His Unknown Wife

Thus he was the first to reach Madge Forbes, who hurried to meet them, followed by Nina, the latter walking more leisurely and carrying the rifle.

“What has happened?” gasped Sturgess. He saw that the girl was pale and frightened. She and her sister were continually looking backward, as though expecting to find they were being pursued.

“I think – it is all right – now,” she said brokenly. “Nina shot at it – the most awful monster I have ever seen.”

“Had it two legs, or four?”

Sturgess was incorrigible. Notwithstanding the start caused by the sound of the gun, he grinned. The girl turned to Nina.

“Please tell them, Nina, that we are not romancing,” she cried indignantly.

Nina handed the rifle to Maseden.

“Put this thing right,” she said coolly. “It won’t work, but I’m sure I hit the beast with the first bullet.”

Maseden pressed down the lever, and saw that a cartridge had jammed, as the extractor lever had not been jerked downward with sufficient force. He began adjusting matters with the blade of his knife.

“Were you attacked by an animal?” he inquired.

“We don’t know exactly what it was,” said Madge. “When you left us we decided to have a bath before putting on dry clothes. As our only towel was the ship’s flag, we arranged that each should rub the other dry with her hands. We had just finished dressing, and Nina had gone to pile fresh logs on the fire, when I heard a splash in the water of the creek. I looked around and saw a fearful creature, bigger than a horse, which barked at me. I shrieked, and Nina ran with the rifle. The thing barked again – it was only a few feet away – so she fired. Then we both made off.”

“You disturbed a seal, I expect.”

“No. If those were seals we saw last night, this was no seal,” said Nina decisively. “It had small, fiery eyes and long tusks. I think it had flappers, though, in place of feet, but it was enormous.”

“Sounds like a walrus,” put in Sturgess.

“There are no walruses in the South Pacific,” said Maseden. “Anyhow, now that the magazine works all right, let’s go and have a look.”

Ample corroboration of the girl’s story was soon forthcoming. The splashing of water behind the group of big rocks sheltering the pool in which they had taken their bath showed that something unusual was going on.

They all reached the spot in time to witness the last struggles of a gigantic sea-lion, one of the most fearsome-looking of the ocean’s many strange denizens. The shot fired by Nina Forbes had struck it fairly in the throat, inflicting a wound which speedily proved mortal.

The animal was a full-grown male, fully ten feet in length, with a neck and shoulders of huge proportions. Its tusks and bristles gave it a most menacing aspect. The wonder was not that the bathers ran, but that Nina had the courage to face such a monster.

Maseden was delighted, and patted her on the shoulder.

“Well done!” he cried. “You’ve supplied the larder with fresh meat for days. We must even try our ’prentice hands at curing what we can’t eat to-day or to-morrow.”

The girl herself was not elated by her triumph. The water in which the sea-lion lay was deeply tinged with its blood, which had also bespattered the rocks.

“I have never before killed any living creature,” she said in a rather miserable tone. “Why did the stupid thing attack us? We were doing it no harm.”

Maseden laughed.

“Off you go, both of you!” he said. “C. K. and I have the job of our lives now. It will be no joke disjointing this fellow with a couple of pocket-knives. But if the fact brings any consolation, I may tell you that a sea-lion when irritated can be a very ugly customer. Probably this one was sleeping in the sun under the lee of a rock, and you may have come unpleasantly near him without knowing it. When he awoke and saw you he was curious. Instead of slinking off, he roared at you, and might easily have killed the pair of you!”

“Can’t we help?” inquired Nina, seeing that Maseden meant to lose no time.

“No.”

“But we ought to,” she persisted. “We must get used to such work.”

“You can do something quite as serviceable by rigging a few lines on stout poles, where there is plenty of sun and air, and seeing that a big fire is kept up… And, by the way, don’t come this way till we call you. We shan’t be – presentable.”

The two disappeared without further question.

“This will be a messy undertaking,” Maseden explained to his assistant. “The best thing we can do is strip, or our clothes will be in an awful state.”

At the outset they abandoned any thought of actually dismembering the colossal carcass. They skinned it with difficulty, and then cut off the flesh in layers. After an hour’s hard endeavor they had gathered a fine store of meat, while the pelt, after being well washed in salt water, was stretched on a flat rock to dry.

They were dressing again when a new trouble arose. From out of the void had gathered a flock of vultures. These fierce, evil-looking birds were so daring in their efforts to raid the pile of meat that two actually allowed themselves to be knocked over by the staves the men carried.

Sturgess remained on guard, therefore, while Maseden took the strips and hung them on the lines the girls had already prepared.

Madge volunteered to do the cooking. She had found two flat, thin stones, somewhat resembling hard slate, and she fancied that by placing some steaks between these and covering them with glowing charcoal the trick would be achieved. As a matter of fact, she succeeded wonderfully well. Even Nina, sniffing her portion, vowed that the shooting of a sea-lion had its compensations.

More vultures arrived. The sea-lion’s bones were rapidly picked clean, but one of the men had to keep close watch all day over the curing operations.

An amusing argument arose as to the correct method of drying meat. Maseden held that he distinctly remembered reading that biltong, or South African antelope steak, was prepared by hanging the strips in the sun. The girls were positive that this would cause putrefaction, and that the meat should be placed in the shade.

As Maseden was not quite sure of his facts, he compromised as to a quarter of the supply, with the result that this smaller quantity was rendered uneatable.

The story of Alexander Selkirk has been told so often, and in so many forms, that it will not bear repeating here. During a whole fortnight these four young people devoted their wits and their muscles to the all-important task of feeding themselves and securing some means of escape into the interior. The men soon learned how to circumvent the wily seal, and thus store plenty of meat and skins, which latter, with sinews and a knife, were converted first into garments for the women and, as supplies increased, into a tent.

Maseden noticed that the high-water mark fell daily, so he reasoned that the Southern Cross struck during a high spring tide, and that the neap would occur in fourteen days. He laid his plans on that assumption, which was justified almost to a day.

Another gale blew up, but despite its discomfort it helped them materially, because the men loosened a barrier of logs which had formed high up the wooded cliff, and the rain freshet brought down far more timber than was needed for the biggest raft they could hope to construct.

After some experiments they decided to make it a three-tier one, and flexible in the center. Hence it was fully thirty feet in length, the average length of a thick log being fifteen feet after its roots and thin section had been burnt off. For the same reason the raft was fifteen feet wide. It had a step in the forepart for their old friend, the broken topmast. They dispensed with a rudder, believing they could guide their ark with poles.

Observation showed that the tide flowed swiftly in mid-stream, and their well-matured project was to push out to a prearranged point at high-water, anchor while the tide fell, and travel as far as practicable on the next tide. They tried to avoid all risks that could be foreseen.

The raft was built in the waterway which Madge had termed the “creek” – the gulley cleared for itself by the torrent whose dry bed had offered them a road through the otherwise impenetrable forest. Every test of stability their inventiveness could devise proved that an area of thirty feet by fifteen of logs arranged in three rows would support four or five times the weight they were likely to place on it. By manipulating the poles Maseden and Sturgess found that they could control the movements of even such an unwieldy bulk, while if the wind suited they might rig a sail of skins.

They were able to build quickly and well because of three essentials. The timber was at hand, they had a fire, and in the pieces of rope and strips of iron and wire they had invaluable means of making the structure secure.

At last, on the fifteenth day after the wreck, Maseden poled out the raft during the slack tide at high-water, and fastened it to ropes already fixed and buoyed nearly a quarter of a mile from the shore. He would allow none of the others to accompany him, nor did he carry any of the few stores they possessed. He could not be absolutely certain that the cables would withstand the strain, and if the raft were swept seaward by the falling tide only one life was in jeopardy, while Sturgess might be able to help him from the shore.

His vigil was watched by anxious eyes, especially when he thought fit to ease the stress on the ropes by planting a long pole against a big rock which he knew rested a few feet astern and below the surface. The two hours of half-tide were the worst, but the anchors held. Three hours later the raft was aground and he came ashore.

It was then nearly dark, as their first voyage would naturally be taken in broad daylight. Nothing was said at the time, but he was told afterwards, that for no conceivable guerdon would any of the three again go through the agony of suspense they endured while the raft swung and lurched in the fierce current.

Meat, fresh and dried, a quantity of oysters, the leather trunk, and a charcoal fire cunningly packed in oyster shells kept in position by wire – this cooking brazier being the invention of Nina Forbes – formed the cargo. Most fortunately Maseden carried the poncho and the rifle slung across his back with rope, and the cartridges were in his pockets.

They slept on board. Soon after daybreak the raft was afloat, but was not allowed to move until there was a fair depth of water, owing to the very great probability of the whole structure being dashed to pieces against some awkwardly placed boulder. At last, however, Maseden thought the channel was practicable, and the ropes were cast loose, being sacrificed, of course, but that could not be helped.

They were off! The first of the sixty miles was already slipping away. They were so excited, so bent on the adventure ahead, that none of them thought of looking back until Providence Beach, which was the name they gave their refuge, was nearly out of sight.