His Unknown Wife

by Louis Tracy

  CHAPTER XI

  PROGRESS

  When he stood beside them once more on the ledge he told them what hehad seen.

  "It's a fortress of rock up there, and nothing else," he said. "We mayhave to climb at least a couple of hundred feet. Have any of you everdone any Alpine work?"

  No; they knew nothing of the perils or delights of mountaineering.

  "I'm in the same boat," he confessed, "but I've read a lot about it, andI've noticed one thing in our favor--the pitch of the strata is downwardtowards the land, and that kind of rock face gives the best and safestfoothold. Moreover, this cleft, or fault, seems to continue a long wayup.

  "Now, we haven't a minute to spare. Each hour will find us weaker. Theweather, too, is clear, and the rock fairly dry, but wind and rain, orfog, would prove our worst enemies. There is plenty of cordage downbelow. I'll gather all within reach. It may prove useful."

  He seemed to have no more to say, and was stooping to begin the descentwhen Sturgess grabbed him by the shoulder.

  "Wait a second, commodore!" he cried. "You've got your job cut out, andI'll obey orders and keep a close tongue, you bet; but when it comes tocollecting rope lengths, that is _my_ particular stunt, as I sell hemp,among other things. You just rest up a while."

  Maseden nodded, and made way for a willing deputy. It was only fit andproper that he, too, should conserve his energies.

  "'Round the corner to the left," he said, "you'll find a sloping rock.Some wreckage is lodged in an eddy alongside it. Secure the cordage, andany other odds and ends you think useful. Shin up here with a few ropelengths at once. I want them straight away. Have you a strong knife?"

  Yes, Sturgess luckily did possess a serviceable knife. By the time hehad handed over a number of rope strands Maseden, helped by the girls,had hauled back the mast, to which he began attaching short loops, orstirrups, about two feet apart. He did not expect that either MadgeForbes or her sister would be able to climb the mast, and it was almosta sheer impossibility that he and Sturgess should carry them time andagain. So the mast, after serving twice as a bridge, was now to become aladder.

  Sturgess returned with a curiously mixed spoil--a good deal of rope, asou'wester, a long, thin line--probably the whip used to establish theconnection between bridge and forecastle while parts of the _SouthernCross_ still held together--and the ship's flag, the ensign which wasflying at the poop when the ship struck.

  Water was dripping off him. Evidently he had either been caught by a seaor had slipped off a rock.

  "Accident?" inquired Maseden.

  "Not quite. I had to risk something to get these," and he produced fromhis pockets a dozen large oysters.

  No party of _gourmets_ ever sat down to a feast with greater zest thanthose four hungry people. Probably, in view of the labors and hardshipsthey were yet fated to undergo, the oysters saved their lives. There isno knowing. Human endurance can be stretched to surprising limits, but,seeing that they were destined to taste no other food during twelve longhours of arduous exertion, the value of Sturgess's find can hardly beoverrated.

  The oysters were of a really excellent species, though under thecircumstances they were sure to be palatable, no matter what theiractual qualities.

  "I suppose I need hardly ask if there are any more to be had?" inquiredMaseden, when the meal was dispatched.

  "No, sir," grinned Sturgess.

  He left it at that, but the others realized that he had probably riskedhis life more than once in the effort to secure even that modest supply.

  The meal, slight though it was, not only gave them a new strength--itbrought hope. If only they could win a way to the interior, and reachthe land-locked waters of the bay which opened up behind the frowningbarrier they must yet scale, in all likelihood they would at leastobtain a plentiful store of shell-fish.

  Nina Forbes uttered a quaint little laugh as she threw the last emptyshell on to the rocks beneath.

  "Now," she said, "I am quite ready for the soup and a joint."

  "Oh, don't be horrid!" cried Madge. "You've gone and made me feelravenous again."

