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THE FAR CRY 
 
THE FAR CRY 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "WHITE TIGER," ETC. 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 
 
 1919 
 

 
 • • 
 
 . •'.. Copyright. WW, 
 %• by/Du»Fi»u> * Comtant 
 
 
To 
 H. Elliston Warrall 
 
 Dear Warrall: 
 
 It is a long time since the Ping Suey lay waiting 
 for the Chatham to blow up, since we dined with the 
 merry Bey, and — worst of all — since we met and 
 talked. You, following the sea in peace and war, 
 have many friends scattered about the globe: let 
 this book serve to recall one of them. 
 
 As formerly, my dear captain, " chin-chin. " 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 H. M. R. 
 August, iqi6. 
 
 £51209 
 
CONTENTS 
 PART I 
 
 THE ISLE OF BIRDS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The "Nantwich": Towing . 3 
 
 II. The "Nantwich" : Loose . . 21 
 
 HI. The Flytrap 24 
 
 IV. Godbolt, A. B 41 
 
 V. A TO IZZARD 58 
 
 VI. The Spent Messenger ... 70 
 
 VII. Cras Ingens 82 
 
 PART II 
 
 PULO PRINCESS 
 
 VIII. Voices 97 
 
 IX. Thomas Masterman Fraye . 109 
 
 X. The Table in the Grove . . 122 
 
 XL A Morning Call 139 
 
 XII. The Second White Bird . . 154 
 
 XIII. Across Country 168 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XIV. Ashes 181 
 
 XV. In Charge 194 
 
 XVI. First Blood 213 
 
 XVII. A Thing to Do 226 
 
 XVIII. No More Sea 240 
 
 XIX. The "Esperance" .... 250 
 
 XX. Twilight 268 
 
PART I 
 THE ISLE OF BIRDS 
 
"There is an old white-haired man who calls out 
 continually day and night. — Answer: The surf 
 on the reef, whose voice is never still." 
 
 Polynesian Riddle.''* 
 
» > » 
 
 THE FAR CRY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE "NANTWICH": TOWING 
 
 "Ragotin, ce matin , 
 A tant bu de pots de vin, 
 Qu'il branle, qu'il branle! . . * " 
 
 So sang Tisdale in the bow, and staggered for 
 fun, while the schooner staggered in earnest. He 
 enjoyed himself, watching the rainbow spray dash 
 up at every plunge, and flinging his words aft in a 
 melodious yell. Wallace, at the wheel, frowned. 
 A pretty place to be singing, this was, aboard a 
 battered old sea wagon like the Nantwich. She 
 labored along, following the dirty white bulk and 
 dirty black smoke of the steamer Albay, which 
 tugged at her carelessly with ropes as short as 
 when they left harbor. 
 
 "O Rob !" cried the singer. "Look, Wallace ! 
 There he goes now 1" 
 
 3 
 
4 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Between them the deck of the Nantwich glowed 
 in the tropic sun, overflowing with blond hair. A 
 hundred fair giantesses might have shorn their 
 locks and flung them recklessly on board in a 
 golden mound. This deckload of Davao hemp lay 
 underneath in bales, in drums, in raveling wefts, 
 and flowed on top in pale tresses nine feet long. 
 The morning glare, reflected from them, struck 
 into the belly of the little forestaysail a mild, quiv- 
 ering, buttercup light. Deck and cargo swooped 
 up, swooped down, with the diagonal, shoulder- 
 first movement of scending. The day was clear, 
 and blinding bright. The ocean fetched round- 
 about its compass of dark, intense, and luminous 
 blue, unbroken, though back toward Sarangani a 
 long swell ran, slowly and mightily changing the 
 floor of water about the vessel, now to a slant up- 
 hill, now to a smooth declivity. On board, blocks 
 creaked in a lazy rhythm, and halyards rattled on 
 a spar. 
 
 "Look at him!" shouted Tisdale, waving an 
 arm toward the bowsprit. " 'A taut bu de pots de 
 vin ' Look at him, Robin !" 
 
 Wallace, a heavy, dark young man, sighted for- 
 ward with a wary scowl. He saw nothing to war- 
 rant such enthusiasm. 
 
 The Ragotin in this case, Captain Rufino 
 
"NANTWICH": TOWING 5 
 
 Bravo, of the steamer Albay, stood at the end 
 of his towing hawsers, two hundred feet ahead, 
 and over a wake of blue-tinted foam brandished 
 his arms like a puppet enacting sarcasm. A stern 
 bulwark, grimed with iron rust, alone prevented 
 him from reeling into the Celebes Sea. He waved 
 on high a wicker demijohn, and cried across hiss- 
 ing water some Spanish mockery. 
 
 "Wants us to have a drink!" Tisdale inter- 
 preted. "Do you think it safe — try poison?" 
 
 Wallace watched the two hawsers bend upward 
 in parallel curves, drip silver points, and sink 
 under the turbulent snow of the wake ahead. He 
 made no answer. Here, on board the leaky Nant- 
 wich, was little room for joking. Like a gamblers 1 
 table, she carried half their fortune at one throw. 
 Heaped shining on deck lay the outcome of four 
 years' hard work — four years of grubbing in vol- 
 canic soil, watching and weeding and setting ca- 
 motes, calculating by aroba and hectare, cajoling 
 new-planted villages to work, and guiding lazy 
 brown hands to strip the fiber with bone loc-nit 
 or steel bolo. Four years of learning how — an- 
 other college course, on the shores of Davao Gulf; 
 and here the Nantwich, towing badly, carried the 
 partners and their first cargo, their hard-won di- 
 ploma of hemp, toward a questionable market in 
 
6 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Zamboanga. She might sink under them. Rufino, 
 on the steamer that dragged them along, was 
 drunk at the head of his crew. Was this a time 
 to laugh, a time to sing? 
 
 Tisdale thought it was, for again his chant came 
 aft, over the glistening, tumbling abaca: 
 
 " . . . a tant bu de pots de vin, 
 Qu'il branle, qiC'il branlef" 
 
 He shook both arms defiantly, and yelled at 
 Captain Bravo, who shrilled a far-off answer with- 
 out meaning, waved another invitation across the 
 foam, and then, tilting the demijohn, quaffed long 
 and shamelessly. A sordid spectacle this white 
 midget made, so busy drinking, in the face of 
 tropic heaven and eternal sea. 
 
 "Mean little greaser! Knows we can't I" Tis- 
 dale shouted back indignantly. "By George, I'll 
 show him! Just uphold — honor of white men, 
 RobT 
 
 The young planter tossed his helmet on the 
 golden hemp, ripped off canvas pumps and white 
 jacket, and so, naked to the belt, swarmed up 
 lightly between the knightheads. He stood poised, 
 for a moment, where the bowsprit joined the apple 
 bows of the old Nantwich. 
 
"NANTWICH": TOWING 7 
 
 "We'll show 'em — save our face!" he cried. 
 
 Even Wallace, who knew the fellow's quicksil- 
 ver habit of mind, stood wholly unprepared for 
 the next movement. 
 
 Tisdale sat down acrobatically on the bulwark, 
 swung his legs outboard, and, gripping the tow- 
 rope that chafed against his thigh, perched long 
 enough to let a white blizzard of spray burst over 
 him. His torso gleamed wet like a merman's, as 
 the mist flung its faint, colored arc of Iris above 
 him and dissolved. Then his back muscles 
 knotted suddenly. He went overboard. Nothing 
 appeared of him but his hard, round arms at full 
 stretch, his hands plying rapidly down the curve 
 of the starboard hawser. Tisdale was gone over 
 the side, on purpose. 
 
 "Idiot!" cried Wallace, jumping up and down, 
 and shaking at the wheel as though to wrench out 
 the spokes. "Come back here ! Thundering idiot ! 
 Comeback! Drowned! Drowned sure!" 
 
 The Nantwich swooped her bows down, and 
 gave her steersman a glimpse ahead — a clear view 
 of the hawser as it sagged under glass-blue billows. 
 When it rose, two fists came up on it from the 
 depths, like tiny beads on a great string; two arms 
 shot stretching out of the foam, and then, while 
 the rope lifted to the height of its languid curve, 
 
8 THE FAR CRY 
 
 the fists, the arms, and Tisdale's dripping head 
 went forward briefly and desperately, hand over 
 hand, jerk by jerk, clutch after clutch. 
 
 "Drowned sure!" Wallace repeated, under his 
 breath. He gripped the wheel and stared, angrily, 
 at this foregone disaster. "Arthur! Oh, you 
 fool! You fool !" 
 
 The hawser bent inexorably down, buried a wide 
 segment. It labored free again, and there, 
 through the hissing white mill race, Tisdale's arms 
 warped his merman body forward, slowly for- 
 ward, to gain a few more yards on the Albay's 
 wake, and to leave the Nantwich hurling her bow- 
 sprit up against the sunlight, clear of him now, 
 and no longer cutting off the sight of his escapade. 
 He dangled, half out of water, like a wind-blown 
 garment on a clothesline; then the hawser dipped 
 again, soused him under, pulled him onward as a 
 mere streak. His linen trousers melted into foam, 
 the white soles of his feet flashed, and were gone. 
 
 It was impossible. Wallace clung to the fact 
 as though for comfort; it was impossible that any 
 man could do what this mad partner was madly 
 trying. The wake of the Albay, a blue-tinted 
 lacework swirling in delicate filaments, could tear 
 the rope from any human grasp. Tisdale, though 
 quick and muscular, was no young demigod. Who, 
 
"NANTWICH": TOWING 9 
 
 thought Wallace, on sea or land ever conceived a 
 more odd and useless piece of folly? 
 
 "What for?" His whole nature revolted. "No 
 sense in it! To drown like that " 
 
 In his anguish, he stamped on the deck. 
 
 "Goya !" he cried. "Goya I" 
 
 From the dusk of the companionway, before 
 him, appeared a brown face, regarding him with- 
 out speculation. Goya, the deck hand — a grudg- 
 ing loan of Captain Bravo's — rose like a brunette 
 ghost in flimsy cotton, his dark, soft eyes not even 
 blinking as he shuffled out on the glaring deck. He 
 thrust carefully into his breast pocket the symbols 
 of a racial vanity — his horn comb and his little 
 tin-bound mirror — and stood pouting. His heavy 
 lips, flat Malayan face, and stiff, black hair all 
 on end from an hour's combing, gave his head a 
 funny predominance over his frail body, which 
 seemed yet frailer as the white cotton clothing shiv- 
 ered in the breeze. 
 
 "Here, Goya !" Wallace gnashed at him. 
 "Wake up, and take the wheel !" 
 
 Goya obeyed half of this command by moving 
 aft to rest both hands and one bare foot limply on 
 the spokes, like a supercilious invalid. 
 
 "Lay hold," said Wallace darkly, "or I'll lay 
 open that big, empty cabeza!" 
 
io THE FAR CRY 
 
 Without watching his threat home, the planter 
 peeled off his jacket, leaped away forward, sprang 
 up on the nearest bale, and went scrambling and 
 falling over the blond hillocks of hemp. When 
 at last he floundered into the bow, he had lost not 
 only his helmet and his temper, but all track of 
 his companion's progress. 
 
 Then he saw clear of the bowsprit, and stood 
 glowering with anxiety. 
 
 Some caprice of the ocean swell had so caught 
 the A lb ay and the Nantivich that their heavy tow- 
 ropes now stretched high above the foam. Swing- 
 ing under the lower hawser, gripping it with hands 
 and feet, Tisdale slid into the halfway curve of 
 his journey, waited there for breath, like a glisten- 
 ing white sloth bunched under a bough, and im- 
 mediately, with fresh vigor, began climbing the 
 forward slant, topsy-turvy on all fours. 
 
 "Buenof Ha-ha! Bueno!" Applause flew in 
 shrill fragments against the breeze. The Albay's 
 crew had run crowding into her stern, their brown 
 faces all a-grin. "Animo! Ha-ha !" 
 
 Toward them the gymnast figure labored con- 
 vulsively up the curve of the hawser, shinning like 
 a toy monkey on a string. A dozen white-clad 
 arms reached down, grappled for him. And just 
 as Wallace concluded that the feat might be pos- 
 
"NANTWICH": TOWING n 
 
 sible, after all, Tisdale went sprawling over the 
 distant bulwark, yanked aboard the steamer. 
 
 The crew buzzed over him ; laughter came spill- 
 ing back to the Nantwich. Among the stunted 
 aliens, Tisdale's wet body gleamed like a statue; 
 he waved a naked arm, shouted back some breath- 
 less impertinence, and, turning away, rounded the 
 bulge of the deck house. Captain Rufino Bravo 
 slapped him between the shoulders as he disap- 
 peared. The midget mariners trooped after. 
 
 "Got there!" growled Wallace, alone in the 
 bows of the schooner. "Fool thing to do. Just 
 like you. Featherbrain!" _\' 
 
 The deserted partner shook his fist at the Ah 
 bay, and flung down a coil of rope he had 
 snatched up. Though a poor swimmer, he had 
 been ready to jump over. 
 
 "Just you wait, my buck ! Wait till you're back 
 aboard here!" 
 
 Muttering hot but vague revenge, the young 
 man carefully collected his friend's coat and hel- 
 met, recovered his own, and climbed aft over the 
 bright bales of hemp. 
 
 Goya hung on his wheel, and dozed. 
 
 "Lively shipmate you are," growled his cap- 
 tain, "for a long voyage !" 
 
 Like a sleeper half waking, Goya rolled a pair 
 
12 THE FAR CRY 
 
 of eyes duller than brown glass, chose another 
 spoke for his toes to rest on, and relaxed afresh. 
 
 "Fine company," muttered Wallace. He 
 dragged a rattan garden stool to the foot of the 
 main shrouds, where palm thatch, raised on bam- 
 boo stilts, made a scant awning or open hut, as 
 if a piece of jungle architecture had run away to 
 sea. Here he sat down in shade, and stared mo- 
 rosely at the swinging water. 
 
 The color of it — a blue that glowed and yearned 
 like the inwards of a dark jewel — lay everywhere 
 the same under vertical noonday. Thin, sallow 
 vapor, far off to starboard and trailing far astern, 
 tinged the north horizon where Mindanao floated, 
 a mere exhalation of land. Ahead, the Albay 
 slouched through the sea, dragging a foul bottom 
 at five knots, and besmuttering the southern heaven 
 with coal smoke. These things, the brilliant cheve- 
 lure of the hemp, its reflection quivering in the tiny 
 staysail, were all that could seize an eye jaded 
 with sunlight. The steamer puffed laboriously but 
 faintly, blocks creaked aloft, halyards rattled a 
 drowsy measure, and under these few sounds ran 
 the steady, hushing whisper of foam, quietly com- 
 manding silence. Time slipped away like a word 
 forgotten. Sight and sound, thought, life itself, 
 dissolved into an ocean reverie. 
 
"NANTWICH": TOWING 13 
 
 Wallace, under his jungle roof, crooked one 
 elbow on the rail, pillowed his chin there, and 
 watched Mindanao drag its sallow haze farther 
 astern. He recalled his last fortnight on that 
 shore; how the hemp they slaved for had lain 
 there, useless; how, by strange luck, and Tisdale's 
 madcap bargaining, they had secured the Nant- 
 wich, only to find, as an afterthought, that no pair 
 of landlubbers could sail her; how Tisdale again, 
 by another stroke of policy, had won Captain Ru- 
 fino, had sat all night carousing with that sulky 
 officer, and wormed out the promise of a tow. 
 It was Tisdale who, like a Paul Revere hilarious 
 in pajamas, had run through the village at cock- 
 crow and set all hands toiling by daybreak, hurl- 
 ing their precious cargo from pantalan to schoon- 
 er's deck. Tisdale, yes, Tisdale could do anything, 
 offhand, just as now he could desert, leave a chap 
 on board here through the voyage, with this som- 
 nambulist Goya for company! Vexation ran up- 
 permost through the final waking thoughts of Wal- 
 lace; vexation, and a last, dull glimpse, under 
 drooping eyelashes, of something low and black 
 upon the northwest horizon. Some funereal blot, 
 vague, yet solid; a mountain, it might be, rearing 
 above the hidden coast. It did not seem to mean 
 much, as he fell asleep. 
 
14 THEFARCRY 
 
 He woke lonely and febrile, after the fashion 
 of tropical sleepers by day. A voice startled him. 
 
 "O Robin! Make fast, there's a good fellow! 
 On deck! What ails you?" 
 
 Tisdale's voice rose from below, close at hand. 
 Alongside, though farther off, the Albay lay wal- 
 lowing, so that the two ships, with their tether 
 hauled bow and stern between them, formed a 
 rude letter N upon the face of the waters. It was 
 the face of those waters, the new, disastrous coun- 
 tenance of the whole world, that fetched Wallace 
 out from his hut, tottering, but awake. 
 
 His black mountain, viewed so lately through 
 a fading dream, now came rushing toward him 
 in one sheer wall of darkness, a crag of storm 
 cloud that towered from ocean floor to zenith. 
 Sulphurous gleams passed through it, and revealed 
 great downpours of sheeted rain, heavy as gravel. 
 The ocean beneath leaped in small, joggling waves, 
 like blue ink shaken in a basin. On the verge of 
 the storm, high overhead, the sun poised as on 
 a cliff, gave to half the sea and sky one farewell 
 moment of golden summer calm, and was blown 
 out. 
 
 "O Rob! Look alive!" cried the voice of Tis- 
 dale. "Catch our painter, there's a good chap! 
 These beasts are jumping crazy down here." 
 
"N ANT WICH": TOWING 15 
 
 In the gloom, a loose bight of rope wriggled 
 across the deck and up over the bulwark, like a 
 snake. Wallace trod on its tail, hauled in, and 
 made it fast. He looked overside, to find his 
 friend already shinning toward him, up from a 
 boat where brown Tagalogs were yelling, snatch- 
 ing at the painter, spearing the schooner madly 
 with their oars, fighting to stave off and to be 
 gone. 
 
 "Swine! Swine, all of 'em!" Tisdale grunted, 
 hooking his leg over and rolling on deck. He 
 jumped afoot, to cast loose the painter. "T'ake it, 
 then! n 
 
 He flung down the end among the frantic oars- 
 men. While he did so, somebody sprang to the 
 rail beside him, and, with a piteous bleat of terror, 
 hopped into the air. Goya, the sleep-walker, had 
 rejoined his countrymen below. His body thumped 
 on the stern thwart, his well-combed head on a 
 gunwale. As he landed, so he lay, while the oars- 
 men, shouting and catching crabs, lashed away 
 desperately toward the Albay. 
 
 "I gave 'em ten pesos," Tisdale complained, u to 
 fetch me back to you, Rob !" 
 
 The runagate slipped into his jacket, let it go 
 unbuttoned, and, standing thus in comfortable dis- 
 order, seemed to expect a reply. In the strange ob- 
 
16 THE FAR CRY 
 
 scurity that overhung the ship — a kind of Resur- 
 rection darkness — he had a wild and elfish look, 
 an air of being carelessly at home. His eager, 
 sunburned face, his light-blue eyes twinkling, his 
 tousled crop of yellow hair, were the brightest 
 things on board. His tunic flapped open, baring 
 his chest as if in bravado. 
 
 "Ten pesos," he repeated, "to get back with 
 you, Rob I" 
 
 Wallace had sourly taken the wheel. 
 
 "Ass!" he grumbled. "You came near getting 
 
 to " He turned his thumb down grimly. 
 
 "Fool's trick. Ten pesos? Who made you go?' 
 
 Tisdale gave a repentant shrug. 
 
 "I know," he answered, "it was silly. Didn't 
 benefit the firm, after all. That goat Bravo" — he 
 waved an arm at the gray loom of the Albay — 
 "Barcelona goat! Pleased as Billy, he seemed, 
 when I first boarded him. Then he turned peevish, 
 and wagged his black scut at me. Wouldn't hear 
 reason. Delays him, he said towing us here. 
 'Against my owners' orders,' he kept bawling, and 
 all the time too drunk to swear, even." Tisdale 
 paused, and his face grew more serious. "I tell 
 you, Robin, I don't like it. This" — the speaker 
 took deliberate survey of the darkness — "this 
 turned Bravo green in the face. Wall-eyed, he 
 
"NANTWICH": TOWING 17 
 
 was, when I left ; sick man — a little sick goat, with 
 a black beard, talking nonsense. Most unholy 
 right." 
 
 Over the helm, the two partners eyed each other 
 strangely. 
 
 "Bravo'll do us dirt, you mean?" inquired Wal- 
 lace. 
 
 "Can't say, Robin.' , 
 
 They remained silent. 
 
 The schooner quivered like a frightened horse. 
 Her staysail hung dead and wrinkled, in a hot 
 calm. Puny waves jumped everywhere about her 
 flanks, chopping, plashing, ejecting spitefully, with 
 a reverse twist, little gouts of white spray. From 
 the approaching central darkness a cool draft, 
 moist and gentle, swept away all hint of sea air, 
 bringing instead the languid smell of fresh water, 
 a somber, myterious perfume as of torn verdure 
 and trampled earth. Here on the sea, out of 
 place, it caught the nostrils with a kind of threat. 
 
 "She's coming ! groaned Wallace. 
 
 A gust whirled over them while he spoke. His 
 roof of palm thatch beat violently against the 
 shrouds, then soared aloft, and with two bamboo 
 legs trailing storkwise, flapped away into the black 
 heavens. 
 
 "She's here!" cried Tisdale, and ran to help. 
 
18 THE FAR CRY 
 
 They felt the schooner balk, spring backward, 
 jerk her tether; saw the staysail belly inside out, 
 and a few pale streamers of hemp whisk past them 
 overhead, like the tails of Valkyrie horses riding 
 the tempest; and next moment were conscious only 
 of a wheel fighting them, a wet, smarting blind- 
 ness, and, instead of breath, a taste of rain water 
 in their mouths. Underfoot, the frail craft tossed 
 and hung and pivoted, crashed into a sudden hol- 
 low, swerved uphill again, and poised in air. 
 Snowy blurs went fleeting past, behind a black-and- 
 silver mesh of rain. 
 
 All this the two men endured for a long time; 
 but what grew insupportable was a wide roar that 
 swelled beyond the limit of hearing, and stupefied 
 them by mere volume. 
 
 Wallace felt a craving for speech. He tried to 
 gratify it, but his words flew down the wind like 
 bubbles. Without hearing himself, he cried re- 
 peatedly: 
 
 "Hemp ruined! All " 
 
 His friend's lips fumbled at his ear, his friend's 
 laughter rang from a distance : 
 
 "Good boy! Guessed right! So are 
 
 we!" 
 
 The levity of the message, in all this turmoil, 
 shocked him grievously. He would have bel- 
 
U NANTWICH": TOWING 19 
 
 lowed some rebuke, but the hurrying noises gave 
 him no leisure to frame one. 
 
 "Look!" Again Tisdale's voice reached him, 
 light, weak, infinitely far away, like something in 
 a fever. "Look there I" 
 
 The rain had forked asunder, leaving the whole 
 ship visible, for a moment, in greenish twilight. 
 Forward, the rigid hawsers pierced a line of gal- 
 loping whiteness, which broke and left them to 
 bridge a void. Sharp, smoking crests cut off their 
 farther end. Night grimly closed the vista in a 
 whirl. Yet, on its very rim, there lifted and sank 
 the gray, squablike buttocks of the dlbay, on 
 which gray human specks clustered and dimly 
 toiled. 
 
 "See these, see there !" piped the voice of Tis- 
 dale. "Hawsers, Rob — casting off ! Bravo's men 
 — I thought so. Beast! Loose, Robin, we're 
 loose!" 
 
 The rain flung together its parted curtain. The 
 Nantwich recoiled, gave one twisting lurch, and, 
 with her deck at a steep angle, slewed down a 
 vast, unseen hill. 
 
 The friends clung to their wheel, and kicked the 
 empty air. Their footing came back from one 
 direction to be lost in another, as the Nantwich 
 righted and hurled herself toward some new quar- 
 
20 THEFARCRY 
 
 ter of the heavens above or the waters under the 
 earth. 
 
 The last thing clearly seen was a vision of the 
 staysail exploding, like a bomb filled with dirty 
 rags. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE "NANTWICH" ! LOOSE 
 
 Death — who on land in peace-time steals about 
 silent and modest, like a murderer among decent 
 people — enjoys at sea his true, shameless charac- 
 ter, with elbowroom and playtime. Here on the 
 waters in darkness, the young men saw and felt his 
 magnitude, heard him roaring at them, and roar- 
 ing again, dealing shock after shock, and filling 
 with his eternal voice the frame and vault of 
 things. Death caroused at home, where the in- 
 trusion of Life, in their persons, meant no more 
 than if two ants were creeping on the floor of a 
 drunken giant's hall. They felt this, vividly at 
 first, then dimly, for thought departed from them, 
 left but a residue of sensation, or came and went 
 like the rope which — as they were lashing the 
 wheel — now wrapped and fouled their legs, now 
 washed away into oblivion. 
 
 "The rigging I" they cried. "Up to it !" 
 
 21 
 
22 THE FAR CRY 
 
 How they gained the starboard ratlines, through 
 that sudden, howling night, neither man could re- 
 call; but each remembered their crucifixion aloft, 
 the sluice of cold rain, their gyration with the 
 mainmast in giddy rise and tumble and butt-end 
 blow, as if they were bound to a pile driver with- 
 out guides. 
 
 They heard many noises, but all were tones of 
 that world-wide voice roaring. They saw one 
 sight, gusty upheavals of smoke whiter than mar- 
 ble dust, below, that silently rose at them through 
 the black net of the rain, drove past, and vanished. 
 These must have been waves. 
 
 Like the staysail, time itself blew away. The 
 men measured it by aches and pains, by the recur- 
 ring need to shift their bodies, to unhook and re- 
 hook an arm when the biceps, pinched by a ratline, 
 gave out. Once, another lull or "hole" breaking 
 the rain, they saw a kind of muddy, final daylight. 
 The sea wallowed in black edges that ripped into 
 spray, and a snowbank, blowing over the bowsprit, 
 shot high in vertical sheets. The last of their 
 cargo whirled off, seething; tangles of hemp 
 gleamed in a somber valley of water, as if a tre- 
 mendous woman lay drowning, while her hair 
 floated. Then that blond head swept over one 
 of the hills, and was gone. 
 
"NANTWICH": LOOSE 23 
 
 A night, a day, another night — all seemed a 
 mad procrastination of the end, a needless and 
 wretched vigilance called Life. Day was full of 
 waves that slowly departed, fading and swinging 
 gray and fading, until black tumult came again. 
 
 "It breaks!" Tisdale shouted, at one time. "It 
 breaks!" 
 
 He raised his head, which lay under Wallace's 
 armpit on their tarry gridiron. His face was dead 
 white, with charred spots for eyes. 
 
 "The moon, Rob !" 
 
 Beyond some flying tangle of cordage a pale 
 crescent pierced the bosom of a cloud and van- 
 ished. 
 
 "Wind's going down," groaned Wallace. 
 
 He spoke truly. Nevertheless, at sickening 
 speed, the moon coursed over them from wrack to 
 wrack. Her shape resembled the blade of a chop- 
 ping knife: that, the men thought, was why she 
 cut so easily those ponderous edges of cloud, rag- 
 ged and shining, like bright solder spattered on 
 iron seams. 
 
 They let her fly along with the rest of the night- 
 mare. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FLYTRAP 
 
 The cabin floor was a puddle of dirty froth, 
 swashing from side to side, or fore and aft. The 
 cabin ceiling — white paint studded thickly with 
 flies like tacks driven at random — was crossed and 
 recrossed by a similar unrest, as bright, new-risen 
 sunshine performed the same antics at the same 
 moment. In this interior, tight as a drum, every 
 creaking timber and knee of the Nantwich found 
 its echo, except when, regular and leisurely, wave 
 after wave boomed without or sent its deeper thrill 
 running within. 
 
 Amid all this gambol of light and sound the two 
 men lay sleeping in one bunk, "spoon fashion," 
 with a wet blanket over them. 
 
 "Oh, the devil!" 
 
 Tisdale raised his head. His blue eyes fol- 
 lowed vacantly the sunshine that reveled across 
 the white boards above, that darted through the 
 
 24 
 
THE FLYTRAP 25 
 
 skylight and the little prison windows, balanced, 
 wriggling with a hundred smoky wave shadows, 
 and then, as the schooner rolled, darted outdoors 
 again. 
 
 "What's the matter ?" 
 
 Tisdale continued to stare upward. 
 
 "This bedding." he answered dreamily. "It 
 smells of garlic; our predecessor. Vile — foh! 
 Robin, I say, we must be alive yet, because we 
 grumble. Good sign. Can you feel your legs, 
 though? Neither can I. Bad sign." 
 
 Foul water splashed across the floor, the sea 
 fired its muffled cannon, the sunrise light fumed 
 overhead like burning tar. 
 
 "And I was thinking," Tisdale went on wearily. 
 "These flies." He squinted at the black dots on 
 the ceiling. "Poor devils o' Moro flies! We 
 brought 'em all the way from Davao province, to 
 drown out here. Shut in. Seems a pity." 
 
 Wallace, lifting his head in turn, regarded them 
 with hollow apathy. 
 
 "Not drowned yet," he declared. "And the 
 sea's going down. Else we'd be up in that rigging, 
 Arthur." 
 
 The planters moaned, and said no more. Their 
 descent from the mainmast — that agony of crawl- 
 ing — still ached in their bones, with a cold pang. 
 
26 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "If she goes down," Wallace mumbled, after 
 long reflection, "if she goes, I don't like being 
 cooped M 
 
 His bedfellow stretched a hand past him, to 
 point at the ceiling hobnailed with sleeping Hies. 
 
 "See here, Rob. They don't mind." Tisdale's 
 voice died away, content. "Outdoors or in, thy 
 let her wallop. We can do that much. No sailors, 
 but all the same " He waved upward con- 
 soling fingers. "You flies, we'll fetch you through. 
 Topside galow. You wait and see." 
 
 Until noon the flies obeyed. No one could 
 strike eight bells for them; the groaning vessel 
 kept her own watch, alone on a sea that smoked 
 and rioted under heavens calm, brilliant, without 
 a cloud. But when midday heated the cabin like 
 a stove the flies thawed, began to crawl over the 
 skylight, fell from the ceiling, flew about, danced 
 in the reflected gleam of waves, fought an airy 
 sham battle, and one after another went winging 
 back to their pestered bed on the ceiling. 
 
 The men slept like a pair of twins. At sunset, 
 crimson light throbbed in through the little win- 
 dows, failed out, and throbbed in, till night closed 
 the red eye of the world. The planters rolled in 
 their sleep. 
 
 Next morning found them awake outdoors, 
 
THE FLYTRAP 27 
 
 dry clad, comfortably fed, but not hopeful. They 
 stood on deck together in torrid light, puckering 
 their eyes to follow the behavior of their ship. 
 
 Tl e Nantwich had ridden out the gale, for she 
 floated on a falling sea hardly more dangerous 
 than a lake full of whitecaps ; but her survival was 
 a desolate thing to behold. She rode very deep 
 and dogged, her bows low, jib boom gone, cap and 
 stick, from a splintered bowsprit. She took the 
 slap of each wave indifferent as a rock. A kelp- 
 like tangle of hawsers went straying everywhere. 
 Through a breach in the port bulwark forward — 
 bitten out flush with the deck — the sea continually 
 slopped without effort, and ran aft in thin layers 
 creaming like ale. A few last wads of hemp 
 tumbled back and forth as old sponges tumble on 
 a beach. Wooden slats glided along with them, 
 wooden staves, the white shards of a boat dashed 
 clean out of her davits and scattered piecemeal. 
 The schooner was all raffle. Her masts leaned, 
 her motion had a fatal heaviness. She floated, but 
 only as a sick charwoman might crawl home, hav- 
 ing caught her death and ruined her little finery 
 in a downpour. 
 
 "There's a piece of luck, Rob ! n 
 
 The two friends, conning their ship, were spick 
 and span. A camphor chest, below, packed for 
 
28 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Zamboanga, held all their best clothing, so that 
 now they wore clean, white trousers, rolled knee- 
 high; white tunics, silver-buttoned with the coun- 
 terfeit ticals that landsmen buy; and, topping all, 
 in lieu of helmets blown away, two fresh turkey- 
 red bandannas folded closely to keep off sunstroke. 
 Barbaric barefoot dandies, the pair seemed, who 
 might have strolled aboard in curiosity. 
 
 "Pay my look-see," scoffed Wallace. "Where's 
 your luck?" 
 
 "Near enough," replied his companion, "to bite 
 you." 
 
 On the cabin roof a small, black dinghy lay up- 
 side down. The lightest of clinker-built boats, it 
 rested there whole and sound; the greedy storm 
 had overlooked a thing so humble, after wrench- 
 ing it from under heavy canvas gripes, and toss- 
 ing it there. 
 
 "That ?" Wallace retorted bitterly. "Yes ; great 
 slice of luck, that boat!" 
 
 Tisdale, an affable blond pirate in his head 
 bandage, appeared somewhat hurt. 
 
 "The boat's a good boat," he protested. "One 
 more shove, and the sea could have jackstrawed 
 her like the other. But there she lies. Not luck? 
 What do you call it?" 
 
 Wallace turned, in a passion of despondency. 
 
THE FLYTRAP 29 
 
 "What do I call it?" he cried. "A joke, that's 
 all; a poison-mean little joke." He struck the 
 boat with his fist. "Tell me — you stand there 
 mighty chipper — tell me, what good on God's 
 ocean can that pack of clapboards do us?" Moved 
 beyond his habit, Wallace flung a gesture hotly at 
 the sea. "Charts? You saw them below there; 
 the charts leave off, quit us dead, somewhere to 
 north of Caraga. Suppose they didn't, suppose 
 we had 'em all ; can you navigate ? Can I ? Here 
 we are, blown away, without sense enough to know 
 where. Mainsail's a bundle of rags tied up — was 
 when you bought her. And you have the face, 
 Arthur, to stand out there in the middle of noth- 
 ing, and carry on cheerful about a silly rowboat 
 the bigness of a teacup !" 
 
 He broke off, convinced and fortified in his 
 wrath. 
 
 "I know, old boy." Tisdale had a downcast 
 air, and answered gravely. Looking askance and 
 laying his hand almost timidly on Wallace's 
 
 arm "I know," he repeated. "And, what's 
 
 worse, I dragged you into this mess." 
 
 As if to strike a blow, Wallace wheeled. 
 
 "Oh, rot!" he cried, glaring mortal offence, 
 and with his dark features working strangely. 
 "Do you think I'm that kind?" 
 
3 o THEFARCRY 
 
 Their eyes met, the explosion was over. The 
 friends had cleared their atmosphere, and could 
 face difficulty with a better heart. They stood 
 silent, considering the wreckage at their feet, the 
 bright morning sky overhead. Without a wisp of 
 cloud or vapor, the tropic sun mounted straight on 
 high, to restore all the glowing color of the sea. 
 From the northwest fluttered a moist breeze, hot, 
 yet mild, which followed the course of the late 
 storm like a puny clerical spirit trying to expiate 
 the mob violence of devils. 
 
 "Well?" Tisdale ventured. "Let's clean her 
 up. See, Rob, weVe got a foresail, anyhow. Set 
 that, head somewhere east, and chance it. I don't 
 know where we are, but, keeping easterly, there's 
 Karakalong, Taruna, Siao, Makaleha, what's-her- 
 name, and Cabio. Rafts of islands that side, so 
 thick you couldn't punch a knife blade between 'em. 
 Come now I What's the word, old Crusty ? Clean 
 up, and head east?" 
 
 The fellow's eyes brightened, as if his bare 
 string of names were magic, to summon land out 
 of the distance. Wallace gave him no reply, ex- 
 cept a puzzled stare; could he never see things, 
 this partner, as they really were — not even feel 
 the ship dead underfoot — or was he avoiding the 
 plainest fact? 
 
THE FLYTRAP 31 
 
 "Good." Wallace nodded, threw off his white 
 jacket, and, stalking into the waist of the vessel, 
 tossed overboard the first ruin that came to hand. 
 "We'll work the old packet," he cried sourly, "till 
 she drops apart. But no more of your silver lin- 
 ings, mind you, they make me sick !" 
 
 This might have been the last word, the order 
 of the day; for, although both partners worked 
 hard, body to body, sweating and grunting under 
 the glare of noon, they quarreled no more about 
 theory. What commands they had to give, take, 
 or dispute, dealt altogether with hot and heavy 
 practice. They cleared the schooner, spiked up 
 a double gallows tree in place of the broken davit, 
 and slung the remaining boat there; patched and 
 ran up a black rag of headsail on a stay which 
 threatened to part from the bowsprit stump ; and, 
 pulling on one rope like the Ancient Mariner and 
 his nephew, together hoisted the foresail without 
 speech. 
 
 When they had finished, put on their jackets, 
 mopped their heads, retied their scarlet kerchiefs, 
 and taken charge at the wheel, they found a 
 breathing space, but still no mood for talk. Hes- 
 perian light covered the ocean from far astern — 
 air and water forming one great golden peace. 
 The Nantwich, m the midst, appeared a miracle 
 
32 THE FAR CRY 
 
 of human impudence, like a rowdy cab that should 
 trundle down the chief street of heaven. Yet even 
 the Nantwich caught some transfiguring touch, for 
 her aged spars burned red as copper, her slate- 
 colored foresail was tinged with lilac. A few long 
 wrinkles flawed the mirror beneath her flanks, and 
 alone betrayed her motion. 
 
 It was the sunset hour, at sea; a good time for 
 talking confidences, and the best place. But the 
 two young men at the wheel found never a word to 
 exchange. With secret, embarrassed glances they 
 watched each other, and waited. 
 
 Tisdale turned his head, to look astern. Wal- 
 lace, holding the spokes, copied him slowly, with 
 an air of expectation. And yet neither began 
 speaking. 
 
 The sun lowered, veiling in haze, touched with 
 his lower limb the western sea line, floated there, 
 and, swollen with hot refraction, took the form 
 of a Chinese paper lantern, fat, oblate, and blood- 
 red. 
 
 "What was it, Arthur ?" 
 
 "I didn't speak," answered Tisdale, standing 
 at gaze. 
 
 Wallace frowned, then tried again : 
 
 "What were you thinking?" 
 
 The other came back to close quarters, but only 
 
THE FLYTRAP 33 
 
 to be lost in meditation, his blue eyes fixed on the 
 companionway. 
 
 "I was wondering," he said, "about that flytrap 
 again." He nodded at the cabin. "Those poor, 
 misguided insects down there. Queer how a trifle 
 sticks in one's head. Wonder what they'll 
 
 do " Tisdale suddenly faced his partner with 
 
 a look of defiance. "What will they do, Robin, 
 when she goes down?" 
 
 Wallace laughed in his throat — a gruff, satis- 
 fied laugh. 
 
 "Thought you'd come to that, Arthur." He 
 smiled, welcoming this frankness, after silence and 
 evasion all day. "Cat's out of the bag. She's 
 going down; you said it. There's no steeve to her 
 bowsprit any more. See for yourself." Like any 
 other taciturn man given headway, Wallace 
 warmed to his subject. "She's going down pop — 
 strained a butt or something. Your flies can look 
 after themselves; they have wings. But you and 
 I, and that boat of yours, that half a pound of 
 good fortune there — mafeesh, finish ! / don't pro- 
 pose to pump all night, for the pleasure of drown- 
 ing good and tired. Pump till you're black in the 
 face, she's a goner." 
 
 Tisdale remained gazing at the cabin sorrow- 
 fully. He delayed answering. 
 
34 THEFARCRY 
 
 "Ugly speech, that was," he said at last, with- 
 out lifting his eyes. "Ugly, Rob, the sound of it. 
 Did I ever pretend the schooner wouldn't sink? 
 A man might fancy you were sinking her yourself, 
 the notion does you so much good !" 
 
 Wallace reached over clumsily, caught his hand, 
 and wrung it. 
 
 "Arthur," he mumbled, "so long as we float, I'll 
 rub you the wrong way. Don't mind me, will 
 you?" 
 
