by Max Brand
Then the great idea came to Harrigan. He rose without a word and ran out into the rain to a fallen tree which must have been blown down years before, for now the trunk and the splintered stump were rotten to the core. He had noticed it that day. There was only a rim of firm wood left of the wreck. The stump gave readily enough under his pull. He ripped away long strips of the casing, bark and wood, and carried it back to the shelter. He made a second trip to secure a great armful of the powder-dry time-rotted core of the stump.
His third expedition carried him a little farther afield to a small sapling which he could barely make out through the night. He bent down the top of the little tree and snapped off about five feet of its length. This in turn he brought to the shelter. He stopped short here, frozen with amazement. The girl was raving in her delirium, and to soothe her, McTee was singing to her horrible sailor chanteys, pieced out with improvised and foolish words.
Harrigan listened only while his astonishment kept him helpless; then he took up his work. He first stripped away the twigs from his sapling top. Then he tied the twine firmly at either end of the stick, leaving the string loose. Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he had brought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard wood several inches in length. By rubbing this against the fragment of the wheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a rough point.
He took the largest slab of the rim wood from the stump and knelt upon it to hold it firm. On this wood he rested his peg, which was wrapped in several folds of the twine and pressed down by the second fragment of wood. When he moved the long stick back and forth, the peg revolved at a tremendous rate of speed, its partially sharpened end digging into the wood on which it rested. It is a method of starting a fire which was once familiarly used by Indians.
For half an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor. Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed of its rotation — a small sound of protest drowned by the bellowing of the storm and the ringing songs of McTee. Now the smoke rose again and this time the peg kept firm. The smoke grew pungent; there was a spark, then a glow, and it spread and widened among the powdery, rotten wood which Harrigan had heaped around his rotating peg.
He tossed the peg and bow aside and blew softly and steadily on the glowing point. It spread still more and now a small tongue of flame rose and flickered. Instantly Harrigan laid small bits of wood criss-cross on the pile of tinder. The flame licked at them tentatively, recoiled, rose again and caught hold. The fire was well started.
With gusts of wind fanning it roughly, the flame rose fast. Harrigan made other journeys to the rotten stump and wrenched away great chunks of bark and wood. He came back and piled them on the fire. It towered high, the upper tongues twisting among the branches of the tree. They laid Kate Malone between the windbreak and the fire. In a short time her trembling ceased; she turned her face to the blaze and slept.
They watched her with jealous care all night. In lieu of a pillow they heaped some of the wood dust from the stump beneath her head. When their large hands hovered over her to straighten the clothes which the wind fluttered, she seemed marvelously delicate and fragile. It was astonishing that so fragile a creature should have lived through the buffeting of the sea.
Toward morning the storm fell at a breath and the rain died away. They agreed that it might be safe to leave her alone while they ventured out to look for food, and at the first hint of light they started out, one to the north, and one to the south. Harrigan started at an easy run. He felt a joyous exultation like that of a boy eager for play. He tried to find shellfish first, but without success. His search carried him far down the beach to a group of big rocks rolling out to sea. On the leeward side of these rocks, in little hollows of the stone, he found a quantity of the eggs of some seafowl. They were quite large, the shells a dirty, faint blue and apparently very thick. He collected all he could carry and started back.
As he approached the shelter, he heard voices and stopped short with a sudden pang; McTee had returned first and awakened the girl. Harrigan sighed. He knew now how he had wanted to watch her eyes open for the first time, the cool sea-green eyes lighted by bewilderment, surprise, and joy. All that delight had been McTee’s. It was that dark, handsome face she had seen leaning over her when she awoke. He was firmly implanted in her mind by this time as her savior. She opened her eyes, hungered, and she had seen McTee bringing food. Harrigan drew a long breath and went on slowly with lowered head.
They sat cross-legged, facing each other. The captain was showing Kate his prizes, which seemed to consist of a quantity of shellfish. She clapped her hands at something McTee said, and her laughter, wonderfully clear, reminded Harrigan of the chiming of faraway church bells. Blind anger suddenly possessed him as he stood by the fire glowering down at them.
CHAPTER 11
“EGGS! HOW PERFECTLY wonderful, Mr. Harrigan! And I’m starved!”
She looked up to him, radiant with delight; but the triumphant eye of Harrigan fell not upon her but on McTee, who had suddenly grown pensive.
“But how can we cook them? There’s nothing to boil water in — and no pan for frying them,” ventured McTee.
“Roast ’em,” said Harrigan scornfully. “Like this.”
He wrapped several eggs in wet clay and placed them in the glowing ashes of the fire which had now burned low.
“While they’re cooking,” said McTee, “I’m going off. I’ve an idea.”
Harrigan watched him with a shade of suspicion while he retreated. He turned his head to find Kate studying him gravely.
“Before you came, Mr. Harrigan—”
“My name’s Dan. That’ll save time.”
“While you were gone,” she went on, thanking him with a smile, “Captain
McTee told me a great many things about you.”
Harrigan stirred uneasily.
