For a moment I thought I saw a round, dark object on the waves where the flock had been.
And while I sat there watching, up out of the sea along the reef to my right crawled a naked, dripping figure holding a dead duck in his mouth.
Fascinated, I watched it, recognising Grue with his ratty black hair all plastered over his face.
Whether he caught sight of me or not, I don"t know; but he suddenly dropped the dead duck from his mouth, turned, and dived under water.
It was a grim and horrid species of sport or pastime, this amphibious business of his, catching wild birds and dragging them about as though he were an animal.
Evidently he was ashamed of himself, for he had dropped the duck. I watched it floating by on the waves, its head under water. Suddenly something jerked it under, a fish perhaps, for it did not come up and float again, as far as I could see.
When I went back to camp Grue lay apparently asleep on the north side of the fire. I glanced at him in disgust and crawled into my tent.
The next day Evelyn Grey awoke with a headache and kept her tent. I had all I could do to prevent Kemper from prescribing for her. I did that myself, sitting beside her and testing her pulse for hours at a time, while Kemper took one of Grue"s grains and went off into the mangroves and speared grunt and eels for a chowder which he said he knew how to concoct.
Toward afternoon the pretty waitress felt much better, and I warned Kemper and Grue that we should sail for Black Bayou after dinner.
Dinner was a mess, as usual, consisting of fried mullet and rice, and a sort of chowder in which the only ingredients I recognised were sections of crayfish.
After we had finished and had withdrawn from the fire, Grue sc.r.a.ped every remaining shred of food into a kettle and went for it. To see him feed made me sick, so I rejoined Miss Grey and Kemper, who had found a green cocoanut and were alternately deriving nourishment from the milk inside it.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "To see him feed made me sick."]
Somehow or other there seemed to me a certain levity about that performance, and it made me uncomfortable; but I managed to smile a rather sickly smile when they offered me a draught, and I took a pull at the milk--I don"t exactly know why, because I don"t like it. But the moon was up over the sea, now, and the dusk was languorously balmy, and I didn"t care to leave those two drinking milk out of the same cocoanut under a tropic moon.
Not that my interest in Evelyn Grey was other than scientific. But after all it was I who had discovered her.
We sailed as soon as Grue, gobbling and snuffling, had cleaned up the last crumb of food. Kemper blandly offered to take Miss Grey into his boat, saying that he feared my boat was overcrowded, what with the paraphernalia, the folding cages, Grue, Miss Grey, and myself.
I sat on that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him Grue. He couldn"t wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue went aboard his boat.
As for me, I hoisted sail with something so near a chuckle that it surprised me; and I looked at Evelyn Grey to see whether she had noticed the unseemly symptom.
Apparently she had not. She sat forward, her eyes fixed soulfully upon the moon. Had I been dedicated to any profession except a scientific one--but let that pa.s.s.
Grue in Kemper"s sail-boat led, and my boat followed out into the silvery and purple dusk, now all sparkling under the high l.u.s.tre of the moon.
Dimly I saw vast rafts of wild duck part and swim leisurely away to port and starboard, leaving a glittering lane of water for us to sail through; into the scintillant night from the sea sprang mullet, silvery, quivering, falling back into the wash with a splash.
Here and there in the moonlight steered ominous black triangles, circling us, leading us, sheering across bow and flashing wake, all phosph.o.r.escent with lambent sea-fire--the fins of great sharks.
"You need have no fear," said I to the pretty waitress.
She said nothing.
"Of course if you _are_ afraid," I added, "perhaps you might care to change your seat."
There was room in the stern where I sat.
"Do you think there is any danger?" she asked.
"From sharks?"
"Yes."
"Reaching up and biting you?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I don"t really suppose there is," I said, managing to convey the idea, I am ashamed to say, that the catastrophe was a possibility.
She came over and seated herself beside me. I was very much ashamed of myself, but I could not repress a triumphant glance ahead at the other boat, where Kemper sat huddled forward, evidently bored to extinction.
Every now and then I could see him turn and crane his neck as though in an effort to distinguish what was going on in our boat.
There was nothing going on, absolutely nothing. The moon was magnificent; and I think the pretty waitress must have been a little tired, for her head drooped and nodded at moments, even while I was talking to her about a specimen of _Euplectilla speciosa_ on which I had written a monograph.
So she must have been really tired, for the subject was interesting.
"You won"t incommode my operations with sheet and tiller," I said to her kindly, "if you care to rest your head against my shoulder."
Evidently she was very tired, for she did so, and closed her eyes.
After a while, fearing that she might fall over backward into the sea--but let that pa.s.s.... I don"t know whether or not Kemper could distinguish anything aboard our boat. He craned his head enough to twist it off his neck.
To be so utterly, so blindly devoted to science is a great safeguard for a man. Single-mindedness, however, need not induce atrophy of every humane impulse. I drew the pretty waitress closer--not that the night was cold, but it might become so. Changes in the tropics come swiftly. It is well to be prepared.
Her cheek felt very soft against my shoulder. There seemed to be a faint perfume about her hair. It really was odd how subtly fragrant she seemed to be--almost, perhaps, a matter of scientific interest.
Her hands did not seem to be chilled; they did seem unusually smooth and soft.
I said to her: "When at home, I suppose your mother tucks you in; doesn"t she?"
"Yes," she nodded sleepily.
"And what does she do then?" said I, with something of that ponderous playfulness with which I make scientific jokes at a meeting of the Bronx Anthropological a.s.sociation, when I preside.
"She kisses me and turns out the light," said Evelyn Grey, innocently.
I don"t know how much Kemper could distinguish. He kept dodging about and twisting his head until I really thought it would come off, unless it had been screwed on like the top of a piano stool.
A few minutes later he fired his pistol twice; and Evelyn sat up. I never knew why he fired; he never offered any explanation.
Toward midnight I could hear the roar of breakers on our starboard bow.
Evelyn heard them, too, and sat up inquiringly.
"Grue has found the inlet to Black Bayou, I suppose," said I.