 The sun pulled under water his fiery arc. Above 
 and below his last gleam, flakes of red slowly van- 
 ished. The ocean became a lustrous indigo, and 
 this, in turn, a black, softer than charcoal dust. 
 When the two shipmates turned from watching its 
 dark solemnity, they found evening mounted in 
 the eastern sky. A white young moon hung aloft, 
 frail as a shred of wool, yet dropping little, hard 
 reflections into the deep, like white pebbles that 
 one by one dodged the tremors of the moving ship 
 and rendered the gloss of the water visible while 
 they sank. 
 
 "Those," began Tisdale quietly, "give a man the 
 
 idea No bottom, down, and down." He 
 
 stooped, with a movement as of shivering; fired 
 the mesh of the binnacle lamp, and shipped it; 
 then studied the moon, that faintly kindled with 
 
THE FLYTRAP 35 
 
 yellow, to show a greenish pallor in the heavens. 
 "How the old stage lights up, Rob, for our little 
 act ! Muted fiddles in the orchestra ! But, some- 
 how, for my exit, I'd rather storm off than have 
 all this Moonlight Sonata." 
 
 "Yes," rejoined his friend, "if we could choose. 
 I think she'll stay on top all night, though." 
 
 They began talking of many things which had 
 neither any bearing on the present hour nor any 
 link with that part of the world. The warm night 
 loosened their tongues, the dreamy, spacious ra- 
 diance lent scope to their memories. They talked 
 as for a wager, smoked cigars till the only box 
 was emptied, and, though relieving each other at 
 the wheel, and, as a final measure, stowing pro- 
 visions in the small boat on her gibbet, gave no 
 thought to anything but the pressure of time, the 
 necessity of speaking words, hearing words, which 
 could fill the mind and crowd out that nocturnal 
 silence. 
 
 Meanwhile the moon drifted over the topmast, 
 then stole down lower and lower, with a bleared, 
 wintry look. Across her face went winging two 
 black midges, a pair of sea birds that fled past the 
 schooner and melted in a region where stars were 
 gathering. Later, a solitary third fowl crossed the 
 moon path in the same direction, very wearily, and 
 
36 THEFARCRY 
 
 cried something once, far off, and derisive. Soon 
 afterward the little, ailing moon went down, left 
 the ocean vaulted with great stars, and the vessel, 
 a piece of human driftwood, alone with the oval 
 glow of her binnacle. 
 
 "I can't stand this!" groaned Tisdale. He 
 went fumbling down the companionway, to return 
 with a lighted candle lantern, which he set on the 
 deck. "There! A trifle more homelike. That 
 darkness gets under the roots of a chap's hair." 
 
 Wallace disregarded the improvement. He 
 was leaning over the helm in a strained attitude, 
 looking down, but as though listening. Bordered 
 with the scarlet kerchief, his brown face resembled 
 that of some old-time Turkey merchant, intent on 
 a bargain. 
 
 "Hear anything?" he demanded, all at once. 
 "Do you?" 
 
 Tisdale gave heed. Both men eyed each other 
 severely in the lantern light, as if by staring hard 
 enough they could bend their double intelligence 
 into one force of hearing. 
 
 "No. Possibly, once Those birds?" 
 
 The steersman shook his head impatiently. 
 
 "They flew out of earshot, long ago. But lis- 
 ten." 
 
 Another long effort brought no result. Tisdale 
 
THE FLYTRAP 37 
 
 raised his chin, began to sniff the night like a 
 dog. Their staring match thus ended, the part- 
 ners craned forward, shielding their eyes against 
 the lantern. Two white figures, cramped in the 
 same posture, they seemed to await a third person 
 who, at any moment, might take shape in the 
 starlight, and arrive. 
 
 "I hear it now," whispered Wallace. 
 
 "By George, I smell it!" Tisdale shouted, 
 throwing up his fist joyfully. "I smell it !" 
 
 While they spoke, and as if responding, the ship 
 quivered, subsided under them with a shrinking 
 movement, lifted with a swelling, and, rather play- 
 fully than violently, upset both men on her deck. 
 
 "She's going!" Tisdale snatched the bail of the 
 lantern as it rolled past, and jumped on foot. 
 "Come along, Rob!" 
 
 He seemed ready to run somewhere. Wallace 
 caught his hand, crying : 
 
 "No, no ! She's grounded. Fast by the head. 
 Feel her!" 
 
 Tisdale swung up his lantern at arm's length, 
 with some wild purpose of shedding light on the 
 whole situation. A dim circle of the deck flickered 
 into view, rocked vaguely as the lantern rocked, 
 and then, with great deliberation, collected new 
 movement of its own ; everything on the right hand 
 
38 THE FAR CRY 
 
 rose, everything on the left sank, in perfect order 
 and counterbalance. The men had hardly felt 
 their footing start when it canted from under, and 
 they struck the bottom of a steep chute. The lan- 
 tern smashed on the port rail. Overboard flew 
 the candle, a thread of guttering blue fire instantly 
 quenched. 
 
 "That's right enough," Wallace declared, sit- 
 ting breathless but philosophic in a barrel or so 
 of slopping water. "Heeled over. The sails, 
 Arthur; get our canvas off before the wind comes." 
 
 The rag of headsail they doused readily enough ; 
 as for the foresail, the best they could manage, 
 crawling and slipping along the deck, was to lower 
 the peak, strain at the downhaul, then let the whole 
 black fabric swirl down past the stars and float on 
 the lesser blackness of the sea. 
 
 "So!" cried Wallace. "We've done our pos- 
 sible!" 
 
 They scrambled aft, and, using the side of the 
 cabin as a footrest, lay down on deck at a com- 
 fortable slant. Before them the sky paled with 
 dawn, the lower stars dried and dwindled. 
 
 "I can smell it now," said Wallace, clasping 
 his hands under his head. "Plain." 
 
 "Well you might !" Tisdale stretched his arms, 
 yawning. "And I can hear it." 
 
THE FLYTRAP 39 
 
 A whisper, like that of a quiet wind pouring 
 through pine woods, stole toward them out of 
 the dawn — the whisper of small waves breaking 
 slowly at a distance. Pungent whiffs of brine and 
 iodine came with it, exhaled by wet seaweed; and 
 these, from time to time, were overwhelmed in a 
 stink of fish. 
 
 An hour dragged past; light spread up trem- 
 bling from the eastern sea; the world became a 
 suffusion of dark, mystical blue; and there, ahead, 
 between the watchers on the wreck and a sudden 
 orange filament of horizon, swam a coal-black, 
 broken lump, an islet. It lay at a quarter mile, 
 perhaps, off the starboard bow. The sun rose hid- 
 den behind it, suspending in yellow flame its hard 
 profile: a small, black turret of rock, nicked along 
 the crest with tiny, ragged crenelation; from the 
 foot a strip of beach running off, widening, and 
 sloping into a final mound or hillock, furred with 
 low foliage, crowned with four tall palms. 
 
 The planters hung on the rail, seeing all this as 
 over the ridgepole of a house. The snowy fringe 
 of waves, under the beach, stirred and beckoned 
 them. They left off staring, now and then, to grin 
 at eac.i other like hungry men eating. 
 
 "Come ahead!" Wallace clambered over to 
 their little gallows tree, and began tugging at the 
 
4 o THE FAR CRY 
 
 fall of the boat tackle. "What you waiting for?" 
 They slid the boat down handsomely across the 
 deck, and launched her in clear, shallow water, 
 frightening a drove of red and silver fishes. Wal- 
 lace took the oars. Tisdale, perching high among 
 boxes, had almost contrived to ship the rudder, 
 when suddenly he threw it down, caught hold of 
 the overhanging shrouds, and swung back on 
 board the Nantwich. 
 
 "Steady a bit!" he ordered. "I forgot." 
 He climbed the deck, and disappeared down the 
 companionway. Presently his voice resounded in 
 the cabin, crying snatches of exhortation. A rust- 
 ling noise smothered the words. 
 
 "Increase and multiply!" His red bandanna 
 headkerchief popped into view. He crawled on 
 deck once more, and stood up, flapping sheets of 
 old newspaper in both hands, as if to make a sig- 
 nal. "Be happy, my children! Shoo! Scat, you 
 fools, fly to leeward !" 
 
 The sun, clearing the low impediment of the 
 isle, bathed all the sea and all the vessel in warm 
 light. The cabin flies, a thin swarm glinting like 
 crumbs of gun metal, buzzed and scattered into 
 freedom. 
 
 "Off !" cried Tisdale. "There's land for you !" 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 GODBOLT, A. B. 
 
 The buoyant gliding of the small boat, so in- 
 timate and level with the water, was like a breath 
 of liberty. As their oars dipped, the bulkhead 
 clock — a cheap imitation of brass, balanced on Tis- 
 dale's knee — struck five bells. The little sounds 
 tingled over the shoal. It was music to hear them, 
 and to know that they rang in a day so fortunate. 
 
 "Out round the foresail, Arthur. Mind your 
 tiller." 
 
 Tisdale obeyed with a laugh. 
 
 "I was listening," he explained. "And watch- 
 ing those fish. Golly!" 
 
 They rounded a bank of dirty, swollen canvas 
 where the foresail floated. Wallace backed water, 
 to study everything with care. The schooner 
 lolled in a clean bed — an outermost ledge of the 
 shoal — on yellow sand all crinkled with ripple 
 marks, as pretty as the grain of Norway pine. 
 
 4i 
 
42 THEFARCRY 
 
 "She's there for keeps," muttered the rower. 
 "Now head ashore." 
 
 Though laden to her gunwale, the boat drew 
 forward with the same still buoyancy befitting that 
 lake of sunrise. Before her the island had grown 
 clear, and taken color. The tawny beach bright- 
 ened, the crag — sombre, till now, as a black rook 
 in chess — was painted wet-green with weeds above 
 the surf line, patched red with dulse, fretted and 
 frosted from top to bottom with the roosting of a 
 thousand sea birds. The oars, bumping steadily 
 as Wallace pulled, roused a hollow answer from 
 the rocks, at which a great company of winged 
 creatures — tern, gannet, and frigate bird — flew up 
 and twinkled above the morning sun, their noise 
 and number incredible, and from every crack or 
 shelf of this populous turret the black neck of a 
 cormorant writhed out, like so many snakes raising 
 their heads off the basalt columns. 
 
 "Straight in for the beach," commanded Wal- 
 lace. "No sea running to speak of." 
 
 He let his oars drip, and watched the birds 
 above the cliff. Already, their surprise over, they 
 settled in a lively cloud and came flapping to roost. 
 It was they who formed the crenelation of the 
 rocky tower; for against the risen light their bod- 
 ies crowded in clumps and squabbling families, 
 
GOD BOLT, A. B. 43 
 
 which presently became pacified, and lined the crest 
 with rude embrasures. 
 
 "Not afraid of us." Wallace took up his row- 
 ing. "A bad lookout, their being so tame. Island 
 has nobody living on it." 
 
 The steersman, at this, broke out into mutiny. 
 
 "Confound it, Rob!" He stared angrily, and 
 dropped the clock with a bang. "Can't you ever 
 be grateful? Don't spoil the whole occasion!" 
 
 Wallace paused, between strokes. 
 
 "Why, Arthur," he replied, and his voice was 
 troubled. "Why, Arthur, a man must think of 
 possibilities." 
 
 "Go on, Father." Tisdale picked up the clock, 
 held it to his ear, and replaced it on his lap. 
 "Think away, old Doxology." 
 
 He steered for the beach, a stone's throw from 
 the crag foot. With a long, slow lift as gentle as 
 breathing, the sea carried them forward once and 
 again, then lanced them through hissing, white 
 spume. They jumped out, caught the boat be- 
 tween them, and, with no more difficulty than chil- 
 dren might have in rescuing a toy, ran her lightly 
 across this margin, over the wet sand into the dry. 
 For a moment they stood erect, flinging abroad 
 their arms, drinking long drafts of the briny, fish- 
 laden air, admiring the saber curve of the beach, 
 
44 THEFARCRY 
 
 that plunged its glowing point into the hill of green 
 underbrush and palms, a mile away. There was 
 no trace of man, no sign of life, except a fitful 
 squawking and bickering in the citadel of birds 
 near by. 
 
 "Unload?" 
 
 "And breakfast. Hai !" 
 
 They carried their goods and hauled their boat 
 above the tide mark — a line drawn in rags of sea- 
 weed variously and delicately colored. Here, on 
 sand as fine as the siftings of an hourglass, the cast- 
 aways pitched their first camp, ate their first meal; 
 and here, having stretched an old canvas over two 
 tiers of boxes, they crawled into shelter and slept 
 like dead men. 
 
 "A-a-ah! What luxury!" 
 
 The sun, still high, faced them out of the west, 
 and poured into their little cave the full heat and 
 splendor of afternoon. 
 
 "What luxury!" Tisdale rolled over, yawned, 
 and sat up. He found Wallace already awake, 
 squatting with his back to the sunshine, and 
 thoughtfully chewing a pencil. "Something wrong 
 again, my Knitted Brow?" 
 
 Wallace frowned, and, smoothing a paper on 
 his knee, wrote down a word or so. The tide line 
 of weeds — faded pink, faded green, leaf-yellow, 
 
GODBOLT, A. B. 45 
 
 and claret — shone behind him like a Persian car- 
 pet torn to shreds; beyond, the surf ran dazzling; 
 farther still, where the bright green shoal deep- 
 ened into blue, the Nantwich lay diminished, her 
 masts leaning at a melancholy pitch, and a flock 
 of sea birds hankering about her, with plangent 
 cries. Against this background, Wallace sat and 
 chewed his pencil, the image of a poet expecting a 
 rhyme. He looked up. 
 
 "I've made an inventory." And he read aloud 
 from his paper: 
 
 "Provisions: two boxes tinned meat, one 
 case biscuits, one bag Chinese rice, one bunch 
 bananas, one breaker of water, one bottle 
 whiskey, one-half case Tansan. Tools and 
 implements: four axes, one saw, one maul, 
 one clock, one compass. Miscellaneous: two 
 dozen candles, seven packets pipe tobac- 
 co " 
 
 "And fiftyrtwo playing cards, Father." Tisdale 
 drew from his pocket a worn pack, which, with a 
 modest air of contribution, he laid on the sand 
 before his chief. "All the pleasures of home." 
 
 Wallace folded and put away his paper, very 
 deliberately. 
 
46 THEFARCRY 
 
 "This matter," he began, in a sort of calm 
 dudgeon, "happens to be serious." 
 
 Tisdale shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I know it!" he cried irritably. U I know it! 
 But, Rob, if you read out any more of that — that 
 damned trousseau, you'll drive me wild!" He 
 shuffled the cards, arrayed them face upward on 
 the sand, and began, with composure, to play a 
 game of solitaire. "We brought enough to start 
 housekeeping. And, what's more, I want to enjoy 
 the first day of it." 
 
 He held up the nine of diamonds, bent forward 
 to place it on the ten of spades, but never finished 
 the movement or the game. Had lightning struck 
 their tent the two men could not have sat more 
 stunned. A voice, a third voice, deep and jovial, 
 broke out in the wilderness and joined their dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 "Good boy ! Good words !" 
 
 They turned their heads, looked, and won- 
 dered. 
 
 A man sat on the nose of their boat, close by, re- 
 garding them steadfastly — a large man with a 
 black, pointed beard, who wore a strange plaited 
 hat like a fig basket, a blue flannel shirt full of 
 holes, and moleskin trousers cut short below the 
 knees. He seemed all bigness and burliness, tat- 
 
GO D BOLT, A. B. 47 
 
 ters and ruddy sunburn; but this first impression, 
 of rough size, yielded to a second and a more 
 striking. The stranger, although he merely sat 
 there after his brief interjection, might have been 
 pausing in a full stream of talk, so heartily did 
 humor and persuasion warm his features and shine 
 from his black eyes. 
 
 "I've lived on the island one year," said this ap- 
 parition, in a voice like a deep bell; "alone, one 
 year, and had no more than a pair of pocket scis- 
 sors. Trim your beard, and look at the sea, and 
 what are the wild waves saying? There's my 
 diary of it!" 
 
 The two men in the tent remained gaping. 
 
 "You're college boys, now, to make a guess?" 
 He swung his brown feet and smiled. "I bet you 
 
 are. 
 
 "Four years out," said Tisdale, who began to 
 recover. 
 
 "Ah, now, I envy you !" cried the stranger, with 
 gusto. "I do, honest. Lucky men ! High school 
 was where I stuck, halfway, when father failed — 
 cattle, cattle, they bust easy. You boys know 
 Greek, now, I dare say? Well, there, to think!" 
 He grasped his black beard in his fist, and tugged 
 it sorrowfully. "The orts of that Greek class, I 
 used to glean 'em up — 'Anthropos across a hawse, 
 
48 THEFARCRY 
 
 a hoss on Anthropos' — all about the wise man, and 
 Brick Metcalf reciting, too. Next year, thinks I 
 at the time, I'll catch up those wise men and be 
 Lambano-Lepsomai-Lambasting away with the 
 proudest of 'em. Next year! Lord! And here 
 we are instead." 
 
 He swept a big hand toward the surf and the 
 ocean beyond. 
 
 "Shows you, that does, how much good comes 
 o' foresight." He returned from gazing; his 
 black eyes twinkled. "Did anybody say tobacco? 
 Speech behaves queer to me, boys, and my over- 
 hearing might have gone wrong, because I've 
 dreamed tobacco these last few months." 
 
 Wallace tossed him one of the seven packets. 
 He tore open the wrapping, took a long, critical 
 whiff, stood up, sprang into the air, and cracked 
 his bare heels together three times before alight- 
 ing. 
 
 "Wow!" He sniffed the tobacco again, and 
 beamed. "That's honey on the stinger! Thank 
 you, boys, thank you. Wait a minute, I'll be back." 
 
 He balanced the packet carefully on the boat's 
 nose, turned, ran off across the beach at remark- 
 able speed, and, bounding up the bank like a 
 greyhound, was lost in the undergrowth. 
 
 "What do you make of that?" 
 
GO D BOLT, A. B. 49 
 
 The two friends had scrambled out from their 
 shelter, to watch for the stranger's return. Wal- 
 lace tapped his forehead. 
 
 "A little crazy, I'm afraid." 
 
 "Oh, Rob!" Tisdale protested with scorn. 
 Then, more mildly — "I don't care if the man is," 
 he declared. "He's a buster!" 
 
 The plaited hat shone once more among the 
 greenery. The stranger sprang down upon the 
 beach and came racing back, a harefoot for light- 
 ness. 
 
 "All correct now!" he shouted as he ran; and, 
 without drawing short breath more than twice, 
 plumped himself down on the sand by the boat, 
 laughing. "Now," he boomed, "for a smoke! 
 Went to fetch my pipe !" 
 
 His pipe was a white sea shell, with a short 
 reed stem. He crammed in the tobacco, shook 
 out his hand eagerly for a match, struck a light, 
 drew and exhaled a slow draft of smoke, then 
 wagged his beard with ineffable relish. For a 
 while he said nothing, but rolled his eyes at his 
 two benefactors, and squatted there, a big, 
 swarthy figure, puffing at his white sea shell like 
 the peasant murderer in "Robert Helmont." 
 
 "Well!" He spoke at last, between clouds. 
 "Well, now, I'll unfold it. ' Who's this wild man ?' 
 
5 o THE FAR CRY 
 
 you been saying. Oh, yes, you have ! Natural to. 
 So, here goes. Godbolt's my name — Francis God- 
 bolt. The rest is soon told. Now to start fair 
 and open " 
 
 Tisdale, sitting cross-legged beside him, put in 
 a word : 
 
 "To start even, on both sides, you ought to 
 know something about us, and how we got here." 
 
 The smoker laughed. 
 
 "Can see how you got here," he answered, 
 pointing his pipe toward the wreck on the shoal. 
 "That's how. And she'll never budge again* if 
 I'm any sailor. As for you boys — why, Lord 
 bless you ! I could tell by your faces. No fear !" 
 Again he pointed at the schooner. "She looks 
 familiar, too. What might be her name?" 
 
 "Nantwich" Wallace told him. "We bought 
 her for nothing from a drunken old reprobate who 
 died next week." 
 
 The ragged islander clapped his thigh. 
 
 "Thought I knew her," said he, and sat look- 
 ing beyond her masts into the distance. "Poor 
 old Captain Hardmood, gone to glory. He stole 
 that schooner over in the Carolines. And so he's 
 dead, and his vessel done for. You see, I knew 
 'em both. Barratry, plain barratry, it amounted 
 to. And Hardmood's the only man ever de- 
 
GO D BOLT, A. B. 51 
 
 feated rum. But I wouldn't just call him a repro- 
 bate, either. Lots o' good points to Captain Hard- 
 mood, there was, before his daughter went 
 
 Oh, well, he's dead now, poor man!" 
 
 This bit of sea dirge caused another silence, 
 while the speaker twisted his beard. 
 
 "But that's not my story," he continued, by and 
 by. "And first thing I saw you boys asleep here, 
 and her aground, I ran home to put my clothes on 
 — been going naked a good deal, to save 'em — and 
 then came back to introduce myself proper; for 
 likely we'll stay aboard the island some time to- 
 gether. Now here's mine, and every word true, 
 though I don't amount to much, and look so." 
 
 He sat smoking and collecting his thoughts. A 
 white gull soared and tilted overhead, came float- 
 ing close, peered down at the men with curious 
 bright eyes, then squawked, lowered its pink web 
 feet as a brake, and, planing the air at a new angle, 
 escaped. 
 
 "One o' my chickens," said the man, watching 
 it. "For a year I've been a bird farmer. Before 
 that — everything !" He knocked out the sea-shell 
 pipe, and refilled it. "When father failed, and 
 died, and then my mother, I — I just cut loose. A 
 parson was good to me, but he went as missionary 
 to China. I agreed to help him take two cows 
 
52 THE FAR CRY 
 
 and a bull there. Better'n my word, for I dis- 
 charged them and a calf at Woosung. Cunning 
 little dogy, the calf was, Triton by name, being 
 born at sea. From that time on, as I say — every- 
 thing, everywhere, sailor mostly, all over the East. 
 Thirty-two years of age; able-bodied. That's all. 
 Able-bodied is my degree ; can thumb out Latin — 
 almost came to smelling distance o' Greek. Now 
 tell me, boys, is there any sense in a life like that? 
 I wondered a lot, here." 
 
 He looked up wistfully. His eyes, bold and 
 humorous until now, became very sad, gained all 
 at once a surprising depth of melancholy. Tisdale 
 encouraged him with a nod, handed him another 
 match, and said: 
 
 "But you didn't tell us how you came here." 
 
 "Oh," replied the wanderer simply, "got left. 
 I went life-line man on a shelling schooner — 
 Malay crew, Arab skipper. She put in here for 
 eggs and turtle. No turtle, either. I dropped 
 asleep in the shade, being dog-tired, and when I 
 woke up she'd gone off and left me. Too lazy to 
 row back, I suppose, when they found I wasn't on 
 board. Here I was, anyhow, and here I stayed, 
 eggs and fish to my chow." 
 
 Wallace hung his head, as if weighing this nar- 
 rative. 
 
GO D BOLT, A. B. 53 
 
 "What chance do you make," he inquired ser- 
 iously, "of our getting off this island, or being 
 taken off?" 
 
 The black-bearded man became equally serious. 
 
 "Mighty little, to be candid." There could be 
 no greater candor than that in his clear, black 
 eyes. "Mighty little, either way. I flew my cing- 
 let, for a flag, on the tallest of those palms, till 
 it blew away one night. Did no good, so far as 
 
 being sighted. And for getting off Well, 
 
 here's your boat, but where's to make f or ? Land's 
 near enough, some point of compass, but the devil 
 knows which. My crowd, the shelling schooner, 
 was two weeks out, and blown off her course." 
 He got on foot, and, still smoking, looked aim- 
 lessly about, as if to find something new in the 
 same old ocean and a sunset of plain blue and 
 yellow. "No. I'm sorry for your sake, boys, but 
 I can't pretend not being glad o' company." 
 
 Upon this remark, Tisdale also stood up, and 
 faced him. 
 
 "We're glad of yours," he stated warmly. 
 "Your talk does me good, Mr. — Mr. Thunder- 
 bolt." 
 
 The sailor broke out laughing, and shook hands. 
 
 "Godbolt," he amended, in a voice that made 
 the name sound like profanity. "I knew you'd 
 
54 THE FAR CRY 
 
 turn a joke on it. They always do. Sainty, some 
 call me, because that's many a point off my na- 
 ture." 
 
 The sun hung low and sank. The ocean, run- 
 ning its dark-blue bar across a vast brightness of 
 pale blue and gold, divided the real sky, above, 
 from that mimic sky beneath, where, as all three 
 men stood thinking, the wet sands brought sunset 
 home to their feet. 
 
 "Well, boys," continued Godbolt, turning, 
 "while daylight holds, better lug your goods up 
 to my house." 
 
 When they had sorted out three armfuls from 
 the general store, and spread their canvas over the 
 rest, they crossed the beach and climbed into a lit- 
 tle path hidden by green shrubs. The sailor led 
 the way slowly, often halting to set down his bur- 
 den. "For," said he, "you boys look worn out." 
 It was dim moonlight by the time they gained the 
 final hillock and the taller bush, where the con- 
 tinual crying of birds came fainter, and fragrant 
 verdure blotted the smell of salt weeds and fish. 
 
 "She steps all four masts plumb in her bow," 
 said the lord of the island. "And here's my house, 
 between 'em." 
 
 A clumsy cone of dry thatch, like a beehive 
 raised on legs, stood among four palm trunks in 
 
GOD BOLT, A. B. 55 
 
 the dusk. Under this roof Godbolt made his 
 guests welcome, by lighting a candle and sticking 
 it in the dry sand that served as floor. 
 
 "Take your supper, now," he ordered, "and 
 get to sleep. No more talk this day." Drooping 
 over the candle, they ate like weary figures in a 
 dream. Their host — meanwhile gnawing a biscuit 
 with grumbles of delight that it was neither fish 
 nor egg — came and went behind their backs, till 
 he had shaken down a bedding of dry leaves. 
 
 "Good night," he said abruptly, blew out the 
 candle, rolled over to a post, lay flat, and began 
 almost instantly to snore. 
 
 Late that night, when the moon stood over the 
 palm tops, Tisdale, happening to wake, heard low 
 footsteps passing and repassing the open side of 
 the hut. He sat up, vigilant, then crawled out- 
 doors, and peered round to see who was prowling. 
 The surf had grown higher on some distant reef 
 or bank, so that these nearer sounds, coming and 
 going steadily, were often lost in the deep tone 
 of breakers. A moving shadow appeared beyond 
 the palm trunks. Tisdale walked over toward 
 it. 
 
 "Woke you, did I?" The shade spoke in God- 
 bolt's mellow bass, paused, and moved on. He 
 was marching back and forth, naked, in the moon- 
 
56 THE FAR CRY 
 
 light. "Sorry. I can't sleep when that old fellow 
 gets to calling out there. Calling. Listen.'' 
 
 The night walker again halted, to raise a giant 
 arm that glistened as cold as bronze. 
 
 "Calls me out o' my sleep, the old chap does. 
 What does he want?" 
 
 The surf, through a sharp whisper prolonged 
 like the tearing of silk in immense strips, gave its 
 hollower summons. 
 
 " 'Come and find out,' he says. 'Come find 
 what sense there is to a life like yours. What 
 sense?'" 
 
 Tisdale laid his hand on the outstretched arm. 
 
 "We'll find out, some day," he replied urgently 
 
 but quietly. "Some day, perhaps. To-night 
 
 Come back to bed, Sainty." 
 
 The great arm quivered strongly, lifted, and 
 struck him across the back. 
 
 "Bells o' Beulah !" cried the sailor fiercely. "It's 
 grand to hear a nickname again!" He started 
 walking obediently toward where the ponderous 
 beehive roof glimmered like a mound of snow 
 among frosty plantain leaves. "You're right, my 
 dear boy. Back to sleep, and wait." 
 
 He halted once more, leaned one hand on the 
 column of a palm, and raised his bearded profile, 
 
GO D BOLT, A. B. 57 
 
 keen as a hawk's — a strange listener in a strange 
 white nocturne. 
 
 "You're right," he repeated. "But all the same 
 — it's crying.' 1 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A TO IZZARD 
 
 They took an early breakfast on the march, 
 eating as they threaded the low bush down to the 
 beach. At sunrise they rowed out to the schooner, 
 accompanied by a screaming cloud of gannets and 
 gulls, whose pinions whitened the air like flying 
 paper — a snowstorm of ravenous birds flung down, 
 torn apart, blown high or skimming the water, 
 but always thickest where the boat swam. 
 
 When all three men had climbed on board the 
 Nantwich, to look about for salvage, Godbolt 
 threw up his hands in amazement, doffed his fig- 
 basket hat, and swept an ironical bow. 
 
 u The Lord nourish fools!" He saw the 
 whole vessel at a glance, and his black eyes 
 snapped. "O Lord, nourish fools forever! Ex- 
 cuse me, boys, but He slid an island under her 
 forefoot without stopping to think twice. You 
 never gave Him time." 
 
ATOIZZARD 59 
 
 Wallace, whom the shadow of tribulation still 
 overhung, looked ashore dolefully, and shook his 
 head. 
 
 "Not much to brag of." 
 
 The other rounded on him, laughing heartily: 
 
 u Not much?" He called the wheeling birds to 
 witness. "Providence, my son, Providence never 
 did a quicker hand's turn !" 
 
 "If we're to live and die here," Wallace re- 
 torted, "alone, sole alone " 
 
 "Well, there!" Godbolt swung into the com- 
 panionway, and climbed out again, shouldering 
 the yellow camphor chest like a feather. He set 
 this load down, before taking up the argument. 
 "Sole alone?" he echoed, and gave a wink of 
 satire. "Ever live in a house, did you, Mr. Wal- 
 lace, packed roundabout and chock-a-block with 
 relatives, your nearest o' blood or marriage ? And 
 did you always love 'em all, dear and steady? 
 Or walk a street, Mr. Wallace, and see those 
 lovely faces go a-streaming by, and the right hands 
 o' brotherhood all poked out to fondle you?" 
 
 He disappeared below, to stagger blindfold on 
 deck with a pair of mattresses over his head. 
 
 "Phew!" he cried, bundling them into the boat. 
 "My late friend Hardmood took to garlic also, 
 I understand!" He straightened up, wagged a 
 
60 THE FAR CRY 
 
 forefinger at the island, as though aiming one last 
 dead shot of wisdom. "Mr. Wallace" — he lev- 
 eled the finger after every word — "there's lots 
 worse things than living alone !" 
 
 Next moment he was down in the cabin, rum- 
 maging, and singing over and over to the air of 
 "The Irish Washerwoman" : 
 
 " 'Oh, John Darling lived well, 
 And his father lived well, 
 And his father well knew 
 That John Darling lived well! 
 And John Darling lived well, 
 And his father lived ' 
 
 "O' course," he shouted up, suddenly, "a man 
 can sit on his prats and think Omar Key-West all 
 day, if he's that much concentration!" 
 
 So began their second day on the isle, with 
 wrecker's work, debate in philosophy, and always 
 the cat-like fighting of sea-birds. So their days 
 continued. The schooner, gutted of all things use- 
 ful, let fall both her masts, and settled, a rotting, 
 grinding hulk between sand and water; by which 
 time the trio had forsaken her, except as a mark 
 to swim round in their morning bath. Athletes, 
 training, when the world was young, to race for a 
 
ATOIZZARD 61 
 
 strigil and a parsley wreath, could not have led 
 cleaner lives than theirs upon this mile of beach. 
 Sunrise woke them in the beehive house; and 
 when Tisdale had won at the swimming, and 
 Godbolt, without effort, had flung them both over 
 his head in a wrestling match, or outstripped them 
 a hundred yards in running a mile, there followed 
 wholesome hours of porterage and carpentry 
 under perpetual sunshine. The mainmast of the 
 Nantwich they raised, after great labor, on the 
 hill, and rigged with halliards flying all Captain 
 Hardmood's color-box of signals; the cabin roof 
 they floated bodily ashore, then rebuilt as a go- 
 down to hold their meagre property. Birds 
 haunted them at work or play, mewing in their 
 ears. Sunset painted the water and the sands, 
 never twice alike, but gorgeously; evening lit stars 
 round their dungeon wall; the birds left their 
 screaming, except when beaten fishers, that flew 
 home late with talons empty, woke their fledglings 
 to hunger and disappointment in the dark; and so 
 night after night, wide, still, and more consoling 
 than the night of cities, brought sleep to all but the 
 outlying surf. 
 
 "No man," said Godbolt, one afternoon, "could 
 ask for better, some respects. The old sand-bank 
 — she taught me to think, I shouldn't wonder." 
 
62 THE FAR CRY 
 
 They were walking, three abreast, over the 
 bleached gold-dust of the shore, toward the crag. 
 Towering between his two friends, the bearded 
 speaker had been meditative. He took a roving 
 sight along the island. 
 
 "Yes," he went on, like a dark sage full of doc- 
 trine, "she's the world in one volume, boys. Life 
 — you never hear people ask outside o' print, but 
 all hands keep guessing one way or other — what 
 the devil is Life, anyhow? This island, she speaks 
 up pat, and tells you, from A to Izzard." 
 
 At high flood, a little channel, a shallow brook 
 of salt water, cut off the birds' ledge from the sand- 
 spit. Now, at half-tide, this channel had van- 
 ished, leaving a few clear pools among matted 
 heads of wrack. Toward one of these the sailor 
 bent, like a man who could lay his hand on any- 
 thing required. 
 
 "Here's A," said he. "I'll show you Izzard 
 before long. Here's A> the fore-side o' life for 
 you, plain." 
 
 From under brown sea-weed, he dug an old, 
 flat shell, in shape like a huge ear. Rough sea- 
 handling had polished the nacre into soft colors 
 and gleams. It held a dirty handful of gray stuff 
 clotted together like wet kernels of barley. 
 
 "What's those?" demanded Godbolt. 
 
ATOIZZARD 63 
 
 Neither of his pupils could answer. 
 
 "And you know Greek I" he laughed, poising the 
 shell over a sand-basin filled with brine. "Come 
 to school, my sonnies ! Sand crab eggs, they are. 
 Look sharp, now, and you'll see a miracle — a holy 
 terror: the Word made Flesh, and no mistake!" 
 
 He squatted by the pool in the sand, a burly 
 worker of magic. The shell dipped, the gray clot 
 crumbled apart, floated — and faster than eye could 
 follow, thicker than sparks, the barley-kernels, 
 melting, set free a thousand black motes that 
 darted hither and yon through the water. Life had 
 begun, creatures were born to Fear. Not an egg 
 burst, but that a living midge knew the great mo- 
 tive instantly, and fled, and in a flash, burrowing 
 the sand, was hidden. Birth and flight, birth and 
 flight unerring, by myriads: to watch this boiling 
 helter-skelter, and see these black atoms dart 
 straightway from the Devourer, was to credit 
 them with foreknowledge. 
 
 "Someone has coached 'em," said Godbolt, peer- 
 ing down. "Someone drills it into crabs for years 
 ahead: — 'Quick as you're born, get under cover!' 
 — See 'em pelting, the little beggars, away from 
 the wrath to come. That's Life — to be scared, 
 hey?" 
 
 Sudden as it began, Godbolt's miracle ended, 
 
64 THEFARCRY 
 
 like a pinch of powder dissolved. An empty shell 
 lay on bottom, reflecting aerial hues. 
 
 "Now for Izzard." The master of this nativity 
 show, laughing quietly, stood up. He tramped on 
 through puddles of shining sea water, and began 
 to climb an iron-red buttress of the crag. "Same 
 time, we'll set our bread for breakfast, too." 
 
 The crest of the rock, won by hard climbing, 
 bore a spectacle at which the men, even after daily 
 visits, could not cease to wonder. From the soli- 
 tude of their beach, they mounted into more noise 
 and smell, more color and movement, than those 
 of any fabulous bazaar. It was the Chandni 
 Chowk of sea-birds, the fort and crowded capital 
 of Aristophanes's kingdom. A flat half-acre, 
 coated thickly as with white lead, was covered by 
 a winged host of every size and name, gannet, 
 boatswain, mutton-bird, snowballs of baby fluff, 
 shapeless Easter rabbits with vermilion noses, 
 young Phaethon feathered in white satin, and 
 breeding frigate-birds whose bare throats shone 
 raw scarlet, as if scraped down to the arteries. 
 Beaks of blue, beaks of amber and black and sul- 
 phur yellow, turned idly as the three men ad- 
 vanced through a lane which opened and closed 
 round their passage, no broader than the birds 
 chose to waddle from underfoot. 
 
ATOIZZARD 6s 
 
 "I'll set our bread overnight." Tisdale stooped, 
 and pinching his nostrils, smashed a square yard of 
 varicolored eggs. He took the bearings of the 
 spot carefully, for to-morrow's breakfast, new- 
 laid, would cover it. "Wheel Let's move to 
 
 windward Now where's your Izzard, 
 
 Sainty?" 
 
 Godbolt, shin-deep among staring fowl, tugged 
 his black beard. 
 
 "Right there," he answered, and pointed 
 gravely to an outmost pinnacle of basalt. "There 
 they wait. No joke, boys, the end o' the alpha- 
 bet." 
 
 Apart from the crowd, apart from one another, 
 on shelves and edges of the rock sat a few droop- 
 ing birds, old noddies and old coots. Most of 
 them hung motionless, dejected; though now and 
 then one shifted his awkward feet, wagged his 
 tail-feathers weakly, or craned his neck with pain- 
 ful striving. Too old to fish, too feeble, they sat 
 patiently awaiting the end of all aches and hun- 
 gers. Behind them, eggs might hatch, males fight, 
 loose females go squinnying and squawking; they, 
 the superannuated, stared blankly before them, 
 and shrugged the wings they could not lift. 
 
 "I watched 'em, often." Godbolt's deep voice 
 was lowered as though he spoke beside a human 
 
66 THE FAR CRY 
 
 sick-bed. "Often. There's the finish, mates. 
 That's the one blessed thing I felt afraid of, liv- 
 ing alone — that kind o' sitting still, and flapping 
 yourself, and no purpose to anybody." 
 
 The glow of late afternoon streamed over the 
 ocean, gilded the cliff, rosily warmed the huddling 
 whiteness of the birds, and lighted soft metallic 
 sheen on colored beak or burnished feather. To- 
 ward the rock, from every point of the horizon, 
 the fishers flew homeward — here a black cormor- 
 ant, whirring low, like an ill-made, unbalanced top 
 with wings set too far astern; there a gull, drop- 
 ping for another dive, and yowling, and flogging 
 the air as he rose to soar again ; above these, above 
 the light, a great frigate homing in one swift line, 
 with scissor-pointed pinions reefed for the final 
 swoop; far over all, a white star that winked by 
 daylight in the blue, came high-flying Phasthon, the 
 tropic-bird. The noise of each laborer joining his 
 family, followed shrill and loud after the three 
 men as they returned along the sunset beach. 
 
 They walked in silence, for that parable of the 
 old noddies remained; somehow, it drew about 
 them the heaviness of their prison-house, closer 
 and more darkly than at any night-waking hour; 
 and yet, as each man plodded thoughtfully on the 
 heels of his long-drawn shadow, he was revolving, 
 
ATOIZZARD 67 
 
 not their own confinement on the island, but that 
 wider confinement of which it seemed an image — 
 the old jail of mortality, and the invisible jailor. 
 
 At one place on the beach, they found them- 
 selves halted by a common impulse, as though they 
 had reached the same point in a brown study. 
 
 "Godbolt," Wallace broke out, "I take it you're 
 a pessimist?" 
 
 His question seemed to know its answer before- 
 hand, and approve. The sailor, casting down his 
 eyes, shifted uneasily. 
 
 "Why, no," he muttered, juggling the sand with 
 his toes. He had a shamefaced, hang-dog air. "I 
 ain't even that, thorough. You see " He fal- 
 tered in growing embarrassment — "you see, boys, 
 I never had the schooling. I read some, but never 
 so far's to be anything. Now, does your pessimist 
 ever get jammed into squeaking out a prayer, 
 might say?" 
 
 Tisdale gave a delighted laugh. 
 
 "Not until he's met a real scare, Sainty." 
 
