillars. It picked up the smaller hummocks outside and set them waltzing along the shore. It heaped a foot of new sand on their roof and sent a cartload of it down the chimney.

But their position had been well chosen. The more the sand piled on their house and against it, the tighter it became. Then the rain came down in sheets and torrents, but no drop came through, except down the chimney, and that Wulf presently plugged with a blanket and let the smoke find its way out through an inch of opened door, which he had purposely placed to leeward, as all their great storms came from the south and south-west.

But the change of atmosphere was bracing, and with solid sand under their feet, and assured of the safety of their house, they welcomed it and felt the better for it.

After the first day's confinement he must out to see, and she would not stay behind. So they rigged themselves in oldest garments and fewest possible and started out.

They were drenched to the skin in a second and whirled away like leaves the instant they forsook the cover of their hollow.

Avice was being carried bodily towards their nearest shore. He feared she would go headlong into the sea and started wildly after her. He saw her throw herself flat and grip at the sand, but she was broadside on to the merciless wind and it bowled her over and over, and rolled her along like a ball. It carried him along in ten-feet leaps. He flung himself down beside her, put his arm round her, wrenched her head to the gale, and they lay there breathless, she choking hysterically with paroxysms of laughter.

It took them an hour, crawling like moles, to get back to the shelter of the hills. He would have had her go in, but she would not hear of it. They could hear the booming thunder of the great waves on the spit even above the wind, and she must see them.

So they set off once more, flat to the sand, and worked round in time to the breast of the great hill near the fresh-water pools, and lay in it, safe from dislodgment unless the hill went too.

They could only peer through pinched eyes, and then only with their hands over them, into the teeth of that wind, but, even so, the sight was magnificent and appalling. The grim gray sky and the grim gray sea met just beyond the spit, and out of that close sky the huge gray waves burst, high as houses,—whole streets of houses rushing headlong to destruction. They curved gloriously to their fall with a glint of muddy green below and all their crests abristle with white foam-fury. Right out of the sky they came, right up to the sky they seemed to reach, flinging up at it great white spouts of spray like flouting curses, towering high above the land, crashing down upon it with a thunderous roar which thinned the voice of the wind to no more than a shrill piping.

Their own land-locked lake was lashed into fury also. The flying crests of the outer waves came rocketing over in wild white splashes. He was not sure that some of the waves themselves did not cover the spit and come roaring into it. The 'Jane and Mary' danced wildly to her cable. He wondered if it would hold. The 'Martha,' more than ever on her beam-ends, was being pounded like a drum.

"Did you feel that?" he shouted in her ear, and she nodded, with a touch of fear in her wind-blown face. For, under the impact of one vast mountainous avalanche, the very ground on which they lay seemed to shake like a jelly, and the whole island shuddered.

"It cannot wash it all away, can it?" she gasped, when they had wormed their way back to shelter.

"It never has done yet anyway," he said cheerfully, as he squeezed windy tears out of his smarting eyes. "Now, dear, change all your things at once. We are wet through to the bone."

"It was very wonderful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But I'm glad we're ashore," and she slipped away into her own room.

That was the first of the winter storms, and there were many like it. But they bore them equably. They were in splendid health, the weather at its worst was never very cold, indeed the gales were more to their taste than the smothering chill of the frequent fogs. They had all they needed,—food and fire, and light and books, a weather-tight house, and one another.

If they lacked much of what their former life had taught them to consider necessary, they had more than all that former life had given them, and they were happy.

LIV

Between the storms and fog-spells, they tramped to and fro discovering the changes wrought in their island, and many a strange thing their wanderings showed them.

One great gale which lasted a full week strewed the south-west Point with wreckage as thickly almost as the great pile beyond. Their hearts ached at thought of the still greater loss it represented, of which the proofs were never lacking. The chaotic bristle was studded with the bodies of the drowned, and the sight sent them home sorrowfully, yet marvelling the more at their own deliverance, and still more grateful for it.

"We are miracles, without a doubt," said Wulf gravely, as they went back home. "No one else gets here alive, you see.... I was the first miracle. Macro was the second," and he told her what she had not known before, how he had contrived to save the mate, and of his regret that it had not been old Jock Steele the carpenter, who would have been a blessing to them instead of a curse. "And you are the third and best miracle of all," he said, clasping her arm more tightly under his own. "God! what a difference it has made!" he said fervently. "Alone here one might go mad. In time one most certainly would. See how good a work you are accomplishing by simply remaining alive. Instead of being a melancholy madman you make me the happiest man on earth. Oh, the God-given wonder of a woman! Truly you are the greatest miracle of all, and He has been good to me."

"And to me. If you had not been here I should have been dead and we would never have met. Perhaps He sent us to one another."

"I'm sure He did, and all our lives we'll thank Him for it," and so the sight of the dead but put a keener edge on their gratitude for life and their joy in one another.

The next big storm washed the point clean again. All had gone, wreckage, bodies, everything, and the great pile beyond bristled higher than ever.

"Do you notice anything strange?" he asked her, as they stood looking out at it.

"There seems more of it."

"And not a bird to be seen. They've all gone for the winter, I expect. We shall not see them again till next year."

"I am glad. They are evil things. Our Paradise is sweeter without them," and he kissed her for the word.

The weird forces of the gales, however, afforded them many surprises.

Tramping round the further end of their lake one day, they saw changes in the great stretch of sand that ran out of sight towards the eastern point. What had been a level plain was scored and furrowed as by a mighty ploughshare. It was like a rough sea whose tumbling waves had in an instant been turned into sand—league-long grooves with high-piled ridges between, and in the hollows the watery sun glinted briefly here and there on shining white objects sticking out of the sand.

"Bones!" said Wulf in surprise, as they stood looking into the first hollow, and he jumped down and picked up a human skull.

"Horrid!" said Avice. "And there's another, and another over there. It's a regular grave-yard."

"A battle-field, I should say," as he examined them one after another. "This is very curious. This fellow was killed by a bullet through the head. Here's the hole. And this one's skull was split with an axe or a sword. This one also. I wonder what it all means...."

"Pirates and murderers. That's what they look like."

"I shouldn't wonder.... Here's an ancient cutlass."

"And what's this?"—rooting at something with her foot.... "An old pistol! ... and the hilt of another sword! ... I wonder if they were the men who lived on our ships."

"Maybe. But I think these things are older than the ships.... Why—the place is thick with them," as they wandered on. "There must be scores of them, and more still underneath the ridges, no doubt.... There was no lack of life here at one time evidently——"

"And death!"

"Yes, and death without a doubt. A good thing for us, perhaps, that customers such as these don't frequent it now."

"I'm glad we live at the other end. You haven't found any bones there, have you?"

"Not a bone! They're not very cheerful company. Let us hope the next gale will cover them up again."

Further on, in another trench, they found one side of a boat, mouldered almost into the similitude of the sand in which it had been embedded for very many years. And, further along still, Wulf thought he could make out the stark ribs of ships like those on the outer banks at their own end of the island. But they were very far away and held out no inducement to closer investigation, and Avice had had enough of such things for the time being.

There were spells of bad weather, when, for days at a time, they scarcely ventured out except to get in wood or fetch water from the pools, which always meant a thorough soaking.

But they were completely happy in one another's company, and ever more grateful for the Providence that had cast their lot together.

The days slipped by without one weary hour. Shrewder and subtler proving of hearts and temperaments could hardly be conceived. But they stood the test perfectly, never thought of it as such, found in their present estate nothing but cause for joy and deepest thankfulness.

The depth and warmth of his love for her expressed itself in most devoted service and tenderest care, and hers for him in so frank and implicit a confidence that he felt it an uplifting honour to be so favoured. Indeed the man who could have betrayed so great a trust must have been lowest of the low and basest of his kind.

