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Title: The Island of Captain Sparrow
Author: Wright, S. Fowler [Sydney Fowler] (1874-1965)
Date of first publication: 1928
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1946
   [Chicago: All-Fiction Field, Inc.]
Date first posted: 26 September 2017
Date last updated: 26 September 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1469

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.
We have also added a table of contents.






  THE ISLAND OF
  CAPTAIN SPARROW

  By
  S. Fowler Wright



  An uncharted island in a nameless sea ...
  a forgotten people's war against the world
  ... a man who dared to risk fantastic death
  for a year's lease on life and love....




Contents

  Chapter

  I The Landing of Charleton Foyle
  II The Island Colony
  III The Dryad
  IV In the Temple of Gir
  V In the House of Jacob
  VI The Reward of Pierre
  VII The Flight




CHAPTER I

THE LANDING OF CHARLTON FOYLE

The wind had fallen, but the sky was still black with low and hurrying
cloud, and the sea rolled heavily.

Charlton Foyle sat in the stern of the boat, and steered with an oar.
He was striving to keep her head before the wind, and gazing anxiously
at the land, toward which wind and tide were united to take him.

He saw that the cliff-wall rose straight and high.  There was no sign
of nearer rocks or shallows.  It appeared that the cliff rose abruptly
from a deep water.  What hope could it give?

He could not handle the boat.  There was a mast, but it was not
stepped, nor had he strength and skill to set it up, or to control its
canvas.  There were oars, but they were too heavy, and the boat too
large for a single man to manage more than one.

Till the storm came in the night he had let the boat drift as it would.
He had water; he had food.  He had not known where he was, nor in which
direction land might be nearest.  His only hope was to be picked up by
a passing ship.

For many days the sun shone; and the seas were kind.  The indolent,
laughing waters had rocked him gently, and in their arms he had
regained something of the health which he had sought vainly over half
the world.  He had begun to care for life, when life seemed most likely
to elude him.  He was aware that he watched the horizons for lift of
sail, or trail of smoke, with a keener vigilance than he had done in
the weariness of the first days.  But it was still with a mind too
indifferent to the future for anxiety to disturb it, unless it were
aroused by a danger which should be acute and imminent.

He had leaned lazily over the tossing side of the boat, watching
strange life in deep water, or gazed at a sky of white-and-blue, or
brilliant with tropic stars.

Once a flock of birds passed, low and swift, over the waves.  He did
not know their kind.  They flew straight and fast, as having a clear
goal and a common purpose.  Should he make some effort to direct the
boat in the same way?  Even could he do it, he had doubted its wisdom.
He knew nothing of how far such birds may travel.  They might be on
their way to a near land, or they might be leaving the near land behind
them.  They passed quickly, and the great loneliness of sky and water
was again around him.

Once the wide expanse of solitary sky was specked by a great bird that
grew in size as it came more nearly overhead.  He realized that it was
not merely flying over, but was descending toward him.  It was gray in
color, larger than a swan, and with broad wings that moved with an
occasional powerful stroke.  It came low.  It circled the boat twice in
a narrowing spiral.  He saw a long hooked beak, and a dark eye that
considered him.  He reached for a boat-hook, and was aware that his
hand shook as he did so.

Then it came with a rush, close over him.  He crouched in the well of
the boat, and thrust blindly as it passed.

Because he crouched as he did, the beak missed him.  For a second he
was under a canopy of feathered wings.  The boat-hook caught, and came
clear.

He saw the great bird soaring back into the sky.  There was a stain of
blood on the end of the hook, and some gray feathers floated on the
wind, and settled down on the water.



When the wind had risen, he had got out the oar, and striven to keep
the boat's head so that she should not be swamped by the waves.  He did
not know whether his toil had been needless.  The boat was large,
strongly built, and half-decked.  He supposed that the storm had not
been a bad one.  Certainly not as bad as some he had witnessed from a
liner's deck.  But the waves had seemed large--there was a difference
in the point of view.

Anyway, the wind had fallen again.  The black menace of the night, with
its heaving waters that came out of the darkness, was over, and he was
safe, though wearied--and now the sea was carrying him swiftly toward a
peril which he had no means of avoiding, or any hope to overcome.
Every moment the cliff-wall showed nearer and higher, as the tide swept
the boat forward.

At the rate at which it was moving, it obeyed the steering-oar very
readily.  He could deflect its course, but he doubted whether this
would avail him.  It might enable him to delay the final impact, or to
strike the land somewhat further north than would otherwise be the
case, but it seemed that, soon or late, he must be dashed against a
cliff-wall that showed neither beach nor break so far as his eyes,
could follow it.

Still, the impulse is instinctive to delay a danger which we can see no
means of defeating.  The swimmer will remain afloat while his strength
lasts, though he may have no hope of rescue.  The embarrassed tradesman
will strive to renew a bill, though, as he well knows, the later date
will give no better prospect of solvency.  He leaned on the oar till
the boat lay almost broadside to an advancing wave.  It rolled in the
trough, and some water slopped over the gunwale.

Easing it somewhat, he looked shoreward again as the next wave lifted.
The morning sun, which was behind him, and still low in the sky, found
a break in the flying cloud, and lighted the cliff-face with a fading
glory.  But he noticed that there was one spot which remained dark.  It
was not a break in the wall.  It was like a cave-mouth at the
tide-level.  It gave a hope, though a faint one.

He bent his mind to the task of steering toward it.

As he approached the cliff, he saw that the distant view had not
enlarged its terrors.  It rose straight as a wall.  If his boat were
beaten against it by the breaking waves, he knew that disaster must be
instant and irretrievable.

It seemed, as he neared it, that the pace of the boat was somewhat
less, and that his control upon it increased.  He wondered whether he
might not be wiser to struggle to avoid the peril entirely.  Soon or
late, changes of wind and tide would be sure to aid him.  But the
chance was doubtful.  His control of the boat, at the best, was not
great.  If he should work it some distance from the land, the next tide
might fling it back, and there might then be no possibility of refuge.

Now, the opening which he had sought was before him, widening in
appearance as he approached, and of such height that a fishing-smack
could have run in with its sails set.

He was aided, more than he knew, by the fact that the tide was full,
and near the turn; and, more by the tide's caprice than his own skill,
he steered to the opening.

The waves that broke on the cliff-wall to right and left made a
swirling turmoil of the gap which gave them passage.  They rolled the
boat till he thought that it would be overset, swept it broadside on,
and carried it into a tunnel where it bumped heavily against a wall of
rock, recoiled, and the next moment was in somewhat quieter water.

He perceived that the tunnel, though straight in itself, was driven
into the cliff obliquely from the sea-line.  The cliff faced the east.
The tunnel ran north-west.  The direct force of the waves did not
therefore swing in; yet the boat tossed from side to side, and though
he struggled hard with the oar, it got some rough bumps as the waves
hurried it inward.

As his eyes became used to the gloom, he saw that the passage ended in
a blank wall, against which the water rose and fell restlessly, making
a murmurous sound which filled the tunnel.  The speed of the boat
slackened as he approached it.  He shipped the oar and took up the
boathook, thinking to fend the boat from the wall of rock which he was
nearing.  He saw no hope but to remain there and protect the boat as
best he might, till the tide should carry him again to the open sea.
Then he noticed a heavy iron ring, set in the face of the rock, by
which a boat might be moored.

He looked round with an increased wonder and a keener scrutiny.  He saw
that there were similar rings in the walls on either side.  The tunnel
had steadily narrowed as it progressed, so that the walls were much
nearer than they had been at the entrance.  It was evident that a boat
moored to the three rings would be secure from being beaten against the
rocks.  He had abundance of stout cable, and he resolved to fasten it
in this manner.  He could at least feel that he would not be hurried
out to the open sea till he was ready for the adventure.



Commencing to carry out this plan, which was not easy for one man only
in the unquiet boat, he had to consider the length of free cable which
he should allow.  If it were much, the boat would not be centrally
held; if little, how would it fare when the tide fell?  And it could
not fall with it, unless the cables broke.  He pictured one breaking,
while the others held, and the boat tipped up and its precious cargo
scattered into the water.

It was true that he could watch, and pay out or shorten the cables as
the need changed, but that could scarcely have been the intention of
those who provided this means of security.  He was led to wonder how
deep might be the water beneath him.  He sounded with the boat-hook,
and struck rock at about four feet from the surface.

Reassured, he continued his work.  If the tide, as he rightly supposed,
were full, then his fears were groundless.  Even while he worked, he
knew that this was so, and that the boat was pulling outward on the
ropes that held it.

Also, as he worked, he observed another thing with a fresh wonder.  In
the inner corner a flight of steps rose in the rock.  They were very
roughly cut, mere holes for the toes to enter.  At intervals at either
side, staples were fixed for the climber's hands to grip.  The
ladder--if it could be held worthy of such a name--ended in a black
hole in a corner of the rock-roof.

Surely, he thought, if human hands had hollowed that great tunnel, they
would have given it a less perilous exit.  But the hands might not be
the same--or they might not have intended that the ascent should be
easy.

He considered whether he should attempt to explore it.  He did not know
what hostility he might arouse.  He knew that the cargo which his boat
contained would excite the cupidity of all but the most ignorant
savages, and from such as they he might encounter a different danger.
He believed that he was off the tracks of sea-traffic, or of charted
land, and he knew that the lonelier islands of the vast Pacific were
the last homes of cannibalism, and of savagery which appeared to be
unable to understand any argument but that of extermination.

He realized that, should he climb those steps, his return could not be
rapid, at whatever urgency.  He realized also that, as the tide fell
and his boat grounded, he would be trapped beyond the possibility of
flight, should he continue to occupy the tunnel.

On the other hand, the sea offered a precarious hospitality.  The steps
that fronted him were the only possible alternative.  Though it was
true that his boat would become immobile as the water fell, it was
equally so that no other boat could enter upon him at such a period.

The fact that there was provision for mooring a boat, and that it was
vacant, suggested either that the tunnel was unused, or that those who
occupied it were absent upon the sea.

He decided to wait till the tide fell, and, if nothing had then
happened, he would climb the steps in the assurance that no one could
approach the boat in his absence, or attack him in the rear of his
exploration.

Meanwhile he was well armed, and none could come upon him hurriedly by
such a descent.  If a boat should enter while still the water allowed
it, he would be trapped indeed, but that risk must be taken, and
already it was almost over.  There was a repeating rifle in the boat,
and this he found and laid near to his hand while he manipulated the
mooring ropes so that the boat was drawn close to the steps, and the
hollow to which they led was directly above him.  He looked up, but he
could see nothing.  The hole was square and black.

So he sat there, watching the tossing sunlit water at the cave-mouth,
and the black vacancy above him, the rifle across his knee.  After a
time the boat grounded, gently enough, and the water receded from it.
He looked to see the whole passage draining equally, but the waves
still swept in.  He perceived that the floor, which was now bare around
him, sloped downward toward the entrance.

As the water receded, he left the boat, and followed it, not being
minded to pursue his first intention until he were satisfied that
entrance from seaward would be difficult or impossible.  He thought
also that, if he could look outward from the tunnel, he could observe
whether there was any sign of human life on the waters.

He found leisure as he waited to wonder that the floor of the tunnel
was bare and black as the waves left it.  He would have thought that
such a cave would be a trap for sand and shell, and all the ocean's
dbris.  But he supposed that the smooth slope caused it to be washed
clear as the tide receded.

Having no haste, he did not attempt to wade ahead of the tide's
retreat.  It was fortunate leisure, as he had realized before he stood,
at a later hour, looking over an ocean which sparkled to a tropic sun
and showed no sail.  For the gentle slope had ended abruptly half-way
down the passage, leaving only a narrow ledge of rock to follow on the
left hand, apart from which the rock fell across the whole width to a
depth he could not tell, for when the tide had fallen a dozen feet
below, it had not found its limit.

But he was satisfied to see that, by this time, there was no way of
gaining access from the empty seas except it were by the climbing of
twelve feet of wall-like rock, against which the waves beat continually.

There were not even any steps such as those which he had resolved to
attempt.  He judged that they who made or used this tunnel, whether it
were yesterday or a thousand years ago--and it might be either, for any
means he had of deciding--did not intend that it should be entered,
except at high tide, and that it was very certain that no one was now
likely to attempt it.

He walked back confident that his rear was secure, and resolved to
explore the mystery to which the steps led upward.



It was two months or more since Charlton Foyle had booked a passage to
Honolulu on a trading schooner.  He had been wandering aimlessly in the
summer ways of the world, avoiding the death to which a dozen doctors
had doomed him, yet not gaining the health without which life is of a
doubtful value.

At Honolulu he had asked to continue on the schooner indefinitely.  He
did not like the two men who appeared to be the joint owners of the
vessel, but that was an unimportant consideration, for he was
indifferent to those around him.  The schooner was well-found.  He had
lived less luxuriously on liners of fifty times the tonnage.  He felt
that the voyage had been beneficial beyond his previous experiences,
and was anxious to continue it.  They had demurred at first.  They
excused themselves on the plea that they would be visiting a succession
of distant islands, at some of which they might be detained, and that
the date of their return was uncertain.

When they found that this did not deter him, they named a figure which
they probably thought would be prohibitive.  But in the end they had
agreed, though with obvious reluctance, and after a quarrel between
themselves, which he had partly overheard, though he did not understand
its meaning.  In view of what he knew later, he was surprised that they
had consented at all--unless they were each so afraid of the treachery
of the other that they welcomed even a stranger, who must be an
embarrassment later.  Unless, of course, he were--removed.

He did not know, even now, what dark secrets might explain the events
that had followed--which do not concern us now--though it is a tale
which might be worth the telling.  He only knew that, after a load, of
whatever nature, had been taken aboard in the night-time from a
nameless beach, they had burst into a sudden quarrel, in which knives
had been drawn, and from which they had been separated by the efforts
of a crew that appeared to consist about equally of the adherents of
either.

And then, on a later night, when he had lain on deck, as he sometimes
did, unsuspected in the shadows, and they were anchored beside another
nameless beach, a boat had been lowered and stealthily loaded by the
men who held the watch, one of the partners superintending.  And just
as it appeared that the work was finished, the other had rushed up,
with his party behind him, and the deck had become the scene of sudden
violence, oaths, bare knives, and pistol-shots, and the cough of a
dying man.

On a moment's impulse he had dropped over the side into the loaded boat
as the nearest safety from the flying shots of a quarrel which did not
concern him, and then become aware, with mingled feelings, that the
mooring-rope had parted, and that he was adrift on the ocean.

The distance had widened rapidly from the anchored schooner, while the
noise of the fight continued and fell.  After an interval of silence,
he had heard two shots, and had supposed that the victorious party were
disposing of what remained of their opponents.  Then there had been a
brief silence again, and then a pandemonium of cries that told that the
loss of the boat had been discovered.

Should he hail them?  He had experienced a natural hesitation.  There
would be so little difference in one shot more, and one more corpse for
the sea's disposal.  And, while he doubted, he drifted further away,
into a momentary security, for the night was dark and starless.

As he drifted thus, he realized that his peril might be greater for his
silence, were he to be in sight of the ship when the dawn rose, and
that his alternative was to be an outcast in the loneliest wastes of
the Pacific, where a thousand miles were unsailed and uncharted.  But
even while he realized his dilemma, the difficulty of explaining his
silence had increased, and the distance widened.  The ennui of his
physical condition inclined him to the choice of inaction.  The cries
grew fainter, and died away.

The dawn showed him an open ocean without sail or sight of land.



It was typical of Charlton's disposition, though a condition of health
rather than character, that, having assured himself that his rear was
secure, and decided his purpose, he was in no haste to commence it.  He
became conscious that he was hungry, and ate a meal at his leisure.
Having done this, he was increasingly aware that he was tired from a
night's vigil, and from the toils in which he had spent it.  As the
time passed, and there came no threat from the dark aperture above him,
he became assured that it held no menace.  He did not resolve on sleep,
rather it resolved upon him, as he ignored it idly.  In the end, sleep
he did, and for some hours though his sleep was light and watchful.

Doubtless, when he awaked, he was the better for sleep and food, and he
went about his preparations with a careful deliberation.  In the boat
there was a lantern, which he lit, and, having no belt, he fastened it
round him with a length of rope.  He placed a loaded revolver in a
righthand pocket.

He looked with hesitation at a very serviceable sword, straight and
sharp, neither too light nor too heavy, which was among the boat's
offensive equipment, but he rejected the thought.  It was unlikely
enough that he would meet with any living thing.  If he should do so,
they might not be unfriendly.  If they were doubtful in their demeanor,
a display of weapons would not increase their good-will.  More definite
in its objection was the fact that he was not used to the wearing of
such a weapon, and that it might impede his legs in climbing.  Every
way the revolver was best and should be sufficient.

The climb was not easy....  The supports, though firm enough, of
whatever age or metal, seemed very far apart.  The foot-holes were
sometimes difficult to find.  Clinging closely to the face, of the
rock, he had to grope for them with a free foot, the hold of the other
sometimes feeling insecure as he did so.  He wondered whether the
staples would hold, were his whole weight suddenly dragged upon them.
He did not like the thought of falling upon the hard stone below.  He
imagined himself there with a broken leg, struggling to get into the
boat before the returning water should drown him--and his life
afterwards, if he should be able to live under such conditions.  The
penalties of accident are heavy to a lonely man.

His arms ached badly.  Probably he threw more strain upon them than a
more accustomed climber would have done, and his muscles were unused to
such effort.

When it seemed that he could climb no more, he realized that it might
be harder to return than to continue.  He rested for a few moments, so
far as rest was possible in such a posture, and started upward again.
A doctor might have told him that such experiences were all that were
needed to complete a cure that the sea-winds had made possible.  A man
may die in a gradual lethargy, thinking that he has no will to live,
who would yet be roused by a sudden threat of death, before he had gone
too low for his will to wake to the conflict.

He was impeded also by the lantern, which would not keep clear of the
wall, as he had designed to sling it, but he was glad of its light when
he came at last to a place of landing.

At least--should he land?  For some time he had left behind the open
space of the tunnel and had been ascending a narrow shaft about a yard
square.  It still continued upward into the darkness, but behind him
there was now an opening into an unlighted chamber.  Loosing one hand,
he leaned sideways from the wall and raised the lantern.  He saw
nothing but a bare rock floor and an empty darkness.

He was aching to rest his straining arms, and for the security of a
solid floor, but still he hesitated.  He did not doubt that he could
step safely to the floor that was about three feet behind him--but the
return?  He thought that it might not be so easy to reach forward and
clutch the rings, or to stride over vacancy to those precarious
footholds.  He had a vision of starving there with all his stores
beneath him.  The bare darkness of the chamber gave no promise of
hospitality, nor probability of exit.  It might be that the way out (if
way there were) was to continue upward.

While he doubted, weariness resolved the problem.  He was too exhausted
for descent or for further climbing.  He reached out a foot, felt firm
rock, leaned his weight upon it, and landed easily.

After a short rest, he commenced to explore the chamber.  He was not
keenly curious, nor did he feel anxious as to what he might discover.
The physical exhaustion following the exertions of the night and day,
acting on a body which was still searching for health rather than in
possession of it, left his mind dull and aloof from his surroundings,
now that the need for further effort had lost its urgency.

The lantern showed him a rock chamber, bare and black, about ten feet
high, and of about twice that width.  Its length was greater, and the
light was insufficient to reveal it fully.  He judged that its
direction was toward the cliff-face, which limited its possibility.

He decided to make a circuit of the walls.  If they should show no
exit, he must continue to climb into the darkness or give up the
enterprise and return to such hospitality as the sea might offer.

Turning to the short inner wall, he came at once to an open passage
about three feet broad, and high enough for a man to walk freely.  This
must run inland, he thought, and gave a better prospect of reaching the
surface.  So far as the light showed, it was not level, but sloped
steadily, though not steeply, upward.

He took a few steps along it and then returned, reluctant to leave an
unexplored possibility of danger behind him.  He would not risk the
chance of anything cutting off his return to the boat, or gaining
possession of it in his absence.  He resolved that he would first
complete the circuit of the walls of the chamber.



Emerging from the passage again, he took the wall left-hand, casting
the light before him.  He trod in a fine dry dust, which increased in
depth as he went forward.  The light flickered upon the length of the
northern wall.  Dim and huge, he caught the figure of a man.  He
stopped, lifting the light to look more closely.  He saw the drawing of
a human form, with wide stag-like horns.  It was colored a dull red.

The figure was crude, powerful, brutal.  It was human, and yet not
human.  It might be god--or devil.  It might be the work of an artist
to whom the two had been one.  Because art cannot be powerful without
sincerity, no artist of our own or of any historic period could have
drawn that figure.  Charlton may not have realized this, but he
recognized that he was looking upon the work of a dim antiquity.

The figure was not more than eight feet high, including the horns, yet
it gave an impression of overshadowing size, and of an insatiable
ferocity.  He shivered, as though chilled, though the cavern was not
cold.

He noticed that the figure held a sword in its left hand.  He thought
that its shape was not unlike that which he had left in the boat.  He
had an absurd fancy that it was the same.  Always the sword, he
thought.  Races and civilizations rise and die, and their records pass
from the minds of men, but the sword continues.  Always the sword.  His
mind wondered and wandered.  The figure held it hypnotized.  He pulled
himself free with difficulty.  He looked down in the dust in which he
trod--a very fine dry dust--and it had a new significance.  It was the
dust of things long dead--very long dead.

He went on with altered feelings, as of one who invaded an ancient
sanctuary, or a forgotten tomb.  The thought that he must beware of the
presence of living men had left him wholly.  And then, as he completed
the length of the chamber--it was surprisingly long--and turned the
corner to the shorter wall, he came on something which obliged him to
adjust his mind afresh.  It was a brass cannon.  He saw it while still
a few feet away, and at the first glance it was unmistakable.

Coming closer, he saw that it was swivel-mounted, of no recent pattern.
He ran the light along it, touching it in wonder to assure himself of
its reality.  It was covered with a thin coating of dust.  He noticed a
hint of verdigris at the touch-hole.  Otherwise it showed clear and
bright as he rubbed the dust aside.

He thought that he saw some writing upon it--or was it ornamental
scroll-work only?  Looking more closely, he read--_The Fighting Sue,
1866_.  That was definite; but it might have been at a later date that
it found its home in this solitude.  He looked round for anything which
might give further explanation, but he found nothing.  There was no
powder or ball.  There was no other object.

A line of light, very faint, which did not come from the lantern,
caught his notice.  Looking at the wall which fronted the cannon's
muzzle, he saw a wooden shutter, wide and low, beneath which the light
entered.  It was made of a hard elm-like wood, showing no sign of
decay.  It was suspended on a long horizontal hinge.  He tried to raise
it, and found that he could do so after some effort, though it did not
move easily.

He looked through an embrasure cut through two feet of rock.  It was
not very large on its inner side, but it was shaped in a widening
funnel, sloping downward.  It showed a broad extent of ocean below him,
with long waves rolling inward.  If it had been made for the cannon,
it, at least, must be recent.  But what purpose of defense could it
serve--could it ever have served--in this lonely place?  Who had left
it, and how, and when?

He could find no answer.

But he saw that there were traces of two occupations: one of an
incalculable antiquity, and one which, in comparison, was but of
yesterday.

With this thought in mind, he observed that the dust was much thicker
along the walls than in the center of the chamber, where it had the
impression of many feet, and; looking closely, he was sure that some at
least of these feet had been booted.

He completed the examination of the remaining wall, but made no further
discovery.

He paused again at the mouth of the shaft, hesitating as to whether he
should return to the boat, or explore the tunnel before doing so.  He
could not resolve the significance of all that he had seen, but it had
diminished both his hope and his fear.  He now imagined himself alone
in a place where men had once been, but which they had long deserted.
He had no reason to fear any hostility, nor to hope for any assistance.

The one problem which remained was that of an inland exit from the
passage which, he had discovered.  That was, at least, probable.

If there were none, his course was clear.  He must put to sea again
when the conditions appeared favorable.  His supply of water would not
last forever.  That consideration alone was decisive, for these caves
showed no stream, nor any faintest trickle of moisture.  If he put to
sea again, he might find another side to the land, where it would be
possible to beach the boat without danger.  But this was doubly
doubtful, for he knew that his measure of control of the boat gave
little prospect of reaching such a goal, did it exist, of which he had
no evidence.

On the other hand, if he should find that the passage gave him access
to a desert land, he would have to decide whether it would be the
better to remain there or to risk the dangers of the sea once more,
after he had replenished his stock of water and perhaps augmented the
store of food which he carried.  It was no hopeful prospect to drift at
the mercy of sea and wind, knowing that his life was forfeit to the
first serious storm that the days would bring.  But then there would be
no haste to decide.  Really, there was no haste now.  He felt tired and
lethargic.  Had the return to the boat been easier, he would have taken
it at once, and rested there before he explored further.

As it was, he stood hesitating, and the lantern decided him.  The light
flickered, and he observed that the candle which it contained was
almost finished.  The thought that he might be obliged to stride across
the hollow shaft in the darkness waked a sudden panic.  Very carefully,
lest a jerk should extinguish it, he slung the lantern to his side.  He
saw the metal loops in the wall before him, and in the urgency of the
failing light he leaned forward boldly to grasp them.  He hung a moment
while his feet scraped for the holes, and the light went out as he
found them.  But it was easier to descend than it had been to climb
upward, and he had beneath him a more definite and desired objective.

It was long after noon when he regained the boat, and the tide had
risen far, though it had not yet reached it.  He had gained this much
by his enterprise; he was no longer anxious lest any hostility should
threaten him from the aperture above him.  If there were any men living
who had access to that gloomy chamber (which he greatly doubted), they
were making no use of their knowledge, and it was little likely that
they would be aware of his presence.  He ate with an appetite such as
he had not known for a long time; after which, he decided to wait till
the next day before continuing his exploration.  He put a fresh candle
into the lantern, though he did not light it; laid it beside the loaded
rifle, near to his hand, and settled himself into the bed that he had
made in the stern of the boat, on which he had slept so many nights
while the summer seas had rocked him.

He did not sleep at once, as he had expected to do.  He lay awake till
the darkness came, and the boat was lifted again in the arms of the
advancing water.  He felt her pull on the cables, now on this, now on
that, as the waves swayed her.  Soon she settled to a motion which was
gentler and more regular than that to which he had been accustomed on
the open sea.  But still he did not lose consciousness.  Perhaps he
missed the stars overhead.  When at last he slept, he dreamed--dreams
of the kind which cause the sleeper to wake with a sense of misery and
foreboding beyond reason.



He waked in a different mood from that with which the night had
assailed him.  He cared nothing for dreams, or for the dust of
forgotten days.  He was of no mind to venture again upon a deserted
ocean, in a boat which he could not guide, if there were any better
possibility.  By the coastline he had seen he judged that the land must
be of considerable extent.  If it were uninhabited, it might give the
means of sustaining life very easily in such latitude.  The cave above
him offered shelter already, which appeared to be his for the taking.
If there were other inhabitants, they might be friendly.  He could
explore with caution.  He need not show himself till he were sure that
it would be safe to do so.  Everything depended upon a landward exit to
the passage he had discovered, or to the shaft above, and surely it was
probable that one of these would give it.

He became keen to start, hurrying his morning meal, and even considered
carrying up some of his possessions, his mind beginning to regard the
upper chamber as his headquarters, rather than the boat which had
brought him to it.  He resisted this impulse, but he started in good
spirits, equipped for a day's absence.  He was less indifferent to
life, and more alert to meet it than he had been for years.
Circumstance had pressed upon him till he had been forced to react
against it, and it had occupied his mind so that he was not even aware
of the change which it had induced.

He climbed more quickly than yesterday, and was soon in the deserted
chamber.  He resolved to examine it once again before entering the
tunnel, lest he should have overlooked anything of significance on his
first circuit.

He found nothing; but, coming to the wooden shutter which covered the
embrasure, it occurred to him that he would gain some light if he
should fasten it upwards.  Examination showed that this had been done
by means of short chains and staples which were fixed into the rock.
Having raised it thus, and satisfied himself that it was firmly held,
he leaned out to survey the scene beneath him.  It was idly done, a
moment's gazing at the sunlit water before he returned his eyes to the
dark interior.

A moment later, he was going up the dark tunnel.  It was a gentle,
steady ascent, straight and long.  The tunnel was quite dry.  The air
was good enough, though he could feel no current.  Becoming curious on
the point, he exposed the flame of the lantern.  It bent, though very
slightly.  It indicated a very gentle passage of air in the direction
in which he was going.  He took this to imply that there must be some
opening before him, and his pace increased, though he watched his steps
carefully.  After what he thought to be about half a mile, the ascent
ceased.  For a short distance the floor was level, then it began to
descend.  Here he passed an opening on his left hand, but he decided to
continue straight forward.  There was still no sign of light ahead, but
he was suddenly aware that the walls had ceased.  He stopped abruptly,
daunted by what he saw.  He was in a dark chamber, such as he had left
at the other end of the passage.  But it was not empty.  It was choked
with snakes.  They writhed in heaps on the floor!  They were piled to
his own height in fantastic contortions.  He moved slightly, and
something cold and soft flicked his cheek.

He cried out sharply.  But even as he did so, he had subdued the first
impulse of panic, and had realized its foolishness.  It was a vegetable
growth that confronted him.  Root or branch--he could not tell which.
Leafless, livid, fantastic, writhing forms, with pale tints of green or
yellow.  Advancing upon them, he saw that they entered through an
aperture in the wall before him.  They crushed in, shutting out all
light, almost all air.  He wished that he had brought the sword to hack
through them.  Evidently there was a way out where they entered.  He
could see no other.

He was excited and eager now to find what the outside might offer.  He
was in no mood to be deterred by such an obstacle.  He laid down the
lantern and commenced to clear the way.  Inspecting them more closely,
he decided that he was confronted by the arms of some creeping plants
which, having lost themselves through the window of this chamber,
maintained a sickly existence in the darkness.

He found them tough and difficult to sever, and if he pulled as he
broke them, a further length would be drawn in, and he had little gain
for his effort.  But he worked with energy, and soon had his way clear
to a window about three feet square, though he could see nothing
through it.  The creeper filled the opening, which pierced a wall of
rock two or three feet in thickness.  Even when he had cleared it
sufficiently to discover the limit of its depth, the same growth
covered it, a curtain through which no observation could penetrate.

Leaning forward, he worked gently at the screen which closed his view.
He was cautious now, not knowing what strange sight might be near him.
Finding how thick and close was the obstacle which confronted him, he
tried to break more of the impending growth away, but he was confronted
now with the thicker stems of the main growth of the plant.  It was a
living matted wall three feet thick, with stems as thick as his own
thigh, through which he at length worked a sufficient opening for the
light to enter.

Lying forward, half on the floor of the aperture and half on the
supporting creeper, he at last saw the land outside.

A wide prospect, several miles in extent, lay beneath and before him.
He was looking out from a hillside, not so abrupt as were the cliffs to
seaward, yet so steep that it could have been climbed with difficulty
but for the vegetation which covered it, which appeared to be of one
kind only.  The backsloping side curved forward to right and left in a
gigantic arc, as though the whole island were one huge volcanic crater
(as perhaps it had been), and it was draped and hidden from base to
skyline in a garment of glossy green, as dark as winter ivy, formed by
the giant creeper, which flowered profusely with enormous saucer-shaped
flowers of a plumbago-blue color, and of an overpowering fragrance.

But Charlton's first glance was not upon this garmenting of the rocky
wall from which he looked.  He had not pushed his way out sufficiently
far to see it.  He was aware of flat ground two hundred feet beneath
him, parrot-green, looking like a grazed field, and beyond that a dark
forest of trees, growing close and high, at the sight of which he felt
chilled, though the air was warm and windless, for it recalled a forest
of which he had dreamed in the night, and which he had feared to enter.

He did not doubt that it was the same, and that the dream had warned
him against it.

From his vantage of height he could see somewhat over and beyond the
forest, which stretched for several miles before him.  Beyond was
higher ground, thinly wooded.  There was no sign of cultivation, or of
the abodes of men, except--far to southward--something shone
marble-white in the sunlight.

It might be house or temple.  He could not tell.