 Godbolt glanced up, with a smile round his 
 black eyes ; then, more sheepish than ever, looked 
 down and juggled his toes. 
 
 "Why, there you are: I wasn't even scairt. 
 
 Don't see how I ever came to do it, unless " 
 
 He paused, as to confess a crime — "unless being 
 
68 THE FAR CRY 
 
 lonesome. You know, something began to carry 
 on fierce, inside here" — He struck his chest like a 
 drum — "fierce, a-toothaching and a-smouldering 
 where you couldn't reach her, the way soft coal 
 sweats afire in the hold. Diagnosis hit me all 
 aback, one day. I never made a bow nor crooked 
 a joint, but stood right up in my tracks with a big 
 fresh boatswain's egg in my hand as it happened, 
 and 'O Lord,' says I, 'if you're hatching the whole 
 hurrah's nest, as some let on — here, take charge o' 
 my soul, if that's what I'm suffering from.' " 
 
 The bearded apologist made but one gesture, as 
 if plucking something from his bosom and tossing 
 it into the air. Tisdale smiled and nodded at the 
 pantomime. 
 
 "What result?" said Wallace. 
 
 "Result?" cried the other. "Never bothered 
 since!" 
 
 He started on briskly, toward the green hillock, 
 the palms, and the mast beyond, where the string 
 of signal flags fluttered in warm light. His alac- 
 rity had returned full force : even his companions 
 caught the infection, and copied his pace. 
 
 "So you're happy" — It was Wallace who re- 
 opened their peripatetic argument — "to live here 
 always, till we drop off into the water, like those 
 sick old birds?" 
 
ATOIZZARD 69 
 
 The sailor was not to be pent by narrow con- 
 sistencies. 
 
 "Happy? Not for Joe !" he bellowed in wrath. 
 "Think a man's a fool? Happy? It drives rqe 
 fair cannibal!" 
 
 He bounded up where the path, a rivulet of yel- 
 low sand, came tumbling through the bush. Here 
 he stopped, to fill the sea-shell pipe with tobacco. 
 Matches being too precious, and their vestal fire 
 of banked embers too far ahead, he struck no 
 light, but puffed his "dry smoke" with moderate 
 satisfaction. 
 
 "We'll get off," he mumbled, gazing to sea over 
 the green tops of shrubbery. "We'll win off the 
 island, boys. The means will come. All in good 
 time." 
 
 He stood listening to the surf, a dreary whisper 
 roundabout; then flung a hand impatiently, and 
 marched inland. 
 
 The means would come, sooner than they 
 thought. It was not on land, or sailing the sea, or 
 traveling in any form the wisest of them might 
 have guessed; but already it was on the way, to 
 bring aid by fighting its own battle, enduring its 
 own hardship. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SPENT MESSENGER 
 
 A great wind startled, them at bed-time, rush- 
 ing through the leaves and rattling the bee- 
 hive thatch. All night a gale poured westerly, 
 plantains flapped their ragged pennants, palm 
 fronds crackled like hail, the four palm trunks bent 
 and creaked. Sleep came by fits; but even to sleep 
 was to be carried in spirit down a river of air, 
 through tossing trees. Next morning, and all day, 
 the hubbub grew. No rain fell, but the bush hissed 
 with driven sand, a dark conflagration of clouds 
 rolled overhead, and as the sea bombarded with 
 huge guns on every hand, wraiths of tall spray 
 drifted falling across the island. The castaways 
 lay low, rubbed the dust from their eyes, shivered, 
 and swore; for of all things, wind and hopping 
 sand they felt were the most tiresome. 
 
 " 'C'est le vent de la mer qui nous tourmenteP " 
 sang Tisdale, to vary the uproar. The other two 
 
 70 
 
 
THE SPENT MESSENGER 71 
 
 kicked at him, crying "Shut up I* 1 Their torment 
 was plain enough. They had no hint that any 
 courier was riding the blast. 
 
 "She," declared Godbolt, naming the gale by 
 allegory, "she's only whisking the tail of her skirt 
 over us, here. She's going somewhere else, though, 
 to raise hob." 
 
 On the following midnight, they woke to find 
 every leaf quiet, the air warm again, stars burn- 
 ing, and all hushed but the terrific boom of the 
 surge. 
 
 And so next morning, when they went to fish, 
 hot sunshine blinded them, outrageous noise made 
 them deaf. Their fishing was robbery. They 
 had only to scale the crag, creep among the sea- 
 fowl, and watch for some bewildered noddy, dodg- 
 ing the frigate-birds and other pirates that dark- 
 ened the air, to alight and drop his catch. Thus, 
 in a forenoon, the men could steal a basketful of 
 live fish, purple, silver, red-striped, or motley blue. 
 As the defrauded bird, screeching with hunger, 
 always flew up and off to sea again, they thought 
 their method cruel even while they snatched; and 
 therefore, by a kindly figment called the Game 
 Laws, they were forbidden to steal fish after mid- 
 day, or more than thrice a week. 
 
 This morning, they tramped to their sport 
 
72 THEFARCRY 
 
 under a white, roaring rampart of surf. Timbers 
 from the vessel dotted the strand like charred piles 
 hammered askew; there was a villainous odor of 
 stale eggs, smashed by the gale; nor was it won- 
 derful to find, here and there along the beach, a 
 dead bird jumbled with weeds, or dryblown into 
 a quivering tussock of sand and feathers. 
 
 "There's a white one," said Tisdale, pausing. 
 "What kind, Sainty?" 
 
 They stood near the tidal brook, or channel, 
 darkened by the morning shadow of the crag. 
 
 "Young gull," Wallace declared without look- 
 ing. "Storm killed it." 
 
 On wet sand, just above the foam and whiter 
 than the foam, lay the body of a small bird, with 
 head and wings outstretched. So often had they 
 found stray fowl, of unknown species, lying dead 
 in the same flat exhaustion, that they might easily 
 have passed this white stranger, and let the next 
 wave roll him away. 
 
 "Gull?" Godbolt crouched over it. "Gull— 
 your aunty's pet canary. — Why! Look! Boys — by 
 goles — it is!" 
 
 He rose, lifting the bird tenderly. The wings, 
 limp and white, spread across his flannel shirt as 
 though the Dove of Heaven had flown straight 
 into his bosom, and expired. 
 
THE SPENT MESSENGER 73 
 
 "A pigeon, boys." He slid one hand under the 
 
 rumpled feathers, and stood very still. "Alive? 
 
 No. Can't find the heart. Warm, though. A 
 
 young he, looks like. What's a pigeon doing at 
 
 1 sea?" 
 
 His friends drew near, and watched him turn 
 the bird carefully over, holding it in the crook of 
 his arm, and smoothing its white feathers. The 
 pink claws were shriveled together, gripped in one 
 last agony of flight. 
 
 "Look!" All three cried, regardless, jostling 
 and disputing. "Stand clear! Look! Get out o' 
 my light ! What's that ?" 
 
 A pigeon it was, alive or dead — a pigeon, but 
 
 something more. Its legs, though both powdered 
 
 with sand, were of different colors — one rosy 
 
 , coral, the other puffed by some yellow excrescence 
 
 or scab. 
 
 "Homer!" Godbolt shouted. "A homer!" 
 
 "A what?" cried the others, marveling at him. 
 
 "Homer !" He bellowed fiercely this name of a 
 blind bard, and pointed at the yellow leg as if Troy 
 had fallen through this very ailment in pigeons. 
 "A homer!" 
 
 Tisdale and Wallace bent their turbans yet 
 more closely. Both at once, they saw what God- 
 bolt was trying to say. The pigeon's leg was 
 
74 THE FAR CRY 
 
 glossed and swollen, not by any sore or disease, 
 but by a wrapping of oiled silk, ringed with two 
 ligatures of yellow thread. 
 
 "A carrier 1" 
 
 Godbolt snorted. 
 
 "What else have I been telling you, this half 
 hour? A homer he, 'tis. Carrier pigeon, with 
 a message. Here!" His right hand fumbled in 
 the pocket of his moleskins, and drew out a pair 
 of old stubby scissors, bright-polished with sand. 
 "Behold — ecce signum! I wondered, many's the 
 time, why that instrument got left ashore with a 
 man. Not just for clipping a beard, was it, now? 
 Talk about shears o' fate! Comes handy." He 
 spread the blades. "Here : take a purchase on his 
 off claw." 
 
 Wallace held the bird's leg. Deft as any sur- 
 geon, Godbolt snipped the bands of thread, un- 
 rolled the yellow silk, and from under that cover- 
 ing peeled off a cylinder of tough "onion skin" 
 paper, which came free in his hand only to curl 
 again, tighter than a cigarette. 
 
 "There's writing inside." Godbolt returned the 
 scissors to his pocket; and his fingers, which a mo- 
 ment ago had worked so neatly and steadily, be- 
 gan to tremble. "Ink shows through. Take it, 
 Arthur! I'm all thumbs. Read off, quick!" 
 
THE SPENT MESSENGER 75 
 
 He handed over the spill of paper; then, cod- 
 dling the pigeon in his arms, he sat down on the 
 sand, turned his face away, and seemed to avoid 
 the shock of unbearable tidings. 
 
 Yet when Tisdale had pitched his voice higher 
 than the surf, what he read sounded tame enough. 
 The first words dealt with latitude and longitude, 
 and a date now two days old; the rest might have 
 been carpet phrases from any parlor. 
 
 "Dear K." — ran the message, as it un- 
 rolled like a snip of ancient manuscript — 
 "Dear K., I trust this will find you all well at 
 Pulo Princess. I am in capital health and 
 spirits, 5 days out, everything on board ex- 
 tremely comfy, if rather a bore. Please don't 
 allow the Grandpater to fret. I feel confi- 
 dent of setting matters right. You will ig- 
 nore the Pretender, of course; for as I told 
 you, the man is imbecile. He can do nothing 
 but threaten. Be well. — Yrs., W. F." 
 
 Three or four waves roared in, tumbled up the 
 beach, slid down again, before anybody spoke. 
 
 "Well, that's something." Tisdale, holding the 
 paper ribbon at full stretch, re-read it silently, and 
 frowned. 
 
76 THEFARCRY 
 
 "Something!" cried Wallace, bitterly. "I'll 
 take my oath it's not much !" 
 
 He had been staring voraciously over the read- 
 er's elbow. Suddenly he struck at the paper, 
 turned, and clapped both fists on his temples, as 
 if despair could pierce like a headache. 
 
 u No," agreed Tisdale, calmly. "Not much. 
 Queer things — hopes. Aren't they?" 
 
 Godbolt sat quiet with his Dove of Heaven. 
 He had never stirred. A deaf mute could not 
 have shown less emotion. Presently, without look- 
 ing, he reached round one hand. 
 
 "Let's wedge that writing open," he demanded, 
 in a voice which made the other men jump. 
 "There's meat for us in the nut, if we can crack 
 her." 
 
 He laid the pigeon across his knees, and with 
 a stern, dogged air sat reading the paper band 
 from top to bottom. 
 
 "English hand of write," said he, "if I can tell 
 a B from a bull's foot. English. Book style o' 
 thinking. What a whale of an Ego, boys: all 
 about his dear little gory self, his health and his 
 comfort, while calling other chaps imbecile. — Prin- 
 cess Island — no such place! Porto Princesa we 
 know, on Palawan; but this says Pulo Princess 
 Island. Ever hear o' that?" 
 
THE SPENT MESSENGER 77 
 
 The pair of listeners could not help him. They 
 shook their heads, gloomily; but still, to miss no 
 chance word through all the uproar of ocean, they 
 bent down in leap-frog fashion, hands on knees. 
 
 "Me neither." Godbolt sharpened his black 
 eye-brows over the writing. " *W. F.' That 
 sounds probable. *W. F.' Funny, if it was! — 
 'Dear K.,' now. What sort o' woman, you s'pose, 
 his dear Kate?" 
 
 Wallace rebuked this trifling. 
 
 "Woman?" he jeered. "K might stand for 
 Kenneth, my friend, or Karl." 
 
 The sailor nodded at him, shrewdly, with twink- 
 ling eyes. 
 
 "So it might, so it might," he confessed. "But 
 your Karls and your Kenneths, all the King's 
 horses and all the King's men, can't wheedle their 
 old grandfather out o' fretting. That's a woman's 
 work, son. Kate's her name, I'll bet my scissors." 
 
 Tisdale gave a laugh, for he liked the by-play. 
 
 "Kate or not, Sainty, she couldn't help us much." 
 
 Godbolt looked up, surprised and offended. 
 
 "I'm thinking she could," he boomed, angrily. 
 "Help us or hurt us — that's a woman's liveli- 
 hood, too. Makes a remarkable odds, people 
 say. Which kind will this Kate be, when we get 
 there?" 
 
78 THEFARCRY 
 
 His indignation rang out so honest, he spoke 
 of the future with so much heat and perplexity, 
 that both the leap-frog players rose erect, and 
 stared. He must have read the riddle, after all. 
 They cried together, eagerly : 
 
 "Where? When we get where?" 
 
 Godbolt shook the paper strip at them. 
 
 "When we land where she lives, o' course." 
 
 A torrent of questions beat upon him. The 
 leap-frog backs were bent again. 
 
 "Where's that? What do you mean, Sainty? 
 Look here. How do you know? Does the paper 
 say? Don't sit there and grin, old boy. Where 
 is it? Who is she?" 
 
 The sailor promptly cast a wet blanket on their 
 ardor. 
 
 "Who? How should I know? Never heard 
 of her before," he grumbled; and letting the writ- 
 ten message curl back to its former shape, he put 
 it in his pocket. "Guess-work, that's all. But the 
 document's plain enough to figure on." 
 
 He stood up. The white bird spread lifeless, 
 wing and wing, on his breast. 
 
 "No fishing to-day. Let's get back under shade, 
 boys, in the bee-hive. Council o' war — large talk 
 and hefty, we must hold." 
 
 He stalked away homeward, wrapped in his 
 
THE SPENT MESSENGER 79 
 
 own thoughts. Over the storm-littered shore, up 
 the dune, into the windings of the bush, his two 
 friends followed close at heel, like a pair of Ham- 
 lets imploring a stalwart ghost to halt and speak 
 in full daylight. Thus they came to the loggia of 
 palms, and entered the bee-hive. 
 
 "Now for your talk," said Wallace. 
 
 "Yes," replied their leader, absently. He 
 placed the bird on a mattress, and began hunting 
 roundabout, with the lack-lustre eye of one who 
 searches rather for an idea than for an object. 
 "Yes. We must make that cage. A little cage. 
 Sticks will do, or splints o' palm. A tidy little 
 cage, now." 
 
 Tisdale stepped in front of him, took him by the 
 shoulder, and gave him a shake. 
 
 "Your mind outruns your tongue, Sainty. 
 Aren't we to work together, all three? Come back, 
 my wandering boy, and look me in the face. What 
 are all these murmurs about a cage? And what's 
 that paper?" 
 
 Godbolt returned slowly out of his musing. 
 
 "Paper?" He drew from his pocket the roll of 
 stubborn tissue, and held it up. "That? Why, 
 that's our walking-ticket. Don't you understand? 
 Our sailing-orders. I told you." 
 
 Tisdale shook him again, laughing. 
 
80 THEFARCRY 
 
 "You never said a word. And here we are, 
 ready to split with ignorance, old fellow." 
 
 Godbolt echoed the laugh, his white teeth flash- 
 ing in his beard. 
 
 "Wouldn't that scandalize your mainsail !" he 
 crowed. "And me taking it for granted! Shows 
 you : when a man talks too much by habit, like me, 
 
 he thinks he's talking all the time. Well ! Sit 
 
 down, boys, and have it out." 
 
 They squatted on the floor of sand. By in- 
 stinct, all three faced the dirty mattress where the 
 clean bird lay. 
 
 "I felt it in my bones," declared Godbolt, "be- 
 fore you read it out: 'Here comes our sailing- 
 orders. We're not long for this island. No 
 more tarrying here.' And somehow it hit me a 
 solemn poke." He nodded slowly at his compan- 
 ions. "Like dying, boys. Will it be better, s'pose, 
 or worse, where we're going?" 
 
 Even Wallace felt a shade of presentiment; but 
 waving it aside 
 
 "Where do we go, then?" he began, briskly. 
 "Where, and how?" 
 
 Godbolt stroked his beard before answering. 
 
 "Where and how? That's it, Rob. Where and 
 how, if we're set free at all? Depends." He 
 raised his black eyes, to glance toward the mattress 
 
THE SPENT MESSENGER 81 
 
 and the spent messenger lying there. "Whole 
 thing depends, Rob, on whether that pigeon's been 
 told to live or die." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CRAS INGENS 
 
 "Live or die?" Godbolt repeated his own 
 words, flippantly. "Go or stay?" He took a 
 pinch of sand from the floor, tossed it in the air 
 like a jack-stone, and caught it on the broad back 
 of his hand. "Head or tails? A cage for the 
 bird, or — this cage for us? If he lives, we follow 
 him and go; if he dies . . . Well, that bundle o' 
 feathers is buried easy, brothers, cheaper than 
 most of us; and we stay. Been happy here on the 
 old island." 
 
 Sunshine, flickering among plantain leaves and 
 scrub ironwood, poured under their stilted dome a 
 changing, holiday light. It made the shadows 
 dance, played on the men's faces, and like a fiddler 
 outside a church, mocked every word with bright 
 allegro. 
 
 Tisdale unwound his red turban, folded it away, 
 and rumpled his hair for the debate. 
 
 82 
 
CRASINGENS 83 
 
 "Francis Godbolt," he opened formally: "you 
 are a man of two tongues this morning. You say 
 the bird may die, and leave us here for keeps, if 
 I understand you ; but in those big prophetic bones, 
 you're feeling the bird's to live, and we're to go — 
 somewhere. Now why? Deliver yourself, An- 
 cient Pistol, like a man of this world. Whip her 
 out : why should our lives hang on a pigeon's ?" 
 
 Godbolt played with his pinch of sand, until 
 the last grain slid through his fingers. 
 
 "Ever hear the nursery moral," he began, sit- 
 ting up and squaring his elbows, "about the king- 
 dom lost for a horse-shoe nail? Because this is 
 that kind o' concatenation, too. Men and pigeons 
 count about even, though we can pout bigger. — 
 Now, then, pay attention !" And his deep voice 
 flowed on, pausing only to let the greater waves 
 resound and cease beyond the trees. 
 
 "Pulo Princess: that, I make it, is a fancy term, 
 a private nickname for some place where an Eng- 
 lish family lives. The handwriting's English; and 
 they love to clap a tom-fool title on their house and 
 garden-patch. They'd clap it on an island, like 
 as not, and then settle down to their tea, all proper. 
 Now, Fraye's Atoll's an island. Fraye's Atoll 
 does lie somewhere in these. waters. Fraye's Atoll, 
 I've heard say, does contain a British family. Tea- 
 
84 THE FAR CRY 
 
 pot, too, that case. Well : 'W. F.' might be some 
 W. Fraye Esquire, in good health, says he, and 
 rather bawed. — That's a long guess, though. 
 Now lay hold o' facts." 
 
 Godbolt began tracing the sand with one finger, 
 intently, as if drawing a map of his thoughts. 
 
 "Carrier that brought our dispatch — the pigeon, 
 here — flew against the wind. Flew east, the 
 spunky little mite did, beak to storm until he 
 dropped. Stands to reason, then, that W. F. Es- 
 quire and his vessel are off to west'ard, well to 
 west'ard; and that " 
 
 Both hearers cut short his lecture, slapping him 
 on the back, and trying to shake three pairs of 
 hands all round. 
 
 u And that Pulo Princess lies to eastward . . . 
 Fraye's Atoll ... to eastward . . . near by! 
 Yea-a-ay! English, too, there's luck! 
 
 " 'Forever let Britannia wield 
 The tea-pot of her sires!* " 
 
 In uproarious high spirits, they fell upon God- 
 bolt and mauled him, shouting abusive compli- 
 ments. He laughed, and like a good-humored 
 bear, administered one cuff to the right, another 
 to the left, which laid them flat on the sand. 
 
CRAS INGENS 85 
 
 "Down, whelps!" he cried. "Moderate your 
 transports. To east'ard, yes: but east'ard's a big 
 order. Northeast, or southeast? You tell me 
 that : for by gravy, it makes a difference, ye wild- 
 cats!" 
 
 They sat up, mortified and humbled. 
 
 "So it does," they admitted. "Which is it, 
 Francis? How shall we know?" 
 
 He tugged his black beard, and gave a still 
 more chastening frown. 
 
 "I've seen Kanakas," he resumed, after a long 
 pause, and in a reminiscent mood, "I've seen Ellice 
 Kanakas follow a tame frigate home between 
 islands. Nigger padres trained 'em, those birds, 
 to fetch and carry letters. Well, set your com- 
 pass by a pigeon's line, and steer so? Three days 
 out, say, and if you don't sight land, back home 
 again, no harm done. Why not? — unless that 
 pigeon goes dead on us." 
 
 Wallace jumped up, and made a step toward the 
 mattress as if he would wrench the little sufferer 
 back to life by force. 
 
 "Hands off!" commanded the sailor. "Put a 
 cup o' water alongside, and let him alone!" 
 
 Tisdale stared at the dove, then at his protec- 
 tor. 
 
 "Sainty," he faltered, "sure he's not dead?" 
 
86 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Godbolt calmed them both, beckoning sternly. 
 
 "Sit down. Sit down and wait. Til bring the 
 water. No false hope, now, boys, but — I felt his 
 heart flitter, like, while being carried." 
 
 He rose, reached down a tin cup from a hollow 
 in the thatch, and disappeared outdoors. His voice 
 died away and then returned, carolling through the 
 sun-lit bush : 
 
 " 'Hop up, jump up, pretty little yella-bird, 
 Hop up, jump up, don't fly away! 
 Hop up, jump up, pretty little yella-bird, 
 Stay a little longer, it ain't quite day!' 
 
 "Time," he announced, coming quietly as into 
 a sickroom. "Give the bird time, Rob. That's 
 all I meant, speaking to you so brisk." 
 
 He placed the brimming cup on the mattress. A 
 white spark of sunshine fell through the water, 
 and started phosphorescent gleams to quiver and 
 dazzle in the apex of the roof. The men sat 
 watching in fascination, like crystal-gazers, the 
 spark that winked from the cup so mocking and 
 vital, the pigeon that lay beside it so dead. 
 
 Gradually, this contrast faded. The water in 
 the tin cup grew still, the light went out. High 
 noon smothered the island and filled the bush with 
 
CRASINGENS 87 
 
 hot, narcotic smells. When all the world lay bur- 
 ied in drowsiness, Tisdale bent forward. 
 
 "Ssh! It moved." 
 
 Each man thought his heart was pounding more 
 loudly than the surf. They joined hands for a 
 moment, to repress one another, and to form a 
 current of anxiety. 
 
 The pigeon's eyelid, a horny gray film, had 
 wrinkled. A slit appeared. Then suddenly a 
 round topaz eye considered the trite question of 
 individual existence, and shut up. 
 
 "Alive! Coming to !" 
 
 The trio stole outdoors, hid behind a palm- 
 trunk, and there consulted as if that weary topaz 
 eye might be watching their privacy. 
 
 "Build the cage," whispered one. "Sit by him," 
 said another, "so that he can't fly off." — "Over- 
 haul the boat."— "Feed him." 
 
 They separated like plotters bound on various 
 furtive errands : Godbolt into the bush, to gather 
 splints for a bird-cage; Tisdale home, to make 
 ready a diet of rice, and stand guard; Wallace 
 toward the cabin go-down, the stores, and the boat. 
 They met for supper, and passed a silent evening 
 in the hut, extravagantly burning the remainder of 
 their first candle. No king had ever a death-bed 
 more jealously attended than this dingy mattress 
 
88 THE FAR CRY 
 
 where the pigeon lay. Nobody spoke ; all suffered 
 an acute suspense. It was a hot, windless night. 
 The candle-flame rose long and sharp as a willow- 
 leaf; indoor and outdoor shadows hung on the 
 verge of moving, afraid to start; and round the 
 yellow funnel of the ceiling, even the neat sailor- 
 made stitches of coir showed like drops of jet 
 lengthening to fall. 
 
 The ship's clock rang four bells. Not long af- 
 terward, the pigeon gave a little shudder, drew his 
 wings in slightly for support, and lifting his bill, 
 winked peacefully at the candle. 
 
 Before eight bells on the midnight, he had drunk 
 water, and gone safe to bed in the clumsy cage of 
 Godbolt's plaiting. 
 
 "The king's going to live!" sighed Tisdale. 
 "Long live the king, fellow physicians !" 
 
 "Lucky job," said Wallace. 
 
 They were for shaking hands boisterously, but 
 Godbolt's manner chilled them. 
 
 "Good so far," was his only comment. "Sleep 
 well, boys." 
 
 He blew out the guttering candle-end, as he had 
 done before, on their first night together. And 
 later, while Wallace lay snoring, and the sea flung 
 down rumbling burdens in the dark, Tisdale heard 
 the same light footstep pass and re-pass without, 
 
CRAS INGENS 89 
 
 among the palms. As no answer came to his call, 
 he let the footstep continue, and fell asleep, won- 
 dering. 
 
 Within two days, the small boat Nantwich 
 Number Two — the black lap-streak — lay ready 
 for launching, rebuilt with a Malay outrigger and 
 a huge spread of canvas finned out with battens, 
 like the sail of a Chinese junk or a Marblehead 
 racing dory. Her voyage would be a race, indeed 
 — a dash toward unknown fortunes. Her pilot, 
 the carrier dove, was beating his white feathers on 
 the bars of his cage, and pecking out angrily. 
 
 Godbolt came to breakfast in low spirits that 
 day. 
 
 "What's wrong, Sainty?" inquired Tisdale. 
 "Britannia's tea-pot? Afraid of W. Fraye Es- 
 quire and the everlasting muffin? Come, play the 
 man! We sail to-morrow." 
 
 Godbolt, eating a chuit egg, left the spoon in 
 the shell. ^ 
 
 "I know we do," he replied, heavily. "Ain't 
 there a Latin piece, 'Cras Ingens' ... I forget. 
 'To-morrow,' it says, 'we hoist up on the ocean'?" 
 
 " 'To-morrow on the huge' " — began his friend. 
 
 He groaned, and raised a hand. 
 
 "To-morrow the Big," said he, as if the frag- 
 ment more than satisfied him. "That's it. Let 
 
9 o THEFARCRY 
 
 the rest go. — To-morrow the Big. It's a good 
 kind o' motto." 
 
 He sat thinking. 
 
 "Too big for me, this time!" he declared, shak- 
 ing his head. "Queer feeling — never had it be- 
 fore. A qualm like a woman's. I hate to go, 
 somehow. Boys, you'd better leave me behind. 
 Don't cross your luck." 
 
 The two landsmen sat like angry Buddhas 
 turned to stone. 
 
 "Leave you? Great Heavens, man!" they im- 
 plored, when speech returned to them. "Leave 
 you behind? How'd we know the way, even? 
 You're captain for the voyage. Don't you see? 
 We're lost, if you . . . Sainty, old duffer, you're 
 captain!" 
 
 They argued, reviled, and for a quarter hour 
 sang his praise without effect. He waited, not so 
 much harkening as letting a mood pass. At last, 
 suddenly, he confronted them with black eyes 
 bright and ready. 
 
 "Captain? Good!" he said, curtly. "On con- 
 dition, this way. You, owners of the Nantzvicli 
 Number Two boat, hire me to fetch her to Pulo 
 Princess, if possible. You take my orders while 
 afloat, or I log you to your face. For serving as 
 master, you pay me: two and a half packets o' 
 
CRAS INGENS 91 
 
 tobacco, already advanced; one red bandanna, like 
 yours, for I'm mortal sick of packing my head in a 
 home-wove basket; two suits of white drill, Rob's 
 for choice, he being thicker set; and the use of a 
 razor. There's every term, article, stipulation, 
 and emolument, for you to take or leave. Amen." 
 
 He hung his head, as though ashamed. The 
 owners made a mistake by laughing. 
 
 "Why, Sainty, you could have taken those things 
 any day, for the asking!" 
 
 Godbolt stood up, haughty and straight. 
 
 "May be," he answered, stiffly. "But a man 
 don't ask. — Shore ways for shore. To sea, dis- 
 cipline, with your wage and your papers all under- 
 stood. You know my terms, gentlemen." 
 
 He was marching out among the palms. Wal- 
 lace ran after, overtook him, and held out a pro- 
 pitiatory gift — a worn leather case. 
 
 "Here, Mr. Godbolt, for God's sake," he stam- 
 mered. "My shaving-set. Let's have no quar- 
 rel." 
 
 Tisdale's tribute was an armful of white cloth- 
 ing. 
 
 "Go draught your papers." The sailor took 
 this earnest of his bargain, and moved off, grin- 
 ning, down the path which led toward the spring. 
 "Draught your articles, I'll sign 'em. All right, 
 
92 THEFARCRY 
 
 boys. The fit is passed off. — To-morrow the Big; 
 whatever she is, let her drive." 
 
 The document binding owners and captain was 
 hardly penciled, Wallace and Tisdale lingered re- 
 vising it over the remains of breakfast, when a 
 returning shadow fell across them in the hut. They 
 glanced up, and found a strange man smiling at 
 them — a stalwart, martial figure in a white uni- 
 form, tightly buttoned. The stranger was God- 
 bolt without his beard, transfigured, his cheeks 
 very pale, and across cheek-bone, nose, and brow a 
 red scald of sunburn like a highwayman's vizard, 
 or a birthmark. His face greeted them for the 
 first time, clean and youthful. A quirk of melan- 
 choly humor caught the lips : their full curve might 
 have formed the Cupid's bow, but that experience, 
 hardening certain fibres, had given to the mouth, as 
 to the eyes, a trace of cruelty. It was a proud, 
 sensitive, contradictory face. Long afterward, 
 Tisdale was haunted by a resemblance, until one 
 day he saw again the portrait of Graham of Clav- 
 erhouse, and that sad glance from painted canvas, 
 bidding a harsh world — "Look out for yourself, 
 and I'll look out for the Viscount Dundee." But 
 now, on a tropic morning, it was only strange to 
 see Godbolt's new features, full of life and pas- 
 sion, as though he had torn off a disguise. 
 
CRASINGENS 93 
 
 "All or nothing, your sea rule goes for beards," 
 his voice rang out, like a bell. "Hand your pen- 
 cil over. There: signed, sealed and delivered. 
 My first command, that is, and reads pretty. To- 
 morrow, then, we sail." 
 
 They sailed on the next morning. Their little 
 crowded boat flew up and down through outrag- 
 eous waves, gray with boiling sand. Her sail, 
 the web-foot canvas, caught the wind bellying till 
 every batten pointed stiff. Spray drenched the 
 three men, darkened their red turbans, ran down 
 their faces like sweat and tears. They crouched 
 to windward; and as Godbolt calmly coaxed the 
 tiller, they saw the island swing into view, com- 
 plete and verdant, then sink behind a gray mound 
 of sandy water. Regret was their chief emotion: 
 regret at seeing the black tower with its living bat- 
 tlements, the bare signal-mast of their prison rise, 
 and sink, and rise again diminished, and so dwindle 
 by glimpse after glimpse beyond raging waves. 
 
 They stood far off toward the morning sun, so 
 that no hungry sea-fowl might confuse or baffle 
 their experiment. When the last gannet squawked 
 farewell, and wheeled away toward the island, 
 Godbolt gave his first order as captain. 
 
 "Mr. Wallace," he said, formally, "turn loose 
 your pilot." 
 
94 THEFARCRY 
 
 Wallace held on his knees the rude wicker bas- 
 ket. He drew the linch-pin, opened the door. 
 
 "Oh, the little devil!" he cried, in grief. 
 
 The carrier dove refused its liberty, and re- 
 mained inside the bars, resting bewildered. 
 
 u Give him time," Tisdale advised. "He's 
 cowed." 
 
 Several waves, the glittering blue glass of open 
 sea, rolled smoothly under them, heaving and 
 yawning. There came a sudden flutter and fright 
 in the cage. The pigeon tumbled out all awry. 
 Then, with the whinny and whimper of wings that 
 no other bird can make, he flew up, cleared the 
 finny leach of the sail, hung high in sunlight, white 
 and twinkling, a point of quivering stability like 
 a kingfisher about to dive. Next moment, this 
 troubled speck seemed to mount in spirals, as if 
 snatched upward by a gust. All at once, directed 
 by some unerring secret, off it sped on a bee-line, 
 and melted into the glowing snow-peak of a cloud. 
 
 "Go!" cried Godbolt, and through his mask of 
 sunburn peered at the compass. "It's a go ! He's 
 not forgot his orders. Straight up to beat Elijah, 
 and away. He'll tole us home. Come and find 
 out, eh? Follow and find out. East by south." 
 
PART II 
 PULO PRINCESS 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 VOICES 
 
 For three days, liberated on the ocean, cramped 
 in a skiff, they held the pigeon's doubtful vanish- 
 ing-point toward morning, east by south. It was 
 like following a dream, confiding their bodies and 
 their goods to any airy fable, believing in a dove 
 that already had flown home to a sacred mountain. 
 Light airs filled the sail, passed, and let it crumple, 
 with battens rattling together like the sticks of a 
 broken fan. Time and again, the voyagers called 
 out, and pointed across an ocean quiet as the sky, 
 to where a black ridge broke the horizon ; but al- 
 ways this form of their desire cheated them, de- 
 tached itself like mirage, and trailing above a 
 steel-bright band of water, dissolved — another 
 cloud of black rain spilled in the very impulse of 
 rising. 
 
 Hope thus rose and fell to waste. But on the 
 third day, in a glaring noon, suddenly the faintest 
 
 97 
 
98 THE FAR CRY 
 
 of all these ridges held its foundation, sprouted 
 with outlines. Far ahead, to starboard, it perched 
 like a bar of written music — black quarter-notes, 
 upright on that steel rim of the world. 
 
 "No shower, there. Not much!" The men 
 spoke quietly, but nodding a conviction solid as the 
 land. "Real thing, this timel 
 
 As afternoon drifted by, the quarter-notes mul- 
 tiplied, grew larger and more distorted, until one 
 by one changing form, they stood like a row of 
 beetles impaled on long pins. The late afternoon 
 glow revealed them, at last, in true color and pro- 
 portion, shaft by leather-brown shaft, bundle on 
 green bundle of cocoanut palm, overtopping many 
 a tufted lance of areca. The bar which under- 
 scored them shone out a living green, a fresh- 
 water green, like that of flags in a marsh. Below 
 this, a smooth patch whiter than ice broke into agi- 
 tation, tumbling higher and wilder as the boat ap- 
 proached — a ring of surf hemming the island all 
 about, leaping, and every moment clamoring 
 louder. 
 
 "Same voice," Tisdale observed at random, 
 thoughtlessly. "There's your old man again, 
 Sainty, got here before us." 
 
 Godbolt 3iiut him the dark look that means a 
 confidence betrayed. 
 
VOICES 99 
 
 "No time for nonsense," he grumbled. "Down 
 sail and out oars, Mr. Wallace. Here's your low 
 island — Fraye's Atoll, for what I know. Stiff and 
 ugly piece o' rowing." And when some land-gaz- 
 ing delay followed his order "Damn it, Mr. 
 
 Tisdale," he broke out, "d'ye think it's a basket 
 picnic on them reefs? I may talk moonshine in 
 my sleep, but not all day, thank you. Tide's fav- 
 orable. Ship those oars, unless you want to 
 drown!" 
 
 They rowed, slowly at first, to keep their 
 strength for a crisis. The bright green island 
 broke in two before them, parted right and left 
 like sliding doors, and showed, between two banks 
 of theatric verdure, the pale gleaming mirror of a 
 lagoon. Thus the atoll opened its gate, toward 
 which the waves galloped in thunderous charges, 
 to trample and destroy one another before the 
 breach. No time to see more: the boat sprang 
 into the thickest of the froth, was whirled ahead, 
 flung end-long, sidewise, churning and smothering 
 the wits out of her crew. The oars bit deep, or 
 winnowed smoke, until a rising vortex burst for- 
 ward and belched her into the strait. Both green 
 headlands bared their fangs of coral, gray and 
 dripping, to gnash at her. She flew between them 
 up-hill, on the steep snow-path of a wave. 
 
ioo THEFARCRY 
 
 "Steered !" the rowers panted. u Well steered. 
 Captain !" 
 
 Godbolt rubbed salt water from his eyes, and 
 said nothing. 
 
 A great inland calm received them, even while 
 the din of ocean fell astern. They had fought 
 their way through a battlepiece, and now went 
 skimming an eclogue of still waters. Evening light 
 poured after them, to gild a broad circular lake in 
 a tropic forest. All milk and fire in the centre, the 
 lagoon lay shining with reflected clouds, like an 
 opal. Round it, the osier-green of the shore 
 floated double ; a thin white arc of coral parted the 
 true foliage from its watery likeness — shadows be- 
 low, sun-bright reality above, moving only where 
 palms held up clusters of sparkling sword-blades. 
 The boat lost way, and drifted. The men forgot 
 to row. 
 
 "Nobody here," said one. 
 
 "I smell queer stuff burning," declared another. 
 
 "See the pantalan?" asked the third. "A land- 
 ing built there, boys." 
 
 Across the lagoon, in fact, a slender jetty stip- 
 pled the dark inverted image of the leaves. This 
 was the only mark of habitation — this, and a faint 
 breath of aromatic smoke diffused from the embers 
 of cocoanut husks, hidden among the trees. 
 
VOICES ir 
 
 Wallace took up his oars again. Godbolt 
 turned the boat's head to port, and let her glide 
 close under the curving woodland, in a green 
 shade, pleasant and cool. 
 
 "Did you ever see the like," Tisdale was say- 
 ing, "for stillness? The fish-pools of Hesh- 
 bon . . . " 
 
 He stopped and stared. From the bush that 
 leaned above their heads came an echo, or some- 
 thing pat as an echo, but more musical, and utter- 
 ing its own words. 
 
 "Oh, go back I" it moaned. "Oh, go away 1" 
 
 It ended in a wail. The boatmen sat looking 
 foolishly at one another, then up into the foliage. 
 Nothing appeared there, nothing stirred. For a 
 moment they heard only the surf grumbling behind 
 the leafy palisade and a rattle of palm-fans like 
 gravel ground by rapid wheels. Wallace me- 
 chanically dipped his oar-blades. 
 
 "Oh, go away!" chanted the voice among the 
 leaves. "O men, go away !" 
 
 So might a wood-nymph, hiding, plead in terror 
 and without hope. The call, prolonged and trem- 
 ulous, passed like a piece of melody as the boat 
 slid onward. But now another voice took it up, 
 ahead; then another, and another, till all that 
 screen and canopy of shore repeated the warning, 
 
^02 ;.T.^ E FAR CRY 
 
 from various places, in the same low note, not of 
 command, but of helpless lamentation. 
 
 "O men, go away!" implored the sorrowful, 
 scattered choir, like children who had no faith in 
 what they sang. "O men, go away!" 
 
 Godbolt stood on a thwart, trying to peer 
 through some cranny in the boughs, ferns, and 
 creepers. These grew impenetrably matted, brist- 
 ling from their basis of round coral, as if rooted 
 among heaps of skulls. 
 
 "Ahoy there ! Show yourselves !" he bellowed. 
 "We don't mean you any harm !" 
 
 Not a word followed. He had ruined some 
 elfin spell. A slight rustling passed here and there 
 through the bush, and something like a sigh, a 
 whisper; then louder rustling, and grunts, and a 
 patter of departing steps, too quick and small for 
 any human feet. 
 
 "Row, boys, row!" Godbolt sat down and 
 snatched his tiller. "Row hard! Running off, 
 they are. Catch 'em! There's a break in the trees 
 ahead." 
 
 The boat rocked with the violence of their 
 strokes. They surged along the white beach, and 
 shot past the mouth of a tiny clearing where, for a 
 boat's length or so, the Golgotha of broken coral 
 stood bare. On the nearer side, bushes parted. 
 
VOICES 103 
 
 Three black pigs galloped awkwardly across the 
 glade, tumbling and squeaking in their rush for 
 safety. 
 
