Joan of the Island/Chapter 1
JOAN OF THE ISLAND
CHAPTER I
FLOTSAM FROM THE FOUR WINDS
THE door of the skipper's cabin opened slowly, and the head of a man emerged. There was something sinister in the way he paused and listened. For a few moments he was irresolute. Then he glanced back over his shoulder into the cabin, and a queer, grim little smile flashed over his face. He remained irresolute no longer.
Without a sound he closed the door behind him, and moving stealthily, made his way to the deck, where he walked in the direction of the after wheel-house.
Only the soft swish of the water as it rippled along the sides of the steamer, and the steady thud thud of the propeller. A fitful moon occasionally glared down on a dead calm sea. Up on the bridge of the Four Winds a Kanaka helmsman mechanically kept her sou'east-by-south, and wondered vaguely about a little brown baby that ought to be able to swim by now. The officer on watch was leaning in a corner of the bridge in his shirt sleeves, sucking an empty pipe, with two more hours of monotony to kill before he could turn in. A thousand flying fish shot up near the vessel's prow, glittered in the moon beams for a space, and sank back into the depths. Astern a lone gull sailed steadily over the wake.
The man who had come from the skipper's cabin paused when he reached a small boat which hung in-board on its davits. With fingers that had suddenly become strangely awkward he started to loosen one of the ropes. The block squeaked as a few inches of manila ran through it, and the man muttered a curse. The night was too still. He glanced over his shoulder apprehensively and scowled. It would be impossible to get the boat overboard, however careful he might be, without fetching half the crew tumbling aft to ascertain what was wrong.
He thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets, winced, and drew one hand out again. Then he fumbled in the boat in the darkness until he fished out a folded cork life-belt This he laid on the deck. Without further delay he started to unlace his shoes, but his quick ear caught foot-falls.
Like lightning he whipped up the life-belt and moved toward the after rail. There he halted long enough to make sure the steps were coming nearer, and then he lifted one long leg over the rail. Beneath, the water, churned to creamy whiteness by the propeller, was gleaming with phosphorus. The screw would cleave him in half if he fouled it. A man needed nerves of iron to drop into that death trap, and his nerves were none too steady at the moment. Only a fraction of a second he hesitated, and then, gripping the life-belt firmly, he slid down into the boiling wake of the Four Winds.
It seemed an eternity before the swirling water ceased to spin him round beneath the surface, but even while his lungs felt as though they were bursting for one good breath of sweet air, his chief thought was that the propeller had missed him. When at last, with a mighty effort, he raised his mouth above the foam-flecked surface and gasped, the lights of the Four Winds were dwindling in the distance. He could hear the steady thud thud thud of the screw, which was driving the ship further away every second, but otherwise everywhere there was deathly stillness.
He was alone with the stars in the middle of the Sulu Sea.
For a few moments the man lay in the water, supported by the life-belt in his arms, watching the disappearance of the steamer, as though reluctant to begin life anew in his peculiar circumstances until the tramp had gone. Soon she was a mile away, and her engines were running as regularly as ever. There was small chance of the vessel stopping now, and the man gave a grunt of satisfaction. He reached down to one shoe, unlaced it, and kicked it off. The thing was sinking in about a mile of water, he reflected, as he tackled the other shoe. His socks went next, but then he stopped undressing. He now only had on thin trousers and a shirt, neither of which would counterbalance the buoyancy of the life-belt which he opened out and fastened round his waist. For the present he was not physically uncomfortable. The water was warm—almost tepid—and though he moved his arms and legs slowly as a swimmer mechanically does in water, it needed no exertion to keep afloat.
He wondered vaguely what would happen. Of course there were the sharks. There are always plenty of them in the Sulu Sea, but they are not all man-eaters. A shiver crept down his spine, and then he banished the thought of them from his mind. If they came it would soon be over at any rate; but he hoped they would not come.
Presently he turned over and lay on his back, staring up at the stars. It was horribly quiet. He had no idea that such stillness could be. Not a quiver stirred the glassy surface. It was eerie.
From where he lay, with eyes a few inches above the water, the steamer was now only a dot on the horizon. He wondered who would go into the captain's cabin first and find—it. Probably Carson, the second mate, when nobody relieved him on the bridge. Carson might get a shock but he wouldn't be particularly sorry. A brute like Captain Murdock-was better out of the way anyhow, the man in the water reflected. There was no remorse in his heart. He had never killed anyone before, and he sincerely hoped he never would again. Probably he was not to get the chance. But it wasn't murder—not murder in his eyes, that is. Of course nobody on board would believe it. Nor would anyone in any civilized court of law, in face of the evidence. He and Captain Murdock had been at daggers drawn for months. It was just natural antagonism such as springs up between natures which grate on one another. Murdock was a bully, with the temper of a fiend and the manners of a pig. Moreover he was part owner of the Four Winds, which fact he never forgot, and he took advantage of it to the full. The friction began soon after the Four Winds sailed out of New York harbour, and constant nagging, extending over many months, had only made matters worse. Several times they had quarrelled openly. While floating in the water the man remembered over-hearing a significant remark made by one of the crew.