Encouraged by the solitude of the scene, and reflecting that no
creature, human or other, could have been using the entrance he
occupied for many months, nor, probably, for a longer period, he pushed
further outward, as far as he could do it with safety, till half his
weight was upon the branches of the creeper.  He saw the crater-like
curve of the flower-clad cliff from which he looked.  He supposed that
it might continue on either hand, until it encircled the island.  It
must be an island surely!

He remained there for a long time, satisfied that he could not be seen
either from beneath or above, and watching for any sign of moving life.
He heard the cries of sea-birds, and of others from the forest.  He saw
many doves, of an unfamiliar kind, which flew to the hillside.
Doubtless they rested in the green-clad wall from which he looked.  He
thought that he heard the chattering of monkeys.  He noticed that the
forest had little resemblance to the wooded places of the Pacific
islands among which he had wandered.

He decided he would bring up all the stores from the boat into the
greater security of the chamber above it.  Perhaps he would bring them
here in time.  There was time in plenty.  A lifetime, it might be.  He
would do that first and make all things secure, and he would venture
out at his leisure.  It would be easy to clamber down the sloping wall,
with the growth of the creeper three feet thick upon it.  He could not
fail if he tried.  Something moved at the edge of the forest.  He had
become weary of watching, and did not notice it as it first emerged.
It was like a large dog.

It was going to a little pool that lay between the trees and the open
green beneath him.  (Why did the trees end so suddenly?  What was the
meaning of the bare green level beneath him?  his mind wandered to
ask.)  The creature stood upright, and he saw that it was a man.  It
went down on all fours again, and he saw that it was a beast.  It was
in a clearer light now.  Men can see far in the glare of a tropic noon.
Charlton saw that it had horns on its head.  Horns like a goat.  It put
a bearded face to the water.  Having drunk, it rose upright again.
Certainly it was a man.  Very hairy, or perhaps wearing a coat of
skins.  And yet the feet were hooved unless the light deceived him.
The creature dropped on all fours again.  It disappeared.

Charlton's curiosity was aroused.  He would explore that forest when he
was ready.  The creature, man or beast, had not seemed very formidable.
But he would take the rifle when he did so.




CHAPTER II

THE ISLAND COLONY

Captain Andrew Sparrow of the _Fighting Sue_, pirate, carried on
business for twelve years or more in the middle of the last century.
He might not have continued successfully for so long a period had he
not emulated the caution of the fox, that does not rob the hen-roosts
near his own earth.  He made his home in the equatorial regions of the
North Pacific, which was then a lonelier ocean than it is today.  He
lay await for his prey in other seas.  Then the _Fighting Sue_,
Boston-built, brigantine-rigged, with five port-holes a side, a long
bow-chaser, and two brass cannon on the quarter-deck for use in a
flying fight, did not live up to her name unless she were compelled to
do so, which was seldom, for she was fast on any wind, and when she
hunted she was not cumbered with cargo.  She bullied, robbed, and ran.

She had fought at times, when fight she must--once with a Dutch
frigate, from which she had been saved by darkness and a rising sea,
with the loss of a top-mast and a third of her crew.  But escape she
did, and with honor of its kind, for Captain Sparrow had handled her
well.

When twelve years had gone, he decided that it would be tempting a
forbearing Providence too far to continue his operations longer.  In
this his judgement was sound, as events proved.

His plans had long been made.  He did not intend to risk his life by
returning to lands that were at one in their objections to the
profession which he had followed so successfully.  He knew an island
where he could retire--it was uncharted, far from shipping lanes, and
inaccessible.

He did not plan only for himself.  He planned for his crew.  He did not
intend that any wandering seaman should be in a position to betray him.
He proposed that they should land with him, and that the ship should be
sunk, so that further wandering would be impossible.  He kept this part
of his plan in his own mind.  He would be the king of a new land.

He had schemed this long, and had perfected the details of his design.
He had wealth, but it would be of little use after he had separated
himself from the means of spending it.

There was a port in Chile where he was known, and which he could enter
in comparative safety.  Here he purchased stores of many kinds, and in
great quantity.  Here he took on board the wives of some of his men,
who had made the place a furtive and infrequent home.  Lest the port
authorities should regard this as evidence that he was not returning,
and think it no longer worth their while to grant him immunity under
such circumstances, he cut his cable and ran out to sea in the night,
when he had taken them aboard.

He made a good voyage, and landed his stores in safety, though with
much labor, owing to the nature of the approach to the caves through
which he must bear them.

Having done this, the devil tempted him.  He had still much gold, and
forever is a long time.  He was able to think of many things which he
might still purchase, of which he had nothing, or of which he might be
glad to have more.  He determined on a last voyage before he sank the
ship.

With the stores which he had put ashore he left the women and eight of
his men.  He left also his son, Jacob Sparrow, then a child of ten
years.  He landed most of his powder.  His predatory career was over,
and he did not expect to need it.

Before sailing, he invaded the island in force.  He made his way
through passages which had been cut through the rock to the cliff-tops.
He descended the inner side of the cliff, and lost two men in an
attempt to cross the bogs beneath it.

Abandoning this design, he continued along the top of the cliffs until
he reached the south side of the island.  Here he found a safer descent
to fertile ordered land.  There were some miles of park-like
garden-ground, bearing fruits of many kinds, and a luxuriance of tropic
flowers.  This garden was tended by a number of huge birds, reminding
Captain Sparrow of the cassowaries of Patagonia, but much larger.  He
would have been a tall man who could have looked over their backs, and
their heads were nine feet from the ground.  Their work was mainly to
weed and prune, keeping space for the selected plants, and restraining
them to their intended places.  They did this most frequently by the
simple process of eating that which was redundant.  They stirred the
soil with their beaks, leveling it with raking motions of their
three-toed feet.

Coming up on a number of these monstrous birds, the men looked to their
muskets.  But Captain Sparrow ordered them not to fire, and the birds
neither retreating nor molesting them, but only raising their long
necks, and surveying the intruders with sardonic eyes, they passed
through quietly.



Beyond the garden they came to a palisade thirty feet high, dividing it
from the untamed luxuriance of a tropic forest.  The forest was unlike
anything which they had seen in Central America, or in the
Indian-Archipelagos, though it had some characteristics of both.  There
was a remarkable absence of noxious insects of all kinds even in the
swamps.

Turning back through the garden-land, they came to the dark mass of an
ancient temple, and to other buildings beyond it.  These were closed
and silent.  Their windows, glazed with a somewhat opaque glass, were
high and few, and too narrow for a man to have passed through them.
Their approaches were always the same--stairs which wound upwards,
steep and very narrow, in the thickness of the wall.  He would have
been a bold man who would have adventured to climb them without knowing
the reception to which the next turn might bring him.  Captain Sparrow
waited for three days while there came no sign of life from these
dwellings.

He camped in a large hall, built of white stone, which was about half a
mile from the temple on a slight hill, and which stood open and empty.
He had with him a force of forty men, and he had his hands sufficiently
occupied in maintaining discipline among them.  But he would have no
relaxation till he had disposed of the military problem which
confronted them.  Up to this time he had prudently left the women on
board with the remainder of the crew.

He did not allow his men to molest the great birds, which continued
their work with apparent indifference, but he gave them permission to
shoot some of the little monkeys that abounded in the trees, to
demonstrate the nature of their weapons to those who (he felt) were
watching them from the silent temple.  He also permitted them to invade
the forest, where they were mobbed by a troop of the goat-foot satyrs,
till they were obliged to shoot one in self-defense.  Knowing nothing
of mythology, they were not concerned as to whether it were allied
either to men, or goats, or gods.  They were hungry for fresh meat,
after some months of salt junk and ship's biscuits, and they cooked it,
as they had done the monkeys, and with results which were even more
satisfactory.

Captain Sparrow's patience, often exercised before when he had hove-to
for long weeks on a deserted ocean waiting for an expected victim, was
again justified when a man emerged from the temple on the morning of
the fourth day.  Having news of this from a watching scout, Captain
Sparrow drew his men into order, and received his visitor with some
aspect of dignity upon the lawn which sloped away from the hall of
which he had taken possession.

He found himself confronted by a man a head taller than himself, young,
lean, dark, austerely handsome, and remote in his aspect.  He did not
appear to be impressed or interested by the display of disciplined
force which met him.  His aspect was aloof, but not discourteous.

He did not attempt speech, which would have been obviously futile.  He
opened a roll of papyrus in his hand, and showed a neatly painted map.
With a courteous gesture he proposed that Captain Sparrow should
examine it with him upon the long table which ran down the center of
the hall.

Captain Sparrow, who had had other more or less constrained interviews
with the masters of the vessels on which he had levied blackmail, many
of whom had been unable to speak a common tongue, was quick to accept a
suggestion and to appreciate an attitude.  Telling his men briefly to
stand their ground, he walked in with his visitor to inspect a map
which showed the whole island in colored detail.

Half an hour later, without word spoken or written, they had arrived at
an understanding which appeared to be mutually satisfactory.

Whether Captain Sparrow intended to observe it I cannot say.

The visitor (who was the son of the priest of Gir) produced a duplicate
of the map with coloring materials.  Swiftly and neatly he painted a
space around the temple grounds a dull red.  That was to be sacred to
his people.  At the southwest of the island a space was painted blue.
That was reserved for the privacy of the invaders.

Between these two, and including the hall in which they stood, was a
green space which would be common to both, and in which acquaintance
could be made if both parties should desire it.  On a waxed blank
beneath the map the visitor laid his open hand, impressing it as his
signature.  He invited Captain Sparrow to do this also, so that the two
hands crossed, and he then fastened the map to the wall at the higher
end of the hall.

Besides this, Captain Sparrow had learned by gestures, and by swift and
skillful sketches, that it would be a cause of difference to continue
to shoot monkeys; that it would be not only such, but in some way
dangerous in itself, to molest the great birds; that his people were at
liberty to enter the forest when they would and to shoot the satyrs,
providing that they did not kill more than one in any one moon; and
that there was a stretch of swamp at the north of the islands where
there was a variety of blue pig, like a small tapir, which they could
kill at their own pleasure; and he had signified his acceptance of
these arrangements.

He offered drink and gifts of various kinds, but his guest declined
them with an aloof politeness and departed.

Captain Sparrow was a good judge of men in certain relations.  He
sailed away two days later, confident that the treaty would be
honorably observed by those with whom he had made it, and having
promised to hang anyone, whether man or woman, who should cause trouble
by infringing its provisions while he was absent.

The men that he had left had been chosen by lot from among those whose
women were now ashore, as these men were the most loath to start out on
a further voyage; and by leaving only such as were married themselves,
he judged it the less likely that trouble would arise with the wives
who were temporarily deserted, and that those to whom they belonged
would be the less reluctant to leave them.



Having ordered all these things with due thought for his people, as a
king should, he set out on his last voyage, promising the unmarried men
an opportunity for female companionship at some port of call.

He sailed with a fair wind for the East Indies--virtuously resisting
the impulse to plunder a clumsy merchantman that lumbered away in a
very natural panic at the sight of the long low hull, the yawning
port-holes, the wide spread of canvas, and the flagless masthead--and
he was south of the Ladrones when he encountered a succession of light
varying winds, which left him drifting on a calm sea over which a heavy
mist settled.

The mist cleared during the night, and the dawn, coming with a light
breeze from the northeast, showed him Her Majesty's corvette, _Condor_,
of twenty guns, about three cables' length distant.

Captain Sparrow was ready for most emergencies, and he opened the game
by running a signal of distress to the masthead, and following it, when
the inevitable inquiries came, by the announcement that he had had
seven deaths from smallpox, and that twelve men were sick below of the
same malady.

It would have been sufficient to render many captains disinclined for
any avoidable intimacy, but Lieutenant Mainwaring, who was in command
of the corvette, was of a skeptical and inquiring mind.  He asked
questions as to the charter and destination of the brigantine, which
were answered fluently enough, but the replies were unconvincing.

Lieutenant Mainwaring signaled, _I am sending a boat_.  Captain Sparrow
replied that he did not need help.

The corvette, having no occasion to conceal her suspicion, had already
trained her guns upon the victim of her unwelcome curiosity.

Captain Sparrow watched the approaching boat, and courteously lowered a
ladder amidships.

Then, very suddenly, the rigging was alive with men, and the helm went
over.  There was a cry from the unlucky crew of the boat as they
endeavored vainly to avoid the impact of the vessel's side.  The next
moment the broadside of the _Condor_ flashed and roared.  The _Fighting
Sue_ heeled and shivered as it struck her.  There was an outcry of
death and wounds on her gun-deck.  A round-shot, coming through an open
port, caused one of her guns to break loose.  It slid across the
sloping deck, disabling two who were not agile enough to avoid it.

But the _Fighting Sue_ tacked and came round across the stern of the
_Condor_, raking her from end to end with a broadside which, though not
so heavy as she had taken, was the more deadly in its delivery.

Unfortunately for the _Fighting Sue_, it was a maneuver which could not
easily be repeated.

Lieutenant Mainwaring, though a very angry man, and handicapped by the
necessity of lowering a boat to pick up the crew of the first, who were
now struggling in the water, did not allow himself to be flustered.
Captain Sparrow had cause to observe, with a natural annoyance, that he
was not the only man who could handle a ship efficiently under fire.
The _Fighting Sue_ was slightly to windward of her adversary, which
might have been to her advantage, had she been seeking to close at her
own choosing, but it was more doubtfully so when she only sought
escape, and to avoid exposing herself to the heavier guns which were
waiting to be trained upon her.



With all their canvas spread to a wind which was still too light to
give them, more than very gradual motion, the two ships showed like
contending swans, white on the tropic blue, dodging and twisting as
they endeavored to bring their own guns into play while avoiding the
opposing broadsides.

The guns flashed and thundered, and wisps of heavy sulphurous smoke
drifted along the wind.

There were few casualties at this stage of the duel, for the fire of
either vessel was directed to the masts and spars of her opponent,
though with different objects.

Captain Sparrow wished to disable his adversary so that he might put a
safe distance between them.  Lieutenant Mainwaring wished only to
secure his continuing company.  So far, chance shook the dice, and
threw them when a shot struck the mizzen of the _Fighting Sue_.  It did
not fall at once, but the next time that the helm went over and the
strain came, it snapped off three feet from the deck, and went overside
with a tangle of sail and cordage which took five deadly minutes to
hack clear so that it floated free.

And meanwhile the _Condor_ had closed in and was pouring all her weight
of metal into the doomed hull of the _Fighting Sue_.  After that, only
one end was possible.  Even could Captain Sparrow have gained his last
hope and boarded, it must have been the same end.  Larger numbers,
better discipline, better morale must have decided.  But Lieutenant
Mainwaring respected the lives of his men, and he avoided every effort
which the pirate ship made, like a cornered rat, to get its fangs fixed
into the side of its unrelenting opponent.

After a time it lay still on the water like a wounded bird, but the
deadly flashes still broke spasmodically from a gun-deck which was
slowly sinking toward the ocean level.  What use was there in
surrender?  Yet yield she did at the last, for the powder failed,
Captain Sparrow having put too much ashore when he sailed on this
peaceful enterprise.

Lieutenant Mainwaring, boarding the sinking vessel, took off nineteen
unwounded prisoners, including the captain.  He tumbled the wounded men
over the side.  He was in no mood to be merciful.  He had heard of
Captain Sparrow before.  And his own losses were serious, and were (he
considered) the lives of better men.  As to the prisoners, acting on
the authority given to naval officers in those seas, he held a swift
court martial, and hanged them before sunset.  He had offered the
chance of at least some months of life to any one who would tell him of
Captain Sparrow's headquarters.  He should be taken home and tried
there.

Yet this slender inducement was sufficient to bring a ready volunteer
of treachery, but, unfortunately for himself, the man told the simple
truth (excepting only the position of the island, which he did not
know), and as it was so obvious that he was lying, he was strung up
with the rest, protesting vainly against the incredulity which
condemned him.  So before sunset they were all hanged except Captain
Sparrow himself.  It may be that the lieutenant thought he might be
induced to speak to better purpose than he supposed that the man had
done; it may be that he desired to have some living exhibit to evidence
his successful exploit.

Captain Sparrow had leisure to reflect upon the folly of having
extended his voyages into the thirteenth year.  Being landed in England
some six months later, he was tried with more formality than Lieutenant
Mainwaring would have considered necessary, but with no less certain
issue.  He was, however, offered a reprieve if he would give such
information as would lead to the recovery of his illicit gains, which
were believed to be very great.  But this he declined to do.  He would
not betray his cherished secret, nor the men whom he had left behind.
Whereupon he was hanged at Execution Dock.

It may be that he did not trust the promises which were made.  It may
be he thought that they would not hang him while he remained silent.
It is more probable that he was hanged because there was a degree of
baseness to which he would not sink.  Which might happen to any man.



Captain Sparrow had not been explicit as to how long he intended to be
absent on his last voyage.  He was not one who gave his confidence
widely.  But he was a man to be obeyed; and as his orders had been that
the men he left should proceed to the erection of houses, and should
maintain peaceful relations with the earlier inhabitants, they
continued to behave with quietness and industry until they had settled
down to the routine of their new life.

As months passed they must have become increasingly doubtful as to
whether they would see him again, but there could never have been a day
when the uncertainty was changed into the settled fact.  They might
have thought that he had marooned them with a deliberate treachery but
that was not reasonable, when it was considered that he had left such
over-ample stores for so small a colony, with a great treasure of
precious things, and had sailed away with an empty hold.  Also, he had
left his son.  It was perhaps fortunate for this youth (as the world
esteems fortune) that the possibility of his father's return was in the
minds of his companions while he was gaining the years and confidence
which finally enabled him to assert himself as his heir and
representative.

By the time that he did this, the isolated community had settled into a
debased existence which was to continue for a generation.  There had,
at first, been some tentative approaches towards acquaintance between
them and the original inhabitants, but these had not been developed.
There was an absolute lack of congeniality, of common interests or
attractions.  But there was a deeper cause.  It is the peculiar
degradation of Europeans (whether from their carnivorous habits, or
other differences) that they have the power to cultivate and harbor
diseases which are unendurable by other races.  Encountering these for
the first time, such people die helplessly.

The surviving race is too apt to regard the issue complacently, as an
evidence of its superiority.  It is as though a sewer should boast that
it can tolerate garbage.

The original inhabitants of the island, though they were of apparently
finer physique, and of incomparably more equable health, than those who
had intruded upon them--having won to this physical condition by a
social economy which had systematically eliminated the weakest members
of the community--yet suffered, after their age-long isolation from
others of their kind, as many inferior races have done in every part of
the world when the various diseases of European civilization have
reached them.

In six weeks, more than fifty, out of a total population of eighty,
were already dead, including the priest of Gir; his son, who had
negotiated the treaty, succeeding him.

The new ruler, having little faith in the characters, or belief in the
good-will of his new neighbors, and having an additional weight of
responsibility on his mind arising from the fact that he had concurred
in rejecting the directions of their oracle (which had shown the
natural course of events to be that they should have attacked the
invaders when first they landed) gave orders that this mortality should
be kept secret, fearing that they would be treated with little ceremony
on Captain Sparrow's return if he should learn of the losses which they
had sustained.

Now it became the duty of the new ruler to take the risk of any contact
with the strangers that might be necessary.  And so it became his
custom to join them at these monthly festivals, and on some other
occasions, eating with them, though without touching the dead flesh, or
the foods devitalized by the application of heat, which they preferred.
He conversed with them, also, learning their language, as they showed
no aptitude at his own.  This language was a debased form of English,
which shrank and degenerated as the years passed, even from the form in
which it had been spoken on the _Fighting Sue_.

It became blended also with words and phrases introduced by the women
of mongrel South American origin who formed the majority of the colony,
and quaintly streaked with the phraseology of the Bible, the speeches
of Charles James Fox, a book on the breeding and management of cattle,
and a collection of broadsheet ballads, which had constituted the
fortuitous library of the colony.  These books had been read by the
more-active-minded of the earlier generation, but the younger had shown
no desire to read, nor had there been any with the inclination to teach
them.

The island to which fate had consigned them was of such a nature that
the necessity for work was of the slightest.  The climate was
delightful.  Food was abundant.  They satisfied their inherited desire
for flesh with the monthly satyr, and with the blue pigs in the further
marsh.



They soon observed, that the restriction in regard to the shooting of
the satyrs was a necessity, in their own interest, if these animals
were not to be exterminated.  As it was, their numbers were not greatly
diminished.

The hunting of these animals constituted the principal diversion of the
new colony.  The satyrs, having realized the deadly nature of the
muskets with which they were attacked, made no attempt at resistance,
but fled in a useless terror at the approach of their enemies.  They
gradually learned that it was only the male satyrs which incurred any
danger, and that it was the younger of these which were most to the
taste of their assailants.

The females and young would even continue their feeding undisturbed,
the while the hunters went past them, beating the bushes for the hiding
males, or breaking into wild rush of pursuit when they had started
their quarry.

Besides these hunts, there were occasional expeditions to the swamps
where the pigs rooted and wallowed.  But these creatures were
dangerous.  The women were left behind, and the men went armed with all
the miscellaneous weapons that they had learned to handle during their
piratic exploits.  They would return with the heavy carcasses of their
victims slung from poles, and more than once with a litter in which a
wounded companion would bear evidence of the ferocity of these animals.

After this, there would be an orgy of feasting, ending in a drunken
saturnalia, for they had not failed to utilize the possibilities of the
grapes which abounded wild in the forest, and hung in even heavier
clusters from the cultivated vines of the gardens in which they were
free to wander.

The years saw other changes.  As the possibility of the return of
Captain Sparrow and his companions diminished, the women whom they had
left behind chose husbands from among those males that remained, not
without quarreling and some outbursts of violence, on one occasion with
fatal consequence.

The children resulting from these unions were not sufficiently numerous
to lead to any excessive increase in the size of the colony.  Many of
the women were past their first youth, and their lives had not been
such as to leave them, as the years had passed, with unimpaired
vitality.  The island life, in spite of its physical advantages, was
not a healthy one, and the children that were born were often neglected
or indulged, with detrimental and sometimes fatal issues.

It is an unpleasant fact that the women, mingling freely with the
female satyrs, would follow the progress of the hunt, and would
combine, with a repulsive, elbowing curiosity, to watch the capture and
slaughter of the monthly victim.  It seemed that their attitude had
gradually affected the female satyrs, until these events were regarded
as pleasantly exciting episodes, rather than as attacks upon their
kindred by alien enemies, and even the males would emerge from their
hiding-places the moment that they knew that a capture had taken place,
and watch with an appearance of enjoyment the slaughter and
disemboweling of their unfortunate companion.

There was another development which drew a closer link between these
people and the half-human beasts on which they fed.  They discovered
that the satyrs, if caught while very young, could be taught to perform
many useful services, and could learn to understand much of the
language of their owners, though they made no attempt to speak it.

They captured and reared a number of young females, whom they trained
to wait on them, and, in particular, to weave a fibrous cloth, such as
was made and worn by the original inhabitants of the island, and which
could be variously dyed, a process for which the forest gave abundant
materials, both from its vegetable and insect life.

Another, and perhaps the most potent influence upon the development of
the community, was the personality of Jacob Sparrow, after he had
arrived at a sufficient age to assert an authority which he found no
one prepared to challenge.

A successful leader, whether saint or criminal, must possess certain
positive qualities, such as are admirable in themselves, whatever may
be the uses which exalt or degrade them.

Captain Sparrow was capable of a cold and calculating brutality, which
was sufficiently unattractive.  It is difficult to suppose that there
are many crimes which he would not have committed, had they been
clearly to his advantage.  But he had been prudent in enterprise, cool
in danger, skilful in maneuver, and with a habit of moderation, even in
pillage.  He had a sense of order and method, and a personal magnetism
which had enabled him to control a succession of lawless crews without
permitting license, or using an intolerable severity.  Pitiless in his
punishments when the occasion required it, he was never either
unreasonable or capricious.  He was not loved, but he was both feared
and respected.  In a way, he was trusted.  He had a fortunate
reputation.

But Captain Sparrow's son did not inherit the better part of these
qualities.  Gross and ungainly in body, he was destitute of physical
courage, and averse to physical activity, but he was gifted with a
far-sighted cunning, which enabled him to maintain his position,
perhaps more easily than would have been the case had it depended upon
the ascendency of more admirable characteristics.  He was neither
aggressive nor domineering, and so long as he was not impeded in the
gratification of the selfish instincts on which his contentment
depended, he allowed his followers a full measure of license to pursue
their own proclivities.  He was, however, jealous of the recognition of
his position, and insisted upon the wearing of a battered article of
naval head-gear when seated at the head of the long table at which his
subjects assembled, while their own heads were required to be uncovered
on those occasions.

He had also an unreasoning cupidity, causing him to cherish many
articles which had originally been his father's property, but most of
which he did not attempt to put to any service of utility, even had it
been possible to do so.  First amongst these were twenty bars of solid
gold, each of about two pounds weight, of the extrinsic value of which
he had probably gained some knowledge during the early years which he
had spent in a South American seminary.

These were always placed in a neat pile upon the table before him.  No
one ever attempted to steal them, for the sufficient reasons that there
was no place to which they could be removed to any advantage, nor were
they of any conceivable use to anyone.



At the time with which we are concerned, Jacob was an obese old man,
gluttonous, silent, and somnolent, but still capable of reacting to the
excitements of fear or greed, or to any slight upon the dignity of a
position that he did so little to justify.  Under such stimuli he would
show that the watchful cunning which had distinguished his earlier
years was still sufficient to render his ill-will dangerous to those
who should be sufficiently indiscreet to arouse it.

His most amiable characteristic was an unreciprocated affection for a
son who had been born to him about eighteen years earlier.  This son,
named by his mother Nicodemus, which had become Demers in the
degenerate island speech, was a young man already over six feet in
height, of heavy awkward build, slouching forward as he walked, like a
great ape, with long arms, and hairy hands.

His hair was long, thick, coarse and black, growing very low on the
forehead.  His brows were black and prominent.  His nostrils were very
wide.  His jaw was heavy, with exceptionally large and powerful teeth,
over which the lips were never entirely closed.

Demers, unlike his father, was of unquestionable physical courage.  It
was his delight to lead the occasional expeditions against the blue
pigs, which were no longer hunted with muskets because the powder, too
carelessly used by the earlier generation, was nearly expended.  On
these occasions he would be the only man who could be relied upon to
face the savage beasts when they had turned upon their pursuers, and
who had the strength and skill to drive home a boarding-pike, while
himself avoiding the angry tusks that were directed against him.

Once, when he had been wounded in the leg by one of these animals, he
had burst into a passion of uncontrolled ferocity, causing him to
batter the dying body of his assailant, and to trample upon it after
all life had ceased, until it was flattened out into the muddy soil,
and was judged to be unfit to be used for the food for which it had
been hunted.



Charlton Foyle carried out his plan with a systematic thoroughness
which was natural to him.  Many and weary were the journeys which he
made to and from the boat.  Many were the loads which could be hauled
up only with the help of a rope, and that with difficulty.  He had
found a smooth slab of stone beside the shaft-mouth in the first
chamber, to which he had attached no importance previously, though he
had stumbled over it on his first landing.  He now saw that it was
intended to be slid over the opening, which it could cover completely.
That was good.  But he first found it another use, fastening the rope
around it so that he could rest at times when a heavy load was
ascending.

The day came when the boat was bare of all but the unstepped mast.
Even the cordage, the oars, and the heavy canvas had been hauled aloft.
Charlton tested the moorings afresh, and left it there at the tide's
mercy.  He was glad to have it: he might need it again; with half his
mind he hoped to do so; but he had chosen the land.

He pushed the heavy slab over the hole.  It was too heavy for one man
to move it easily, but his muscles had developed as he had toiled.

He was conscious of a glow of health and a zest for living, such as he
had never expected to feel again.  With health came confidence, and it
was in a buoyant mood that he prepared for the second stage of the
campaign which he had planned.

He had already taken the precaution of ascending the steps that went
upward beyond the roof of the chamber which he now occupied.  He had
found another chamber, similar, but without admittance of any light,
and entirely empty.  There were drawings on the walls of a character of
which he did not willingly think.  They were of the same evident
antiquity as that in the one in which he was now living.

There were dark passages leading to other chambers which he had
explored without finding their terminations, but he had noticed one
thing which contented him.  Beyond a certain limit, the dust of time
lay on the floors, and it was only his own footsteps which had
disturbed it.

He would explore further at another time.  That could wait--and the
supply of candles for his lantern was limited.  So were his matches.

He was already calculating and hoarding irreplaceable things.

The next step on which he had resolved was to convey small quantities
of his immediate necessities to the inland chamber, leaving his main
stores in the security of the one that he had first discovered, from
which he could replace them as required.

There was a good reason for this--apart from the fact, that he did not
wish for the added toil of conveying them to the further point--in fact
that, while the first was dry, the second was damp.  This change had
been observable from the point where the passage had commenced to
descend, and in the chamber itself water dripped from the roof at one
side, forming a small pool in the inner left-hand corner which must
have had some means of drainage, as it did not overflow or diminish.

As he worked, Charlton had debated in his mind the advisability of
commencing his investigations by climbing up the cliffs rather than
down.  The creeper would render such an enterprise very easy.  He did
not think that he was far from the summit.  Gaining it, he would have a
better view of the island which he wished to explore.  He might also
contrive some method of signaling to any passing ship, which might be
called to his rescue.

But the objections were obvious.  Such a signal, were the opportunity
to occur, would be equally visible to any unknown inhabitants of the
island.  He preferred to learn who or what they were before disclosing
his existence so freely.  To mount to the cliff-top might bring him
into an immediate and undesirable notice.

Rather, his mind was concerned to leave his refuge unobserved, and to
descend with secrecy.  The moon was not full, but it would give light
enough, if the sky were clear, for him to climb down and hide at the
cliff-foot till the dawn came, and he could see where he went.  He
recognized that the darkness had its peril as well as its protection.
But he did not intend that any living thing should learn of the
entrance to his own burrow.



Commencing the last stage of his preparations, he cleared the floor of
the second chamber from the creeper that he had torn away to make his
passage.  It had shrunk and withered, and its bulk had diminished.  He
would render himself conspicuous by throwing it outward, so he carried
it back as he made successive journeys, bringing his food and weapons
and some bedding for the drier side of the chamber; and, as he thus
cleared the floor and refurnished it, he made a discovery which gave
him fresh light upon what was before him, and left his mind in an
increased wonder.

It was a seaman's chest of the ordinary pattern.  It had been hidden
beneath the growth of the creeper, and that which he had torn away had
given it a deeper burial.  It was unlocked.  It contained some clothes,
rotten with damp; some tools; some trinkets; two or three books.
Things that were never of great value except to those who owned them.
Some of them were incongruous, as though the possessions of several had
been thrown together.

Some of the contents, apart from the mending materials which are in
every seaman's chest that the oceans bear, suggested a female
ownership.  It was easy to conclude that this chest had belonged to one
of those whose footsteps he had traced.  It confirmed his theory that
men had been there at a more recent date than was indicated by the
presence of a part of the ordnance of the _Fighting Sue_.  It would
have given little more information, but for a bulky notebook, which its
owner had used for recording his experiences.  Charlton seized upon
this book with avidity, but it was not easy to decipher, and difficult
to understand when he had done so.

It was written in French, which was in itself no difficulty.  Charlton
had spent two years as attach to the British Embassy in Paris.  He
could speak or read the language with equal fluency.  But this was the
illiterate French of an uneducated man.  His constructions were crude,
his spelling original.  He used words which are unknown to the
lexicographer.  More serious, he lacked the gift of narrative.  He
could not appreciate the position of one who was not already familiar
with antecedent circumstances.  Further, he appeared to have written
with a pencil of the poorest quality, and the damp, which had soaked
the book, had blurred much of it beyond any hope of interpretation.

Charlton spent many hours over this book, forgetting time and food as
he did so.

The one clear thing was a date, written in ink on the first page, with
(presumably) the owner's name, "Jean Couteau," beneath it.  The date
was less than five years ago.  The narrative might be later, but how
much later there was no means of telling.

After many hours of study, Charlton summarized the facts he had gained.