 "Pigs?" cried Wallace, like a man imposed on. 
 u But somebody was talking — English ! What's 
 wrong with this place, anyway?" 
 
 His fellow-voyagers could only shake their 
 heads, and look ashore, and listen. The pigs had 
 vanished, tearing through ironwoods. Their sud- 
 den appearance — fat bathos scampering out from 
 a fairyland of disembodied voices — left a curious 
 shock, not altogether comical. It was like having 
 routed the swine of Circe. 
 
 "Wrong? Yes." Godbolt pulled himself to- 
 gether. "Make for the jetty, and we'll find what. 
 Give way!" 
 
 They no longer coasted the green reflections of 
 the bank, but steered out across the lagoon silently 
 in a blur of dancing heat. Whiter than cotton, the 
 beach swelled its thin line to a broad, horned cres- 
 cent, which radiated fiercely the glow of sunset, 
 and from which the little pier straggled into the 
 pool on black wiry shanks. Beyond, by a darken- 
 ing stroke like that of snow-blindness, the whole 
 eastern semi-circle of the atoll was painted flat in 
 sombre green. 
 
 The boat grazed the wet spilings of the jetty, 
 
io 4 THE FAR CRY 
 
 at last, and tied up. When her crew had climbed 
 a ladder, and stood easing numb legs on the pier- 
 head, they broke out laughing. Each man carried 
 an axe. They had seen nothing but three black 
 pigs; yet here they brought weapons ashore. 
 
 "Can't chop down a solitude," Godbolt averred. 
 "We look silly enough for coots." All the same, 
 he kept his bright axe ready. "What's here?" 
 
 Nailed to a post, a white bulletin board con- 
 fronted them. Neat block letters covered it. 
 
 "VISITORS WILL PLEASE TAKE 
 NOTICE 
 
 ist. That no natives must be allowed on 
 shipboard, without written permission signed 
 by the Proprietor. 
 
 2nd. That fish caught in the lagoon should 
 not be eaten unadvisedly. Certain varieties 
 are poisonous. 
 
 3rd. That water will be furnished at 9s. 
 6d. per ton, to cover coolie hire. 
 
 Thomas Masterman Fraye." 
 
 "Hmm !" said Godbolt. "There's a thoughtful 
 man. Did I earn my pay? It's Fraye's Atoll, fast 
 enough." 
 
VOICES 105 
 
 They turned their backs on the sunset, and 
 began marching up the jetty. Now, raised by this 
 light platform above the glaring beach, they could 
 look deep into the colonnade of palms, and see, 
 mottled with shadows brown and green, a thatched 
 house hidden like a long hay-stack in a grove. 
 Huts peeped from ambush in the distance; a row 
 of boats lay side by side among the tawny, slant- 
 ing trunks ; but nothing moved, the sunset poured 
 under the trees and touched no living figure. 
 
 "Queer," said Tisdale. "Queer. It troubles 
 me, all of it." And halting where their scaffold 
 joined the land, he pointed at the sand below. 
 "What do you make out of those, now?" 
 
 Powdered coral swept away on either hand, 
 forming a high concave bank, steep as the turn of 
 a race-course. Along it were scattered blunt little 
 ends of refuse, like mushrooms thrown up by the 
 tide. 
 
 "Champagne corks?" cried Wallace, bending 
 over the edge of the jetty. "Champagne corks !" 
 
 Godbolt nodded gloomily. 
 
 "That ain't Britannia's tea-pot, even," he de- 
 clared. "A yacht club must 'a' been cruising here- 
 about. Corks: by the dozen. Far worse than 
 pigs. Drunkards, I don't like 'em." 
 
 Greatly puzzled by the sight of this bacchanal- 
 
io6 THEFARCRY 
 
 ian flotsam, the comrades went forward, crossed 
 the ramp of the pier, and set foot on island soil. 
 Winding between borders of gilt-spattered crotons, 
 a trim brown path led them toward the house. 
 Throughout this many-masted grove the western 
 sky and the burning lagoon lavished their bright- 
 ness, only to be mixed with twilight, absorbed in 
 tranquil tones of brown and green. An English 
 flower-garden shone softly variegated in the gen- 
 eral dusk, and spiced the salt air with a breath of 
 cloves. The men themselves (and they alone) 
 brought movement and discord here. Barefoot, 
 black with sunburn, clothed in filthy linen, with 
 savage red turbans on their heads, they came 
 shouldering their axes like pirates. 
 
 "Where are the people?" muttered Wallace. 
 He could neither forget nor explain that litter of 
 wine corks on the beach. "Are they all sleeping 
 it off?" 
 
 Tisdale reviewed the garden. 
 
 "They're not that kind," he answered, "who- 
 ever they are. This path was swept to-day. And 
 smell the pink stocks !" 
 
 "Clove gilly-flowers," Godbolt agreed, halting 
 and sniffing. "Mother used to plant 'em, always." 
 He strayed from the path, plucked a stalk of 
 crowded blossoms, and stood thoughtfully inhal- 
 
VOICES 107 
 
 ing the well remembered sweetness. "No : gilly- 
 flowers, they don't go with champagne." 
 
 Holding the colored tuft in his hand, he moved 
 on. Between great banks of roses and of honey- 
 suckle, the garden path went straight to the ve- 
 randa of the house, which stood with open door 
 and windows facing the grove and the sunset. It 
 was a bamboo structure, rambling, rudely plaited, 
 overhung with thatch, yet neat as the whole envir- 
 onment and shining like dull gold. Nobody moved 
 inside it, but a small red morocco book lay on the 
 steps, with a handkerchief marking a reader's 
 place among the pages. 
 
 "Call to 'em," Godbolt whispered, clamping 
 Tisdale's arm in iron fingers, and pushing him for- 
 ward. "There's a woman round the place. Speak 
 to 'em, Arthur. You're the youngest. Women 
 don't ever like me." 
 
 Tisdale laughed, but without confidence. This 
 desert peace weighed down the spirit. His blue 
 eyes widened and grew blank. He, the ready 
 speaker of the company, could find no form of 
 words. 
 
 "Oh, I say," he began. "Is anybody at home?" 
 
 The dark windows of the house remained star- 
 ing, vacant, over their heads. But now, while they 
 listened eagerly, they heard a long, difficult sigh, as 
 of a man drawing his breath in pain. 
 
108 THEFARCRY 
 
 Tisdale again called. 
 
 This was an afternoon of voices. No one came 
 to door or window, but from within the house an- 
 other voice, clear, and full of rising courage, re- 
 plied. 
 
 "One moment," it said. "Do you come from 
 Mr. Mace? Sit down and wait, please. I'll be 
 out to you." 
 
 Godbolt started as if to run. 
 
 "There! That's Kate!" he whispered. "Bet 
 you ! Wish we were out o' this 1" 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THOMAS MASTERMAN FRAYE 
 
 They stole off to hide their axes under the 
 croton border of the path; for somehow, having 
 heard this latest voice, they felt no desire to be 
 caught there armed, like a gang of free-booters. 
 
 Glass rang, a spoon jingled, inside the room. A 
 murmur of consultation followed. Then came a 
 quick, light tread, a rustle of skirts; and in the 
 doorway, all at once but very calmly, a girl ap- 
 peared — a girl not above middle stature, yet gain- 
 ing the advantage of height as she looked down 
 at them with, cool brown eyes ; a girl dressed in 
 dark blue, her fair hair shining against the deep 
 background of the room, and her young arms 
 bared to the elbow. Her pose, her look, were full 
 of scorn. 
 
 u Mr. Mace chose a poor time," she began, quiet 
 and straightforward, "for sending you." 
 
 As though to offer the narrowest possible mark, 
 109 
 
no THE FAR CRY 
 
 all three men turned shoulder foremost, and 
 glanced up cringing, like so many copies of Bob 
 Acres under fire. 
 
 "A poor time," she repeated. "Not that Mr. 
 Mace would care; but my grandfather has been 
 very ill indeed." 
 
 Her throat, like her arms, was bare. A pulse 
 throbbed in it. She could not be so cool, then, as 
 her eyes would have these cowards to imagine. 
 
 "Why, really . . . We are sorry." Tisdale, 
 the spokesman, took heart. "There must be a 
 mistake. We never heard of Mr. Mace before, 
 upon my word." 
 
 The girl, like one preoccupied, whose courage 
 points to higher matters, had shown no surprise 
 at seeing them, all grimy and barbaric as they 
 stood. Men who tied their heads in scarlet rags, 
 who wore silver buttons in the dirtiest of jackets, 
 might have been her daily visitors — inconvenient, 
 base, but not. dangerous. Now, when Tisdale 
 spoke, a light. crossed her face, the light of unmis- 
 takable surprise and relief. 
 
 "Mace didn't order you?" She gave a start. 
 Her brown eyes kindled, and saw them all anew. 
 "Indeed, by your faces . . . No! You haven't 
 come to threaten a woman and a sick main — an old 
 man who is very ill ? You haven't ; have you ?" 
 
THOMAS FRAYE in 
 
 It was strange, pathetic, to see her pride turn- 
 ing into supplication, and hear her voice change 
 and falter. She had stood above them as on a 
 stage, rehearsing a defiant part, which now she 
 broke off short, to speak in her own character. 
 
 Tisdale bowed. 
 
 "We are ship-wrecked," he said, briefly. 
 "We've just landed. It's a piece of our Tuck to 
 bring you more trouble at such a time. Can we 
 be of help?" Looking about, in his emHarrass- 
 ment, as though for some act of homage to per- 
 form, Tisdale spied at her feet the little red vol- 
 ume with the handkerchief. He picked it up. The 
 gilt letters of the title caught his eye. "Ah, Le 
 Foyer Breton" and he smiled as he offered her 
 the volume. Childhood — fairy tales — the sound 
 of his mother's voice reading aloud in twilight: 
 old secret memories thronged and vanished. "My 
 mother," said he, on the impulse, "was of that 
 country . . . France. That is twice," he added, 
 glancing back to Godbolt, who overshadowed 
 them from a humble post in the rear, with eyes 
 downcast, and the gilly-flowers in his hand — "that 
 is twice we have been reminded, already." 
 
 The girl, though puzzled by his words, seemed 
 to gather something of their spirit, and to cast off 
 her own misgivings. 
 
ii2 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Wait, please, a moment." She smiled at the 
 bedraggled wanderers, and turning, disappeared 
 within the house. They heard her speaking to 
 somebody, but could catch none of her words ex- 
 cept — "I believe them" — and again — "Not the 
 slightest doubt." 
 
 The men, waiting below the veranda, ex- 
 changed a glance and a nod. 
 
 "Hear that ?" said Godbolt. He had held aloof 
 like a stupid boy forbidden to join a game; but 
 now he drew near, took his friends by the shoul- 
 ders, and whispered earnestly. His big, black eyes 
 glowed with admiration; and across them, al- 
 though sea wind and tropic sun had burnt his 
 cheeks, the red scald reappeared for an instant, 
 by some effect of pallor. "Did you hear? She 
 believed us ! That's the kind she is. You spoke 
 well, Arthur, you spoke up like a master hand!" 
 
 The sun went down. Through the darkening 
 grove a strong blue radiance poured from the 
 lagoon, more like the promise of dawn than the 
 failure of another evening. By this half light, 
 they saw the girl's head shine in the doorway. She 
 beckoned them. They untied the bandages from 
 their heads, and went upstairs. 
 
 The room they entered was dark and cool, filled 
 with a fresh pungency of camphor-wood. 
 
THOMAS FRAYE 113 
 
 u Good evening, gentlemen." A man's voice 
 greeted them from the farthest corner. It was a 
 pleasant voice, like the girl's, but somewhat iron- 
 ical. "Forgive my not rising, won't you?" 
 
 In a long rattan chair, beside one of the oppo- 
 site windows, lay a figure wrapped in gray — a lit- 
 tle white-haired man, perfectly still, though at first 
 glance his body seemed to move because of a rest- 
 less shadow passing over him from head to feet, 
 from feet to head again. This shadow came and 
 went as a huge, brown man-servant, who stood 
 half hidden by the head of the chair, kept sway- 
 ing back and forth a two-handed punkah, the stalk 
 and leaf of a palm. 
 
 The little white-haired man lay watching his 
 three visitors; while they, pausing on the 
 threshold, bowed to him. 
 
 "I am glad," said he, in the same cheery but 
 satirical tone, "I am glad you appear so able- 
 bodied, my friends. If you came to remove me, 
 you may have to do so feet foremost. Not that 
 I'm obstinate, gentlemen, only sick. Old age, old 
 age !" he chirped. Then suddenly sharpening his 
 
 white eyebrows at them in the dusk "Well?" 
 
 he demanded bitterly, "does Mr. Mace provide a 
 stretcher?" 
 
 He put all his force into the question. The 
 
ii 4 THE FAR CRY 
 
 sound of his breathing followed, dry and hard and 
 short. The dark giant who swung the fan, gripped 
 the butt of it between his toes, and rolled the 
 whites of his eyes, placidly wondering now at his 
 master, now at the strangers in the door. 
 
 "Oh, Grandfather!" cried the girl. She had 
 stood midway, intent and motionless, at the cor- 
 ner of a table. Nightfall obscured her face, but 
 her voice rang out reproachfully. "I told you the 
 men were honest." 
 
 "Be quiet, Katherine," retorted the old man, 
 sharply but not unkindly. "Let the men speak for 
 themselves, if they can. Well?" He repeated 
 his challenge. "Why delay? Proceed, gentlemen. 
 We're quite ready, quite helpless, as you see, and 
 not in the least afraid of you." 
 
 Daylight had forsaken the place. In the gloom, 
 Godbolt stepped forward so angrily that the slave 
 of the fan forgot his duty, and shrank back. 
 
 "We never tried to scare you," he declared, with 
 indignation. "We're shipwrecked, sir, and that's 
 a fact: whether you believe us or not. She did." 
 He swung on his heel. "Good night, and beg 
 pardon. Let's go out, boys. We've slept in the 
 bush before now." 
 
 The white head roused from the chair. 
 
 "Well delivered, sir. Well delivered — deep 
 
THOMAS FRAYE 115 
 
 from the chest.'* The master of the house peered, 
 with a different and a keener motive, from beneath 
 the swaying punkah. "Katherine, take note: you 
 judge by faces. Quite wrong. As a man speak- 
 eth, so is he. Nulla fides fronti, my dear. All the 
 same, friends, come, let me see your faces. You 
 find us at a very uneasy hour. Katherine, go tell 
 Consolacion to fetch a lamp. I doubt if the wench 
 has filled one." 
 
 His grand-daughter obeyed, silently. She 
 passed into a dark veranda at the back of the 
 house, clapped her hands, and remained there, as 
 though listening. It was now too dark for out- 
 lines ; but the three men, as they waited to undergo 
 their singular ordeal of lamp-light, thought they 
 saw the girl suddenly bend her head, clasp her 
 arms on her breast, and wring them with passion. 
 Dim guess-work, the adumbration of movement, it 
 spoke out like a cry of gratitude. She raised her 
 head, clapped her hands again, calling: 
 
 "Consolacion?" 
 
 For answer, a nimbus came toward them 
 through the grove behind the house — the soft, 
 circular glow of a lamp, indoor comfort straying 
 among palm trunks. A little brown woman, whose 
 bare feet stole in and out under a yellow skirt, 
 carried the lamp slowly up the steps, and dropping 
 
n6 THE FAR CRY 
 
 an odd curtesy to her mistress, followed her into 
 the room. 
 
 "Trimmed and burning, after all," the old man 
 chuckled. U A wise virgin to-night, my child." 
 
 Consolacion, a plump mestiza, placed her lamp 
 on the table, and knelt before his rattan chair. 
 
 "We love you, Master," she moaned. 
 
 She rose and stole to the door, a sleek-headed 
 mouse of a woman, in yellow and white gauze. 
 Her voice was like those plaintive dryad voices 
 among the trees, where the black swine had gal- 
 loped. 
 
 "Come," said the master, impatiently. "Come, 
 gentlemen, step up and show your faces." He 
 struggled, and bent forward in his chair. "Here is 
 my face. Exhibit yours." 
 
 Wallace, Godbolt, and Tisdale ranged them- 
 selves by his chair, and let the lamplight speak. 
 They saw below them a figure no larger than a 
 boy's, wrapped in a gray dressing-gown; the face 
 ruddy, round, jocose, betraying its years only by 
 the tolerance that twinkled in brown eyes, and by 
 the hair and moustache whiter than milk. 
 
 "What are your names?" he snapped. 
 
 They told him. The girl, the mestiza at the 
 door, and the swart giant with his punkah, stood 
 listening while they spoke. 
 
THOMAS FRAYE 117 
 
 "Mine is Fraye. Thomas Masterman Fraye. 
 And there's my grand-daughter Katherine," said 
 the sick man. "Mr. Wallace, you look young and 
 thoughtful. Mr. Tisdale — ah, my boy, you might 
 come to a bad end, if you had not been well 
 brought up. And Mr. Godbolt? Well, Captain, 
 there is room in your lungs, I see, for that cathe- 
 dral chime of yours ! You are — somewhat — 
 older ?" 
 
 He reached past them, signaling toward the 
 doorway. 
 
 "Consolacion? Dinner? Run, child, and set 
 the table. In the grove, to-night. Places for 
 four. No, Katherine, not I. Old Pantaloon will 
 sup his gruel alone, where he can make all the 
 noise he likes in breathing. Four places, child." 
 
 The girl had moved between his chair and the 
 window. The breath from the punkah set her 
 bright hair fluttering like a lambency about her 
 head. For a moment she stood looking — with 
 parted lips and eyes that sparkled — now down at 
 her grandfather, now up and across his body at 
 the young strangers. 
 
 "You do believe them," she said. "I knew you 
 would!" And then, laughing happily, "Gentle- 
 men, if you knew how much you have done for 
 us ! It is wonderful, your coming here !" 
 
n8 THE FAR CRY 
 
 She made a quick and speaking gesture, like 
 one who throws off a burden. 
 
 "Tut, tut, tut!" Mr. Fraye grimaced at her, 
 working his white brows and pouting his white 
 moustache. "Not so fast, young lady, not so fast. 
 Men are not shipwrecked to please you, alto- 
 gether. More than that " His ruddy, round 
 
 face grew composed, even serious; once again his 
 eyes were the only part of him to move, as he 
 raised and fixed them on the three friends. "The 
 question has now become, not of our believing you, 
 but your believing us. That's not so easy to ar- 
 range, offhand." 
 
 Tisdale made a deprecatory sign. 
 
 "Let us return the compliment, sir." 
 
 The old man shook his head slightly, and al- 
 lowed the great palm leaf to sway back and forth, 
 back and forth, before he answered. 
 
 "No. Conduct, I find, grows more difficult as 
 a man grows older." He smiled up at them, slyly. 
 "Our case — you must learn it for yourselves, and 
 judge. No first impressions, please. On my part, 
 I sha'u't bear witness against my neighbor, false 
 or true. Yes, my dear," he said, as the girl started 
 angrily. "Yes, my dear, it's a neighborhood mat- 
 ter. You found us afraid, though on that point, 
 just now, I lied to you in self-defense; you found 
 
THOMAS FRAYE 119 
 
 us backward in welcome, and suspicious ; don't ask 
 me to put all our worst feet forward. We sha'n't 
 try to prejudice you. Wait, and see, and choose." 
 
 "Grandfather," began the girl, reproachfully. 
 
 He stopped her with a hard glance. 
 
 "No, I'm not silly, Katherine," he declared. 
 "I'm only doing right." 
 
 His body writhed somewhat under the gray 
 robe. He was evidently in pain; but as he lay 
 considering, the boyish look of mischief did not 
 leave his eyes. He began to gasp with open 
 mouth, more and more audibly. 
 
 "Rust in the bellows," he panted. "Good 
 leather yet, though." And then, snatching an in- 
 terval of ease "Wait and see, my boys. You 
 
 know the old Jacobite lines? 
 
 <{ l Who that Pretender is, and who that King, 
 God bless us all, is quite another thing!' 
 
 There's your situation, to a hair. But wait and 
 choose for yourselves." 
 
 Katherine stooped, and spoke a few words in 
 his ear. 
 
 "Nothing will !" he cried petulantly. "Nothing 
 will happen to-night. I've told you so all day." 
 
 He forced out the last words. To breathe be- 
 
120 THE FAR CRY 
 
 came a slow struggle, a long distress. Closing his 
 eyes, he sat up and strained for air. 
 
 "You are hungry," said Miss Fraye to the men, 
 quickly, pointing toward the back veranda. "I'll 
 join you out there." 
 
 A white cloth shone beneath twinkling candles, 
 close by in the grove. Out at the rear door and 
 toward these the young men filed. As they went 
 down, they heard the loud sighs of their host. 
 "Aaah, ha ha ha !" he repeated slowly, like a deaf 
 man who read the words aloud and had never 
 heard of merriment. "Aaah, ha ha ha !" 
 
 "Plucky little devil, that," whispered Godbolt. 
 "Could see him staving the fit off." 
 
 The round, white table, set with silver and 
 lighted by four candle-lamps, stood there, brightly 
 familiar, on the frontier of a great darkness. All 
 three men, regarding it while they waited, felt 
 this contrast with peculiar force. The black vault, 
 beyond the candles, might have been thronged with 
 watchers. 
 
 Tisdale gave his friends a quizzical glance. 
 
 " 'Thou preparest a table before me,' " he 
 quoted, lightly, " 'in the presence of mine enemies.' 
 Odd effect, eh?" 
 
 They both smiled at him, nodding, as if he had 
 put their feeling into words. 
 
THOMAS FRAYE 121 
 
 "Enemies? Well," growled Godbolt, "they'll 
 see a hearty appetite for once. What's this Pre- 
 tender business, though? Remember the writ- 
 ing on the pigeon's leg? What's all the scare 
 about, inside there?" He jerked his thumb back 
 toward the lighted windows. "What's the Pre- 
 tender? And who's Mr. Mace?" 
 
 They shook their heads, not expecting an an- 
 swer. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE TABLE IN THE GROVE 
 
 "Ah? Yes— it's I." 
 
 The words were spoken casually, near at hand 
 — so near that the three men started. Nobody 
 had joined their group ; and at first, as they turned 
 to stare hither and yon through the darkness, they 
 saw nobody. For a moment their eyes took coun- 
 sel together. They were puzzled. The cry of 
 the surf, hoarse and mournful, summoned their 
 hearing through the grove, across the island, off 
 to sea beyond the uttermost reefs. Palm tops high 
 overhead set up a dry clashing, which subsided 
 into silken rustles. Overhead, but much lower, 
 sounded a muffled "Rou-cou-tou-cou" of doves in 
 some hidden cote. These voices of the night ex- 
 plained themselves; not so the human voice. 
 
 "You called my name?" It spoke again, slow 
 and cool. "I thought you did, in passing. If not, 
 I beg pardon." 
 
 122 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 123 
 
 An elderly voice, gentle, with a slight tremor, 
 it might have come across the table. Peering in 
 that direction, the men saw above the mild radi- 
 ance of silver, white linen, and candle-flame, a face 
 watching them with shadowy benevolence. A face, 
 and no more, told them where the speaker stood 
 — a long, narrow, wrinkled face with thin fea- 
 tures, dark, vague eyes, and lofty but narrow fore- 
 head. Bareheaded, clothed in black, the stranger 
 melted bodiless into the gloom, and left only this 
 visage to float and waver beyond the wavering 
 candles. It was long and sleepy and kind, like 
 the face of an old horse. 
 
 Tisdale was the first to answer. 
 
 "Oh!" said he. "Mr. Mace?" 
 
 The visitor was seen to bow, gravely. 
 
 "Yes," he replied; and after a thought- 
 ful pause "I chanced to be going by." There 
 
 fell a second pause. "But I see you were not call- 
 ing to me, gentlemen." The face moved away, 
 slowly fading toward the right; then hung station- 
 ary. "I trust," continued the gentle voice, "I sin- 
 cerely hope that Mr. Fraye is better this even- 
 ing?" 
 
 The question had an odd sound, tentative, re- 
 luctant, as if it came with effort. 
 
 "Better?" echoed Tisdale. "That I can't say, 
 
i2 4 THE FAR CRY 
 
 sir. Mr. Fraye seems ill. We're strangers here. 
 We came only now, by accident, in a boat." 
 
 The face, dim almost to vanishing, suddenly 
 approached the light again, grew somewhat 
 clearer. 
 
 "By accident? Ah! Strangers." Mr. Mace 
 had lost his equine look. His dark eyes were no 
 longer vague, but wide awake. In his pale cheeks 
 the wrinkles moved and worked, as though he were 
 chewing the cud of some new idea. "I'm very 
 much afraid, young men," he observed ruefully, 
 "that you came at a bad time." 
 
 A thin, white hand stole up and stroked his 
 chin, after this rebuke. 
 
 "It's hardly our fault," Wallace grumbled. 
 "Shipwrecked men can't choose their times for 
 landing." 
 
 "No! No! Indeed they can't!" agreed the 
 other, quickly. His hand fluttered aloft; anima- 
 tion seized his voice; he seemed to have conquered 
 a fit of shyness. "No, indeed. Quite right. I was 
 thinking of poor Fraye, only. Poor Fraye ! He's 
 so hospitable, the dear old chap — feudal gener- 
 osity, you know — that he'd take you in at any sac- 
 rifice." 
 
 The white hand sank to rest on his chin. This 
 time, it was Godbolt who took offense. 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 125 
 
 "Sacrifice?" cried the sailor. "A bad time? 
 By the Humphrey Hell-cat, there it goes again! 
 Look here: we don't bother sick men, do we, 
 boys ?" He turned wearily on his friends. "Come, 
 it's the same thing I said before : we'll go bunk in 
 the bush. There's more on foot than what we 
 understand." 
 
 Again the countenance above the candles took 
 a different aspect. Mr. Mace was smiling, 
 frankly, but watching his own smile, as it were, 
 down the length of his nose. 
 
 "There, now !" he chuckled. "You mistake me. 
 I'm a blundering old fellow; what I'm trying to 
 say, is this." The dark eyes looked up, full of 
 amusement. "Under the circumstances, won't you 
 come stay at my house? Bachelor quarters!" he 
 laughed. "Bachelor quarters : but I can make you 
 snug, and nobody there will count your stengahs 
 when you're dry! Company's rare with me: I'd 
 like dearly to have you?" 
 
 The three companions glanced at one another, 
 awkwardly, in consultation. 
 
 "I see how it is," the speaker added, with 
 pathos. "You'd find it dull, no doubt. But while 
 poor Fraye's down sick . . . Come to-morrow," 
 he begged, his thin face warmed and shining. 
 "Come by daylight and view the premises. If you 
 
126 THE FAR CRY -% 
 
 like them, they are yours — the freedom of the 
 place. We want the islands to keep a good name 
 for hospitality. Come and see me, at any rate!" 
 
 Tisdale, reading the looks of either shipmate, 
 spoke for them. 
 
 "Thank you, Mr. Mace," he answered. "We'll 
 come to see you." 
 
 "Good. I'm delighted." Wrinkling with satis- 
 faction, the long face once more receded in dark- 
 ness. It returned for a moment, smiling cannily. 
 "Never tell Fraye that I was bidding for you, 
 though! Dear old Tom! — he'd be furious! 
 Don't forget: I expect you to-morrow morning. 
 You'll find it the best arrangement. I'll send a 
 boat, of course." 
 
 He was gone. They heard a slight crunching 
 of sand, as he went softly away toward the right. 
 Aloft, the palms crackled and fell silent; the surf 
 resounded round the distant confines of the night; 
 the candles flickered or burned steady on the table, 
 and lighted three musing figures of men. 
 
 "Something's up," said Wallace. 
 
 "Let it wait: I'm hungry," Tisdale scoffed. 
 "What's fretting you so hard, Sainty?" 
 
 Godbolt stared at the candles without answer- 
 ing, for a while. 
 
 "I was thinking." He shook himself, at last. 
 

 TABLE IN THE GROVE 127 
 
 u There was less trouble on the old island, wasn't 
 there? We'll never see them again, those days. 
 But here we are. And that's best." 
 
 They were too weary, too bewildered, and too 
 hungry, for any further comment. The grove, the 
 bright dinner-table, evening, and the prospect of 
 sleep : these were all pieces in a fantasy, the name 
 of which was drowsiness. 
 
 Half dozing, they heard behind them the brush 
 of skirts. Miss Fraye came toward them and to- 
 ward the light. She was bringing a decanter on a 
 silver tray. 
 
 "My grandfather is better," she called out as 
 she came. "He'll join us before long." 
 
 She put down the decanter — a shining globe of 
 pale sherry — in the midst of the candle-sticks; 
 lifted a silver bell, and set it tinkling; then, with a 
 smile and a little wave of the hands, made her 
 guests welcome at table. 
 
 They were hardly seated, when from nowhere, 
 like a familiar spirit, appeared a small, rotund 
 Chinaman in white livery faced with blue. Still 
 as a ball of thistledown, he passed round the table 
 and out of sight again, leaving at this point in his 
 orbit four cups of bouillon, and an impression that 
 with three blinks from a slanting eye, he had stud- 
 ied the full history of three strangers. 
 
128 THE FAR CRY 
 
 The men drained their cups without speaking, 
 but looked at one another and sighed — a three- 
 fold, heartfelt sigh. At the sound of it, they 
 laughed, and found their hostess laughing with 
 them. Good food had worked a magic : hardship, 
 loneliness, careworn voyages were over; cramped 
 bodies, tired minds belonged to the unreal world 
 of fatigue. Here they sat already warmed and 
 fed, awake and laughing. The girl understood; 
 or so her brown eyes told them, shining in the 
 candlelight. 
 
 Again, while they laughed, the Chinaman glided 
 through his comet path, leaving fish as by accident, 
 with a faint, plump smile of condescension. When 
 he had vanished, there came from the house a quiet 
 scuffle of bare feet, and four dark men-servants 
 in the white and blue livery set down a burden at 
 the edge of the light — Mr. Fraye's long chair, and 
 Mr. Fraye himself, lying still under his robe as if 
 wrapped in lead. 
 
 "You sound very merry," said he, nodding his 
 white head. "Go on. Proceed. I can enjoy my- 
 self listening." 
 
 The men, who had risen, sat down again. Kath- 
 erine touched the decanter, and glanced toward 
 Godbolt, her right-hand neighbor. He looked for 
 her glass, found she had none; looked at his own, 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 129 
 
 with a doubtful air; and suddenly flushing red 
 through his sunburn, passed the decanter on. 
 "Here, Arthur," he mumbled. Tisdale poured 
 himself a glass, and gave the decanter to Wallace, 
 who followed his example. 
 
 "Sherry's not bad, Mr. Godbolt," said the little 
 man in the chair. "It rounded the Cape of Good 
 Hope when I was your age." 
 
 The sailor faced about to answer; but the an- 
 swer would not come. He seemed in great con- 
 fusion and distress, looked once toward the girl, 
 then avoided her eye. 
 
 "It ain't the reason, sir," he faltered at last. 
 "It — it really ain't the reason." 
 
 Tisdale came to his aid. 
 
 "Miss Fraye, is that a dove-cote behind you — 
 the peaked thing I seem to see overhead, at some 
 distance? We thought we heard pigeons cooing. 
 Your carrier got home safe, I suppose?" 
 
 Never did a subject change by a more thorough 
 somersault. 
 
 "Home? My carrier?" The girl's face was 
 all bright wonder and surprise. "How did 
 
 you Have you seen Walter? Where was 
 
 he? Did he say Did Walter give you any 
 
 message?" 
 
 Tisdale shook his head. It was a pity, he 
 
i 3 o THEFARCRY 
 
 thought, looking at her, to overthrow such hopes, 
 whatever they might be. 
 
 "We haven't seen Walter," he replied. "Don't 
 even know who he is." 
 
 Miss Fraye bore the disappointment well. 
 
 "He's my brother," she stated. "I was anxious 
 to hear. I am sorry." Then leaving her anxiety 
 
 out of the question "But how did you know of 
 
 my pigeon?" 
 
 Tisdale raised an eye-brow at his friends. They 
 laughed, and gave him the telling of the story. 
 When he had finished, when his last sentence came 
 home, like the pigeon, to thTs dark and peaceful 
 grove surrounding them, they all remained silent 
 for a time. 
 
 Miss Fraye turned toward her grandfather. 
 
 "How strange it is! What do you think of it, 
 happening so, to-night?" 
 
 The old man stirred in his gray shroud. 
 
 "Ask these young men. What do they think?" 
 
 She fixed her brown eyes on them in turn, 
 seriously. 
 
 "Well ? What do you ? What does it mean to 
 you, Mr. Wallace? — having my pigeon lead you 
 here?" 
 
 "A queer coincidence," Wallace replied, hon- 
 estly. "A thing we never dreamed of." 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 131 
 
 "And to you?" The brown eyes rested on 
 Arthur Tisdale. 
 
 u To me?" laughed that young man, bowing: 
 "our very great good fortune, of course." 
 
 Miss Fraye turned, somewhat impatiently, to 
 Godbolt. 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 The sailor raised his head, and gave her that 
 steady, sidelong look of his. 
 
 "I don't hardly dare to say," he answered 
 quietly, and lowered his eyes. "It might sound 
 foolish. 
 
 She leaned toward him quickly, her arms on the 
 cloth. 
 
 "No. Do! Say it!" 
 
 Godbolt looked at her again, but shook his 
 head. 
 
 "Not now." 
 
 She held his glance with her own. 
 
 "Later — some day?" 
 
 His dark face lighted, as though she had di- 
 vined his thought. 
 
 "Yes," he consented, gravely. "Some day." 
 
 The girl's face glowed likewise, perhaps be- 
 cause it took, near and full, the brightness of the 
 candles. The color tingeing her brown cheeks was 
 not a flush, but fine transparent youth; the lumin- 
 
i 3 2 THE FAR CRY 
 
 ous quality about her came by chance, as the reflec- 
 tions fluttered round her hair, or caught a deep and 
 lively answer in her eyes. Whatever the cause, the 
 effect was brief. She nodded slowly, thoughtfully, 
 at Godbolt's promise; withdrew her arms; and 
 sitting as before, appeared to veil this momentary 
 lustre. 
 
 The silver bell tinkled under her hand. The 
 Chinaman came noiseless out of limbo. 
 
 "Kofi," she ordered. "Tig*." 
 
 When the plump phantom had vanished, re- 
 turned with three cups of coffee, and vanished 
 again, the company kept their former silence. 
 
 The surf grumbled, far out. But for this, the 
 grove was still as an empty forest. 
 
 Presently, Tisdale spoke, with his cup half-way 
 to his lips. 
 
 "That's queer," said he, glancing about. 
 "We're alone, and yet I keep feeling ..." 
 
 Miss Fraye caught his words up, lightly. 
 
 "What do you feel?" 
 
 Tisdale shot another glance, puckering his eye- 
 brows. 
 
 "As if, n he began, and halted. "As if we sat 
 on a stage, behind footlights — with all the dark 
 full of audience! Yet we're alone: you can hear 
 how much we're alone." 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 133 
 
 She looked mischief at the trio. 
 
 "Are we?" the old man chuckled in his chair. 
 "Are you? — Look and see." 
 
 The visitors obeyed. On the girl's right, they 
 saw the house, a long, low bulk deserted, with dim 
 orange squares for windows and door; behind her, 
 behind her grandfather's chair, nothing but a hint, 
 a looming apex of the dove-cote ; roundabout else- 
 where, the night, a high wall of blackness over- 
 hung by stars which, marvelously near the tree- 
 tops, marvelously thick, seemed painted in soft 
 streaks of phosphorescent gold. 
 
 "Look lower," advised the girl. "Lower yet. 
 Near the ground." 
 
 They looked. Inside the ring of light, they saw 
 nothing. Outside, nothing at first; little by little, 
 after hard scrutiny they discerned formless white 
 things arranged knee-high along the floor of the 
 grove like stunted bushes covered with snow. The 
 light fell short, divulging no more. But among 
 these white things it appeared, now and then, as 
 if tiny movements passed fitfully. At last the 
 movements could be named or guessed at: here, 
 the crooking of a white-sleeved elbow; there, the 
 turning of a shadowy head, so that eye-balls or 
 white teeth glimmered. The darkness had a liv- 
 ing hedge at its border — a line of people, almost 
 
i 34 THEFARCRY 
 
 invisible, who lay or squatted there to watch and 
 overhear. 
 
 The three friends faced the table again, rather 
 stiffly, like men who at a banquet find themselves 
 threatened with arrest. The discovery embar- 
 rassed them. They sat here, the focus of many 
 eyes, their privacy the privacy of gold-fish in a 
 lighted bowl. 
 
 "Curious, how I felt them," said Tisdale, throw- 
 ing off his constraint. "Long before you joined 
 us, even." He laughed, and repeated boldly — 
 " 'Thou preparest a table before me . . . '" 
 
 Miss Fraye smiled. 
 
 "They're not enemies, though," she broke in. 
 "Friends, all friends, our islanders. You're not 
 offended? We let the poor things look on, some- 
 times of an evening, because it comforts them." 
 
 Wallace, aware of that semi-circle of eyes aim- 
 ing like arrows at his back, stirred uneasily. 
 
 "You have plenty of protectors," he ventured. 
 
 At this the girl laughed. 
 
 "Protectors?" her grandfather chuckled, and 
 shook his white head. "They're afraid of the 
 dark, our children there. Take a rattan switch, 
 and you could drive them all into the sea I Jump 
 up, Mr. Wallace, and make toward them as if you 
 were angry." 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 135 
 
 Wallace hesitated, then sprang afoot and took 
 one stride from the table, with hand uplifted. 
 
 A flutter, a confusion of little squeaks and whis- 
 pers, took place in the darkness. The vague row 
 of watchers burst and melted, in white groups that 
 fled crouching. Wallace borrowed a candle, and 
 held it above his head. The grove, as far as one 
 could see, lay vacant. 
 
 Mr. Fraye called from his chair: 
 
 "Good night, my friends I" 
 
 An answer, from various distances, came back 
 as the fugitives pattered away through the palms. 
 
 "Good night, Master!'' the voices mourn- 
 fully chanted, like those which at sunset had 
 floated over the lagoon. "Good night, my Mas- 
 ter!" 
 
 The old man's eyes twinkled. 
 
 "You observe their valor? In three genera- 
 tions, they can get the English tongue, but not the 
 English backbone !" 
 
 He lay musing, with a look which passed 
 through and beyond the folk at table. 
 
 "A life-time — a dream!" Mr. Fraye spoke to 
 himself; then louder: "Time for grandsires to be 
 in bed. Ring for my bearers, Katherine." 
 
 The girl rang her bell. Her guests rose with 
 her, and stood waiting. The four dark servants 
 
i 3 6 THE FAR CRY 
 
 appeared, salaamed, and were about to lift the 
 chair when Mr. Fraye signed for them to pause. 
 
 "The Chinaman will show your rooms, gen- 
 tlemen, whenever you choose to turn in. My 
 boys have drawn your boat up. Ask for anything 
 you want. Good night ! It's a great pleasure to 
 have you here." 
 
 The servants raised and carried him. Miss 
 Fraye went before, a candle in her hand. Half- 
 way to the house, he suddenly cried: 
 
 "God bless me ! Cigars ! I quite forgot. Kath- 
 erine, dear, run fetch the poor chaps a box." 
 
 When the girl had returned, bringing cheroots, 
 she bade the wanderers good night once more. 
 
 "I'm glad you are here!" She looked them in 
 the eyes, but her voice trembled. "I mustn't tell 
 you how glad! — Till after breakfast, then?" she 
 added, and was moving off. 
 
 "Oh ! Boys !" cried Godbolt, all at once. "We 
 forgot some, too. Miss Fraye : a man went past, 
 before dinner, and asked us to go . . . That 
 is ... " The sailor floundered. "I mean, he 
 asked after your grandfather's health, and wanted 
 us to ... " 
 
 The girl's face altered. 
 
 "A white man?" she inquired, with a flash of 
 incredulity. 
 
TABLE IN THE GROVE 137 
 
 "Mr. Mace." 
 
 "He came?" Anger shook her — a visible 
 tremor of the body. "He came and asked?" 
 
 They wondered at her vehemence, her paleness, 
 above all at the restraint which kept her from 
 saying more. 
 
