"I"m ashamed to ask it," she said abruptly, as she steered me home, her sleeves rolled up, her hair blowing in the wind, "and ashamed of my silly tears too, because I really can"t make out what caused them; but, Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me not to go off for your long expeditions--just yet. I beg it of you." She was so in earnest that she forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways and made us roll dangerously. "I have tried hard not to ask this," she added, bringing the canoe round again, "but I simply can"t help myself."
It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesitation was plain; for she went on before I could reply, and her beseeching expression and intensity of manner impressed me very forcibly.
"For another two weeks only--"
"Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight," I said, seeing at once what she was driving at, but wondering if it was best to encourage her or not.
"If I knew you were to be on the island till then," she said, her face alternately pale and blushing, and her voice trembling a little, "I should feel so much happier."
I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish.
"And safer," she added almost in a whisper; "especially--at night, I mean."
"Safer, Joan?" I repeated, thinking I had never seen her eyes so soft and tender. She nodded her head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face.
It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my thoughts and judgment may have been, and somehow I understood that she spoke with good reason, though for the life of me I could not have put it into words.
"Happier--and safer," she said gravely, the canoe giving a dangerous lurch as she leaned forward in her seat to catch my answer. Perhaps, after all, the wisest way was to grant her request and make light of it, easing her anxiety without too much encouraging its cause.
"All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise," and the instant look of relief in her face, and the smile that came back like sunlight to her eyes, made me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was capable of considerable sacrifice after all.
"But, you know, there"s nothing to be afraid of," I added sharply; and she looked up in my face with the smile women use when they know we are talking idly, yet do not wish to tell us so.
"_You_ don"t feel afraid, I know," she observed quietly.
"Of course not; why should I?"
"So, if you will just humour me this once I--I will never ask anything foolish of you again as long as I live," she said gratefully.
"You have my promise," was all I could find to say.
She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon lying a quarter of a mile ahead, and paddled swiftly; but a minute or two later she paused again and stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across the thwarts.
"You"ve not heard anything at night yourself, have you?" she asked.
"I never hear anything at night," I replied shortly, "from the moment I lie down till the moment I get up."
"That dismal howling, for instance," she went on, determined to get it out, "far away at first and then getting closer, and stopping just outside the Camp?"
"Certainly not."
"Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it."
"Most likely you did," was my unsympathetic response.
"And you don"t think father has heard it either, then?"
"No. He would have told me if he had."
This seemed to relieve her mind a little. "I know mother hasn"t," she added, as if speaking to herself, "for she hears nothing--ever."
It was two nights after this conversation that I woke out of deep sleep and heard sounds of screaming. The voice was really horrible, breaking the peace and silence with its shrill clamour. In less than ten seconds I was half dressed and out of my tent. The screaming had stopped abruptly, but I knew the general direction, and ran as fast as the darkness would allow over to the women"s quarters, and on getting close I heard sounds of suppressed weeping. It was Joan"s voice. And just as I came up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling with a lantern. Other voices became audible in the same moment behind me, and Timothy Maloney arrived, breathless, less than half dressed, and carrying another lantern that had gone out on the way from being banged against a tree. Dawn was just breaking, and a chill wind blew in from the sea. Heavy black clouds drove low overhead.
The scene of confusion may be better imagined than described. Questions in frightened voices filled the air against this background of suppressed weeping. Briefly--Joan"s silk tent had been torn, and the girl was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat rea.s.sured by our noisy presence, however,--for she was plucky at heart,--she pulled herself together and tried to explain what had happened; and her broken words, told there on the edge of night and morning upon this wild island ridge, were oddly thrilling and distressingly convincing.
"Something touched me and I woke," she said simply, but in a voice still hushed and broken with the terror of it, "something pushing against the tent; I felt it through the canvas. There was the same sniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent give a little as when wind shakes it. I heard breathing--very loud, very heavy breathing--and then came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvas ripped open close to my face."
She had instantly dashed out through the open flap and screamed at the top of her voice, thinking the creature had actually got into the tent.
But nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not the faintest sound of an animal making off under cover of the darkness. The brief account seemed to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all as we listened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this day, the wind blowing the women"s hair, and Maloney craning his head forward to listen, and his wife, open-mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pine tree.
"Come over to the stockade and we"ll get the fire going," I said; "that"s the first thing," for we were all shaking with the cold in our scanty garments. And at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a blanket and carrying his gun; he was still drunken with sleep.
"The dog again," Maloney explained briefly, forestalling his questions; "been at Joan"s tent. Torn it, by Gad! this time. It"s time we did something." He went on mumbling confusedly to himself.
Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly in the darkness. I saw his eyes aflame in the glare of the flickering lanterns. He made a movement as though to start out and hunt--and kill. Then his glance fell on the girl crouching on the ground, her face hidden in her hands, and there leaped into his features an expression of savage anger that transformed them. He could have faced a dozen lions with a walking stick at that moment, and again I liked him for the strength of his anger, his self-control, and his hopeless devotion.
But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless chase.
"Come and help me start the fire, Sangree," I said, anxious also to relieve the girl of our presence; and a few minutes later the ashes, still growing from the night"s fire, had kindled the fresh wood, and there was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up the surrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards.
"I heard nothing," he whispered; "what in the world do you think it is?
It surely can"t be only a dog!"
"We"ll find that out later," I said, as the others came up to the grateful warmth; "the first thing is to make as big a fire as we can."
Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on some warmer, and less miraculous, garments. And while they stood talking in low voices Maloney and I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little enough to see, but that little was unmistakable. Some animal had scratched up the ground at the head of the tent, and with a great blow of a powerful paw--a paw clearly provided with good claws--had struck the silk and torn it open. There was a hole large enough to pa.s.s a fist and arm through.
"It can"t be far away," Maloney said excitedly. "We"ll organise a hunt at once; this very minute."
We hurried back to the fire, Maloney talking boisterously about his proposed hunt. "There"s nothing like prompt action to dispel alarm," he whispered in my ear; and then turned to the rest of us.
"We"ll hunt the island from end to end at once," he said, with excitement; "that"s what we"ll do. The beast can"t be far away. And the Bo"sun"s Mate and Joan must come too, because they can"t be left alone.
Hubbard, you take the right sh.o.r.e, and you, Sangree, the left, and I"ll go in the middle with the women. In this way we can stretch clean across the ridge, and nothing bigger than a rabbit can possibly escape us." He was extraordinarily excited, I thought. Anything affecting Joan, of course, stirred him prodigiously. "Get your guns and we"ll start the drive at once," he cried. He lit another lantern and handed one each to his wife and Joan, and while I ran to fetch my gun I heard him singing to himself with the excitement of it all.
Meanwhile the dawn had come on quickly. It made the flickering lanterns look pale. The wind, too, was rising, and I heard the trees moaning overhead and the waves breaking with increasing clamour on the sh.o.r.e. In the lagoon the boat dipped and splashed, and the sparks from the fire were carried aloft in a stream and scattered far and wide.
We made our way to the extreme end of the island, measured our distances carefully, and then began to advance. None of us spoke. Sangree and I, with c.o.c.ked guns, watched the sh.o.r.e lines, and all within easy touch and speaking distance. It was a slow and blundering drive, and there were many false alarms, but after the best part of half an hour we stood on the farther end, having made the complete tour, and without putting up so much as a squirrel. Certainly there was no living creature on that island but ourselves.
"I know what it is!" cried Maloney, looking out over the dim expanse of grey sea, and speaking with the air of a man making a discovery; "it"s a dog from one of the farms on the larger islands"--he pointed seawards where the archipelago thickened--"and it"s escaped and turned wild. Our fires and voices attracted it, and it"s probably half starved as well as savage, poor brute!"
No one said anything in reply, and he began to sing again very low to himself.
The point where we stood--a huddled, shivering group--faced the wider channels that led to the open sea and Finland. The grey dawn had broken in earnest at last, and we could see the racing waves with their angry crests of white. The surrounding islands showed up as dark ma.s.ses in the distance, and in the east, almost as Maloney spoke, the sun came up with a rush in a stormy and magnificent sky of red and gold. Against this splashed and gorgeous background black clouds, shaped like fantastic and legendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing stream, and to this day I have only to close my eyes to see again that vivid and hurrying procession in the air. All about us the pines made black splashes against the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, indeed, had already begun to fall in big drops.
We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without speech, made our way back slowly to the stockade, Maloney humming s.n.a.t.c.hes of his songs, Sangree in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment"s notice, and the women floundering in the rear with myself and the extinguished lanterns.
Yet it was only a dog!