At a date unknown, but roughly indicated by the diary, and by the
condition of the contents of the chest, the writer, a seaman, had been
cast away here, under unexplained circumstances and without means of
leaving the island, together with a man named Pierre, sometimes called
_le charpentier_, and another man named Latour, with a girl Marcelle,
who appeared to have been his daughter.  Latour was of higher social
status than the other two men (the narrator called him _monsieur_ more
than once, and his Christian name did not appear).  Possibly he and his
daughter had been passengers on a wrecked or abandoned ship.  But that
was surmise.  He wished to sort out the facts only.  At the time at
which the narrative had been written Jean was alone.  The other three
had gone into the interior and had not returned.  The girl had gone
either alone and first, or together with Pierre.

It is not clear whether Pierre had gone in ordinary companionship, or
to aid, or in pursuit.  He was clearly distrusted or disliked, both by
Latour and Jean.  Latour had gone after his daughter.  He had supposed
her to be in some danger.  He had asked Jean to accompany him.  Jean
had refused--from fear.  Latour had not returned.  At the time Jean had
written the narrative he had no expectation that he would.  But, at the
last, Jean had resolved to go also.  It was not clear why.

There was little more of actual fact that he could decipher with
certainty, but there were allusions that implied that the interior of
the island was more or less known, as well as feared, by the writer,
either by report or observation.  That suggested that some parts might
be visited with comparative or entire impunity, and that those who had
been lost had gone into some further danger.  Jean called it an Isle of
Devils.  That might mean much, or little.  The creature which Charlton
had seen might suggest a devil to a vulgar mind.  Also, Jean seemed to
write under the shadow of dread which he did not understand, even to be
drawn to it against his will, if one blurred page had yielded its
secret to Charlton's patience.

Anyway, they were gone, all gone.

Carlton laid aside the book, took out the cartridges from his rifle,
and cleaned and reloaded it very carefully.  There had been several
others in the boat--heavier weapons--which he had left in the first
chamber, but weight counts in a tropic climate, and the ammunition for
them was less plentiful.  He hesitated over the sword again--but it
would be awkward to wear.  He had a fantastic thought that he might be
flying back for refuge, and find an enemy in possession who might use
it against him.  Humoring his own folly, he hid it behind the chest.



Charlton knew that the moon would not rise till late.  He lay down
before the short tropic twilight came, and slept soundly.  When he
waked and looked out through the creepers that screened his window so
deeply, the country beneath him was flooded with silver light.  It was
too much for his purpose, rather than otherwise.  His preparations had
been made already.  He ate a hearty meal of the preserved food with
which his boat had been provisioned, longing the while for the fresh
fruits which he did not doubt that he would soon pluck at his pleasure.
He had filled his pockets with ship's biscuit, for he did not intend to
return before the next night, but he hoped to find a meal which would
be more to his liking.  He slung the rifle over his back, and climbed
out.

The stars were very brilliant.

The descent was easy.  It would not have been difficult had the cliff
been perpendicular, with such a thickness of clinging growth to support
him.  As it was no more than a very steep slope, he could scarcely have
fallen far had he designed to do so.  He would have sunk among the
leaves, and the boughs would have caught him.

But he was almost intoxicated by the scent of the great flowers, which
came out most strongly in the night-time.  He knocked one of them
aside, and a night-bird--or was it a giant moth?--flew out on silent
wings, with a note of protest which was neither hum nor cry, but
something strangely between the two.

He slipped a few feet at the last, for the boughs were thicker and less
frequent, and the moonlight deceived him; but he was unhurt, and he
paused, drawn back under the shadows, in doubt as to whether he should
adventure further in the darkness.

It was three hours to dawn.

He decided that it would be best to move cautiously along the foot of
the cliff, lest he should betray the locality of his refuge to any
watching eyes when the light came.  He turned left-hand, for he had in
mind that hint of a white building on the distant hill to southward as
his ultimate objective, should nothing hinder him earlier.  The ground
sloped slightly downward from the cliff-foot for a short space, beyond
which was the level stretch of verdure that had shown parrot-green in
the sunlight.  He was of a mind to cross it, and gain the wood's
shelter now, rather than later.  He could lie closely there till the
night should be over.  But he would continue for a while, and not cross
opposite to his own lair.  Even a lapwing had too much sense to do such
a thing as that.

He trod in a very thick herbage, waist-high in places, and drenched
with a heavy dew.  The hum of insects was round him, that his steps had
brushed from their sleeping quarters.  He was glad when he saw that the
thick growth ceased and the level plain came to the cliff's base.  He
stepped briskly forward and his foot sank, and the mud held it.  It
sank--and continued sinking.

He tried to throw his weight back on to the other foot, but it was too
late.  He had taken a long stride forward, and he could not recover it.
He was sunk to the knee now, and the other foot had been dragged
forward and was slipping into the slime.  He was still sinking
steadily.  But the foot of the cliff-wall was not beyond the reach of
his left hand, and he threw himself sideways toward it.  Doing this, he
was immersed to the waist.

With both arms he grasped the twisted root of one of the giant
creepers, which went down into the bog.  He struggled desperately
against the clutch of the glutinous clinging slime, but it held him
firmly.  Exhausted to no good purpose, he leaned forward upon the root
he held to gain strength and breath.  He could scarcely sink further
while he remained in that position.  To release himself was another
matter.  But he must avoid panic: there must be some way.  After a long
rest he recommenced the struggle, but it was unavailing.  The bog held
and would not let go.

The firm ground could not be far from his left foot--he was so close to
the cliff.  If it continued to slope in the same direction?--he tried
to move a foot toward it.  He could not be sure how far he had
succeeded.  Very slightly if at all.  But he persevered.  Either by
that effort, or because he had sunk even more deeply while he
struggled, he became aware that the side of his foot was on firm rock.
With that leverage to aid him, he worked somewhat nearer the side.  He
worked the foot somewhat upward.  He drew the other foot higher.  The
dawn was coming before he knew that the struggle was won, and that he
was not destined to disappear beneath the green slime that had so
nearly engulfed him.

He was safe, and with a feeling of measureless relief at his escape,
but he was exhausted and unfit to go further.  He struggled forward
until he reached a spot where he could rest on ground which was
reasonably level, and sheltered from observation.  Then he took stock,
in the growing light, of the damage which he had suffered.  The slime
which had held him was peculiarly adhesive.  He was still covered by
it, from the waist downward.  From that point he looked as if he had
been immersed in a bright green paint.

The clothes which he had worn when he left the schooner had been good
and new.  They were still in serviceable condition--or, at least, they
had been so a few hours earlier--though worn and soiled.  He had no
others.  To cleanse them, if it were possible, had become an imperative
necessity.  But he must rest first.  This was something different from
his anticipated adventure.  He should have been exploring the delights
of a tropic forest by this hour, and plucking its pleasant fruits.  He
realized that to those who go strange ways it is the unexpected that
happens.  He rubbed his hands with the glossy leaves around him till
they were clean of the slime, staining them an enduring yellow with the
juice of the leaves as he did so.

Then he examined his rifle.  Only the butt had gone under, and having
cleaned this, he was satisfied that its utility was unimpaired.  His
revolver, which had been in a hip-pocket, had suffered more seriously
and was beyond any immediate remedy.

The food in his jacket-pocket was but slightly damaged, and he speedily
reduced the quantity which would be at the mercy of any further
misadventures.  His greatest need was water.



He had the cliff on his left hand and the bog on his right.  There was
no better course than to go along the narrow space between them, and
hope for some improvement in the prospect.

This he did for about an hour.  The sun had not yet gained sufficient
height to overlook the cliff, and the air was pleasantly cool.  So far,
there had been no means of crossing the bog, and Charlton began to fear
that it might encircle the whole of the interior of the island.  He
considered climbing the cliff, from the top of which he might have a
view that would resolve the doubt.  If there were a passage across the
bog, he might make better progress toward it above than below.  If
there were none, the clifftop would be the limit of his domain.  He had
had enough of the bog.

While he debated this project there came a change.  A narrow space of
water showed between cliff and bog.  Further, it widened.  It was
stagnant water, with a thick sediment on its surface of an unwholesome
yellow.  Patches of rank water-weed showed in places, with a curious
iris-like flower of a deep blue streaked with crimson.

There were spaces where the bog appeared to have ceased entirely.
Shallow, reedy water stretched to the forest.  A crowd of gaily colored
water-fowl rose as he approached, and flew northward.  Finding a
clear-seeming pool, he cupped some water in his hands and tasted it,
but it was brackish and very bitter.

The day was becoming hot, and the need of fresh water imperative.

He remembered the pool at which he had seen the creature--man or
animal--drinking on the day when he first looked on the land.  But that
was far behind, and on the other side of the bog.

It was about half a mile further on that he thought it possible to
reach the forest.  The ground here was irregular.  Shallow pools lay in
its depressions.  Dense canes, ten or twelve feet high, grew on its
drier portions.  Black mud intervened.  In some places, dark
pumice-like stones gave a firm footing.

Charlton was eager to overcome the obstacle which held him back from
the forest, but the dread of the bog was still upon him.  The
contending feelings made him at times too venturesome, and at times too
cautious.  Twice he adventured to cross where the prospect was not
attractive.  Twice he turned back when it might have been no more
hazardous to continue.  When at last he crossed, it was to find that he
had reached a part of the forest which was so low that he waded at
times ankle-deep among rows of trees growing so thickly that there was
scarcely space to pass between them.

The ground rose as he advanced.  The character of the trees changed.
The growth was luxuriant, the colors brilliant.  Humming-birds flashed
past.  Butterflies showed unfamiliar beauties.  Great trees flowered
like shrubs.  Creeping plants festooned them with gorgeous tapestries
of blossom.  At times the sun, now high in the heavens, broke through
the canopy of branches, making a riot of color around him.  At times he
walked beneath a rich green gloom, shadowing to a dim twilight where
the trees were densest.  Straight, lofty aisles opened in places, with
long vistas that were beautiful beyond description.

There were paroquets among the branches, and tiny monkeys smaller than
squirrels.

Charlton forgot even his thirst for a time as he went through this
scene of tranquil opulence.  He forgot caution also, till he trod on a
yellow snake that bit his boot as he killed it.



He went forward more warily, and with an altered observation.  The tiny
monkeys ate a nut which grew abundantly.  It was a very small nut,
suitable to their own size, with, a brown wrinkled shell.  Two would
have gone into a thimble.  The monkeys pelted each other with shells as
they ate.  They were obviously carefree and unafraid.  They took no
notice of him at all.

The nuts were probably wholesome, but they did not attract him.  He
found grapes, which were more to his liking, and ate heartily.

Then he came to a pool.

It lay quiet and cool and deep, and trees grew to its margin.

He had no thought at first except that here was water for his need.
Good water, pleasant to taste.  He drank freely.  He bathed.  He
cleansed his clothes as well as he was able, drying them in a sunny
spot before he resumed them.  It was when he was moving along the bank
to reach this spot, where he saw that the sun shone, that he came to
the drinking place.  It was clear of trees to the water's edge, a
gentle downward slope of verdure with a narrow path behind it that
disappeared in the forest.  The ground was soft at the water's edge,
and it was broken by many hoof-marks.  Among these he traced the
imprint of a human foot, it was small.  Not a man's, he thought.  Or,
if a man's, not that of a European.  But it was certainly human.

He looked round.  The forest showed no life but that of bird and
monkey.  He decided to hide, and wait.

He saw that some of the marks were old, and others were quite fresh.
It was clearly a regular resort of the creatures of the forest.  If he
would see before he were seen, here was the place at which to watch.

Bushes grew thickly beneath the trees around the margin of the lake.
He made ambush at the side of the path, a few yards from the water's
edge.

He waited there several hours, lying full length, the rifle before him.
The heat increased, and the forest grew silent.  He was tired, and it
was natural that he should sleep in the stillness.

He was wakened in the afternoon by the noise of a rout of creatures
that came down the path to the water.

There were about a dozen of them, old and young, and they came with
barking, chattering, semi-human sounds that had the effect of a
nightmare.

Sight followed hearing, and Charlton doubted that he waked as he
watched them.

Man-like in posture when they trotted balanced on their short hind
legs--beast-like when they went on all fours, which they did the more
frequently--goat-like in horns and hair, and with arms that were more
human than those of monkeys--they were the very living forms of the
satyrs of Phrygian mythology.  It would have seemed reasonable that
they should dance to the pipes of Pan as they came down to the
drinking-place.

Drinking was a formality.  A fat goat-bearded elder approached the
waterside while the rest waited.  There was a second male, younger, and
appearing the more vigorous.  He edged up to the water doubtfully.  The
ancient gave no sign, and he advanced more boldly.  The eyes of the
rest of the troop were fixed upon him.  Suddenly the horns of the elder
butted sideways.  It was done so quickly and so entirely without
previous indication, that, though the younger male withdrew very
speedily, he was not entirely successful in avoiding the attack.  A
horn caught him beneath the ear.  He drew back, snarling, with a
spreading patch of red on a hairy neck.

One by one, the rest of the party, which consisted of females,
adolescents and children, came to the side of the ancient, and were,
allowed to drink while he surveyed them with a goat-like benevolence.
But the offender did not venture again until the whole party were
retiring.  When they had disappeared along the forest path, he drank at
his leisure; but having done so, he showed no disposition to follow
them.  He crept under the bushes on the opposite side of the path.

Charlton lay very still.  He could hear no sound.  He supposed that the
creature had gone, but could not be certain, and remained motionless.

Then he saw the horned head cautiously lifted and withdrawn.  There was
a look of greedy anticipation in the goat-like eyes.

For what was he waiting?

Having no confidence in the amiability of the faun or satyr's
character, Charlton kept his hand on the rifle-trigger.  But he was
getting drowsy.  He roused himself with an effort.  He must not sleep
here.  But perhaps he had slept?  Perhaps he had dreamed the whole
thing.  It seemed likely.  Speculating upon this possibility, he slept,
and the heat of the afternoon settled down upon the forest silence like
a brooding bird.




CHAPTER III

THE DRYAD

Out of sleep he started to an alert consciousness of movement in the
branches above him.  He looked up, but the foliage was too dense for
sight to aid him.  He looked out, and the satyr's head rose for a
moment in the same curiosity as his own.  It might have seen him, but
that its attention was on that which was approaching overhead.  It
crouched down out of sight.

Charlton was conscious that, though it was not dark, the intense
noon-light had lessened.  Shadows moved from the wooded edges of the
water.  He must have slept long.

A girl leapt lightly from a branch above, and stood at the water's
edge.  Slim and straight as a birch, she stood with her back to him.
Satyrs there might be.  But a wood-dryad was beyond believing.

Watching her, he forgot her danger, if any danger were hers.  She stood
looking out over the pool, in no haste to enter it, the toes of one
foot dabbling in the edge of the water.

He could not see her face; and he knew that he could not place her till
he did so.  But she was not Polynesian.  The small head, with its
night-dark hair, thick and curling, but cut short to her shoulders and
the slim well-shaped whiteness of her body, were surely Aryan.  They
might be English.  They might be Greek!

Silent as a cat, the satyr had risen and was approaching behind her.

Charlton's rifle came to his shoulder.  He saw the heavy paws
outstretched, that would have clutched her hair at the next second, and
his finger touched the trigger--but he did not press it.  The beast was
almost between him and the girl, and a shot was too dangerous.  He
leapt up, shouting to warn her.

As he did so, with a movement almost too quick to follow, the satyr
sprang; the girl, waked by his cry to instant action, slipped aside and
leapt upward to the branch from which she had descended.  "_Mais non,
mon ami!_" she called, with a light laugh, as she gained her shelter.
The beast beneath her did not appear aware of Charlton's existence.  He
stood with, raised and clutching hands, screaming and gibbering at the
prey he had lost so narrowly.

Cool and mocking, a voice laughed from the green gloom above them:
"_Toujours la politesse!_"

Evidently satyrs do not climb.

Half-way up the tree, bowered in green leaves, and unable to see or be
seen from the ground beneath her, the girl paused.  She was not
concerned about the satyr, though she knew that the escape had been a
close one.  She knew the hour when the satyrs drank, and had supposed
them far away in their sleeping-den when she ventured down to the
water.  She must be more careful in the future.  She knew that she was
safe from them among the branches.  But what was the cry that had
warned her?  Eyes grew blank as she puzzled it.

A rifle-shot broke the stillness beneath her.  She knew what that
meant.  There was only one thing it could mean.  If they had seen
her--she supposed that it was the end, but what could she do but fly to
the most remote of her habitations?  The stars saw her sleeping, a
hundred feet aloft, where, a giant tree forked apart and formed a
twelve-foot hollow for her hiding-place.  An orphan monkey, scarcely
longer than a man's hand, that she had found and petted, crept under
the warmth of her side and believed itself to be in safety, as a child
trusts its parents, who can do so little to aid it, and as a man does
not trust God--who can.

The girl lay under the warmth of a gathered heap of leaves.  There was
no better sleeping-place when the skies were cloudless.  But she did
not sleep; and there was nothing in her heart of the cool gaiety that
had mocked the satyr.  _If they had seen_--she thought.  _If they had
seen_.



Charlton stood with his rifle raised to his shoulder.  He hesitated to
shoot.  The girl had escaped.  The matter was not really his business.
There was a half-human quality about the creature before him which his
mind allowed, as he watched it.

He supposed that the satyr knew nothing of rifles, and this mistake was
his undoing.  It knew its danger perfectly well.  It had seen others of
its kind shot down, and the executioners had been unmannerly enough to
hang the disembowelled bodies where those that lived could observe them.

The satyr looked at the rifle, and its fear was abject.  It did not
attempt flight, because it knew that it would be useless.  But the shot
delayed, and a wild impulse of resistance waked in its frightened mind.
Charlton, seeing the terror which he inspired, expected it to turn and
run.

Instead of that, it ducked suddenly and ran in under the rifle.  It was
about six paces distant when it did this.  Charlton lost half a second
from sheer surprise, and when he brought the rifle down, the beast was
immediately beneath it.  He shot it through the loins, the muzzle
almost touching the hairy skin.  At the same instant the butting horns
caught him.  He felt a sharp pain in his left thigh, as he drew back
from the creature, which had collapsed on the path.  He looked down,
and saw that he was bleeding freely.

The satyr (he was sure that it was a satyr now) rose on its hands, and
dragged itself under the bushes, its hind legs trailing.

Charlton knew that the ground rocked beneath him.  His leg was failing.
He must not faint, he told himself, till he had stopped the bleeding.
He must not.  He was back in the bushes now.  It was bleeding fast, but
he was satisfied that the main artery was untouched.  The wound was
about three inches above the knee.  He tied a piece of string tightly
round the leg, immediately above it.  It was the best he could do.
Then he lost consciousness.

Under the bushes on the other side of the path lay the satyr.  They had
both returned to the places from which they had watched the water.
Fate laughed, and the forest resumed its peace.

During the night Charlton regained consciousness.  But he could not
think clearly.  He had been dreaming of a girl who stood about to bathe
at the lakeside in a tropic forest.  A delightful scene, but not such
as is familiar to the waking mind.  His dream was mixed with wild
imaginings of satyrs, horned and hoofed, which he knew did hot exist.
He was not too sane to believe it, but the dream was very real.  When
he tried to think of where he really was, his mind failed and wandered.
He remembered that he had planned to explore the forest tomorrow.  But
what were the branches overhead tonight, and the star that showed where
they parted?  He must be dreaming still.  He wished he could return
into the dream entirely.  But his mind wandered.  Why did she not turn
her head?  It was always so with dreams.  Anyway, he was tired now.  He
would sleep.

But the girl did not sleep--because she was not sure.  There are few
griefs or terrors which can resist sleep, in its due season.  A
murderer can sleep, though he know that he will be hanged in the
morning.  But not if he be in doubt whether he will wake to death or a
pardon.

She had lived safely for two years.  She knew that they believed her
dead.  She was safe in the trees.  Doubly so since she had made friends
of the little monkeys, who could warn her while they were a mile away.
But, anyway, they came only to hunt the satyrs, and that only once in
every moon.

But if they had seen.  And _they must_ have seen, or who should have
cried to warn her?  And yet--  There was something strange.  The
time--the place--the voice--she was not satisfied, though her reason
told her that there was only one explanation, and her fear confirmed
it.  No less, she resolved to go back to the spot when the morning
came.  Reason told her that she should be as far from it as possible.

She had a range of just about ten miles of forest.  About ten square
miles of trees that grew so close that you could go all the way through
the green cover without sight of earth or sky.  Surely she could defy
them to find her!  And with the little monkeys to warn her.  But she
knew that she would be hunted--hunted--and there could be but one end
to the two years she had lived in the forest.



The satyr was dead.  He lay face downward, as he had crawled under the
bushes.

The sudden tropic sun had not risen, and the westward stars still
showed in the reluctant sky when the branches moved and the girl
dropped lightly to the ground beside him.

She had no doubt that he was dead, though she kicked a shaggy side with
her foot to prove it.  Cold and stiff.  There was no doubt there.  But
having shot him, why had they left him thus?  They hunted for food.  He
could not have escaped their notice so easily.  He had not gone twenty
yards from the spot where he must have been shot.  And he had left a
trail of blood as he moved.  She traced it backward.  There was a
mystery here, and it was vital to her to solve it.

On the open path she could see where he had fallen.  The light was
still dim, but her eyes were keen, and she saw that there was another
trail of blood which went the opposite way.  Swift as a startled bird
she regained the branches, and was high in the forest roof before she
would pause to consider it.  She did not know what it could mean, and
she had learned the forest law of the forest life: that what is not
understood is to be avoided swiftly.  She had descended dangerously to
obtain knowledge, as a bird will swoop to snatch the food it needs, but
she would consider it in safety.

She considered, and found it inexplicable.  There had been only one
shot.  Possibly it might have hit two of the satyrs, and in following
one they might have lost the other, it was possible--but unconvincing.
And there was the cry that had warned her.  Besides, they did not hunt
singly, nor, in her experience, had they done so at such a distance
when the light was failing.  She was sure that there was something here
which she had not discovered, and which she must know for her peace of
mind, if not for her safety.

Very cautiously she descended again.  Among the trees that met
overhead, she crossed to the other side of the path.  Then she
descended to the lower branches.  She found Charlton easily.  After the
first restless hours he had fallen into an easier sleep, and the
movements in the boughs above did not disturb him.  She watched him for
some time, and when assured that he slept, she dropped silently to the
ground.

Her feet made no sound on the soft verdure as she approached.  She bent
over him, looking at the wound.  She did not think it serious.  A very
cool and tearless Aphrodite, she considered an Adonis who would not
die.  At least, he would not die of that wound.  There were other
possibilities.  She saw that he was a stranger who had doubtless been
cast upon the island, as had herself and her friends.  He might be
alone.  If so, he would not live long were he discovered.  He must be
warned.  Also, he knew of her existence, and if he were caught, he
might tell it, thinking no evil.  For every reason he must be warned.
She looked searchingly at the sleeping face.  Was there a possibility
that a road of escape was opening?  Or that here was a companion for
her loneliness?

Her eyes sought every detail of his equipment for guidance.  She
learned that he had come through the bog.  That meant, almost
certainly, that he knew nothing of the dangers which threatened him.
But she must not risk anything till she were surer.  And, in any case,
he must not see her like--this.

Quietly, as though her thoughts had penetrated to his sleeping mind, he
waked, and their glances met for an instant.  Startled into full
wakefulness by the apparition, he raised himself and looked round, but
there was no one in view.  He was not sure that the delirium of the
night had left him.

Then the pain of his wounded leg gave him a more urgent consideration.
The horn had ripped the muscle for an inch or two, but he did not think
it had gone deeply.  It was less serious than he had thought, though it
had bled so freely.  But his leg was numb from the way in which he had
tied it.  With some difficulty he cut the string, and the blood forced
its way back into the deserted veins.  The wound did not break out
again, but he was afraid that it might do so should he attempt to walk.
Yet drink he must.  His thirst was maddening.  He crawled down to the
water.

Having drunk, he washed and bandaged the wound.  He went back into the
bushes.  Not wishing to meet the satyrs again in his present condition,
he withdrew further from the path.  He still had some food; and the
night having been warm and dry, he was little the worse for his
exposure.  The curse of the mosquito had not fallen on this lonely
island.  He would rest today and hope that he should be able to proceed
quietly tomorrow.  He had seen nothing yet that he need fear.  The
satyrs were not formidable.  He realized that he had been attacked from
desperation rather than courage or ferocity.  But the vision of the
night before would not leave him.  He was determined to find her.

He drowsed as the day advanced, though with a mind alert for any sound
that might rouse him, and with the rifle near to his hand.  He did not
think that he had slept heavily, and was surprised to find that a large
bunch of grapes, a pile of guava-fruit, and a red variety of banana
were beside him.



The fruit was welcome in the heat of the afternoon, relieving thirst
and hunger; but it meant more than that.  It was an evidence that he
was watched over, and by those who were not unfriendly.  Perhaps he
could take the gift as no more than recompense for a warning cry.

He remembered that he had not seen the girl's face.  The waking glimpse
had been too vague and transient for any enduring impression to be left
on his mind, though he sought it vainly.  His heart beat faster as he
recalled the vision in the tropic twilight of the previous day.
Certainly he would find her.

Night came, and it was very dark in the forest.  Having rested during
the day, Charlton now felt sleep to be impossible.  His mind besieged
the problems that the island offered, but found no point at which he
could penetrate to their solution.

While he wondered a voice called low and near through the silence,
"_Dormez vous?_"  He was uncertain of the direction from which it came.
There was a rustling in the leaves above him, but that might be the
monkeys.  He answered in English: "No, who are you?"

"I thought you were," came the cryptic answer.

"_Si vous_--if you mean I'm English," he answered, "you're right, but I
can speak your language if you prefer."

"Oh, they're both mine," the voice answered, "and I've forgotten them
about equally.  We'd better keep to yours.  But I'll tell you who I am,
if you'll lead the way."

"Well, I asked first," he said, not unreasonably.

"But I'm a girl, and can't wait."

"Are you the one that escaped from the beast I shot?"

"I may be; but I shan't speak again till--"

"Very well," he said, resigning himself to the unavoidable.  "But
there's nothing to tell.  My name's Charlton Foyle.  My age is
twenty-six.  My height, five feet ten inches.  My weight varies.  My
profession is (or was) that of a junior attach.  The doctors say I am
ill, and I thought they were right; but I am beginning to doubt it.  I
drifted here in a boat that I was too weak or too stupid to handle.
That's the whole tale, and now will you please explain--everything?"

"You have a boat?" the question came breathlessly.  "Where is it?"

"I'll tell you if you'll play fair.  You haven't answered my question."

"There's really nothing to tell," the voice mocked him.  "My name's
Marcelle Latour.  My age is twenty.  My height is five feet six.  My
weight varies.  My profession is difficult to define.  The doctors
might have said I was ill had there been any to consult, and had I
asked their opinions.  I drifted here on a raft that I made no attempt
to handle, as I was both too weak and too stupid.  Also, there were
others with me who were more competent.  That's the whole tale, and now
will you please explain--where is the boat?"

"The boat's quite real," he answered, "and quite safe."  His mind was
divided between a reasonable caution and an instinctive confidence.
"But it is too large for one man to handle.  If your companions are
anxious to leave the island, we might do so together."

The voice that answered had a new note of seriousness.  "I have no
companions.  They are dead.  I am quite alone.  No one knew that I was
alive, till you saw me.  But if you have a boat, it may be life for
both of us, if you will take me.  I must tell you all, and you will
understand when you hear.  But if you don't believe me, please say, and
I'll stop.  I don't suppose you will.  But you may, because you've seen
something--"  She hesitated, as though hardly knowing how to commence.
Memories crowded back as her mind turned to the past.  Charlton had
leisure to wonder how near she was, and to recall the vision which his
mind held, so that he hardly heard the first words in which she began
her narrative.

"It was two or three years ago--I can't say more exactly--that I was
traveling home with my father--he was French, but my mother was
English.  He had been on a scientific mission to the French islands in
Polynesia on behalf of the government.  We were run down by another
ship in the night.  When the morning came it had sunk, or was out of
sight--I don't know which.  They said it was damaged more than we were.
Anyway, we were sinking.  Some of our boats were smashed, and most of
the men went off in two of the others.  The captain and four of the men
stayed.  He advised us not to go with the boats.  He thought the ship
could be kept afloat, and that the risk was greater if we left it.  The
weather was very rough.

"But the ship sank during the next day, though not till the men had
made a large raft, for the only boat we had left was a very small one.
They said the raft would be safer.  They made it with a mast and sail.
It was large and strong, and floated high on the water.  We had loaded
the boat with provisions and towed it behind us.  It was better weather
by then.

"I don't think I was very frightened.  The ship went down so gently
that the raft floated clear of the deck before it really sank.  But the
weather got worse again, and the rope broke, so we lost the boat.  We
were on the raft for about three weeks.  The last week we had water,
but no food.  We caught fish, and one of them must have been poisonous,
for the captain and one of the men died.  It was a horrible time.

"Then we saw this island.  We thought we were saved at first, but when
we got near, it was all high cliffs with no landing-place.  We sailed
too close in, and were beaten against the cliff, and one of the men was
drowned, and the raft was damaged.  We were too weak to do much to save
him.  Then we found a kind of tunnel in the cliff.  There was a ledge
along the side on which we landed--"

"Yes, I know the cave," Charlton said, "you needn't explain that."

"Very well," she answered.  "If it's the same.  Anyway, that's how we
got here.  We saved a few things, but couldn't get the raft properly
in, and it went out to sea when the tide turned.  Most of our things
went with it.

"We climbed up some steps of a kind--you know them?--and lived for
weeks in the rooms above.  We hauled up the two chests we had saved--"

"Two," he said.  "I only saw one."

"There were two chests;" she said, "but they don't matter.  We were
very weak, and we had no food.  We found a way out on the inner face of
the cliff.  It goes all round the island like the sides of a cup.
Perhaps you know the way we found?  Very well.  We all felt afraid, but
Pierre Janot ventured out and he came back the next day with plenty of
fruit, but with a tale that he had nearly died in a bog, and of such
strange creatures that we were more afraid than before."



Marcelle paused for a moment, as though doubtful how to continue--or
reluctant to explain all that had happened--and then said, "I must tell
you about these men.  Jean Couteau was quite harmless.  He was like a
dog that is faithful, but too timid to be of any use to help you in
danger.  He had religion.  He trembled at the tales that Pierre told
us.  He thought that we were on an island of devils--he wasn't far
wrong in that.

"The things Pierre told impressed my father very differently.  He was
interested, and questioned him closely.  But he didn't like Pierre, and
he was absorbed for these first days in examining the drawings and
other things in the upper rooms--"

"The upper rooms?" Charlton interrupted.

"Yes--haven't you seen them?  That is where he had the chest taken that
held his papers.  Well, it doesn't matter.

"But after a time Pierre's tale changed.  He said that he had found the
people who really controlled the island, and that they were quiet and
friendly.  Why should he spend his time bringing us food by such a
path, while we could get it ourselves in safety?

"We should have had to venture out ourselves, had he refused to do it.
He said he hadn't told them where we were hidden, out of respect for my
father's wish, but that he should not return again unless one of us
would go with him.  When he said this my father was not with us.  I did
not want to go alone with him.  There were reasons.  But I was very
tired of the caves, and I wanted the forest.  Also, I thought that, if
he did not return, it would be useful for one of us to know the way he
had found for crossing the bog.

"He said that I could be back within a few hours if I wished.  I was
not really much afraid of him.  Anyway, I went.

"I had made Jean promise not to tell my father till I returned, but he
was frightened and did so almost as soon as we had started.  My father
followed.  He kept us in sight, though we did not see him.

"Pierre led us to the people who live at the end of the island.  It's
no use telling you about them.  No one would believe who has not seen
them.  They are not beasts.  They are men--of a kind.

"He led us by an indirect way, so that we entered their village from
the further side, and they were between us and the nearest way of
retreat when first we saw them.

"They were crowding round us in a moment.  They must have known we were
coming.  They talked in a language which is difficult to understand,
but which has many English words.  I think they would have pulled me to
pieces out of a kind of savage curiosity--I am sure they would have
torn my clothes off me--"

Marcelle stopped suddenly, as though the allusion brought a sudden
self-consciousness of the present, but resumed in a moment.