"I can't help wondering sometimes whether we would have felt like this to one another if we had met in an ordinary way, outside there," she said musingly, one night, as she lay in the hollow of his arm, watching the coloured flames.

"Yes," he said emphatically. "For you laid hold of my heart as soon as I set eyes on you. It got tangled first in the meshes of your hair, and in your long eyelashes, and the thing I wanted most was to see what your eyes were like. They were wells of mystery."

"And—they were right?" she laughed softly.

"They were exactly right and just what I had hoped. Large and dark and eloquent and tender and true and——"

"Dear! dear! If I had known such an inquisition was going I should have been afraid to open them."

"Ah, you didn't know me, you see."

"I didn't know you, but I knew I was all right as soon as I saw you. I knew I could trust you.... How strange and wonderful it all was!"

LV

One strange and terrible experience they had when the winter was almost over, and it came within measurable distance of making an end of them both.

Depending on their reserve stock of flour on board the 'Jane and Mary,' they had used freely what they had on shore. When he opened the other he found to his dismay that it must have been more damaged at first than he imagined. It was nearly all mouldy and smelt badly. He had run short of tobacco also, and so decided to go over to the pile for supplies on the first possible day.

The worst of the storms seemed over. They had occasional brisk gleaming days in between times, and on one such, after seeing that Avice had all she would need in his absence, they set off along the northern shore.

She wanted to go out with him, but he dissuaded her from that. The crossing would be very different from what it was in the summer and he would not have her exposed to it. Besides, he intended to make only a short job of it, just get what he wanted, and be back almost before she knew he had gone. She was so loth to be parted from him, however, even for that short time, that she insisted on walking with him to the point and said she would sit there and wait till she saw him on his way back.

So she sat down in the sand and drew her blanket cloak about her, and watched him wade and swim and at last scramble up on to the pile. He waved his hand to her and then set to work constructing a raft as usual.

She saw him climbing to and fro among the wreckage, smashing away at casks and cases, and then, to her dismay, he and the pile and the gaunt wrecks beyond disappeared completely, wiped out by a bank of mist that had come sweeping in from the sea. The sun still shone up above, but intermittently. Dark clouds came rushing up out of the south and presently it too was hidden. The wind blew gustily and increased in violence every minute.

She wished he had not gone. She could do no good by stopping there, but she did not care to go home. Behind her, on the southern shore, the waves were beginning to break with the short harsh sounds that portended storm.

Perhaps he would leave his work and swim across. He would know she was waiting for him. She must wait till he came. She drew her blanket over her head and sat there, huddled up with her back to the wind, and hoped and prayed. For, if this sudden storm should work up into a gale and last, she would be full of fears for his safety.

Suppose he should be drowned! What that awful pile would be like in bad weather she dared not think.

She prayed wildly for his life,—"Oh God, spare him to me! He is all I have! Spare him! Have pity on us both! Spare him! Spare him!"—over and over again the same ultimate cry, for her mind was closed to every other thought but this, that the man she loved more than anything on earth was out there in peril of his life.

She stayed there, drenched by the rain and flailed by the wind, till it began to grow dark, and then she crept wearily home like a broken bird.

Grim fear gripped her heart like an icy hand, but she would not despair entirely. He was so strong and capable. He might have tried and found it impossible to get back. He might come in at any minute.

If he were here the first thing he would have told her was to change into dry clothes. She changed, and made up the fire and put on the kettle. He would be cold and hungry when he came. She must be ready for him.

Out there on the wreckage, Wulf had been so hard at work that he noticed no sign of change in the weather, till the clammy mist swept over him and blotted out everything but the box he was delving into.

The winter storms had wrought great changes in the pile. It seemed thicker and higher and more chaotic than ever, bristling with new stuff which he would have liked to investigate, in case it should contain anything that would add to Avice's comfort.

But first, to find some decent flour, and, as it happened, there seemed fewer barrels about than usual, and most of them had suffered in their rough transit. The search for a good one took time. Such as he found were gaping and he did not trouble to open them. However, he discovered one at last, opened it to make sure of the goodness of its heart and then turned to seek tobacco.

It was then that the fog swept down on him and chained him to three square feet or so of precarious foothold. Trespass beyond that limit might mean a broken limb or neck, for the surface of the pile was seamed with ragged rifts and chasms, in which the tide whuffled and growled like a wild beast anticipating food.

So he rooted away in the chest he had just smashed open, lighted on a supply of tobacco to his great satisfaction, and then sat down where he was, to wait till the fog cleared. But this, he perceived, was not one of their usual clinging fogs which enveloped one like a pall of cotton-wool. It drove on a rising wind and sped past him in dense whirling coils that made his head spin. He thought briefly of mighty spirits of the air trailing ghostly garments in rapid flight. Down below him, in the black rifts and along the sides of the pile, the water was yapping savagely, as if the wild beast would wait no longer.

When the last of the fog tore past him in tattered fragments, he found to his dismay that the sea between him and home was beyond any man's swimming,—every channel raging and foaming, and the banks between boiling furiously in the rising tide and the rush of the south-west wind. The raft he had made had already broken loose and started northwards on its own account. It went to pieces on the nearest bank, as he watched, and swept away in fragments.

There was nothing for it but waiting. So sudden a storm might pass as quickly as it had come.

For himself he had no great fears. The pile had stood a thousand storms, and worse ones than this. But he was filled with anxiety on Avice's account. She would imagine the worst when he did not come, and her suffering would be great. Thought of her troubled him infinitely more than fear for himself.

He tried hard to make her out on the beach, though how to reassure her he did not know. But the sky was overcast and the atmosphere murky with sweeping showers, and he could not even see the point.

He was wet through with his swim, and the wind, though not cold in itself, was so strong that it chilled him. He searched about for shelter, and coming on a huge case which presented a solid back to the weather, he stove in the front and found it contained fine lace curtains. He hauled out a sufficiency, which the wind whisked playfully away. Then he crept into their place, grateful for so much, and lay and watched the strange writhings and contortions of the pile under the impact of the gale and the rising tide.

The wind would go down with the tide probably, and then he would make another raft and get home as quickly as he could with his flour. For, great as Avice's anxiety would certainly be, they were still short of flour, and it would be better to take it with him than to have to come back for it. The wreck-pile in a gale was a decidedly unpleasant experience, and its behaviour most extraordinary. He had never imagined a dead conglomeration such as that capable of such antics. When the tide was at its height the whole mass writhed and shuddered through all its length and breadth like some great monster in its death agonies. The rifts and chasms gaped and closed like grim black wounds or hungry mouths. Strange and awesome sounds broke out all about, groanings and creakings, ragged rendings and grindings, as the component pieces lifted and settled regardless of their neighbours. When the tide went down it was more at ease, and the only sounds were the waves snapping at the sides and gurgling and rushing in the depths below.

He did not find it very cold. Sheltered from the wind, the heat of his body in time made a warm nook round him in the heart of the curtains. But he was never dry. And before it got too dark, when he saw it would be impossible to get away that night, he crept out and crawled precariously to and fro till he lighted on a small cask of rum. He carried it to his shelter, knocking in the head with his axe, and it kept his blood warm through the night. But it was a terribly long night, chiefly because he was thinking all through it of Avice, and her fears for him, and her suffering.

To his bitter disappointment, morning showed no signs of abatement or relief. It brought another wild gray day without a glimmer of hope in the sky.

He had eaten nothing for more than twenty hours and was feeling empty and ravenous. The tide had risen and gone down again in the night. Before the pile began its writhings and contortions again he must eat. So he crept out and foraged till he found a barrel of pork, and bashed it open and carried back to his nest a big chunk which he ate raw and washed down with rum.