  "He, or she, who would eat must first labor," said Maseden. "Thanks tofriend Sturgess, we've enjoyed a first-rate snack. I've never sampledmanna, but I'll back the proteids in three fat oysters against those ina pound of manna any day. Now, let's get to business. If I'm notmistaken we're going to tackle a stiff proposition."

  He knotted some stout cord around his own waist and that of each of theothers, and slung the longest available coil over his shoulders. Thenthe mast was fixed in its place across the ravine, and he climbed to theopposite crest by straddling the pole, putting his feet in the loops,and pulling himself up by both hands.

  Throwing back the rope, he told Sturgess to see that it was fastenedsecurely to one of the girls on the belt already in position. Hepurposely refrained from specifying which one. By chance, Madge Forbesstood nearest, and it was she who came.

  The crossing was awkward rather than dangerous, and rendered far moredifficult by the fact that the unwilling acrobat was compelled to exposeher naked limbs. But after the first shock common sense came to her aid,and she straightway abandoned any useless effort to observe theconventions.

  Still, she blushed furiously, and was trembling when Maseden caught herhands and helped her to land.

  "Thank Heaven we've kept our boots," he said, unfastening the rope."Just look at the ground we have to cover, and think what it would meanif our feet were bare."

  The comment was merely one of those matter-of-fact bits of philosophywhich are most effective in the major crises of life. It was sotrue that a display of leg or ankle mattered little afterwards.Nevertheless, a similar ordeal caused Nina to blush, too, but shelaughed when Madge cried ruefully:

  "What in the world has happened to my ankles? They are scrubbed andbruised dreadfully."

  "That was last night's treatment, my dear," said her sister. "I escapedmore lightly than you."

  "But what do you mean? I felt some soreness, but imagined I knockedmyself in coming from the wreck."

  "You were in a dead faint, so Mr. Maseden and Mr. Sturgess massaged youunmercifully."

  Madge surveyed damages again.

  "I must have been very bad if I stood that," she said.

  "You'll be worse before we see the other side of this cliff," murmuredNina, casting a critical eye over the precipitous ground in front.

  It is not to be wondered at if the girls' hearts quailed at the sight.They were standing on a sloping terrace, of no great depth, which endedabruptly at the foot of a towering cliff. A little to the right ranthe line of the cleft, but so forbidding was its appearance, and soapparently unscalable its broken ledges, that the same thought occurredto each--what if they had but left a narrow, sheltered prison for awider and more exposed one?

  Maseden, however, allowed no time for reflection. He and Sturgess hadalready dragged the foremast after them, and were shouldering it in thedirection of the first hump of rock which seemed to offer a way into thecleft. Any other route was absolutely impossible.

  After one last glance at the reef which had slain a gallant ship and somany lives, they quitted the ledge which had proved their salvation. Itwas then five o'clock in the morning. At four o'clock that afternoonthey flung themselves, utterly spent, on a carpet of thick moss whichcoated the landward slope of the most westerly point of Hanover Island.

  Their hands and knees were torn and bleeding, their fingernails broken,their bones aching and their eyes bloodshot. But they had triumphed,though many a time it had seemed that if Providence meant to be kind,an avalanche of loose stones or a slip on treacherous shale would havehurled them to speedy death on the rocks beneath.

  On five separate occasions they had found themselves strung out ona narrow ledge which merged to nothingness in the sheer wall of aprecipice. Five times had they to go back and essay a different path,often beginning again fifty or even a hundred feet below the point theyhad reached. They were obliged to drag or carry the
heavy topmast everyinch of the way, because, without its aid, either as a bridge or aladder, they could never have surmounted a tithe of the obstaclesencountered.

  In those eleven awful hours they had climbed not two, but five hundredfeet, a distance which, on the level, a good runner would traverse inabout twenty seconds, whereas it took them an average of a minute toclimb one foot.