"Pierre shouted to them a warning about 'Demers,' at which they seemed
to hesitate, and it was just then that my father joined us.  They
seemed half frightened of my father, and drew back a few steps.  There
must have been fifty of them, men and women and some half-grown ones.
You couldn't think of them as children.  It was like being awake in a
nightmare.

"Only my father being there gave me some confidence.  He was never
afraid of anything.  I saw him looking at them as aloofly as though
they were a new species for him to classify.  They felt it somehow, and
hung back like a lot of cowardly wolves, each afraid to be the first to
spring at us.

"Then there was a cry that Demers was coming, and--well, I can't tell
you what he is"--Charlton heard the shudder in her voice as she named
him--"he's the son of the old man who rules them.

"He took us to him, in a white stone hall that those creatures could
not have built.  My father talked to me in French, which they could not
understand.  'I don't think they are cannibals,' he said, rather
doubtfully, 'but in any case we shall know how to deal with them.  They
have no intelligence.'  He asked me to interpret what they said, as far
as I could understand it.  He could write English well, but not follow
it when spoken, as I do, and they did not speak any proper language at
all.

"The old man is called Jacob.  Even my father would not say that he has
no intelligence.  When we talked to him, we soon knew that Pierre had
betrayed us.  I don't know why he did it, unless it were out of revenge
because I had shown I disliked him.  You might understand if you knew
him.  He is still with them.  But, of course, he does not know that I
am alive.

"We found that I was to be a wife for Demers, and I should have been
handed over to him without ceremony as soon as Jacob had seen me, but
for my father's contrivance.

"He did not try to speak to them himself.  He told me to tell them that
he could not speak their language.  That gave us time to consult, and
to exchange words in French which they could not follow.

"My father told me not to look frightened, as there was nothing to
fear.  I was to tell Jacob that I was quite willing and that he
approved, but that there was a prophecy that, if I were married on any
day except when the moon was full, my husband would die within a week.
It was the kind of idea which would come to my father's mind, and we
must have acted well, for they believed us at once.  It was four days
before the moon would be full.



"Pierre could not have believed the tale of the prophecy, but my father
told him that he had considered that, as there was no means of
escaping, it was the best thing that could happen that I should be
married to the son of the chief man of the island.  Pierre seemed
puzzled and sullen, but our manner may have convinced him.  As soon as
we were alone, my father told me not to be afraid.  'Of course,' he
said, 'I shall not let that ape touch you.  But we have four days.  For
the next three days don't even think of escaping from them.  Just
forget the future.  I shall be ready with a plan when the time comes.
Meanwhile, I want to gain their confidence and look round and learn
what I can.'

"My father was like that.  Nothing worried him needlessly.  He was
always sure he could deal with it, and I had learned to trust him.  And
for the next three days he seemed absorbed in the strange things that
were around us.  I think, had he really been in the hands of cannibals,
he would have been capable of forgetting his coming fate, had he been
interested in the shape of the pot which they put on to boil for the
coming meal.

"They gave us each a hut, and while within these we were quite free,
and more or less private; and they followed us about so that to escape
unnoticed would have been impossible.  We might have tried it in the
night, but I knew my father was planning better than I could do, and I
just did as he told me.

"It is a wonderful place, like a great garden.  But the gardeners are
huge birds, taller than men.  They call them rukas."

"Birds?"  Charlton's voice was incredulous.

"Yes, I knew you wouldn't believe without seeing.  But they don't
belong to the people of whom I am telling you.  Beyond them there is a
great red temple, where there are others of a different kind.  We
learned that they reserved part of the cultivated land to themselves,
and we were warned not to enter it.  But the great birds go where they
will.  They are like ostriches, but larger--and different.

"My father said they were a kind of giant cassowary, till he looked at
their feet.  He smiled when I spoke of ostriches, and asked whether I
did not know that those birds had only two toes.  But when he looked at
their feet he said they were different from cassowaries, but they were
more like them than the rhea.  They looked down at us in a way I didn't
like.  It was as though we amused them.  But they did us no harm.
There were other strange things, but it's not easy to tell them.  It
would have been beautiful, but for the horror.

"On the second day they took us with them to hunt a satyr which they
wished to kill for the wedding feast.  I needn't describe that.  It
made us realize the kind of beasts that had caught us, more than we had
done before.  I've watched many others since, but it was new then.  Of
course, we all eat things that are killed--at least, I used to; I
haven't here; and we may enjoy chasing them, but it was the way they
killed it after it was caught--one of them shot it and broke its
leg--the way they gloated over killing it, and crowded to see and
share, that was so loathsome--I can't describe it."

"Shot it?" Charlton interrupted again.  "I thought you said that they
were only half-human, and I supposed this island to be unknown to
Europeans.  Have they got firearms?"

"They have got some muzzle-loading muskets, and large clumsy pistols.
My father said they were half a century old--and a whole lot of swords
and other weapons.  Didn't I tell you they spoke in a half-English
language?  They say their ancestors came here in an English ship.  But
they're not English now--they don't seem quite human.  You need to see
them to understand."

"Well, go on.  I'm sorry I interrupted."

"There isn't very much more to tell, and the time's passing.  I must go
soon," Marcelle answered.  She knew the hour of moon-rising, and had no
intention of being seen when its light should flood the glades of the
forest, and give a glimmering twilight to its recesses.  "The boundary
between the gardens (which are like a great park with lawns and fruits
and flowering trees and creepers) and the forest in which we are is a
high palisade, too strong to break through easily, even should any
creature wish (the satyrs would never dare the attempt), but there is
nothing more than an open pathway leading to a gate in the palisade to
divide the gardens between the two races that share them.  My father
was bent on seeing the temple, and he may have thought that we should
find some protection among people who were apparently respected by our
captors.  He told me of his intentions, and asked me whether I should
prefer the risk of going with him or remaining.  I chose to go.

"So on the third day we just walked over the boundary.  They cried out
in anger or alarm--there were a dozen of them around us at the time,
but the movement was unexpected and they did not dare to follow.  They
kept shouting to us to return, till a drop in the ground hid us, but we
took no notice.

"We went on for a mile or more in absolute solitude, getting quite near
to the temple.  It is neither beautiful nor ugly, except as strength is
beautiful.  It gives an impression of being immovable, though the world
should fall from beneath it.  It is very squarely built and of great
size, but the strangest thing is its color, which is red, but of a very
deep, almost purple tinge, and of an extraordinary intensity, so that
you feel that it is not merely on the surface, but all through the
great square stones that build it.  You feel that it is soaked in this
color.  I remember that I felt awe as I looked, and a more sinister
impression, which I could neither shake off nor explain.



"As we looked, a priest came from the temple towards us.  He was tall
and dark, of a quite different race and character from those among whom
we had been.  He looked at us in a remote, austere way, but without
hostility.  When he spoke, I was startled to hear him use the language
to which I was becoming accustomed.  He must have learned it from them,
but, as he spoke it, it had lost its vulgarity.  He did not rebuke us
for trespass, he simply told me to stay where I was and await my
father's return.  He signaled with his hand to one of the rukas that
was near us, and it came and waited beside me.  My father went with
him.  It was near twilight when he returned.

"We had walked most of the way back before he spoke, and then he was
different from anything which I had known previously.  He was always
cool and sufficient, but he spoke now very slowly and with an unusual
gravity.  He told me that the priest had shown him strange things, but
he could not repeat them.  He said, 'I have seen what is going to
happen during the next days, and some things that are further.  I want
you to remember that if you have courage all will be well.'

"I said, 'Will it be well for you also?' and, as he did not answer
quickly, I continued, 'But if you have been warned of any danger,
surely we can find some way to avoid it.'  I had a fear that some
tragedy, was upon us from the tone in which he spoke, and a restraint
that was different from his usual serenity.

"He answered, 'Yes, we could alter it.  No one can really foresee the
future, because it is subject to incalculable influences.  It is not
fixed beforehand.  But--I think I have seen what will happen--if we
make no move to avert it: and if we do that there may be a worse
alternative.  That is the danger.  Against that the priest warned me
before I looked.  If I should tell you, it would not happen, and you
would only think that I have been credulous of folly.  In any case it
may not.  Many chances may avert it.  But it might be worse.'

"After that he would say no more for some time, and then he turned to
me and said, 'I want you to promise that you will never consort with
this canaille, whatever happens.  Anything would be better than 'that.
You must have patience as well as courage.'

"I could not understand that then, though I gave the promise he asked,
but those words have shown me since that he really must have seen, and
that he gave up his own life because he saw that it would mean escape
for me if he let things happen in that way.

"There was great excitement over our return, and an increased suspicion
and watchfulness.  I was questioned as to our experiences and replied
on my father's advice that I had not gone far, and had seen nothing.  I
did not mention that he had been in the temple separately.

"The next day Pierre came to us with a proposal that we should escape
together.  We had good reason to distrust him, and my father replied
that he saw no hope in escape, and had no intention of doing anything
of the kind.

"A great feast was held once every month in the great hall on the night
following that on which they hunted the satyrs, and it was their custom
to have a kind of dancing orgy after this feast, which would fall on
that occasion upon the day my father had mentioned, when the moon was
full.

"My father told me to say that he would marry me to Demers at the
conclusion of this feast, if he could have a house built for his own
use, and if it were agreed that I should become Demers' legal wife.

"My father insisted upon making some other conditions--I needn't
trouble to tell them--but, while they were not difficult to grant, they
gave an impression that we were quite agreed to the marriage, which was
no doubt what he actually intended.

"Anyway, I don't think they had any suspicion.

"My father told me his plan, which was so simple that I was afraid at
first, till I saw that he was right, and that its unexpectedness would
be its strength.  He said that, as the evening passed, they would all
get more or less drunk, and that he would give me an agreed signal,
either while the feast should still be in progress, or even on the way
to Demers' house afterwards, at which we should quietly escape among
the trees by a path that we agreed upon, and which we both memorized
very carefully.

"He pointed out that they would be more or less unarmed and taken by
surprise, even though they might still have control of their wits and
legs, which he thought unlikely.

"He had a good revolver which he always carried, though he was not in
the habit of showing it, and I doubt whether even Pierre knew of its
existence.

"He said that we could easily outdistance a scattered pursuit as we
should have a clear objective, and that, when we reached the caves, we
could defend the entrance, should they follow and find it.  I said that
Pierre would betray that, to which he answered that he would deal with
him, but he did not say how.  I think they must have known more or less
of the caves, as their ancestors appear to have come by the same way,
but they may have forgotten them, or somehow lost knowledge of the
entrance.



"My father told me all this with evident confidence that the plan was
sufficient in itself, but yet as though it were of no real importance
one way or other, and his mind was preoccupied with something of a
greater significance, but he said no more.

"I think it would have all gone as he had planned, but, when the feast
had just started, and we were all seated at the table, Jean Couteau
came running into the hall.

"The old man Jacob and his son were at the head of the table, and we
were at his right hand, the priest and his wife--I suppose they were
guests to honor the occasion--being opposite to us.  I had seen my
father and the priest exchange glances, and look towards the entrance
of the hall, which was at the further end, more than once, as though
they were expecting something to happen.  When Jean appeared I heard my
father say to himself, '_Donc c'etait vrai?_' and then very quietly to
me, 'Come at once; it is now or never.'

"Jean ran into the hall crying something about hell and devils, and
waving his arms--I think he was quite mad--and at once the whole hall
was full of screams and outcry.  They are a people that can be roused
to a frenzy of cruelty or excitement in a moment.  It is the same when
they hunt the satyrs.  They sprang at Jean as though they would tear
him to pieces with their hands.  Some of them wore cutlasses--they have
a lot of old ship's weapons--and they drew them and slashed at him
while he dodged wildly about the hall.  I don't know why his coming
made my father decide that we must go at once, but we could have done
nothing to save him.  The way he screamed was like putting a match to a
laid fire.  I saw him killed before we were down the hall.

"We rose so quietly, and the attention of everyone was so much taken by
what was happening at the further end of the hall, that we were
half-way down it before any effort was made to intercept us.  I looked
back once and saw the priest watching the confusion as one who looks at
a play which does not concern him.  Then I caught the old man's eye,
and knew he had seen us.  His son had half risen, and he was holding
him back with one hand, and saying something to him very urgently.  I
think he saw the revolver in my father's hand.

"Then he shouted something which I could not hear, and at once
attention was directed toward us.  We were walking down the side of the
hall.  I was nearer the wall, with my father on my left, and the backs
of the people--men and women seated together--were at his left side.
They turned and saw us, and began to jump up to stop us.  My father
quickened his pace.  He did not fire, though one or two of them drew
their cutlasses as they turned, and thrust at him as he passed them,
but, as we were near the entrance, a man sprang in front of him and
seized me by the arm.  I shall never forget his face.

"He pulled me in front of my father, and I struck at him with my free
arm.  He screamed out something--for the others to help, I think--as he
did so, and I think I screamed in a different way.  It must have been a
wild scene.  I think my father was the only one there, besides the
priest, who kept his self control.  I saw the man's black eyes, mad
with excitement, and his teeth, very white, and snarling like a wolf,
and then my father fired, over my shoulder, and the face fell.

"The next moment we were clear of the hall, and running hard for the
way we had chosen.

"We could not reach it.  They were close behind and around us.  Some of
them could run faster than we.  But they were afraid to come close.  My
father fired if they did, aiming deliberately.  I don't think a shot
missed.  So we gained the trees and a moment's safety, but we were cut
off from the way we had intended--the safe way back across the bog.  In
the shelter of the trees my father stopped a moment to reload.  Then I
noticed that his left arm was bleeding.  I asked if we could not wait
to bandage it, but he said no--it was nothing--and hurried me on.
'It's not the arm that matters, it's the side,' he said, and I saw that
he had been wounded there also.  It must have been before we got clear
of the hall, when they were thrusting at him with their cutlasses.  I
don't know how deep it was: I suppose he knew that it would make no
difference in the end.

"We came out of the wood to an open space that sloped down to the bog.
It was open water in places, and smooth green mud in others, and there
were great patches of reeds with gaudy blue flowers striped in mauve
and crimson.

"They were close behind us then, and closing in on either hand.  They
drove us down to the bog.  We crossed it for some distance, walking
heavily, but not sinking.  They seemed afraid to follow.  We made for
what seemed like an island of reeds, but, when we were near it, we
found a clear space of water about twelve feet across which separated
us from it.  My father said, 'You can swim better than I.  Could you
swim round to the further side and see whether we could land there?
Slip into the water as though you were sinking in the bog.'

"I was afraid, but I did not like to refuse.  I was used to obeying
him.  I did not understand his purpose.  I slipped down as he said, and
swam low till I was out of sight of those who were pursuing us.  Then I
climbed into the reeds.  I pushed through cautiously till I came to
where my father was still standing, but he had sunk to his boot-tops in
the thick mud.  I called to him cautiously that there was a safe way
round, but he answered without turning to me that he had a different
plan.  He was drawing his feet out of the mud with some difficulty as
he did so.



"He spoke again without looking toward me, 'Make for the forest; it
will be safer than the caves.  Do not answer.'  Some of our pursuers
were following doubtfully a little way into the bog, and my father
fired again, and one of them fell into it.  The other tried to drag him
out, but found they were being drawn in and let him go.  They were all
watching him sink, and could not control their excitement as he
screamed to them to rescue him.

"They broke into a kind of nervous laughter.  They seemed to be
frightened, and yet to enjoy watching him.  It held my attention till
he disappeared, and then I saw that my father had moved some distance
away, as though he were making for another patch of reeds.  Then I saw
that three men were running down to the edge of the bog with muskets.
They fired at him all at once, and he fired back twice.  I didn't think
they had hit him.  I saw one of the men had dropped his musket, and
that he was holding both hands to his body.

"When I looked for my father again, he had disappeared.  I never saw
him again.  He may have been hit, or he may have sunk in the bog.  I
lay still.  I was too frightened to move.  There was a crowd at the
edge of the bog by this time.  The old man and his son were with them.
They were all talking and pointing.  I suppose they thought I had sunk.
I don't think any of them would have been brave enough to come to
search after watching the one that sank.

"They went at last.  It was sunset.  I lay there too frightened and too
wretched to move, till the moon was high in the sky.  The night was as
cold as they ever are on this island, and I must have been drenched by
the swim, but I did not notice.  It was the coming of a snake that
started me.  It swam through the clear water with its head raised in
the moonlight.  I dreaded snakes then more than anything else that
lives.  I know now that it would not have harmed me.

"As it came out of the water and began to crawl through the reeds, I
started up, and plunged blindly into the water to escape it.  I made
straight for the land, taking the bog as it came.  It is a marvel that
I got there alive.  Perhaps my speed helped me.  I ran so quickly over
the surface that my feet had no time to sink.  As I ran, I remembered
my father's words, and I made for the forest.  No one stopped me: no
one could have seen me, for no search was made.  I have lived here in
the trees ever since--I am very glad you have come."

Charlton was silent for a moment when the voice ceased, pondering over
the strangeness of the tale; and it spoke again with a hesitation which
it had not previously held.  "But I don't expect you to believe me.
You will have to see for yourself first; and then it may be too late to
escape.  I know it sounds an unlikely tale, and I haven't told you all,
because I didn't want you to doubt it."

The tone was almost plaintive now, and Charlton answered quickly, "Oh
yes, I believe you.  It's not the kind of tale that anyone would expect
to be believed if it weren't true.  Besides, I know it's true about the
caves, and I've seen the satyrs.  It's a bit stiff about the birds
doing the garden, but, after all, elephants do similar work in India,
so it's not very surprising.

"But there's one thing that puzzles me.  Why didn't you go back to the
cave to get the things you had left there?  Clothes and things, you
know.  You must have needed them."

"I was afraid at first.  I went to the further side of the forest and
hid in the trees.  I was afraid of being found."

Charlton fell silent again, then.  A sudden doubt had disturbed him.
Could he find the entrance to the cave?  He thought he could, but he
realized for the first time how small it was, and without outward sign
in the monotony of the creepered wall.  But he must face that stile
when he reached it.

"Can we hope to escape?" she said eagerly.  "Will you tell me about
yourself?"

"Well, I think we'll try," he answered with a new cheerfulness.  "If
you can help me to handle a boat, we ought to be able to manage it.
About myself?  There's nothing really to tell."

But she pressed him, and he told her many things of his own life and of
happenings in the world from which she had been divided, realizing as
he did so that she had the livelier interest in them.  He had had life
within his grasp, and had let it go indifferently past--while she had
hungered for it with a vivid vitality, thinking that she had lost it
forever.

They talked, and the night passed.  They drew to a closer mental
intimacy than might have come from months of more conventional
acquaintance.  He had been telling her of the capacity of his boat, and
they had been planning to escape together with the impersonal
comradeship of a common need.

While he was speaking she had resolved to go before the dawn should
come, and she was the more urgent to do so for the mental intimacy
which had united them.

Also, she had a certain task to accomplish before the day came, of
which she was afraid to think, though she was resolute to achieve it.

She spoke at last, trying to reach a casual tone.

"Listen carefully to this.  There's a tree on the further side of the
pool with low boughs, and dark leaves, long and narrow.  It's the only
one of its kind just here, though they're common round the swampy
places.  It's quite easy to climb.  There's a space where the branches
spread out at the top of the trunk, where you can rest comfortably and
would be safe forever.  I'll come back about three hours before noon.
Will you wait for me there?  I shall come through the higher trees and
drop down.  If I don't come, you'll know that they've--that I
can't--but I've no doubt I shall come."

"But why need you go?  Why can't I come with you?  Can't I help?"
Charlton began, a score of questions and protests rising in his mind to
delay her, but Marcelle had seen the dim outline of the tree beside
her, and it was a high and distant voice that called a final farewell
to his protests.




CHAPTER IV

IN THE TEMPLE OF GIR

Marcelle earnestly desired apparel before she should introduce herself
in the daylight.  It was about eighteen months since the last rag of
the attractive garments in which she had landed had declined to
identify itself with her further wanderings.  Recalling the expedient
of her first ancestor, she had endeavored to provide herself with a
covering of leaves.  After some weeks of experiment, she remembered
that Eve had received supernatural assistance, and she decided that it
must have been needed.

Her efforts to manufacture garments for various parts of her person had
succeeded in providing several which she could put on without
catastrophe.  When she assumed one of these, it remained in its
intended position so long as she practiced a similar immobility.  When
she moved, it could be relied upon to expose its own fragility, and its
owner's person.

If the second branch did not reproduce her original nudity, it was only
because the first had relieved it of the opportunity.

After some weeks of these abortive experiments, she had desisted.
While she had been engaged upon them, she had been able to look forward
to a time when she would have resumed the symbols of respectability, as
she had been taught to suppose them.

Probably there are women who would have been more persistent, more
inventive, and more adroit in manipulation, but she had never been fond
of sewing.

She had no doubt that she could pass the palisade, though the hoofed
satyrs were unable.  But she did not know with exactness what might be
at any point upon the further side.  She knew of more than one place
where the trees grew close and high, and mingled with those
beyond--places where the little monkeys crossed with impunity.  She
marshaled every scrap of memory regarding the position of woods and
gardens; adding everything that the distant observations of the last
two years had taught her.  She thought of the wide gate in the palisade
through which they entered the forest when they came to hunt the
satyrs.  There was a path from there that led, broad and straight, to
the center of the settlement.  She had not passed along it, but she
knew it at either end.  The trees ran along one side of it for some
distance from the forest.  Perhaps, most of the way.  She decided upon
that line of approach.  When the trees failed, she would take the path.
She would make the quicker progress in the darkness, and the path would
be almost certainly deserted.  She must risk that, and trust to speed
for her escape, if she should be seen.

As she planned, she did.  The moon had risen now, and was sufficient to
guide her.  She would have asked for less light, had the choice been
hers.  She crossed above the barrier without difficulty, and continued
for nearly a mile, passing from tree to tree beside the moonlit path.
It would have been easier to descend and walk along it, but there was a
feeling of security in her accustomed trees which she would not
willingly lose.  The path was empty of life.  The movements that she
heard around and beneath her were only such as were common to the
tropic night.  They held no threat of danger, but rather an assurance
of security.  They told of myriad activities that would have sunk into
an instant silence had any voice or sound of distant step disturbed
them.

But they did not cease as she passed, for she was free of the forest,
and danger did not come from the high branches in which she lived.

So far, the little monkey that she had tended had followed, its agility
and untroubled leaps through the empty air enabling it to follow her
longer reach and almost equal tree-craft.

Still she went on, and the moon rose higher and the path was vacant,
though a yellow owl came drifting, silent as a dead leaf, along the
air-way above it.

Then there came a tiny sound from the monkey, and the girl paused in an
instant, for she knew the danger-word of its kind, which would pass,
low as a movement of leaves, from end to end of the whole forest.

She became aware of some large shadowy shapes among the branches before
her.  Marcelle's heart beat fast as she saw them.  She guessed at once
that they were the great birds which the older community kept for their
gardening.  She had never thought of them as flying.  Probably they
ascended branch by branch, as a fowl will gain the higher perch of the
poultry-house.  But here they were, a hundred feet from the ground.
She was afraid to go forward.

She moved, and they gave their first sign of having observed her.  A
hoarse squawking noise broke out.  It was taken up by birds further
away.  It seemed that scores of these creatures must be perched in the
trees before her.

She had no defense, should they attack her.  She remembered their great
beaks; their heads, which were higher than hers; and the sardonic
intelligence of the eyes that had surveyed her as she had walked in the
gardens.  She had always dreaded them.

Certainly she could not now bring herself to venture among them.  And
there was a new danger in the noise which they were making.  It might
raise an alarm which would be fatal.  And the time was passing.

She could not attempt another way through the trees, for they grew
thickly only in a narrow belt along the roadside.  There were trees on
all sides, but they were separated too widely for any continued
progress among them.

She must descend and take to the ground.

As she decided this, the little monkey called from below her.  Fifty
feet down, she found that the way was clear.  The birds were only
perched among the higher branches.  She went forward quietly, though
with an added caution.  The squawking voices had stilled, as she left
the higher level.



The trees grew smaller, and then ceased.  Marcelle stood on the moonlit
road.  She was afraid to go on, dreading the peril of the adventure,
and feeling a disconcerting sense of bareness, such as she had never
known in the green depths of the forest.

There was little cover before her.  To the right the ground rose
park-like and undulating, colorless in the moonlight, but Marcelle knew
it to be gay with the tamed luxuriance of a million flowers.  Beyond
was the dark mass of the temple, and the houses of the priests and
their families.  Before her, on the hilltop, rose the white
feast-house, and to the left a bush-clad slope that fell away to the
bog-land.  She remembered the bushes, with their great blooms of
tiger-yellow, shaped like a slender trumpet that lifted sunward when
the light called, and then declined again as the evening shadowed.
Beyond these bushes were the white men's houses.

She had been uncertain whether to attempt her purpose there, or at the
dwellings of the older people, but the bushes decided her.  She could
crawl through them unnoticed.  Also, she was more doubtful of the
habits of the dark-skinned women.  She did not know how or where they
slept, or--in fact, anything.  She knew nothing of their habits, nor
had she entered their quarters.  She turned to the left.

Crawling through the bushes was possible.  So far, she had been right;
but it was neither pleasant nor speedy.  It was necessary to lie
low--very low at times.  Necessary to wriggle flatly along ground that
was stony in some places, and at others consisted of a damp adhesive
clay with rough-barked leafless under-boughs scraping the back--boughs
with an occasional projecting spike that gave a sharp penalty for too
impetuous progress.  It was hard, slow, uncomfortable work, and, worse
than that, it was almost impossible to continue in a straight course in
the root-impeded darkness.  There was a heavy poisonous odor from the
over-closing bushes, which made breathing difficult and the brain
rebellious.

Having wasted half an hour, and made less progress than she could have
done in five minutes on the open way, Marcelle gave up the attempt.
She realized the time was passing inexorably, and that it threatened a
greater danger than was probable from the open path in the night-time.

Standing erect once more, with trodden ground beneath her, she saw how
high the moon stood, and calculated that the dawn was not more than two
hours away.  Men do not lie asleep after dawn in latitudes where day
and night are equal, and noon is sultry.

She had a cowardly impulse to turn back, and to come earlier and more
swiftly on another night, aided by what she had learned already.
Perhaps it was no more than prudence that urged her, but, because she
was in a panic of fear, she felt it to be cowardice, and refused the
thought.  She went on more rapidly.  She passed Jacob Sparrow's house,
with its long verandas.  It was built of timber, heavy and solid,
different from the others.  Demers' house was further on the left, and
a score of others were beyond it.  Would the moon give no shadow, just
where it was most needed?  On the darker side of a creepered porch she
crouched and doubted.  They were all around her now, and, if one should
call, she would be surrounded in a moment.  Most of the houses were
built of latticework, the road being visible to anyone who might lie
wakeful within them.

Nothing stirred.  There was no sense in this; having come so far, she
only increased her risk while she waited.  With the sudden courage of
desperation she made straight for the structure where the goatfoot
servants slept who were neither women nor satyrs.  It was thickly
thatched, for rains were sometimes heavy, and the roof spread out and
downward beyond the walls.  It was walled half-way up, but less
strongly, for winds were rarely violent, and the position was sheltered
by the outer circle of cliff, and by the hill beyond it.  The upper
halves of the sides were entirely open, except for the pillars which
sustained the roof.  Internally, it was divided into two compartments;
one was used for the weaving of cloth from hibiscus-fiber, in which
these creatures were employed when their services were not otherwise
needed: one was their sleeping-quarters.  They could not get out when
the door was shut, for they were unable to climb.  The method of
building gave protection both from sun and wind and rain, with abundant
ventilation which the heat required.



Fortunately, Marcelle remembered in which division the day's labor was
carried on.  That would surely be deserted now.  She climbed the wooden
wall with a silent agility which she would have thought impossible two
years earlier, and then dropped down quickly to the floor.

It was darker here than on the moonlit turf outside.  Though the upper
parts of the side-walls were left open, the projecting slant of the
roof prevented any direct moonlight from entering.  But there was a
diffused light that was sufficient for her purpose when her eyes had
adjusted themselves to it.

The apartment in which she stood was long and rather narrow, with looms
and spinning-wheels ranged along its outer wall, and a row of benches
before them.

On the opposite wall, against which she stood, many garments were hung
on wooden pegs; some new, some sent for repair.  Marcelle could have
taken an ample armful, and escaped as silently as she had come.  None
would have stayed her.  Had she done so, she might have saved many
lives and much trouble to herself and others.  But Marcelle was modest.
She would follow the mode.  And her mode was of Paris, not of the
descendants of half-bred Chilian women.  Modesty (which has no relation
to virtue) is a somewhat tyrannous mistress.  Marcelle was sure that
she must have clothes.  She was (if possible) surer that she would
never wear those which she now found before her.

Let us be fair to those clothes.  The material was good, and they were
well-woven.  As to their designs, it is at least certain that Marcelle
would have worn uglier, had she been satisfied that a thousand other
Parisians, of a satisfactory social standing, were making a similar
exhibition.  But having no such assurance, her mind was repelled by an
ugliness which had no license.

Besides, they would not fit her.  Most of the island women were short
and very thickly made, as mongrel women of certain descents are apt to
be.  That was their misfortune.  It was their fault that indolence and
gluttony had united to add a covering of fat to their natural
dimensions.  Their clothes were designed accordingly.

The creatures that wove them--it is difficult to classify them
accurately either as animals or human slaves--appeared to take pleasure
in their work, and some of them were very skillful, but their skill was
not wisely directed.

They produced garments in which irregularly shaped patches of crude and
violent colors blended discordantly, one into another, or they
portrayed objects upon them.

They were mostly of an ample size, for the amenities of the climate had
not inclined these women to a reduction of covering, such as might have
been considered a likely consequence.  Rather, the fact that the
garments could be produced in greater abundance than they could be worn
had incited a spirit of competition among them, in which each strove to
wear more than her companions.

This explains why half an hour passed before Marcelle emerged again in
the moonlight.

She tried garment after garment, and discarded them with a visible
shudder of disgust.  She disliked the prospect of meeting Charlton in a
garment the arms of which were absurdly short, the material between
them sagging loosely in front, and in the same condition behind,
however tightly she should lace it.  A garment very light and thin and
finely woven, but of which it could only be hoped that the colors would
look better in the sunlight--a hope for which a very sanguine mind
would be needed--and with images woven upon it, so that it looked, at
best, like the walls of a children's nursery.

She was quite sure she was not going to introduce herself to Charlton's
notice in so absurd a drapery.

In the midst of this dilemma she became conscious that the ugliness of
these garments was more easily visible than when she had commenced to
inspect them.  With a start of fear she realized that the day was
coming.  It was at the same moment that she came upon something which
she might consider to be at least a possible covering.  It was a man's
tunic, such as were worn on their hunting expeditions, leaving the legs
free below the knees.  The tunic was of a silver-blue color and was
without embellishment, except that its edges were embroidered in a
darker shade.  Marcelle seized upon it with avidity.

She had vaguely intended to acquire some variety of wardrobe on this
pilfering expedition, but she had no longer thought for anything but
escape, if time should still permit it.  Already there were sounds of
movement on the other side of the partition.

Less easily than she had come, for the loose tunic embarrassed her, she
climbed the wooden wall and dropped into the shadow of the veranda.

It was lighter than she had supposed, and the need for flight was
urgent.  Dawn comes quickly in equatorial regions.  She glanced right
and left, and saw no movement; but eyes might soon be looking from the
score of dwellings.  They might be looking now.  She remembered that
she was at the further end of the settlement.  The idea came that she
might be wiser to leave it at that side, though it was furthest from
the forest, and to return by making a circuit through the bushy slopes
that lay between the settlement and the bog.

She passed round the veranda and found that the woods were not a
hundred yards away.  There was no reason why they should have been
cleared for a greater distance.  There was no cause for cultivating the
ground while food was abundant without effort.  There was no fear of
enemies, such as would make the denseness of the woods a possible cover
for attack.



Marcelle crossed the cleared space very quickly.  She was confident
that no one had seen her.  She came to a narrow path that ran into the
wood.  She remembered having explored this with her father, followed by
a watchful retinue.  She remembered that it led only to a little pool
at the edge of the bog lands.  So it did then; but that was two years
ago.

She went on with a sense of exaltation.  She could scarcely restrain
herself from singing.  She had done that which she came to do, and was
escaping to safety.  Before her was freedom--companionship--other
things, of which she was glad, and shy to imagine.