All that day the gale held. He hardly dared to think of Avice and yet could think of nothing else. At times, under the impulse of his fears for her, he was tempted to leap into the sea and try to battle through to the point. But when he studied the chances of it, common sense prevailed. Adventure into those boiling currents meant death as surely as if he cut his throat on the pile.

If he could only let her know that he was alive.... If he had had his flint and steel he would have tried to set something on fire—even if it were his nest—on the chance of her seeing the smoke and understanding it. He searched eagerly for another tinder-box, but could not light on one.

It was an anxious and gloomy man that crept into the heart of the curtain-case that night; but he slept, in a way and brokenly, in spite of it all, for Nature knows man's limits, and when he goes beyond them she steps in at times and takes command.

LVI

To Avice, also, that first night was one long horror.

She made up the fire and sat waiting for him to come. He would know in what a state of despair she would be and he would certainly come. She was sure he would come—if he could. If he did not it was because he could not. And ... if he could not....

The wind shrilled eerily outside. It sounded cold and heartless ... pitiless ... like messages from the dead ... warnings of evil. It got on her nerves and set her shivering. She crept to her room at last and dropped hopelessly on to her bed, and lay there sorely stricken.

In the gray of the morning she ate mechanically, and hurried away to the point for sign or sight of him. But it was all she could do to make out the pile itself, like a bristling rampart in the dull dim distance. As to distinguishing anything on it, that was out of the question.

She wandered about there all day long, with her eyes strained on the pile like one bereft, and only crept back when night shut it out and drove her home.

She was satisfied in her own mind now that he was dead. If he had been alive he would certainly have come. Well, she would not be long in following him.... Without him she had no desire to live ... even if she could struggle on alone, which was very doubtful ... better to join him quickly than to drag on miserably all by herself on that lonely bank, and go crazy in the end.

She sobbed herself asleep, her last wish that she might never waken. She had eaten nothing since the morning, and then only a hasty scrap that had no taste in it. The fire had gone out.... It did not matter. She would go out herself as soon as might be.... A woful end to all their golden hopes and happiness.

Morning found her still lying spent and hopeless on her bed, comatose, neither asleep nor awake, simply careless of life and even of the fact that the wind had fallen at midnight and that the new day had broken soft and clear.

Then, in her dream-weariness, she heard a voice in the outer room—or thought she did—but all her senses were dulled except the sense of loss and heartache. People, she knew, heard voices when they were going to die.

"Avice!"—the voice of God calling her—the sweet voice of death. She was ready to go.

"Avice! Where are you?"—and a tapping on the wall of her room.

How like Wulfrey's voice! Perhaps he was permitted to be the messenger,—a gracious thought—a joyful thought.

She rose painfully, stiff with weakness and long lying, stumbled to the doorway, stood leaning her hands against the sides, and peered, white-faced and awe-stricken, through the curtains into the room. Then, with a broken cry, she threw up her hands and fell forward into Wulf's arms.

When she came to herself she was lying on a blanket outside the house and he was bathing her forehead and kissing her. She lay looking up at him in wonder, out of eyes almost lost in the mists and darkness of her suffering. She raised a hand and touched his face.

"Are you real? Are you alive?" she whispered doubtfully.

He proved it with hot kisses. His eyes swam with pity for her sufferings. Her face and eyes told him all the story.

"By God's mercy we are both alive, dear. It might have been otherwise.... You have suffered sorely."

"I thought you were sent for me ... the angel of Death. And it was so good of them to send you and not a stranger.... But it is better to have you alive," and happy tears welled weakly out of her eyes and rolled down the white cheeks.

"I believe you have eaten nothing since I went. Lie still and I will get you something," and he jumped up and went inside, lighted the fire quickly, and presently was sitting by her side, feeding her with warm rum and water, for she was icy cold, and some bits of the cakes she had made three days before.

"You ought not to have starved yourself like that," he remonstrated.

"I was sure you were dead and I had no wish to live.... You will never go out there again...."

"Not in the break of a storm anyway. We must go to the storehouse sometimes, but we'll make sure of our weather in future."

"I wouldn't have minded if I'd been with you."

"I would. It was ghastly out there in the night," and he told her how he had lived in the big case of curtains, and how the pile heaved and writhed like a wounded sea-serpent under the tide and the gale. And how he had brought back some flour after all, though it had been no easy job as there was no wind to help him.

"It is dear flour," she said. "It nearly cost us our lives. I would sooner live on raw meat another time."

LVII

That was their sorest trial of the winter. Often, over the fire of a night, they talked of it and told one another all there was to tell of their feelings and their fears, and their love burned the brighter for its tempering.

But Avice was soon herself again, and as the Spring quickened all about and in them, the bitterness of the experience gradually faded out of their recollection and only the brightness was left.

And then there was so much to interest one everywhere that the days were hardly long enough for all there was to see and do.

First, seals—mothers and babies galore. Those sandy beaches of the northern coast seemed a favourite basking place and nursery, and Avice could creep along behind the sandhills, and crawl up among the wire-grass, and peep over, and she never tired of watching them. There was something so human in the way the babies snuggled up to their mothers when they were hungry, and still more in the way the mothers looked down at their nurslings.

And the baby-rabbits. They were almost as entrancing as the seals, but far shyer and more difficult to spy upon.

For the simple lifting of a head among the sparse tufts of grass set the hollow below alive with tiny bobbing white scuts, whose terrified owners tumbled over one another in their anxiety to get below ground. Avice would not hear of rabbit-meat in those days. She said the very thought of it made her feel like a cannibal.

And lastly,—birds. They were coming back in flights. The eastern point seemed their chosen ground, but closer at hand stray families were found, and importunate babies were being fed by the cold-eyed mothers with whom, a few months later, they would be waging the fierce battle for food. But Avice never took to the birds as she did to the seals and rabbits. She could never forget what they would grow into—brigands and fighters and cold-blooded raucous screamers at all times.

Now and again they lived on the 'Jane and Mary' for a week by way of a change, and fish was always obtainable whether they were afloat or ashore.

The clear fire of their love waxed ever stronger, devoured the days and weeks and months, and refined and fused them all into golden memories without one smallest speck of alloy. More devoted lover never woman had, nor man a sweeter mistress. Never was princess of the blood—without a bar across her scutcheon—held in loftier esteem or shown it more gallantly. Never, in word or act, did he offend her sense of right in the smallest degree; yet she could set his heart leaping and his blood racing by a touch—and she knew it.

Sometime,—when he believed it right—she knew he would ask more of her. It was inevitable. She had known it from the beginning. And she had no fear of it. Love such as theirs knows nothing of fear.

They were not playing at love. They loved with all the white fire of passionate devotion which loses sight of self in the one beloved. For better, for worse; in life, in death, she was wholly his. With the ardour of the Spring in her blood, and the love-light in her eyes, she waited for him to speak.

LVIII

Time came when, according to her calendar, he had been there full twelve months and she just about nine. And as to prospect of escape, or further addition to their company, they were in exactly the same position as when they came.

Whenever they discussed that matter, she said, "Still, I came ashore alive."

And he always said, "You were the miracle. Besides you were nine-tenths dead."

She wondered when he would ask the next step of her, and how he would do it. Her answer was ready—herself. Still, something of extra fragrance—something ineffably sweet and delicate—would cling to it for ever, or be for ever just that much lacking, according to the manner of his asking.

But she believed his great love would choose the proper chord and strike it with strong and gentle fingers.

And it did.

They were sitting in the firelight one night, when a more than usually pregnant silence fell on them. The depth of their feeling for one another expressed itself not infrequently in these long delicious pauses in their talk, when that which was in them was all too sacred for words. Her Northern blood, of which she was proud, prevailed as a rule over the Gallic strain, which she held in light esteem, and made for undemonstrativeness in any outward display of feeling. But she felt to the depths, and when she did permit the brakes to slip, the wheels struck sparks.

