His Unknown Wife

CHAPTER XV

THE SIMPLE LIFE

Who found the boat? The question has not been answered to this day. Four people held and vehemently expressed different opinions; if they had not agreed ultimately to pool the credit, the foundations of six very firm friendships might have been endangered, because even the sisters were at logger-heads on the point.

No one could dispute the fact that it was Nina Forbes who, with outstretched hand and pointing finger, exclaimed dramatically:

“What is that?”

But the other three yielded her no prior right on that account. Were they not all looking at it, and thinking that which Nina said?

Each could establish a most reasonable claim if the matter were adjudicated by a prize court. Firstly, Maseden had ordered a close survey of the coast, and, if this very proper precaution had not been taken, the boat would be rotting yet on an uncharted beach. Secondly, if Sturgess had not slipped on a rock and scarified his chin rather badly there would, thirdly, have been no need for Madge to suggest that he should wash the wound in fresh water, and even insist that this should be done.

Lastly, there was Nina, who literally demanded an explanation of a long, low strip of taut canvas visible above a small sand hill on which tufts of coarse grass were struggling for life.

The simplest way out of the difficulty was to admit that sheer, unadulterated good luck brought about an incident which probably changed the whole course of events, though a white and shining patch of skin on Sturgess’s left leg testifies to this day that his accident was primarily responsible for it.

Two fair-sized streams ran from the hills into the straits on that side. Near the first was pitched the camp. Well hidden near the second was the boat.

Now, these rivulets, though fairly deep and swift, were not torrents; that is to say, they drained a watershed by no means so steep as Hanover Island. Their volume was more regular, inasmuch as they were not wholly the outcome of the latest downpour of rain. To avoid the necessity of fording them, one had to walk a long way seaward until their waters began to spread over the reef in a hundred little runnels, and one could leap from rock to rock.

Indeed, it was while Sturgess was so doing that he barked his shin, a most painful if not dangerous operation; in this instance, it evoked language which the girls pretended not to hear.

Having crossed the stream, however, Madge examined the damage, and would have it that the sufferer take off his boot and sock, and forthwith lave the wound in fresh water.

What he really wanted to do was to wander away out of earshot and relieve his feelings by the spoken word. He obeyed, however, and all four went up the right bank (which, as Sturgess and Madge jointly cited in their contention, they certainly would not have done otherwise) to a point where the river was free of salt-water.

In the result, curiously enough, Sturgess’s excoriated wound was left absolutely to its own devices. Both he and Madge, not to mention the other two, were startled out of any further thought of such a minor casualty by coming full tilt on to a ship’s boat, trimly sheeted in gray canvas, dry-docked, one might say, behind a sandhill.

After an incredulous stare, Maseden answered Nina’s eager question.

“It is one of the life-boats of the Southern Cross,” he said, and his voice was hushed, almost reverent. “There is her number, with the ship’s name. She was carried on the starboard side, just behind the forward rail on the promenade deck. I used to look up at her and admire her lines.”

By this time they had raced up alongside the craft. She appeared to be undamaged. Maseden unlaced a portion of the canvas cover. She was dry as a bone inside.

“Say, Alec, d’you know that every boat was stocked with provisions and water for twenty people for fourteen days? I heard the captain give the order.”

Sturgess was so excited that he almost yelped the words.

“I saw the stewards putting the stuff on board,” said Maseden.

“There’s tea, and coffee, and condensed milk, and butter, and tins of meat and jam,” cried Nina.

“And ship’s biscuits, and a spirit stove, and matches, and barrels of water,” chimed in Madge.

Maseden was tapping the planks and peering at so much of the keel as was visible, but he could find no sign of injury. The smart white paint had been badly scraped amidships and in the bows, but the wood was not splintered. To the best of his belief the craft was thoroughly seaworthy. She carried her full complement of oars, a mast, and lugsail. In fact, she was almost in the exact condition in which she had left the ship.

Two pulleys and a part of a broken davit showed how she had been wrenched bodily from her berth and flung into the sea by the first great wave that crashed over the SouthernCross when the steamship swung broadside on to the reef under the pull of the aft anchor.

“Come along, everybody!” shouted Maseden, and the ring of triumph in his voice revealed the depth of his feelings. “We start building a new camp at once. Within less than a fortnight the spring tides which brought her here will be with us again, and we must be ready for them.”

“Can’t we launch her on rollers?” demanded Sturgess.

