by Max Brand
CHAPTER 10
They started working eagerly to revive her. While McTee bathed her faceand throat with handfuls of the sea water, Harrigan worked to liberateher from the twine. It was not easy. The twine was wet, and the knotheld fast. Finally he gnawed it in two with his teeth. McTee, at thesame time, elicited a faint moan. Her wrist was bruised and swollenrather than dangerously cut. Harrigan stuffed the twine into his hippocket; then the two Adams carried their Eve to the shade of a tree andwatched the color come back to her face by slow degrees.
The wind now increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of thewreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushingthrough the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rainwas coming, and against that tropical squall shelter was necessary.
The two men ran down the beach and returned dragging the ponderoussection of the wheelhouse. They leaned the frame against two trunks atthe same instant that the first big drops of rain rattled against it.Overhead they were quite securely protected by the dense andinterweaving foliage of the two trees, but still the wind whistled inat either side and over and under the frame of boards. Of one accordthey dropped beside their patient.
She was trembling violently; they heard the light, continuouschattering of her teeth. After her many hours under the merciless sun,this sudden change of temperature might bring on the fever againstwhich they could not fight. They stripped off their shirts and woundthem carefully around her shivering body. McTee lifted her in his armsand sat down with his back to the wind. Harrigan took a place besidehim, and they caught her close. They seemed to be striving by the forceof their will to drive the heat from their own blood into her tremblingbody. But still she moaned in her delirium, and the shivering would notstop.
Then the great idea came to Harrigan. He rose without a word and ranout into the rain to a fallen tree which must have been blown downyears before, for now the trunk and the splintered stump were rotten tothe core. He had noticed it that day. There was only a rim of firm woodleft of the wreck. The stump gave readily enough under his pull. Heripped away long strips of the casing, bark and wood, and carried itback to the shelter. He made a second trip to secure a great armful ofthe powder-dry time-rotted core of the stump.
His third expedition carried him a little farther afield to a smallsapling which he could barely make out through the night. He bent downthe top of the little tree and snapped off about five feet of itslength. This in turn he brought to the shelter. He stopped short here,frozen with amazement. The girl was raving in her delirium, and tosoothe her, McTee was singing to her horrible sailor chanteys, piecedout with improvised and foolish words.
Harrigan listened only while his astonishment kept him helpless; thenhe took up his work. He first stripped away the twigs from his saplingtop. Then he tied the twine firmly at either end of the stick, leavingthe string loose. Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he hadbrought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard woodseveral inches in length. By rubbing this against the fragment of thewheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a roughpoint.
He took the largest slab of the rim wood from the stump and knelt uponit to hold it firm. On this wood he rested his peg, which was wrappedin several folds of the twine and pressed down by the second fragmentof wood. When he moved the long stick back and forth, the peg revolvedat a tremendous rate of speed, its partially sharpened end digging intothe wood on which it rested. It is a method of starting a fire whichwas 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 pegslipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after ashort rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speedof its rotation--a small sound of protest drowned by the bellowing ofthe storm and the ringing songs of McTee. Now the smoke rose again andthis 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 woodwhich Harrigan had heaped around his rotating peg.
He tossed the peg and bow aside and blew softly and steadily on theglowing point. It spread still more and now a small tongue of flamerose and flickered. Instantly Harrigan laid small bits of woodcriss-cross on the pile of tinder. The flame licked at themtentatively, recoiled, rose again and caught hold. The fire was wellstarted.
With gusts of wind fanning it roughly, the flame rose fast. Harriganmade other journeys to the rotten stump and wrenched away great chunksof bark and wood. He came back and piled them on the fire. It toweredhigh, the upper tongues twisting among the branches of the tree. Theylaid Kate Malone between the windbreak and the fire. In a short timeher trembling ceased; she turned her face to the blaze and slept.
They watched her with jealous care all night. In lieu of a pillow theyheaped some of the wood dust from the stump beneath her head. Whentheir large hands hovered over her to straighten the clothes which thewind fluttered, she seemed marvelously delicate and fragile. It wasastonishing that so fragile a creature should have lived through thebuffeting of the sea.
Toward morning the storm fell at a breath and the rain died away. Theyagreed that it might be safe to leave her alone while they ventured outto look for food, and at the first hint of light they started out, oneto the north, and one to the south. Harrigan started at an easy run. Hefelt a joyous exultation like that of a boy eager for play. He tried tofind shellfish first, but without success. His search carried him fardown the beach to a group of big rocks rolling out to sea. On theleeward side of these rocks, in little hollows of the stone, he found aquantity of the eggs of some seafowl. They were quite large, the shellsa dirty, faint blue and apparently very thick. He collected all hecould carry and started back.
As he approached the shelter, he heard voices and stopped short with asudden pang; McTee had returned first and awakened the girl. Harrigansighed. He knew now how he had wanted to watch her eyes open for thefirst time, the cool sea-green eyes lighted by bewilderment, surprise,and joy. All that delight had been McTee's. It was that dark, handsomeface she had seen leaning over her when she awoke. He was firmlyimplanted in her mind by this time as her savior. She opened her eyes,hungered, and she had seen McTee bringing food. Harrigan drew a longbreath and went on slowly with lowered head.
They sat cross-legged, facing each other. The captain was showing Katehis prizes, which seemed to consist of a quantity of shellfish. Sheclapped her hands at something McTee said, and her laughter,wonderfully clear, reminded Harrigan of the chiming of faraway churchbells. Blind anger suddenly possessed him as he stood by the fireglowering down at them.