by Philip Wylie
"I know. I know."
"We're no worse off than we were before," Henry insisted. "And that makes twice.
The third time--they'll take us back."
"The third time," McCobb repeated huskily and Henry, looking at him, realized that he, also, was old.
They found Stone on the 6th of June.
He was lying beside his wheelbarrow. He had been carrying manure from the goat corral to the garden.
He looked as if he had fallen asleep.
McCobb, who had come upon him first, summoned Jack.
"He's dead, Jack."
"Yes, Mr. McCobb,"
"Where's Henry?"
"On the bay."
"Ring the bell."
"Yes, Mr. McCobb." The Scotchman met Henry on the porch. "Your father died this afternoon. A heart attack. It must have been instantaneous, and there's no sign of any pain."
Henry walked inside the house and sat down beneath the sections of newspaper which had been framed behind glass that once had formed the bridge windows of the Falcon.
"We all expected it, didn't we?" he said slowly.
"We did, Henry. He's been failing for a long time."
"He was--fairly old."
"Almost seventy."
"Where is he?"
"I--I haven't moved him yet. He fell under that tree with purple flowers."
"Oh."
They went out together--McCobb with his arm encircling Henry's broad back.
They buried Stephen Stone inside the compound at the foot of the huge tree on which he had first laid his hand--the only tree of any size within the confines of the stockade. His headstone was a boulder and on the face of it McCobb fixed a-plate of solid gold:
STEPHEN STONE
The days were long, after that. The house seemed strangely empty.
That emptiness frightened them.
It was in their eyes when they looked at each other.
Next.
It was in Henry's soul when he went to the edge of the sea and whispered to the water: ''I'll be last. I'll be there alone. Alone with three graves. And I shall go mad."
McCobb came after him that day, as he had done once before.
They sat together.
"Any day, now—"
' I'm thirty-one," Henry answered tonelessly. "And I have been waiting all these years for any day."
"The cities"--McCobb murmured his list--"and women."
"Women!"
"Women--laddie--"
Henry rose.
"Why torture me with it? I shall be last. I'll fish here alone. You will lie there and Jack. And I shall laugh and run on the beach and scream like a parrot. I'll never see a woman. I'll never--never--never--"
"Henry!"
"Oh--right. I'm sorry."
His resignation was worse than his anger.
And in his heart McCobb admitted that all he said was true, all he felt was justified.
Chapter Nine: THE MIRACLE
MCCOBB watched through the glasses. He knew what was going to happen--it had happened before.
Henry, stark naked, poised on the gunwale of the boat and dove.
His body flashed in the sun and McCobb could see the long knife in his hand.
Jack came out on the porch. He followed the direction of McCobb's glasses.
"What's he doing?"
"Watch."
The ripples which Henry's dive had started ran toward the shore. There was a very brief interval of calm. Then the whole surface of the bay in the neighborhood of the boat was broken by a mighty threshing.
In the foamy melée Henry came to the surface and swam quickly to the boat. He caught the gunwale and climbed aboard. He stuck the knife in the wood of a seat.
"Gor!" Jack murmured. "What is it?"
"Shark." McCobb bit off the word.
The splashing was already lessening. Red flowed in the froth. The motion of a long tail was visible, and the fish twisted round and round.
Henry saw McCobb on the porch and waved to him.
"He dive in and kill a big shark like that?" Jack asked.
"He did?"
"Wiff a knife?"
"With a knife. One just like that weapon you carry around."
"Damn!"
McCobb said nothing.
The shark's motions were feeble now, and Henry was paddling toward it.
"That's dangerous," Jack said tentatively.
"You bet it is."
"What's he do it for?"
"Fun."
"For fun?"
"Yes, Jack."
"That ain't fun."
"For him it is. He's sick of things--just like you and me, Jack. Only he's young.
We can swallow our feelings and say nothing. He can't. He has to go out and do things.
The more dangerous the better."
"Sure enough?"
"That's the way boys like that are made."
Suddenly McCobb turned and smiled at Jack in a manner almost brotherly. He could smile--now that the shark was lying with its ripped belly toward the sky.
"You ought to know. I remember once Mr. Stone mentioned that you used to raise cane when you were a young buck."
Jack grinned and scratched his woolly head.
"That's a fact." Doubt came in his face. "But I wouldn't of done nuthing like that.
Not me."
McCobb laughed.
Henry made fast his shark and rowed laboriously toward the beach. Even through the glasses McCobb could see the flexing of his muscles.
Half an hour later the shark-killer appeared, bringing a portion of the hide.
"You saw my day's catch?"
McCobb nodded.
"I took this for shoosies and threw the rest back."
"It never occurred to you that you might get hurt doing that, did it, Henry?"
"Oh--no. Never."
"Never thought that three or four of those things might come at you simultaneously?"
Henry stopped and considered with mock seriousness.
"Now that you mention it, Mr. McCobb--"
"Wouldn't mean anything to you if I asked you to take it easy--for Jack's and my sake?"
