Chapter V: Book II: No Man's Land (3)

So Wulfrey had the day to himself, and had time, which the labours of the previous days had not permitted him, to consider the situation in all its aspects.

So far they had been marvellously favoured, without doubt. Ten days ago they were swinging up and down on the galley-roof inside the cage of the dead ship's ribs, possessed of nothing but their bare lives, and those but doubtfully. And here they were, provided for in every respect, with comforts which shipwrecked men had no right to expect, and with unlimited further stores to draw upon. They could live without fear....

But what a life, after all. Eating, drinking, sleeping,--raking over the wreckage for possible plunder that was useless to them,--rambling among the rabbits and the sandhills. Quarrelling in time, maybe. Perhaps it was a good thing there was a ship for each of them.

He was not himself of a quarrelsome disposition. The mate, he thought, might be difficult to put up with if he took a crooked turn. But it would be the height of folly for two men, bound together by ill-fortune, and to this bare bank for all time, to fall out. Every circumspection within his power he resolved to exercise, and so far, indeed, his companion had given him no cause to mistrust or doubt him.

But he had a somewhat discomforting feeling that he knew very little of the real man that lay beneath that saturnine exterior, that there might be elemental depths there which would surprise him if they came to be revealed. This Macro that he knew was to him something in the nature of a sleeping volcano, outwardly quiet but full of hidden fires.

He could imagine no likely grounds for dispute between them. Each worked for the common good, and so far they had shared all things equally and without question. But how would it be as the weeks dragged into months, and the months into years?

So far the rifling of the wreckage had afforded the mate all the outlet he needed for his activities. In ministering to the cravings of the riever spirit that was strong in him it had also supplied their wants in overwhelming abundance. The longer it kept him busy the better, and if it yielded him plunder of value he was entirely welcome to it.

Wulfrey could not imagine his discovering anything out there which could by any possibility lead to any serious difference between them. And yet, in spite of all that, from little glimpses he had caught at times of the strange wild, hidden nature of the man, he was not without doubts as to his absolute congeniality as a sole companion for the rest of his days.

In short he had a vague feeling that, if by any chance they came to loggerheads, Macro might prove an extremely unpleasant person to be shut up with, within bounds so limited as this great bank of sand.

He recognised such feelings, however, as unnecessarily morbid, and ascribed them to the general murkiness of the outlook and over-weariness from the exertions of the last few days. So he tumbled overboard on to the new raft and paddled to the nearer shore, and set off for a brisk walk over the sandhills and along the beach, in search of a more hopeful frame of mind.

Why could they not build a boat? Macro said the coast of Nova Scotia was but a hundred miles or so away. A hundred miles was no great affair, and there was wood among that pile enough to build a thousand boats. So far, indeed, they had not come upon any tools except the rusty axe, for tool-chests probably sank at once on the outer banks where the ships went to pieces.

Still, he would suggest it to Macro. It might prove a further outlet for his energies. If he should by chance find plunder of value out there he might, when he was satiated, favour the idea of an attempt at escape. In fact, plunder without any attempt to utilise it would be absurd.

The opportunity of making his own position clear, and thereby obviating any cause for dispute, occurred that same day.

When, in the afternoon, he saw the mate coming slowly along before the wind, he paddled over to the spit to meet him and found him in great spirits.

"Man! it's been a great day, and if ye'd been there ye'd have had your chance. I lit on some graand things. Wait while I show you----"

"Let's get 'em all aboard first. They'll keep, and I'll be bound you're tired and hungry."

"Hungert as a wolf, but finding siccan things takes the tired out o' one," and his black eyes sparkled over his finds, and he must go on telling about them as they worked.

"It was down under where we found yon Duke o' Kent box. I spied another, and then more, mebbe there's, more yet down below."

"More fancy coats?"

"Ah!--and some with jewelled stars on 'em and swords with fancy hilts. I'll show you when we get aboard."

"You didn't come across any tools, I suppose?"

"Tools? No. What would we want tools for?"

"I was wondering if it might not be possible to build some kind of a boat and get across to Nova Scotia."

"We're safer here than trying that, I'm thinking."

"When you've got all there is to be got out there you'll want to get home and enjoy it----"

"Man! It'd take a hunderd years to go through it all. It's bin piling up there since ever this bank silted up."

"Oh well, we don't want to stop here a hundred years, that's certain. What's the good of it all if you can't make any use of it?"

"It's graand to handle anyway."

And when they had eaten, he opened some of his bundles and displayed his treasures,--a jewelled 'George,' roughly cut from some Garter-knight's court-coat, several smaller decorations, all more or less ornamented with precious stones, three dress-swords with mountings, in ivory and gold, a small wooden box lined with sodden blue velvet in which were half a dozen rings, some of which from the size of the stones and the massiveness of their setting, seemed to Wulfrey of considerable value.