 "We promised," Godbolt stammered, "to go 
 see him in the morning. Please . . . We weren't 
 to tell your grandfather." 
 
 Katherine viewed him coldly. 
 
 "Ah? Then go," she agreed, with bitter un- 
 concern. "Go by all means." 
 
 She started walking toward the house, but 
 halted somewhere under the trees. After a long 
 pause, she came hurrying back toward the light. 
 This time there was color in her cheeks, warmth 
 in her eyes. 
 
 "Forgive me," she begged; and the sight of 
 her, so pretty and so contrite, moved the men 
 strangely. "I did not mean to be rude. And do, 
 please, make your visit to-morrow morning, for it 
 may help you to understand." 
 
 She slipped away quickly, as if ashamed. They 
 saw her cross the veranda and enter a lighted 
 doorway. 
 
 Not long afterward, they heard her singing in 
 the house. The song was not for them; only a 
 
i 3 8 THE FAR CRY 
 
 private matter, with breaks and delays while the 
 singer busily came and went between rooms. It 
 was something about a dove and the Grail. 
 
 Her own dove-cote was fast asleep ; so was the 
 grove; but the three men stayed as she had left 
 them, astonished, forgetting the presence of to- 
 bacco, and staring at the desolate candles. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 A MORNING CALL 
 
 The bedrooms to which the Chinaman guided 
 them, were in a bungalow hid by a small forest of 
 its own — a heavy cluster of broad banana sheaves. 
 Each room, lighted by candles, stood open to its 
 neighbor and formed a gallery of cool spaces, with 
 clean white wallcloth, brown polished floor, and 
 beds veiled cubically in mosquito gauze, like so 
 many tall boxes of mist. 
 
 While they undressed, the friends paid visits 
 back and forth, straying barelegged or bare- 
 chested, smoking, inspecting one another's quar- 
 ters, talking by snatches, after the fashion of men 
 at bed-time. 
 
 "She faces the lagoon, this bungalow," Wallace 
 proclaimed. 
 
 All three heads popped out at window, to ad- 
 mire a lake full of stars beyond the foliage. 
 Ashore, a stone's throw distant on the right hand, 
 
 139 
 
i 4 o THE FAR CRY 
 
 they saw a pair of oblong lights that suddenly 
 went out as Mr. Fraye, or his grand-daughter, 
 put the main house to sleep. 
 
 "Pretty girl, that," continued Wallace. 
 
 Tisdale snorted. 
 
 "Feeble, Robin. Very feeble terms for her, 
 aren't they, Francis ?" 
 
 Godbolt flung his cheroot into the dark. When 
 his reply came, it was fervent, but indirect. 
 
 "Kings couldn't treat us handsomer I" He 
 turned indoors. "Mosquito-bars that hoist on pul- 
 leys clean to the ceiling — mark that, boys? — And 
 the bottom hem all weighted full o' shot, flush to 
 the floor, so's a gnat couldn't crawl into bed with 
 ye!" 
 
 After lights out, he was heard to stretch in a 
 Capuan luxury of linen. 
 
 "Boys-oh!" he yawned mightily. "The sheets 
 here smell o' cedar-closet, way they use' to at 
 home!" 
 
 Surf grumbled and whispered; landlocked water 
 lapped the distant foot of the jetty; and to these 
 sounds the men sank through a region deeper than 
 dreaming. 
 
 They woke to find the sun over the island, and 
 their plantain thicket dazzling in broad pennons, 
 apph-green and silver. The lagoon pieced every 
 
A MORNING CALL 141 
 
 gap with the same shining colors. Against this 
 background, there stood in the veranda a break- 
 fast table all complete, with red roses crowning a 
 bowl, and a little glass tower in which coffee 
 steamed and bubbled fragrantly. A tall man stood 
 waiting there — the brown punkah giant of last 
 evening. 
 
 "Good morning, sirs!" he greeted them shyly, 
 in a mellow baritone. "My master hope you have 
 slept well. My master send the kimono" — he 
 held up an armful of colored vesture — "and bath- 
 ing sarong. Your clothes are being ironed. I 
 will bring them after breakfast. If you wish any- 
 thing, sirs, call out for Anak. My name is Anak." 
 
 Parting both hands in a magnificent gesture 
 from the forehead, he bowed low, and strode 
 away. 
 
 When they had bathed in the lagoon, and 
 brought great appetite to breakfast, they found 
 this Anak — child by nature as by name — waiting 
 timidly to serve them; and after breakfast, as they 
 lounged in cool blue kimonos, he fetched not only 
 their own clothing — fresh and smooth, with but- 
 tons polished — but also two wicker trays, one 
 heaped with canvas pumps, the other with Goa- 
 lundo pith helmets, whiter and lighter than snow. 
 
 "My master wish you try these," murmured 
 
i 4 2 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Anak, offering the gifts. "If they not fit, my mas- 
 ter say, plenty more in the go-down. " He with- 
 drew among shining plantains, and to another 
 obeisance, added more shyly than ever: "Sirs, I 
 think Mr. Mace have sent a boat. His man wait- 
 ing." 
 
 Clean-shaven, light-hearted, spotless from toe 
 to helmet, they set off at last on their morning call. 
 A foot-path took them down the drooping banana 
 glade to the beach; and as they deployed there, 
 each man smiled to see his fellow move so brisk 
 and soldier-like in the vainglory of new apparel. 
 
 The beach glared like an immense bunker full 
 of salt. Where still green water curved into it, 
 below, lay a boat with a little boatman dozing 
 under a toadstool hat. At their hail, he squirted 
 tobacco juice over the gunwale, straddled wearily 
 out upon the wet coral, and in a sort of cringing 
 apathy, let his three fares climb past him into the 
 skiff. With spidery brown arms he shoved off, and 
 took the oars. As he rowed, his naked ribs, collar- 
 bone, and point of scapula strained out glistening, 
 like knuckles in a rubber glove; at every stroke his 
 knee-caps pointed through his cotton trousers. To 
 any question, no matter what, he agreed unthink- 
 ingly with a — "Bai Tuan" — hoarse and broken- 
 winded, while his eyes followed his moving hands. 
 
A MORNING CALL 143 
 
 "A Bugi, this fellow," declared Godbolt. "Al- 
 ways chewing a fig o' tobacco, Bugis are. That's 
 no voice o' this island, neither. — Apa nama, ye 
 corrugated runt?" 
 
 "Satrap, Tuan," wheezed the rower, and spat, 
 like a man whose name meant nothing in this world 
 or the next. 
 
 So forlorn a puppet had no business on a stage 
 so brilliant. The candescence of the beach floated 
 along their port side, fiercely white, but now at a 
 bearable remove. Calm as any midsummer pond, 
 the imprisoned bay reflected all things in a blur, 
 as though the shore had begun to melt and run. 
 Dragon-flies hotly burnished, now single, now 
 coupled in tandem, darted past the boat or 
 stopped above it, thrilling with motion, yet seem- 
 ing to stick fast in the oppressive air. It was odd 
 to see them — familiar ornaments for woodland 
 and meadow waters — quivering over this ocean 
 pool in whose pale green chamber the sea fishes 
 gleamed, shadows of ginger coral wavered, and 
 monstrous clams on bottom lay gaping with blue- 
 beaded lids. Dragon-flies close aboard; white 
 gulls that wheeled and mewed far off; the whiter 
 pointed wings of little fishing boats clustered be- 
 yond them, across the lagoon; the farther beach, a 
 thread of snow beneath dark woods — everything, 
 
i 4 4 THEFARCRY 
 
 from submarine foundation to highest glittering 
 palm-blade, moved or lay steeping in excess of 
 light. 
 
 "Yesterday was Sunday!" Wallace exclaimed, 
 like one who had guessed a riddle. "We lost 
 count. Sunday! That's why the place was all so 
 empty, when we got here." 
 
 Godbolt nodded, squinting under his lashes at 
 the fishing-fleet. 
 
 "You clinched that nail, Rob," he muttered ap- 
 provingly. "Slews o' brand new, clean canvas over 
 there, too — none o' your rotten mats. Mr. Fraye 
 keeps his natives Bristol-fashion. But where does 
 old man Mace hang forth, anyhow?" 
 
 Their boat answered him, by turning a promon- 
 tory of palms and ironwood, and opening a small 
 channel, choked with reefs, through which they 
 caught a glimpse of ocean tossing its white mane. 
 Another tiny cape, ahead, concealed the mouth of 
 another channel, for there as here the ebb-tide 
 poured out, pulling flaws in the glassy water. Thus 
 the men became aware that Fraye's Atoll, which 
 they had taken for one island, was really three, 
 conjoined or overlapping a circuit; and that now 
 Satrap, the lean rower, was heading for the mid- 
 dle fragment of shore. 
 
 "Good lads, good lads!" called someone, as 
 
thev disci 
 
 A MORNING CALL 145 
 
 ey disembarked among hopping sand-crabs. "I 
 began to fear you wouldn't come." 
 
 They looked up. At the head of a blinding fore- 
 shore Mr. Mace waved his helmet abroad. Tall, 
 wiry, in gray flannels of a sportive cut, he seemed 
 anything but that obscure passer whom they had 
 seen doubtfully in the grove, last night. 
 
 "Come, come up!" he chirruped, gaily. "I've 
 a cold welcome for you ! Better than a warm one, 
 this weather, eh?" 
 
 He shook hands eagerly with Tisdale and Wal- 
 lace. Godbolt came later, having paused to give 
 the boatman a cheroot, with a word or two, al- 
 though neither gift nor speech evoked more than 
 a blink of understanding. 
 
 "Good lads," cried Mace, "to visit an old fogy I 
 Aha, Captain Godbolt, your hand also ! Come, 
 come !" He began to herd them inland, very spry, 
 very fussy, and talking all the while. His long 
 visage beamed, his gray cheeks reddened with ex- 
 citement. "Welcome to Mango Island ! Not so 
 grand as Tom Fraye's place, but — well, you wait, 
 my boys ! Such as it is ! A cold welcome, you may 
 say. It would make a cat speak, though ! Oliver 
 Mace keeps his own ice machine!" 
 
 With these and other blandishments, he urged 
 his company through mottled palm shade, into a 
 
i 4 6 THE FAR CRY 
 
 hot clearing and a great attap house that sprawled 
 there. Indoors, a cool, dark room stretched away 
 like a sail-loft. After their first plunge from sun- 
 light to blackness, the callers found themselves 
 grouped about a rattan table, where four glasses 
 of champagne stood seething. 
 
 "Here's fun!" Mace greedily set the example. 
 "Boys, I'm a bachelor, too. Ageing, the calen- 
 dar says, but full of pepper. Jolly bachelors all. 
 Here's to you, my contemporaries !" 
 
 Wallace and Tisdale raised their glasses. 
 
 "Captain?" Mace turned with an injured air. 
 "You're never T.T.?" 
 
 "I'm up the pole," explained Godbolt, care- 
 lessly. "Don't mind me." He wandered about 
 the room, studying the walls, on which hung many 
 barbaric trophies: match-locks, targets of painted 
 wood or buffalo hide, treacherous campilans in the 
 split scabbard; but most often things of feminine 
 import — brass-wire hoops from a Dyak woman's 
 corselet, a silver fig-leaf, or the leering ingenuity 
 of Cantonese fans, reversible, in water-colors. Be- 
 fore these the sailor pondered, like a man lost in 
 a museum; but when he spoke, it was of an outdoor 
 matter, quite beside the point. "Which way," he 
 called, "does the current set from here, Mr. Mace, 
 flood running?" 
 
A MORNING CALL 147 
 
 The jolly bachelor was rattling a bottle among 
 cakes of artificial ice, in a bucket on the floor. 
 
 "Which way? Over toward Fraye's beach — 
 dear old Tom's landing. Why?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing," said Godbolt, and moved far- 
 ther down the room. "That's my trade — currents, 
 and winds, and general drift of orts. . . " 
 
 His voice trailed off to suit the words, a rum- 
 ble of sound from a corner. The other men al- 
 lowed him to go, and soon forgot him. Mr. Mace 
 was telling stories, fluently and well, with a kind 
 of crabbed humor. At sea, or on the Isle of Birds, 
 there was no such fun as here. This was Bache- 
 lors' Hall, built in attap, large and dark and cool, 
 where the wine was good and talk abounding. 
 Time passed. 
 
 "Here, Sainty!" A convivial shout went up. 
 "O Francis! Captain, come here a moment!" 
 
 The unsocial wanderer stood near a window, 
 reading. He laid his book aside, and came down 
 the room in his easy, rolling gait, unhurried. 
 
 "Well? What is it?" 
 
 "Why, look here." They all spoke at once. 
 "We'd better stay. We're going to camp here. 
 You're right about it, Mr. Mace. Look. Sit 
 down. We've been talking " 
 
 "So I heard," interrupted the sailor, drily. He 
 
i 4 8 THE FAR CRY 
 
 crossed his arms over the back of a chair, and 
 looked on, big, sunburnt, and droll as a bad boy. 
 "Saying anything, to speak of ?" 
 
 "Here's our problem, Captain. 1 ' Mace held in 
 sinewy fingers a wine-glass, and smiling, watched 
 the bubbles that crowded up its hollow stalk. 
 "We've all agreed — I'm happy to say — that 
 Mango Island's a better place than Fraye's. For 
 you to live in, I mean, while poor Tom's ill. De- 
 lights me to have you think so." He nodded 
 kindly at his auditors, and continued, smiling and 
 dozing over the words. "Now, then. He's a 
 touchy old nabob, is Tom. How shall we word 
 our message to him, a nice little chit, polite and 
 smooth, so as to hurt no feelings?" 
 
 Godbolt shot one hard look at his friends. 
 
 "Afraid I can't help you." 
 
 "Another bottle can." Mr. Mace got nimbly 
 out of his chair. "Composition's a dry, thirsty 
 performance. Wait till I unlock the bin, for 
 there's no trusting these brown devils with liquor." 
 
 Jingling a bunch of keys, the speaker ambled 
 across the room, through a doorway, into some 
 backward penetralia of the house. He was hardly 
 gone, when Godbolt, pouncing ambidexterously, 
 whipped away the glass from either friend, 
 stepped lightly to the nearest window, and flung 
 
A MORNING CALL 149 
 
 a double jet of champagne froth into the sunshine. 
 
 "There!" he grunted "Now come to your 
 senses." 
 
 The two men at the table stared, by no means 
 amiably. 
 
 "I must say," began Tisdale, "that's rather 
 high-handed!" 
 
 Godbolt swept a commanding paw at them, for 
 silence. 
 
 "You babes in the wood!" he whispered, his 
 bright, black eyes dancing. It was impossible to 
 tell which was uppermost in him, anger, caution, 
 or a desire to laugh. "I never figgered you'd fall 
 so easy to that old fox ! You ! Drinking against 
 him, you — you infant class !" 
 
 At this, out flared the moody Wallace. 
 
 "We're of age, thank you. Perhaps you're cap- 
 tain on land, still?" 
 
 The sailor blazed up in his turn. 
 
 "No !" he boomed, indignant and scornfv . 
 "No, I ain't forgot! Seems to me you have, 
 though. Seems to me you sat there gullible 
 
 enough, drinking in taffy and fool-wash Oh, 
 
 I can hear the length of a room: I heard old But- 
 ter-Tongue a-complimenting round ye. Smooth 
 
 and polite, says he No, I ain't a captain ; my 
 
 only command was a joke ; and small need you had, 
 
i 5 o THE FAR CRY 
 
 Rob, to remind mc o' that ! But if I was the man- 
 giest fireman out o' Mersey river, I'd show more 
 grateful than what this comes to!" 
 
 The pair of revelers wondered at him. His 
 heat overbore their petulance. 
 
 "Grateful? What's wrong, Sainty?" 
 
 Another voice echoed the question. 
 
 "Yes, what's wrong, indeed?" Mace had re- 
 entered, softly. He paused at the door, a lank, 
 gray figure carrying weight, two bottles in each 
 hand, like some pedestrian John Gilpin. "My 
 dear men? What on earth is all this hubbub?" 
 
 Godbolt faced him, unabashed. 
 
 "It's a hard thing, sir, to speak out in your 
 house. But here goes. Mr. Fraye treated us 
 handsome, not to mention — others. They were 
 looking for us back to-night. Why, Lord knows : 
 any more'n why you're frolicking to keep us here. 
 But for myself, Mr. Mace, and all due thanks to 
 you, well, home goes Goosey!" 
 
 Like a pin-setter in a bowling alley, Mace care- 
 fully planted his bottles upright on the floor. 
 
 "If you must go?" he replied blandly, as he 
 rose. "The three of us can manage. We'll miss 
 you, Captain." 
 
 But Godbolt had not finished. 
 
 "You boys," he went on, sternly, "can choose 
 
A MORNING CALL 151 
 
 how you like best. You come of age recently, I 
 understand. All right. Mr. Mace he's getting 
 you sewed up. Better stay." 
 
 "Sainty !" cried the young men, in rebuke. 
 
 "Better stay." Godbolt, apparently cool, went 
 searching round for a helmet. He stopped, and 
 cracked his fists together. "Stay, and disappoint 
 a woman who believes in ye ! Stay, and forget an 
 old sick man that fed ye, housed ye off the sea, 
 never asked no question, but shod ye with what 
 you're standing in!" 
 
 He found his helmet on a chair. The two cul- 
 prits uneasily watched him. Their festivity was 
 ended. They felt, in this long, still room, the con- 
 met of two stubborn wills. 
 
 "Good-bye, then," said Godbolt. "I'm going 
 back to main island." 
 
 This farewell, being simple, carried the day. 
 Tisdale rose; Wallace followed; each mumbled 
 something of regret and leave-taking; and both 
 awkwardly awaited the next movement. 
 
 It came from their host. Oliver Mace drew 
 toward them, slowly, his face grayer than his flan- 
 nels. 
 
 "So, Mr. Godbolt?" he drawled, and there was 
 venom in his look. "When your highness finds a 
 place dull, nobody else can stay there? What — > 
 
i 5 2 THE FAR CRY 
 
 what «■ ' ■ ■" He stammered and choked ; his eyes 
 grew smaller, and in a shrill outcry that seemed to 
 vent years of hatred — "What damned lie has 
 Fraye been telling about me?" 
 
 "There, boys." Godbolt spoke with cool dis- 
 gust. "There. Judge for yourself. That the 
 kind o' language we heard last night? Pick your 
 choice." 
 
 This quarrel had begun strangely enough; it 
 now came to a stranger end. Mr. Mace, his arms 
 clasped rigidly behind him, went pacing up and 
 down the room, angrily at first, then more and 
 more thoughtfully, with a footfall retarding to a 
 dead pause. He had gone from red to pale again, 
 from hot to cold; and when he spoke, it was hard 
 to believe that a voice so gentle could have assailed 
 their ears, a moment ago, like the wicked scream 
 of a sea-gull. 
 
 "I never meant that," he said quietly, chafing 
 his lips as though he had taken bitter medicine. 
 "I'm heartily ashamed. Heartily. What a mis- 
 fortune it is, gentlemen, to inherit a vile temper!" 
 He shook his head, with a melancholy smile. "And 
 to let it go — of all times ! — when I was hoping you 
 might think well of me! Ah, dear chaps, you 
 know my worst failing now: you can understand 
 how I've come to be living alone !" 
 
A MORNING CALL 153 
 
 Pathos marked this recantation. The man sent 
 a forlorn glance round his great room, as if al- 
 ready he saw it a desert place, and himself the lean 
 companion of shadows. 
 
 "Well! 'Twas ever thus, my fond gazelles." 
 Mace nodded, shrugging his shoulders. "I can't 
 force you to stay. Tiffin first, however. Pot-luck. 
 Oh, but I insist ! You sha'n't leave without tiffin ! 
 It's ordered. I'll go tell the mandur to serve you 
 at once." 
 
 Retreating past his row of bottles, Mr. Mace 
 left the room. For all his humility, and in spite 
 of a shambling gait, there was something grim 
 about that exit. 
 
 Wallace and Tisdale immediately closed on 
 their comrade. 
 
 "Sainty, what the dickens?" they whispered. 
 "What got into you?" 
 
 The obstreperous captain only laughed, and 
 wagged an iron fore-finger. 
 
 "Watch!" he growled. "Watch old Oliver 
 Be'lzebub there! He's got a bushel of mischief 
 coming 1" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE SECOND WHITE BIRD 
 
 Mischief might be afoot, but none appeared. 
 High noon glared through the windows and chinks 
 in the plaited walls. Mace did not even return; 
 and when at last a footstep broke the tedium of 
 waiting, it was only the scuffle of bare soles. A 
 morose, elderly native, in cotton jacket and blue 
 kilt, entered from the back of the room, and cross- 
 ing it without a word, sourly beckoned the three 
 men to follow. 
 
 They filed after him, through the front veranda, 
 the torrid clearing, the palm belt; until, with a nod 
 of scant courtesy, their guide halted, slid aside, 
 and deserting, let them pass on toward the gleam 
 of the lagoon. 
 
 "There, Sainty!" cried Tisdale. "That ought 
 to shame you!" 
 
 The shore at this point fell steeply away, almost 
 without a beach. Tall "monkey-laddered" palms 
 
 154 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 155 
 
 hung slanting, their heads over the water, but their 
 matted shadows so falling as to cover the verge of 
 land. Under this high protection, like a mon- 
 arch's divan beneath umbrellas, a rude platform or 
 gazebo stood,* and on it a table set for tiffin, with 
 three chairs. Nobody was in sight, nor any food 
 except a mound of golden papaya and sliced lem- 
 ons; but from below, at the water's edge, a husk 
 fire sent up its aromatic smoke, and an iron pot 
 was clinking. A pair of gulls hovered, peevishly 
 complaining, between the water and the tree-tops. 
 
 "Aren't you ashamed?" repeated Tisdale. 
 "Here are coals of fire for your stubborn old 
 head!" 
 
 Godbolt had nothing to say. They leaned, all 
 three, on the rail of the platform, and looked over. 
 Down at the foot of the little precipice, a half- 
 naked man was mending the fire. He glanced up 
 once. It was the emaciated boatman, Satrap. 
 Near him, on a hand's breadth of coral powder, 
 lay his boat; and on the forward thwart, a basket 
 in which shone a great fish. 
 
 "I feel like a fool !" groaned Wallace, viewing 
 the preparation below. "This Mace — he's an ec- 
 centric if you like. But he was doing his best, poor 
 old fellow. Why under heaven, Francis, did you 
 cut up so?" 
 
156 THE FAR CRY 
 
 The sailor took his elbows from the rail, and 
 pointed easterly across the lagoon, toward those 
 low woods where, some three miles off, Fraye's 
 jetty showed a black nick in the curving water. 
 
 "Flood running," he replied, slowly, "the cur- 
 rent sets over there. Mace told me — you heard 
 him. Well : you saw Fraye's beach, when we first 
 come, yesterday, all one litter o' champagne corks. 
 Who pulled them corks? Mace did; Mace does; 
 — and they drift over, day in, day out. Thick as 
 grasshoppers in the fall, they are. I wouldn't pin 
 no faith to words, 'polite and smooth,' you under- 
 stand, when a man does so much elbow-work. 
 Would you?" 
 
 He turned on them, earnestly, for corrobora- 
 tion. 
 
 "Go ahead," they urged. "What else ?" 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "Not much. Not to count much, anyhow. Ever 
 lived fo'c's'le, 'twould cure the squeams and make 
 
 ye easy-going. But in there " Godbolt jerked 
 
 his thumb back towards the house they had quitted 
 — "In there, some things that old customer hangs 
 on his walls. They're filthy ! Filthy! You can put 
 that down, boys: they were too strong for me!" 
 
 Again he laughed, but there was no sound of 
 pleasure in it. 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 157 
 
 'That's all?" said Wallace. "I don't sec, now, 
 what made you get so hot !" 
 
 Godbolt patted him on the shoulder with one 
 hand, reached out the other to collar Tisdale, and 
 so, leaning between the malcontents with his arms 
 hooked over their necks, spoke in a lowered voice. 
 
 "Hot? Got hot o' purpose, I guess. You see, 
 it lies about so-fashion, mates." He parted sharp 
 glances between them, nodding now at one, now 
 at the other, to enforce his thought. "You see this 
 far into the mill-stone, don't you? There's two 
 camps on the lagoon: hers — Fraye's, I mean — 
 and this old superannuated bob-cat, Mace's. Two 
 camps; and a feud between 'em! Feud? — If 
 ever you nosed one in the air, you ought to now, 
 my duckies ! Last night, when we rowed in off 
 the sea, you heard 'em singing out and whining, 
 the pig-tenders there in the bush, begging us to go 
 away. Because why? Because they took us for 
 scouts — a boat-crew o' Mace's. And when we 
 landed, and tramped up the jetty, with axes, mind 
 ye! — who comes out to us but that girl, playing 
 bold as a queen? 'Mr. Mace sent you?' says she, 
 first crack. 'No,' says we, the gang o' mudlarks. 
 And she believed us !" 
 
 Godbolt gave his hearers a little argumentative 
 shake. 
 
158 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Katherine, she believed us!" he cried. "And 
 her old man, too sick to breathe, what of him? 
 First crack: 'I ain't afraid o' you,' he allows, 'and 
 Mace had better provide a stretcher!' Game as 
 a bantam. Game all the way through, that pair! 
 And when they found us for strangers that never 
 heard o' Mace? What happened then? Not a 
 word ! Not a word, pip nor yip ! 'Neighborhood 
 affair,' says they: 'judge for yourselves.' — The 
 feud coming to a head, plain; Mace to have next 
 move, whatever it was; and them sick, and fright- 
 ened, and lacking help. Did they call on us? Not 
 for Joe ! they wouldn't lead us into trouble blind- 
 fold, not their kind, by thunder!" 
 
 The sailor ended with a passionate swoop of 
 his arm. The two great fishing-gulls took fright, 
 and flew off, to squall and circle at a better dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Tisdale gave in with ready grace. 
 
 "You do our thinking for us, Sainty. It's we 
 that ought to feel ashamed." 
 
 "And so we do !" cried Wallace, glowing darkly 
 as he caught the fire of suspicion. "The Pre- 
 tender — that's Mace. I see it! Mace wants to 
 grab the island, somehow; and we might stand 
 in his way. It's A. B. C, boys ! No wonder he 
 cottoned to us so !" 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 159 
 
 Godbolt smiled on his pupils. 
 
 "Love at first sight was Mace's complaint," he 
 assured them. u Mace came a-scenting round the 
 cook-house door last nightfall, to see if 'dear old 
 Tom' was dead, I shouldn't wonder. What he 
 saw, instead, was us — three hard-favored runa- 
 gates, if ever was. A tough pill to swallow. But 
 I give Mace credit, fellows : he came nigh swallow- 
 ing us to-day!" 
 
 They winced at this view of their conduct. 
 
 "Oh, well, that's over!" cried Godbolt, hastily. 
 "I judge we all agree." He balanced right hand 
 against left. "Here's Pretender, and here's King. 
 Not to mention a fine young queen of a girl. 
 Which camp are you for, Arthur? Which camp, 
 Robin, old socks ? Mace's camp, or Fraye's ?" 
 
 Before they could utter their choice, a most 
 unwelcome sound, from behind them, cleft their 
 conference in two like the fall of an axe. 
 
 "Ah! So?" 
 
 Oliver Mace had rejoined them, or come at 
 least to the island edge of the platform. The 
 steward in the kilt stole past him, placed on the 
 table three yellow glasses of "Mango Fool," and 
 shuffled away through the trees. Mace leaned one 
 hand on a palm-shaft. He was hatless, pale, 
 older and thinner than he had seemed before. His 
 
i6o THE FAR CRY 
 
 face hung down, weary and long and stupid, like 
 that of a cart horse looking over a fence. 
 
 "So?" His free hand groped in the air, as 
 though fingering after some difficult word. "You 
 recognize the situation?" He raised his eyes, 
 quickly; and they burned with a nameless ques- 
 tion, imploring, threatening, evading. "Which 
 camp," he cried at last, in a harsh, dull voice, 
 "which camp are you for, then, gentlemen? Speak 
 now, or forever after ..." He broke off with 
 a scared look. "I . . . that is ... I beg you 
 to think twice. I warn you, I did my best to . . . 
 to prevent . . . anything!" 
 
 The three friends bowed. They felt a sudden 
 respect, not for the man, but for the grave, secret 
 matter which could leave him shaken and stam- 
 mering, and could even weigh upon them also. 
 
 "We have chosen," said Tisdale, quietly. "For 
 the Frayes." 
 
 Mace lowered his eyes again, and slowly shook 
 his head. He let his fingers crumple and slide 
 from the palm trunk, so that hand and arm fell 
 inert. It was a lifeless, pathetic gesture. He 
 stood there, visibly trembling; and as if to mock 
 his agitation, a spot of sunlight was juggled by 
 the branches overhead, and set to playing touch 
 and go across his gray hair. 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 161 
 
 "You're quite determined?" The man's voice 
 failed. He cleared his throat, pulled himself to- 
 gether by a shambling hoist of one shoulder, and 
 for the moment seemed ready to let go a rush 
 of words. None came. He drooped again, and 
 repeated lamely: "Quite determined?" 
 
 "Quite, thank you," they answered. 
 
 In his gray flannels, Mace had the air of a tall, 
 sick priest. 
 
 "Sit down," he counseled, weakly. "Take your 
 tiffin, I beg. Pot-luck. I — I cannot join you 
 now, gentlemen. Excuse me for the time. I am 
 not well. An old touch of the sun. Pray be seated. 
 Satrap is cooking it fresh for you on the beach. I 
 cannot eat. Do, please, do. Oh, gentlemen!" he 
 stammered, piercing them with a subtle, fervent 
 look, "enjoy yourselves to-day! Who knows 
 where we shall be to-morrow?" 
 
 And even while he posed this ancient riddle, 
 Mr. Mace abruptly turned, and went tottering 
 back toward where his house lay hidden. The 
 path was too narrow for him. He grazed the 
 rugged shafts as he went. 
 
 "Drunk," said Wallace, haughtily. 
 
 "Not a bit!" retorted Godbolt. 
 
 "No," Tisdale echoed. "He gave me the 
 creeps." 
 
162 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Indeed, as they watched that lank figure dwindle 
 through inter-crossing palms, they felt the same 
 unknown discomfort. So might a great gray 
 spider fade into his waiting cobweb; so might a 
 sorcerer go home. 
 
 "Well, it beats me!" they murmured, one to 
 another. "What's the old man got up his sleeve? 
 — Yes, what? Humph! — Doesn't love us a bit, 
 now, does he?" 
 
 It was Wallace who recovered, and outdid his 
 nature. 
 
 "I'm going to eat," he said, and sat down at 
 table. "To-morrow? Your friend's talking Omar 
 Key-West again, Sainty. Who cares about to- 
 morrow? I'm going to eat and be merry. Come 
 on. Mango Fool is Mango Fool !" 
 
 The other two laughed. Godbolt laughed for 
 friendship's sake; Tisdale because at that instant 
 he saw not only his giddy self but his careful part- 
 ner changing, succumbing to this plain sailor who 
 had no thought of mastery. Would old Rob have 
 spoken thus, half a year ago? 
 
 They ate the Mango Fool as it should be eaten, 
 spoonful by Epicurean spoonful. The platform 
 had a pleasant perch, between green woods and 
 green water. They saw the lagoon, close below, 
 as a pair of crystal arcs; the arc inshore a pale 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 163 
 
 receptacle for coral buds that shimmered in crink- 
 ling yellow; the arc beyond, a deeper light for 
 clouds to float in. The two fisher-gulls went 
 swerving and crying over this parti-colored cove, 
 now almost under the bamboo rail, now far aloft. 
 
 Suddenly and quietly the kilted steward came, 
 took off their empty glasses, and brought, after 
 some delay, a platter with two great fishes that 
 steamed under heaps of rice. The steward left 
 this grudgingly, and departed. A savory, tempt- 
 ing course, it had come hot from the kettle on the 
 beach. 
 
 Godbolt divided one of the fishes, and served 
 the plates. The rising vapor smelled like an in- 
 vitation. The men were about to eat. 
 
 "Tuan, tida!" came a loud whisper. "Tida — 
 ikan!" 
 
 They turned in their chairs with a start, for 
 the whisper seemed to spring out of the ground. 
 They saw, level with the platform floor, a shock 
 of coarse, black hair, a dark, sunken face, and 
 brown eyes blinking at them in terror. Satrap, the 
 boatman-cook, had shinned up one of the palms, 
 and like a tree-toad, clung hand and foot to the 
 "monkey-ladder" notches in its trunk. 
 
 "No, no!" he whispered volubly. "The fish! 
 No, no!" 
 
164 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Unhooking one hand, he made a frantic motion 
 toward the table. 
 
 "Fish? What about it?" The friends stared 
 from him to their platter, and back again. 
 "What's wrong?" 
 
 The starveling turned his head, and in palpable 
 anguish looked over his bony shoulder at the trees 
 which hid his master's house. He hung thus, peer- 
 ing, for an instant; then, with a sign that the men 
 should wait, he went nimbly down the ladder- 
 notches, dropped into the sand, looked upward — 
 as if to entreat their utmost caution — ran to the 
 basket in his boat, and lifted out the big silver fish 
 remaining there. 
 
 "O Sir!" he whispered up to Godbolt. "See! 
 It is the same you are eating. Watch now !" 
 
 Holding the fish by the gills, Satrap drew from 
 his belt a bloody case-knife. He pointed this 
 heavenward, but aslant. The act seemed ritual, or 
 mere nonsense, until, following the direction of 
 his blade, the three men saw that he was pointing 
 at the gulls, where they flew. 
 
 "Itu!" grunted Satrap, "lyah!" And with a 
 quick downward slice, he ripped the silver belly 
 of the fish. Back went his knife into sheath. Sa- 
 trap grinned morosely, and held up a handful of 
 red entrails. 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 165 
 
 "Iyah!" He dropped the fish, stepped forth 
 into the water, and waved his skinny arms. The 
 two gulls dropped from the blue, to come racing; 
 and as they came, Satrap flung the entrails to meet 
 them. 
 
 Hardly the red offal had struck water, when the 
 foremost gull was on it, pouncing with rigid legs. 
 His beak flashed scarlet as he dodged his yelling 
 mate, and rose, to gulp the morsel on the wing. 
 
 The tiffin party stood by their platform rail- 
 ing, and watched. Satrap, they thought, had given 
 them a simple-minded entertainment, after all. 
 They would have drawn in their chairs, had he 
 not cried up to them, earnestly. Knee-deep in the 
 water, he still pointed aloft. 
 
 "Yes, yes!" They requited him with careless 
 nods. "Very good!" 
 
 But the frail bronze manikin was not content. 
 He gave another guarded cry. As he did so, upon 
 his pantomime was clapped a vivid sequel. 
 
 Down through the sunlight, heavily, zig-zagging 
 like a boy's torn kite, fell that gull which had won 
 the entrails. Its big white body splashed into the 
 shoal, its pinions flogged the water weakly, then 
 collapsed; and there, before one might compre- 
 hend, it floated as a lump of dead feathers, the 
 centre for widening ripples. 
 
166 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Mata, mata!" The little Bugi man ashore 
 took from the sand his mangled fish, and flapping 
 it for emphasis, jerked his chin repeatedly after 
 the floating bird. He rolled his eyes at the men 
 above him. "Dead, dead!'* 
 
 His part was done. They understood, next mo- 
 ment, with an ugly thrill. 
 
 "Poison." 
 
 All three framed the word upon their lips, but 
 none could tell who uttered it aloud. In stupe- 
 faction, each man bolt upright behind his chair, 
 they looked at the platter as though waiting for 
 it to move. 
 
 "Poison." They heard one another mumbling, 
 in a kind of trance, without heed, without belief. 
 "Same fish. Bulletin board on Fraye's jetty, 
 remember? 'Unadvisedly': that's so, boys; 
 shouldn't be eat unadvisedly. Same fish." 
 
 Death lay in the platter, covered with snowy 
 rice. The word lost all its triteness, the common 
 dish became a wonder, a vessel of wrath and 
 trembling. Death lay there so near, so quiet, so 
 homely. Woods and sea-lake remained the same 
 — a passion of color mirrored in tranquility, like 
 the poet's thought; palm-leaves pattered crisply 
 overhead; flecks of light maintained a flittermouse 
 dance across the table-cloth; and because of what 
 
SECOND WHITE BIRD 167 
 
 lay there, all these things had gone pale, and spoilt, 
 and hollow. The distemper of mortality infected 
 them. All these things, and all else, might soon 
 have been as nothing, forever. 
 
 The three men looked up, each to read this in a 
 pair of thoughtful faces. 
 
 Alone, the live gull hovered round its drifting 
 fellow, with a clamor of surprise. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ACROSS COUNTRY 
 
 A MISS was good as a mile; but so it did not 
 seem at the first chill, when escape from death was 
 a new and solemn thing, at which the heart still 
 bounded. Sunshine, the stream of days flowing 
 on, were enough to be grateful for; and the men 
 had little room, at the moment, for more than a 
 long, awkward silence which meant gratitude. 
 
 They moved and spoke at last, each according 
 to his private thought. 
 
 "That makes two," said Tisdale, pointing at the 
 dead gull on the water below. "White birds are 
 lucky for us. There goes the second, poor thing, 
 that came along to help us." 
 
 Walter looked up from the platter. 
 
 "Poison?" he sneered, his honest brown face 
 full of heat. "By George, I'll tend to Oliver 
 Mace! You wait " 
 
 And doubling his fists, he would have run 
 ashore from the platform. 
 
 168 
 
ACROSS COUNTRY 169 
 
 Godbolt snatched him by the elbow, and held 
 firm. 
 
 "Wait, Robin ! No, ye don't ; I got you !" The 
 captain was captain still, not to be shaken off. 
 "Quit your wrestling, man I L00& here. If you 
 let fly one word to Mace, he'll skin our friend 
 Satrap alive, down there. God knows the Bugi 
 can't afford to lose none off his bones. He warned 
 us. Don't give him away. Hold still, ye Turk!" 
 
 Thus, continuing to live, they heard and felt the 
 obligation of life. It was not enough to have 
 passed the bitterness of death ; they must pick up 
 their wits, go forward, and act. 
 
 Tisdale acted, by crumpling a little rice and fish 
 into the plates, and flinging the rest with a great 
 spatter cleanly into the lagoon. 
 
 "There!" said he. 
 
 Godbolt approved. 
 
 "Good! That's good. Mace'll think we ate 
 his chow. Come on, we'll do a sneak for home." 
 
 They gave the shoreward palms a careful 
 watching. No one was there; and so far as sight 
 and earshot could penetrate among the leaning 
 trunks, no movement came from Mace's com- 
 pound. Brown soil, brown pillars, monotonous 
 green foliage — all Mango Island took a noon 
 siesta. 
 
i 7 o THEFARCRY 
 
 "Come on. Easy, now!" 
 
 Wrong-doers could not move more easily. One 
 by one, the three men straddled the port railing, 
 clutched the nearest "monkey-ladder," and so 
 dropped beside the cauldron and the sweet-smell- 
 ing embers on the beach. 
 
 Satrap, drying his cotton leg-wear by these em- 
 bers, hardly vouchsafed a look. All his energy 
 had gone into the late pantomime; but though it 
 had been successful, though it kept three Strang-, 
 ers alive and they crowded round him whispering 
 praises, he did not appear to care. Dull Malayan 
 eyes hid his motive; the dull, perverse Malayan 
 heart kept its own counsel barred and locked away 
 under the grating of a sunken breastbone and ca- 
 daverous ribs. 
 
 "Here, take it!" Wallace and Tisdale offered 
 him what coins they found in their pockets. "Take 
 'em ! It's little enough." 
 
 Satrap hitched his trousers, wriggled his toes 
 under the pot where he had been cooking death 
 for these men. He would have none of their 
 money, none of their thanks. 
 
 "Here!" said Godbolt, impounding the handful 
 of silver. "Take it, ye Griddle-Iron!" 
 
 The native glanced at him slyly, reached out, 
 and like a nervous ape, pilfered the coins out of 
 
ACROSS COUNTRY 171 
 
 the sailor's palm. He studied curiously the face 
 of a peso, stamped with Mayon's broken moun- 
 tain-top ; then slipped the whole tribute quietly into 
 his belt-purse. 
 