He also was more doer than talker. Hence those long sweet silences, when she lay with her head in his arm in the coloured firelight, and the gentle play of his hand on her hair was more to them both than all the words in the world.

But this night there was more in the silences that fell on them. In both their hearts the high-charged thoughts and feelings of many months were converging to a point. The quickening of the Spring was in their blood.

His hand slipped suddenly down from her hair and clasped on both of hers where they lay in her lap. His voice as he spoke was deep with emotion. It thrilled her to the depths. She felt the hot pulses in his hand leaping and throbbing. His words were very simple, as became a matter so vital. Deepest feeling needs no garnishment.

"Dearest, you have honoured me with your trust and love"—— Her hands turned and clasped his fervently.

"Every hair of your head is precious to me. I would not knowingly offend your feelings in any smallest thing.... We are here, cut off from our kind, it may be, for ever.... We are as alone here with God, as Adam and Eve were in The Garden.... You make my Paradise. You can perfect it.... Will you?..."

And for answer she put up her arms, and drew down his face, and kissed him passionately, and clung to him as if she would never let him go.

"I thank God for so precious a gift," he said, clasping her to him so that she felt his heart pounding inside as furiously as her own.

"Heart ... soul ... body ... all yours!" she whispered, and he kissed her hair, because her face was hidden, and clasped her closer still.

"It is the ordained crown of our love," he said presently, when their first blinding whirl of emotion was over. "I cannot see that we offend any law of man's, for here we are beyond the law. God's law we are surely keeping.... And, so as not to act on simple impulse I have thought that we would let another month go by before..." and he kissed her rosy face again.

"But why?"

"Perhaps you have not thought it all out as I have——"

"But I have ... I knew it must be so...." and the joy in him was very great.

"All the same, dear, we will not enter into that high estate without your very fullest consideration.... And if you should find any reason or instinct against it I shall abide by your decision."

"I am all yours. I shall not change."

"From what the mate said I imagine this island may pertain to Nova Scotia. It is possible that Scottish law runs there.... We can take one another for man and wife and place it on record...."

"How?"

"We have books with fly-leaves. Among the sand-hills you will find all the quills you want. The birds are some use after all.... Anyone can make a pen ... and ink we can always get even though it is red.... All we need for a good Scots marriage is a pair of witnesses."

"Seals, rabbits, birds...."

"They cannot testify.... All we can do," he said thoughtfully, "if, by God's mercy, we ever leave this place is to regularise ourselves by proper marriage ashore as soon as we land. But the prospects of getting away seem very small, I'm afraid."

"We have been very happy here. We can still be very happy here," she said contentedly.

So amazing is this great power of Love in covering all deficiencies of outward circumstance.

LIX

The days slipped past, and each day he watched her quietly for slightest sign of compunction, or retraction. And if such had come to her, sore though he might have felt, and bereaved of the perfect unfolding of the fair flower of their love, he would have choked the feeling down, trampled on it, buried it so that she would have seen no sign of it in him. For he recognised to the fullest what a mighty thing this was that he was asking of her.

But she understood him perfectly, fathomed his fears, was on the look-out for his quietly-questioning looks, and met them with clear full-eyed serenity and a face rosy at times with anticipation.

"You need not fear for me," she laughed softly, one night as she lay in his arm before the fire. "I shall not change."

He clasped her closer. "I could not blame you if you did. From every worldly point of view you would be right——"

"What have we to do with worldly points of view? We are out of it all. We are here alone, and like to be. And we are doing right in our own eyes."

"I would risk my soul on what seems right to these pure eyes," and he bent and kissed them warmly.

"Ten more days!" she murmured, and nestled closer, with her head on his breast so that she could feel the strong beating of his heart.

"It says 'Avice!—Avice!—Avice!'" he said quietly. "It is full of Avice," and she pressed still closer.

So the great day came, the greatest day either of their lives had known.

Wulf had found sleep impossible. His heart, full-charged, felt like to burst its mortal bounds. He rose quietly in the dark and went out into the soft twilight of the dawn—to greet the coming of the perfect day. And she, as impossible of sleep as he, heard him in spite of all his caution, and laughed softly to herself for very happiness in him and in herself. And when he had gone, she thanked God for this great gift of a true man's love, and for that in herself which responded to it so fully.

She had not a doubt nor a fear. The smallest of either would have barred her from him. But there was not the smallest shadow between them. Their hearts were one. It was meet and good that their lives should be one also. Wulfrey paced the beach out there and found the silent darkness soothing to his bounding senses.

It was late April. The air was sweet and fresh. The sea just breathed in its sleep and no more. The water rippled silently up the hard sand with scarce a murmur. The darkness of the eastern sky thinned as he paced and watched. There came a soft suffusion of light there. It throbbed and grew. A faint touch of carmine outlined a cloud above it. The darkness seemed to fade and melt out of the sky. All the tiny clouds above him turned their faces to the east and flushed rose-red with the joy of the new day.

He climbed a hill and caught the first golden gleam of the rising sun. His eyes shone, and his face. In his eyes two suns were reflected. But there was only one sun. And they were two and now were to become one. The Perfect Day had dawned.

And just as she, lying in her bed with her face in her hands, had thanked God for His goodness, so he. He flung his right hand up towards the sun in the brightening sky and said deeply, "My God, I thank Thee for this day and most of all for her!"

And, down below, he saw her coming out of the house towards him.

He sprang down to meet her, caught her hands, and looked right down through her eyes into her heart, and was satisfied.

LX

Arm in arm they paced the beach till the sun was well up, and their bank of sand shone in the flood of golden light as it had never shone before,—fresh and sweet as if but new-created.

A light wind had come with the sun. The small waves came hurrying in as though they were invited guests. At sight of the wedding-party they broke into crisp white laughter, curled themselves over in league-long sickles of tenderest lucent green, and raced up the sands to their feet in long soft swirls of liquid amber, laced with bubbles and edged with creamy foam.

"They haste to the wedding, to pay their tribute to the only bride they have ever set eyes on," said Wulf, as they stopped to watch them. "And each one is glad to give his life for a single peep at her."

"Foolish little waves," laughed she. "I am going to make their very close acquaintance presently. How beautiful the sea is this morning!"—as her eyes travelled out to the wide blue sweep beyond, with its dapple of purple shadows.

"The most beautiful sea and the most wonderful morning that ever was," he asserted heartily. "But it is only a beginning. There will be many more like it. And still better."

"I am so glad it is so sweet a day. A dull one would have troubled me."

"But it could not possibly have been anything else."

"Oh, but it could."

"In mere outward accident perhaps. But I've got the sun inside me. I wonder it doesn't show through."

"It does," she laughed joyously. "You are all aglow."

"And never man had better reason. I would not change places with all the kings of all the earth rolled into one."

"Nor I with all the queens. We are happier here by far with nothing but ourselves."

"Ourselves, and our Love, and infinite Hope. Now let us go and eat. My bride must not starve. That would be a bad beginning. Did you sleep?"

"Not a wink. I heard you go out."

"And I was pluming myself on not having made a sound."

While she was making cakes he busied himself making a pen out of a quill he had picked up on the beach, and she smiled when she saw what he was at.

"And the ink?" she asked.

"I've got it all ready. I always carry some with me in case of need," at which she knitted her brows prettily and looked puzzled.

After breakfast she said, "Now you must leave me for a couple of hours. I am going to thank the waves for their good wishes and then I shall go to the fresh-water pool."

"You will be very careful.. You won't get yourself drowned."

"I will be very careful. And you!"

"I will go across to the spit. But when we are wed——"

"Yes—then!" she nodded rosily, and he kissed her and went off past the fresh-water pools, and splashed through the narrows that joined their lake to the smaller one, and so to the shore and into the sea, for the last time alone.