"They're worth something, all those," said Macro, as he handled them with loving exultation.

"Ay, if you could get them home and turn them into money. I don't see what use they're going to be to you here," said Wulfrey, fiddling his own string again.

"They're fine to have anyway."

"I'd sooner have another pipe and some more tobacco than the whole of them."

"Ye can have that too," and he rooted in another bundle and produced both. "They're oot a dead man's chest and they're wet. But he's no use for 'em and they'll dry. So there ye are. Ye dinnot care for jewels?" and he looked at Wulfrey wonderingly.

"As to that, I don't say I wouldn't pick them up if I came across them, but I've no hankering for them."

"Ye've plenty money of your own, mebbe."

"As much as I need--if ever I get ashore."

"Ah! It meks a difference, ye see. I never had any to speak of, and these bonny sparklers pluck at the heart o' me."

"You're welcome to all you can get, as far as I'm concerned----"

"Ay, man, they're mine, for I found 'em."

"But they're no use to you unless we can get away from here. Get ashore and you can turn them to account. Now why couldn't we build some kind of a boat and get across to Nova Scotia? There's wood enough and to spare out yonder----"

"Ay, there's wood, but ef we had the tools 'twould still be no easy matter. An' then ye've got to reckon wi' the weather. 'Twould be a bad move to spend our time building a boat only to go to the bottom in her with all the gear we'd gathered. We're safe here, anyway. Mebbe some day a boat'll come ashore not so broke but we can patch her up.... How'd ye like to be afloat in a home-made boat a night like this?"

For while they sat, eating and talking, the day had darkened, and now and again there came a menacing whuffle down the open hatch, and the little ship was filled with a tremulous humming as the rising wind played on their bare masts, and the growl of the spit had deepened into a long hoarse roar.

"It'll be a bitter bad night I'm thinking. I saw it coming away out yonder. Mebbe it'll add some to our pile of stuff. Mebbe it'll bring us a boat."

"We will not hope for either," said Wulfrey soberly, "for that means more deaths out yonder----"

A long shrill scream outside sent a creepy chill down his spine for a moment. He glanced apprehensively across at Macro in the flickering light of the fire, and saw his face livid, his eyes like great black wells, his jaw dropped.

"The spirits o' the dead!" jerked the mate. "There's a hantle o' them out there.... They're mebbe after me for these things...." and he rocked himself to and fro, where he sat on the floor, and muttered strange words,--"An ainm au Athar, 's an Mhic, 's an Spioraid Naoimh,"--in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

The weird shrieking waxed louder and shriller. Wulfrey got up and climbed the steps, and found the stormy twilight gray with that vast cloud of birds, all fleeing blindly before the gale and each one screaming its loudest.

It was a fearsome, blood-curdling clamour, an ear-splitting pandemonium, a whirling Sabbat, as if all the demons of the pit had broken loose and clothed themselves in wings and shrieks and deadly fear.

"It's only those damnable birds," he bent and shouted gruffly down to Macro, vexed with himself at his own momentary fright.

But the mate was not for accepting any such simple explanation as that.

"Man!" he said hoarsely. "Birds ye may think 'em, but I know better. It is spirits they are,--spirits of all the dead that ever died in this dread place,--a great multitude--their bones are white out there, but the spirits of them cannot rest. A Mhoire ghradhach! 'Twas under the Dark Star we were born, and here we'll die and leave our bones to whiten in the sand, and the spirits of us will go screeching and scrauchling wi' the rest. Come away, man, and shut the doors tight or they'll be in on us!"

Wulfrey had never seen anything like it. Those myriads of fluttering wings looked as though the whole gray sky had come tumbling down in fragments. It was like a snowstorm on a gigantic scale, every whirling flake a bundle of wildly screaming feathers.

He stood watching for a time and listening to the growing thunder of the rollers on the spit. He imagined their crashing in white foam-fury among the stark ribs of the dead ships out there on the banks.

He shivered as he recalled the chill horrors of their own undoing and deliverance. It was wonderful beyond words, with that in his mind, to be standing there, safe and warm, and well provided, and his heart was full of gratitude.

"God help any who are out there this night!" he said to himself, and closed the doors on the storm-fiends, and squatted on the floor over against the mate, who sat rocking slowly to and fro in great discomfort and muttered Gaelic seuns as a protection against the unholy things that wandered outside.

All night long their little ship was filled with the hum of the shuddering masts, broken now and again with the creaking and jerking of their rusty cable. And whenever Wulfrey, warm in his bunk with many blankets, woke up for a moment, he heard the deep thunder of the waves on the spit, and the howl of the wind, outside, and the thrashing of the rain on deck; and he thanked God for warmth and shelter, and lay listening for a moment, and then rolled over and went to sleep again.

