CHAPTER II THE ISLAND

About an hour before noon Floyd, relinquishing the tiller, stood up and, supporting himself by the mast, looked around. Then, sheltering his eyes with his hand, he fixed his gaze straight ahead.

The sea line at one point was broken, and the sky just above the broken point had a curious and brilliant paleness.

Once before he had seen a bit of sky like that, and he guessed it at once to be the reflection cast upward from a lagoon island.

The sight of it dried his lips and made the sweat stand out on the palms of his hands; then, taking his place again at the tiller, he resumed his course.

The boat was making about three knots, and he reckoned that the island could not be more than ten miles away. Were bad weather suddenly to spring on him Pacific fashion, he might either be driven out of reach of the shelter before him or sunk. But the wind held fair and steady with no sign of squalls, and now, when he looked again, he could see the palm-tree tops raised high above the water, and—what was that—a ship?

[Pg 17]The masts of a ship, all aslant, showed thready near the palms. She was wrecked—of that there could be no manner of doubt.

The shimmer of the sea cut off everything but the palm tops, the palm stems, and the masts; they seemed based on air.

In an hour, standing up again, Floyd made out the whole position distinctly.

The island that lay before him was simply a huge ring of coral clipping a lagoon a mile or more in diameter, as he afterward discovered. It was not an even ring; here and there it swelled out into great spaces covered with palms and artus and hotoo trees. Near the break in the reef for which he was now steering, piled up on the coral literally high and dry, lay the carcass of what had recently been a schooner of some two hundred tons.

She must have been sent right up by some great lift of the sea.

As he drew near he could see that the planking had been literally stripped off her from a huge space reaching from the stern post almost to midship; there was no rudder; the sails, he thought, had either blown away or flogged themselves to pieces, taking with them gaffs and booms. Then he remembered that the masts, still standing by some miracle, would certainly have snapped like carrots had sail enough been on her to carry away the spars like that. He could not tell. The thing hypnotized him as he watched it, his hand on the tiller and the opening of the reef before him.

Though the sea was as calm as the Pacific can ever be, a steady surf was breaking on the reef. The boom of it came to him now against the wind, and the boat[Pg 18] heaved to the short sea made by the resistance of the great coral breakwater.

It was like the bourdon note of an organ, and though it swelled and sank it never ceased, for it was the tune that ringed forever the whole four-mile circuit of the atoll.

Then as he passed the coral piers and opened the lagoon, the sound of the surf grew less loud and the boat went on an even keel.

Before him lay the great blue pond, calm as a summer lake; the shore surrounding it showed long beaches of salt-white coral sand and great spaces of foliage; palms and breadfruit, mammee apple bushes and cane, colonies of trees all moving, gently pressed upon by the warm trade wind, whose breath made violet meadows on the broad lagoon.

It was the most extraordinary place in the world.

It had a touch of the ornamental, as though some city more vast and wealthy and populous than any city we know of had decreed this great space of water as a pleasure lake, ordered the white of sand and green of foliage, emerald of shallow water and blue of deep, and then vanished, leaving its pleasure place to the wastes of ocean.

The water at the opening of the lagoon was very deep, but inside it shoaled rapidly, and Floyd, glancing over the thwart, saw the white sand patches and coral lumps of the lagoon floor almost as clearly as though he were gliding over them through air.

He swept the circular beach with a glance, flung up his hand to shade his eyes, and then with a shout put the helm over and hauled the sheet to port.

[Pg 19]Away on the beach to the right something flapped; it was the sailcloth of a rudely made tent, and by the tent, waving its arm, stood the figure of a man; by the man, squatting on the beach sand, was another figure, small and difficult to distinguish.

Floyd instantly connected these figures with the wreck; they were evidently the remains of the shipwrecked crew.

As he drew closer the man on the beach showed up more clearly—a bronzed and bearded man in dubiously white clothes, and the figure seated on the sand revealed itself as a girl; she was almost as dark as the man, and she was seated with her hands clasping her knees.