She had acted prudently, and her memory had not betrayed her, yet she
went forward gaily to her own undoing.

She came to the stump of a felled tree.  Then to several on her left
hand, at the side of the path.  Then to a fallen tree which lay across
it.  She attempted to clear it, forgot the impediment of the short but
unaccustomed skirt, and came down rather awkwardly.  She was bruised,
but her temper was unruffled.  She was too light-hearted for such
trouble to invade her serenity.  If she considered the trees at all,
they gave her no warning.  If they wanted timber, they cut trees.  That
was natural.  What of it?

Then she came in sight of a bungalow, large, newly built.  She was
close upon it at the first sight, and as she stopped abruptly, a woman
came out.

A tall and leafy tree was overhead, and with an instinctive resort to
her accustomed safety, Marcelle reached for its lowest branch.  She
drew herself up, confident that she had escaped unnoticed.

Climbing higher, she observed that the tree in which she had taken
refuge was isolated on three sides by the felling which had taken place
around it.  On the fourth another tree of a like kind grew closely,
toward which she made her way, and then hesitated, for it had commenced
to sway in an unnatural manner.  She looked down through the leaves and
saw that a man was moving below her.  She saw also that there were
ropes round the tree's trunk.  She could not see from her position that
it had been cut through most of its thickness, but the swaying motion,
and a creaking, cracking sound from below, were sufficient evidences of
what was happening.

Could she cross it before it fell?  It might be her one chance of
safety.  She was in the mood to venture, and knew that she was too late
at the same moment.  With a rending of strained boughs, and a final
crack at its base, the wounded tree bowed over and crashed at an
increasing speed through the surrounding branches of its neighbors,
that could delay, but had no strength to support it.

Marcelle looked down, and became aware that the fall had exposed her to
sight from below.  She drew back hastily, and a man, who was already
looking up to observe what damage the fallen giant had caused to the
surrounding trees, observed her motion.  Their eyes met with a mutual
shock of recollection.  It was Pierre, the carpenter.



After the death of Marcelle's father and her own disappearance, there
had been an hour during which Pierre's life had been somewhat
precarious.  M. Latour's revolver had been used to deadly effect; the
girl was gone; there was no disposition to regard the introducer of
these strangers with gratitude.  The proposal that Pierre should be
executed was popular, and required only the decision of Jacob Sparrow
to have been carried out with a very cheerful alacrity.  It was his
craftsmanship that saved him, of which he had already given some
demonstration.

Jacob remarked very reasonably that he could use it to make any
articles which were required, and that they could always put him to
death if he should cease to be worth the keeping.  As he proved useful,
they kept him busy in their service.  It was practical slavery, but was
not onerous.  As time passed, he was allowed to build a house for
himself, but was directed to do this at some distance to the rear of
the other dwellings.

Pierre was a man of the blond French type, with a full fleshy face and
a beard that straggled widely, but had no density.  He looked somewhat
heavy and awkward in his build, but he trod with a silent lightness.
His voice, like his tread, was very soft.  He would have killed a sheep
with tears in his eyes--and enjoyed the tears.  He was a good workman,
and industrious.  He considered his own comfort, which inclined him to
confine his more strenuous occupations to the coolness of the early
morning hours.

There is no doubt that there had been a time, after their first landing
on the island, when he had calculated that Marcelle was destined to
become his wife.  He had despised Jean, and though he had not
underestimated the character of her father, he had relied upon the
absence of competition and his own attractions (which he may have
overrated), even if the opportunity for more violent arguments might be
deferred.

Marcelle had rejected his first advances with a contempt which she had
been at no care to conceal, and this attitude had doubtless contributed
to the complex motives under which he had betrayed her into the hands
of the Sparrows.

She had shown her contempt, but there had been a secret fear that she
had not shown, which came back as she gazed down upon him, joined with
a rush of memories of those nightmare days of captivity, with the final
scene of bloodshed and her father's death.  She looked down, but she
neither moved nor spoke.

Pierre was at least equally startled, but his mind adjusted itself the
more easily.  It was obvious that she had escaped the bog, and remained
concealed in the forest.  For a moment he debated the possibility that
she might have been kept in the settlement without his knowledge, but
he rejected the supposition.  The lives of the community were too open.
Their houses were not adapted for such concealments.  She might have
been in the custody of the priest of Gir, but the position in which he
found her, and the pilfered garment, the significance of which he was
quick to recognize, joined to other facts which his mind reviewed
rapidly, made it seem improbable.

He realized what had happened very easily; it was less easy to decide
on his own course of action.  But he saw at once that he must first
capture, and then conceal her, before the community should be astir.
Then he would have time to consider.  He supposed that Demers would
have her for a wife.  If only the old man were dead!

He addressed her in French, as casually as though it were a natural and
expected meeting.  "_Bon jour, mademoiselle_; hadn't you better come
down and have some breakfast?"  The question might have been humorous,
or asked with a light good-will, to relieve an awkward situation.  But
Pierre did not joke, and the soft tones were full of menace to the girl
who heard them.  She looked around, but the nearest tree was far beyond
the possibility of reaching it.  He noticed, and understood the glance;
he saw that she made no movement to carry out his suggestion.  He
whistled to the woman who stood watching from the door of the bungalow,
and gave her some directions which Marcelle could not hear, when she
came to him.  She went back into the hut.

He spoke again, as one who reasons quietly with a foolish child.  "They
will soon be about, and they will tear you to pieces if they catch you.
You will be safe in my house."

She knew that she could very quickly be safer than in his house, if he
would let her go, but she knew that he had no such intention.  No less,
she saw that she would gain nothing by remaining where she was.  If she
came down, she would gain nothing by having shown her reluctance.  She
dropped from branch to branch, very conscious of the impeding skirt,
and feeling awkward in consequence, but to Pierre the revelation of her
ease in the descent confirmed his first conclusion.

His hand grasped her under the arm as she reached the ground.  The
woman had returned, and was holding out a short length of rope.

"Put your hands behind you," he said, "I shall have to tie them."  She
started at the word, and commenced to struggle furiously, but the grip
on her arm held, though not easily.  He was amazed at the strength of
the lithe body that strained away.

Ha said, without raising his voice, "Don't be foolish.  They would kill
us both if they found us together, unless they thought that I had
captured you for them.  I shall only tie your hands.  If you make a
noise, they will be here in a moment."

She did not know why they would act differently because he had tied her
hands, or what he meant, but she knew he was false, and she could not
easily consent to such loss of freedom.  But she had a great dread of
those with whom she was threatened.  She knew it was true that the
noise of a struggle might bring them.  Certainly true that he could
call them at any moment, and hand her over to them if he would.  She
would have killed him gladly, as a quick glance told him.  But then she
realized, and answered in a voice which she tried to make casual, "Very
well, if you think it's best, but don't do it too tightly."

She felt the brutal grip that bruised her arm slide down to her wrist.
The next moment her hands were secured behind her in such a knot as a
ship's carpenter would not be likely to fail to tie.  They walked into
the house.



The priest of Gir was alone with his wife in their private chamber at
the rear of the temple.  It was built, as was the temple itself, of
blocks of hard red stone; square blocks each a cubic foot in bulk, and
with surfaces that were smooth as glass.  If any knew how or when they
had been built thus, it was the old man who now bent over the table.
But they showed no sign of age, nor did it seem that time had any power
to destroy them.

Projecting ledges of stone, giving the effect of shelves along two
sides of the room, were piled with papyri, containing the wisdom of a
forgotten civilization.  In the center was a table, built of blocks of
the same stone.  It was constructed solidly, except that the stones
were omitted at intervals to form knee-holes for those who might sit
beside it.  Blocks set into the floor before each of these knee-holes
formed seats.  Otherwise the chamber was bare, except that there was a
pile of rugs in a corner, on which a child of about three years was
sleeping.

The priest of Gir was old, but of an undiminished vitality.  Tall,
lean, dark-skinned, handsome in a hawk-like way.  with an air of
authority which was habitual, he appeared to be equally incapable of
human weakness, of human sympathy, or of human laughter.  Yet his
aspect was without baseness, as it was without generosity.  It was
austere and remote.

The chamber was lighted by a series of bracket lamps, that showed the
priest and his wife seated together and bending over a mirror which was
laid flatly upon the table.  As the light caught the surface, it showed
now as water, and now as metal.  The gazers were intent and silent, as
though they saw something in its depths which was other than their own
reflections.  In fact, they saw the moon rise upon the path that led to
the forest, and a figure that dropped from the trees and moved along
it.  They saw more than that.  They saw into the coming days, and the
part that they were destined to play in the tragedy which was now so
closely upon them.

Suddenly the woman rose.  "I can look no more!" she said, in a tongue
which was forgotten when the shepherd-kings were reigning in Egypt.
"It is the end of all."  She crossed the room and threw herself face
downward beside the child.  She made no further sound.

The priest continued to gaze into the mirror.

At last he rose.  He walked over to the woman.

"Urda," he said, "all is well."

"Well!" she cried.  "And what of the child?"

"All is well," he repeated; "you should have looked longer."

"Need you do it?" she asked, after a pause of silence.

"No," he said slowly, "there is no need; but we have gone our own way
twice before, and it has not proved a good one.  It is the intended way
that we see, and we can vary it at our peril.  Had we not sought the
easier path before, this would not be today."

"Yes," she said, "it is true."

They spoke no more, but went into the temple together.  Their
understanding was too close for many words to be needed.  And the real
tragedy was not in the events which had been foreshadowed.  It was upon
them already.  Except for the sleeping child, they were the last of
their race.  Their son and daughter, husband and wife also, the parents
of the child, lay dead together in the temple, waiting for the
cremating pyre to consume them.

Eighty of their race there had always been till the strangers came.
That was the ancient law.  Every time that a child was born which would
have increased their number, the community had voted, and the least
efficient, or the least needed, the diseased, or infirm, or
evil-minded, man or woman or child, had been chosen for sacrifice.  It
was a good custom.  It kept the standard of the race high.  They gave
their blood to form the stones of which the temple was built, and their
bodies to the fire.  Every stone was colored by the blood of the
sacrificed, saved and included, how only the priests could tell, in
those smooth red stones.  The blood of many, beyond computing.  It was
a very ancient law.

But the two who lay dead before the altar now had not given their
blood.  They had not been chosen for sacrifice.  They had died as none
had been known to die--till the strangers came.

The strangers had brought disease.  Strange disease, of which they had
no knowledge, and for which they could find no remedy.  It had seemed
that all would die.  And then the plague had stopped.  But not
entirely.  Faster than their births, their deaths had been.  And now
the only two who could have continued the race lay dead together--and
they had left but one child.  It was the end.

The strangers did not know.  They had never been allowed to know how
fast the race had diminished.  Looking in the mirror of fate, the
priest had seen that they never would.  That at least was sure, if he
accepted the fate which the mirror showed.  He looked up at the great
temple-painting up above the altar, which symbolized the enduring cry
of mankind from its isolated planet to the Power which it feels but
never reaches; and through the desolation of his heart there came a
thrill of exaltation.  He saw that the end was the implicit sign of the
eternal.

He must do the part that had been given him....

Urda had gone back to the sleeping child.  She wished that she had
looked longer, and had learned what its fate would be.  Now, she would
never know.  Even he who had seen could not help her here, for even
between themselves such things might not be spoken.



Marcelle was afraid, and bitterly self-reproachful over the
over-confidence which had placed her in such a needless peril.  She sat
on the wooden stool which Pierre had indicated for her use, and thought
of the meeting with Charlton toward which she should now have been
proceeding.  She thought, with a maddening regret, of the free forest
life which she might have lost forever.  Yet the buoyancy of youth and
health were still hers, and it was in no despairing mood that she
considered the predicament into which she had fallen.  Pierre did not
speak.  He sat with his eyes on the ground.  He, too, was troubled by
the uncertainty of the position, and unsure what the events of the day
might be.

The woman fed Marcelle.  There was nothing inhuman about her face.  It
was kind and sad, with a refined beauty.  She might have sat for a
Madonna.  She was quiet, patient, alert to obey the will of her master
even before it was spoken.  She spoke little herself, and when she did
so, it was in French, which he must have taught her.

Marcelle decided that she was not unfriendly, but that there was
nothing to hope for from that quarter.  Nor anything to fear, unless it
were from her obedience.

The room was airy and light, but less open to outside observation than
was usual in the houses of the settlement.  Yet Marcelle noticed that
Pierre was watchful for any sound.  Evidently, he did not wish her
presence should be known, or at least not till his own time.

Could she not persuade him to let her go?  She considered whether she
should tell him anything of the boat, or of Charlton.  Why should they
not take him with them?  He would be an extra hand to help with the
boat.  Charlton had said that it was beyond his capacity.  Pierre was a
seaman, as well as a carpenter.  It seemed a natural thing to propose
that they should escape together.

But--he would guess at once where the boat must be.  Suppose he should
leave her captive here and take it for his own use, leaving Charlton to
his fate?  She could not risk such a betrayal.

As she pondered thus, he raised his eyes, and looked at her
speculatively.  He commenced to speak, and fell again to silence.  Then
he rose.  He looked at his wife.  "You had better both stay here.
Don't open to anyone till I return."  He went out.

Marcelle felt the relief of his departure.  Why should she not get up
also, and walk out into freedom?  She wondered whether she would
encounter any active resistance from her companion, should she attempt
it.  But she quickly saw the folly of such an enterprise.  With her
hands so bound, what progress could she make?  If she got to the
palisade unnoticed, she could not cross it.  She must do better than
that.  Pierre's evident confidence that she was helpless was not
encouraging.  And he might return at any moment.

Marcelle ventured a few indifferent remarks, to which she received
replies that were polite, though they went no further.  The woman--her
name was Rela, the origin of which may have been from any time or
language from Judea to Chile--had a voice that was low and very
musical, so that the most commonplace word came like a caress.

Then Marcelle came to the point.  She remarked on the unseemly size of
the tunic that she was wearing.  Could a smaller one be procured?  Rela
looked at it quietly, and agreed with a surprising readiness.  Yes, she
would do that.

She agreed so readily--indeed, so indifferently--that Marcelle wondered
whether she had been understood.  But the fact was that Rela had an
influence with the slave-workers in the clothing-house that made it
easy for her to render her guest or prisoner the service for which she
asked.

She agreed at once, but made no motion to put her promise into
operation.  Marcelle thanked her, and asked when she could hope to have
the needed garment--she did not minimize the ugliness, nor the
inconvenience, of the one that she was wearing.

The woman replied that she could not leave the house in Pierre's
absence, but that she would fetch it on his return.  This was not
exactly what Marcelle had hoped--though it was more than she could
reasonably have expected.

Her thoughts reverted to Charlton, waiting, she supposed, at the spot
she had appointed.  How long would he wait?  If only she had had the
sense to tell him where she was going!  She did not doubt that he would
attempt her rescue, if he should be aware of the peril in which she
lay.  And perhaps lose his own liberty, or his life in the effort, she
thought, with a renewed bitterness of regret at the folly through which
she had been captured.

Soon there came a sound of approaching footsteps, and the smooth voice
of Pierre outside the door.  He entered, with another man coming close
behind him.  Marcelle had a moment of panic, thinking that it was
Demers--come, perhaps, to take forcible possession of the bride that
had escaped him previously.  It was almost a relief when she saw the
form of Jacob Sparrow, leaning on a heavy stick, and coming slowly
through the doorway.



When Pierre had gone out, his resolution had been taken definitely,
with whatever reluctance, to see Jacob Sparrow and inform him of the
capture which he had made, rather than take the risk of concealment.

He went straight to the home of the aged ruler of the community, and
found him sitting on the veranda enjoying the coolness of the early
morning.  It was there that he spent most of his time, only removing to
the inner side of the door during the heat of the day.  The position
was of some strategic importance, because his home contained the
residue of the stores which his father had brought to the island a
generation ago, some of which, including the ammunition and an
unexhausted variety of tools and implements, were irreplaceable from
the island resources.

This was the only building which was solidly constructed, and capable
of being strongly secured.  When Jacob left it, which was seldom,
except for the periodic feasts (when the whole population would be
under his eye, or their absence known and permitted), it was always
locked and left in the charge of certain trusted servants whose loyalty
was secured by the privileges which they enjoyed, and which his death
would very probably terminate.  The temptation to attempt pilfering was
also lessened by the difficulty of subsequent concealment in the midst
of a community which lived so openly, and whose concerns and
occupations were matters of common knowledge and continual gossip.

Jacob dozed at his door and surveyed the carpenter's approach through
half-opened eyes, in which there was no friendliness, though the dull
indifference of their glance gave no indication of the alert and
cautious mind which was in ambush behind them.

Pierre was under no delusion as to the old man's feeling toward
himself, though he would have been startled had he known how entirely
his own purposes were read; or the definite plan for his destruction
which was only delayed from week to week, that the community might not
be deprived of his services till it should be considered necessary to
remove him.

Pierre gave his skill to his masters' use with a suave and deferential
manner that attempted no familiarity, and made no friendships.  He
waited for the old man's death.  He saw that he could do nothing while
he lived, but he was confident that he could find occasion to outwit
his son, whose brutalities were formidable only while his father's
brains were behind them.  Meanwhile he was too cunning to draw
suspicion upon himself by any premature intrigue, or attempted
confidence.  He kept his thoughts to himself, the while he watched the
differences and weighed the characters of those whom he served with so
humble an alacrity.

But the old man, watching with a like intentness, and brooding over all
he saw with a very ample leisure, had recognized him as a potential
danger to his son's security; and he had made plans for his removal,
which he delayed from time to time, as a man may delay the execution of
the will on which may depend the peace and security of those who are
dearest to him.  There was still useful work for Pierre to do, and
Jacob did not regard his own decease as an imminent contingency.  So
the days passed.

Facing the old man on the porch, Pierre came to the point at once.  It
would be obscure and tiresome to reproduce the debased and mongrel
dialect in which they conversed.  In substance Pierre said simply: "The
girl was not drowned in the bog.  She has been hiding in the forest.  I
have caught her among the trees I was felling."

Jacob took the news without visible emotion, though it must have been
somewhat surprising.  After a moment's pause, he replied, "How did you
find her?  It is easy for those who know to find."

Pierre could not mistake the accusation.  It was not entirely
unreasonable.  It was singular that he, who had brought her to the
settlement before, should now be the one to find her.  The imputation
that he had known more than he had told before would not be easy to
meet.  But he only answered, in a voice that was even smoother and more
deferential than usual, "She was up a tree where I was felling.  I
think she had ventured here to steal clothes, which she had come to
need.  I have her in my house.  I thought I ought to ask first what you
wish."

Jacob was silent for a time.  He considered Pierre, but he asked no
further question.  Then he rose slowly, leaning on his stick.  He said,
"I will see her.  You had better come with me."  He called to those
within to close the house till his return.  He walked slowly down the
center of the path, where the light was strongest.  He knew that he was
going blind, and he was careful not to show his infirmity.  He could
still see clearly for a short distance.  He seldom went abroad except
to the feast-house, and he could have walked there in the dark.  It was
a road that he had known from childhood.

His going to Pierre's house would have attracted attention at another
time, but this was the day of the monthly hunt, and the inhabitants of
the village were already assembling at the other end, which was the
nearer to the forest.

He walked painfully, dragging one foot.  Slowly as he moved, Pierre
kept a pace behind, not venturing to walk beside him.

He made no further allusion to Marcelle, but asked some questions
regarding the fallen timber as he passed it, and the work on which
Pierre was occupied.

Having entered the house, he stood looking at Marcelle for a moment.
He was never quick to speak.  He looked at Pierre and his wife.  "Go
outside," he said, "and do not listen."

When they were gone, he sat down on a stool opposite to Marcelle.  He
sat down awkwardly, and as though the operation of rising might not be
easy.

Marcelle looked at him, and was not afraid.  Womanlike, she was
impressed by his age and infirmity, and she under-rated her danger.
She had a girl's confidence in her power to win her way with an old
man, either by wit or cajolery.

The old man questioned her directly.  "Where have you been these two
years?"

She answered simply, "I have lived in the trees."  Then with a woman's
inconsequence, "My hands are hurting me.  I do not like them being
tied."

He said: "That was Pierre's doing.  He is a fool."  But he did not
propose to loose them.  He said: "Why did you come here?"

"Because I needed clothes," she answered.  The truth was obvious.

There was silence after that for some time.  Jacob Sparrow looked at
her, and he resolved that she should be his son's wife, whether she
willed or no.  Physically, she was of a different order from the
diseased and degenerate women of the settlement.

In her mind and character he was disposed to think her superior.  With
such a wife his son's position would be secured--and with Pierre's
removal.

His next question came to the point.  "You were to have married my son.
Why did you go?"

She said: "It was when they started to kill Jean.  I was frightened.
And then you killed my father among you."

It was plausible, but not convincing.  Jacob did not doubt that she
would escape again if she could.  Marcelle saw clearly that she must
persuade him of her willingness for the marriage, if she were to have
any chance of freedom.

He said suddenly, "Do you like Pierre?"

The question surprised her, but the start of repulsion with which she
met the suggestion was unmistakable in its complete sincerity.



Jacob spoke deliberately: "You cannot escape from the island.  Do you
not wish to marry?"

"Yes," she said; "I might."  A thought which he could not follow
dimpled her cheek as she answered.

He continued: "If you wish to marry, you must prefer the best man you
can get.  My son will succeed me.  He will have everything.  He is the
best man here.  There is no other so tall, so strong, or so brave as
he.  You shall be the first of his wives.  You shall be the only one,
if you wish.  Are you not willing to have him?"

Marcelle was silent.  She felt that a ready lie might give her the
opportunity of freedom, but it would not come.  She loathed Demers too
utterly.  The most that she could do in the cause of duplicity was to
look down with an expression which was only faintly troubled.

Jacob put his question again, but in other words: "Are you not content
to marry the best man in the island?"

She looked up, and her face changed.  "Yes," she said, and there was
the note of unmistakable sincerity which he had heard when she
repudiated any liking for Pierre.

_Magna est veritas_.  Even to deceive, truth is more powerful than
falsehood.  It did not occur to him that there might be another man on
the island whom she would prefer to Demers.  How should it?  He was
very sure that the priest of Gir would not look at any woman but his
own wife, and his age and aloofness made it an improbability that he
would be in her thoughts.  She had shown her feeling toward Pierre.  So
far his judgment was right.  She might have seen from her leafy ambush
some other man of the community who had attracted her fancy, but it was
not probable.  He had spoken truly when he said that his son was the
strongest and the most courageous.  He reflected that the position was
different from when her father was living.  She had had two years of
solitude.  After that (he supposed) there were few men that a girl
would not be glad to take.

And there was the fact that she had come into their midst from the
security of her hiding-place, with whatever excuse for her temerity.
On the whole, he was satisfied that his son was her choice.  Besides,
did it matter?  If Demers wanted her, he would have her.  There was no
other man that would question his claim, or thank her for bringing him
into such a quarrel.  Jacob was sure of that.

On the whole he was satisfied beyond his expectation.  He intended that
Demers should marry her, and he would have been quite content for his
son to have beaten her into submission; but if she were willing, he was
the better pleased.

He said: "You shall see him in the evening.  He is hunting to-day."  He
rose slowly as he spoke.

Marcelle smiled in reply.  He could not doubt that she was pleased at
the result of the interview.  So she was.  He could not know that it
was the ease with which she had deceived him, or rather that he had
deceived himself, and the fact that Demers was away in the forest, that
made her eyes alight, and gave a new hope to her heart.

She said, "My hands hurt me," and looked at him as though relying upon
his assistance to release them.

He said: "We will alter that.  Come with me."  He went toward the door.

She rose and followed, though doubtfully.  Pierre and his wife stood
under the trees about ten yards away, waiting permission to return to
their dwelling.  Jacob led the way along the path without giving them
any notice.

The sight of Rela recalled the promise she had made.  Marcelle stopped,
and gave Jacob a glance that was at once confident and appealing.
"Rela promised to get me some better clothes," she said.

Jacob paused, in his usual manner, while he considered the implications
of this statement.  "You must come with me now," he said; "you shall
have all the clothes you want."

Marcelle saw that she could gain no more for the moment.  Evidently he
did not yet intend to release her hands.  She walked on beside him,
looking demurely submissive, and accommodating her freer stride to his
dragging steps.

As they were going, Pierre followed, and caught them.  He stood in the
path with an expression submissive and yet resolved.  He was a head
taller than Jacob, and in every way the larger man: but with his head
bent, he looked something like a revolting sheep--or perhaps not a
sheep, but in sheep's clothing only.

"I shall have the reward?" he asked, in the low suave voice that seemed
to apologize for its own existence.

He waited anxiously through the usual interval of silence.  He expected
refusal.  He knew that Jacob loved his gold, and the promise was two
years old and made under different circumstances.

Jacob looked at him coldly, but the answer, when it came, was
unexpectedly complacent.  "You shall have the reward.  At the
wedding--tomorrow night.  Yes--you shall have the reward."

In Jacob's mind a thought that had come to him many times as he sat at
the head of the feast-day board and watched the carpenter at the lower
end, his broad hunched shoulders appearing apologetic of his own
existence, took shape and resolution the while the question had been
asked and answered.  Yes, it would be sooner than he had intended.  And
simpler also.  He should have his reward.




CHAPTER V

IN THE HOUSE OF JACOB

Jacob's house was different from the others around it: the main
portion, in which his goods were stored, was built of timber, heavy and
strong, and roofed in the same material.  But around this central
solidity there were a number of rooms more lightly built, and differing
little in structure from the prevalent style of architecture, except
that the roofs were wooden (Jacob thinking that the usual thatch would
add to the danger of fire, which was a constant dread to his mind) and
that the door was strongly fastened.

His servants, watching through the latticed walls, saw his approach,
and the door opened without his knocking.  He went in, and Marcelle
followed.  He led the way along a passage which ran along the side of
the outer wall.  This wall was lightly built, with a broad strip of
lattice continuing along it, at a convenient height for observation by
those within.  Some light came through, but it gave an effect of
darkness to anyone passing from the strong sunshine without.

Marcelle noticed little till she had been led into a room which opened
from the inner side of the passage.  It had no door, but a wide
aperture only.  Through this, some light entered from the passage.
There was no window.  Like all the rooms, similarly ranged round the
central store, it had no means of exit except by the outer passage.

Having entered here, Jacob turned to Marcelle, and stood facing her in
an impassive silence, as his habit was before speaking to any serious
purpose.  It would have been disconcerting to a nervous temperament,
but the girl had the advantage of a physical condition that required a
more definite cause to perturb it.

During the silence of the walk, the thoughts of both had been active,
and Marcelle was now resolute to deceive him into such a confidence as
would give her the opportunity of escape for which she was watching.
She had seen clearly that her knowledge of Charlton's presence, and of
the boat by which they might escape, was a concealed factor which might
easily upset his most logical calculations.  She saw that she had a
perilous battle to fight, but, if she fought it well, she had some
confidence in an ultimate victory.

Jacob weighed her words, and estimated her position shrewdly enough, so
far as his information went, and he judged that she would submit to his
will, but he was not quite sure, and the doubt angered him.  He felt
instinctively that there was some important fact that he did not know,
though he could not imagine what it was.

He spoke, slowly and impressively, leaning forward as he did so with
both hands on the heavy stick, for he rarely stood for so long a time,
and the weight of the gross body tired him.  "I will send someone to
untie your hands.  They will bring you food, and all the clothes you
wish.  I shall marry you to Demers tomorrow night, telling them all
what your position will be.  You will be the first in the island.  The
priest of Gir is nothing, nor are his people, whom we never see."

He was silent for a moment, and went on in a different tone.  "I don't
think you will try to deceive me again.  But if you do--"  His voice
changed again, he thrust his head forward, he took a step nearer to the
girl who stood facing him, her hands fastened behind her, but she held
her ground and returned his look without flinching.  "If you do,
understand that I will catch you, though I fell every tree in the
forest, though I burn it down, though I clear it of all the food it
contains.  I will let them hunt you as they hunt the satyrs--_and for
the same fate_."

She faced this sudden burst of passion with at least an outward
courage.  She was cool enough to wonder whether it were genuine, or
nothing more than an attempt to scare her.

She said, in as light a tone as she could command, "It doesn't matter,
because it won't happen.  I shouldn't like to be hunted like that.  But
I didn't know you were cannibals."

Jacob laughed in derision.  "Do you think they wouldn't be glad of the
change?  We have eaten satyrs once a month for fifty years.  Do you
think they would mind the change, if I set them on you?  Just try, and
you will get no mercy from me.  Have you seen them killed?"  He went
out.

He was satisfied that she would make no attempt to escape after that.
If she had had a doubt in her mind before, he did not think she would
dare to do it, after the warning he had given her.  But he took no
risks.  He gave such orders as the occasion required, and he resumed
his seat in the building's only doorway.

His servants came and untied her hands.  They brought her food in
plenty.  They brought her clothes from which to choose, only
protesting, when she asked for a shorter tunic similar to the one she
had, that it was not a woman's garment.  She replied that it would be
when she had worn it, and had her way.  She supposed that the wife of
Demers could set any fashion that she would.  For the moment she almost
brought her acting to the point of reality.

But she got a tunic of the length she wished, short enough to leave her
the free use of her limbs, and of a single color.  They brought her
sandals of satyr-skin, which she put on without enthusiasm, for her
soles were of a polished hardness which was little likely to suffer
from the floors or paths of the settlement.



Having supplied her needs, they left her to her own devices.  The heat
of the day was approaching, and in spite of all the excitement and
anxiety of her position she was conscious of the need for sleep.  She
had not rested at all during the previous night.  A very comfortable
hammock invited her occupation.

Entering it, she fell asleep almost immediately, but the afternoon was
not far advanced when she found herself awake again.  It is said that
sleep brings counsel, and courage.  To Marcelle it did neither.  She
had fallen asleep afraid, but yet confident that she would escape the
danger that threatened her.  It had not seemed very imminent.  There
was till tomorrow night in which to escape.  Once in the forest, the
way of freedom was before her.  A way which they could not guess.  And
any moment Charlton might come to her rescue.  Besides, she was very
tired.  It was pleasant to think that she might sleep, and that he
might be on his way to her assistance the while.  She had an
unreasoning confidence both in his will and in his power to release her.

But she waked in a different mood.  The room was hot and oppressive.
It was not usual to use these ill-ventilated apartments in the heat of
the day, except in the time of rains.  To Marcelle, after two years
beneath the open sky, it was an intolerable oppression.

Her wrists hurt her acutely--more than she had realized when she had
been physically tired, and mentally excited.  There were deep weals
half round them, where the cord had cut.

When she slept, the crisis had seemed distant--tomorrow night, at the
worst.  Much might happen in the meantime.  Many chances might aid her.
She waked to the memory that Demers was returning from the hunt, and
that the day was passing.  Any moment he might enter.  How should she
meet him?

Two years ago he had been ugly, brutal, uncouth, a repulsive savage;
but he had been visibly uncomfortable beneath her father's critical
eyes.  Till the hour of the expected wedding he had not attempted any
familiarity.  Her father had always been beside her.

But he was then an overgrown youth of sixteen years--years of the quick
growth of tropic climates.  That was two years ago.

Could she deceive him as--she hoped--she had deceived his father?  Had
she even succeeded in deceiving him?  She remembered the question with
which he had left her: "_Have you seen them killed?_"  She had.  It was
not a pleasant thought.  Suppose she were consigned to such a fate at
once, and she should show her real feelings!

After a time, she heard voices and the sound of steps outside the
house.  She went into the passage, and looked out through the lattice.
There she saw the man she most dreaded.  Demers came to his father's
door.  Behind him were those who carried the spoils of the day's
hunting.

As she looked, her face changed.  "_I never will,_" she said,
"_never!_" As she spoke, she heard a movement.  She turned, and saw an
old woman standing beside her.  She was much older than Jacob.
Wrinkled like a dried fig.  So small and bent, that she was scarcely
higher than Marcelle's elbow.  Her eyes were small and black, and full
of an alert suspicion.  Fortunately, Marcelle had spoken in her
father's language.

Marcelle went back into the room, tearless and resolute.

Demers spoke with his father in the porch, but he did not enter.
Apparently Jacob had decided that they should not meet till the next
day.