“Among other things, that you had no such record as he hinted at while we were on the Mary Rogers. So I have to ask you to forgive me—”
The blue eyes grew bright as he watched her.
“I’ve forgotten all that, for the sea washed it away from my mind.”
“Really?”
“As clean as the wind has washed the sky.”
Not a cloud stained the broad expanse from horizon to horizon.
“That’s a beautiful way to put it. Now that we are here on the island, we begin all over again and forget what happened on the ship?”
“Aye, all of it.”
“Shake on it.”
He took her hand, but so gingerly that she laughed.
“We have to be careful of you,” he explained seriously. “Here we are, as McTee puts it, on the rim of the world, two men an’ one woman. If something happens to one of us, a third of our population’s gone.”
“A third of our population! Then I’m very important?”
“You are.”
He was so serious that it disconcerted her. It suddenly became impossible for her to meet his eyes, they burned so bright, so eager, with something like a threat in them. She hailed the returning figure of McTee with relief.
He came bearing a large gourd, and he knelt before Kate so that she might look into it. She cried out at what she saw, for he had washed the inside of the gourd and filled it with cool water from the spring.
“Look!” said she to Harrigan. “It’s water — and my throat is fairly burning.”
“Humph,” growled Harrigan, and he avoided the eye of McTee.
The gourd was too heavy and clumsy for her to handle. The captain had to raise and tip it so that she might drink, and as she drank, her eyes went up to his with gratitude.
Harrigan set his teeth and commenced raking the roasted eggs from the hot ashes. When her thirst was quenched, she looked in amazement at Harrigan; even his back showed anger. In som
e mysterious manner it was plain that she had displeased the big Irishman.
He turned now and offered her an egg, after removing the clay mold. But when she thanked him with the most flattering of smiles, she became aware that McTee in turn was vexed, while the Irishman seemed perfectly happy again.
“Have an egg, McTee,” he offered, and rolled a couple toward the big captain.
“I will not. I never had a taste for eggs.”
“Why, captain,” murmured Kate, “you can’t live on shellfish?”
“Humph! Can’t I? Very nutritious, Kate, and very healthful. Have to be careful what you eat in this climate. Those eggs, for instance. Can you tell, Harrigan, whether or not they’re fresh?”
Harrigan, his mouth full of egg, paused and glared at the captain.
“For the captain of a ship, McTee,” he said coldly, “your head is packed with fool ideas. Eat your fish an’ don’t spoil the appetites of others.”
He turned to Kate.
“These eggs are new-laid — they’re — they’re not more than twenty-four hours old.”
His glance dared McTee to doubt the statement. The captain accepted the challenge.
“I suppose you watched ’em being laid, Harrigan?”
Harrigan sneered.
“I can tell by the taste partly and partly” — here he cracked the shell of another egg and, stripping it off, held up the little white oval to the light— “and partly by the color. It’s dead white, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That shows it’s fresh. If there was a bit of blue in it, it’d be stale.”
McTee breathed hard.
“You win,” he said. “You ought to be on the stage, Harrigan.”
But Harrigan was deep in another egg. Kate watched the two with covert glances, amazed, wondering. They had saved each other from death at sea, and now they were quarreling bitterly over the qualities of eggs.
And not eggs alone, for McTee, not to be outdone in courtesy, passed a handful of his shellfish to Harrigan. The Irishman regarded the fish and then McTee with cold disgust.
“D’you really think I’m crazy enough to eat one of these?” he queried.
Black McTee was black indeed as he glowered at the big Irishman.
“Open up; let’s hear what you got to say about these shellfish,” he demanded.
Harrigan announced laconically: “Scurvy.”
“What?” This from Kate and McTee at one breath.
“Sure. There ain’t any salt in ’em. No salt is as bad as too much salt.
A friend of mine was once in a place where he couldn’t get any salt
food, an’ he ate a lot of these shellfish. What was the result? Scurvy!
He hasn’t a tooth in his head today. An’ he’s only thirty.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Kate indignantly, and she laid a tentative finger against her white teeth, as if expecting to find them loose.
“I didn’t want to hurt McTee’s feelin’s. Besides, maybe a few of them won’t hurt you — much!”
McTee suddenly burst into laughter, but there was little mirth in the sound.
“Maybe you know these are the great blue clams that are famous for their salt.”
“Really?” said Kate, greatly relieved.
“Yes,” went on McTee, his eyes wandering slightly. “This species of clam has an unusual organ by which it extracts some of the salt from the sea water while taking its food. Look here!”
He held up a shell and indicated a blue-green spot on the inside.
“You see that color? That’s what gives these clams their name and this is also the place where the salt deposit forms. This clam has a high percentage of salt — more than any other.”
Harrigan, sending a bitter side glance at McTee, rose to bring some more wood, for it was imperative that they should keep the fire burning always.
“I’m so glad,” said Kate, “that we have both the eggs and the clams to rely on. At least they will keep us from starving in this terrible place.”
“H’m. I’m not so sure about the eggs.”
He eyed them with a watering mouth, for his raging hunger had not been in the least appeased by the shellfish.