He unstepped the mast and took to the sculls; a minute later the stem of the boat was grinding the sand of the beach, and Floyd was over the side helping to pull her up.

Before they exchanged a word they pulled her up sufficiently to keep her from drifting off with the outgoing tide. It was easy to see they were sailors.

"She's all right," said the bearded man; "and where in the name of everything have you come from?"

Floyd flung both hands on the shoulders of the other. It was not till this moment that he had borne in on him the frightful loneliness and the fate from which he had escaped.

"I'd never hoped to see a living man again," said he. "Never, never, never! You're real, aren't you? Don't mind me. I'm half cracked; your fist—there—I'm better now."

"Wrecked?" said the bearded man.

"Yes; wrecked, burned out. The Cormorant was[Pg 20] the name, bound from Frisco to Papeetong; drink and fire did for us——"

He stopped short. He had been staring at the girl. She had shifted her position only slightly, and she was looking at him with eyes that showed little interest and less emotion—the eyes of a person who is gazing at shapes in a fire or at some object a great distance off.

She was a Polynesian—a wonderfully pretty girl, almost a child, honey-colored, with a string of scarlet beads showing on her neck about the scanty garment that covered her, and with a scarlet flower in her jet-black hair.

It was a flower of the hibiscus that grew in profusion in all the groves of the atoll.

"That's Isbel," said the bearded man. "Kanaka, called after the place she came from. Isbel Island in the Marshalls. I'm Schumer, trader and part owner of the Tonga. There she is"—jerking his thumb at the wreck. "Hove up in a gale a month ago; we've been here a month; every man jack drowned but me and Isbel. I've salved a bit of the cargo—foodstuffs and suchlike. What's your name?"

"Floyd."

"Well, that's as good as any other name in these parts, anyhow."

He sat down on the sand near the girl, and Floyd did likewise. Then Schumer, taking a pipe and some tobacco from his pocket, began to smoke. He talked all the time.

"We've rigged up a bit of a tent. Isbel prefers to sleep out in the open. Kanaka. Not much between them and beasts except the hide. Well, tell us about[Pg 21] yourself. What's the name of the schooner did you say was burned?"

Floyd told; told the whole story while Schumer listened, smoking, lolling on his back and cutting in every now and then with a question.

"Well," said he, when the other had finished, "that lays over most yarns I've heard. And what's become of that boatload of Kanakas, I wonder? Starved out most likely. Good for you they took their hook; good for me, too, for now we've got your boat, and a boat's a handy thing. We can get across the lagoon easy, for there's no getting round on foot beyond that clump of cocoanuts on the shore edge there. There's a quarter mile or so of broken coral all that way; razors ain't in it beside broken coral. We can fish, too, and it may be handy to have a boat if we sight a ship, though this island is clean out of trade tracks. We were blown two hundred miles from our course."

"What was your cargo?" asked Floyd.

"Printed stuffs, tinware, and general trade; a missionary—he was washed overboard—and several passenger Kanakas under him. Isbel belonged to his lot. She can talk English—can't you, Isbel?"

"Yes," replied the girl.

It was the first thing she had uttered, and Floyd noticed the softness of her voice and the way she avoided the "y," or rather the hardness of it, without breaking the word or mutilating it.

"It was the storm of storms," said Schumer; "there we were, running before it with scarcely a rag of canvas set and every wave threatenin' to be our last, every man jack on deck clinging to whatever he could hold when the great smash came. I don't know how I[Pg 22] escaped. Providence, mostlike—same with Isbel, though I guess she's so little account she escaped the way some did in the earthquake out in Java three years ago. I saw a whole family flattened out under their own roof and a basket of kittens saved. It's that way things work in this world."

"Well," said Floyd, lying on his back on the sand—there was shade here from the trees—"I'm jolly glad you were saved. Good Lord, it's only coming on me now, the whole business; it's just as if one had escaped from the end of the world. It's not good to be drifting about in a boat alone."