Henry shook his head up and down rapidly.
"Sure. I'll stop."
"And you might abandon the idea that you can get one of the crocodiles barehanded, too."
"It's abandoned."
McCobb was embarrassed. ''I'm not trying to supplant the place of your father.
But--you see--if anything happened to you I'd feel responsible for cheating you out of your life--up there."
He pointed toward the north.
"It's all right. I was just looking for a little excitement. There isn't much here any more."
"I know."
Both men stared over the porch rail.
Two traveler's-trees spread fans like peacocks' tails in the yard. Beyond them, ebonies and eucalyptus and a member of the banyan family whose numerous gray trunks ran to earth like the probosces of elephants. Over all a redundancy of foliage with caves in it where the sun shot down, and birds whose plumage made them: look like small fragments of a rainbow.
After that came the sea, so blue that the eyes ached in contemplation of it, and the shoals where the water turned to jade green and tan and even, along the coral edges, a pure alabaster white.
A scene indescribably beautiful and to them unutterably tedious. They had grown careless of the garden, and flowers bloomed there in a rank luxury of competition, overwhelming each other and threatening to inundate the house itself.
Days passed again.
Henry settled into an inactivity which to MeCobb was worse than his foolhardy pursuit of stimulating dangers. He did not read, he did not work, he ate and slept and was silent.
Months.
They seldom rallied each other. The flow of life was slowing down and because Henry had ceased to care, the others had somehow lost interest.
When the ship came, they did not see it at all.
Jack was making preparat
ions for lunch. McCobb was in his shop. Henry sat with a book on his knees and his eyes closed.
He heard sounds come over the water of the bay. Oarlocks creaked and there were voices. His stultified subconscious suggested that McCobb had gone fishing.
Then he realized that the voices were not those of his own companions.
With legs like water, he went to the porch.
A lifeboat, rowed by a half dozen sailors, was already halfway into the bay. A man stood in the stern with the tiller in his hands. It was his voice that Henry had heard--
for he was stroking his sailors.
Henry opened his mouth and shouted for McCobb with every ounce of his power-
-and not a sound issued from his throat. Sweat broke out upon him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
Once again he tried, and a sort of scream was the result.
McCobb at that moment came around the house, and trees prevented him from seeing the bay.
"What ails you, lad? Are you choking?"
Henry's ashen face swung toward the water and McCobb hurried to his side. He remembered later that he thought Henry was seeing a great beast emerging from the ocean. He did not think of men.
Next, he was hugging Henry.
"There it is, lad," he whispered. "There's home.
There they come. See how finely they row? Straight for the sand. Seven of them, Henry! Now--are you having a thrill?"
Henry didn't speak.
"We've got to go down and meet them," McCobb gibbered. His glee was ghastly.
"That's the proper function of a host."
He started to pull Henry toward the steps.
But Henry turned. He pointed toward the kitchen.
"That's right." McCobb had a spasm of shaking and his breath hissed between his teeth. "Jack."
The word was inaudible.
"Call him, son."
"Jack!"
Suddenly Henry's voice was let loose and it echoed across the bay so vehemently that the sailors stopped rowing and turned to look at the shore.
"Yes, Mr. Henry?"
The Negro's words came peacefully through the house. He stood beside them.
"Dreams," he said mysteriously. "Dreams. "
"Come!"
McCobb tottered across the compound.
They reached the sand just as the small boat grounded and the sailors jumped into the shallow water. The run down the road had restored them somewhat.
McCobb went first. He held out his hand to the gaping officer.
"My name's McCobb. David McCobb, This is Mr. Stone and our man Jack. We're glad to see you--"
He got no further. He was seized by a paroxysm of weeping.
The officer and his men stared. They stared at the clothes, at the faces, and at the house. One or two of them whispered in a language that the islanders could not understand.
Henry mastered his wonderment.
"We--we don't know what to say. You see--we've been here for thirty-three years."
Then the officer spoke. He spoke rapidly and they did not understand a syllable.
He turned to his men and lifted his hand. The men cheered and waved their hats.
McCobb had recovered again.
"They're Scandinavians, Henry. They probably don't know a word of English. But it doesn't matter." He beckoned toward them and turned to Jack. "Come on, Jack. We'll take them to the house and get dinner for them. A big dinner."
The officer--a short, blond man--came to life. He stepped forward and embraced the islanders. He pounded their backs. And the men mingled with them.
There was, abruptly, an immense confusion--a confusion which was partly allayed as McCobb began to pull and beckon them toward the house. They went up the road.
As they walked, the officer came beside Henry. He seemed to be asking a question. He repeated it--pointing to the sea and holding up first two fingers and then five and finally ten. Henry was so breathless from this contact with the fourth person he had seen in his life that it was some time before he understood.
Then, nodding, smiling, talking nonsense, he held up all ten fingers three times and three fingers more.
The officer shook his head and shouted to his men that the castaways had been on the island for thirty-three years. Astonishment swept over them.