  The marvel was that the women could have done it at all, even with thehelp which both men gave unstintedly. During the last weary hours no oneuttered an unnecessary word. Each of the four was determined to go on,not for his or her own sake, but for the sake of the others. They wereroped together. If one fell, it meant disaster to all. So, with splendidgrit, each resolved not to fall so long as hand would hold or foot lodgeon the tiniest projection.

  But, with final success, came utter collapse. Even Maseden, far strongerphysically than Sturgess, fell like a log. True, he had borne far morethan his share of the day's toil. No matter what his inmost thoughts, hehad never, to outward seeming, lost heart. It was he who always foundthe new line, he who earliest decided to turn back and try again.

  It was he, too, who called now for renewed exertion after some minutesof complete and blissful repose.

  "Sorry to disturb your _siesta_," he cried, with a woful assumption ofcheery confidence, "but we must reach the shore, if possible, beforenight falls. Oysters and Chablis await us there. _En avant, messieurs et'dames!_"

  Nina Forbes sat up and brushed the hair from her eyes.

  "I don't think I can walk another yard. Won't you leave me here?" shedemanded.

  "No."

  "Are we to carry that mast with us?"

  "Why not? We may need it."

  Her eyes followed Maseden's down the slope. Compared with the sullen,frowning realm of rock they had quitted, this eastern side of the islandresembled a Paradise. The moss on which they were resting was thick andwiry. A hundred feet beneath were fir-trees, sparse and stunted atfirst, but soon growing luxuriantly, yet promising, to Maseden'sweighing eye, a barrier nearly as formidable as the fearsome wall ofrock they had just surmounted.

  He knew that which was happily hidden from the others. In this wildland, seldom, if ever, trodden by the foot of man, the forests throve onthe bones of their own dead progenitors. Aged trees fell and rottedwhere they lay, and the roots of newcomers found substance among theheaped-up logs. Gales and landslides helped to swell the mad jumble ofdecaying trunks, which formed an impassable layer hardly ever less thanfifteen feet in depth and often going beyond thirty feet.

  Of the two, Maseden believed he would sooner tackle another wall of rockrather than essay to cross that belt of fantastic growths.

  But, down there was water--perhaps food--certainly shelter. He guessedthat at an altitude where hardy Alpine mosses alone flourished the coldwould be intense at night. Already there was a shrewd nip in the breeze.They must not dawdle another instant.

  He made up his mind to head for a gap in the trees which seemed to marka recent land-slip, and trust to fortune that the gradient might not betoo steep. Better any open risk than the fall of perhaps the whole partyinto a pit of dead wood choked with foetid and noisome fungus growths.Once caught in such a trap, they might never emerge.

  And now they met with their greatest among many pieces of luck that day.The opening Maseden had noticed was not the track of an avalanche, but arough water-course, through which the torrential rain-storms of thecoast tumbled headlong to the sea.

  Notwithstanding the long-continued gale, the descent was so steep thatonly a vestige of a stream trickled down the main gully. Here and therelay a pool. Though the water was brackish, it was strongly pigmentedwith iron, and the roots of vigorous young trees seemed to findsustenance in it.

  At any rate, they must drink or die, so they drank, though Masedenwarned them to be moderate. They laved their wounds, which wereintensely sore at first, owing to the encrustation of salt on theirskins. But here, again, nature's surgery, if painful, was effective.Salt is a rough and ready antiseptic. None of them owned any realmedical knowledge. In their hard case ignorance was surely bliss,because they must have had the narrowest of escapes from tetanus.

  The descent, though trying, was not specially perilous. Three times didthe mast bring them down small cataracts, and many times acrossextraordinarily ingenious log barriers, set up against the stress offalling water by nature's own engineering methods.

  Once, indeed, a heavy boulder, poised in unexpected balance, toppledover just as they had reached the base of a waterfall. It would havecrushed Nina Forbes to a pulp had not Maseden seen the stone move. As itwas, he snatched her aside, and a ton of rock crashed harmlessly on tothe very spot where she had been standing the fifth part of a secondearlier.