Schumer agreed.

Floyd had now taken stock of his new companion. He was a powerfully built man with a bold and daring face, a trifle hard, perhaps—hard certainly one would say in striking a bargain; he was tanned by sun and wind, and despite his name he spoke English like an Englishman; sometimes the faintest trace of an American accent was perceptible, and sometimes the inimitable American cast of words lending color and picture to his conversation.

Floyd liked him.

"Well," said Schumer, rising up, "let's go and have a look at the old hulk; there's some more stuff worth salving—not that if I had a derrick and more boats and a ship to lade the stuff in I wouldn't salve the lot. By the way, what did you bring off in that boat of yours?"

"There's some biscuits and canned stuff, and a tin box with the ship's papers and some money—nothing much."

"Money, did you say—how much?"

Floyd told him.

[Pg 23]"Well," said Schumer, "money's not of any use to us here—wish it was; all the same, it's worth having, for there's no knowing the moment the door may be opened for us to get out of here."

He led the way toward the wreck, Floyd and Isbel following.

The coral islands of the Pacific may be roughly divided into two classes: compound islands—that is to say, islands made of solid land and surrounded by a coral ring or breakwater, and simple islands or atolls—that is, simple rings of coral inclosing lagoons.

Then we have occasionally a third variety, an atoll island in whose lagoon one finds several islets.

This island that Floyd had struck was of the simple variety; the lagoon was of an irregular form, circular as a whole, yet here and there making bays in the coral.

The coral ring had four definite areas upon which vegetation flourished; one might say that the ring inclosing the lagoon consisted of four islands, each joined to each by naked coral.

The Tonga had been lifted by one great heave of the sea right onto the raw coral of the northern pier of the reef. It was not so great a feat, after all, for the reef was lower than elsewhere, and ships before this have been lifted over atoll reefs and deposited upside down in lagoons.

The Tonga was not upside down, but she was broken fore and aft, and the fact that her masts were still standing formed another incident in that category of strange incidents—the story of the power of the sea.

The rudder had been plucked off and lay there like a great barn door flung down on the coral; the pintles were gone as though they had been torn from the wood[Pg 24] by forceps; the planking, as I have already said, was stripped from the port side right to midships; she lay with a list to port, and through the great gaping wound where the ribs of the vessel showed like the ribs of a half-devoured carcass, the contents of the trade room and cabin could be seen half shed on the coral, half still contained.

Bales of print, kegs and cases, burst boxes of canned provisions, bird cages, trade gin, some cases of cheap rifles destined for the King of Apaka, who was in revolt against German rule, and who was anxiously awaiting the consignment—these and twenty more varieties of things lay there festering in the sun, watched by the sea birds and blown upon by the wind.

"Good heavens," said Floyd, "what a spill!"

"It's just that," said Schumer, "and it's not good to see so much stuff gone to waste, especially when one's money has paid for it, or part paid for it. It wasn't all my venture. There's a man at Sydney who's my partner. Well, there's no use crying over spilled goods; let's try and do what we can. Now you are here we may be able to salve more of the stuff than I had hoped. First thing is to get some of the perishables under shade. The sun doesn't hurt rifles, but it doesn't improve prints and provisions."

"I'll help," said Floyd; "anything's better than doing nothing."

"Then come along, my son," replied Schumer. "Claw hold of the other end of this case, and you, Isbel, follow along with that mat of rice."

A few mats of rice had been among the cargo of the Tonga, and though here on the island there was evidence of an abundance of food, Schumer seemed to pay[Pg 25] especial attention to the salving of provisions. Perhaps with that keen brain of his, which had carried him so far in life against tremendous odds, he foresaw the time when these same provisions would be more valuable as a trade asset than minted gold.

They worked for several hours, and then knocked off and came back to where the tent was pitched.

Schumer proceeded to light a fire, while Floyd and Isbel got together the things for supper.