Marcelle went back to the hammock, and no one disturbed her.



Charlton had lain awake for some time after Marcelle left him.  Her
tale was strange, but he knew it to be confirmed at every point where
his own observations could test it.  Anyway, he believed it.  He was
not in a mood for skepticism.  He only longed for the return of one
whom he might not know when he saw her.

He loved a voice in the night.

Falling asleep, he did not wake till the sun had risen over the
cliff-top, and a ray of light, slanting down where the pool made a
break in the high canopy of the forest, touched his face, and its heat
disturbed him.

He was first conscious that there were troubled noises in the air.  The
peace of yesterday had left the forest.  Monkeys in the branches
overhead chattered uneasily.  Satyrs barked their warnings; now from
one side, now from another.  A louder, more distinct noise gained in
volume, sounding like the advancing cries of a crowd, and then receded.
He recalled that Marcelle had told him that this would be the day of
the monthly hunting.

He became conscious of the insecurity of his own position.  The island
threatened, and his mind recalled the foreboding with which he had
first beheld it, and the fear which had dominated him in the dream
which had revealed it beforehand.  Yet this feeling did not cause him
to forget that Marcelle was to return, nor had it power to overcome the
excitement of the anticipation.  He recalled that she had directed him
to the shelter of the tree which was their appointed meeting-place.  He
decided that it would be wisest to seek such security as it could
offer, without waiting for the hour that she had appointed.

Making his way round the pool, he found it easily.  It was not likely
to be approached by any without a definite purpose, for the ground in
which it grew was a deep mud, and on one side it overhung the pool.  It
was not difficult to climb, and on reaching the top of the bole, he
found the place of concealment of which she had told him.  Here he
could lie flatly and in some comfort, and observe something of the
ground below, though not much.

He had a clear view of the pool, and of the drinking-place on the
opposite side.  Above his head the boughs of a greater tree extended
far out over the water.  Its leaves were a light and vivid green.  It
bore a profusion of small cream-colored blossoms, with an orange
center, and having a delicious but intoxicating scent, so that, as the
day advanced, he found it hard to retain a watchful consciousness.

The cries died in the distance.  The forest recovered something of its
former peace.  The heat increased.  The appointed hour was past.  But
Marcelle did not come.  He supposed that in some way the hunt might
have delayed her, though he could not imagine why.  He did not doubt
that she had intended to keep her promise, or that she would be able to
do so.  He was impatient rather than anxious.

Then the cries of the hunt rose again, returning from another
direction.  There were sounds of movement below him, at the edge of the
pool.  He looked down cautiously, and saw three satyrs, an adult pair
and a half-grown female.  The male had a damaged hoof, and moved slowly
and as though in pain.  They were conversing with low sounds which
seemed scarcely articulate, but must have had meaning to them.  He had
a fancy that the female was urging something to which the male
consented reluctantly.  If so, she had her way, for he moved down to
the edge of the pool and entered the water.  He swam rather slowly
across the pool--Charlton had not thought that satyrs could swim,
though it was natural enough--but did not attempt to land on the
further side.  He chose a place where the bank sloped abruptly and
stood in deep water beneath a luxuriance of overhanging creepers, only
his head appearing above the surface.  The two others watched till he
had done this, and then disappeared in the woods.

Turning his attention from this incident, Charlton became conscious
that the noise of the hunt was much louder, and was approaching the
further side of the pool.

It was not long before a satyr came running down the path to the
drinking-place.  He ran slowly, and was evidently exhausted.  His hairy
sides were matted with sweat, and there was a smear of blood on his
left haunch where a pike had grazed it.

He had escaped for the moment because powder was getting scarce, or so
Jacob said--no one knowing the truth but he--and his orders were that
the muskets were not to be used unless the noon should pass without a
victim having been secured.  This one, being almost cornered, had
evaded his pursuers through his knowledge of the undergrowth, but he
was being hotly chased, under the impression that he was more badly
wounded than was actually the case.

Now they were close behind him.  He plunged into the water, swimming
straight for the spot over which Charlton was stationed.  His hunters
hesitated, and then commenced to circle the pool, some in either
direction.  There was no path, and their progress through the bushes
was not rapid.  They had the longer way to go.  Had the satyr been
fresh, he might have escaped, but he swam slowly.

When he landed he was a few seconds ahead, but he was not many yards
from the water when the giant form of Demers, who had outpaced his
followers, burst through the bushes.  He had a musket in his right
hand, which he held half-way up the barrel, with the butt foremost.  He
drove the butt hard between the shoulders of the panting satyr, who
staggered and fell face-forward.  Demers put a heavy foot on the fallen
body, and gave a bellow of triumph which was echoed by his approaching
companions.

It was echoed also by a party of hunters whom Charlton had not heard
previously!  They were approaching from the other side, in full chase
of two young males that they had just beaten out of their cover.  They
knew the significance of Demers' shout, and slackened their pace at
once.  So also did the satyrs that they had pursued.

Demers had thrown down the musket.  He had a long knife in his hand.
He was on his knees beside the prey that he had run down.  He had
rolled the fallen body over, and several of his followers had come to
his aid, grasping the limbs of a creature too overcome by exhaustion
and terror to make any effectual resistance.  The two satyrs that had
been chased a moment before now crowded fearlessly up, knowing that
more than one was never taken at these monthly chases.  One of them,
bending over Demers to see which of his companions had been taken, gave
an audible chuckle of satisfaction.  Demers heard the sound, and looked
up.  Turning suddenly, he caught the creature by one hoof, and jerked
it off its feet.  As it fell, he threw his weight upon it, shouting to
his companions.  "Let that one go.  This is fatter."

The animal struggled furiously, almost getting clear for a moment, but
there were a dozen of them upon him.  He barked terrified protests.
Demers used the knife to quieten him with a practiced hand.  The
barking changed to a series of sobbing screams.  The satyr that had
been released so unexpectedly struggled to his feet.  He seemed dazed,
and walked unsteadily.  He went into the bushes, not appearing to
notice the crowd of men and satyrs that were collecting from all sides
around the scene of the slaughter.



Charleton, looking aside from a scene that was not attractive to
contemplate, noticed a form that still hid, under the overhanging
growth at the further side of the pool.  He wondered why it had not
come out to join its fellows.  Possibly it did not wish that the men
should observe its hiding-place.

He made no further effort to penetrate the leafy screen that hid the
scene of blood and tumult beneath him.  He had seen enough.

How deep, after all, was the real gulf between these degenerated people
and the character of the race from which they sprung? he wondered.  An
Englishwoman will say that she could not bear to kill a sheep, or even
see it slaughtered, while she lifts the mutton to her mouth.  She is
not consciously hypocritical.  Nor is there any real inconsistency
between her words and her occupation.  She is only mistaken in the
supposition that she is moved by anything but an entire and complacent
selfishness.  Her objection is not that her presence would be
detrimental to the sheep, but only that it would be unpleasant for
herself.

If the European must live on the flesh of his fellow creatures, it may
be advantageous that he should enjoy slaughtering them.  It increases
the sum of the earth's pleasures, and does harm to none.

Having no sense of humor, a vegetarian once complained that he had been
gored by a bull.  That animal has the reputation of being somewhat
stupid, but, had he known the zeal with which the vegetarian preached a
doctrine which would involve the comparative, if not absolute,
destruction of his kind, it is not conceivable that he would have let
him escape with some bruises and a broken rib.

The domestic animal is served from birth to death by those who will
ultimately devour him.  They build houses to shelter him.  They toil to
grow the foods which he prefers.  They perform the most menial offices
for his comfort.  They are his servants in all things, and, did he not
finally pay them the due wage of his carcass, they would not be
servants but slaves.  If such creatures have a grievance, it is that
man is the cause of their degeneration in character and intelligence,
owing to the comfort and security in which they live.

Presently there was silence now on the blood-drenched ground.  Only a
distant and lessening murmur told where the disturbers of the forest
peace were retiring in an excited hilarity.  The trees waked to life.
Parrots called and monkeys chattered.  Charlton could hear the
discordant cries of a hundred bright-plumed birds that have no use for
song, because they do not woo by sound but by color.  The sun was past
its midday height.  The girl had said that she would come before noon.
It could easily be supposed that she would fear to venture while the
hunting rabble had been immediately beneath him.  Perhaps she had been
all the time in the high branches overhead.  But why did she not come
now?

No man (except he be very young) expects punctuality from a woman,
unless he have experience of her individual capacity.  Charlton did not
expect it.

He returned to the appointed spot, and waited there till the evening
darkened.  He had decided by then that, having been deterred by the
alarm of the hunt from coming at the hour she had appointed, she had
postponed her intention until the night.  It seemed natural that she
should visit him in the darkness.  But he could not be sure whether she
would expect to find him in the place where he had been sleeping during
the previous night, or in that which she had appointed for the daylight
meeting.  He decided that she would be more likely to look for him on
the ground, and that in any case she would seek him there if she could
not otherwise find him.

So he descended, but not to sleep, for he was now restless and anxious.
He lay awake, listening for a motion in the leaves above him, and for a
voice that he did not hear.  The night was cloudy over the forest, and
oppressively hot.  It was damp also, and at times a warm rain fell,
though little penetrated the thickness of the shade above him.  He was
impatient to hear her voice, and to urge her departure with him.  He
must rescue her from this--yes, Jean's had been the right words--from
this island of devils.  They would not wait a moment after the moon
rose, and they could be well on their way to the caves before sunrise.
Perhaps they might actually have reached them, if she were able to
guide him sufficiently.

But the moon rose and she did not come, and impatience gave place to
fear.  It became too evident that some accident or misadventure had
delayed her.  Unless--but he would not think it.  He could not think
she was false.  And yet--he had told her so much.  He had told her of
all he had, and of where it could be found.  And what was she but a
voice out of the darkness?  The worst of women might have a voice that
would win confidence.  Yet he would not think it.  But it put a fresh
fear in his mind, which would not quieten till he had decided to return
to the caves in the morning, and satisfy himself that all was safe.
Besides, what could he do?  He could not seek her in the trees.  He
might make such a search for months in vain, unless she willed that he
find her.

He would do even that, if there should be no other way.  But first he
would return to the caves.  If it were needful, he would seek her even
in the abodes of the half-men that he had watched and loathed.  He did
not think that it would be necessary.  Why should he?  But some
half-heard words returned to his mind with a weight of foreboding that
they had not borne at the time.  Had she gone into some danger,
necessary before she should leave the island with him, the nature of
which he could not guess?

The thought did not impress him as probable, yet it influenced his
decision.  If she did not come by sunrise he would go to the caves,
supply himself with some extra cartridges and other things that he
needed, and would then commence a cautious exploration of the inhabited
portion of the island.  Having resolved on this course, he slept, at
last, though very briefly, for it was within an hour of the dawn that
waked him.



Looking back in the light of after-knowledge, Charlton was always
disposed to blame himself for the time which was lost in his journey to
the cliff side.  It seemed to him as though, while the woman that he
loved was in peril, he had thought first of the safety of some tinned
food.

He was at a loss to supply any adequate reason for the course he chose.
Yet it was not really discreditable to himself, nor difficult of
explanation.

He had no definite knowledge of Marcelle's peril, or of where he might
find her; he had not intended to be away for more than a day when he
set out, and he had no other home or place of security of any kind; he
wanted various things, though (apart, perhaps, from the larger supply
of cartridges) they were not of great importance.  Finally, there was
the doubt which had been in his mind since Marcelle had told him of her
inability to find the entrance when she had attempted to return.

If he were to have a similar difficulty he would prefer that it should
be while he was free from pursuit, or any imminent danger.  He wished
to be sure that this line of retreat would be open, and could be
rapidly taken; then he could give his mind to the finding of the girl
with whom he wished to share it.

In fact, he found the entrance with little difficulty, though he was
favored in this both by good chance and by the careful survey which he
had taken of the surrounding scenery in the days before he had ventured
out.

He found everything as he had left it.

He felt the need for rest which was natural after an almost sleepless
night, and the watchful tension of the previous day.  He decided to
remain in the security of his retreat till after noon, when he would
commence a systematic search for the girl of whom he thought so much,
and of whom he knew so little.  His mind relieved by decision, he slept
for several hours, waking abruptly to a dream of a voice that called
him through the darkness of the forest night, not as he had heard it
before, in friendliness or in laughter, but with a note of urgent fear.

He had been content before to go with his weapons loaded, and with a
handful of additional cartridges in a jacket pocket; but now he
increased the quantity.  He also fetched out the sword which he had
hidden behind the chest, and considered how best he could carry it.
After one or two unsuccessful experiments he corded it over his left
shoulder.  It seemed a novel method to choose--he was not aware that
the heavy two-handed swords, of the middle ages were often carried in
this position--but in the absence of belt or frog, he could not adjust
it securely at his side, nor would he risk that it should impede his
climbing.

He did not burden himself with food, having learned that it could be
found in abundance on the forest boughs.  With the rifle slung over his
back, his hands were free.  He broke away the creeper from the entrance
sufficiently to be a guide to the approach as he would near it on his
return, though not so that it could be seen too easily from below.  On
reaching the ground, he marked and memorized very carefully the place
where his return ascent should be recommenced.  How, he wondered--if
ever--should he return?  With a companion, or without?--in urgent
flight, in furtive secrecy, or in confidence of a successful enterprise?

He looked over the bog at the dark line of the forest, and the sinister
impression that he had known when first he saw it returned as a cloud
crosses the sunshine.

There were dark things--dark and strange--that the island held, and the
peril into which he went was beyond his estimate.

But he shook the foreboding from him, and went resolutely forward to
the enterprise on which his desire was centered.  For so men will, till
the last sword is broken, and the last maid is brought to wifehood.  He
went to dangers that he could not tell, and to a need that he could not
know, for a vision of slim white limbs in the forest gloom, and a head
well carried--and for a voice in the night.

Charlton crossed the bog somewhat further to southward than he had done
previously, and reached the shelter of the forest without difficulty.
Continuing to the south, he came to the palisade of which Marcelle had
told him.  It must have been originally built of metal or of some very
durable wood, but it was now a living wall of giant creepers and of
clinging growths, with great trees branching over it.  To a man who
could climb, it presented no obstacle.  Charlton went over without
curiosity as to its structure.  It was enough that it stood firmly, and
had abundant footholds.



On the other side he found a difference.  Beauty was there, as it had
been in the forest; beauty of tree, of bird, of flower and insect.  It
was as luxuriant as before, but it was curbed and tamed.

Trees fought for light and space in the forest.  A score were choked,
and one conquered.  They took the shapes that the strife allowed.  They
had the vigor and the scars of their warfare.  But here, each tree had
its unrestricted space, its full shape.  Every flower had its full
value.

He had crossed the palisade about a mile further east than the pathway
by which Marcelle had traveled.  For the earlier part of the way he was
distant from any dwellings, or the probability of observation.  Now
that the feast-night was approaching, the inhabitants were little
likely to be wandering in such direction.

He did not know this, but he observed the quietude of the scene; and
while he went forward watchfully, his rifle under his arm, he did not
delay greatly for the finding of cover, thinking, indeed, that, should
he come upon some wandering member of the community, it might be best
that he should be seen advancing without evidence either of fear or
hostility.

He had not gone far when he came upon some of the great birds of which
Marcelle had told him.  Remembering the assurance she had given that
they were not dangerous, he walked quietly toward the nearest of these,
and paused to observe its occupation.  At a casual glance it might have
been thought that it was merely feeding upon the vegetation around it.
But Charlton observed that its attention was confined to the overgrowth
of a climbing plant with large white, bell-shaped flowers, like a giant
bindweed, and that it was reducing it to an ordered shapeliness by the
breaking-off of the pieces which it swallowed.

Further on, he came to a place where three of these birds were
assembled around a young tree that showed a sickly appearance among the
vigorous growths that surrounded it.  He saw that they had cleared the
soil from one side of its roots to a depth of a foot or two, and, while
he watched, he observed one of them draw out an insect or reptile, like
a huge milleped in appearance, about eighteen inches in length, and of
the color of sea-sand.

Dropping it from his beak, he held it down with a toe across its neck
while the three heads bent down to consider it.  The birds appeared to
consult in low squawking tones, and then, having apparently decided its
fate--whether--the question was as to its deserts, its suitability for
food, or which of them should have it--the captor lifted his claw, and
before its myriad legs had hurried it more than a few inches away, the
beak of one of the other birds caught it with an easy certainty, and it
was devoured in a moment.

Charlton had drawn near to the scene of this drama as it approached its
conclusion, and now met the stare of the three birds as the three necks
were turned in his direction.

He felt that they regarded him much as they had done the milleped that
was now uncomfortably located in the nearest gizzard.  There was a look
in their eyes, at once amused and assured, which was disconcerting.
Yet it was judicial rather than hostile, and he remembered that he had
been told that they would not harm him.  Probably they only regarded
him with curiosity, as a member of the community whom they had not seen
previously.

Charlton, like many men who are naturally unaggressive, was not easily
frightened.  He did not allow himself to deflect from the straight line
of his direction, though it took him so near that a stretched neck
could have reached him.  But, as he came close, they returned their
attention to the work on which they had been occupied, and were filling
up the hole around the root of the injured tree.



Charlton had neither the mental detachment nor the zeal for
accumulating physical facts which would have dominated M. Latour under
similar circumstances.  Had he been informed that they belonged to the
oldest of the extant orders of birds because they had no keel to the
sterna, he would have been entirely unmoved, yet he looked at them with
a lively interest as they resumed their labors.

In shape they were more like the cassowary than the ostrich, though
they were somewhat taller, and much larger than the latter bird.  Their
bodies were longer than is that of the ostrich, and the wings lay more
closely.  The feathers were almost hair-like in texture.  They lay
closely, giving an appearance of a smooth compactness to the bodies
they covered.  Their color was a neutral gray, with some silver
penciling, edged with black, on the wing-coverts.  Their height was
about six feet at the arch of the back, which was highest at the
center.  They had not sufficient tail-feathers to break the downward
curve of the back.  Their necks were long; their heads, though really
large, appearing small in consequence.

One of the three--the one that had held the milleped under its claw
while its fate was decided--had a kind of helmet of hard substance on
its head, of a glossy green color.  The beaks of the other two, which
he rightly supposed to be hens, were broader and flatter, and well
adapted for the spade-work in which they were occupied.  Their
dove-gray heads were smooth and feathered.

Charlton looked at these birds with a natural, but transient, interest.
He had a settled purpose before him, and he had a feeling that he was
engaged in something that was beyond his own volition.

Alert and wary, both of eyes and mind, he went on rapidly and without
attempt at concealment.  Approaching from a more easterly direction, he
struck the main road just where the bushes commenced, into which
Marcelle had adventured.

Clear in the half-dried mud at the roadside, he saw a naked footmark,
such as he had first seen in the edge of the forest pool.  These bushes
were rarely more than four feet high, and they sloped downward to the
bog.  They grew closely, and he could look over them for a half a mile,
or perhaps more.  He did not think anyone would make way far through
them.  It did not occur to him that anyone would attempt to crawl under
them for any considerable distance.  When they were seen by daylight,
the idea was not reasonable.

He went along the road, watching the damper margin of the slimy soil
beside it.  By good fortune, he found the place where she had come out.
The slants of the footmarks at the two places were evidence that her
direction had been similar to his own.  He supposed that she had
hidden, and had continued along the way when some danger had passed
her.  It was not quite correct, but Dr. Watson's simple-minded friend
could have discovered no more, and would have wasted much time in the
endeavor to do so.

Charlton paused at the second footmark.  Marcelle's dimple would have
shown more deeply than before, could she have watched him as he
regarded it.  But a footmark in the mud is not a token that the most
infatuated lover can easily remove, or is likely to cherish, and this
is more especially the case if he be in chase of the one who made it.

Charlton went on with a higher hope, a greater resolution, and an
increased wariness.  Whether in peace or peril, he had no further doubt
that he was about to find her.

The path turned and fell.  Its sides were wooded now.  It turned again.
He heard steps and voices approaching.  He found time to consider that
he ought reasonably to be frightened, and to observe that he was not,
with a passing wonder.  But knowledge is power.  He wished to observe
at leisure.  He drew back behind a sheltering thicket.



The old woman, meanwhile, said to Jacob, "What is the meaning of
_jamais?_"  Jacob did not know.  She said: "The girl looked at Demers
through the lattice.  She did not look pleased.  She said:
'_Jamais!--Jamais de la vie!_' and turned away.  She had been crying
before.  Afterwards, she did not cry."

Jacob did not know what to make of this, but he increased his
precautions against her escape.  Had she tried, she would have
regretted it very quickly; but she did not do so.

The woman was far older than Jacob.  He had been in her charge when his
father left him on the island.  He had some vague memories of his
earlier years, but she alone had any clear knowledge of the
civilization that was beyond them.  For many years she had been the
nurse and doctor of the community.  Now two younger women, who had
previously assisted her, carried on the practice.  It was the
peculiarity of the island life that it was without organized religion.
Priest-craft is responsible for many evils, as well as for much good.
The conditions that prevailed here in its absence were its best
vindication.  But without some form of medical attendance they had
found it impossible to exist.

There were superstitions, of course, vague and trivial, and individual
rituals of grotesque kinds, but there was no organized religion, and
consequently there was no flourishing heresy to contend against it.

The old woman was devoted to Jacob.  Inclination and interest were in
one scale.  Demers hated her.  If she watched Marcelle, it was not that
she wished to assist his pleasure.  But she was one of those to whom
youth and all things youthful become hateful as the years advance.  The
reactions of age to the youth that succeeds it are the supreme
evidences of character.

Having a wider knowledge of life than those around her, she was the
better able to judge what Marcelle's feelings were likely to be.  But,
like Jacob, she could not see that the girl had any alternative.

Jacob sat at his door, as his custom was in the morning hours.  He
thought slowly as he drowsed in the sunlight, but his plans were clear
and simple.  He would make a speech tonight, which was a greater
formality than was usually accorded to an island wedding.  He would
marry this girl to his son, and he would decree that her children
should succeed Demers, as Demers would succeed him.  Perhaps, with that
incentive, she would be a real wife, and supply the brains of which he
well knew his son's deficiency.  The plan was not so base as its
methods....  And he would give Pierre his reward.

When she had seen Pierre have his reward, she would not be in a mood
for resistance.  Demers could take her home.

Jacob felt that his plans were sound, and his conscience was
untroubled.  He drowsed in the sunshine.

Marcelle waited.  She had decided not to attempt escape, unless a clear
opportunity should offer.  She waited and watched events, alert to
seize any favoring chance.  She would meet the need of the moment as it
arose.  In the end, and till the last, she did nothing.  The difference
might have been little had she spent the day in despair or resignation,
except in herself, which must be everything when the final judgment is
taken.

She could not know that Jacob had decided that it would be best that
Demers should not see her during the day, and she was in constant
expectation that she might have to face him.  Fainter, and more vague,
was the hope that Charlton might be doing something to aid her.

To her the day passed slowly, though the evening would come too soon.

To Demers it was very long, he was impatient to marry her.  She was
finer than any other woman on the island.

The time passed differently with the priest of Gir, who lay in the
purple gloom of the temple, before the altar that was old when the Nile
Valley was unknown to men.

It was impossible to see clearly in the temple.  The intensity of the
color which soaked the stones was like a mist in the unwindowed
interior--a mist of color which was neither red nor purple, and through
which one looked with difficulty.  The image of Gir, towering to the
roof, might be a statue or a mural painting.  It was hard to tell.  But
its terror overcame the heart of the gazer.

The priest of Gir did not look.  He lay with his eyes darkened.  His
mind searched the ages that were past, and beat against the blind wall
of the future.  It was all over.  His wife was dying.  His race was
dead.  It would all pass at last.  And yet not all.  There was the
child.  Life would continue.  Alien life, and yet the same.  But all
that had been, all its thought and all its wisdom would vanish.  Though
the books that the temple held should continue, there would be none
that could read them.

And the world would still hold such flesh-eating filth as these
creatures that were less than monkeys, and had destroyed his race with
their diseases.  Yet he need not die.  He could avoid the issue that
the mirror had shown him.  Very easily he could avoid it.  But the girl
was not as these people.  Neither had her father been such.
Nor--though more doubtfully--was the man in the forest.  And above
all--there was the child.  He rose, resolute.  He would take the
appointed path, and the rest was in the hands of Gir.  Was not Gir the
Maker of the world, and would he not control it to his own ends?  Had
not the All-God created him so that all it held and did, either of good
or evil, was but the functioning of his spirit?  Must not every world
be as is the different spirit which the All-God gave to create it?
Very dark and very bright was Gir, and he had made the earth to his
liking.  Made it of blood and fire: of shadows and beauty.  And its
symbol was the sword.  Peace comes, but the sword returns.

The priest of Gir left the temple.  He took a bronzelike sword,
straight and sharp;--a sword that had pierced the throats of many who
had been doomed to death that the race might not degenerate.  He
fastened it beneath the looseness of the robe he wore.

He went in to his dying wife.



Ambushed in the thicket, beneath a canopy of dark-green leaves and
heavy-scented heads of hydrangea-like blossoms, Charlton watched a
straggling company of about a hundred men and women approach at a slow
pace, with Jacob Sparrow at their head.  Their numbers were about
equal, for the excessive number of women who had been left on this
island by Captain Sparrow had naturally not continued itself into the
next generation.  They moved slowly, for they could not exceed the pace
which Jacob set at their head.  Eight men came in a bunch behind him,
two of whom carried muskets.

As a precaution, though he thought it needless, Jacob had appointed
these men to guard the door of the hall, two at a time, during the
evening.  Charlton looked at their weapons with some contempt.  The
ancient muzzle-loaders were certainly slow and clumsy beside the rifle
he carried--though they caused death and wounds enough at Waterloo or
Marengo.  He could not know that they were unloaded.  Jacob did not
purpose that the girl should be shot.  Their purpose was to intimidate,
and if that were insufficient, they were to be used to club anyone who
should attempt to go either in or out without Jacob's permission during
the evening.  He had Pierre in his mind, as well as Marcelle.  He
remembered also the eruption of Jean on the previous occasion.  In
fact, he forgot nothing.  He provided for everything, except for that
of which he had no knowledge.

As a military demonstration, the eight men with the two muskets did not
impress Charlton's mind very seriously, but he was conscious of a
strange impression, which increased as he watched the procession that
followed.  It was such as may be felt by a caged, clean feeding bird,
which is given nothing but mouse-tainted corn for its hunger.  In some
indefinite way, the whole concourse was foul and unwholesome.  To live
among them would be intolerable.  It would be nauseating to touch them.
The women were squat and ungainly in shape, and coarse and brutish in
aspect.  Some were gaudily, and some grotesquely dressed.  A few were
decorated with flowers.  The men commonly wore cutlasses.  A few had
hatchets in their belts.  These were sanguine individuals who hoped
that a marrow-bone might fall to their portion, and who went prepared
to crack it.

Watching this procession, Charlton decided that they were formidable
only by their numbers and their brutality.  It might not be easy to
establish friendly relations with such as they, even should he desire
to do so.

Then he saw her.  Among a knot of shorter women, toward the rear of the
crowd.  A small dark head.  A skin sun-bronzed enough, but lighter than
those around her.  A face that was made for mirth rather than tragedy,
but that showed a mood to equal the circumstance it had to face.  He
knew that it was she.  He knew it by the quickened beating of his heart
as he watched her.  He would know it more surely still in a moment.

She came nearer, and he was aware of sea-blue eyes that were alert and
searching.  It seemed to him that their glances met.  That must be
fancy only, for he was so far drawn into the cover.  Then she had
passed.  He did not venture to move, to observe her further.  But he
knew that he would follow her to hell, if the need were.  And then her
voice came, singing.  They did not try to stop her.  Why should they?
There was no order that she should not sing the whole way, if she would.

  "_N'oserez-vous?
  N'oserez-vous?
  N'oserez-vous, mon bel ami?_"


Had he doubted for a moment (which he would not own) the voice would
have told him.  And the song?  Yes, he would dare.  Very certainly, he
would dare.  But did it mean that she had seen him?




CHAPTER VI

THE REWARD OF PIERRE

The next hour went slowly for several of those whose fortunes we
follow.  Charlton had gained sufficient knowledge of the customs of
these people to judge that they were on their way to the monthly feast,
for which he had seen the meat provided on the previous day.  He could
not doubt, even without the evidence of the song, that Marcelle went
unwillingly.  He could not know the extremity or the urgency of her
peril, but he was resolved to interrupt the proceedings, and to invite
her to freedom.  His reason told him that it would be best to let them
settled down first before he intruded upon them, while his impatience
denied it.  His memory was not only of sea-blue eyes, or the defiant
lift of a night-dark head.  He had the vision also of one who had moved
restlessly behind her.  It was he whom he had seen club the panting
satyr on the previous day, and then pull down the other for a facetious
exchange of victims.  Irked by the slow pace of the procession, he had
been moving with long strides backwards and forwards behind her, his
forward stoop and slouching motion showing him like a wolf that waits
the moment to spring.

The time passed slowly for Charlton.

It passed slowly also for the priest of Gir, who sat in the
feast-house, waiting for the drama to open, the event of which he
already knew.

How did it pass for the satyr, trussed now and roasted whole, and
steaming at the top of the board?  If we knew that, how much also
should we know, which is now hidden!

There was an appointed place for each in the feast-house.  Jacob sat at
the head, with Demers at his right hand.

At the head of each of the side-benches there sat a man to help with
the carving.  Below the man on the left the priest of Gir would sit,
with his wife opposite to him, in the places of honor.

The priest of Gir and his wife always entered by a small side door at
the top of the hall, on Jacob's left hand--a door that was reserved for
their use.

This evening he came alone.  He explained with brief courtesy to Jacob
that his wife was ill.  He did not say she was dead.

Jacob saw in this a convenience only.  He gave her place to Marcelle.

The board was heaped with many fruits, and there were great vessels of
the island wine.

Jacob and his son, with their two helpers, carved at different parts of
the carcass, and the work of serving proceeded rapidly.  The platters
were green leaves, large and smooth and slightly concave These leaves
were destroyed when the feast was over.  In this they had only adopted
a custom which is prevalent in the islands of the Pacific.  The unclean
European custom of swilled earthenware had died out, if it had ever
been practiced among them.

Marcelle's position brought her close to the trussed body which was
being carved, so swiftly by long-practiced hands.  It was revoltingly
human in its appearance.  Indeed, the prevalence of cannibalism in the
South Sea Islands suggest that these creatures may at one time have
been generally distributed among them.  When they died out, it would be
natural for the frustrated appetites of their hunters to turn for
satisfaction to their human enemies.  Might it not even have been
deduced that such creatures must have existed from the fact that
cannibalism is so much more prevalent there than on other parts of the
earth's surface?

Marcelle did not trouble herself with such speculations, but she had a
shuddering memory of the fate which Jacob had threatened.  It was
unpleasant to think that she might be occupying the same position as
the steaming satyr when the next month's feast should arrive.  She put
the thought from her mind.

Having such fears, and on the threshold of such a crisis, did she
refuse to share in the feast?  Could she attack the generous portion
which Jacob carved for her benefit?  The truth constrains me.  She
could.  She was hungry, and she had a very practical mind.



Eating went on steadily at first, and then slackened.  Those who had
carved were behind the rest, and must concentrate the more upon the
portions which they had reserved for their own consumption.  Words were
few till the first half-hour had passed.

The priest of Gir, eating lightly of the fruit before him, watched
Marcelle's appetite with some speculation.  It was important that he
should understand her, and it was natural that he should be in some
doubt as to her feelings and character.  The mirror had shown him much,
but it had not shown him the eyes that met her own from the thicket,
nor could he understand why she looked so confidently at the fate which
seemed about to seize her.

Marcelle looked at him with eyes which were equally speculative.  He
appeared cold and remote, and, to her youthful eyes, very old.  She did
not think him likely to aid her.  Yet she recognized that he was
different from the others; a man to trust, as being free from any
private business.  But not one whose sympathy would deflect his
judgment.

At Demers, though he watched her as his hunger slackened, she did not
look at all.