He waited till he was sure she had done with their bathing-pool, and then ran across and plunged into it, for the salt water braces, but sticks and never makes one feel so clean as fresh.

She was still busy with the princely brush and comb when he came on her, and his heart leaped again at her fresh and radiant beauty.

She had clothed herself all in spotless linen, swathed about her in that marvellous fashion of which she held the secret to perfection. To his rejoicing eyes she appeared half angel, half Vestal Virgin, yet all bewitching human girl, and, best of all, his bride.

"Be thankful you're a man, and delivered from this," she said, her eyes shining through the glorious veil at his visible joy in her.

"I'm thankful I'm a man, but I wouldn't have you relieved of that for half the world. I glory in it," and he bent and kissed it. "For a moment I thought you were an angel."

"Perhaps I am."

"I know you are. But, thank God, you're human too! Men don't wed with angels.... I must go and dress myself also," and he disappeared into the house.

When, in due course, he came out, gallantly clad in a long blue coat with flap-pockets, and figured vest, and white silk knee-breeches, and stockings to suit, she first stared and then laughed.

"My faith, but we are fine!" said she. "But, in truth, I like you best as I have known you best. Do you marry in a dead man's clothes?"

"Not if I know it. Sooner in my rags. But, to the best of my belief, these belonged to your friend the Duke of Kent. Macro would have them, but little he dreamed of the high use to which they would be put. I borrow them for the occasion. His Highness would make no objection I am sure."

"I am sure he would not, and they become you well. But still I like you best as I have known you best."

"I will doff them presently. But you are so like a queen that I did not like to come to you like a beggar."

In his hand he had brought the Prayer-book, with the quill in a certain place.

He stepped up to her and lifted her hand to his lips.

"You do not repent you of this we are about to do?"

"I shall never repent it," she said, with dancing eyes.

"Please God, and as far as in me lies, you shall never have cause to repent it.... We are here, our two selves, with none to witness this that we do but God.... We are doing what we believe to be right for our own great happiness and well-being.... It would suffice, I believe, for a Scots wedding, simply to declare ourselves man and wife. But I have thought it would please us both to do something more. We are not entering upon this new estate lightly or without due thought.... It will, I know, be to both our minds and comforting to both our hearts, to think that in our loneliness here we have done all we could to supply the deficiencies for which we are not to blame."

He spoke with very great emotion. She rejoiced in this fresh evidence of the heights and depths of his nature and his essential goodness of heart, though indeed she had not needed it.

Her great dark eyes, fixed on his, were abrim with happy tears.

"So," he continued, "We will read together the Form for the Solemnization of Matrimony in this Prayer-book, and then we will inscribe on the front leaf of it the fact that this day we have become man and wife. We will sign our names to it, and we can do no more to comply with man's law.... Is that your will, my dear?"

"Yes."

"Then here we will kneel and wed," and down they knelt in the sand, with a clear sky and bright sun above, and the blue sea that held them captive dancing and laughing in front; and holding the book between them he read the Service aloud in a deep and reverent voice.

Parts of it were of course somewhat incongruous to their situation, but he would not slur or miss a word. The statement that they were gathered together in the face of this congregation almost provoked her to an explosion. For out of the corner of her eye, as she followed his reading, a slight movement on the side of an adjacent sandhill showed her a rabbit, sitting up and watching them with critical attention, and it looked to her just like the frowsy old female in black she had seen hovering about the skirts of a wedding in a London church.

And there were parts that brought the colour to her face, though she was familiar with them. Applied to oneself they seemed to hold new point and meaning.

However, he read bravely on. No one interfered to show any just cause why they should not lawfully be joined together, nor had either of them any confession of impediment to make.

At the "Wilt thou——?" he answered heartily, "I will." And waited for her to do the same when her turn came.

When it came to—"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?"—he answered boldly,—"God."

Then they took hands and plighted their troth, reciting the words in the book.

But when it came to the putting on of the ring there came an interlude not provided for in the Marriage Service.

He had duly provided a plain gold wedding ring.

"Where did you get it?" she asked with a look of surprise.

"I found it among Macro's treasures."

"It must be some dead woman's, then. I would sooner not. Can we not leave that out? Will it make any difference?"

"No, dear. It will make no difference to our being truly wed."

"Then please go on without it."

So they left the ring out and read on to the end together.

He closed the book and drew her to him as they knelt, and kissed her as his wife.

"Now," he said, lifting her up. "We will put on record the most wonderful thing that has ever happened on this island, and then we will go home and prepare the marriage-feast.... I wonder now if James Elwes, M.A., late of Brasenose College, Oxford, is aware of the high use to which his Prayer-book is being put,"—as he pointed to the name inscribed on the fly-leaf, and turned over to the blank on the other side.

"Do you think they know?"

"I do not see why not. But as we never knew him, nor he us, it is possible he is not present."

And suddenly those words at the beginning of the Marriage Service assumed a new and mighty significance for her. "In the face of this congregation" might mean more than she had ever dreamed of. Perhaps her mother had been there—— If she had, if she should be here now—it, was somewhat startling to think of—she would be glad, for she would know how good and true a man this was.

But he was busily writing, and at the sight she cried, "Oh!"—for the writing was red and the ink was drawn from a little jag he had made in his arm.

"In blood," she said, with a touch of dismay.

"It could not be put to better use," he laughed. "It is all at your service ... to the very last drop.... How begin better than by setting down here that we are one till death?"

"What you said made me think that perhaps my mother had been with us——"

"I am sure she was, and mine too.... They will both approve, you may be sure.... Here is what I have written—

"'I, Wulfrey Dale, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Avice Drummond to be my lawful wedded wife.' And for you, 'I, Avice Drummond, do hereby declare that I have this day taken Wulfrey Dale to be my lawful wedded husband.' Now I will sign.... And you will sign there ... and I will add the date as far as we know it ... and our present place of abode—Sable Island."

He held the book till the writing was dry, then kissed her signature. "It is the first time I have set eyes on your handwriting," he said. "It is like yourself—clear and strong and true ... Mistress Dale,"—with a smiling bow, as he handed her the book,—"your marriage-lines! You will like to keep them."

"And the pen, please," she said, holding out her hand for it, and wrapping it and the book in a fold of her white robe. "These will be more to me than all the treasures of the world."

He put his arm round her and they went slowly home—man and wife.

BOOK V

GARDEN OF EDEN

LXI

Happy? If all newly-married folk could find such happiness as was theirs, what a wonderful world it would be!

From every worldly point of view they had nothing. They were outcasts, paupers, dependent for the food they ate and the clothes they wore, on Nature and the caprice of the sea. Yet, having nothing, they had everything, since they had one another.

If he had rejoiced in her before, and loved her with a love akin to pain in the repression he subjected it to, he loved her now a thousand times more, and she filled him with a joy that knew no bounds. Time, he said to himself, would not suffice for all their love, it would fill eternity.

The days were never long enough for them. In this new joy of life and perfected fellowship they forgot their years at times, and were like a pair of children, endowed with the freedom of time and space and hearts attuned to the most perfect enjoyment of these new attributes.

They made long journeys and explored every inch of their territory—sleeping out at times in the side of a sandhill under the soft summer night. And those were wondrous times.

—To lie there flat on their blanket, side by side, chin in hand like children, his arm about her, and watch the red sun sink into the water at the end of his fiery trail, while all the sky above burned crimson right into the east behind them.—To watch, with bated breath, the rabbits creeping out to feed and frolic about them, all unconscious of their presence.—To lie and watch the colours fade slowly in the darkening sky, and the stars come out till the whole dark dome was a never-failing marvel of delight.—Or, on the other shore, to lie and watch the moonbeams dancing on the sleeping bosom of the sea.—To feel oneself oneself in the midst of it all—a part of it all—the height and the width and the immensity and wonder of it all.—To feel his arm enfolding her, and all that that meant to them both.—To feel the warmth of life, and all the mighty joy of it, throbbing in her slender body as he drew her closer.—To know, as he knew, that God lived and had given her to him, and that she loved him with every fibre of her being, as he loved her....