Schumer the day before had managed to catch a small turtle, and he now set to to grill some of the flesh. He also boiled some water for coffee, and in half an hour Floyd found himself before the best supper he had ever sat down to.

"It's good for us there's water here," said Schumer, when they had finished. "You see, if this island had been a ring of coral hove up out of the sea there wouldn't have been any natural water here, but it's not. It's my belief it's more a ring of mountaintops just showing with coral bridging between; anyhow, there's lots of water—at least enough for us. Well, we'll take your boat out in the morning and have a good look at the lagoon, and see what we can find in those bays over there. I've got some fishing tackle and we can fish—shellfish makes good bait; there's no fishing of any account to be had on the shore edge, but there's big things to be done out in the lagoon."

He filled his pipe and lit it, and they smoked for a while in silence. The sun was setting, and from the great ring of coral came the sound of the surf, continuous, dreamy and less loud to the ears of Floyd than when he had first landed. In a little time he would not hear it; or, rather, he would not notice; it was one of[Pg 26] the conditions of life here, a part of the strangeness of this strange place where perfect peace dwelt forever ringed around by the murmur of the sea.

"See here," said Schumer, after a few minutes' silence; "what about that money you said you had in the boat?"

"You mean the ship's money and papers?"

"Yes."

"Oh, they're in the boat still," said Floyd, rising up.

He went to the boat where she lay high and dry on the sand, and took out the tin box.

He brought it back to where Schumer and Isbel were sitting by the embers of the fire, and, taking his place on the sand beside them, opened the box and took out the bag of sovereigns.

He undid the string and poured the contents of the bag onto the hard sand of the beach.

There were two hundred and ten sovereigns—as they afterward counted—and the moon, which had just pushed up its face over the eastern reef edge, lit the pile which Floyd was now stirring with his finger, while Schumer, who had drawn himself closer on his elbow, looked on without a word. Isbel had drawn closer, too.

She had spoken very little as yet, and when she spoke it was a pleasure to listen.

To attempt the reproduction of Polynesian speech is fatal, and the authors who attempt it succeed in producing only a disgusting form of pidgin English. It is impossible to reproduce the inflections, the softness, the timbre, the soul of it. It is equally impossible to reproduce the infantile French of the West Indies.

Isbel's language was the human equivalent of the language of the soft-voiced birds; more than that, the[Pg 27] missionary who had brought her up had guarded her from the vile "savvee" and "um" and "allee same" that foul the speech of the lower natives.

How much the missionary teaching had bent her mind to Eastern ideals or influenced her nature it would be impossible to say. There was a great deal of mystery about Isbel, centuries and centuries of the unknown and unrealized gazing from those eyes so dark and unfathomable.

"Well," said Schumer, breaking the silence at last, "that's a decent pile, and what are you going to do with it?"

"Well, it's Coxon's," said Floyd, "and now he's dead it will belong to his next of kin; he hadn't a wife and family, so he told me, but he's sure to have relations."

"Every man has who dies worth a cent," said Schumer. "Question is how are you to find them, and whether they'll thank you if you do find them, or swear that you've nailed half the boodle. You said the chap that fired the schooner was Coxon's brother-in-law; well, it 'pears to me you've suffered a good bit from his relations already, and deserve some recompense. If I were you I'd put those papers in the fire and the money in your pocket—however, that's your affair, not mine."

Floyd put papers and money back in the tin box.

"I'll put them in the tent for the present," said he; "there's lots of time to think over the matter, and little chance enough to act in it."

"Well," said Schumer, "you can do as you please when the time comes—and I wish it would come. I'm about sick of hanging here doing nothing. I'm going to turn in. I sleep in the tent, and there's room for you,[Pg 28] too. Isbel has made a wigwam in the bush—the boat's all right; she's high above the level of the tide."

Half an hour later the great moon, swinging above the island, showed nothing but the embers of the fire, the trodden sand and the tent; the human beings whom the Fates had brought together on this lost and lonely spot had vanished, touched by sleep, just as men vanish from the world when touched by Death.