"He won"t stay quiet, sirs; I can"t make him!"
We would have thought a delirium had seized the big black had not he then appeared from the same doorway, regarding us with an air of rationality. I have never seen a smile more broad, or more expressive of relief. It simply radiated happiness, and Tommy, staring at him, began to hum a song that had cheered us many a time in the trenches.
"By Jingo, Tommy," I cried, "we"ll name him that!"
And thus he was christened Smiles--which, however, through some fatuous process of fabrication so soon grew to Smilax, that as Smilax he shall henceforth be known.
The frown of displeasure that had gathered on Monsieur"s brow fled as the fellow spoke. For he did speak, telling in his own style that the concussion had been a mere bagatelle, that his faculties had returned quite unimpaired after their brief absence, and that he was hungry but ready to serve us. What he did actually say to express this--to which the professor would have devoted five whole minutes of scientific phrasing--was:
"Me well."
Monsieur sprang forward and imperiously commanded him to sit facing the western glow. He then proceeded to squint closely into the patient fellow"s eyes, he felt of his head, his pulse, and looked at his tongue.
At last he stood back, pondering with an air of deep solemnity.
"It is true," he sighed. "The man is well."
"You look like we ought to put the flag at half-mast," I said. "What"s the objection to a little snicker?"
"I do not understand," he murmured, ignoring this flippancy, "how he got well so soon."
"Of all the funereal old bugs!" Tommy began to laugh at him. "If you ever doctored me, gezabo, and I happened to recover, darned if I wouldn"t turn around and die out of pity for you! Come here, Smilax, I want to ask some questions!"
The result of Tommy"s probing showed that late the previous afternoon, while this negro was fishing sponges, the _Orchid_ deliberately ran him down. She would not have stopped, but luckily he grasped the bowsprit stays and climbed aboard of her. Here he was met and roundly cursed by angry men who were, for a while, at least, in favor of throwing him back. He had seen the _Whim_ following. No, he had not seen a lady. Yes, he had heard strange music that, with our shooting at them, decided him to swim off to us during the night.
To Tommy"s further questioning we learned that he knew nothing of the Ten Thousand Islands except through hearsay. As to his wound the recital was brief: he had been put to work wrapping up many things in old sails; two men came into the galley and stood by while he finished the last bundle, then one of them who wore a cap like--he pointed to Gates--stepped behind him, something crashed upon his head, and that was all.
Tommy drew in his breath with a sharp hiss, saying:
"That"s a cold blooded bunch!"
"They"re on those islands, sir," Gates cried. "I just feel it!"
The mate and his half of the crew had come aboard after making the _Orchid_ snug for whatever weather the increasing sultriness portended, while Tommy took Smilax forward to coach him in the manipulation of an automatic revolver--for this modern arm puzzled the big negro who was, however, nicely skilled in the use of older models.
That something brewed in the way of a storm did not require a barometer or the eye of a seaman to determine, so I insisted upon speeding up preparations for the landing force. This met the approval of all, since the skipper thought it likely that we could be put ash.o.r.e and the _Whim_ get well on her way back to Big Cove before the disturbance came.
While we ate a hasty supper, therefore, Bilkins saw that the things we should want were stored in the small boat: food, ammunition, canvas for a lean-to, matches, utensils of sundry kinds--in fact, the necessaries.
He had attended to my camping outfits before, and possessed a genius for knowing what to include. Only when this was under way, and the mate had thrice a.s.sured Gates of his ability to navigate the _Whim_ on her ticklish course down the coast, did the old captain feel satisfied to join us at table.
He brought with him a large chart that he pinned to the wall and, nodding to it as he tucked a napkin under his chin, said:
"You should take that, sir. It shows scarce more"n the sh.o.r.e line, but the sh.o.r.e"s where you"ll be, and not far inland. Here"s Little Cove," he touched the spot with his fork. "In harf an hour we"ll lay outside it, not being able to get in, and there we"ll anchor to put you off. Who"ll you be taking with you, sir?"
"Tommy and I thought we"d make a sort of reconnoissance first, and Bilkins says he wants to go as cook," I answered. "In a day or two, weather permitting, we"ll sail the small boat up to Big Cove for a council of war."
"Well, sir," he said, shaking his head, "just go slow, that"s all I arsk. Don"t start anything. There"s no use two young fellows kicking up a racket without their friends, that"s what I say. So just poke around, but keep out of sight; learn all you want, but don"t start anything. If you carn"t learn it all, be satisfied with harf; then the rest of us will take that and make a whole of it in no time. Am I right, Professor?"
"You are right, _mon Capitaine_, if they will mind you. But will they? A chance comes for to--what my boy Tommy calls plug--that old sinner, and so they will jump to a fight. Fight! Bah! How many fools give a life for one who cannot give a reason!"
"There"s reason enough here," Tommy laughed. "But we"ll promise to be careful, if that satisfies you."
When at last we dropped anchor half a mile outside the entrance of Little Cove our deck became active. I went off first with the supplies to choose a spot where they should be stored, although in such a black night this might have been left haphazard to the men. But one never believes, on occasions so momentous as pitching camp, that others know a jot about it but oneself--to this there are practically no exceptions.
While being rowed sh.o.r.eward I noticed that the wind had quite died down, leaving a suffocation in the air that is difficult to explain; but I"ve felt something like it on a sultry summer day when the sky is black with slowly advancing clouds, when the birds have become too awed to chirp and every leaf in the trees hangs motionless. It is in these suspenses of unpleasant expectation, when at any moment the heavens will open with a hissing smash of fire and nature be turned to fury, that one breathes heavily. There is no other feeling like it, except the drag of torturing minutes before being called to make a speech, or to be whistled over the top into No Man"s Land.
Our prow grated on the sand and in silence we began to unload. Back from the sloping beach grew a fringe of small machineel trees and palms; the beach and they, as well as I could judge, forming a kind of amphitheater to the water.
My men wanted to raise the canvas into a make-shift tent before returning for the second load, but I thought better of this and had them leave it as it was, wrapped about our guns and stowed with the other things beneath the palms. Until daylight showed how well our position might be screened from the islands, it were a short sighted business to stretch a tell-tale piece of white duck that could be seen for miles.
Already there were eerie whisperings of some disturbance in the sky.
From the black forest far behind us could be detected faint restless noises, as if a myriad agitated spirits were scurrying hither and thither whipping their wings against the branches. Something more than an ordinary man"s size blow was coming out of the southeast, so I tumbled the crew into their boat, charging them to pull right heartily and bring back Tommy, at least, before too late.
They must have got close to the _Whim_ when a force, as sudden as it was at the moment unexpected, almost lifted me off my feet. Indeed, had I not possessed the presence of mind to fall flat upon the beach I should have gone kittering. In half a second the heavens were cluttered not only with screaming and tumbling winds but branches of large trees driven along as straws. I dug my toes and fingers into the sand, flattening out for dear life. Close upon the head of this hurricane came the deluge of rain, cloudburst after cloudburst. Then lightning was unchained, veritable shocks of fire, and no thunder out of h.e.l.l could have been more appalling.
For perhaps a minute I had not been given a chance to think of the small boat, or the _Whim_, but struggling to raise my head I stared through the inky s.p.a.ce eagerly awaiting the next flash. It came almost at once, bringing into image the Cove as if a million green calcium lights were focused there. This was but for an instant, yet such is the peculiar effect of lightning that in the following blackness each detail of the scene remained photographed upon my retinae. I saw the turbulent waters apparently sweeping, as a mill race, out to sea; I saw a lone palm, that had formerly stood in dignified solitude upon a nearby point of land, now bent in the wildest agony, its leafy top resembling an umbrella turned inside out. I saw the _Whim_, greenish white in a greenish foam, heeled over till her masts were all but on the waves and her mainsail, half torn from its boom, snapping in the wind. In this fashion she was being driven at breakneck speed across the Gulf. I thought--I tried to think--that I had seen a small boat being dragged behind. Surely my men had reached her!
But another flash, and still another, brought no greater a.s.surance of this. Each showed the yacht farther away, more blurred by rain, until the distance became too great for me to make her out at all.
And then another sky-splitting flame photographed a sight that made my blood congeal. I got but an instantaneous glimpse of it from the corner of my eye before the world became wrapped again in darkness--but something had been there, some huge, horrible monster was rising out of the water and waddling toward me. I had seen two long dripping arms, or feelers, extending in my direction. Crouched, with my nerves on fire, I waited. The rifles and revolvers were wrapped in the canvas and could not be reached in time; there was nothing to do but wait till this thing touched me.
It seemed an age before the heavens split again, and then I gave a yell wilder than the lashing rain, a yell of joy; for, staggering up the beach was Smilax, true to his name with a grin so broad that the greenish glare flickered on his teeth.
His sense of direction was either extremely acute or he possessed the eyes of a cat, for in the following darkness I felt a hand grasp my shoulder and push me toward the trees. Obediently I yielded. Then above the storm I heard him tearing leaves from the smaller palms until, by overlapping them against some bushes so they would be held by the wind, he constructed a lean-to--in the circ.u.mstances a most creditable achievement--beneath which I crawled.
The rain drumming upon this shelter made conversation an effort, but in half an hour the storm had all but blown itself to pieces and then I let fly a string of questions--the first being of our small boat.
He told me, in his taciturn way, that her crew had made safe just in time. As they scrambled aboard the hurricane struck. The mate, knowing with laudatory foresight that the masts were in danger of destruction, had rushed forward and chopped the anchor cable. Even that had not saved the mainsail from being torn away.
As to the fate of our yacht neither he nor I felt much concern. I knew her to be a staunch craft, handled by able seamen, and felt that she would come out on top even if upon the coast of Mexico. Then, with a simplicity that deeply touched me, he added that as she was about to be blown off for an absence of, perhaps, some days, and he realized that I would be in need of help, he dived overboard.
"But," I cried, remembering the anger of that seething water, "you took your life in your hands!"
"Me swim all over," came his quiet reply; but whether he meant all over the world, or all over as might apply to his personal self, was left in doubt.
Anyway, I do not believe there is another man living who could have breasted that hurricane-lashed sea for such a distance. I could judge something of what it cost him by the way he had gasped for breath--and since then I have seen him finish a fifteen-mile run, breathing little faster than normally. This gives an idea of his task that night, and the risk he took--and the indifference with which he took it; yet about his stupendous strength I can not write, but only marvel.
Wet clothes are not conducive to sleep, but I was thoroughly tired, healthily drowsy. There were more questions to be asked, plans to be discussed, but my G.o.ds descended; and, lo, when I looked again the sun was shining in all its glory.
CHAPTER XIII
ON TO DEATH RIVER!
Some day I shall write an ode, not to sleep but to the pleasure of awaking when the sleep has been deep and dreamless, when the day is ushered in by smiling skies, a laughing earth, and a forest of joyous songsters. More especially beautiful is the face of nature after a storm-swept night, for then, indeed, the blinking dawn itself reflects the grat.i.tude of mundane things for their deliverance. In the forest one hears a water-drip--aftermath of rains; a gentle, almost noiseless fall of crystal drop on crystal drop tapping the loamy soil, and imagination sings in whatsoever key the soul is tuned.
But with what reaches of farther imaginings do we greet the day, and how variously! Our eyes do not require a visual picture of the lone wild turkey on his cypress roost to know that he is ruffling his feathers, craning his neck inquisitively downward in all directions, before chancing to descend to earth and breakfast; nor need we see the panther skulking from his lair to know that he has stopped to lick his paw and pa.s.s it over his face--the feline morning ablution. Each creature has a particular mode of resurrection after its hours of mimic death; and so I, on a bed of whatsoever it may be, yawn hideously and stretch my arms and grumble: O, Lord, how I hate to get up! Indeed, how variously do we greet the day!