Happy? At times, so full was her heart that she wondered if such happiness was right for mortals to enjoy, and so, if it could last.

And when she shared that with him, as they shared everything in common, he reasoned her back to comfort.

"Happiness and health are life's proper conditions," he asserted, with such hearty conviction that her doubts hid their heads. "Sorrow and sickness come of trespass, somehow, somewhere, somewhen, though it is not always easy to trace them back to first causes. But, without doubt, people were meant to be as healthy and happy as it is possible for them to be."

"But I have known people suffer who, I am sure, never did any wrong—none, that is, deserving of suffering such as they had. In fact," she mused, "it seems to me that the good people suffer most and the wicked prosper."

"That is as we judge. But we see only the outsides of things and we are purblind at best. Nature has certain laws, and God has certain laws—though a parson could tell you more about these than I can. And if those laws are broken the results have to be borne, and sometimes they run on and on and fall on innocent people."

"It doesn't seem very fair."

"The laws cannot be altered for individuals or exceptional cases. Fathers sin and the children suffer. But the blame is the fathers'."

"Yes," she nodded, and perhaps she was thinking of her own case.

"So you've no need to fear being as happy as you can," he added quickly. "God meant you for happiness, and truly, I think we have more certainty of it here than we might have had elsewhere."

"I am sure of it and I am happy," and she nestled still closer under his folding arm.

But they had their strenuous working times as well, and enjoyed them equally. He developed his new-found capacity for carpentering. Made her more chairs and a table, added to the comfort of their house in many ways. And she kept it all in perfect order, and attended to the cooking, and proved herself a most admirable housewife and helpmate.

They were down almost to fundamentals. Their life—partaking as it did of the development of the ages, and so of the wider freedom of thought and feeling, was the life of the ancients and not far from idyllic.

The hunter went forth to the chase—though it was only rabbits—and the fisherman to the lake, and brought home his spoils to his waiting mate, and they ate of them and were content.

They enjoyed the most perfect health, and for society they had one another and desired no more—at all events, no outsiders.

They had storms and mists and spells of dull weather, but their house was proof against all assault from without, and warm and bright with their abounding love. They had fire and light and books and themselves, and always in time the sun shone out again, and they enjoyed it the more perhaps for its frequent defaults.

They had their trying times too. Stores had to be replenished from the pile, and, after that dreadful experience before they were married, she would not be left behind.

"I do not care what happens if we are together," she said. "The worst that could happen would be nothing compared with that other time," and he could not gainsay her.

So whenever he had to go she went also, and they chose their day with care and made a picnic of it, and came home laden with spoils.

Only once they got caught by one of those swift-travelling mists which seemed to spring from nowhere. It swept over them just as they were preparing to leave, and in the twinkling of an eye they were prisoners, bound clammily to the pile till it should pass. For in that close-clinging bank, as thick as wet cotton-wool, all sense of direction was gone in a moment. They could not see a foot before them, the pile was pitted with death-traps, a step might be fatal.

They had both come lightly clad, for the day had been warm and the wreckage claimed unhampered limbs.

Fortunately they had come upon a case of blankets during their operations.

"Sit you down here," he said, as he felt her shivering under his arm, "And I'll get you some blankets."

"You won't get yourself lost?" she asked anxiously.

"Not if you will keep calling to me," and he crawled away in search of the case, while she sat calling, "Wulf ... Wulf ... Wulf," and he answered her, "Avice ... Avice ... Avice," and at last a shout, "I've got it."

And presently his muffled "Avice ... Avice ... Avice," drew near again, and he loomed through the fog like a creeping ghost, and taking her arm they crept together from blanket to blanket, which he had spread as a guide, till they came to the case itself. He hauled out more of its contents till there was room inside for both of them, and they crawled into their nest and in time got warm and comfortable.

The fog showed no sign of lifting, so before it got quite dark he crawled out again, she calling to him as before, and found a cask of rum, of which there was always plenty about, and one of pork, and on these they supped as best they could.

The writhing and creaking of the pile, as the tide rose and fell, caused her some alarm. But he explained it all to her, and after a time she fell asleep with his arm about her, and they were wakened to a clear bright morning by the shrieking and squabbling of the birds over the barrel of pork, which he had left standing open.

The barrel itself and all the pile adjacent seemed suddenly to have sprouted feathers. It was alive with fiercely-beating wings and jerking feathered necks and squirming feathered bodies, and cold hard little glassy eyes, and cruel rending beaks, and shrill angry cries.

"How hideous they are!" she said, shrinking back into the case.

"It is the great fight for life. They seem always hungry."

The barrel stood on end. The fortunate ones among the feathered pirates wormed themselves in, and tore and rent at the food, regardless of the shrill expostulations of their fellows and the beaks and claws that tore and rent at them in turn, till the barrel itself was lost under a seething mass of shrieking, fiercely-struggling birds. They pecked at one another's glassy eyes, they struck wildly with their wings, they clawed with somewhat futile feet, and all the time screamed at the tops of their voices as though they were trying who could scream the loudest.

"I wish they'd empty it and go," said she, and he wrenched down a slat of wood and leaned out with a blanket over his head and arm, and succeeded at last in tipping the barrel over, and pork and pirates rolled out together.

It was all cleaned up in five minutes and the cloud drifted away after other prey. The disappointed ones swooped round the empty barrel for a time, and some of the bolder, or more hungry, or least intelligent, came fluttering at the opening in the blanket-box as though set on fresh meat at any cost, and he had to beat them back with his slat. It was only when a score or more were flopping brokenly about the pile in front of the box that the rest grew tired of so losing a game and sped away to join the main body. As soon as the way was clear, he helped her out of her nest and they got to their raft, and eventually safely home.

But that was only an incident, though it confirmed her dislike and dread of the pile. She still always insisted on going with him when he had to go, and at such times they laboured long and hard, and got in supplies enough for many weeks, and so went out there as seldom as possible.

LXII

So, working, wandering, bathing, reading, hunting, fishing, eating, sleeping, with hearts and minds stripped bare to one another and every thought in common, they lived that first golden year of their married life, and grew into still closer fellowship and communion, into still clearer understanding of one another, into still greater love,—although, at the beginning, all this would have seemed to them impossible. But there are always heights and depths beyond, and will be, until the final heights are scaled—and doubtless even then also.

And now, to one such depth and height they were drawing near, with a touch of not unnatural fear on her part, as to an experience unknown and invested with all the possibilities of life and death, and new life.

He cheered her with his own great confidence; and her reliance on his professional knowledge, and the love he bore her, comforted her mightily. But they both knew full well that, given all the knowledge and love in the world, the certain issue of this great matter still lay beyond the utmost power of man; and it sent them to their knees and brought them nigher heaven than ever in their lives before.

It also set her very busily to work on tiny garments, which she had to contrive as best she could from her very scant materials. And it set him to the making of a cradle out of a very carefully-cleaned and sand-scrubbed pork-barrel, which turned out an immense success and filled him with great pride of accomplishment.

She was in the very best of health, without a trouble on her mind, and rejoicing more than ever in his joy and pride in her. And these and the free open-air life they led all made for good. He would not permit her a despondent thought, though as the time drew near she not seldom, for his sake, assumed a braver and more cheerful aspect than her heart actually warranted.

But all went well, and within a day or two of the anniversary of their wedding-day, their son, Wulfrey, was born and proved himself at once a true Islander, lusty both of lung and limb.