 "What made you do it for us? Tuan Mace 
 would fix you, if he overheard ! What possessed 
 you, old Palsy-Cage?" 
 
 And then a remarkable thing happened. The 
 belt-purse had two compartments : from the inner 
 one, Satrap drew carefully some fragile object. 
 He grinned, showing red and black teeth filed to 
 the gums. What he held in his fingers, was the 
 half-burnt stump of a cheroot — the cheroot God- 
 bolt had given him on landing. "Tembako" he 
 said, and grinned again. Here was the cost of 
 friendship : this, with a chance word or so of kind- 
 ness, had been the cheap ransom for three lives. 
 
 "By the Lord Harry I" boomed Godbolt. "No 
 more'n that? And I'd clean forgot it!" 
 
 The little Bugi put away his burnt stump, care- 
 fully as before. He cocked a startled eye at the 
 impending bank, to make sure that nobody saw 
 his doings; then, beckoning, he dodged under the 
 bamboo girders of the platform, and began to lead 
 the way. His debtors copied him in every move- 
 ment, hugging the foot of the sandy crag, and 
 stooping under the lower palms; for they had no 
 
172 THE FAR CRY 
 
 desire, now, to let Mace know the means of their 
 deliverance. Thus, for a hundred yards, they 
 crept safely along the stifling hidden way of the 
 beach, until, as they rounded a point, Satrap 
 halted. He gave a vigorous nod, to signify their 
 course lay plain before them, and then, turning 
 without a word, bolted for his kettle and his post 
 of duty. 
 
 He had brought them to the end of his mas- 
 ter's domain. Here Mango Island dipped its 
 coral boundary under water — the water of that lit- 
 tle strait, or channel, which divided Mace from his 
 neighbors. The tide was at young flood, the chan- 
 nel a clear green brook, scarce ankle-deep; so that 
 the fugitives, rolling up their trousers and carry- 
 ing their pumps, waded across through calcareous, 
 fern-like weeds, among sidelong crabs and terri- 
 fied gray mullet. On their left hand, as they 
 waded, the dead white gull went drifting for com- 
 pany. 
 
 Safe upon Fraye's island, they shook the water 
 off their feet, as though apostolically crying quits; 
 but Tisdale, more impudent, made a long nose at 
 the opposite shore. 
 
 "So sorry not to stay!" he called. "So sorry, 
 dear old Oliver!" 
 
 Fraye's territory, the mainland of the atoll, 
 
ACROSS COUNTRY 173 
 
 proved greater than they thought. A faint trail, 
 much impeded by wind-fallen banana stalks and 
 wild kati papaya, brought them through mile after 
 mile of woodland, rich and dense, covering a 
 brown earth — that guano and dead-leaf earth 
 which crowns with magical fertility the aged ocean- 
 work of coral. Their homeward journey was 
 longer, more circuitous, than by the beach; but it 
 was cool, shady, a tangled country to explore. 
 Now they crashed among thickets, where tame 
 birds — weavers, thrush, and green ground-pigeons 
 — hardly rose from the boughs. Now they broke 
 through the honey-combed soil where land-crabs — 
 brown and varnished, like Caran D'Ache toys 
 made to imitate their sea cousins by wooden- 
 jointed art — spanned away into the bush on clink- 
 ing pincers. Once in a while the barrier surf fired 
 off its heaviest cannonade far to the right; and ex- 
 cept for this, the forest might have stood leagues 
 inland, not the middle part in a sickle-bladed isle, 
 but the very core of a continent. The feeling of 
 seclusion grew deeper, in fact, as the men ad- 
 vanced. Their trail deserted them from time to 
 time; and what with finding it again, what with 
 wandering after this glimpse of a strange bird, or 
 that glimpse of a strange fruit-tree, they found 
 the afternoon sped. The sun, going down behind 
 
i 7 4 THEFARCRY 
 
 them, shot with golden light the topmost leaves 
 of guava shrub and tamarind; evening drew over 
 them in the wilderness; so that when they heard 
 a quiet tinkle of bells, near but scattered among 
 the trees, they were glad to think the sound might 
 come from flocks in open pasture, within reach of 
 human kind. 
 
 Suddenly a ram dashed off before them through 
 the undergrowth; bright spaces glimmered in front 
 of him; and soon after, they came out into a broad 
 green field, streaming with long shadows. 
 
 It was here the bells tinkled, for sheep were 
 grazing — a few buff-coated New Zealanders, crop- 
 ping coarse grass here and there down the undula- 
 tions of* a great clearing. Specks of red shone 
 among them in the sunset. The place was not only 
 a sheep walk, but a golf course marked with flags. 
 At the edge of the shadows, a young woman, bare- 
 headed, all in white, was bending over a little 
 white ball. She moved. The ball rolled neatly 
 across the green, and disappeared. 
 
 "Good evening !" Katherine Fraye rose and 
 waved her iron. "Glad you saw that ! My shots 
 weren't all so good." 
 
 A shy brown urchin, pot-bellied, in sarong and 
 skull-cap, was holding her leathern bag and a red 
 pennant on a bamboo. He stared at these three 
 
ACROSS COUNTRY 175 
 
 tall gentlemen of the silver buttons, before taking 
 the putter from his mistress and sliding it down 
 among the other clubs. 
 
 "You had a pleasant day?" She walked to 
 meet them, swinging her helmet by the chin-strap. 
 She was young, light-footed, flushed with exercise, 
 a figure of liberty; but round her waist, they noted, 
 she wore a black belt and a sagging holster in 
 which a pistol hung. "You enjoyed yourselves ?" 
 
 They laughed, and lied without premeditation. 
 
 "Oh, very much," replied Tisdale. 
 
 They went with her down the field, talking as 
 if nothing had happened that day. Whether she 
 understood or not, the girl accepted their fiction. 
 
 "And do you always play here?" Wallace was 
 saying. "Every afternoon?" 
 
 Katherine patted her bright hair, restoring with 
 little touches that vulnerable part of beauty. The 
 men saw, and let the action pass; they admired, 
 rather, to have her join their fellowship almost as 
 though she were a fourth man. Few women could 
 have done so : she did, without second thought. 
 
 "No, not every," she answered. "To-day the 
 Grandpater's better. Your coming has cheered 
 him up. And then, the village has worked faster. 
 You braced them, too, poor creatures. Every man 
 Jack fetched in his four hundred nuts on time. So 
 
176 THE FAR CRY 
 
 I got away early." She looked up, forestalling 
 their questions. "Oh, yes, I see to the copra now- 
 adays. Somebody must. We ship twenty-five 
 thousand piculs a year, you know. And there's 
 'kudu bark, about thirty guineas the ton, and beche 
 de mer for little pig-tailed epicures in Canton. . . 
 But that's all shop. No: I golf only when I can; 
 and to-day because grandfather made me come 
 out." 
 
 Godbolt brought the party to a standstill. 
 
 "You mean, you oversee all that?" he de- 
 manded. His black eyes were snapping. He 
 pointed at the girl's waist. "And you always carry 
 a gun?" 
 
 Miss Fraye was suddenly and greatly abashed. 
 
 "Oh, no!" She unbuckled her weapon, and 
 crowded it into the caddy's bag. "That was to — 
 to shoot sea-hawks with. That was for fun." 
 
 However well women are supposed to fib, not 
 one of her escort believed her. Hawks, indeed! 
 Godbolt himself took pity on her. 
 
 "What's your game o' golf?" he inquired, with 
 his own rough tact. "I've seen pictures of it, but 
 never in the open air before. How might she go, 
 Miss Fraye?" 
 
 The girl gave a mischievous look at Wallace 
 and Tisdale. 
 
ACROSS COUNTRY 177 
 
 "Try it, Captain," she said; and to the little 
 boy — "Drop a ball for this gentleman, Krian." 
 
 The caddy, consumed with eagerness, did as he 
 was bid. 
 
 "And you whack it with this?" Godbolt drew 
 by chance a brassy, and along with it, the girl's 
 belt and pistol, which tumbled out on the ground. 
 "Stand clear, all hands!" 
 
 He addressed the ball after a fashion, drew 
 back his mighty arms, and smote. 
 
 A scalp of dusty grass flew, and lighted per- 
 haps a rod away. The ball trundled not much far- 
 ther. As for the club, it shivered into three pieces, 
 and left the splintered stock in Godbolt' s fist, like 
 a tool in the hand of Kwasind. The man was not 
 built for anything small and clever. 
 
 Everybody laughed. Even the youngster for- 
 got his decorum, and tittered. Godbolt picked up 
 the fragments ruefully; but seeing how the girl 
 shared and led the general merriment, he also 
 broke out in a peal of boyish laughter. 
 
 "Well, there! Poetry o' motion, that was!" 
 He stowed the pieces in the caddy's bag. "I'll 
 mend your little whipstick for you." As he spoke, 
 he took from the grass her belt and holster. 
 "Playing with this" — he patted the revolver-butt 
 — "playing with this, now, a man might hit !" 
 
i 7 8 THE FAR CRY 
 
 Her challenge came at a flash. 
 
 'The ball yonder? Could you hit that?" 
 
 Godbolt drew the weapon — a regulation Web- 
 ley — measured its dark symmetry with a scholar's 
 eye, and glanced at the golf-ball ahead. 
 
 "Sure!" 
 
 He spoke cheerfully. Katherine gave him no 
 time to weaken. 
 
 u Do it!" she commanded. "I hate people who 
 boast. Do it now, quickly, or else . . . ' 
 
 Whatever her threat might have been, the re- 
 volver cut it short. Godbolt had raised his arm 
 and fired before they saw he was aiming. A long 
 scar ripped the grass; two white chips flew into 
 the sunlight; and there was no more golf-ball. 
 The nearer sheep cut an absurd caper, and ran 
 bundling away with a flurry and jingle of bells. 
 
 Katherine clapped her hands. 
 
 "Oh !" she cried. "You can!" 
 
 The sailor had in fact retrieved his reputation. 
 Little Krian, the caddy, wondered at him with 
 round, solemn eyes. Wallace and Tisdale laughed 
 no longer. 
 
 "If that's your way of hitting," declared the 
 girl, "I like it better than mine." 
 
 Godbolt shook his head. 
 
 "No. Here, sonny." He flicked out the empty 
 
ACROSS COUNTRY 179 
 
 cartridge, stuffed the Webley back into its holster, 
 and gave it to the boy. "Good gun there, Miss 
 Fraye. No : your way's better, with the whip- 
 stick." 
 
 Something in his tone made her look up quickly. 
 
 "Golf better? It's a silly old game, croquet by 
 the acre !" she cried. "Your shooting — why, that's 
 an accomplishment. It's beautiful. Robin Hood, 
 in the story book, couldn't do what you have 
 done." 
 
 He shook his head again. 
 
 "It's no good," he rejoined, staring down the 
 long, bright pasture. "A trick that don't help a 
 living soul. It's no good. Unless you wanted to 
 kill a man." 
 
 He spoke with a regret half whimsical, half 
 genuine. 
 
 "But," said Katherine, smiling, "suppose you 
 wanted?" 
 
 He looked down at her, suddenly, with great 
 good humor. 
 
 "Why, there!" he exclaimed. "Suppose I 
 wanted. By Joe, I wouldn't have the courage! 
 And that's a fact." 
 
 So, loitering in a pleasant coolness, they fol- 
 lowed their shadows over the sunset field, home- 
 ward, to the vesper tinkling of bells, the bleating 
 
1 80 THE FAR CRY 
 
 of a scattered flock, and that unending, all per- 
 vasive sigh — like a slow forest wind sifting 
 through pine needles — which was the mournful 
 voice of the sea. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ASHES 
 
 At the corner of Fraye's bungalow, Katherine 
 took her leave. 
 
 "I must go stimulate Yee Poy toward his din- 
 ner," she said; and before disappearing round a 
 honeysuckle bush — "Won't you please tell grand- 
 father anything you care to tell him, about — about 
 where you spent your day?" 
 
 The honeysuckle swayed in the dusk. And they, 
 captain and owners of the Nantwich Number Two 
 boat, were left to give an account of themselves. 
 
 "Arthur," commanded Godbolt, u you got to do 
 the talking." 
 
 They skirted the front veranda, went up, and 
 entered the lamp-light in the main room. 
 
 Thomas Masterman Fraye sat playing chess at 
 a mahogany table. He was alone. Dressed in 
 white homespun, made gay by a red cravat, he 
 bent over his battlefield of crowded pawns and 
 
 181 
 
182 THE FAR CRY 
 
 pieces, humming as he weighed their chances. It 
 was a kindly picture that he presented, so neat and 
 plump, his cheeks so ruddy, his moustache and 
 hair frosted with so many years. He moved a 
 boxwood knight, and took great pleasure in the 
 outcome, for he snapped his fingers and whistled a 
 few bars of some lively jig. Jack Horner with 
 his plum could not have been more juvenile; in- 
 deed, for the moment he seemed like a jolly, 
 rotund little schoolboy at a masquerade, who had 
 forgotten that he must act the grandfather. His 
 black eyes twinkled as he glanced up, nodding. 
 
 "Well, young men? Have you slept the clock 
 round?" 
 
 His three visitors laid aside their helmets, and 
 took the chairs to which he beckoned them, round 
 the chess board. Evening was now at that most 
 home-like hour, the first hour of lamp-light; and 
 while a sapphire glow from the lagoon faded in 
 the western windows, this comfortable room, frag- 
 rant with camphor-wood, was like an old familiar 
 place. 
 
 "No, Mr. Fraye," replied Tisdale. "We slept 
 wonderfully, thank you ; but to-day — we went vis- 
 iting." 
 
 The knight had captured an ebony pawn. Mr. 
 Fraye dropped this quietly into the box. 
 
ASHES 183 
 
 "Have you?" His voice was bland, but in his 
 eye they caught a sparkle of humor. "Visiting al- 
 ready ? My neighbor, I suppose ?" 
 
 Tisdale copied his manner precisely. 
 
 "Your neighbor, Mr. Oliver Mace, of Mango 
 Island." 
 
 Fraye chuckled. 
 
 "True," said he. "Of Mango Island at pres- 
 ent. Thane of Cawdor, now ; but who knows what 
 title may follow? How did you get on?" 
 
 "Not at all, sir." 
 
 The little chess-player tugged his white mous- 
 tache. 
 
 "Not at all?" he echoed, in the mildest ironical 
 wonder. "That seems a pity. Did Mace inquire 
 for me, by the way?" 
 
 Tisdale kept up the diplomacy. 
 
 "Oh, yes; inquired with great solicitude," he 
 began. 
 
 But at this point Godbolt, swollen with indigna- 
 tion, could contain no longer. 
 
 "Called you pet names !" he burst out. "Called 
 you 'dear old Tom' !" 
 
 The spark fell into the powder with a venge- 
 ance. 
 
 "Did he, though!" cried Fraye, ruffling and 
 reddening. He sat up, a little bundle of hot tern- 
 
1 84 THE FAR CRY 
 
 per. "The damned impudent !" And he 
 
 struck the table, so that the weighted chessmen 
 hopped upon it. "Mace calling me pet names, by 
 Heaven I" 
 
 It was no mere pride, but the passion of a just 
 man suffering outrage. 
 
 "Mace! And I forbade him the house, this 
 twelvemonth." 
 
 The gust blew over. Mr. Fraye's hands were 
 trembling, but he folded them in his lap. 
 
 "Gentlemen, you see I despise the fellow," he 
 continued, quietly. "You see that: I dare say it's 
 as well you should. Let me tell you why; or try 
 to." 
 
 He pointed past them, toward the windows and 
 the darkling blue of the water, barred with slender 
 trees. 
 
 "Fifty-one years ago, I saw that lagoon for the 
 first time, as you saw it yesterday. We came in 
 through the channel, my father and I. We found 
 wild savages here, a poor, spiritless handful, 
 scared, and wearing leaves — 'unum folium ante, 
 retro alium,' like the Jesuits' report of old Hai- 
 nan. My father, Sir Charles Fraye, was cruising 
 for pleasure. He died here. I was younger 
 son. 'Tom/ said he — he died under a big palm, 
 on the very place where we sit to-night — 'Torn, 
 
ASHES 185 
 
 you're a fat little comedy imp. If you go home 
 to England, the devil is sure to grip you, with an 
 armchair and a bottle of port. Stay here and work 
 out your weight/ So father died, and left his 
 ashes here. I mean ashes. We burn on the island, 
 we don't bury. Dig a few feet, and you'll under- 
 stand why. Land-crabs, coral worms. ..." 
 
 Mr. Fraye had forgotten his wrath. He was 
 looking down at the chess-board, which might have 
 been a deep pool full of memories. His voice, 
 also, came from the distant inward spaces of the 
 past. 
 
 "I stayed," he went on, smiling. "I had sense 
 enough to go home, first, and marry Kate, and 
 bring her here, all on a risk ten thousand miles 
 wide. Thank God we took it. The children grew 
 up, Frank and George and Amy, the little girl. 
 She lies with her mother, on this island. Ashes, 
 under the big rock. George went down at sea, 
 with the old family schooner. Then 'twas Frank 
 and I that stayed, and worked out our weight, to 
 the muscle, by Jove ! And Frank married, and this 
 pretty little child Katherine was born — named 
 after my Katherine, you see; but before she came 
 her father was dead, and her mother soon after, of 
 grief. Yes, my boys. The Lanao pirates had 
 happened in, feeling cocky, with a big prau mount- 
 
186 THEFARCRY 
 
 ing brass swivel guns; and we — we two, my son 
 Frank and I, with the only dozen men of spirit in 
 the village — we beat them off, smashed 'em on the 
 beach, shot 'em in their boat, picked off steersman 
 after steersman as they rowed away howling, and 
 sunk them, at last, in that channel you came in 
 through yonder, so that the water was black with 
 heads ! And what came ashore, a few, I took and 
 tamed. Frank got a bullet, though, on the point 
 by the channel mouth. He died there among the 
 seaweed. What do you think he said? 'I'm 
 sorry,' says Frank, 'to leave you all the work.' 
 That was my dear son Frank, this girl's father: 
 ashes, like the rest now. Ashes! But you'll ad- 
 mit the family had mettle, once?" 
 
 His hearers answered him with shining eyes. 
 
 "More than once!" Tisdale murmured, point- 
 ing at a small glazed coat of arms that hung on 
 the wall cloth. Azure, it read, three mullets ar- 
 gent — silver rowels on a blue field — with the cant- 
 ing motto — "Fyrst in Fraye." 
 
 The old man looked at them sadly. 
 
 "I was not thinking of that," he said. "1 was 
 thinking of Walter. Katherine's brother, my 
 grandson, Walter. I forgot to mention him! I 
 sent him home to college — my college, and my 
 father's; it's a good old nest of buildings, too; but 
 
ASHES 187 
 
 Walter is . . . different. I wonder about the 
 mettle. The mettle ! The fire in the ashes . . . " 
 
 He stared once more among his chess men. 
 
 "The island's prosperous," he declared, as if 
 to himself. "Our natives do well, all of them. 
 Slaves that rowed in the pirates' prau; South Sea 
 men, the whalers kidnapped, that slipped over- 
 board and swam ashore at night; Mace's riff-raff, 
 such as could stomach him no longer; sick fore- 
 mast hands — they and their children all grew rich 
 with us. Weak, broken-hearted, homesick natives 
 from everywhere; whoever came, has done well. 
 Riches, we can give; but not courage. You saw, 
 last night, how they ran away. Grateful, oh, yes ! 
 They love us to any point short of fighting!" 
 
 The three friends waited for his narrative, and 
 said nothing. 
 
 "Well? We've done more than well. Kather- 
 ine ought never to feel want!" he cried, regaining, 
 for an instant, his air of the plump martinet. 
 "Katherine — God bless the child — she stuck by 
 me ! Too long. I beg her to go home, live with 
 my brother's people, and be happy. Not she! 
 Katherine stands by the old sick man. She's 
 Frank's girl. She's all I have left out of a life- 
 time, is Katherine. And here came this hell-hawk, 
 Oliver Mace !" 
 
188 THE FAR CRY 
 
 One to another, the young men stole a secret 
 look of comprehension. 
 
 "If you're afraid about Mace," said Wallace 
 the blunt, "we'll promise you " 
 
 Mr. Fraye plucked up the tallest piece from his 
 chess board, a white king, as though to hurl it. 
 
 "Afraid!" he thundered. "Afraid of Mace? 
 No: of him, nor his harem, nor his poor black 
 ruffians behind him ! Old age can harden the ar- 
 teries — it's doing so for me — but thank Heaven it 
 can't make us chicken-hearted altogether. Afraid 
 of Mace? Let me tell you ..." And Fraye 
 used the white king to hammer his words with. 
 "Mace came here, eight years ago, when I was 
 away taking the children home to England. Mace 
 landed, with his slaves and his women, half-starved 
 Siranis, and white females — very white and pale 
 and powdered, I assure you — the discards of sea 
 captains. Don't be offended, Mr. Godbolt: every 
 trade has its blighters, even at sea. Well, a pretty 
 establishment greeted me on Mango Island when 
 I came out again; sweet neighbors; and ever since, 
 this dog, this Oliver Mace, with what remnant of 
 wit he saved from liquor and sunstroke, has tried 
 to oust us from our island. Ours? There comes 
 the hitch. The place remains private ground to 
 this day; we have no status." 
 
ASHES 189 
 
 "No status?" repeated Wallace. 
 
 u No flag," said Mr. Fraye, impatiently. 
 "Under no government; open to the first who 
 takes. Mace began flirting with the Dutch. We 
 addressed England, but England can be the slow- 
 est of sure things on earth. That's why Walter 
 has gone — against my will — to keep the far end 
 of a cable hot, praying for Letters Patent and all 
 the rest. But we prayed before. Great men are 
 deaf. And meantime, where's the law? The 
 law's Mace, or it's me. There is no other way now 
 on this island. A hard predicament: take Mace, 
 or take me, for your law." 
 
 Wallace made a second and a better attempt. 
 
 "It's you, sir. I meant to say, if you want us, 
 we three take your side." 
 
 Fraye looked keenly under his white eyebrows. 
 
 "Come what may?" 
 
 "What may," Tisdale responded, and the others 
 gave a nod. 
 
 "I offer you nothing sure," objected the old 
 man. "Danger and trouble. Mace has forty odd 
 men at his back — bad ones. Mace can bite." 
 
 "We know that," they assented. "He tried to 
 enlist us. Oh, yes, sir, Mace tried all his might. 
 Offered, sir? Why, he offered champagne, and 
 then a fish — poison." 
 
r 9 o THE FAR CRY 
 
 "What's this?" cried the other, sternly, yet with- 
 out surprise. U A fish . . . Poison?" 
 
 Among them, they described what manner of 
 tiffin Mace had provided on his platform, that 
 afternoon. Mr. Fraye heard them out, a quiet lit- 
 tle red-faced judge who sat balancing every word. 
 
 "Walter was wrong," he cut in, at the close. 
 "Venom. I said so. Should never have let you go 
 there. That man Oliver Mace — he's full of 
 venom. Toad under a stone, as I knew all along, 
 but Walter wouldn't see it. College turned the 
 boy's head: he contracted sweetness and light 
 there, the suaviter fashion without t'other half. 
 All for nice persuasion, is Walter; he'd send a 
 lady-like piece of rhetoric to do a good cudgel's er- 
 rand. Persuasion? You can't persuade born dev- 
 ils, or socialize 'em off, because a sub-sub-assistant 
 secretary lived in your staircase at college ! No. 
 Walter was wrong. This means fight, here and 
 
 now." 
 
 Silence followed his declaration. Mr. Fraye 
 put the white king softly back on the board. Had 
 he looked up, he might have seen a brisk move- 
 ment, a three-fold squaring of shoulders. But he 
 hung his head. 
 
 "Would you fight," he asked of nobody, "would 
 you fight for a few square miles of copra planta- 
 
ASHES 191 
 
 tion, two hundred people without a backbone 
 amongst 'em, and — and a handful or so of ashes ?" 
 
 His proposal had not long to wait. The young 
 men made a broken remonstrance, and came grasp- 
 ing at him over his game of chess — three pairs 
 of hands all in a jostle to catch hold of one. What 
 words happened to fall, fell very gently. 
 
 "There now, Mr. Fraye. There, sir, don't you 
 fret. We'll see to that part. Lord save us, what 
 else have we got for a pastime?" 
 
 They drew back, ashamed of their ebullition. 
 As they did so, a sound entered the room through 
 the front window — a slow thumping of oars, from 
 somewhere on the lagoon. Tisdale wheeled about, 
 listened, then laughed. 
 
 "Hold on!" he cried. "I think our friend's 
 coming to inquire again." 
 
 He ran out through the front veranda. Dark- 
 ness lay beyond. They heard his feet fly down 
 the garden path, and ring hollow on the jetty; soon 
 afterward, his voice, cheery and insolent: 
 
 "Good evening, Mace ! How are you to-night, 
 my dear Oliver?" 
 
 The oars had stopped. There was no reply. 
 
 "Aren't you coming ashore?" 
 
 Lagoon water chuckled, under the growing star- 
 light. 
 
i 9 2 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Do come!" Tisdale was heard beseeching. 
 "We're all here. Do come take pot-luck, a little 
 rice — and fish!" 
 
 Again the starry void ignored this mockery. 
 Then somebody muttered, and the oars creaked in 
 their row-locks, departing. 
 
 "The boy shouldn't expose himself," said old 
 Fraye. "Go call him in. Mace is a dead shot, 
 whatever else he may be." 
 
 Tisdale's yellow head appeared in the doorway. 
 He was smiling. But before he had rejoined the 
 party by the chess table, he was quite serious; for 
 so were his companions. 
 
 "That was Mace," he said, "coming to view the 
 
 remains." 
 
 The beat of hostile oars passed away, steadily, 
 toward Mango Island. In point of dignity, that 
 sullen boat was carrying off the honors of the first 
 engagement. 
 
 Mr. Fraye began to gather his playthings into 
 their box. Godbolt stooped over and helped him. 
 
 "Is it only this island?" the sailor asked, in his 
 deep voice. "Only the island that Mace wants? 
 Nothing else?" 
 
 The little man stared up into Godbolt's eyes, 
 amazed and frightened. 
 
 "How did you guess?" he whispered. "How 
 
ASHES 193 
 
 did you? That reminds me of Frank, my son 
 Frank: you think too much, Captain." 
 
 Godbolt showed no mercy. 
 
 "Is it? Only the island?" 
 
 Mr. Fraye glanced round the room in a sort 
 of terror. 
 
 "Hush!" he ordered. "I never said that. She 
 might overhear you. She has quick ears, little 
 Katherine . . ." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 IN CHARGE 
 
 Hercules crossed the great sea in an earthen 
 pot, and left an allegory for human flesh and 
 human spirit. Mr. Fraye might urge the spirit 
 forward, but his vessel was too old, the clay had 
 worn too fragile ; and that evening, at dinner in the 
 grove, he was forced to call for his bearers, and be 
 carried in his long chair to the house. Wallace, 
 Tisdale, and Godbolt had a private audience in 
 his bed-room, while he lay waiting to be undressed 
 by meek brown Anak, the lubberly nurse. 
 
 "My dear good boys," he panted, looking up 
 with grateful eyes. "If I should go suddenly (I 
 don't intend to, but if I should), you watch after 
 Katherine. You understand. Let Mace take the 
 island if he can, and the devil take Mace if he 
 will. But keep her harmless. Aaah, ha!" he 
 sighed, and caught back his breath like a staggered 
 fighter. "Keep Katherine safe. Take her home, 
 should anything go wrong with Walter. I see you 
 
 194 
 
IN CHARGE 195 
 
 will. Here's your commission. Read it, please." 
 He handed them a long envelope. Wallace 
 read out the enclosure. 
 
 u 'During my present illness, I appoint 
 Messrs. Robert Wallace, A. R. Tisdale, and 
 Francis Godbolt as my agents to safeguard 
 my interests and those of my grand-daughter 
 Katherine Fraye, here on Fraye's Atoll, some- 
 times known as Pulo Princess. The aforesaid 
 gentlemen will employ all justifiable means to 
 preserve the peace and good order now exist- 
 ing in this island. The village has received 
 word, through the headman and the school- 
 master, that until further notice, or until the 
 arrival of Walter Fraye, all orders given by 
 my agents herein appointed, shall be consid- 
 ered as issuing from me. 
 
 Thomas Masterman Fraye.' " 
 
 The old man watched them keenly. 
 
 "Do you agree to that?" 
 
 The three men bowed, and one by one took his 
 hand silently. 
 
 "You know my feeling," said he, "better than 
 I can express it. Firearms on my dresser. Serve 
 out, Anak." 
 
196 THE FAR CRY 
 
 The barefoot giant, looking frightened, gave 
 them each a black pistol, well-oiled, and a packet 
 of ammunition. They slipped these into their 
 pockets. 
 
 "I trust you'll find no need for — anything of 
 that kind," said Mr. Fraye. "Good night, then." 
 
 Authority had fallen upon them, the command 
 of his island. They went out from the bed-cham- 
 ber, deeply affected. As they passed through the 
 living-room, Katherine stood by the front door. 
 
 "All's well?" she faltered, smiling pitifully. 
 "You left him well?" 
 
 Remorse took hold of them, to see her — young, 
 lonely, bright as only wholesome youth appears 
 to wholesome youth, so near with her starry brown 
 eyes, and yet so unutterably removed from them. 
 They had laughed with her on equal terms, just 
 now at the dinner table; her grandfather had al- 
 most taken them into the family with her; and for 
 that very reason here she stood all the further 
 away, entrusted to them on the pinnacle of their 
 honor. She was a girl with red lips and throat 
 of gipsy tan: she was their ward, Katherine. 
 
 "All's well," they stammered. "He's only 
 tired." And they edged out of doors in a hurry, 
 before they could say too much. "Good night, 
 Miss Fraye. All's well." 
 
IN CHARGE 197 
 
 Once in their bachelor quarters, they showed the 
 hollowness of that agreeable fiction, by holding a 
 conference round Godbolt's table. Their candles 
 burned low, and still the talk flowed on, in an un- 
 dertone. They sat as a Committee of Safety — 
 three conspirators, with sunburnt faces hard and 
 cautious, ready to turn and listen at any sound. 
 
 "Here!" said Wallace, when the last candle be- 
 gan to sputter in the socket. "Here are the things 
 we have to do, in order. Look sharp, you fel- 
 lows." And he read the penciled minutes of their 
 meeting. 
 
 " 'First. Every night, beginning now, shall be 
 divided into three watches ; the watchman to patrol 
 the grove, garden, shore, and main house. 
 
 M 'Second. Every day, a look-out shall be sta- 
 tioned by the jetty, with binoculars, to sweep the 
 beach and especially the near point of Mace's 
 island; to give warning immediately, if he sees 
 either a boat putting off, or any person wading the 
 channel toward us. 
 
 11 'Third. Picked natives shall camp near the 
 sheep walk, to prevent any approach by land. 
 
 " 'Fourth. Armed escort for Miss Fraye, every- 
 where outside her house.' " 
 
 The conspirators eyed one another across the 
 dying light. 
 
198 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Hold hard!" put in Tisdale. "Point four is 
 delicate. Who's to be escort?" 
 
 Blank looks followed. No one had foreseen the 
 question. They had cut straws for the night 
 watch; but here was a duty which demanded some- 
 thing more than rotation in office. There were no 
 volunteers. Tisdale answered himself. 
 
 "You, Sainty." 
 
 The sailor recoiled in his chair. 
 
 "Me?" he cried, like one accused of monstrous 
 iniquity. "Me, the hulkingest ... to look after 
 her? Bells o' Beulah, you're lunatic! Go get the 
 Pope o' Rome!" 
 
 But Wallace basely gave his vote, nodding at 
 Arthur. They were two to one. The candle snuff 
 leaned over, and burned blue in a welter of wax. 
 
 "Ye skulkers!" Godbolt stood up, incensed. 
 "Putting it on me! Shirkers!" 
 
 Tisdale caught him by the hand, pleading. 
 
 "Sainty! You're the oldest. We can't, and 
 somebody must. What else did her grandfather 
 say to-night? 'Let the rest go. Look after Kath- 
 erine.' I'm not fit to, Rob's not. You must, old 
 boy. You're the only real shot with a gun. She 
 might depend on that, if the pinch came. You 
 must!" 
 
 The long black candle-wick curled into its 
 
IN CHARGE 199 
 
 brazen cell, and expired. Darkness filled the room 
 — a darkness that gradually became gray starlight. 
 The doorway glimmered at the top with heavenly 
 stars ; at the bottom with glow-worm stars reflected 
 from the lagoon; and in this frame, half blurred 
 against the shadow of plantains, Godbolt's tall 
 body loomed like a cross, with both arms out- 
 spread as he gripped the jambs. He leaned there 
 for some time, without replying. 
 
 "If I must," he muttered, rather to the night 
 than to the room, "I must." 
 
 His broad shadow dropped its arms, and faded 
 from the door. 
 
 "My watch now. Go to bed." 
 
 He had shouldered the island, and taken their 
 first patrol. Ocean made the sole disturbance, be- 
 yond its barrier. 
 
 Dawn came in a pink mist, morning blazed red 
 through areca and plantain, a multitude of birds 
 "warmed their little loves" with twittering com- 
 plaint among bush and tree-top. Nothing had 
 happened. Oliver Mace and his forty odd men 
 might have levanted in the night, so far as any life 
 appeared from the dark-green bulk of Mango Is- 
 land, floating on the southwestern glaze of the 
 lagoon. 
 
 Soon after breakfast, Godbolt reported for 
 
200 THEFARCRY 
 
 duty — the duty which his fellows had put upon 
 him over night. His mode of reporting was like 
 the man, blunt and apparently simple. 
 
 They were all assembled at the rear of the 
 house, Mr. Fraye lying in his long chair, the young 
 commissioners leaning on the rail near by, and 
 smoking. Sunlight poured through the trees, and 
 gilded the brown floor of the grove, as if an east- 
 ern gate swung wide to let the earliest morning 
 flood a cloister. Not far off, though partly hid- 
 den by shrubbery, Katherine stood beside the pole 
 of her dove-cote. Her head caught the light; and 
 from time to time her hand rose in a graceful 
 motion, like the hand of a sower flinging seeds 
 broadcast. Pigeons fluttered above her, dropped 
 behind the shrubs again — now a white pigeon, now 
 a russet-mottled, or a pair of blue "leadies." The 
 girl was talking to them all, as they rose, and 
 circled, and fell with their peaceful whinny of 
 wings. 
 
 "You think, sir," said Godbolt, "that these boys 
 are right about . . . her?" 
 
 Old Mr. Fraye searched him with a kindly 
 smile. 
 
 "Quite, Captain. We confide her to you for the 
 present." 
 
 Without more ado, the sailor got up from the 
 
I . 
 
 IN CHARGE 201 
 
 railing, went down into the grove, and marched 
 straight over to the dove-cote shrubbery. 
 
 "Miss Fraye," he broke out, "would you take 
 me for a guardian angel?" 
 
 The pigeons whirled aloft, in a medley of lus- 
 trous feathers, eddying upward, so that Kather- 
 ine's brown eyes and fair hair gleamed, for a mo- 
 ment, through a storm-cloud of wings. When the 
 sunshine cleared, she stood holding a single mem- 
 ber of her flock — a white pigeon, that balanced on 
 her fore-arm, and leaned his bosom against her 
 blue dress. 
 
 "How did you happen to say that?" she re- 
 joined. Either Godbolt's sudden appearance or 
 the flurry of pigeons, had given her a start. "Why 
 do you ask?" 
 
 He wasted no preamble. 
 
 "Your grandfather^ feel easier if you had com- 
 pany," he said, with a vague gesture, "whenever 
 you go — roundabout like, next few days. 'Twould 
 freshen the nip on his mind, sort of. I don't want 
 
 to hamper you none. But " The sailor's 
 
 black eyes cast a flickering glance toward the 
 veranda; his cheerful outdoor voice descended to 
 its lower notes. "But you running free, like, and 
 me within good hail, somewheres — why, you no 
 need to carry yesterday's gun from now for'ard!" 
 
202 THEFARCRY 
 
 Katherine stroked her pigeon. Whether she 
 was annoyed, or merely trying not to laugh, God- 
 bolt could not be certain. Then she looked up; 
 their eyes met ; and he knew that she had taken the 
 spirit, not the form, of his poor words. 
 
 "You're very kind, Captain. Perhaps you'll see 
 me to the village, by and by." She paused; and 
 smiling, held out her arm with the bird upon it. 
 "Don't you recognize your old friend?" 
 
 The pigeon spread his white wings and tail, 
 shifted his rosy claws, and caught a new balance 
 on his perch. He was the carrier, the spent mes- 
 senger from abroad. 
 
 "The little tyke !" cried Godbolt, joyfully. 
 
 As though averse to nicknames, the bird sprang 
 from her arm, and flickered up to join his com- 
 panions on the sunny ledges of the cote. 
 
 "He brought you here," said Katherine. 
 
 They both stood looking overhead, watching 
 him strut and wheel among the others. 
 
 "God bless him for that !" boomed the sailor. 
 
 Katherine turned away, rather quickly. 
 
 "Shall we get ready for the village?" she asked. 
 "It's time we oversaw the husking." 
 
 So began a week of peaceful and busy days. To 
 see this pair together — Godbolt, heavy of frame 
 but light on foot, rolling along beside the girl — no 
 
IN CHARGE 203 
 
 one would have taken them for ward and guard- 
 ian, or guessed that on her account he carried a 
 weapon under his tunic, in the arm-pit. They went 
 away laughing and talking ; they returned so. The 
 village — a toy street of tawny basket-woven huts, 
 shining cleanly under slant palms and bowers afire 
 with hibiscus — the village knew a large, merry 
 gentleman who watched the naked children play, 
 and learned their names so quickly, while the Prin- 
 cess of the Island was indoors with some sick 
 woman, telling the neighbors what the best food 
 might be. The go-down saw them inseparable; 
 for white-clouted workmen, trotting under pole 
 and panniers into that cool, shady warehouse, got 
 their tally-splints from the merry gentleman, and 
 timorously watched the Princess enter in her book 
 the tale of cocoanuts poured clumping on the mats. 
 Rumors coursed everywhere, from the village to 
 the farthest western horn of the atoll, and the 
 swineherds' camp by the channel : rumors of war, 
 of a new master coming from Mango Island with 
 ne'er-do-wells, and a change for the worse; ru- 
 mors that were checked by the sight of Katherine 
 passing with her guard. 
 
 And so the week went by : no word from Mace, 
 no stir from Mango Island but a wreath of smoke 
 before meal-time. 
 
204 THEFARCRY 
 
 Late one afternoon, the go-down doors being 
 shut for the night, Katherine and Godbolt took 
 their walk eastward, some three miles, to the ocean 
 side. A loud surf crashed, as they went threading 
 the hollows and low mounds of an upward-sloping 
 wood; and their first view, when the trees parted 
 on gray coral boulders, was a view of smothering 
 crests, the whole sea outflanking them in a concave 
 series, white wall after white wall that toppled 
 roaring on the reef, to explode and shoot high 
 against the sunlight. Each wave burst afar, but 
 sent hissing layers onward, so that the island's 
 outer curve, a thirty-foot rampart of coral bould- 
 ers, storm-built and water-carven, hung beetling 
 over sea-foam laced with Tyrian blue. Here was 
 land's end, all broken into blocks and lumps and 
 ruined seats, as of an amphitheatre bent wrong 
 side out. 
 
 Godbolt found his own hyperbole for the scene. 
 
 "The stern of the Earth," said he, "kicking up 
 her wake behind her !" 
 
 They had chosen two blocks of coral, not far 
 apart, where they could sit facing each other. 
 Katherine turned her back to the sea, and with an 
 easel before her, was busily dabbing brush into 
 paint, and paint on canvas. Godbolt, with knife, 
 twine, and glue-bottle, sat woolding a new shaft 
 
IN CHARGE 20s 
 
 for the golf club he had broken. Each worked as 
 if there were no time to lose; yet their work 
 seemed only an excuse for talking. 
 