Avoiding him, she was inclined to look down the hall.  It was the end
of the first half-hour, and the guard at the door was changing, so that
all might have their meals in turn.  As they did so, six of the great
rukas came in through the doorway, and sat down below the end of the
table.  There was nothing unusual in that.  They came to be fed.  It
was in his boyhood that Jacob had discovered that they liked to pick
the bones of the satyrs, and had commenced a practice which had now
been established for half a century.

How they arranged it, who can say?  But these were always six birds,
neither more nor less, and they were all green-helmeted cocks; the hens
did not come.  The turn of these birds came when all had eaten and the
carving was over.

Many years ago Jacob had rigged an ingenious device by which their meat
could be hung in a large net bag, at the sides of which they would
peck, as the hens in a poultry run will peck at a hanging cabbage.  It
may have suited Jacob's youthful humor to see these sedate birds
pecking between the strands of rope of which the bag was formed, while
it swung away from them and was returned with an increased velocity by
the pecks of their companions.

The sides of the bag were rope, but it had a bottom of leather, so that
its contents should not fall out too freely.  The leather foundation
would be flat and open on the floor, between the door and the foot of
the table, until the two carvers should carry down the great dish and
tip the bony remnants upon it.

Then by an ingenious contrivance of a seaman (long since dead) who had
once been boatswain of the _Fighting Sue_, Jacob was able to pull a
cord which hung over his chair, and the bag would be jerked up and
drawn together at the top.

The rukas had learned not to entangle themselves among the loose ropes,
or to advance upon their meal until this had been done.

On this occasion, when the carvers had finished their own meal--which
they were naturally the last to do--they would have risen to carry down
the dish, but Jacob spoke a word to delay them.  He then took a long
drink of the island wine, and rose slowly to his feet to address the
assembly.

He stood silent for a full minute, as his custom was, either to choose
his words or because he had found that they gained weight when his
hearers were kept in suspense.  It was a tribute to his method that he
never lacked the attention of his audience, and there was now a silence
of expectancy.  All were still, ceasing even to eat or drink, or reach
for the fruit and wine which was before them.

Marcelle, thinking that the crisis had come, and resolute to resist,
though with no clear plan of what to do, thought that they must hear
the beating of her heart through the sudden silence of the hall.

She gave one glance down the double line of repulsive half-animal
faces, but saw no hope of any help or understanding among them.
Gluttony, indolence, disease and dissipation were written there for a
child to read them.  Cowardice also on most, though some of the men
showed an animal ferocity.  Certainly there was none to whom she could
appeal for any chivalrous help; none whom she would prefer even to
Demers; none who would dare to challenge his anger, even were she
prepared to reward him for such an adventure.  All the faces, except
that of Pierre's wife, who sat beside him at the very foot of the
board, were marred by a lust of cruelty which was not animal, for
animals are not cruel, with the very rarest exceptions, unless homo
sapiens be classified among them.  It was sub-human: devilish.



Different only was the priest of Gir, whose eyes met her own for an
instant, but she could read nothing from them.  She felt that he
understood: that he was watching, as a man watches a play.  She knew
that he was different from the rest.  She felt instinctively that he
had no sympathy with them.  Had he sympathy with her?  If so, would it
move him to take part in the play?  She was sure that he was fearless
of them.  She felt that he could help her.  But she had no cause to
think he would.  Even Jacob, with all his cunning, in all those years,
had never learned what he thought.

Then she was aware that Jacob was speaking.

"Two years ago," he began, "we met to marry my son to a young woman who
had been brought here for the purpose.  We were interrupted.  Then
there was fighting, which need not have been, and men were killed, and
she was frightened and ran into the forest.  Now she has come back.
She is a fine young woman, as you can see, though she might be thicker.
She has improved since she ran away.

"My son likes her.  He can have what he will.  You can see he likes
her."  He glanced affectionately at the figure beside him, which was
leaning forward gazing at Marcelle like a wolf withheld from his prey,
his great teeth showing and his tongue licking the lips that never
quite closed over them.  "I think she'll need some beating.  Well, he
can beat any woman without needing another to hold her."

He gave another glance of affection at his ungainly offspring.  "When
I'm dead, he will take my place, and if this young woman stays here her
son will take it after him."  He paused again, and glanced at Marcelle,
who sat, white-faced and motionless, with no sign of hearing.  "If she
does what she's told, she'll be the first woman on this island.  What
she wants, she'll have; and no one will lay a hand on her except her
husband.  If she tries to go back to the woods, I've told her that we
shall all share her."  He tapped the dish before him, and his tone,
though jocular, had a note of merciless warning.  "We'll have her
skinned and lying here on the next feast-day.  But she hasn't come back
for that."

Another pause, and Marcelle wondered whether she were to be handed over
immediately, and the crisis was upon her.  But he went on, with a
different note in his voice, and her breath came again.  "But the first
thing is to pay a debt that has been owing for two years.  I always do
what I promise.  There was a man who came and said that he could find a
wife for my son who would be better than any of the women here, if I
would give him one of these bars of gold when he had brought her.
Well, here she is--and he shall have his reward."  He paused again, and
then bent down to his son and said something in too low a voice to be
overheard even by those nearest.  Then he continued: "We don't allow
slaves up here, and it's too far to throw, so as my son gets the woman,
he shall take him the reward."

He sat down with a smile on his face, and Demers rose and took one of
the gold bars from the pile that lay just below the great dish.  He
went down the right side of the-hall.

The hall was silent, and heads were turned in a dull puzzlement.  Why
had the gift not been passed down, and why had Jacob chosen his son as
the messenger?  And why did Demers, who had no love for his father,
obey the order with such alacrity?

But though Demers went at once, and with a seeming willingness, he did
not hand the gift with any good-will when he reached the foot of the
hall.  Pierre had risen, and stood with bent head to receive it.

Demers stopped a few paces from him.  He raised the golden bar as
though he were about to fling it in the face of the carpenter.  He
addressed him with abusive island words for which there are no exact
English substitutes, and there is no need to paraphrase them: he
accused him of knowing where the girl was all the time, and keeping her
from him.  He told what he would do to Pierre, but for his father's
orders.  Then he threw the brick.  Pierre raised a shielding arm, but
it did not hit him.  It fell in the leather center of the bag, and
Demers laughed and went back up the hall.

Pierre hesitated a second, uncertain whether there were some malicious
intention underlying the position to which the bar had been thrown.  He
knew well that there was no good-will in the gift, either from father
or son.  But if he left it there till the bag were drawn up, it might
not be too large for one of those monstrous gullets to swallow.
Perhaps Demers had hoped that one of the birds would attempt to do so,
seeing it in that position.  But they did not move.  They never
advanced till the bag was drawn up.  They were sitting quietly now,
larger than camels, placid as resting geese.  Pierre stepped forward to
take his prize, and as he stooped to raise it, Jacob pulled the rope.



The bag was large, but Pierre was a large man, and it was not intended
for such a burden.  He was jerked off his feet by the first pull, yet
he made a struggle to free himself; and though the cords contracted
almost instantaneously as it was raised from the ground, he got one arm
out at the top, where it did him no good, the cords closing so tightly
that he was unable to use or withdraw it.

For the rest, it closed around him till he was drawn into a ball, the
caught arm rendering it impossible for any struggles to alter his
position appreciably, even had the tightness of the net been
insufficient to hold him.  The spasmodic efforts which he made caused
him to swing and spin in a manner which roused the excited amusement of
the spectators, as did the cries with which he begged for release and
mercy.

So far it was comedy only, however heartless, but the victim's cries
rose to a shrill scream as he became aware that the rukas had risen as
they were accustomed to do when the net was drawn up, and were
advancing upon him.

They surrounded the swaying bag, evidently curious and uncertain of the
unusual meal which it offered.  It hung at about the level of their
heads, and as it had a leather bottom it was only through the sides
that they could reach its contents.

Pierre was fastened so tightly now that in some places he bulged
slightly between the cords.  One of the birds made a doubtful peck, and
the bag swung round toward another.  This one pecked more boldly.  Its
beak showed a piece of torn cloth, as the bag swung away like a
pendulum.  Another bird jumped at it with half-open wings, and there
was a great wisp of Pierre's beard in his beak as the bag swung away in
another direction.

To this point Marcelle had watched with no great horror.  She had no
cause to love the carpenter, and he had been receiving the price for
which he had betrayed her when the jest was played upon him.  That it
was anything more than a cruel jest she had not imagined.  But at the
scream he gave as the hair was torn out, she forgot everything, even
her own peril, in indignation and protest.

"Oh, stop it!  Stop it!" she exclaimed, turning from the sight of the
horror with a glance that included both Jacob and the priest of Gir.
But the latter was looking on with an expression which showed no
sympathy.  He did not appear interested in the carpenter's fate, but
looked on as an actor waiting in the wings to take his part in the
tragedy.

Jacob was leaning forward, gripping the edge of the table with thick
red fingers, his face showing an excitement such as he rarely
exhibited, while his age-dimmed eyes strove to miss nothing of the
drama, which was being played as he had planned that it should be.

He did not notice her protest.

The whole assembly was in a state of uncontrolled emotion.  They were
half risen from the seats, leaning forward to get a clearer view,
gesticulating, and talking to neighbors who did not heed them.

Then came a scream of shriller agony from the swinging net, as one of
the great birds pulled away a mouthful which was neither clothes nor
hair.  Demers had returned to the top of the hall, walking backward
that he might lose nothing of the sight as he did so.  He was behind
Marcelle as Jacob first showed that he was aware that she was
addressing him, now with a roused passion of pleading against the
torture which they were witnessing.

He spoke more quickly than usual, and with a slurred intonation, as
though drunk with the excitement of the spectacle.  "He is getting what
he deserves.  It will be a lesson to you."  He looked at Demers.  "Take
her away.  She's yours now.  She won't be much trouble now she's seen
how we deal with misbehavior."

Demers dropped a huge black-haired hand on her shoulder.  "Come along,"
he said roughly, looking down upon her with an expression that had no
trace of love, nor any chance of mercy.

Suddenly the expected crisis was on her.  She resisted an impulse to
sink her teeth in the hairy fingers that gripped her.  She rose from
the bench and faced him.  The horror that she had witnessed, the
excitement around her, had given her a strange exaltation of spirit, in
which she heard her own voice in words which she had not consciously
intended.  "Why do you want me?" she asked, and looked with a fearless
quietude into the face that bent toward her.



Always she would remember the black hair, coarse and long, on the left
side of his head where a short horn showed through it.  Demers was not
good at argument, or rather his arguments were of a direct and forcible
order.  "Come along," he repeated, but in a voice that was now a growl
of menace.  He gripped her shoulder again, and at the touch her control
left her, and in a sudden passion of repulsion she struck the hand
away.  She had not lived in the forest boughs for two years without the
hardened muscles of her arms, soft and round though they might appear,
having gained a strength that many men might have envied.  Anger and
fear released this strength to its limit.  Demer's hand fell, his wrist
numbed where the blow struck it.

But it could only be the success of a moment.  Demers stood over her,
grinning in anticipation of the beating which he would give for her
attempt at resistance.  She was surrounded by evil faces that would
take delight in her degradation.  They were turned already from the
horror at the foot of the hall where the birds were now burying their
beaks in a meal which had almost ceased to scream, and from which the
blood was spouting over them as they tore it.  But the spectators were
anticipating another exhibition which would be equally pleasurable to
witness.  Jacob looked at his son.  "You had better break her temper
here," he said, while Marcelle looked round like a trapped hare for any
means of escape that might offer.

She looked at the priest of Gir, but he was not looking at her.  Her
eyes followed his, and stopped, fascinated.  Demers, his hands raised
to seize her, stopped also, as an unfamiliar voice said with a quiet
assurance: "You cannot do that.  She is my wife."

Charlton, who had entered by the little door which the priest used,
stood a few feet behind Jacob's chair.  Till he spoke, no one had seen
him, their attention having been turned to Marcelle when it was drawn
from the execution at the other end of the hall.

Jacob, turning round in his chair, saw a young man with a rifle, ready,
though not threatening, in the crook of his arm, and an air of cool
assurance, that warned him to the exercise of his natural caution.

For the moment audacity triumphed.  Jacob thought quickly.  He must
have come from the outer world, and if one had come, there might be
fifty.  He had not forgotten the deadly use which Marcelle's father,
whom they had thought unarmed, had made of the little weapon he carried.

He looked at Demers, who had been paralyzed by surprise into a pause of
inactivity.  "Wait," he said, "I will deal with this."  And then to
Marcelle, "Is it true?"

If the girl hesitated, it was for so short a time that it was not
perceptible to those who watched her.  "Yes," she said.  What else
could she?

Jacob did not believe her.  Why had she not told him before, if it were
so?  He was aware of the rifle at his back, and he wished to avoid an
instant crisis.  When he had learned more, he would know what to do.

He looked at Charlton again.  He said: "We must talk of these things.
Will you sit with us?"  He told one of the carvers to give place,
leaving a vacant seat between him and the priest of Gir.  He did not
wish Charlton to be on the same side as Marcelle.

Charlton advanced at once, and took the offered place.  He sat down
with his rifle between his knees.  The sword-hilt showed over his
shoulder.  He looked armed and unafraid.  He was alone among a hundred
enemies.  But they did not know that he was alone.  Not yet.  When they
did--

He looked round at the rows of evil faces turned in his direction.
They were silent now, watching him with a hostile but puzzled curiosity.

Marcelle, at a word from Jacob and a nod from Charlton, had resumed her
seat.  Demers had returned to his place at his father's side.  He said
nothing, but regarded Charlton with a murderous stare, which left no
doubt of its meaning.

He did nothing as yet because, though he had no love for his father, he
knew that he could depend upon him to provide his wishes more cunningly
than he could for himself.  He scowled, and waited.

There was a short silence while the old man appeared to ruminate,
looking down on his hands.  He looked half-somnolent.  Charlton began
to wonder if they were accepting the position which he had claimed.
The ease of his victory seemed incredible.  Then the old man looked up
again, and commenced speaking slowly and reasonably.

"It is two years since the young woman was brought here by her father
to be a wife of my son, to which she agreed.  Since then she has been
lost in the woods.  That is her own tale.  Now she comes back and says
she is still willing to marry him.  She says nothing of having fled
from another husband.  Can you explain?"



Charlton saw his difficulty.  He did not know what she might have told
already.  He saw that the truth might not help them.  He saw the
cunning that said little, but threw the danger of words upon his own
shoulders.  He answered with similar reticence, and with a question
which touched the weakest point in the indictment: "Did she _escape_?"

Jacob felt the coolness of the parry, but he was not simple enough to
be drawn from his own position to give battle on his opponent's ground.

"As I see it," he said, "she is my son's wife.  If you claim her, it is
for you to explain."

Charlton could not explain.  He knew that, and Jacob guessed it.  He
answered easily: "You have heard her admit that she is my wife.  I do
not know what may have happened two years ago, but I know of some
things which have happened since.  But does it matter?  Neither of us
would wish to claim her against her will.  If she says she prefers your
son, he can have her.  There is no need to quarrel.  If she prefers to
come back to me, I am content.  I will not ask what may have kept her
here."

Jacob was silent again.  He wished to know whether this man were alone.
Had he been long on the island?  Could he leave it at will?  He
wondered whether the priest of Gir knew anything of him.  He could not
ask without being overheard by the man who sat between them.  Nor could
he give orders for him to be surrounded and overpowered without an
instant danger, both to himself and Demers.

He did not answer Charlton at once, but turned and whispered to Demers,
who rose and went down to the end of the hall.  He passed the feeding
birds, and said something to the two men at the entrance; who laid
their muskets down and went out with him.

Charlton guessed that this movement had some sinister intention, and
wondered whether he would do well to force the issue before they should
return, and then Jacob spoke again.  "The young woman has chosen my
son, and, as you say, that is final.  There is really no need to ask
her, but as you wish, I will do so.  I have no doubt that she will
reply as she should."  He was not so confident as he professed to be,
but he considered that everything might be gained, and nothing need be
lost by this test.  He knew that Demers was hurrying with one of the
men to fetch powder and ball and loaded muskets, which would place the
intruder at an augmented disadvantage, and the other man was searching
the vicinity for any sign of a larger invasion.  He would soon have
firearms in the hall.  He would soon know whether the stranger were
alone.  He turned to Marcelle: "Do you wish to go with this man, or
will you keep your word to my son?"

The words were quiet and slow.  Only the eyes menaced with a glance at
the bone-strewn dish before them, of which Charlton could not
understand the meaning.  But Marcelle knew.

She looked back with an aspect of courage, trying to speak, and aware
of an inward panic which left the words unformed.  Her glance turned to
Charlton.  Gaining there what she sought, she said, "I would rather
go."  She knew, as the words were uttered, that the final choice was
made, and that she was as good as married to this three days' stranger.

She said, "I would rather go," and rose as she said it.  It was her
instinct to seek protection of the man whom she had chosen.

Charlton rose also.  There was the joy of victory in his heart, and
confidence.

Jacob showed no sign of resentment, but answered slowly: "She has twice
chosen my son.  Now she says that she had chosen you.  It is a matter
which cannot be decided in my son's absence.  He will be back in a few
minutes.  You must wait till he returns.  He has a right to know what
is decided."  For the first time he addressed the priest of Gir.  "Is
it not just that we should await his return?"

In the doubt as to whether Charlton were alone, or one of many
potential enemies, it was natural that Jacob should wish to know
whether he could count upon the support of the priest, and of the
unseen people who were supposed to live in their southwestern
reservation, and the question was very cunningly addressed to him on a
point of procedure, on which Jacob felt that the priest's concurrence
might be readily given: but there was no warrant of support in the
coldly courteous answer which he received.  "They might ask, 'Why did
he go?'  But it may be best to wait."

Hearing it, Charlton felt an added assurance.  Here was a personality
as remote as his own from the foul crowd around them, and yet serene
and unfearing.  He saw also that there was an appearance of justice in
Jacob's contention, and that it would certainly be more dignified, and
might even be safer, to wait and listen to anything which Demers could
urge on his own behalf, than to attempt to force a hurried exit before
his return.  He felt it essential that they should avoid an aspect of
haste or fear.

He said, "We will wait, if you wish," and, then to Marcelle, "There is
room here," and made space for her on the bench beside him, the priest
also moving with the same object.

Marcelle came round the head of the table very quickly, before Jacob
had considered any course of prevention, which would have been
difficult without resort to immediate violence, which he aimed to avoid.



Charlton felt that he had gained much, for his mind was on the side
door behind them, and Marcelle was now as near as he, and, being beside
him, he could give her a hint which would be unheard by others.  He
began to consider the probable result of a sudden retreat in that
direction, and to estimate the probable actions and survey the weapons
of the men that were nearest.

It was just then that one of the rukas gave a high call--a call so loud
that it could be heard not only in the hall, but half a mile away.
Jacob knew this call well.  It was one which the leading birds used to
summon the others for their tasks of the garden.  But it had never been
heard in the hall before.  Now they heard it repeated in the gardens
outside.  Three times they heard it.  It meant nothing to Charlton.  It
puzzled Jacob.  It only told the priest of Gir that the mirror had not
mistaken the course which events would take.  It was forgotten by all
as Demers came back through the doorway.

He came with a man behind him carry an armful of loaded muskets and a
bag of powder and ball.  He made no attempt to conceal these.  They
were distributed at once to those who guarded the door and to others
around.

He had learned that the stranger was alone, at least in that
neighborhood, and he had returned resolved to settle matters by such
ways as he understood, if his father should not have done so already by
his different methods.  He wore a belt now, with a heavy cutlass and
two horse-pistols.  He looked up the hall and saw Marcelle seated
beside Charlton.  She was peeling a red-skinned banana with an
appearance of ease which she may not have felt.

Demers came up the hall with long strides, his body slouching forward
and his head projecting, as was his way when he walked.  His teeth were
set, and his face was flushed with blood.  Charlton saw that there was
something different from Jacob here--something which could not be
fenced off with words or adroit delayings.  Demers stopped at the head
of the table, and looked at Charlton.  His glance was murderous, with
the ferocity of a beast of prey.  He looked at Marcelle, and his eyes
changed, to a greed of anticipation.  She would suffer for this.  No,
he would not need any other hand to hold her down when he beat her.  He
had little imagination, but he felt that his hand was in her hair
already.

The satisfaction of the thought may have been the restraint which
withheld him from one of the uncontrollable furies to which he was
liable.  Charlton thought that he would leap at him over the table.  He
had his own right hand in his jacket-pocket, and wondered whether a
revolver-shot would be sufficient to stay him.  He would have no time
to adjust the rifle.  He did not like the thought of those hands on his
throat.

But Demers did not leap.  He said, "Will you fight or go?  Shall I kill
you first, or will you watch while I beat her?"  He did not notice the
hand which Jacob raised, or hear the words which were meant to
restrain.  Jacob saw that the course which his cunning mind had planned
was becoming impossible.

Charlton, cooler than his opponent, although having an almost equal
willingness to kill, was reminding himself that to lose his own life
was to leave the girl at the mercy of the beast before him.  He was
resolved that he would not rashly incur such a hazard.  He only said,
"How?"

Demers extended hairy hands in silent and sufficient answer.  Charlton
was silent.  He would be a fool indeed to give himself to be torn or
choked in that beast-like grip.  The derision of the thought may have
come into his eyes and been the spark which lighted the sudden rage of
his enemy.  There was a knife, long and sharp, which had, been used for
the carving, lying on the table beside him, and this he caught up and
flung at Charlton from his three yards' distance with deadly force and
accuracy.  It came from a hand practiced in a craft much used in the
island, his skill in which was inherited from the blood of his Chilian
grandmother.  As the knife spun through the air it was a thousand
chances to one that Charlton's life was ended.

There was no possible time to move aside, nor to think of any means of
protection, but with a blind swift instinct the hand that held the
upright barrel of the rifle raised it in an effort of protection which
might have appeared absurd in its futility had there been time for
thought; and by a chance which was on the verge of the miraculous the
point of the flashing blade was caught and deflected on the narrow
shield of steel.  Charlton was aware that the rifle was almost knocked
from his grasp, and then saw the knife quivering in the neck of the
priest beside him.

The priest said nothing.  He raised his hands and drew out the knife.
The wound was neither deep nor dangerous.  The force of the throw had
been broken when it was turned aside.  It had struck him where the
muscle of the neck joins the shoulder.  He showed no concern, though it
bled freely.  He neither made protest nor asked apology.  He looked at
Charlton and at the girl beyond him.  "Come with me," he said, and the
three rose together.  Charlton had drawn the revolver from his pocket
and watched Demers, ready to shoot at the first moment that threatened
danger, but reluctant to do so if it could be avoided.  Jacob stared at
them, seeming to speak, but no words came.  Even Demers appeared to be
taken back for a moment by the result of his murderous throw.  Since
long before his own birth, the priest of Gir had sat in that place,
remote, austere, different from themselves, but by his presence giving
an assurance of amity between them and the unseen inhabitants of the
temple precincts.

It was a pause that must have burst into violence at the next instant,
had there not come a scream of fear and agony--and then another--from
the lower end of the hall.  They were such cries as Pierre had given
when the great birds tore his flesh from him, and every eye was turned
to the place from which they came, but with different feelings from
those which had found a hectic enjoyment in the dying agonies of the
carpenter.



For while the general attention had been drawn to the altercation
between Demers and Charlton at the upper end of the hall, there had
occurred a scene without precedent at the lower doorway, where a dozen
of the great birds had crowded in at the call of their companions, to
pick the bones of the carpenter.

The men who stood with loaded muskets at the door had made no attempt
to stop them--though they were alarmed and puzzled by the novelty of
the invasion--for it was well understood that their movements should
not be molested.  But others were seen to be approaching, and the space
between, the door and the foot of the table was already crowded with
these birds in a condition of unwonted excitement, including some hens,
none of which had previously entered the hall, when there came the
cries which drew all eyes in their direction.

Introduced, as they had been, to a diet of human flesh--invited to tear
to pieces a man that was clothed and living--their appetites aroused
and unsatisfied--it was not surprising that some of them began to
stretch investigating heads towards the men and women that were seated
nearest.

These people had been taught from childhood, and had learned by
experience, that, if they left the birds alone, they would not be
attacked by them.  They were not quick to fear, but they shrank and
moved uneasily as the long necks stretched among them.  And then at the
end of either of the long sidebenches, at the same moment, the assault
came.

At one a man gave a single scream that choked as a bird's beak closed
on his throat and dragged him backward from the bench among the eager
beaks of its companions.  At the other, scream followed scream as a
great beak which had been feeling round a man's feet pushed upward
beneath his tunic and buried itself in his body.  The man fell from the
bench, struggling vainly, the bird holding him down with one foot while
it fed.  His nearest comrades made no effort to rescue him, but drew
back in panic, only baring the cutlasses which they appeared always to
wear on these occasions, and slashing the air to discourage the further
advance of the necks that were stretched toward them.

Then a man by the door fired his musket, and one of the birds fell.  It
kicked furiously on the ground, making a great outcry.  Then it
regained its feet, and stood swaying unsteadily.  Charlton could not
see where it was hit.

Some of the birds gathered round it curiously.  Others--probably the
later comers whose appetites were unsatisfied--crowded to feed upon the
two victims that had been pulled down.

Charlton noticed the wife of Pierre, who had been seated beside him.
When he was given to the birds, she had fallen unconscious from the
cross-bench at the foot of the table.  There she still lay, faint or
dead, but the birds did not touch her.

The priest of Gir looked on as one who watches a familiar scene.  He
appeared aloof as ever, concerned neither for the bleeding wound in his
own neck, nor for the torments of the wretches that were being eaten
alive at the further end of the hall.  Yet he had drawn a sword from
beneath his garment, and held it in an awkward-seeming manner in his
left hand.  But it was the way to which he had been trained, and the
appearance was deceptive.

Jacob sat motionless, gazing with his failing eyes at the tragedy that
he had originated.  Always more adroit to avoid than to meet a crisis,
he made no attempt to control the situation.

Demers, cursing inarticulately, had run down the hall, a pistol cocked
in his hand.  Courage he never lacked, and such brains as nature had
given him were always stimulated by a call to action.  "Stand your
ground, fools--slash at their necks," he bellowed, stopping their
flight by the confidence of his voice and with the persuasion of a
hard-driven fist.

But the birds had not followed them up the hall.  They appeared to
consult together around the one that was wounded.  They did not seem to
be either frightened or angered, but, as though they realized a serious
position which required further reflection, they made an orderly
retreat from the hall.  They called to those that were still feeding,
and these withdrew reluctantly with blood-drenched heads from their
ghastly banquets.

Then things happened very quickly.

Charlton, who might have used the chance to retreat with Marcelle
through the door behind him, had watched fascinated for one foolish
minute, his instinct being to take sides with his own kind, however
base or hostile, against such an attack.  He had even thrown his rifle
forward, and would have fired could he have got a safe shot above the
heads of the moving crowd.



Marcelle's more practical female mind suffered from no such confusion.
Had she stood alone, she would have been through the door, and in swift
flight to her familiar trees at the first moment of opportunity.  But
she had chosen her lover, and she left the control of their movements
in his hands without protest, though with impatient eyes.

As the birds turned away, she heard the voice of the priest of Gir.  He
addressed her quietly, but with a deliberate slowness, so that the
words would neither be confused or forgotten: "You will take the path
you know, and the steps in the south end of the temple.  Lose no time.
The birds will not harm you.  I give the child to your keeping."  She
did not know what he meant, and there was no time for reply.

Charlton's hand was on her arm, and he was drawing her to the door.
Even at that moment a memory waked in her of how she had thrilled to
him, as she did now, when he touched her in the darkness.

Jacob saw the movement.  He opened his lips to call to Demers to stop
them.  His eyes met those of the priest of Gir, and the words were
unspoken.  The next moment they were unspeakable.

With a swift, strong backward sweep, the priest's sword had reached his
neck.  The keen thin blade, impelled by the full strength of the
practiced arm, passed completely through it, and was not checked in its
course.  There was a second during which Jacob sat with a stunned mind,
not knowing that he was dead.  He tried to rise, but the thought came
too late for the severed nerve to convey it, or he might have walked
headless, as a fowl will do in the like case.  He gazed down at the
hands that would not move as he willed them, and as the shock lessened
he was aware of a fire of pain around his neck.  He saw his body slip
sideways beneath him.  His head rolled on the table.

It was over in an instant.  We may suppose that he lost consciousness
very quickly, as the blood drained from the severed head.  Knowing
nothing, we may suppose what we will.

It was at the same instant that the priest of Gir fell forward as a
musket-shot sounded from the lower end of the hall.  It was not fired
with any purpose to harm him, but from a trigger pulled in panic by one
of the sentries at the door as the birds crowded out, and he had
mistakenly thought that one was about to seize him.

Charlton saw the priest fall, and turned back, though Demers was
already running up the hall with a rabble of followers more willing to
attack a single man than they had been to face the beaks of the rukas.

The priest looked up.  There was no friendship in his eyes, nor
surprise, nor fear.  He was remote as a god.  He said, "I am killed.
Go quickly.  There is the child."  Charlton thought that he meant
Marcelle.  He remembered her peril, and went.

He ran through the door, pushing Marcelle before him and swinging her
aside as he passed it, out of the line of fire.  He heard the explosion
of Demer's horse-pistol as he did so.  Standing aside, he put an arm
round the door, and fired his revolver three times in rapid reply.
Blind though the shots were, he judged that they could scarcely fail of
effect on the advancing crowd, and at the best would check them, as
indeed it did, though for not more than a minute, for their flight was
seen and shouted by others who had run out from the main door.

"Run for the trees," he said.  "I can keep them back here."  But she
shook her head.  Her voice trembled into laughter.  "I can run faster
than you."

He saw that she would not go alone, and ran with her.  They would have
gone due north, by the side of the hall, and toward the distant safety
of the forest, but the men who ran out from the front would have cut
them off.  Hearing that they were on the run, Demers came with his
followers through the side door.  The spreading line of pursuit was
forcing them toward the temple grounds.

They heard the sound of Demer's remaining pistol.  It was a useless
shot at the distance which they had gained.  Musket-shots followed, but
there was little precision in those ancient weapons, and, whether well
or badly aimed, the bullets did not come near them.

Marcelle ran the more easily, for the two years of forest life had
given muscles and breath that the advance of civilization had left
behind, and she was lightly clad and unburdened, but Charlton's longer
stride kept beside her.



Gaining the shelter of some scattered trees, he turned in hope to check
pursuit with his rifle.  The chase was scattered now, there being only
three that were near them, with Demers twenty yards further back, and
the rest straggling over a space of two hundred yards behind him.

Charlton fired twice, and the foremost pursuers paused.  He was not
sure that he did any damage.

Demers, stooping to a thicket's shelter, reloaded his pistols.

Charlton would have fired again, but Marcelle called to him that they
were being surrounded while they stood, for though they had checked the
progress of those who were directly behind them, there were others
running far to right and left who did not slacken.

Then they ran again, faster for the breath they had gained, and down a
turfy slope, where speed was easy.  Here they gained on those who were
on their left, as the ground there was less favorable, but on their
right, between them and the forest, the pursuers had made better way,
and their retreat was now cut off entirely.  They must go straight on
toward the temple, or turn to the unknown land that stretched to the
southward cliffs, where there might most probably be the same boggy
hollows which they had learned to dread on the eastern side.

They were going uphill now, at a slackened speed.  Here they showed
plainly to their pursuers, and the muskets sounded.

Over the ridge they paused, looking round for the best way to take.
Life and death might hang on the choice of the straight path or the
trammeled way.  "I know," she said, and ran on with a fresh courage.
She had seen the way which she had gone with her father two years ago,
and knew that they were on the shortest track, where all must be as
strange to their enemies as to themselves.

Charlton spurted, and came level.  "Did you mean it?" he asked,
surprisingly.  Their glances met, and she did not pretend to mistake
him.

"But no!" she said, with eyes that laughed and mocked and challenged.
He caught her hand in reply, and they ran on together with a new speed
and lightness.

The path they were now on ran straight forward.  Its surface was
lawn-like turf.  At times it was closed in by a luxuriance of flowering
bushes, or by groups of trees, of which each one, in an ordered peace,
was given light and air for its full growth, relieved from the fierce
pressure of the forest strife and the stranglehold of its creeping
parasites.  They had a great, though a different, beauty.  They bore no
scars: they were of an untested valor.  Their growth was of a complete
symmetry.  They had fulfilled themselves, as they could not have done
in the stress of the forest strife.  They demonstrated the blessings of
peace.  And yet--their peace was founded on the ruthless destruction of
all that would have competed around them.  Life was less here than in
the forest--certainly less in its total, perhaps less in its degree.
It is the insoluble problem.  War is evil--and without evil there can
be no good.