Prouder and happier father and mother, and more wonderful baby, it is safe to say that island never saw. And if their days had been full of delight before, the coming of Little Wulf filled them quite three times as full. For there was Little Wulf's own happiness, which was patent to all,—and his mother's rapture in him, and his father's,—and his father's mighty joy in them both,—and her joy in his joy,—and so on all round the compass;—and deep below and high above and all through it all, their unbounded thankfulness for safe deliverance from peril.

If he had admired and loved her as a maid, and loved and rejoiced in her as a wife,—as mother of his child he found himself at times dumb with excess of delight. He could only sit and watch, with worshipful eyes, and newer and deeper thoughts of that other Mother, and of The Child whose coming had transformed the world.

She got out the treasured old Prayer-book, and they read over him as much as seemed applicable to his case of the Ministration of Private Baptism of Infants, and then inscribed on the fly-leaf, under the record of their marriage, his name, Wulfrey Drummond Dale, and the date of his birth as nearly as they knew it—with the same pen as before, in the same red ink, and from the same glad source.

And now indeed their days were full, and their nights, for Master Wulfrey had an appetite that brooked no waiting, and he ruled that household with a lusty pair of lungs against which even equinoctial gales strove in vain.

But it was all part of the price of their joy in him, and they paid it joyfully; and he repaid them tenfold by simply being alive and permitting them to watch his vigorous kickings as he lay naked on a blanket at their feet in the sunshine.

Avice was speedily herself again, herself and so very much more. In his rejoicing eyes all her beauty was clarified, dignified, emphasised manifold, in a way that he would not have believed possible.

It was his turn now, in spite of all his philosophy,—and at times hers again also—to marvel at all that had been vouchsafed them, and to wonder, with a fleeting touch of fear, if happiness so great could possibly last.

The sense of the mighty responsibility their love entailed was upon them. Suppose, by any dire misfortune, he were to be taken away,—what would happen to them? He believed her capable of rising to the occasion for the boy's sake and doing man's work in his place, but it would be a desperately hard fight for her. Suppose they should be taken from him—either, both. God!—he could spare the boy best, but it would be terrible to lose either.

And suppose, thought she in turn, either of themselves should be taken! Suppose they should both be taken!—Well, in that case the poor little fellow would linger behind but a very short time. They would soon all be together again.

But such black thoughts, natural as they were, inevitable almost, still partook, to both their minds, of basest ingratitude and lack of trust. And yet they did high service, for, when they came upon them their souls went down on their knees, and there they found strength and joyousness again.

Little Wulf—but they very early began to call him Cubbie, it seemed so appropriate—fulfilled all the promise of his advent. He was a marvellous child. He crawled vigorously at nine months, and headed straight across the soft yellow sand for the water, like a true Islander, born of freedom and the open air and the sunshine, the moment he discovered this new power. And they followed him, foot by foot, with beaming faces, as he wallowed along like a well-developed white frog, digging his little snub nose into the sand at times, but gurgling and laughing all the same, and struggling on without a look to right or left, intent only on the water in front.

At the lip of the tide, where it came creaming up the beach in long soft swirls of amber, laced with bubbles and edged with filmy foam, she was for snatching him up. But Wulf stayed her. He wanted to see what the boy would do.

He was no stranger to cold water, but he had so far met it only in a tub, never in such quantity as this. He crawled on along the wet sand and the soft swirl came rushing up to welcome him. It was quite two inches deep. It filled him with astonishment and took away his breath. Everything under him seemed on the move. He stiffened for a second on his front paws, gave a huge bellow of amazement, tried to grab the back-streaming water with both hands as a cat pounces on a mouse, and then set off after it at top speed, and was swung up into the air by his delighted father, and held there, kicking and crowing, and striving still after the enchanted water below.

"He'll do," laughed Wulf. "He'll swim as soon as he can walk. The first native! And a credit to the Island!"

Golden days! If the first year of their married life was all pure gold, this second was gold overlaid with jewels of rare delight. Every moment of it was happiness unalloyed. The boy throve mightily. Avice was in the best of health and spirits, and to the eyes of her lover grew more beautiful with every day that passed.

What more could the soul of man desire?

LXIII

Their Wulf Cub was fifteen months old, and could swim like a fish, and run like a free-born savage, and talk in a jargon of his own which was yet quite understandable to his parents, when his sister Avice came on the scene. She took after her mother, and her father vowed there never had been such a lovely child born into this world before.

Their patriarchal life flowed on, deepening and widening, as it went, and so far without any break in its smooth-swelling current. The great gales, to which they had grown accustomed, piled up ever-increasing supplies for them. Within certain narrow bounds they knew no lack, nor would they though they lived there for a hundred years. On great occasions the wreckage even yielded them luxuries of the commonplace which in the former life they had looked upon as ordinary adjuncts to a meal and accepted perfunctorily, without a thought of special thankfulness. But here they were rarities, priceless delicacies to be held in esteem and made the most of. Apples for example. Once their western point was strewn thick with what seemed a whole ship-load of delicious red apples. They had probably been packed in frail barrels or cases which the waves made short work of, and the birds were fortunately away. They spent days carrying them up above tide-level and then transporting them home, and revelled in apples for weeks till their stock went bad. Another time it was potatoes, which they had not tasted for over three years. Wulf declared it was almost worth while to have been denied them so long, to find such new relish in them now. Avice regretted, for the children's sakes, that they could not have them all the time.

And that set him to planting a quantity in some of the damp bottoms by the water-pools. They came up all right, but the rabbits cleared the green shoots as fast as they appeared. Upon that he fenced off a patch with some of his superfluous raft timber and planted more, and succeeded in raising a small crop, but they were a degenerate race, lacking the good soil which had gone to the making of their ancestors.

Curiously enough, that fact started into expression trains of thought that had been latent in both their minds.

He had come in exultantly with his first fruits of the potato-patch, Cubbie at his heels proudly bearing one in each hand, and Avice cooked them rejoicingly and pronounced them excellent.

"It will be so delightful to have potatoes again," said she.

But he was critical of his own production, as the author of a work—even though it be but a potato—may be allowed to be. "They have neither the texture nor the flavour of the original stock," he said. "I suppose they need better soil than our old sandbank can afford them,"—and his eyes happened to fall on Cubbie munching away at a potato, and hers lighted on the dark little head in her arm. The same thought pricked both their hearts and their eyes met with understanding.

As with potatoes—so with children. He and she, growths of the larger world, had found unlooked-for happiness through the accident of their transplantation to this outer isle. But they brought with them the strength of heart and mind that had come to them through contact with that other world. In many respects it was a vain and hollow world. The change had made entirely for their good and happiness.

But—these little ones! ... Were they to be condemned for ever to the sweet narrow groove of this island life, which to their father and mother, by reason of the wonder of their love, had been like Paradise?

To the children no such transformation, no such veritable transfiguration of life as had been theirs would be possible.

They could, indeed, teach them all they knew themselves—all the essentials at all events. They could train their hearts and brains to highest things. But in time the children would feel what the island life entailed and denied them—what their lives were missing. The higher their development the keener would be their regrets.

"Dear," he said, clasping her closer, as she lay in the hollow of his arm before the fire that night, "I know what you are thinking. It came on me, and it came to you, when I was criticising those degenerate potatoes."

"I suppose it must have been lurking somewhere in my heart," she said quietly. "But it all came on me with a rush as you spoke. You and I desire no better. It has been wonderful ... perfect happiness. But for them...."

"Yes," he said soberly. "For them it would be different. For them we desire the very best. And here they cannot get it."

And so they were face to face with the mighty problem which thenceforth must of necessity be constantly in their minds and hearts.

For themselves, all that the outside world could give them could add no whit to their perfect content and happiness.

But for the children's sakes ... how to cross that treacherous hundred miles of sea which barred the way to the wider—in some respects wider,—to the larger—in some respects larger,—to the questionably happier life, which yet these newcomers must prove for themselves, as was their right?