 "The stern o' the Earth, sailing away with 
 us!" 
 
 Katherine, behind her canvas, kept up a run- 
 ning fire of glances, preoccupied and furtive 
 glances, now at him, now at the palms behind him, 
 and the long shadow of their frontier. 
 
 "Mmmh," she mumbled, a brush between her 
 lips; then, removing it — a Yes. A lonely place. 
 Very lonely, and final, and . . . solemn." 
 
 They worked on together, in friendly silence. 
 
 "Can't I see what you're painting of it?" the 
 sailor begged. He made as if to rise. 
 
 "Don't you dare!" She frowned him down 
 again. "How can I do a port — a landscape, with 
 you jumping back and forth across it?" 
 
 He sat quite still, and patiently carried his 
 woolding round and round the shaft. 
 
 Regularly, when the sea dealt a louder, heavier 
 shock, they could feel the island quake under them 
 with a deep thrill: fathomless foundations were 
 set vibrating, for only a moment, but for a moment 
 which undid the security of ages, and made earth 
 itself appear hardly more stable than a passing 
 thought. 
 
206 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Time," said Godbolt, in soliloquy. "Time's a 
 funny thing." 
 
 "And what puts that into your head?" inquired 
 Katherine, behind her canvas. 
 
 He stretched out his hand for an instant, as if 
 his idea were palpable and all-surrounding. 
 
 "Why, there her under-pinning goes it again," 
 said he. "The whole place beats like your pulse, 
 or a time-piece ticking. Not Greenwich time, 
 either, it ain't: a little piece of eternity, might 
 say." He dropped his hand, for tfoe tremor had 
 passed. "And to think of all them little beggars 
 down below, the coral fellows, thingumbobs, 
 polyps, that lived and died so ancient, leaving their 
 bones to build and build. Talk about your Taber- 
 nacles o' the Lord? Gorry ! And I've known 
 
 you just about a week!" 
 
 The girl laughed. It pleased her to see his mind 
 cut a wide circle, then drop. 
 
 "Has the week been long?" 
 
 But Godbolt was not laughing. 
 
 "Yes, if length meant bigness," he replied. 
 "The best portion out o' my life, 'tis, anyhow." 
 
 Another mood, another man, would have made 
 this utterance a mere dismal piece of folly. Even 
 now, Katherine's color mounted; but she saw God- 
 bolt's face as she loved to see it, warm and sorrow- 
 
IN CHARGE 207 
 
 ful and honest, like his words. She remembered 
 also what her grandfather had said about voices; 
 for this man's voice rang true, giving out rudely 
 the meditations of a clean heart. 
 
 "I call it a good week," she assented; and be- 
 cause a kind of safety lay in plaguing him 
 
 "Why, Captain 1" she went on, severely, "has your 
 life been such a blank as that? A disgusting, 
 dreary desert' ?" 
 
 Godbolt regarded her steadily. 
 
 " 'Tain't," s id he, "the wittiest joke in nature, 
 to be a — to be a superfluous man." 
 
 Katherine made a funny little face, of surprise 
 and mock reverence. 
 
 "Are you the Superfluous Man? You don't in 
 the least resemble any character of Gorky's !" 
 
 The sailor was not to be flouted into a better 
 conceit of his position, or baffled by little authors. 
 
 "Gawky? Some gawks can be o' service," he 
 retorted. "Not me. Drifting, always. That's my 
 hookum, drifting by chance. No sense in it." He 
 fell to work on the broken brassy, now almost as 
 good as new under his neat repairs. "And come 
 old age," he chuckled, "some job like this: to sit 
 on an oakum bale and whittle boats for children, 
 like one o' them pious hoary-whiskered sea-faring 
 frauds in a Sabba'-School book !" 
 
208 THE FAR CRY 
 
 They laughed. Katherine swung into hiding 
 behind her easel, where some problem of art ab- 
 sorbed her — all but one round, young elbow, that 
 wagged continually with the strokes of her brush. 
 
 "Is that why you refuse wine?" 
 
 The sailor gave a jump. To paint pictures was 
 wonderful enough, but here sat a girl who could 
 do that, busily, and meanwhile send her thoughts 
 winding in through the tangled motives of a man. 
 
 "Drink never helped me none," he admitted. 
 "I wouldn't dare try it. Not while you're alone, 
 and a wasted piece in the world." 
 
 She faced him again, reproach in her eyes. 
 
 "That's my first disappointment. That's not 
 like you. It sounds weak." 
 
 He raised his head, proudly. 
 
 "Weak?" he cried. "O' course. Any man's 
 weak. Some of us don't ask for Dutch courage, 
 that's all!" 
 
 He thought she smiled, but the canvas inter- 
 vened before he could be certain. She was paint- 
 ing faster than ever. The shadow of the island 
 trees which covered them, now streamed across 
 coral flats and darkened the outer pools. Ashore, 
 evening had arrived; the afternoon glowed only 
 at sea, on the white-fuming waves and the blue 
 plateau of the horizon. 
 
IN CHARGE 209 
 
 Katherine shut her paint-box, and stood up. 
 
 "The Grandpater will be fretting. We should 
 never have stayed so late." 
 
 A cocoanut, still in the husk, happened to be 
 lying where it had rolled, among the breakage of 
 the higher beach. 
 
 "There!" She turned the thing over with her 
 foot — a white mouse of a foot, as Godbolt saw. 
 "Is it chance, Captain, or design, that cocoanuts 
 are shaped so?" 
 
 He had never before considered the form of a 
 cocoanut in the husk. This windfall had three 
 brown surfaces, joining in a raveled point at either 
 end. 
 
 "It's like a fat sort o' boat," said he. 
 
 "A boat," replied Katherine, looking down. "A 
 boat that falls into the sea, by chance; and floats 
 away, and perhaps comes to nothing, or perhaps 
 comes drifting on a reef, to help make an island 
 like this, where people live for years. So logs 
 have come drifting — by chance — to crumble into 
 earth for it. Sometimes a log brings a passenger, 
 an animal, one or two little creatures that have 
 sailed hungry from who knows where? Corals 
 have grown, and breathed in the spray, and died, 
 as you said, Captain, to leave their bones building 
 underneath and building. Wasted pieces? I've 
 
I 
 210 THE FAR CRY 
 
 wondered, too, when I was walking the shore 
 alone; before you came — by chance?" 
 
 The argument was light as an arrow, but flew 
 straight. Godbolt acknowledged a hit, not un- 
 gracefully, by clapping his big hand on his chest. 
 
 "You're right ! 'Twas your pigeon led us here. 
 Some sense in our coming!" 
 
 Katherine looked up at him, then swiftly down 
 as before. 
 
 "Shall I tell you what it meant to me— your 
 coming?" Her voice was low and hurried, but 
 had a quality like the rise of song. "It was an 
 answer, when you came. We were alone. This 
 man — this Mace . . . We needed help. There 
 was no ship to hope for, any more than now; so 
 that I gave up watching the sea. Do you know 
 that story of a girl chained to the rocks, who could 
 only pray for a knight? Well, I — never mind, it 
 all came true. At our worst need, there you sailed 
 in out of the sunset. That was the wonder. Three 
 men, three good champions ready to stand by us ! 
 You broke through the sky, as our brown people 
 say of ships that come. After so much longing, 
 to see my three men at the door, and you their 
 captain " 
 
 She stopped short, alarmed by her confession. 
 When she dared raise her eyes, they found in God- 
 
IN CHARGE 211 
 
 bolt's a reflection of their panic. He was very 
 pale. There came a long pause, through which 
 the fundamental quaking of the island passed like 
 a bit of their own emotion. 
 
 "Home now," said Katherine. "Let's go 
 home." 
 
 As they turned from the noise and brightness of 
 the sea, and were about to enter the wood, she 
 pointed suddenly with her left hand. 
 
 "That came here by design. The Home Rock. 
 We brought it from England." 
 
 A granite boulder loomed where the dusk be- 
 gan, under the palms — a rude monument, front- 
 ing the open sea with one gray face on which glim- 
 mered several tablets of bronze. The Home 
 Rock, in a land that held no other, it stood among 
 familiar flowers, a mass of blue and white peri- 
 winkle covering the place of unforgotten ashes. 
 
 "If you are a wasted piece, what were they? 
 My father's name was Francis, like yours." 
 
 Godbolt could not answer her, for the waves 
 rolled an everlasting requiem. 
 
 The sound of this grew faint and high, as the 
 pair hurried home through twilight woods, down 
 the imperceptible hill that sloped from the sea- 
 rampart to the lagoon. Not till they saw their 
 veranda lights twinkling, did the girl speak again. 
 
212 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "I want you to promise me, Captain Francis." 
 
 "Anything 1" said he. 
 
 The veranda was empty. She paused, half-way 
 up the steps. 
 
 "Let me feel proud of you/' she begged. 
 "Don't think yourself . . . adrift, any more !" 
 
 He looked up slowly, clasping her mended 
 brassy and her painter's kit, as though loth to go 
 empty-handed. 
 
 "A new way o' thinking, that is !" he rejoined, 
 hoarsely. "It goes to a man's head." 
 
 "But promise. You're not adrift now, or 
 alone?" 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "When I'm certain sure — when this old busted 
 cocoanut o' mine comes floating to land solid, and 
 no mistake — why, bless your heart, I'd — I'd fill 
 a glass o' wine to your good fortune !" 
 
 They shook hands on the compact. Katherine 
 ran upstairs with her canvas. He failed to see the 
 painted side of that, for she had held it jealously 
 away from him. 
 
 It was observed, a few moments later, that God- 
 bolt came singing into the bachelors' house; that 
 his features caught something beyond their share 
 of light; that all his motions were those of a man 
 buoyed up by more than mortal confidence. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 FIRST BLOOD 
 
 Mace was not dead, but waiting. Thrice a day 
 his pillar of smoke twined over Mango Island and 
 faded on the sky, like the breath of a puny vol- 
 cano, half asleep. Bright weather covered the 
 atoll, from sunrise to sunset; night unto night 
 showed knowledge abiding in clear stars; and all 
 things but the sea remained quiet. It was only a 
 truce. 
 
 One afternoon, about four o'clock, a scared vil- 
 lager ran panting into the bachelors' house. God- 
 bolt and Wallace happened at that moment to be 
 there. 
 
 "People coming!" cried the runner. "Orang 
 datang! The people come!" 
 
 He was one of those picked men — picked from 
 a poor lot — who had lain camping near the sheep 
 walk; a handsome creature, whose god-like bronze 
 body encased a chicken heart. Distracted between 
 
 213 
 
214 THE FAR CRY 
 
 propriety and fear, he clawed up the white clout 
 slipping round his loins, and babbled. People 
 had stolen in (he tried to say) through the west- 
 ern woods beyond the field. 
 
 "Well," Godbolt drawled, "we better go look." 
 
 So many vain alarms had come in the same 
 fashion from the same quarter, that now the two 
 white men donned their helmets lazily, and made 
 no great haste about going. They sauntered west- 
 ward, through a curving avenue of cocoanut and 
 betel spars. Their cowardly vedette followed 
 them skulking a little way, then "took his hook," 
 as Godbolt said, and was seen no more. 
 
 They came to his late outpost at the verge of 
 the woods, but found all tranquil. Their picked 
 men were gone. The green pasture glowed ; sheep 
 lay in the hollows of it, and strayed nibbling over 
 gentle knolls. 
 
 Both men made a careful scrutiny, far and near. 
 All round the field, the serried border of palms 
 quivered and gleamed in a light wind. Sunshine 
 poured free as over a parade ground. There was 
 no sign, even, of Katherine's red flags. Only the 
 sheep occupied this clearing, their dusty coats 
 brightened like so many bits of golden fleece. 
 
 "Anybody there?" Wallace nodded at the west- 
 ern shadows, long and dense beneath a lowered 
 sun. 
 
FIRST BLOOD 215 
 
 Godbolt shook his head. 
 
 "Psalm Twenty-two," he replied. U I can't 
 sight no trouble, these parts. Can you?" 
 
 Wallace looked everywhere, with his faithful 
 and heavy scowl. 
 
 "No. TheyVe cried wolf on us again. I don't 
 believe Mace would dare. We're too much for 
 him, the three of us." 
 
 "Don't you go be sure o' that," chuckled the 
 sailor. "Mace ain't the boy to lack courage. If 
 things was ripe, he'd come along." 
 
 After a while he added, seriously: 
 
 "Blest if I know Mace's game. Now's his time 
 for jumping us off the board, now or never. Pretty 
 soon her brother'll come sailing back — this boy 
 Walter, nice little easy boy himself, but with a 
 vessel and a crew, likely. Mace better start now, 
 or he'll overstay his tide. Shakespeare allowed 
 there was one, in the affairs o' men." 
 
 Godbolt laughed. He was in high feather now- 
 adays, and on this day above all. 
 
 "Whole thing seems to make you happy," 
 grumbled Wallace, and stirred, with the toe of his 
 pump, a little dust out of the grass. 
 
 "Happy? Almost!" 
 
 A moment later, Wallace raised his head. 
 
 "I was afraid so. What's to be the outcome, 
 Sainty? What about her?" 
 
216 THE FAR CRY 
 
 At that question, Godbolt turned as if stung. 
 He spoke, but with sort of violent deliberation. 
 
 "I like you, Rob," he said, hoarsely. "I like ye 
 fine, Rob. You got a grand square way o' look- 
 ing at a man, square, and forehead foremost, and 
 broad betwixt the eyes, like a good old black bull. 
 I like that way; keep it so; while ye talk." The 
 sailor went pale, went red again, then laughed 
 unsteadily. "Whip her out, what you're think- 
 ing!" he cried. "You're into the china shop, 
 Robin, old bull! Plump into the china shop. 
 Smash away." 
 
 Wallace continued looking at him, front fore- 
 most, as he desired. 
 
 "I'm thinking this," replied Wallace. "I like 
 her. You like her. That's all right for now." 
 
 Godbolt clapped him on the shoulder, and held 
 him at arm's length, crying, in a heat of honest 
 affection. 
 
 "Like her? Katherine? O' course we like her! 
 What ails ye for that, Rob my child? Both of 
 us, how could we choose but like her?" 
 
 Wallace drew free from Godbolt's hand, and 
 gathered himself forward speaking. It was his 
 turn, now, to be white in the face. 
 
 "I'm a stupid kind of chap," he began, obsti- 
 nately. "I'm not clever, like Arthur Tisdale. 
 
FIRST BLOOD 217 
 
 You know me, Sainty. I'm dull as wood. But 
 don't go thinking I'm jealous. No woman ever 
 looks my way twice; or if they do, I can't find a 
 word to say. No, sir, it's not jealousy. I like 
 her, but I like you — better. You're my notion of 
 
 a man. Sainty " And here, for once in a 
 
 rather stolid lifetime, Wallace beat his breast — 
 "Why, Sainty, I'd go through fire for you ! And 
 so would any woman. There ! The cat's out of 
 the bag!" 
 
 He let go a great breath, and stood waiting. 
 
 Godbolt stepped in closer. 
 
 "What d'ye mean, Rob?" he demanded, sternly. 
 
 Wallace held his ground without flinching. 
 
 "I mean just this," he retorted. "And you 
 know it — deep down, you know it. I've thought it 
 over nights abed. I've seen it in your face, the 
 way you talk, the way you move, lately. Kather- 
 ine's coming to think of you, as I say any 
 
 woman Oh, look ahead, Sainty! We're 
 
 here on our behavior. It's all temporary. Noth- 
 ing ahead. All bound to come to nothing." 
 
 Godbolt knotted up his brows and his fists. 
 
 "Do you see past what you're a-hinting, Rob?" 
 His black eyes burned. "For less'n that, I'd — 
 not on my account, on hers " 
 
 Wallace turned away, and stared at the seaward 
 palms. 
 
218 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "It takes a fool," he observed, bitterly, "to 
 speak out as I do." 
 
 A dry clashing of palm-blades ran round that 
 sunny hollow square in which he stood; and like 
 another voice or mood of the same breeze, he 
 heard old ocean mourning. 
 
 "Rob, it's me played the fool." 
 
 Wallace kept his back turned; however dull, 
 he knew better than to watch a friend stammering 
 and choking with useless anger. 
 
 "A good mate you are, Rob. I couldn't fight 
 ye, no, not for her sake, even; because you're 
 wrong there, about her. Wrong by a million mile, 
 thank the Lord!" 
 
 These last words rang so different, so grateful, 
 that Wallace could face round again. For both 
 men, it was a haggard moment. 
 
 "About me, you spoke right," said Godbolt, 
 firmly. "All this must come to naught. Nothing 
 ahead. What way is there out — for me?" 
 
 His answer came flying with a little spiteful 
 noise through the air. Not caring what they did, 
 the friends had wandered forth into the pasture, 
 and remained — as chance would place them — two 
 white and shining marks upon a well-cropped 
 knoll. The spiteful noise flew, enveloped them, 
 and died — like the hum of a taut wire struck by 
 
FIRST BLOOD 219 
 
 an urchin's pebble. Quicker than thought, it was 
 repeated. Then something snapped confusedly 
 between the two men. 
 
 "Shot!" groaned Wallace, and staggered, and 
 fell groveling on the dusty grass. "I'm hit, Sainty, 
 through the arm I" 
 
 He heard his own words, marveled at his own 
 cleverness; for all he had felt was one sledge- 
 hammer shock near the elbow, that spun him half 
 round after it, and so felled him. He tried to be 
 game, to rise. A heavy hand knocked him sprawl- 
 ing and dizzy as before. 
 
 "Flat ! Lay flat I" roared Godbolt, pinning him 
 to earth and setting the example. "Don't ye stand 
 up and give a target — Reckless wasters we 
 was! Lay flat — Aha, I spy! The beggar's 
 hid amongst them trees !" 
 
 A blaze of shots followed. The sailor, cross- 
 ing his wrists on the ground, twice emptied his re- 
 volver loudly, carefully, and smokily into the west- 
 ern woods and the sunset. Three or four jets of 
 yellow dust answered him, at first, by spattering 
 up from the knoll ; but these quickly ceased, even 
 while sheep after sheep bundled away helter-skel- 
 ter for the nearest woods. 
 
 "Missed him ! The beggar's running," grunted 
 Godbolt. "He had smokeless powder, and a si- 
 
220 THE FAR CRY 
 
 lencer on his muzzle, drat him! Hid where we 
 scared that ram, other day. But we gave him 
 enough. He's run clean for Mango Island." 
 
 Wallace did his best to feel awake, though sky 
 and treetops reeled. 
 
 "Mace, was it?" 
 
 Godbolt stowed his weapon under his arm-pit, 
 and jeered — obviously jeered, for the moral ef- 
 fect 
 
 "Mace? No. Some hired man. Ye ain't no 
 more than winged, are ye? Why, there! Mace 
 could a* shot, they tell me. That was only the 
 hired man." 
 
 Then, with a strange, uncouth tenderness — 
 
 "Rob," he inquired, "ye ain't hurt bad, are 
 ye?" 
 
 Wallace grinned foolishly, sat up, displayed a 
 red crease in the elbow of his right sleeve. 
 
 "Not badly. My arm's broken. First blood 
 for Mace." 
 
 His friend reached over, and fingered his wound 
 considerately. 
 
 "Broke, yes. Bullet clear through. Hum: I 
 can set that, Rob. Gun-shot holes are no treat 
 to me; I've seen plenty worse. Come on home till 
 we can jury-rig ye." 
 
 They crawled backward out of the sunshine ; lay 
 
FIRST BLOOD 221 
 
 watching among the palm trunks; and then, with 
 many a backward glance, began to retreat. Peace 
 reclaimed the pasture. From woods to left and 
 right the silly sheep were venturing out, bleating, 
 joining once more their scattered groups. The af- 
 fair was over; an ambush at long range, not an 
 advance. 
 
 The two skirmishers came home silently, Wal- 
 lace nursing his arm, Godbolt wrapt in thought, 
 with eyes following a sombre day-dream along 
 the path. Though lacking words, they felt no 
 lack; never before had they walked in such near 
 understanding, shoulder to shoulder, spirit and 
 spirit alongside. Wallace always remembered 
 this strange walk together. 
 
 So the day failed, and so they came by twilight 
 into their bachelors' house among the plantains. 
 Godbolt struck a match, and set a candle burning. 
 
 "Now," he commanded, "hold out your pinion, 
 my duck." 
 
 When Wallace lay back in a chair at last, with 
 his arm admirably slung, and the dull stupor of 
 it clearing into pain, he let his mind swim between 
 lethargy and a vague sense of personal escape. He 
 saw Godbolt move the candle to a dressing-table, 
 near by, and stand there cleaning and loading his 
 Webley. Something — the man's downward look, 
 
222 THE FAR CRY 
 
 the careful movement of his hands, or perhaps the 
 little taper shining on a white cloth — transformed 
 his action almost to that of a priest before some 
 lonely altar. 
 
 "You're to lay quiet, Rob." The sailor put the 
 pistol under his jacket, and turning, took his pa- 
 tient by the left hand. Not then, but in after days, 
 it appeared that he was bidding farewell. "Mind 
 you lay quiet. You're off duty henceforward, well 
 out of a bad pidgin, boy. I'll send Arthur in, to 
 keep you company for a while." 
 
 At the door he paused. There was a kind of 
 longing in his look. 
 
 "You spoke out noble this afternoon," he added, 
 cordially. "Noble. Francis Godbolt ain't the 
 sort to go denying it. You cleared the air, all 
 round. Oliver Mace, we know his game now; 
 wanted to pick us off separate, one by one; but 
 we'll stop that, don't ye fret. Ho! ho! We'll 
 h'ist Oliver in a moused hook, send him higher'n 
 Gilderoy'skite!" 
 
 He ran down the veranda steps, crying: 
 
 "Adios, old Robin !" 
 
 After that, it was Tisdale who met him, brush- 
 ing away banana pennons on the path to Fraye's. 
 He was no more than a shape hurrying through the 
 gloom. 
 
FIRST BLOOD 223 
 
 "Rob's waiting for ye, Arthur," he announced 
 gaily, in passing. "You skip along. No, I'm 
 busy. Got a thing to do. Some sense about 
 thisl" 
 
 The next person who saw him that evening, 
 and the last friend who then heard him speak, was 
 old Thomas Fraye. 
 
 It was early starlight on the lagoon mirror, 
 lamplight in the big room. 
 
 "Mr. Fraye," said Godbolt, entering bare- 
 headed, cool, and with no sign of hurry, "it's a 
 grand piece o' night outside. Ain't it?" 
 
 The old man lay reading in his chair, alone. 
 
 "You, Frank? — I mean, you, Captain?" He 
 lowered his book. "Yes, indeed, a very fine night, 
 All well?" 
 
 The captain beamed. 
 
 "All well, sir. On the point o' being better. 
 Fact is, I'm going for a row, to take the air. Can 
 I borrow Anak? He's moping down round the 
 jetty." 
 
 Fraye nodded, and said : 
 
 "No wonder I call you Frank. You behave like 
 a son to me, Captain. I — I muddle the pair of 
 you into one, sometimes, thinking, after dark." 
 
 Godbolt smiled across the table. There stood 
 between them a tray, with slender glasses round 
 
224 THE FAR CRY 
 
 a yellow decanter. His face brightened, as if at 
 some happy thought. 
 
 "The Cape o' Good Hope sherry, sir? Is that 
 it? — Good Hope. Sounds like an omen." 
 
 He leaned over and with a steady hand poured 
 a glass of wine, which he then raised. The light 
 set it blinking. 
 
 "Tell Katherine — " his voice filled the room, 
 quietly — "tell Katherine I drank this to her, and 
 all she can ever hope for." 
 
 He shut his fist over the empty glass, and 
 crumpled it like so much paper; let the splinters 
 trickle and tinkle into the tray; bowed, and stalked 
 out through the main veranda. 
 
 Mr. Fraye heard his footsteps going down the 
 garden path, his voice, afterward, hailing Anak 
 on the jetty. Illness confused the old man's wits; 
 for he lay comfortably, book in lap, and listened 
 while a fatal beat of oars passed away toward 
 southwestern stars, over the blue obscurity of the 
 lagoon. Time slid by. 
 
 "He seemed so like her father," mused Age. 
 
 But Youth appeared at the door, all flushed and 
 eager. Katherine ran in, with Tisdale following. 
 
 "Where is he?" they cried. "Sainty! Where's 
 the captain?" 
 
 Fraye smiled at them. 
 
FIRST BLOOD 225 
 
 "The captain has gone boating," he explained. 
 "My dear, you may feel honored. He drank your 
 health in broken glass, before he went " 
 
 Katherihe gave one look at the table, the tray, 
 md the splinters glistening there. She let her arms 
 drop, slowly, as if the weight of that honor bore 
 them down. 
 
 "To his death," she whispered, looking 
 strangely about the room, like one who finds her- 
 self deserted. "For our sake he has gone to his 
 death. To Mace. We shall never see him again." 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 A THING TO DO 
 
 Katherine was wrong, in part. They were to 
 see Godbolt once more, that very night; to behold 
 him on the summit of his life, topping the last 
 bright hill of a high journey. 
 
 What happened in the meantime, Anak told 
 when all was done. 
 
 The sailor made for the jetty, first, and called 
 Anak to come help him. Then, from her shelter 
 among ironwood boughs, they dragged the little 
 Nantwich Number Two down into the water, 
 shoved her off, and shipped their oars. Godbolt, 
 steering, hummed a funny little air — so droll, in 
 fact, and so light-hearted, that Anak failed to 
 watch their course or guess what terror lay before 
 them. 
 
 "The Old Seventy -Six they've sallied forth, 
 On their crutches they do lean, 
 With their rifles leveled on us 
 226 
 
A THING TO DO 227 
 
 And their specs they take good aim 
 
 Oh, there* s no retreat, my boys, for them 
 Who'd rather die than run " 
 
 So the steersman chanted, happily, but no more 
 loudly than the dripping oars. The boat stole on- 
 ward, under a dome fretted with constellations. 
 From the lagoon — heaven's liquid counterpart, 
 night's floor — the rowing dug up shattered stars, 
 and sent them like golden minnows whirling astern, 
 to dart about profoundly, and rejoin, and heal the 
 long scar of the wake. 
 
 "Or I fear that they will conquer us " 
 
 There was no fear in the singer's voice. He 
 liked his ballad. 
 
 "Or I fear that they will conquer us 
 As they conquered John Burgoyne 
 
 When he got too far from Canada 
 
 Run for life, hoys, run!" 
 
 Anak would gladly have obeyed this sentiment, 
 when all at once, turning from his work, he saw 
 the grayness of a beach, close ahead, and knew it 
 for the beach at Mango Island. Somebody was 
 
228 THE FAR CRY 
 
 coming down toward them with a lantern. Anak 
 dropped his oars, clattering. 
 
 "There, there !" Godbolt, as he climbed ashore, 
 patted the giant's back. "Quiet, my son ! Don't 
 ye tremble so. Just ye wait. I got a thing to do ; 
 and if I don't bring ye a passenger inside o' twenty 
 minutes, you can row straight home. There ! And 
 that case, you can tell 'em all's well anyhow. In 
 twenty minutes, Mace living, I'll fetch him pris- 
 oner. You wait, son; your part is easy." 
 
 The lantern now lighted them both, the wet 
 nose of their boat, and a circle of yellow-gray 
 strand. A weazened, imp-like figure bore this 
 lantern. 
 
 "Hallo, Satrap!" chuckled the sailor. "How 
 are ye ? Master at home to-night ?" 
 
 Satrap wore a blood-red cotton scarf round his 
 throat, to ward off sakit angin, the air sickness 
 that travels abroad after dark. He raised one end 
 of the scarf, and rubbed his eyes with it, as though 
 to see more clearly a sight beyond belief. 
 
 "You?" he croaked. In the dim light, he 
 seemed to be all cheekbones, ribs, and brown 
 wrinkles. "You, Large Sir, in this place? Go 
 back. You will die. Go back." 
 
 Godbolt lowered a benevolent grin, and shook 
 his head. 
 
A THING TO DO 229 
 
 "I won't go back alone. Tuan Mace up at the 
 house? Good." 
 
 The Bugi opened wide his skinny arms, but God- 
 bolt went dodging past into the darkness of the 
 upper beach. 
 
 "This man will die," grunted Satrap, staring; 
 then, after visible and painful indecision, he blew 
 out his lantern, and ran to see whether he had 
 spoken true. 
 
 Anak could not long endure that dark, lonely 
 beach. He waited, growing more and more terri- 
 fied, till with a whimper he leaped out of the boat 
 and hurried inland. Ancestral fear of devils 
 pushed him like a silent mob at his back; a great 
 fascination pulled him on; so that between these 
 two forces he found himself panting up the sand- 
 hill, running among trees toward a bright light, 
 and presently kneeling in the dust of Mace's com- 
 pound, behind a castor-oil bush. Satrap lay there 
 also, and shook as if the hot, still night were freez- 
 ing him. 
 
 Mace's bungalow, before them, blazed with 
 light — the infernal brilliancy of acetylene — which 
 made his big main room a stage, a theatric setting. 
 The whole interior shone ghastly through door 
 and windows, barred here and there by the leaky 
 mesh of wall, as by strips of porous curtain. 
 
23o THE FAR CRY 
 
 Godbolt had just entered the room. 
 
 "Good evening," he sang out, on the threshold. 
 
 Oliver Mace lay dozing in a chair, directly 
 under the light, beside his favorite table and a 
 quart of brandy. With chin on breast, lank arms 
 and legs awry, he had sunk deeply into such a 
 rumpled condition that his white trousers and 
 white dinner jacket engulfed him with empty folds. 
 At first glance, a stranger would have thought him 
 drunk and torpid; but his long gray head was 
 busy, after some fashion, for he lay smiling, squint- 
 ing down the edge of his nose. 
 
 It was a weasel nap, soon broken; a weasel's 
 pair of eyes he lifted. 
 
 "Eh? What?" 
 
 The apparition of Godbolt brought him upright. 
 
 "You here again? In my house?" 
 
 From that instant, neither man let the other 
 evade him with eye, word, or hand. 
 
 They watched like rival conjurers. The devil- 
 ish patent light was capital for this kind of duel- 
 ling. 
 
 "What are you here for?" 
 
 "To arrest ye," replied the sailor, calmly. 
 
 Mace puckered his thin brows. 
 
 "Arrest me?" He lay back at ease, very scorn- 
 ful. "Where's your authority?" 
 
A THING TO DO 231 
 
 Godbolt came forward, and produced — without 
 moving his eye — a long envelope from his pocket. 
 He backed away again. 
 
 "There. Read it. I won't move while you're 
 reading." 
 
 It was Fraye's letter of marque. Mace took 
 its contents in with half a glance. 
 
 "Bote Salaam, my Lord High Commissioner," 
 he drawled. "A most imposing document. 
 There's only one thing lacking, which is my con- 
 sent. As for Thomas Masterman Fraye, he's 
 more man than master to-night, I fancy." 
 
 And Mace tore the letter into bits. 
 
 "Where's your commission now?" he inquired, 
 tossing them over the back of his chair. 
 
 Godbolt stood unmoved, with arms folded on 
 his breast — where his tunic was unbuttoned. 
 
 "I've done my legal duty, Mr. Mace. You 
 took service o' my paper. Tear it up or swallow it 
 down; make a boy's windmill of it if ye so desire; 
 the thing is done. You tried to let us eat a fish, 
 other day. Call that a mistake. You had my 
 friend, Rob Wallace, cowardly shot this after- 
 noon in the sheep field. Ye want the whole island 
 for your own, and — never mind what else ye want. 
 By th' Eternal, ye sha'n't have it. I arrest ye." 
 
 Mace cackled. 
 
232 THEFARCRY 
 
 "You born fool!" he answered, drily. "The 
 boot's on the other foot. You're the man arrested 
 — the man, by Jove, that walked into jail ! Of all 
 blind, oafish, lumbering conceit! Why, when 
 you swaggered in just now, did it never cross your 
 mind that I would hardly permit you to go swag- 
 gering out again?" 
 
 The sailor nodded. A smile played round his 
 lips — a calm, pleasant little smile, that made his 
 rejoinder infinitely grim. 
 
 " 'Tain't no great of a mind," he admitted, "but 
 something crossed it, Mr. Mace. As follows: I 
 think unless we both walk out together quiet and 
 peaceable, one of us is going to die right here in 
 this room." 
 
 Mace peered up anew, more sharply even than 
 before. When he spoke, his voice was not so 
 harsh, but had a mingled note, as if some old 
 frayed string of kindness were set vibrating. 
 
 "I withdraw my expression," he said. "You're 
 no fool, or at least a brave one. Far too brave; 
 far too rash, Mr. Godbolt." He waved his hand 
 slightly toward the table. "Do you see my boat- 
 call there?" 
 
 A silver whistle lay shining beside the forgotten 
 brandy. 
 
 "Saw that when I first came in." Godbolt's eyes 
 
ATHINGTODO 233 
 
 did not swerve from the face below him. "What 
 of it?" 
 
 "How if I should blow for help ?" said Mace. 
 
 "Don't try," the other counseled, gravely. "Be- 
 fore your old fingers carried that whistle to your 
 mouth, the life would be blasted out o' ye." 
 
 Mace nodded his long, gray head, in approval. 
 
 "I see/' he murmured. "Several things have 
 crossed your mind, after all. My compliments. 
 If you count on stopping me so quickly as you say, 
 I take it you're armed? For a lark, now, let us 
 make the experiment." 
 
 With a cool, playful air, the old scapegrace 
 leaned toward the table, and let his right hand 
 fumble near the silver boat-call. 
 
 Godbolt laughed, and merely uncrossed his 
 arms. The dark pistol, which Wallace had seen 
 him loading, flew like a bird into his hand and glit- 
 tered there as by magic. 
 
 "Ah, now I follow you." Mace drew back, and 
 lay quite composed. "Under your tunic, was it 
 not? Are you a marksman at all?" 
 
 Godbolt re-folded his arms, but with the pistol- 
 barrel pointing over one elbow. 
 
 "I do what I can," he jested, "in a humble kind 
 o' way. The only gift I got." 
 
 Mace awkwardly stretched out his legs. The 
 
234 THE FAR CRY 
 
 motion brought him somewhat lower in his chair. 
 
 U A bold man, a bold plan," said he. "Unless I 
 go with you quietly, as a prisoner, you will exer- 
 cise your talent, and fire? At Fraye's, you'd put 
 me under guard, wait till that young ass Walter 
 brings the schooner home, and then — deport me ? 
 Was that your meaning?" 
 
 "To a hair," said Godbolt. 
 
 Overhead the patent light burned low for a 
 moment, as some flying insect blundered through 
 the flame. No more than a wink and a sputter, the 
 tiny change made both men jump. Each had used 
 a tone persuasive and bantering; each labored 
 under a deadly strain ; but when they felt the room 
 once more surcharged with light and stillness, it 
 was Mace, apparently, who had suffered from that 
 break of tension. He had slipped farther down 
 in his chair, and let both arms dangle over-side. 
 His face was white, sick, and moist. 
 
 "You'll fire if I don't go?" he repeated, in a 
 creaking but indomitable voice. "Very well, sir. 
 I won't go. Fire." 
 
 Godbolt stared. This man looked up at him as 
 a frightened patient might regard a surgeon, yet 
 with a gleam of purpose, resolution, or mysterious 
 hope. 
 
 "Come, fire." 
 
ATHINGTODO 235 
 
 Godbolt freed his right hand slowly, pointing 
 his weapon at the attap roof. He cleared his 
 throat. 
 
 "I give you ten," he proclaimed, "to get on 
 your feet." 
 
 And he counted the numbers aloud. 
 
 "Ten," he called, with a strange rising inflec- 
 tion. 
 
 The pair of natives hidden outside, behind the 
 castor-oil bush, afterward said that at this point 
 all the night seemed to be going by at once, and 
 the house to stand still before them with the fig- 
 ures in it, very large and bright but not alive, like 
 a piece of devil-work. 
 
 "Well?" broke out Mace. "Why don't you 
 fire? Time — Finish it, man! I won't budge!" 
 
 Indeed, Mace lay quite limp in the bottom of his 
 rattan chair, with left arm hanging to the floor, 
 and right arm sunk in a pool of darkness under 
 the edge of the table. 
 
 Godbolt suddenly moaned like a woman, and 
 dropped both hands at his sides. 
 
 "Ye look old. Ye look sick. You're an old 
 
 man. And in cold blood Oh, what thing was 
 
 I born for, then?" 
 
 Mace drew breath sharply. 
 
 "You can't!" he said. "You can't, fellow. 
 You're beaten." 
 
236 THEFARCRY 
 
 "I'm beaten," groaned the sailor, and hung his 
 head. 
 
 "Now go," advised his conqueror. "Go home 
 in peace. I'm an old man, as you say; another 
 evening like this would end me." Mace raised 
 his left hand in token of dismissal. "I'm too weak 
 for any more. Go, in peace." 
 
 The hand was trembling inordinately. 
 
 "No peace any more." Godbolt shook his head. 
 "I came to do it, and I failed." 
 
 He turned heavily toward the door. As he 
 went, there came two sounds at once; a warning 
 shout from the compound, a crackle of rattan be- 
 hind him. The sailor wheeled, too late by half a 
 second. 
 
 Mace had whipped his long right arm from 
 under the table, fetching up out of shadow a car- 
 bine. He fired point-blank. 
 
 Godbolt's pistol blazed harmless at the roof, 
 even as that rushing wind of death took him full 
 in the breast, and swept him down. 
 
 Mace uttered something which might have been 
 a word, but was more like the squeal of a rat. He 
 jumped from his chair, and stood swaying. Si- 
 lence followed, until the fallen man began to 
 writhe, as if the mat beneath him were a wall and 
 he a climber. Then Mace took aim at the striving 
 
ATHINGTODO 237 
 
 head, and fired again. And then Godbolt lay 
 quiet, his face buried between his arms. The pis- 
 tol had flown into a far corner. 
 
 "It carried!" Mace dropped his carbine into 
 the chair, tottered near the table, seized his 
 brandy, and drank deep. u The bare chance," he 
 said with a shudder, "the bare chance carried 
 through! Hundred to one. Oh, what a bat- 
 tle!" 
 
 For a time he stared blindly at the white heap 
 encumbering his floor. When he moved, he gave 
 it a wide berth, and stole to the doorway only by 
 a circuit. 
 
 "Who made that noise in the compound?" he 
 called, stridently. "Come, show yourself. I'm 
 here. The fellow got in my way. I did it. I'll 
 answer for it. Come, show yourself!" 
 
 The night refused to hear his arguments. Be- 
 low the castor-oil bush, Anak and Satrap hugged 
 the dust for dear life, and thought their turn was 
 coming. It seemed to them that they had wit- 
 nessed a wonder, an end-all. 
 
 But the real wonder was yet to begin. 
 
 "Noise? No," growled Mace. "Imagination. 
 It's over." 
 
 Hot with brandy and success, the slayer faced 
 the room again. He did not care, or was not able, 
 
238 THE FAR CRY 
 
 to look before him clearly as he stumbled in. And, 
 therefore, the shock fell heavier on him — heavy 
 and cold as ice. 
 
 "Ah !" he recoiled, in vain. "I saw you " 
 
 He had left Godbolt dead upon the floor. He 
 met Godbolt living, erect, with wavering arms held 
 forward to grapple and arrest him, in spite of vic- 
 tory. By a miracle of human will, the sailor, shot 
 through the body and through both cheeks, had 
 reared and lurched forward, towering. 
 
 "Let go!" 
 
 Mace felt his throat collared by desperate fin- 
 gers. 
 
 "Let go I" He tried to shout, but heard only 
 a rasping whisper. No silly kind heart now, no 
 mercy to reckon upon ; here was the final combat. 
 "Let me — let me " 
 
 Mace tore himself loose, and fell back, intend- 
 ing to reach the silver whistle, a yard or more 
 away. This — so far as may be known — was the 
 last of many muddled and bad intentions; for at 
 a clap, all the arrears of sottish living descended 
 on him, like a mallet on the skull. It was Oliver 
 Mace, this time, who suddenly encumbered the 
 floor, staring. 
 
 He lay there, dead, by a blow which no man 
 might deliver. 
 
A THING TO DO 239 
 
 When the two natives had convinced each other 
 of this fact, they crept into the room. 
 