“I doubt it. She was docked here by a backwash which does not occur very often, judging by the herbage growing among the sand. She is a heavy craft, too. I don’t think the four of us could move her. We’ll have rollers in readiness, of course, but we must cut a channel for the tide, and so make sure of floating her… By Jove! What a piece of luck!”

It took them an hour or more to sober down. For once, Maseden’s orders were tacitly ignored, even by himself. Instead of helping in the construction of another hut the girls were busy with the lashings of the canvas cover. Every true woman has the instinct of the good housewife, and these two could not rest content until they had examined and classified the stores.

None of them could resist the temptation of a bottle of coffee extract, some condensed milk and a tin of biscuits. The spirit-stove was lighted, some water boiled and they drank hot coffee and ate wheat for the first time in seventeen days.

Their greatest surprise was the quantity and variety of stores on board. There were knives and forks, enameled plates and cups, even such minor requisites as salt, pepper and mustard.

Of course, the chief steward of the Southern Cross had been given many hours in which to make preparations. Being a resourceful man, when the lockers were packed with their regulation supplies he stuffed “extras” into odd corners.

Poor fellow! The pity was that an adverse fate had denied him any benefit from his own foresight.

Although the castaways entered with good heart upon their second campaign against the forces of nature, the immense advantages now enjoyed as compared with their condition on Hanover Island did not blind them to the difficulties yet to be faced and conquered ere the haunts of civilized man might be reached. There was no gainsaying the cogency of Maseden’s logic; the absence of aborigines from a spot so favored as Rotunda Bay (the name allotted to their new location), supplied positive proof of the impracticable nature of all approaches by sea.

How far the barriers might extend they had no means of knowing. They could guess how forbidding they were from the character of the northerly channel, and it was easy to believe that one such dangerous passage alone would not have deterred tribesmen accustomed to navigate these perilous waters.

So, in the intervals of labor, they gave close heed to the tides and their action. For instance, Maseden would knock together a small raft, launch it at high water and watch its subsequent course. He found, at first, that it stranded invariably. Then he took it to the tiny estuary of the second river, waited until the ebb was well established, and let it swing out with the current.

This time, as he anticipated, it was carried swiftly southward, and was seen no more, thus confirming his belief that the rise and fall of the tide set up a circular movement of an immense body of water always tending in the same southerly direction, retarded during the flow, with resultant acceleration during the ebb.

One day, when observation farther afield was desired, they all four set off soon after dawn, and were close to the southern narrows at high water. Then, as the shore gradually became practicable, they followed the receding tide until farther advance became dangerous. Seen from a distance, one of the cliffs offered a not impossible climb, and closer inspection showed that, by hard work, and some roping, they could reach the summit.

The girls, who had positively refused to be left “at home,” were now equally determined to make the ascent. The soles of their light boots had long since given out, but each and all now wore moccasins of sealskin, and very serviceable and comfortable footgear these proved, being impervious to the jars of the roughest rock surface, and most excellent for climbing.

After an hour’s hard work they stood on a narrow saddle overlooking a seaward precipice, and the vista before their eyes was at once awe-inspiring and disheartening. Mile after mile, nothing but broken water met the eye. The reefs were countless. In fact, the resistance they offered to the incoming tide direct from the Pacific was such that, in all likelihood, it accounted for the delay which set up the extraordinary race past Hell Gate.

Even Sturgess was upset by the far-flung chaos. A strong wind was blowing up there, and he sank his voice in the hope that his words would reach Maseden only.

“Rotten!” he said. “It would knock the stuffing out of a brass dog.”

“No secrets, please,” cried Madge promptly. “What did you say, C. K.? Are you telling Alec that there is no way out?”

“Yep,” was the disconsolate reply.

“We have not quite determined that fact yet,” said Maseden coolly. “Having done a stiff climb, suppose we get our money’s worth, and sit down? Never mind the unpleasant prospect in front. Let’s keep a sharp look-out for a log traveling in mid-stream, and watch it as long as possible.”

Nina, who was endowed with excellent good sight, was the first to detect a nearly submerged tree-trunk bobbing about in the channel, nearly a mile distant. The atmosphere happened, however, to be unusually clear that day, so they could follow the progress of the derelict for another mile or more. As soon as it emerged from the actual channel between the two headlands, it swung away to the left, or eastward, and kept on that course until lost in the waste of waters.

Maseden whistled in sheer vexation when he gave up the attempt to follow this floating index any longer.

“What is it now, son?” inquired Sturgess.

“The worst,” snapped the other vindictively.

“Great Scott! Didn’t you like the look of that log. I thought it lolloped along in a devil-may-care style that was rather attractive.”