The storm lasted three full days, during which they never once left the ship. They had all they needed, and fresh water was obtainable in any quantity by slinging an empty keg outside one of the scupper-holes through which the rain drained off the deck.

Macro's gloomy humour lasted, off and on, as long as the storm. The birds had mostly hidden themselves in sheltered nooks among the sandhills. But every now and again the evil in them, or maybe it was hunger, would stir them up and set them whirling and shrieking round the ship, and sometimes lighting on it in prodigious numbers, and the mate would curse them long and deep and fall once more to his spells and invocations. The fury of the storm did not trouble him, but the screaming of the birds seemed to touch the superstitious spot in his nature and set all his nerves jangling.

It was during one of the lull times that he astonished Wulfrey by hauling out his rolls of silks and velvets, and with an elemental, almost barbaric, delight in their rich colourings, he cut them into long strips, which he fixed neatly to the walls of the cabin by means of wooden pegs. The gorgeous results afforded him the greatest satisfaction, which nothing but the wailing of the birds could damp. Whenever their shrill clamour broke out the darkness fell on him again. He hurled uncouth curses at them and no arguments availed against his humour.

To Wulfrey, on the other hand, the birds and their dismal shriekings were but an incident, the fury of the storm a wonder and a revelation.

All through that former time of stress, which had ended in their undoing, his powers of observation and appreciation had been dulled by his fears of disaster. Then, the howl of the gale and the onslaught of the seas had been like hungry deaths close at his heels. But here, in the perfect security of the land-locked lake, he was free to watch and to wonder.

At times, indeed, it seemed to him that the terrible force of the wind might lift them bodily, ship and all, and hurl them into the turmoil beyond. Then he remembered that many such storms must have swept the island and still the ships were there.

The waves that broke on the spit seemed to him higher than tall houses, and the weight of them, as they curled and crashed on the sand, made the whole island tremble, he was certain. The uproar was deafening, and at times great lashes of white spray came hurtling over into the lake, and scourging it into sizable waves of its own.

When Wulfrey woke on the fourth morning he was conscious of a change, and running up on deck he found the sun shining in a pale-blue, storm-washed sky, and nothing left of the gale but the great green waves breaking sullenly on the beach beyond the spit.

He stripped and plunged overboard, and climbed up again full of the joy of life and physical fitness.

XXIII

The days crept into weeks, the weeks into months, with nothing to break the monotony of their life but visits to the wreckage, an occasional skirmish with the birds, rabbit-hunts, rude attempts at fishing, which met with so little success from lack of anything approaching proper material that they gave it up in disgust, and rambles among the sandhills.

They got along companionably enough; the mate's only complaint,--and that not untinged with satisfaction, and obviously prompted more by a desire for his help than from any wish to halve his spoils--that Wulfrey showed so poor a spirit in the matter of plunder, and so shamefully neglected the opportunities of a lifetime.

For himself, if he could have found safe lodging out there, he would have lived on the wreck-pile, to save the time and trouble of going to and fro. The riever spirit of his forefathers was kept at boiling-point by the possibilities of fortune which lurked there. The search in itself at once satisfied and stimulated the natural craving for booty which rioted in his Highland-Spanish blood, and he never tired of it.

He came back laden every time with things for the common good, and rarer pickings for his private hoard, over which he exulted like a chieftain returned from a successful foray.

Wulfrey was on the whole not ungrateful to the pile for affording him such distraction. He discussed the latest additions to his treasure-trove with him, as they sat by the fire of a night, and speculated with him on their probable origin and value, and the higher he assessed this the more the mate's black eyes glowed.

He would sit watching Wulfrey as he turned the latest find over and over, and weighed it in his hand, and polished a bit of it to get at its basic metal, and mused on its shape and endeavoured to arrive at its history. And at such times there was in the sombre black eyes something of the look of an uncertain-tempered dog whose lawful bone is in jeopardy.

Once or twice, Wulfrey, glancing up as he passed an opinion, caught that curious suspicious look bent on him, and was amused and annoyed at it, and also somewhat discomfited. Did the man think he coveted his useless little gauds?--useless in their present extremity, though some of them doubtless valuable enough if they could be sold. Why, he esteemed a dryable twist of tobacco infinitely more highly than any silver candlestick or shapely silver cup that the other could fish up from the depths. It seemed to him just as well that the plunder-fever had attacked only one of them, for he doubted if his companion would willingly have shared with another. For the fever grew with his finds.

Once they came within an ace of a quarrel, and though it blew over, the seeds remained.

Where the mate hid his spoil, Wulfrey neither knew nor cared nor ever troubled his head about. He would no more have occupied his thoughts with it than he would have taken more than his proper share of the food or tobacco.