Then they went through the corral gate. McCobb swept his arm across the compound.
"Our home, gentlemen."
Jack was babbling to one of the sailors who regarded him with a fantastic concentration and nodded every time he spoke. McCobb and Henry took the arms of the officer, as if they feared he would get away.
The new arrivals on Stone Island went over the home and possessions of the trio they had discovered with shouts of amazement.
Everything astounded them--the building itself, the goats and chickens, the kitchen, the gold ornaments, the arms in the living-room closet. They gathered in groups and declaimed to each other all every new discovery.
McCobb at last brought a bottle of whisky.
The mate lifted his drink.
"Skoal!"
McCobb answered, "Skoal!"
Everyone roared with laughter. Seldom on earth has such excitement existed in the hearts of men.
Laughter, tears, handshaking, oration, shouts, whispers--for half an hour everything was madness.
Then the mate made a short speech and pointed toward the sea. They returned to the porch.
Over the tops of the trees on the headland, two masts were visible.
They went back to the shore. But when the sailors pushed off, Henry, McCobb and Jack scrambled into their boat and followed with imploring cries.
The act was so pitiful that it made the trip to the ship relatively silent.
"Look, laddie."
Henry stopped rowing for a moment and followed McCobb's finger.
The ship was small. A freighter. She was low in the water and her sides were rusted. The deck was lined with men and on the bridge the captain leaned out and stared at the second boat with profound astonishment.
The scene on deck was a repetition of the scene on shore, save that the mate who had commanded the small boat went immediately into a tirade of explanation.
Then the captain took their hands and spoke a number of words which were obviously intended as a welcome.
After that McCobb tried to clarify things. Henry intervened with French, which was received with smiles and shakes of the head and then with German--which the captain understood slightly.
That understanding was all that was needed.
Glasses clinked in the captain's cabin and he stumblingly expressed his wish to see the island home for himself.
They arranged, then, to dine there. Jack went ahead with the ship's cook. The others followed.
The afternoon was a fury of industry. Henry and the captain and one of the mates climbed Mount McCobb. The men from the sea stared spellbound at the land.
McCobb packed. The sailors cleared out all the vegetables from the garden and transferred them to the Cjoda. They took the chickens and the goats and ten of the zebus.
The rest of the zebus were turned loose.
The abundance of gold in the house astonished the sailors and two or three of them made away with some of McCobb's ornaments. The gems they did not see, and the Scotchman secreted some on his person and the rest in the trunks. The Scotchman also opened one of the last of the copper drums. It contained clothes. He transferred them to a trunk. Also he took many papers and notebooks and maps.
Later in the afternoon the men returned from the mountain. Jack had dinner ready at six. The sailors were fed on the porch and the officers sat with Henry and McCobb in the living-room. Roast meat, baked potatoes, beets, carrots, fruit and wine.
The sailors were sent back with one officer to the ship that night, but the captain and the mate who had first reached shore stayed in the house. By signs, in halting German, and with much excitement, the islanders told the story of their arrival and their long so
journ.
Henry could not think consecutively for more than a few seconds.
"Aren't the men fine looking?" he said to McCobb, and the Scot, who had seen better men, agreed.
"They're going round Good Hope to New York. They'll take us straight home."
McCobb nodded and twisted the stem of his glass in his fingers.
"Was denken sie--"
"Ja. Drei und dreissig Jahren. Mein vater--"
Through the night to dawn. The captain slept.
But Henry did not sleep and McCobb did not sleep and Jack's slumbers were punctuated by strange writhings, and once by laughter.
Henry stood with McCobb on the stern deck of the Cjoda. Her engines clanked and foamy water poured away from her rusted hull.
Stone Island moved backward. Soon they were as far from it as Henry had ever sailed.
The trees melted into one green coast. The mountain became sharply delineated against the blue sky. Its edges lost their precision. The green began to grow blue.
"My heart hurts," Henry said slowly.
"Yes, son."
"I can't keep my eyes off the men. It's impossible to believe that there are so many of them."
"I know."
"They all look exactly alike."
"You'll get over that."
"I think I could spend a year on this ship without ever minding it."
"You'll get over that, too."
"We're not going to make any other port. It'll be about seven weeks. Think! Only seven weeks! I wish the captain and I could understand each other better."
"Look at the island, lad. You may never see it again."
' I'll come back."
"I'm wondering."
A long silence.
"Happy, McCobb?"
' I'm the happiest old man on earth."
"You're not old."
McGobb--laughed. ''I've even got no right to be active at my age. But the life was healthy. I feel like a young fellow of fifty-five."
"I feel old."
"Humph. The reason they didn't believe we'd been here so long is because you look So young--in spite of the mustache. I had to show 'em our records. Even then--they didn't quite think it was true. Not until they saw the sills were rotting under the house and until they saw the apple trees. After that--they did believe me."
"I wonder what it will be like?"
"I don't know."
In the tiny wireless room of the Cjoda the operator was flashing the news of the finding of three Americans on a hitherto unknown island.