"Either Legs or the Old Man will start shooting afore this trip ends, you mark my words." It was the boatswain who delivered the prophecy. It did not end that way, though the result came to much the same thing.
The swimmer's eyes picked out the silvery dots, far overhead, that formed the Southern Cross. Sailor-fashion, he began from that to take his bearings. Over there, between those two bright fairy lamps suspended from the sky near the horizon, was the east, where the sun would come up in a few hours. Yes, he would see it again. He sincerely hoped to see it the next time it rose also, but things might be becoming unpleasant by then.
It was a long way to the nearest land. Powerful swimmer though he was, it would never have occurred to him to try to reach it unaided, but with a life-belt on the thing became less impossible. He was going to try, at any rate. He could rest without sinking when he chose. There were a few scattered islands away to the west. The Four Winds' course was to have brought her within twenty miles of them. It must have been just short of four bells when he dropped over the stern of the steamer. The Four Winds was making a little better than nine knots. Maybe he was now twenty-five miles, as the crow flies, from the nearest island. It was only a dot on the chart, and it was doubtful whether it was inhabited. But it was a secure foothold, which one could not say of water a mile deep. And, moreover, there were other islands.
Largely by guesswork he set his course, and then rolling his great frame over, struck out with slow, powerful strokes to the westward. It was no consolation to reflect that some current might be carrying him in a totally wrong direction, but on the contrary it was just as likely to be taking him toward his goal.
For two hours he kept up the regular stroke with effortless ease, and then for a rest, turned over on to his back. The exercise had helped to steady his nerves. While he lay there the sun rode up over the sky-line and infused the spirit of hope into him. It was a perfect dawn. The world in which the man off the Four Winds had lived recently had not been a particularly perfect one, but that was finished with, anyway—utterly, irrevocably finished with.
He turned over again, and for a long time breasted the oily sea. He was getting tired, but it helped to keep his mind off thoughts which were none too pleasant. He was growing thirsty, with the brine constantly kissing his lips. He watched the sun creep steadily upward until it hung like a ball of fire almost directly overhead. The strain was beginning to tell even on his enormous strength. It was now eighteen hours since he had eaten anything. Occasionally he was annoyed to find his memory playing quaint tricks—catching up incidents of his boyhood and parading them before him now when all his thoughts should be concentrated on the effort of cleaving his way further through the ocean. There was a girl with greenish eyes when he was eighteen. Allwyn? No, she wouldn't have a man's name. Eileen—that was it. Something happened to her—or was it some other girl?
His right hand was hurting all the time, and constant swimming did not improve it. Murdock did that with his chin.
The swimmer rested many times during the day, but the sea dazzled him. There were half a dozen suns, all blinding and scorching, and yet he knew that there was really only one sun, and that he must keep on swimming as long as he could pick out the genuine from the counterfeits, or lose his sense of direction altogether. He was still worrying absurdly about the girl with the greenish eyes when the sun set, in what was clearly a gigantic bath of blood.
After that the man grew confused. The thirst was there all the time. He moistened his tongue deliberately once or twice with the water that wet his face when he took an awkward stroke, but it did not mend matters. Also his right hand was very painful now. These things he understood only in a dreamy fashion. His predominant thought—when he did think rationally—was that he had to keep his heavy arms and legs moving, because somewhere ahead there was land. His brain seemed to have slipped a cog on the subject of time. He tried to calculate how many hours this struggle had been going on, but he could not work it out, and he was resting, wrestling with the problem, when his knee hit something hard.
That brought him back with a crash to the world of reality. He put his feet down and found there was but half a fathom of water. Dimly the outline of a low reef could be made out not far off. His strength was almost gone, but he managed to stagger ashore, and then stretched his six foot frame gratefully on a bed of seaweed. Thirsty and exhausted though he was, he fell into a sleep which became almost a stupor, and still another dawn was near when he opened his eyes.
It was little more than a ledge on which he lay; probably the highest spring tides submerged it entirely. But his interest was not centered on the ledge. About three miles away, distinct in the growing light, was an island on which cocoa palms grew, an island on which there must be water. And the man craved for water as he had never craved for anything in his life.
He rose unsteadily to his feet, and walked off the reef. His limbs were stiff with the long swim, but he struck out eagerly and in less than an hour dragged himself up on to a silvery beach. Away to the right there was a creek into which a stream trickled from over a rock. Lurching and stumbling, the man hurried over the sand. Then he lay full length on the ground and buried his head in the water.