But increase breeds suspicion, and suspicion clouds the outlook. Among other things, Macro one day brought home a small crucifix and some strings of beads, which he believed to be of gold, while Wulfrey, from their hardness to the touch of the knife, pronounced them only brass. They were all curiously carved or cast, however, and, whatever the metal of which they were made, he expressed his admiration of the workmanship.

A night or two later, to his amazement, Macro came out of his own cabin more black-a-vised than he had ever seen him, and asked abruptly, "Where's that cross?"

"What cross?"

"You know what cross. Yon gold cross I showed you two nights ago. Where is it?" and he lowered at Wulfrey like a full-charged thunder-cloud.

"I know nothing of your cross, man. I suppose you put it with the rest of your things."

"I did that, and it's gone. Where is it?"

"Don't speak to me like that, Macro. I won't have it. I know nothing about your cross or any of your plunder. I've told you before, it is nothing to me. If I wanted it I'd go and get it for myself."

"It was there with the rest and it's no there now. And----"

"---- ---- ----!" cried Wulfrey, springing up ablaze with indignation. "Do you dare to think I would touch your dirty pilferings?" and it looked as though the next instant would find them at grips.

But the mate had broken out in the sudden discovery of his loss. Wulf stood full as tall as himself. He looked very fit and capable, and looked, moreover, as the mate's common sense told him, as soon as it got the chance, the last person in the world to tamper with another man's goods--even though he might be the only one circumstantially able to have done so.

"It's gone anyway," he growled. "But it's no good fighting about it."

"That's not enough. Your greed for gain has blinded you. Till you come to your senses I've nothing more to do with you," and for two days not a word passed between them.

Each prepared his own food as and when he chose, and ate it apart from the other. The mate hung about as though loth to leave Wulfrey in sole charge at home, and the atmosphere of the little cabin was murky and charged with lightning.

On the third day Wulfrey ostentatiously set off for the wreck-pile by himself. He was running out of tobacco and would not have accepted any from the mate if it had been offered.

He waded out, made a rough raft on Macro's lines, and smashed open such seamen's chests as he could discover, for it was always in them that they found tobacco.

He got several small lots, and a couple of new pipes, and a flint and steel, charged his raft with a keg of rum and a case of hard-tack, and managed to get it all back to the spit and to the ship single-handed.

As he came up the side, the mate met him, with the missing crucifix in his hand.

"The little deevil of a thing," he said, with quite unconscious incongruity, "had slipped down a crack, back o' the locker, and I were wrong to think ye could have taken it."

"Well, don't play the fool again," said Wulfrey shortly. "If your greed for other folk's goods hadn't blinded you, you would understand that a gentleman does not stoop to stealing."

"I've seen some I wouldn't trust further'n I could see 'em, and then only if their hands were up over their heads. But ye're not that kind, an' I was wrong. So there 'tis, an' no more to be said. What have ye found?"

"Pipes and tobacco. That is all I went for."

After his two days of enforced silence Macro was inclined to expand, but found his advances coldly received. Wulfrey's pride was in arms and the insult rankled.

By degrees, however, the storm-cloud drifted by, and matters between them became again much as they had been, with somewhat of added knowledge, on each side, of the character of the other.

The mate had learned that the Doctor, quiet as he might appear, was not a man to suffer injustice or to be meddled with. And Wulfrey had got a further warning of the possibilities of trouble should he and the mate come to serious differences.

It seemed absurd that two men, stranded, perhaps for life, on this bare sandbank, should be unable to live together in amity. Yet, his experience of men told him that it was just such enforced close intimacy--the constant rubbing together of very divergent natures, with nothing in common between them but the necessities entailed by their common misfortune--that might, nay almost certainly must, come to explosion at times, unless they both set themselves sedulously to the keeping of the peace.

If any actual rupture took place between them, he foresaw that the mate might develop phases of character which would be exceedingly awkward and difficult to deal with. Freedom from all the ordinary restraints which civilisation imposed upon the natural inner man might easily run to wildest licence.

At bottom this man was just a wild Highland cateran with a dash of Spanish buccaneer, hot-blooded, avid of gain under circumstances so propitious, insatiable. The chance of a lifetime had come to him and he was exultantly set on making the most of it. He was like a cage-bred wolf set down suddenly into the midst of an unprotected flock of sheep. There was his natural prey in profusion and there was none to stay him. To be dropped unexpectedly on to this enormous pile of plunder was like the realisation of a fairy tale. No wonder he was inclined to lose his head.

It was fortunate, thought Wulfrey, that they were built on different lines, and that the plunder-pile made absolutely no appeal to himself beyond the necessaries of life.

He determined, as far as in him lay, to walk warily and to avoid, as far as possible, any just cause of offence on his side.