They discussed it quietly and at great length that night, but could see no way out, and for the moment he could find no further comfort for her than this—and yet it was much,—"Providence, which has done so much for us," said he, "may in time do this also. Meanwhile the Island life is all to the good for them. They are splendid little specimens, and if they run wild and free for some years they will reap the benefit all their lives. We will hope and pray, and puzzle our brains for them."

Hope they did. And pray they did. But no amount of brain-puzzling afforded them any solution of their difficulty.

Nothing in the shape of a boat had ever come ashore, and he had neither the tools nor the skill to build one. And if he had done he would not have dared to risk his wife and children in it for so doubtful a voyage.

Wild ideas came upon him of constructing a raft stout enough for such a journey and venturing on it himself, leaving Avice and the children, fully provided for, to await his return with succour. But he knew she would never hear of such madness, so sent it to limbo with the rest.

He took to lighting huge fires of timber from the pile, as he had done more than once before, but the wood burned brightly, with splendid crackings and spittings which set Master Cubbie dancing with delight, and the volume of smoke was trifling. It occurred to Wulf also that no matter how dense a smoke he could raise it would, if seen at all, be probably taken only for the cloud of sea-birds which were doubtless known to mariners and avoided like death itself—when avoidance was possible to them.

That every ship that could do so kept well away from their notorious bank was evident, for they had never set eyes on a single sail since they landed. Of course their ordinary range from the level could not be more than four or five miles, he supposed; and even from their highest hill, which he reckoned to be sixty to eighty feet, they would see but twice as far;—and nothing came so close to Sable Island as that if it could help it.

Still wilder ideas he had,—of tying messages to some of the birds' legs—but they were such a vicious set that he knew they would get rid of them at once,—of nailing messages to boards, to empty casks, to anything that would float—but he knew they might float for a score of years and never be found, even if the seas did not strip them within a week.

He was reduced at last to that certainty of knowledge which it is always of highest benefit to man to attain,—that in this matter he was as helpless as a child in arms. He could do absolutely nothing that was of the slightest avail. And so he was thrown back upon, and led and lifted up to, that complete and perfect trust in a Higher Power which is the measure of a man's understanding of the great lesson of life.

LXIV

They had been five years on the Island. Little Wulf was three, Avice two,—as healthy and handsome youngsters as the world could show.

Life had been all joyous to them. All the year round, except just now and again when unusual drift of ice came rustling and grinding about their island, they trotted about with almost nothing on. They swam before they could walk, and now were in and out of the water a dozen times a day, and so they regarded clothing of any kind as a hindrance to pure enjoyment and freedom of action, and their mother judged it well to insist on no more than the most reasonable minimum.

They never lacked friends or company, though truly the friendship was mostly on their side and provokingly lacking in mutuality. Rabbits and seals, especially baby-rabbits and baby-seals, were the chiefest objects of their young affections, and they were sorely disappointed at the small response their proffered friendship evoked. On crabs this could be enforced by capture and imprisonment, but they found them cold-blooded, impassive playfellows, of altogether too-retiring dispositions, and only to be stirred into display of their natural abilities by provocation. Sea-birds were just as bad in a different way, and fishes were altogether too elusive until you wanted to eat them, when a baited hook did the trick in a moment.

That wonderful father of theirs, however, managed to capture a pair of baby-rabbits, whose mother he had unfortunately knocked on the head for dinner before he perceived the mischief he was doing. The babies were welcomed with shrieks of delight and were like to be killed with the expression of it. The youngsters spent hours flat on their stomachs watching them in their boarded enclosure alongside the house, and more hours foraging for them the sweetest and tenderest herbs the hollows could yield. And presently the captives became friends, and were so comfortable in their narrow estate that they had no desire for a wider, but galloped about after their owners wherever they went, and sat anxiously twisting their noses on the beach when the irrepressibles found it necessary to wallow and frolic in the water.

At times, for a change, they lived aboard the 'Jane and Mary' for a week or two, but Mistress Avice always had a very reasonable fear of one or other or both of the children tumbling overboard, and so the greater part of their life was passed ashore, with the sand-house as headquarters and all the rest of the island as playground.

That a life so circumscribed should never have grown monotonous tells its own pleasant story. But the youngsters had known no other life with which to compare it, and their elders, who had, found it fuller and sweeter in its pastoral simplicity than any the great world had ever offered them.

Every moment of their day was occupied, if not with work, then with enjoyments. The elders had to provide for the youngsters, and these again for theirs; and when every single thing must be drawn from Nature or from an accommodating but distant wreck-pile, such provision takes time and forethought.

When the day's work was completed they all bathed and rambled far and wide, and it was on one such ramble, when they had gone as far along towards the eastern end of the Island as small legs could carry, that the end came—as suddenly as had come the beginning.

They were sitting on the sunny side of a great sand-hill, eating and resting after their journey,—resting, that is, so far as the elders were concerned. The youngsters, who had found walking tiring, or perhaps tiresome, found no fatigue in scrambling to the tops of sandhills and sliding down the smooth soft sides with shouts and shrieks of laughter.

A cessation in the sport drew their father's and mother's eyes to them. They were both standing on the hill-top gazing eagerly out to sea and chattering to one another.

"Seals probably," said their mother. From where they sat they could not see the shore for an intervening ridge. And seals were always a mighty attraction to the children.

But when they began dancing excitedly on their hill-top their father called, "What is it you see, Cubbie?"

"Somefing, dad! Somefing funny."

"Somefing funny!" repeated little Avice eagerly, and the elders got up lazily and slowly climbed the hillside to see what it was.

"My God!" said Wulfrey, as his eyes cleared the top first, and he turned and kissed his wife joyously.

"Thank God!" she breathed deeply, as her eyes also lighted on that which was coming.

For there, not half a mile away, was a white boat manned by blue sailors, leaping towards the shore as fast as eight lusty oars could drive her, and out beyond her, probably three miles away, was a white-sailed ship of size.

Wulfrey shouted and waved his arms. The children immediately did the same, and the regular rise and fall of the oars stopped suddenly as every eye in the boat turned on them. There were men in the stern with gilt on their hats. Then the oars fell-to again and the boat came bounding on. Wulfrey and Avice picked up each their namesakes, and plunged down the hill and ran round the ridge to the shore.

With a final lunge the boat came up the beach, and a tall man rose in the stern and asked, "Who, in heaven's name, are you, and what are you doing here?"—while nine pairs of eager eyes raked over the little party.

"I am Dr Wulfrey Dale, of Hazelford in Cheshire. This is my wife—and our children. We have been here five years."

"Good God! Five years!"—he was ashore by this time, and the rest tumbled hastily out and stood about them, the burly sailors listening with one ear and trying to make up to the children, who gazed with wondering awe at the only men they had ever seen except their father. "How on earth have you lived? ... Five years! ... Not all of you," he said with a smile.

"Not all of us. The children were born here. We were afraid we would all have to live and die here. I thank God you are come. What brought you?"

"We've been sent to prospect with a view to a lighthouse here. There has been an outcry about the number of wrecks——"

"Ay, there are hundreds over yonder," said Wulfrey, pointing westward. "They have kept us alive, but the cost to others has been heavy."

"And where do you live?"

"Come and I'll show you—or will you take us along in the boat? It's good four miles over that way."

"Boat'll be easiest. Sand's heavy walking. How long can we count on this weather?"

"Oh, for a week at least. It's our best time of year."

"You will take us home?" asked Avice eagerly, when they had climbed into the boat and were swinging along parallel to the shore, the children staring in a vast silence and with rounded eyes at the bearded sailor-men and their amazing ways.

"As far as our service permits, madame, we will do anything and everything you wish. We return to Halifax in Nova Scotia, but once there you will have no difficulties."