  Such an incident, happening in civilized surroundings, would have beenregarded as phenomenal, something akin to an escape from a train wreck.Here it passed as a mere item in the day's trials. It did not even shakethe girl's nerve.

  "I suppose I ought to say 'thank you,' but I'm not quite sure you havedone me a service," she murmured wearily.

  Hitherto both she and her sister had been so brave, so uncomplaining,that Maseden took warning from the words. The two girls were at theextreme limit of their powers of endurance, mentally and physically. Itwas five o'clock in the evening. After a day and a night of passivemisery they had been subjected to every sort of muscular strain duringnearly twelve hours, and might collapse at any moment now.

  "Courage!" he said, with a gentleness curiously in contrast with therather gruff and hectoring manner he had adopted all day. "You haven'tnoticed how near the sea is. We shall be on shore in a few minutes."

  The girl's lips parted in a wan smile.

  "You are wonderful," was all she said, but the pathos underlying thetribute wrung his heart.

  Somehow, anyhow, they slithered and dropped down the remaining steps oftheir Calvary. During the last few feet they were able to leave behindthe friendly topmast, but the shadows were falling when they stood,forlornly triumphant, on the flat rocks which served as the beach ofthe estuary.

  The two girls sank at once to a moss-covered boulder. They looked sodeathly white beneath the tan of exposure and the crust of dirt andblood not altogether removed when they bathed their faces in the pool,that Maseden unstrapped the poncho which he carried slung to hisshoulders and produced from its folds that thrice-precious bottle ofbrandy.

  The patients weakly resisted his demand that they should share nearlythe whole of the mouthful of spirit which remained; but he was firm, andthey drank. Sturgess, who staggered and nearly fell when he tried tomove after the brief halt, was given a few drops; Maseden himself hadwhat was left. Then he filled the bottle with water, and each took along drink.

  There is this supreme virtue in water, that, while slaking thirst, itstays the worst pangs of hunger, and Maseden had enough strength inreserve to hurry off in search of oysters, or any sort of shell-fish,before daylight failed wholly. He was fortunate in finding awell-stocked bed almost at once.

  He alone knew what agony he endured when his bruised and torn fingerswere plunged into ice-cold salt water. But he persevered, and gatheredsuch a quantity that in ten minutes he and his companions were enjoyinga really satisfying meal.

  While they ate, they examined their surroundings. It was half tide. Ableak, rocky foreshore provided at least an ideal breeding-ground foroysters. Behind them rose the solemn bank of pine-trees through whichthey had come. On the right, only half a mile away, stood the greatshoulder of rock which shut out the Pacific on that northern side of theestuary. In front, two miles or more distant, lay a jumble of forestsand wild hills, and a similar vista spread far to the left, because theestuary widened to a span of several miles.

  It was, indeed, a wild, desolate, awe-inspiring land, a territoryabandoned of mankind! In such regions old-time sailors found fearsomemonsters, amphibious reptiles larger than ships, and gnomes of demoniacaspect.

  Such visions were easy to conjure up. Nina Forbe
s saw one now in thedusk.

  "Oh, what is that?" she cried, in genuine alarm, gazing seaward withterror-laden eyes.

  It took some time to unmask the strange denizen of the deep which shehad discovered. Three seals, lying in a row on a flat rock, lookedremarkably like the accepted pictures of a sea-serpent, but the illusionwas destroyed when one of the creatures dived, followed, in turn, byeach of the others, in one, two, three order.

  "We must rise before dawn to-morrow," said Maseden. "Seals are good toeat. You and I, Sturgess, can cut one off when the pack comes on shore."

  "Seals may be good to eat, but they will also be hard to eat if we areunable to cook them," put in Madge.

  "There were times to-day when I could have eaten seal cooked oruncooked," admitted Nina.