“But I’ll try one just to keep you company.”
He peeled away the shell and swallowed the egg hastily, lest Harrigan, returning, should see that he had changed his mind.
“Maybe the eggs are all right,” he admitted as soon as he could speak, and he picked up another, “but between you and me, I’ll confess that I shall not pay much attention to what Harrigan has to say. He’s never been to sea before. You can’t expect a landlubber to understand all the conditions of a life like this.”
But a new thought which was gradually forming in her brain made Kate reserve judgment. Harrigan came back and placed a few more sticks of wood on the fire.
“I can’t understand,” said Kate, “how you could make a fire without a sign of a match.”
“That’s simple,” said McTee easily. “When a man has traveled about as much as I have, he has to pick up all sorts of unusual ways of doing things. The way we made that fire was to—”
“The way we made it?” interjected Harrigan with bitter emphasis.
Kate frowned as she glanced from one to the other. There was the same deep hostility in their eyes which she had noticed when they faced each other in the captain’s cabin aboard the Mary Rogers.
“An’ why were ye sittin’ prayin’ for fire with the gir-rl thremblin’ and freezin’ to death in yer ar-rms if ye knew so well how to be makin’ one?”
“Hush — Dan,” said Kate; for the fire of anger blew high.
McTee started.
“You know each other pretty well, eh?”
“Tut, tut!” said Harrigan airily. “You can’t expect a slip of a girl to be calling a black man like you by the front name?”
McTee moistened his white lips. He rose.
“I’m going for a walk — I always do after eating.”
And he strode off down the beach. Harrigan instantly secured a handful of the shellfish.
“Speakin’ of salt,” he said apologetically, “I’ll have to try a couple of these to be sure that the captain’s right. I can tell by a taste or two.”
He pried open one of the shells and ate the contents hastily, keeping one eye askance against the return of McTee.
“Maybe he’s right about these shellfish,” he pronounced judicially, “but it’s a hard thing an’ a dangerous thing to take the word of a man like McTee — he’s that hasty. We must go easy on believin’ what he says, Kate.”
CHAPTER 12
THEN UNDERSTANDING FLOODED Kate’s mind like waves of light in a dark room. She tilted back her head and laughed, laughed heartily, laughed till the tears brimmed her eyes. The gloomy scowl of Harrigan stopped her at last. As her mirth died out, the tall form of McTee appeared suddenly before them with his arms crossed. Where they touched his breast, the muscles spread out to a giant size. He was turned toward her, but the gleam of his eye fell full upon Harrigan.
“I suppose,” said McTee, and his teeth clicked after each word like the bolt of a rifle shot home, “I suppose that you were laughing at me?”
The Irishman rose and faced the Scotchman, his head thrust forward and a devil in his eyes.
“An’ what if we were, Misther McTee?” he purred. “An’ what if we wer-r-re, I’m askin’?”
Kate leaped to her feet and sprang between them.
“Is there anything we can do,” she broke in hurriedly, “to get away from the island?”
“A raft?” suggested Harrigan.
McTee smiled his contempt.
“A raft? And how would you cut down the trees to make it?”
“Burn ’em down with a circle of fire at the bottom.”
“And then set green logs afloat? And how fasten ’em together, even supposing we could burn them down and drag them to the water? No, there’s no way of getting off the island
unless a boat passes and catches a glimpse of our fire.”
“Then we’ll have to move this fire to the top of the hill,” said
Harrigan.
“Suppose we go now and look over the hill and see what dry wood is near it,” said McTee.
“Good.”
Something in their eagerness had a meaning for Kate.
“Would you both leave me?” she reproached them.
“It was McTee suggested it,” said Harrigan.
McTee favored his comrade with a glance that would have made any other man give ground. It merely made Harrigan grin.
“We’ll draw straws for who goes and who stays,” said McTee.
Kate picked up two bits of wood.
“The short one stays,” she said.
“Draw,” said Harrigan in a low voice.
“I was taught manners young,” said McTee. “After you.”
They exchanged glares again. The whole sense of her power over these giants came home to her as she watched them fighting their duel of the eyes.
“You suggested it,” she said to McTee.
He stepped forward with an expression as grim as that of a prize fighter facing an antagonist of unknown prowess. Once and again his hand hovered above the sticks before he drew.
“You’ve chosen the walk to the hill,” she said, and showed the shorter stick. “Do you mind?”
“No,” mocked Harrigan, “he always walks after meals.”
Their eyes dwelt almost fondly upon each other. They were both men after the other’s heart. Then the Scotchman turned and strode away.
Kate watched Harrigan suspiciously, but his eyes, following McTee, were gentle and dreamy.
“Ah,” he murmured, “there’s a jewel of a man.”
“Do you like him so much?”
“Do I like him? Me dear, I love the man; I’ll break his head with more joy than a shtarvin’ man cracks a nut!”
He recovered himself instantly.
“I didn’t mean that — I—”
“Dan, you and McTee have planned to fight!”
He growled: “If a man told me that, I’d say he was a liar.”
“Yes; but you won’t lie to a girl, Harrigan.”