But the trees reached mighty trunks aloft, and found free air and light
abundant, and the warmth of the tropic sun.  Did they look far off and
scorn the savage trees that fought for life in the forest?  Or did they
envy?  Would the lightning strike them at last, that might have spared
had they not risen so high and so far apart?

A few months before, Charlton, sick of life and its futilities, had
lounged on a hotel veranda--Marcelle had dreamed and longed in the
safety of the forest boughs.

Now they ran for their lives.  War had found them--love and war
together.  If they escaped at all it would be with the blood of others
on their hands.  Were they less or more than they had been?  Were they
blessed or cursed by the net of circumstance that had caught them?  God
knows--Who made the world and all its wonders.




CHAPTER VII

THE FLIGHT

They ran on in good hope of safety, though they knew that they were
half surrounded.  Perhaps the greatest doubt in Charlton's mind was the
reception which they would meet should they attempt the forbidden
sanctuary of the temple that now rose in plain sight before them, a
pile of square-built, ruby-colored stone, that glowed intensely in the
sunlight.

It was surprising that pursuit had followed into this forbidden
territory, but it had been led by the blind fury of Demers; and the
death of Jacob and the priest, the revolt of the rukas and the
spectacle of their ghastly meals, had roused a frenzy of excitement to
which these people were liable, a frenzy which affected them as a mob
rather than as individuals, and some of the effects of courage.  There
was also the idea in the mind of Demers that the strangers must be
prevented at any cost from carrying the news of the priest's death to
those who (he supposed) might be roused to avenge it.  And then,
besides, there was the girl....

Though he had little intelligence, he was a cunning enough fighter.  He
had no code of honor to encumber his mind.  He wished to kill, and to
capture.  He had no intention of being killed if he could avoid it.  He
could have run faster than he did, having more endurance than most of
his followers.  The pace of all--pursued and pursuers--had gradually
slackened as the miles were passed, but when he found that he would
have outdistanced his companions had he kept straight on, he made a
slanting junction with those who were attempting to outflank the
runners on the southern side.

Such was the position when they came in full sight of the temple.

At this point the path was hedged on either side by some flowering
shrubs, ten or twelve feet in height.  They had very dark green leaves,
tinged with scarlet, and great balls of cream-hued blossom of the size
of a man's head.  These were not easy to penetrate, but could they do
so, they would make direct for the southern end of the temple.
Marcelle remembered the words of the priest.  They pushed through them.
They were abused by the colony of dark green paroquets, with lighter
crests tufted with white, that made the bushes their home.

Emerging on a higher path, they met a child; I think, though I am not
sure, that Charlton might have passed her.  But Marcelle stopped.  The
child was about three years old.  She was dark-eyed, slender,
olive-skinned, with an exotic beauty of the kind that does not change
with the years.  She walked as one who is lost and bewildered, and yet
goes on with a purpose.  She stopped when they came out of the bushes.
She looked at them with eyes that were wild and shy, but she did not
retreat.

Marcelle spoke to her, telling her she must not go that way.  What fate
might not be hers from the savage crowd that pursued them?  The child
looked with uncomprehending eyes.  She said something in a strange
tongue.  The tone was plaintive, the words evidently a question, but
they meant nothing to those who heard.

Charlton looked troubled.  "We mustn't wait," he said doubtfully.

"We can't leave her here," Marcelle answered.

They looked up the path; they even called through the bushes, but she
seemed to be quite alone.



Marcelle reached out her arms, and the child hesitated and then came.
Marcelle lifted her, and the child trembled a little and then clung
closely.  She made no sound, but Marcelle saw that there were tears on
the long dark lashes.  She thought of the baby monkeys that she had
left in the trees.  "Come on," she said, and began to walk forward.
Charlton was refilling the empty chambers of his rifle.

"You know it means they'll catch us," he said.

"We couldn't leave her," Marcelle answered.  "Could we?"

He said: "Very well.  But let me carry her."

"No," she answered.  "She's not heavy.  You must be free for anyone
that needs killing."

There was a fierceness in her voice which he had not heard before.
There was a blend of hardness and tenderness in her nature which would
often baffle him in the days to be.

He had the sense not to argue.  They went on at a quick walk.

He felt sure that there would be fighting now, and he began to
calculate the men and weapons that he might have to meet, and to think
haw best he could counter them.

Could they find ambush where there would be an open space around them,
wide enough to be out of the range of muskets?  He was confident that
his rifle could hold them back under such conditions, as long as his
ammunition should last.  But after?

There was one thing in their favor.  The night was coming.  It is
significant of how much longer these events have taken to tell than to
act that it had not fallen already.  It was not yet four hours since he
had heard the voice that asked, "_N'oserez-vous?_" of one who hid in
the thicket.

If they could lie concealed now, the darkness might help them to a
further flight, and to safety.

Could they reach the temple burdened as they were?  It did not look to
be very far, but such appearances are sometimes deceptive.

What reception would they meet if they gained its shelter?

The child might help.  But what if there were no one there who could
understand them?  The priest had been able to speak the corrupt English
of those he met, but it was clearly not his natural language.

Or suppose that these people should attempt to seize Marcelle.  After
the manner of Demers?

It seemed to Charlton that they went from danger to danger.

His mind was on the forest, the cliff, the safety of the eaves--and of
the waiting boat.

But Marcelle's thought was different.  The temple was her goal.  She
had an instinct that it would be the place of their security.  She did
not vex her mind with imagination of who might receive them, or in what
way.  She knew that the priest of Gir had been of a different quality
from those from whom they were flying.  She remembered the words which
had seemed unmeaning when she heard them--"_You will take the path you
know, and the steps in the south end of the temple.  I give the child
to your keeping._"

Well, she had the child, and she would go to the temple.  It was
Charlton's part to help her to get there.  She did not doubt he would
do so.  She trusted him as she had once trusted her father.

She did not know that Demers crouched in a thicket a hundred yards
ahead, with a loaded pistol in either hand.

He fired the first one too soon.  He was not a very skillful or
practiced shot--Jacob had not allowed the use of powder except for the
actual hunting, and then pistols had not been customary.

He saw Charlton advancing with his rifle ready, and he remembered the
execution that M. Latour had done with a smaller weapon.  So he let fly
his first bullet at a distance of thirty or forty yards.  It went
somewhat wide, and too high.  It warned Charlton, and they might have
retreated at little risk, but he chose the bolder course.  He did not
wish to be surrounded in such a position as they then occupied.  He ran
forward, firing as he did so at the spot from which he thought the
bullet had come.



He was not far wrong, and his shots came unpleasantly close to the
crouching Demers.  No doubt the second pistol was fired the sooner in
consequence.  Still, there was little wrong with the aim on this
occasion.

Charlton felt the bullet strike his right side with such force that he
retained his balance with difficulty.  It passed on, leaving him with
nothing worse than a bruised rib, and some broken skin where it had
struck him.  He did not know how far he was injured, and he had little
leisure to consider it.

He had seen the hand with the leveled pistol, and he fired again at the
man whom he knew must be behind it.  The shot missed, and the rifle was
empty.

He lowered it, and drew out his revolver, He did not know that he had
missed, but he wished to make sure.

Then two men ran out of the bushes with cutlasses in their hands, only
a few yards away.

He fired at the foremost--fired again--and the man fell, rolled over,
clutching convulsively at the grass.  He would give no more trouble.
The second hesitated, and ran back.  Charlton's shots followed him.  He
gave a cry of pain as the bushes hid him.  He was certainly hit.

The revolver was empty.

So far, Demers had not risen.  He watched, waiting his chance, while
the others risked lives which he felt to be less valuable than his own.

Now he saw Charlton commence to reload the revolver.  He knew what that
meant, though he had no knowledge of repeating firearms.  It was the
chance he sought, and he drew his cutlass and came out boldly.

To Charlton it was the supreme test which comes but once or twice in a
lifetime.  His instinct was to fly.  Demers came with a rush, his
cutlass lifted over his head.  Charlton had the sword slung over his
shoulder, which had cumbered him all the day, but he had no skill in
its use.  Neither in strength was he any match for his brutal enemy.

But Marcelle was behind him, and he could not leave her.  He looked for
an instant, and saw her, bright-eyed and silent, and the child in her
arms.  She had no doubt what the end would be.

Charlton drew the sword and waited the rush of his opponent.
Courage--and ignorance--were his salvation.  Demers came with the
cutlass raised over his head, meaning that the fight should end with
the first blow, as, in fact, it did.

Charlton did not think he could parry such a stroke with success.
Probably he was right.  It crossed his mind that, if he struck straight
at Demers' throat, he could still kill his enemy, even as his own death
descended.  Marcelle would be saved.

Even as the downward stroke was in the air, Demers realized his peril.
It was no satisfaction to him to kill Charlton if his own life were to
be the price.

Too late, he tried to alter the direction of his stroke, to guard his
own throat from the point on which he was running.

In the result, he neither killed Charlton nor saved himself.  The
cutlass jarred against a blade that was already through his neck, and
showed three inches behind it.

Charlton was thrown back against a tree by the force of the rush which
he had encountered.  His grasp held to the sword-hilt with difficulty
as his enemy fell with his weight dragging upon it.  He looked down on
a face that was convulsed with an insensate fury.  Demers struggled to
his hands and knees, and then collapsed again, as his lifeblood pulsed
from the wound.

Charlton stepped back quickly as a hairy hand reached out along the
turf to grip his foot with no friendly purpose.

But it was the end.  Rage fought with death in the glazing eyes, and
death conquered.

Marcelle, looking down, said, "Thank you," and then, "Oh, but I am glad
he is dead."

Then went on through the dusk.



No one followed them further.  They looked back at a group that had
surrounded their fallen leader, and hurried the faster for the sight,
but the pursuit ceased.

Their need was now to reach the temple before the light should fail
them.

What reception would wait them there they could not tell, but they went
on without discussing its wisdom.  Marcelle, at least, had no doubt
that it was the right thing to do.  And they had the child to take care
of.

When they reached the temple, the sun had sunk below the ridge of the
western cliffs, and the swift tropic shadows were gathering under the
south wall, but they found the steps which the priest had told, and
went bravely up them.

They came into a passage which had doorways at intervals.  They saw no
one.  They called, and there was no answer.  They hesitated to go
further.  What right had they there?  What explanation could they give
if they should be questioned in an alien tongue?

Marcelle set down the child, which had been asleep in her arms.  She
said, "Perhaps she can guide us.  Let her go first."

The child went on confidently.  She came to the door, or, more
accurately, the open archway, which led to the room in which the priest
had consulted the mirror.  It had no window.  It was lighted, as
always, by the lamps around it.

There was a heap of rugs in one corner, as there had been previously.
Near to these a large leaf, filled with fruit, lay on the floor, with a
bowl of water beside it.

The child went straight to these, drank from the bowl, and then
commenced eating.

Charlton said, "We must find some one.  Will you stay here with the
child, while I search further?"

"No, don't leave me," she answered.  "I should be afraid.  And besides,
can't you see?  The food was put here for the child, but it's a man's
room.  He had her here because there is no one else to take care of
her.  She tried to follow him because she was frightened to be alone.
How she got down those steps--!  But you won't find anyone, however
long you look.  The place is dead."

Charlton wondered if she were right.  He looked round at the bare
solidity of the chamber--at the shelves of ordered papyri--it all spoke
of permanence, and of an established civilization, however alien from
his own.

In some indefinite way it reminded him of the figure in the cave--and
of the drawings in the upper chamber, of some of which he would not
willingly think--yes, it might even be as old as they.  It must have
endured very long, and if it were desolate, it could only be a
desolation of yesterday.  It seemed improbable--and yet her confidence
impressed him.

At last he said, "Well, suppose we rest here for tonight, if no one
comes to disturb us, and make a search in the morning."

Marcelle agreed, though she knew that such a search would be fruitless;
and there was neither night nor day in that unwindowed room where the
lamps glowed continually.  She wanted to rest now.

Charlton looked at the heap of fruit from which the child was eating.
He was hungry and thirsty.  There was enough for all.  The child drew
back as he approached, with eyes that were shy but not unfriendly.  He
tried to reassure her with words which would have no meaning to her.
She went to Marcelle.

There was a brief silence after that, the child clinging to Marcelle
with a hidden face.  She was aware of tears, though there was no sound,
and her arms tightened to comfort her.

Both she and Charlton were physically exhausted.  They were drained of
emotion.  And their position was difficult.  They had become everything
to each other, while they were still strangers; it required the
interval of sleep to adjust their minds to all its meaning.  The
presence of the child that had come to them for protection drew them
closer, and yet divided them.

But, beyond this, they felt differently.

Marcelle's mind was content and happy.  She had won the man she would
have.  He had justified her choice, and she had no fear of the future.
And, besides, Demers was dead.  Life was good; but she was tired now,
and would sleep.

She lay down with the child in her arms, and was asleep in an instant;
the hardness of a wooden pillow, shaped to the head, which was at one
side of the rug-strewn corner, having no power to delay her.



But Charlton could not sleep.  He was excited and restless.  He paced
the chamber continually.  He was conscious that he was worn out, and
sat down at the table more than once, only to discover that he could
not remain still, and to resume his vigil.

So much had happened.  So much might still remain to discover--to
plan--to avoid.  The stake had become so heavy.

He looked down at the sleeping girl, of whom he knew so much, and yet
so little.

He had seen her face only a few hours ago.  He had never more than
touched her hand.  No--he had once touched her foot in the night; but
he did not attempt to repeat it.

She was one of those fortunate girls who look their best when asleep.
Fatigue had left her face, where youth triumphed.  Her lips smiled, as
though a dream had pleased her.  Her bare arm was around the child, who
slept also, nestling closely, content in its new protection.

The short tunic that she wore did not concern itself to conceal
her--and it was torn in places, for the bushes that had met their
flight had not all been thornless.

He saw that her body must be sun-browned from heel to head, though only
lightly, for which she had to thank the shadowy ways of the forest
leaves.

Only the soles of her dust-stained feet were very dark, polished to a
deep chocolate color by the treading of many boughs.

He looked down at the lithe grace of the sleeping girl, at the smoothly
rounded limbs.  She was the woman he loved.  She was his by her own
word.  At his life's risk he had won her.  They might both be dead
before another night should know them.

He reached for a rug that lay beside, and drew it over her and the
child.

Then he looked at the steel mirror that was set into the table.  As he
gazed, he was aware that it was not steel but water.  There were
shadows in the water.  Steel-blue shadows that moved.

After a time the shadows grew lighter.  He saw the houses of the
settlement.  It was morning.  He saw a crowd of men that moved in the
direction of the temple.  Was he dreaming? he wondered.  His eyes left
the mirror.  He looked at it again and could see clearly that it had a
surface of steel.  Obviously he had dreamed.  Yet he continued to look,
and was less sure.  It had again an appearance of water.  He saw
movement again, though this time it was clear almost at once, as though
the earlier vision might have commenced in the night-time.

This time he saw the sea and the high cliffs as he had first see them
when he had approached the island.  Only, he was now looking down from
above.  He saw a boat--his own boat--come out of the cliff-tunnel.  It
was full of men, and some women.  They were trying to spread the sail.
It appeared that they disputed and struggled among themselves as to how
this should be done.  He saw the overloaded boat heel as the wind
caught it.

It was long after that Marcelle waked.  Her first sight was the
wide-open eyes of the child, that still lay in the shelter of her arm,
and had watched her, silent and unmoving for many weary hours.
Something that was nearly a smile came into the grave eyes, as it knew
that she had wakened.  It said something which she could not
understand.  She must teach it her own words.

She kissed it impulsively.  It did not draw back, though it had known
nothing of the custom of kissing, which was not used by the race from
which it came.  It reached out a timid hand that touched her face as
lightly, as a falling leaf.  From the ages of separation of race and
custom, nature drew them together.



Marcelle rose, yawning.  She showed small teeth, white and sharp, that
had been taught their use on many nutshells--teeth that she had longed
to sink in Demers' hand when it came on her shoulder.  But that was
yesterday.  Demers was dead.  She looked round, wondering how long she
had slept.  Charlton slept still, his head on his arms.  She would not
wake him yet.  There were physical necessities to consider.  She was
dirty, and she hated dirt.  She must straighten the mass of shortened
hair (long hair will catch on the branches--it is too dangerous in the
forest) which she had cut and tended the best she knew how for the last
two years--but then time was endless.

She noticed that the child was busy eating again.  There was still some
water.  But if she used that for washing, where was more to be found?
And she was thirsty--and oh! so hungry.  Why was the food on the floor?
She supposed that the priest had put it there for the child's reaching.

Marcelle made herself as tidy as circumstances would permit.

Then she decided to wake Charlton.

Stooping over him, she saw the mirror on which his head was pillowed.
To her it was a mirror only.  But "only" is not a word that she would
have used to describe it.  It was better even than the forest pool.
Marcelle smiled.  She looked, and appeared satisfied.  She saw a long
rent in her shoulder, showing cream-brown flesh, firm and smooth.  She
did not think it unbecoming.

She looked at Charlton with uncompromising Latin eyes, that even love
would not blind in the seeing.  It was an ordeal for any man.  He was
disheveled, and dirty.  So was she for that matter.  She was well
content with what she saw, and a song rose to her lips and awaked the
silence to unfamiliar melody.  He was the man she had chosen, and he
had killed Demers to win her love.

Seeing that he was still asleep, she bent over him and kissed his neck.
He moved instantly, and looked up to see her at the further end of the
room, surveying him with a grave demureness.  Undeceived by her
attitude, his waking mood rose to meet her own.  He got up quickly, to
feel a sharp pain in his side, that left the eager words upon his lips
unspoken.

She was beside him in a moment.  "What is it?" she asked anxiously.

He replied, "I think Demers hit me.  I hadn't thought of it since.  It
can't be much."  But he was less sure of that than he professed, and
the thought that he might have a bullet in his side, with no means of
extracting it, was not pleasant.

"Let me look," she said, and they explored together.  It was nothing
more than a flesh-wound that had stiffened and broken out again when he
rose so suddenly, and an aching rib that was only bruised, not
fractured.  But they could not spare any of their remaining water to
bathe it.  They ate, and drank, and discussed their further action.

The presence of the child limited their choice.  If they should take it
with them, it must impede their progress, either to the caves or the
forest.  They could not leave it alone.  They could not take it without
first ascertaining that it had no living parents or others to whom it
should be returned.  So they decided; though Charlton, at least, saw
that either course brought an added danger to a situation which was
sufficiently precarious.

It seemed to him that it was unreasonable to suppose that the child had
no guardians who would be seeking for and must shortly find her.
Already they had brought her back from her wandering.  To do more was
to lose time, and to risk contact with those who were strange and might
be hostile.  If they should meet with no one, then to take the child
would be an encumbrance, and there might be those who would
misinterpret it as an outrage, though they were not visible now.  It
seemed so improbable that they were alone.  Even though the temple was
deserted, there must surely be life in the buildings that were beyond
it.

But it was clear to Marcelle's mind that they could not leave the
child.  In fact, she did not wish to leave it.  By intuition rather
than reason, she was sure that they would find no one living.  In her
own phrase, the place was dead.

To her the search was perfunctory, but she agreed that it must be made.
They searched the temple first--the smaller rooms, and then the great
hall itself.  They saw many strange things, which we need not stop to
consider.  There may be another time for the telling.



Before they left the chamber in which they slept Charlton had noticed
an open papyrus on which the priest had been writing.  Beside it were
some books that were amazing, till he thought of the natural
explanation.  "Pride and Prejudice," a Newgate Calendar, a Bible, a
Nautical Almanack, the speeches of Charles James Fox, a book on
farming, and some others; old and dirty books which the priest had
acquired from a generation that had forgotten their use.

He saw that the papyrus was partly covered with English words and
letters, partly with a writing which seemed unlike anything of which he
had knowledge, even of ancient times.  He saw that the priest had
attempted to probe the mystery of the English books.  Possibly in
earlier years there may have been those who could help him.  Might it
be that here was a clue by which the piled wisdom around him could be
deciphered, even though its writers had perished?

They searched the remaining chambers in the temple.  They went a few
paces into the colored gloom of the temple itself, awful in its
desolation.  They turned their eyes from the dim figure of Gir.

They made their way to the buildings behind the temple, finding the sun
high in the sky, and learning how long they must have slept as they did
so.  They searched houses that were silent and desolate, where the dust
lay quietly.  They saw many strange and some inexplicable things, which
must be left untold--or at least on this occasion.  They found fresh
garments which they were glad to take.  They found water, and cleansed
themselves of the dirt of yesterday.

Charlton was glad to cast aside clothes that were still heavy with the
dried slime of the bog, and caked with the blood of Demers (which had
spouted over his ankles as the dying wretch had tried to reach him) for
the lighter, looser garments that this dead race had worn, and which
were cleanly stored in many of the deserted dwellings.

The child walked beside them silently.

They climbed once to a flat roof that gave a wide view, extending to
the white walls of the feast-house.  The dream or vision of the
previous night--Charlton could not decide upon its nature--came back to
his mind.  He half expected to see that advancing rabble as he had then
beheld them.

He saw, instead, a little group that fled across the land with three of
the great rukas pursuing them.  It was a race that could have only one
ending.  Running with raised wings, the birds had a speed that would
have left a greyhound far behind them.  Yet the men panted desperately
forward, a race for life of the most literal kind, for there was no
hope for the hindmost.

When the birds reached and pulled him down, the others stood still,
looking round in bewildered fear, for to run further might be to
approach another group of their enemies.  Was this all that was left of
the visioned crowd that had set out in the morning to seek them while
they slept?

They debated whether they should leave the confines of the walls that
protected them.  Marcelle was anxious to regain the shelter of the
forest.  She said, "It's not far.  I don't think the birds would harm
us.  I should think they have got all they want by now.  Anyway, I
think we should be safe from them.  Besides, you have the rifle."

Charlton hesitated.  He had had enough of fighting, unless it were
necessary.  But it had to be done.  It might really be safer now than
later.  He answered, "Very well, we'll go at once.  If the boat is
still safe, we might load up and leave by tomorrow."

Marcelle was silent.  She loved the forest life.  She thought that the
dangers of the island were over.  She had won the mate she needed.  She
dreaded the thought of the open boat.  But that could wait.  She only
said, "We will go quickly.  You will need your hands free for the
rifle."  She picked up the child.



They regained the forest without adventure.  They noticed that the
satyrs were running about in a wild excitement, but they did not molest
them.

They crossed the bog and climbed the cliff, finding the opening of the
caves without difficulty.  The interior was vacant and undisturbed.

It seemed that the adventure of the land was over, and the adventure of
the sea was all that lay between them and the civilization that had
been, four days ago--to Marcelle at least--a thing remote and
unattainable.

Charlton proposed that he should go forward alone to ascertain that the
boat and stores were unmolested, while Marcelle waited with the child.
Then he would return, and they would rest till morning, and then load
the boat and set sail at once, or as soon as the wind were favorable.

But Marcelle would not agree.  She would not be separated.  She would
go with him, even though it meant that they must carry the child.  She
was silent and irritable.  Charlton looked at her with a puzzled
wonder.  They had come through a great peril together, during which she
had been brave and cheerful.  They were united not only by a spoken
word, but the sacraments of common loyalties and of common dangers.
Yet now that it appeared that they had come through them in triumph,
she had become strange and distant.  She insisted that he should not
leave her, yet she was aloof and silent.  She did not meet his eyes,
and his words were left unanswered.

Was it strange that he began to wonder whether she had only used him to
assist her extremity, and was now fretting against a bondage that irked
her?

For herself, she did not know the meaning of the mood into which she
had fallen.  Desires and fears warred within her.  They warred with
hidden faces, so that she could not tell the one from the other.  When
they came to the shaft beneath which the boat was moored, and saw it
swinging uninjured on the ropes that held it, she had a feeling of
sharp distress, and realized that her secret hope had been that some
unforeseen disaster had overtaken it.

Charlton said: "If we begin early in the morning and only load it with
that which we most need, we might be away at mid-day.  I took much
longer to clear it, but it will be quicker work to lower the things if
you are there to receive them."  He spoke of the sea-worthiness of the
boat, and of the progress they might hope to make, with her help in
sailing it.  If they steered northwest they had all the North American
coast as their objective, and long before they reached it they would be
in the fair-way of a thousand ships, and would surely be rescued.

She did not answer.  He led the way back, carrying the lantern; she had
the child, which was now tired and half asleep, and clung to her with a
frightened shyness.

When they were half-way along the passage, they came to the one that
branched aside, which Charlton had not explored previously.

Here she called to him to stop, saying that it led to the chamber which
her father had used, and where they would doubtless find the chest in
which his papers were kept.  She would like to save these.

Charlton suggested, reasonably, that they might get them when returning
to the boat in the morning.

She replied that it was drier than the room that opened into the face
of the inner cliff.  If they had to spend the night in such a cave,
they might as well choose the drier.

This was reasonable also, though the tone in which it was spoken was
less so.  It appeared to Charlton to imply that to stay within the
caverns was an evil for which he was responsible.

To him they had seemed a retreat from many dangers, which they should
be thankful to have reached together.

Fortunately he had the gift of silence.  He had the gift of sympathy
also, and through the pain he felt at an estrangement which seemed so
causeless he tried to understand the feelings which underlay it.

Perhaps, he thought, she had slept so long beneath green branches and
the open stars that she had become impatient of confining walls.  Yet
she had lain down happily enough in the temple room.  No less, he was
partly right, though her trouble went deeper.

He went with her along the passage, and they found the room which she
was seeking.  The chest was there, and its contents were dry and
uninjured.

Charlton said: "If you would rather that we stay here, I will fetch
anything that we shall need."  He hesitated, and added: "Perhaps you
would like to be here with the child, and I can watch at the entrance.
You will be quite safe.  I will close the top of the shaft over the
boat."

She said: "I don't know--I will come with you to get the things.  But I
don't think I shall like it.  There is no air here."

They were nearly at the end of the cross-passage when they heard voices.

With a swift motion he obscured, and then extinguished the lantern.
But the voices had already passed.  They were receding toward the
chamber beneath which the boat had been moored--the chamber that
contained all his possessions.

He felt Marcelle's hand on his arm.  They followed silently.  There was
no need for words.  They knew the voices of the island speech; they
knew the forms that were revealed by the torches they carried.  They
saw that their entrance must have been observed, and that they had been
followed as soon as the remaining inhabitants of the island had
collected such things as they wished to save.



Terrified by the great birds that had now abandoned their usual
occupations to chase and feed upon them, their leaders killed, not
knowing what vengeance might be impending for the priest's death, they
had followed Charlton in the hope of discovering some means of flight
from the island.

Charlton counted over thirty, as they collected in the chamber over the
shaft, scattering his possessions, and searching till they found the
stone that covered the shaft, and removed it.

He stood very near to them in the darkness of the passage.  Marcelle's
hand was still on his arm.  She whispered, "Let us go back and talk."
He hesitated, and as he did not answer her grip became, firmer, trying
to draw him backward.

Had he been alone, he would have walked out at once to claim his
property.  He regarded them as less than human, and he did not think
them formidable now that their leaders had fallen.

They should go back the way they came!

But it might be better to do this when he had seen Marcelle and the
child in a place of safety.  What did these people know about boats?
It would be long enough before they had all clambered down the shaft
with their lanterns, even should they decide to attempt it.  Still,
there was no time to lose.

He went back, therefore, at the urging of her hand, feeling the way for
a short distance, and then lighting the lantern.  He did not care much
if they saw it.  They went all the way back, though he became
increasingly impatient as they did so.  He recognized that, having
started, he could not leave her with the child alone in the
tunnel-darkness.

The sun was near setting.  It shone into the aperture, from the sides
of which the creepers had now been completely torn by those who had
climbed through it, making a transient brilliance in the gray gloom of
the chamber, and reflecting itself in the water that dripped in the
inner corner.

Marcelle laid down the child, now sleeping soundly, on the bed which
Charlton had made on the drier side of the room.  Strong though her arm
might be, she was glad to be relieved of the burden, but she showed no
sign of fatigue when she rose and faced Charlton in the sunlight.

There was a great relief in her heart, and a gay light in her eyes,
that surprised him into a momentary forgetfulness of his own
impatience.  Here again was the spirit that had been so swift in
mockery of the thwarted satyr, that had made light of danger as they
had run together on the previous night.  It was more than that.  He
felt that the shadow which had fallen between them had cleared away.
Here was the Marcelle whom he had known in the night--who had won his
love before he had seen her face in the daylight, who had owned him
before the table of their enemies, but who was still the girl who had
not come to his arms, the stranger whom he had not kissed.

Yet he knew that he must not linger.  "You will be safe here--" he
began.

She interrupted, as though she did not hear him.

"I suppose they will take the boat," she remarked, as though it were a
natural thing, and of little moment that they should.  A smile parted
her lips.

As she said it, she was aware that Charlton's arm was around her.  "You
are divine," he said, and she found herself held close and her head
bent back for his kisses.

Then her words penetrated to his mind, and recalled him to the need of
the moment.  He loosed her reluctantly, as he answered:

"No, they mustn't do that.  I don't know whether we ought not to try to
take them.  But they are too many, anyway.  They might crowd in, of
course.  But they would overload the boat.  It wouldn't be safe, and we
couldn't take enough provisions for the risk of a long voyage.  No--it
wouldn't do."

Then he added doubtfully: "We might take one or two to help with the
boat."  He had a feeling that there might be some decent ones among
them, and that if they wanted to escape he ought to do what he
reasonably could.

"I shouldn't come," she answered with a quiet demureness.  "But that
doesn't matter.  I shall be quite happy here."

"You wouldn't--" he began incredulously.  "As though I should go
without you!"

Her eyes lifted and challenged him, and again his arms were around her.
For a moment only, she returned his kisses.  Then she struggled for
freedom.  "No," she said, "not here--not here....  Did you think I
would go with those wretches?" she asked, in the tone of one who is
investigating a curiosity of natural history.

"Well, I don't want them," he replied, with an obvious sincerity, "but
while we talk they may be capsizing the boat, if they don't get off
with it entirely."  (How she wished they might!)  "If you will stay
here, I will soon deal with them."

He turned to go, but with a quick movement she was between him and the
passage.

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

"I shall send them the way they came," he answered.  "The goods are
mine, and so is the boat.  I don't think they will be much trouble."

"You forget," she said, "that they will have found the arms you left
there."

That was true.  He had forgotten.  He had only told her casually of
them in the long talk of their night in the forest.  He was surprised
that she remembered.  There were arms there more formidable than their
clumsy muskets.  But they might not easily find out how to use them.

"I don't think that will make any difference," he answered stubbornly.
"If you want the boat clear you shall have it."

She broke out with a sudden change of mood, when she realized how hard
it was to deflect his purpose.  "Do you care nothing that you will
leave me here alone?"

"But what else can we--" he began, and was interrupted.

"Cannot you see that we are safer here?  There is no danger left,
unless you make it.  Why should we drown in a boat?  _It is all ours,
if you will let them go._"

Then her tone changed as she stepped aside to let him go if he would.
"Of course, you can do as you like," she said pleasantly.  "Some people
like caves and boats.  I like the forest."

She gave an instant's glance at the child, who was sleeping soundly.
She looked at Charlton again with mocking eyes.  "Bogs," she remarked,
"are best crossed in the daylight."

The sun, that was now only half visible above the cliffs of the western
side of the island, caught the darkness of her hair as she turned and
slipped out of the opening.

Charlton, following, saw her dropping down the creepers at a speed that
he could hardly hope to equal.

He followed her through the failing light, but he got no nearer.  He
followed till her form became dim in the growing gloom, though she fled
no faster than he pursued her.  At last he followed only a voice that
called and mocked him.

  "_N'oserez-vous?
  N'oserez-vous?
  N'oserez-vous, mon bel ami?_"


Now it was night in the forest.

He followed a voice to the night.






[End of The Island of Captain Sparrow, by S. Fowler Wright]