  "Probably such times will recur to-morrow," said Maseden. "You will soongrow tired of oysters for every meal. Did you ever hear of the sailingship which took a cargo of bottled porter from Dublin to Cape Town?After crossing the line she was caught in a gale, disabled, and carriedhundreds of miles out of her course. She ran short of water, so, duringthree wretched weeks, officers and crew drank stout for breakfast,dinner and supper. When, at last, the vessel reached Table Bay, ifporter was suggested as a beverage to any member of the ship's companythere was instant trouble."

  "Still," said Madge thoughtfully, "I don't think I shall like rawseal.... You are very clever, Mr. Maseden. You must find some means ofmaking a fire."

  Maseden glanced up at the darkening sky.

  "At present the pressing problem is where are we to sleep," he said.

  "Under the deodars," suggested Sturgess promptly.

  "Yes, I suppose so. But we must make haste."

  "If you ask me to put up any sort of hustle, I'll crack into smallfragments," said Sturgess, rising to his feet slowly and stiffly.

  But this young American--a typical New Yorker in every inch--was blessedwith a valiant heart. He helped Maseden to break and cut small branchesof the fragrant pines, and pile them beneath the largest tree they couldfind on a comparatively level piece of ground above high-water mark. Thetwo girls were half carried to this soft couch, which invited sharpcomparison with the wet, slimy rock of the previous night.

  Despite their protests, they were wrapped in the now dry ship's flag andthe poncho, while the men covered themselves with the oilskins, the coatwhich Sturgess had found on the reef coming in very useful for Maseden.

  Then they slept. And how they slept! The mere fact that they had eaten aquantity of good food induced utter weariness and exhaustion.

  During the night it rained heavily, and the tide pounded fiercely on theboulders only a few feet below their resting-place. But they hardlymoved, and certainly paid no heed.

  Maseden was awakened by a veritable cascade of water on his face; thetree, after the manner of its kind, though shooting the rain generallyoff its layers of branches, now in full summer foliage, providedoccasional channels through which the torrent poured as from a spout,and he was stretched beneath one. He swore softly, saw that the otherswere undisturbed, moved his position slightly, and fell sound asleepagain.

  As for rising betimes to catch a seal, it was broad daylight when heshook off the almost overpowering desire to go on sleeping.

  Nina and Madge were lying in each other's arms, breathing easily, andlooking extraordinarily well. Beyond them, Sturgess lay like a log, hisclean-cut, somewhat cynical features relaxed in a smile. It was a pityto rouse him, but Maseden saw by his watch that they had enjoyed ninehours of real repose, and, as the weather was fine again and there was apromise of sunshine, it behooved them to be up and doing.

  So he shook his compatriot gently by the shoulder, and Sturgess wasawake instantly.

  "Gosh!" he said, gazing at a patch of blue sky overhead. "I was justordering clams on ice in Louis Martin's. It must have been a memory ofthose oysters."

  Maseden, by a gesture, warned him not to speak loudly, whereuponSturgess sat up, saw the two girls, grinned, and stole quietly afterhis companion.

  "Say," he confided, when at a safe distance, "they're the limit, aren'tthey?"

  "They're all right, so far as girls go," agreed Maseden.

  "Oh, come off your perch! Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?If we win through I'm going to marry Madge, or I'll know the reason why,and if you have half the gumption we credit you with you'll tack on tosister Nina as soon as you've shunted that sporty young person whograbbed you at the cannon's mouth in Cartagena."

  "Will you oblige me by not talking such damn nonsense?" growled Maseden,blazing into sudden and incomprehensible wrath.

  "Calm yourself, _hidalgo_!" came the quiet answer. "Sorry if I've buttedin on your private affairs. Having fixed things for myself, I thoughtI'd do you a good turn, too. That's all."

  "Don't you realize that you are hardly playing the game by even hintingat such possibilities in present conditions?"

  Maseden regretted the words the instant they were uttered. Sturgessstopped as though he had been struck, and his somewhat sallow faceflushed darkly.

  "It will be a pretty mean business if you and I manage to quarrel, won'tit?" he said thickly.