 "Tobat?" they crooned. "Butool!— Can it 
 be possible? It is true." 
 
 Godbolt kept his footing, had even a little 
 strength to spare. He put forth his hand, took 
 from Satrap's throat the red cotton scarf, and 
 with an effort, passed it round his own disfigured 
 countenance, like a veil. He made a step toward 
 the door; then, wearily, hung his arm over Anak's 
 shoulder, and let the brown giant take him, half 
 led, half carried. 
 
 The bungalow shone bright and vacant behind 
 them. Only Satrap halted to glance back. He 
 spat in that direction. 
 
 "Good," he croaked. "Good now, Master." 
 
 And like a man unchained from bondage, he ran 
 ahead to find and re-light his lantern. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 NO MORE SEA 
 
 "We shall never set eyes on him again," re- 
 peated Katherine. "Never speak to him. Oh, 
 why did he go?" 
 
 She waited by a front window, questioning the 
 night, the garden, the calm solitude which covered 
 such doubt and anguish, yet retained a spice of 
 clove gilly-flower and a twinkle of starry water. 
 
 Young Tisdale, the ready man, could think of 
 nothing to do or say. 
 
 Her grandfather gave a fretful cough. He had 
 gathered the sound of her words, not the import. 
 Extravagant language was a fault in her, to be 
 corrected. 
 
 "The captain went boating, I tell you. He 
 drank your health, and broke his glass in the good 
 old fashion. I can't see why, for that reason, you 
 roam about like a tragedy queen." 
 
 Katherine turned, imploring, half angry, half in 
 tears. 
 
 240 
 
NOMORESEA 241 
 
 "Oh, don't speak so now, dear Grandfather!" 
 
 Tisdale saw a chance to be useful, and ap- 
 proaching the old man, bent and whispered : 
 
 "Let her be, sir. The captain has gone over 
 to Mace, for our benefit." 
 
 Thomas Fraye took the book out of his lap, 
 carefully placed it on the table, and as carefully 
 swung his feet clear from his chair. He found it 
 hard to rise, but once risen, stood and moved like 
 a young man. Through the rest of that evening, 
 nobody remembered his illness or his age. There 
 was for him, now danger blew sharp enough upon 
 them, a fire in old ashes. 
 
 "Kate," said he, "Kate, sweetheart, the cap- 
 tain will come back to us." 
 
 The girl raised her head with a fierce motion, 
 as if to disown such comfort once for all. 
 
 "No!" she cried imperiously. "No! He's 
 mine — my captain, my Francis ! I won't have him 
 back with blood on his hands." 
 
 The two men stared first at her, then at each 
 other, confounded not only by the flashing pride 
 of this avowal, but by her foresight. They had 
 not thought of the one sombre condition upon 
 which the captain might return. 
 
 "If I could take his place " began Tisdale, 
 
 ardently, then choked and remained silent, in great 
 bitterness of spirit. 
 
242 THEFARCRY 
 
 Her grandfather said the only possible thing. 
 
 "Keep a good courage, my dear." The old man 
 joined her at the window, put his arm about her; 
 and though his white head barely reached her 
 shoulder, he spoke and moved so calmly, so 
 promptly, so much according to his own advice, 
 that he left no other course open, but to be brave. 
 "Don't think ill of the future. Or of the 
 captain. He'll do nothing you wouldn't have 
 him do, Kate. He won't stoop." 
 
 At this, Katherine clung to him, and so the pair 
 waited, each supporting the other, body and heart. 
 Tisdale drew near. They both glanced up, and 
 nodded, with a look of welcome and gratitude that 
 was very like a smile. 
 
 A bush rustled. Somebody came through tlie 
 garden. 
 
 It was only Wallace, with his arm in a sling. 
 
 "I couldn't stay alone," he muttered, pausing at 
 the door. 
 
 "Of course not." Katherine beckoned. "I'm 
 glad you thought of coming." 
 
 They made room for Wallace in their group. 
 Nothing more was said. Silence filled the open 
 parlor, except when the walls, their basket weave 
 contracting in cool night air, made a rasping noise, 
 or ticked like a loud and fitful clock. 
 
NOMORESEA 243 
 
 "Here they come." It was the girl who spoke. 
 
 A new star had blossomed on the lagoon — a big, 
 soft, yellow star, burning steadily at first, then 
 winking in regular time to the hollow stroke of 
 oars. Whom it lighted, and whose boat, were mat- 
 ters of vain guess-work and torture. 
 
 The yellow star sank below the beach, rose on 
 the jetty as a common lantern, and came bobbing 
 slowly through the garden. Round its passage 
 there formed and melted a fringe or tunnel of 
 things obscure — the scarlet heap of a rose-bush, 
 green Poinciana leaves, and palm trunks visible 
 as brown columns edged with misty gilding, like 
 the edge of fur. Two large white-clad men la- 
 bored, arm in arm, down this wavering, traveling 
 vista of the night; a third, bent and dwarf-like, 
 swung the lantern before them, step by careful 
 step. 
 
 "He's hurt! Let me go, dear!" Katherine, 
 first of all the watchers, had seen who was com- 
 ing, and darted out to meet him on the steps. 
 "Oh, Francis, Francis!" 
 
 In this wise Godbolt came home, his left arm 
 round Anak's broad shoulders, his right upheld by 
 her for whose sake its power had failed. 
 
 "Put him into my chair," old Fraye directed, 
 shortly and sourly. 
 
244 THE FAR CRY 
 
 They carried him thither, placed him there 
 under the lamp-light, beside the table. Like a 
 new kind of Moslem decoration, the blood-red cot- 
 ton scarf muffled all his face up to the eyes, and 
 hung broadly down over his left breast. He lay 
 full length, a figure of silence and mystery. 
 
 "Abis tuntu! Surely it is finished!" cried poor 
 Satrap, and set his lantern in the door, and 
 squatted cowering. 
 
 Godbolt's eyes, blacker than charcoal, gazed 
 over the red bandage as from a distance. They 
 moved slowly, greeting each frightened face above 
 them. "I see you plainly," said their look. "I 
 see you all." At last they met Katherine's eyes; 
 and then, as if the spirit returned fiery-swift at a 
 call, they woke, sparkled, were flooded with their 
 old-time lustre. He raised his hands, and made a 
 feeble motion like the motion of writing. 
 
 "What do you want, old fellow?" said Tisdale. 
 
 But Katherine understood, and quickly crossing 
 the room, brought back a pencil and a sketching 
 tablet. 
 
 "Yes, dear." She closed the captain's fingers 
 round the pencil, quietly knelt by the chair, and 
 held her tablet steady. "Now tell us what it was." 
 
 The captain tried, and failed; then waited, 
 gripped the pencil more firmly, and tried again. In 
 
NOMORESEA 245 
 
 big, schoolboy letters, a few words to the page, 
 he wrote : 
 
 "All well Mace dead, I never did it." 
 
 Old Fraye read the message aloud. His grand- 
 daughter made some inarticulate sound. The tab- 
 let shook in her hands. Wallace relieved her of 
 it. Tisdale relieved him, and tore off the written 
 sheet. 
 
 "Oh, Francis, I knew!" she moaned. "I felt 
 certain. You never could." 
 
 Godbolt's eyes contained a smile, part happi- 
 ness, part irony. 
 
 "Come, my lad," the old man gently counseled, 
 "it's time we saw how much you're hurt." 
 
 It seemed evident — from the pallor of Godbolt's 
 forehead, as from that steadfast look of his — he 
 was dying; and for answer, he wrote again: 
 
 "No good, sir. They do not hurt a mite. Once 
 in cheeks, once in Plural Cavaty. Can't spell him, 
 
 but " He let Wallace tear off another page, 
 
 and continued : "but so the Sawbones called him on 
 a man I knew. My time short, don't lose none 
 fretting." 
 
 His eyes closed, as if deliberation weighed them 
 down; then opened, while he painfully inscribed 
 the fourth page of his bulletin. 
 
 "Get Arna to tell you," 
 
246 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Anak?" 
 
 They turned on the huge man-servant, who 
 loomed uneasy in the background. 
 
 "Anak," said his master, "what has hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 Anak louted low, and reared his scrubby head 
 again, six feet and a half toward the roof-tree. 
 Still under the shadow of death, still in a tremor, 
 he obeyed, and began to narrate what he had seen 
 and heard of the night's work on Mango Island. 
 At first, the music of his voice was marred and 
 broken; but as the story caught and carried him, 
 as the spell of that hour and that audience made 
 him forget the castor-oil bush and his ignoble fear 
 behind it, the man's dark face began to work, his 
 eyes rolled white, his limbs were freed in eloquent 
 motion. He became an actor, bringing past fact 
 bodily into the present. His primer English fal- 
 tered and fell, his rhythm changed, and on the 
 wings of his own language he swept with exalta- 
 tion into a chant of war. Brave men have lived 
 before Agamemnon, and after; but few since the 
 days of fable have had their doings worthily re- 
 hearsed with passion, and sung aloud, as Anak now 
 sang the deed of his terrible captain. The deed 
 was over with; the poem only born. Anak, for 
 years a hulking nondescript, had found the gift 
 
NOMORESEA 247 
 
 within him, loosed it, and become historian and 
 bard. 
 
 "Everywhere," he sang, spreading his arms as 
 he retreated on the close, "now everywhere there 
 shall be peace!" 
 
 Thus Godbolt in his life-time heard his own 
 legend, which, by the will of chance or fate, should 
 pass and grow from generation to generation upon 
 the island. Perhaps he guessed a little of the 
 truth, how poetry can seize a deed and change it 
 into something better. At any rate, his forehead 
 flushed, losing its mortal paleness; his eyes, over 
 the red cotton barrier, appeared to be laughing. 
 He reached out weakly for his tablet, and 
 scrawled : 
 
 "After all that, to know you failed/" 
 
 But Katherine accepted the poet's version. 
 
 "There is no failure, dear," she whispered. 
 "You took my quarrel on you, our quarrel. You 
 did your best. If you had done less, I would 
 not . , . be kneeling here." 
 
 His head drooped on his shoulder, so that he 
 might see her where she knelt. In silence, on the 
 brink of Time, their eyes exchanged that light and 
 triumph and fulness of understanding, which no 
 man truly knows but once. 
 
 Godbolt sighed. His heavy eyelids fluttered 
 
248 THE FAR CRY 
 
 down, as if sleep were coming, and measureless 
 content. He remained breathing. 
 
 "You're not in pain, Francis?" 
 
 He shook his head, slowly and restfully. A 
 thing was yet to do; for soon he roused, looked 
 on his tablet blindly, and printed a few words. 
 
 "All easy now. She floats. Way a cloud sails. 
 High. Plenty sun all round " 
 
 His pencil dropped. The task was growing too 
 hard, the distance too great. "She," the mystic 
 boat carrying a soul, had sailed very high in- 
 deed. 
 
 Again and again the house, throughout its fab- 
 ric, strained and chafed like a basket overloaded. 
 Between whiles, there was no more sound of the 
 sea ; hardly a sound of breathing. 
 
 "Francis, wait for me!" whispered the girl, in 
 sudden terror. "Wait for me !" 
 
 He could not possibly have heard, or hearing, 
 understood. So thought all the bystanders. Yet 
 he groped in his lap, until Arthur gave him the 
 pencil and once more held up the tablet. 
 
 "/ will be rounds he wrote, "somewhere. . . " 
 
 His sunburnt hand, strong even to death, re- 
 laxed and fell, but rose, trembled, and growing 
 white and stiff with resolution, made the last mark 
 on the page. 
 
NOMORESEA 249 
 
 "... Always." 
 
 The red blood welling within him, under the 
 red scarf which hid his breast, now choked and 
 overflowed some living channel. Godbolt grasped 
 the arms of his chair, essayed to lift his body, suf- 
 fered apparently the inevitable throe, and lay still. 
 The bright cloud-ship of his fancy had scraped her 
 keel, no more, in gaining the fair-way. 
 
 "Leave us alone," said Katherine. 
 
 Her grandfather led the young men down into 
 the garden. Anak followed them, joyfully think- 
 ing of the poem he had made, and how the village 
 would resound with it before that very midnight. 
 
 A lantern glowed beneath a rose-bush, and re- 
 vealed the skinny form of Satrap crouching there. 
 With a lump of gray coral in either hand, the 
 friendless boatman beat his forehead, stroke on 
 stroke without mercy; for so in ancient days his 
 forefathers had learned to dull their grief. 
 
 The girl in the house had no such method. 
 
CHAPTER V XIX 
 
 THE "ZSPERANCE" 
 
 Sunrise, next morning, gilded the gray sails 
 of a schooner that made her way through the 
 channel confidently, like one who knew her sound- 
 ings and her landmarks. Before she had opened 
 the lagoon full circle, one of her brown look-outs 
 hailed the woods on the port hand, expecting to 
 hear the usual answer, to see the swine-herds burst 
 out from some fernbrake, and run down the beach 
 waving eager arms. So always the swineherds 
 welcomed the family schooner Esperance. To- 
 day, however, the lookout called in vain, woods 
 and beach gave back a timorous echo; and the 
 Esperance, one hundred and eighty tons, Doctor 
 Corbin commanding, stole halfway across the shal- 
 low green light of the lagoon, brought up to an 
 anchor in six fathoms, and evoked no sound but 
 further echo, the flying rumble of her own chains. 
 
 "I don't like this," remarked her master, at the 
 250 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 251 
 
 ladder head. He was a round, red, burly little 
 man, with a fair beard close-cropped, and droll 
 blue eyes. His linen clothes were maidenly white, 
 his pumps and helmet crusted with pipe clay — all 
 fresh for shore and lady's company. 
 
 "I don't half like this," he repeated. "Not a 
 boat to meet us, Mr. Fraye. Devilish odd. No- 
 body fishing. And nobody stirring even on the 
 pantalan." 
 
 He looked anxiously down the ladder. A 
 clinker-built gig, shining with varnished cedar and 
 brasswork, lay ready to put off. A pair of sea- 
 going islanders in blue-and-white turbans held her 
 at oar's length from the vessel. 
 
 "My dear Corbin," laughed a handsome young 
 man, who lolled between the white-bound tiller- 
 ropes. "My dear Corbin, I had really begun to 
 hope that, now your anchor's down, you might dis- 
 charge your mind of dismal forebodings. The 
 voyage was fairly successful, in spite of them, you 
 must admit?" 
 
 Walter Fraye spoke with a gentle, drawling 
 voice, like one who tolerates a rather silly world. 
 A fine, slender, fresh-colored youth with delicate 
 features, and black eyebrows flexible as those of 
 an actor, he had something too much of his sis- 
 ter's beauty. Mouse-gray clothes and a narrow, 
 
252 THE FAR CRY 
 
 mouse-gray helmet made him appear slighter even 
 than he was, and very sleek. 
 
 11 'Twould do no harm," pursued the doctor- 
 captain, frowning thoughtfully, "to take a hand- 
 ful of men ashore. In case of trouble, Mr. 
 
 Fraye " 
 
 The youth was lighting a cigarette. He flipped 
 the match overboard, and observed lazily : 
 
 "Thank you, Corbin. I'm quite competent to 
 look after myself, in that case." 
 
 Corbin's honest face appeared to bulge and 
 redden. 
 
 "Very good, sir!" he replied loudly, and turn- 
 ing, stumped away aft. 
 
 "Not coming?" inquired Walter, sweetly. "As 
 you please, Doctor. Shall I send the gig back for 
 you? No? Very well." He shook the canvassed 
 knots of the tiller rope at his boatmen. "Dayung! 
 Give way, there f" 
 
 "God go with you!" muttered Corbin. 
 There was little piety about this ejaculation, for 
 it was in a boiling rage that the master of the 
 Esperance took refuge under her double awning, 
 ripped off topi, tunic, and pumps, and slatted him- 
 self into a rawhide chair. So, bare to the waist, 
 with bare feet elevated on the rail, he buried his 
 wrath in a paper novel, and in a mango, of which 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 253 
 
 the golden pulp outshone his beard as he bit, now 
 and then, slowly and ferociously. Soon afterward 
 he dropped his book, flung overboard the mango 
 stone and rind, and blew off the rest of his mental 
 steam. 
 
 "You call yourself her brother 1" Corbin glared 
 at his ten toes on the rail. u Her brother ! 'Com- 
 petent to look' — competent, yes, to look after 
 Number One. No fear. Silk-and-satin puppy! 
 Talking so mild, as if your tongue was a wad of 
 salve ! Waugh ! My word, I kept my temper the 
 whole voyage, anyhow I" 
 
 Meanwhile, unaware that any tempers might 
 be ruffled, Walter Fraye had steered his course for 
 the jetty, lounging with a pleasant fragrance of 
 Cavalla tobacco in his nostrils, urbane satisfaction 
 in his heart. The young man took things urbanely 
 always; never more so than on this bright, spring- 
 like morning, as he was rowed home in triumph, a 
 fortnight ahead of the appointed time, with great 
 good news for his family. Let grandfather and 
 Katherine show all the exultation. 
 
 "Time they should," he reflected, smiling. 
 "They were quite in the wrong, as I told them 
 when I left. The old governor has some rather 
 peppery words to eat, I fancy." 
 
 A glorious bit of weather, he noted: the lagoon 
 
254 THEFARCRY 
 
 such a vernal green — green as young buds — that 
 color which one sees in a French picture of 
 spring; the shore woods sodark and virile, painted 
 flat; and the sky beyond, glowing without a cloud, 
 so blue. 
 
 "A regular 'penitential blue,' " he sighed. 
 "Good phrase, 'penitential.' Wonderful phrase, 
 that of Pater's." 
 
 He flung away his cigarette, to swing the boat 
 alongside the jetty ladder. 
 
 "Ati ati! Bail" he told the admiring rowers; 
 then dropped the tiller guides, and climbed the 
 ladder. 
 
 The Esperance never came home and sent in 
 her boat but half the village thronged this land- 
 ing stage. To-day not a soul had come there, or 
 to the beach, or to the shadowy depth of the gar- 
 den. 
 
 "It is odd!" Walter, sleek and deliberate, 
 sauntered up the narrow platform with a feeling 
 of disappointment. U I do think somebody might 
 have met us. They can't all be asleep." 
 
 Entering the grove, he heard a sound which 
 made him pause and listen: a murmur of many 
 voices from somewhere beyond the house — the 
 stir and rustle and subdued buzzing of a multi- 
 tude, then a great voice uplifted in chanting, like 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 255 
 
 the voice of a priest or a poet singing his rhap- 
 sody. 
 
 "Corbin was right," he acknowledged. "It's 
 devilish odd." 
 
 Craning his neck, and peering over the shrub- 
 bery tops, he saw in a glade to the left of the gar- 
 den all the villagers standing motionless, close 
 packed in the sunshine, wearing their brightest 
 clothes and holiday garlands. A swarthy giant 
 reared and swayed in their midst, high on a moss- 
 covered mound of brain-coral, as though declaim- 
 ing from a green velvet stage. It was Anak 
 singing the first canto of his epic. 
 
 "That buck nigger? What's he doing?" 
 thought Walter Fraye. "It's not like him to be 
 noisy. Has there been a ship in? Could he have 
 got liquor?" 
 
 A few words came through the stillness, a frag- 
 ment of the chant of Anak: 
 
 "What said the Mighty One, what the Deliverer? 
 Lo, he was dumb, like a sheep at the shearing. 
 Death mocked Our Captain, fawned on him, 
 
 leering, 
 Ready to strike. For us he must die » • . n 
 
 Walter turned away in disgust. 
 
256 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "The fool's got religion, and it's gone to his 
 head. Anak used to be quiet enough." 
 
 But why did all that concourse remain still, 
 stone still, drinking in the words of a wild singer? 
 Why should the island be empty and silent else- 
 where? Fraye shook his head, uneasily; then hur- 
 ried through alleys of rose bush and honeysuckle, 
 meeting no one, growing more and more dubious, 
 till he ran up the steps of the veranda. 
 
 "Oh, here you are, then!" he called, in relief. 
 
 Four persons occupied the far end of the ve- 
 randa, to the right. His grandfather stood talk- 
 ing with two strangers — two sad-faced young men, 
 one of whom carried a broken arm in a sling. 
 Katherine, leaning against a pillar, seemed to 
 watch and hearken after something inside the 
 house. All four turned toward the new-comer in 
 the same listless way, and regarded him with the 
 same listless air, as though he caused some trivial 
 interruption. 
 
 "Back, are you?" remarked his grandfather in 
 an undertone, extending a casual hand. "This is 
 Walter, Mr. Tisdale — and Mr. Wallace. You've 
 heard me speak of my grandson." 
 
 Walter stared. He could always pass on a 
 snub, however, to men of his own age. 
 
 "How are you?" he said, nodding barrenly 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 257 
 
 as he went by them. "Hello, Kit, old fellow!" 
 
 This was a strange and very flat home-coming. 
 Where were the heated questions he had foreseen 
 and prepared cool answers for? Katherine, his 
 own tom-boy sister, instead of crying out and 
 rushing, silently turned, walked toward him with 
 a dream-like dignity, kissed him once on the cheek, 
 and stood back from him. Her pallor, her pas- 
 sive, worn-out expectancy, gave him a shock, 
 which was not lessened when he saw her face 
 change, quicken, flame into a haggard semblance 
 of its old brightness. His return had meant noth- 
 ing to her, at first; now it meant a great deal, but 
 not what he had the right to expect. Her brown 
 eyes, terribly large, and kindling with wild hope, 
 met and searched him as though he had been a 
 stranger bringing a strange message. 
 
 "Where's Corbin?" she asked. 
 
 "Aboard schooner, the old misanthrope," he 
 replied. "Why, Kit, have you nothing to say to a 
 chap?" 
 
 She cut him short, twining her fingers together 
 at her breast, with a gesture full of pain and 
 hurry. 
 
 "The gig, then?" she demanded. "Where's the 
 gig? Rowers? At the jetty?" 
 
 Walter gave her stare for stare. 
 
258 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Of course it's at the jetty," he drawled. "They 
 brought me ashore. Naturally." 
 
 Katherine caught from his hand the mouse- 
 gray helmet, and clapping it on her head as she 
 passed him, without a word ran down the steps, 
 down the garden path, toward the lagoon. 
 
 Her brother, aggrieved and astonished, watched 
 her disappear among the tall, yellow-spattered 
 croton leaves. 
 
 "I hope you've come in time, Walter," said old 
 Fraye. "I hope you're not too late, my boy!" 
 
 The youth wheeled angrily. 
 
 "Why, sir," he retorted, in his blandest voice, 
 "I thought I'd done more. I thought I was bring- 
 ing news. It was a rotten stupid voyage with old 
 Corbin, but never mind that. You may care to 
 know that I reached my friend Laurie by the 
 cable. Government House has acted, he tells me, 
 at last. Things are definitely set in motion; so 
 much so that his chief has arranged with the senior 
 naval to send us a gunboat of sorts within the 
 month; the flag is to be raised for you, letters- 
 patent read out, and a grant-in-fee handed you. 
 We so often wished for this very thing, sir, I 
 thought you might be pleased to hear it's almost 
 on the way." 
 
 He paused. This neat and debonair report was 
 to be his triumph. 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 259 
 
 "Ah, very good," sighed his grandfather, 
 vaguely. "Well done, I dare say." The old man 
 cast about, reaching fretfully behind him, for the 
 nearest chair, in which he sat down with great de- 
 liberation. "It doesn't much matter, now." 
 
 Walter grew righteously indignant. 
 
 "Ah, well," said he, thrusting his hands into 
 his pockets, then coldly studying Wallace and Tis- 
 dale from top to toe. "If you're busy with your 
 friends, and don't care to hear what's been doing, 
 perhaps I'd better go change into fresh togs." 
 
 He turned away toward the house-door. 
 
 "Stop. Your room's taken," said old Fraye. 
 "There's a poor chap lying in there who's not long 
 for this world." 
 
 Tisdale came forward, with an air of apology. 
 
 "We moved your things," he told Walter, "into 
 the bachelors' lines. You'll find the whole lay-out 
 there, ready for you, Mr. Fraye. Pardon me. I 
 must go back on duty. Rob, you'd better make 
 Anak quit singing, or move away farther. We 
 need quiet." 
 
 And Tisdale silently dodged into the house. 
 Wallace went lumbering on his errand. They left 
 the veranda free for family talk and privacy. 
 
 "Upon my word !" exclaimed Walter, watching 
 them go. "What's happened to you, Governor? 
 Taken lodgers ?" 
 
26o THEFARCRY 
 
 The governor tugged his white moustache, and 
 looked steadily, grimly, at his handsome young 
 grandchild. 
 
 "Sit down," he ordered. "Many things have 
 happened. Forget yourself a moment. Mace, for 
 one thing, is dead." 
 
 Walter was genuinely startled. 
 
 "What?" he cried. "Dead? The poor old 
 blighter! Sorry." 
 
 Thomas Masterman Fraye made a sour face. 
 
 "Our loss," he grunted, "is hell's gain. Sit 
 down, and let me do the talking for once in a 
 way." 
 
 Aboard the Esperance, Dr. Corbin still kept 
 his bare toes cooling on the taffrail and his cropped 
 yellow beard pointing into the yellow novel. He 
 seemed the picture of a man reading. Yet he had 
 not even turned a page, or understood a word 
 among the printed lines; for he lay thinking, or 
 rather wondering, as any strong but inarticulate 
 man wonders, how curious and deep and confused 
 are those damned things called emotions. Corbin 
 felt moved. 
 
 "It's a funny feeling," he told himself. "Old 
 enough to know better." 
 
 He was old enough to know that it made no dif- 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 261 
 
 ference what portion of land or sea his jolly round 
 body happened to cross. He could sit in the Hong 
 Kong club, or the Harmonia, or the Ermita, or 
 the Modderlust, and get up and go out and never 
 be missed. He could sail a ship to beat Vasco de 
 Gama ; remember enough schooling to play ship's 
 doctor at a pinch; entertain his passengers, too; 
 keep not only his own temper, but theirs ; get along 
 well, bah, even with these Walters; and at the 
 end of any voyage, say the polite thing, shake 
 hands, and be forgotten all round. 
 
 "Don't matter where I am," reflected Corbin. 
 "I'm the kind of man, say, at a dinner party, you 
 don't know whether he was there or not. Funny." 
 
 Still, for all that, whenever Corbin anchored in 
 the lagoon of Pulo Princess, he felt his surround- 
 ings to be tremendously significant. At Pulo Prin- 
 cess he became shy, and with good reason so. The 
 atoll was not like other places. Here he had 
 made an ass of himself, been presumptuous, and 
 must live it down. No mistake about that; he 
 must live it down. Going ashore on Fraye's Atoll 
 and behaving like the quiet old stick people 
 thought him to be, was a task that called forth all 
 his reserves of courage and cheerfulness. Yet no 
 sooner did the Esperance anchor in this green lake, 
 and her skipper sit, as now, communing with his 
 
262 THE FAR CRY ' 
 
 heart, than he grew conscious of profound and un- 
 deniable stirrings, a rebellious joy that had no war- 
 rant in fact, and a warm, inward persuasion that 
 he was at home and welcome. 
 
 "Nonsense," growled Corbin. u You only make 
 her uncomfortable when you go on shore. Stay 
 aboard." 
 
 Just as he formed this conclusion, he heard the 
 chock of oars alongside, and the crew of the gig 
 talking. Among their voices he recognized an- 
 other voice which brought him out of his chair. 
 
 "Doctor Corbin !" it hailed. 
 
 Corbin pitched away his novel. 
 
 "She ? No. She out here ?" he thought, staring 
 distractedly along the deck. "And me half 
 naked!" 
 
 He struggled into his white tunic, buttoned it, 
 and crammed his bare feet into his canvas pumps. 
 
 "Doctor Corbin! Doctor! Please come!" 
 cried the voice. 
 
 He ran forward to the waist of the ship, and 
 popped his head over the port bulwarks. 
 
 "We need you," said Katherine. 
 
 Snow-white, except for her brother's gray hel- 
 met, she sat below there in the slender gig, hold- 
 ing the rudder-lines, and looking up. The dazzle 
 of varnished cedar, the rowers' colored kilts, the 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 263 
 
 translucent green background, made her a creature 
 of festival, a holiday shape from some regatta. 
 Corbin lost himself in the delight of seeing her, 
 though it was less like reality than like the dear- 
 est and most impossible thought come true. She, 
 of her own accord, to be here visiting the 
 schooner? He marveled, and could not believe. 
 The consolation of his solitude, the figure pervad- 
 ing his regret, sat there and appealed to him with 
 living eyes. It was not right : she should not have 
 come alone . . . 
 
 "Please hurry," she said. 
 
 Honest Corbin returned to himself, and knew 
 that self for an old fool. 
 
 "What's wrong?" he called, quickly, "Your 
 grandfather? Worse?" 
 
 Katherine shook her head. 
 
 "No. It's Francis. I mean," she added, "the 
 captain. Gunshot wounds. Do come." 
 
 "Half a moment," cried the skipper of the Es- 
 perance, promptly. "My bag's in the medicine 
 chest." 
 
 He ran aft as though the ship were on fire, and 
 bounded down into his cabin without touching the 
 companion stairs. Next moment he was at the 
 rail again, carrying a leather satchel, and putting 
 on his helmet as he thundered down the ladder. 
 
264 THE FAR CRY 
 
 "Give way! Dayung!" He tumbled into the 
 gig. "Row, boys. Chupput-chupput !" 
 
 While waiting for him, she had turned the boat's 
 head for shore; now, as the oars caught the water 
 with a racing start, Corbin perceived that the 
 rowers already had their command for speed. The 
 gig leaped and trembled under their stroke. Knee 
 to knee with Katherine, the skipper sat frightened 
 by what he saw. It was not the mortal whiteness 
 of her face, or the blazing brown eyes, so dark 
 and large, that daunted him; it was her look — 
 the look which transformed the quiet and rather 
 timid girl he remembered, into a very lovely but 
 fierce and ambiguous woman. Her beauty went 
 through him like a sword, true steel of the ice- 
 brook's temper, white, flashing, terrible. And 
 yet the look plainly told him, beyond mistake, that 
 of all the world he, Corbin the humble, was now 
 the presence most welcome and necessary to this 
 woman's soul. He could not understand, but he 
 knew it, and was at once alarmed and exalted. 
 
 Over the gray helmet the masts of the schooner 
 dwindled in the distance, before she spoke. She 
 held the tiller-ropes as if gripping her courage. 
 
 "Doctor," she said, with difficulty, "you once 
 asked me a question." 
 
 Corbin's heart thumped faster than the flying 
 oars. 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 265 
 
 "I know I did," he groaned. 
 
 "Don't think I'm cruel," she added, hastily. 
 
 He could not bear this at close range, in the 
 pent-up isolation of the boat. He hung his head 
 for a moment, studying the old brown leather bag 
 in his lap. 
 
 "Miss Fraye," he began; then managed to 
 laugh, and look up again. "Dear child, you 
 couldn't be if you tried. It's not in you. What's 
 the trouble? Tell me, if I " 
 
 "Because now I understand what it meant to 
 you," she went on. The hardness melted from 
 her face and eyes ; that mien of the resolute woman 
 vanished; and here before him sat the young Kath- 
 erine he worshiped, nearer than she had ever come, 
 and trembling with pity and tenderness. "I 
 couldn't understand," she said. "Not till . . . 
 this came. You were kinder to me, and wiser, 
 
 than " She broke off, checked by the futility 
 
 of words. "My own father and mother could 
 have done no more." 
 
 Corbin cleared his throat, and fumbled with the 
 metal clasps of the bag. 
 
 "You told me, at the time, that the right man 
 would come," said Katherine. "I never knew 
 what it meant to you. Not till now. He did 
 come." 
 
266 THEFARCRY 
 
 Corbin looked up quickly. This early morning 
 voyage across the smiling lagoon seemed to have 
 lasted for ages, without beginning or end. He 
 felt a strange fatigue, a conviction that he was no 
 longer young, and that things tired him. The old 
 fool was wiser, but old in earnest. Whirlpools 
 from the rowers' blades went spinning past, round 
 and smooth little pits revolving in the green glass 
 of the water, on which floated oar-drops white 
 and perfect, like scattering pearls. He watched 
 them go for a moment, then remembered his 
 duty. 
 
 "I'm glad!" he exclaimed, with all his heart. 
 "I'm very, very glad for you." 
 
 They regarded each other steadily. 
 
 "He's dying," said Katherine. "In Walter's 
 room. Oh, you mustn't let him die ! He can't ! 
 You— you?" 
 
 Her voice rose in a wail. The hot breath of 
 the island stole across the water and enveloped 
 them, the boat ran smoothly into the glare from 
 the concave beach, and swung alongside the drip- 
 ping foot of the jetty ladder. Corbin rose. He 
 knew that she was weeping, but did not see her. 
 
 "I won't," he promised. 
 
 To the core he felt, and acknowledged, his own 
 sickening incompetence. He was only a stray, 
 
THE "ESPERANCE" 267 
 
 a renegade from life, who could neither heal nor 
 comfort. But worst of all, he knew how hard 
 their talk had been for her. 
 
 u Up we go," he cried, obstinately. "We won't 
 let him." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 TWILIGHT 
 
 Four days later, at sunset, Arthur Tisdale 
 stood in the big room alone. He was there for 
 a purpose, having slipped away from Wallace and 
 the bachelors' bungalow, and come once more to 
 look at something. 
 
 Daylight was already gone from the room, leav- 
 ing a soft obscurity along the floor and night in 
 the corners. The thing that had drawn him there 
 hung on a plaited wall from which the color of 
 burnt gold was fading. 
 
 "She did that well," thought Arthur, as he took 
 his range between the two doorways. "She did it 
 marvelously." 
 
 The thing — a portrait — looked out at him from 
 the dusk. Unframed, unfinished, it was the canvas 
 that Katherine had painted by the sea beach, not 
 many evenings ago. She had done well, indeed. 
 From a hazy limbo of green and brown, as from 
 
 268 
 
TWILIGHT 269 
 
 deep sylvan twilight, Godbolt himself was glanc- 
 ing forth, askance, in his old familiar way. The 
 painting revealed his face, and that only, except 
 where a touch of gray, like the glimmer of a dull 
 breastplate, showed that his body had been large 
 and solid. 
 
 "There you are, Sainty, for all time," thought 
 Arthur. "It's good — but not the whole of you." 
 
 He stood wondering, a plain man confronted 
 by the greater plainness of art. What was that 
 he missed, while he admired? 
 
 A sound of voices broke and dispersed his 
 thought. He was not alone, as he had hoped to 
 be; for someone had spoken, and someone else 
 replied, outside the open windows of the back 
 veranda. He heard the voice of Katherine. 
 
 "Waiting?" it said. "But that is so long, 
 Grandfather." 
 
 Old Thomas Fraye allowed several moments to 
 pass. 
 
 "My child," came his tranquil answer, "I have 
 waited about fifty years, all told." 
 
 Another silence followed. 
 
 "But that," said the girl's voice, "that is very 
 long." 
 
 "Why, no!" replied the elder, bravely. "Not 
 so long. Time flies, and there are many persons 
 
270 THE FAR CRY 
 
 to share it with. We're all waiting, Sweetheart. 
 We do what we can in the meantime. But the 
 truth is, all of us are waiting." 
 
 The speakers remained unseen in their quiet 
 corner. Loth to overhear, but very loth to go, 
 Arthur stole one more look at the countenance of 
 his friend. Something, perhaps the gathering 
 darkness, had come to his aid; for now he under- 
 stood what the portrait lacked. There was the 
 man Godbolt, ready to speak, and yet divested of 
 all speech, of all rough, uncouth, daily imperfec- 
 tion. The dross had gone. Lingering in that twi- 
 light, he chose only to unveil his face — his face, 
 kind and proud, sensitive, sad, and loyal. 
 
 "The spirit," thought Arthur, "without the 
 body." And of a sudden, the old truth pierced 
 him for the first time. "The spirit is greater." 
 
 A footfall sounded in the room. He turned, 
 and saw Walter Fraye approaching. 
 
 "Good thing, that," observed the sleek new- 
 comer, with a nod at the portrait. "Don't you find 
 it so? I never knew him, of course, but as a piece 
 of work I think Kit has done herself uncommonly 
 proud." 
 
 Tisdale did not reply. For a time the two 
 young men stood side by side. 
 
 "Handsome devil," continued Walter, the critic. 
 
TWILIGHT 271 
 
 ''Rather like Bonny Dundee, don't you think? 
 Without the lovelocks, of course." 
 
 Tisdale agreed, for courtesy. 
 
 "Odd stick he must have been," said Fraye, "by 
 all account. Good chap, but not in any sense a — 
 well, not just one of us, eh? Pity to go get him- 
 self killed for nothing." 
 
 Twilight now veiled the face from all observers. 
 
 "I'm not sure it was a pity," rejoined Arthur, 
 with infinite forbearance. "I'd rather not dis- 
 cuss He was my friend. He's dying." 
 
 And Arthur left the room. He had some vague 
 intention of going back to join Wallace — good, 
 honest, dull old Rob. In the garden, however, he 
 came to a standstill, and remained there, think- 
 ing. Pity? It was no pity. Walter Fraye had 
 set him in a rage, not only on his friend's behalf, 
 but on his own; for in that young urbanity he had 
 discovered himself as in a living mirror, facile, 
 cold-hearted, pleased with his own freedom. 
 
 The garden held an old-time spice. He looked 
 on the ground before him, and saw a bed of clus- 
 tered colors, dim in the evening light. 
 
 "Sainty's gilly-flowers," he said aloud. "Still 
 going on, and still so pretty. I must tell Kather- 
 ine." And to himself: "I wish I could feel 
 sure as Katherine does, about that waiting." 
 
272 THEFARCRY 
 
 While he stood inhaling a memory, doubting the 
 future, there came as it were news from beyond. 
 Many a time Tisdale had heard the sea, as a weary 
 noise ; but now in the garden, in the flowered gloom 
 and sweetness, he was aware of a vast, uncertain 
 thrill, a far cry sounding through the eastern trees. 
 A new voice, yet very old, it called him without 
 haste. 
 
 The young man laughed. 
 
 "I understand," he said. "We overtake our 
 friends. All right, old fellow, I begin at the start- 
 ing point." 
 
 He was about to turn away, when somebody 
 came slowly toward him from the house. Tisdale 
 glanced thither, and saw a white figure approach- 
 ing, with such blind steps that it tottered from the 
 path and brushed the bordering leaves. It stopped. 
 Something told him this exhausted one was Doc- 
 tor Corbin. The long fight had ended. 
 
 While the man faltered there, a second white 
 figure came gliding like a strip of mist. 
 
 "Wait! Oh, wait!" called a low voice, broken 
 with weeping. 
 
 The voice was that of Katherine. She darted 
 closer, and with an inarticulate sound, seemed 
 ready to throw her arms round Corbin. That 
 weary figure shrank backward. 
 
TWILIGHT 273 
 
 "Not me" said the skipper's voice, harshly. 
 "Not me. I'm tough, but I couldn't bear that. 
 He . . . He's a very fortunate man, and deserves 
 it. Yes, by God, he does deserve it. I beg your 
 pardon, poor child. I'm just a little bit used up. 
 Where's Rob Wallace? Think I need a smoke or 
 something." 
 
 Tisdale heard the doctor muttering still as he 
 passed, in the gloom, toward the bachelors' house. 
 
 Katherine came straight forward. The young 
 man drew aside, but as their shadows met, she put 
 forth a hand. 
 
 "He's going to live," she said. 
 
 Arthur could not find a word. 
 
 "Yes," said Katherine, as if answering that si- 
 lence. "He is going to live." 
 
 She passed by, and was gone among the other 
 shadows. Arthur lost the white blur of her gar- 
 ments, then saw it again, or thought he saw it. By 
 its motion, she seemed to be kneeling in the path, 
 burying her face among the clove gilly-flowers. 
 
 A belated fisherman rowing home across the 
 lagoon, out where distance glimmered, began to 
 halloo and sing the new Song of Anak; but his 
 lonely rejoicing came at intervals, overborne and 
 belittled by the sterner voice of the surf. 
 
 THE END 
 
YB397 
 
 HSIZol 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY