Chapter XI: Book IV: Love in a Mist (2)

He had for a long time past secured every nail he could knock out of the old timbers, and regarded them as most precious possessions. The finding of the auger and gimlet opened up wider possibilities. Where nails are scarce, a hole and a peg may take their place. Wood he had in superfluity, for the remains of every raft that had brought cargo from the pile lay strewn about the spit, in some cases hurled half-way across it by the waves that broke there in the storm times.

Where best to build was a matter not easily decided. They would need all the sunshine obtainable. But all the heaviest gales came from the south and west and from these they wanted shelter. And they must be within easy reach of the fresh-water pools and not too far from the ship, where their supplies would be mostly stored.

After much discussion they fixed on an odd little hollow--a mere cup in the centre of three sandhills of size, which stood close together and moreover were well matted with wire-grass and looked too solid to whirl away in a gale as the smaller hills constantly did.

To the south-west of these stood the largest hill in the neighbourhood, and this would break the force of the gales in that direction. The water-pools lay out in the sandy plain just beyond this hill.

Wulf entered on the building of this first house he had ever attempted, with the gusto of a schoolboy.

"I feel about fourteen," he laughed, as he detailed his ideas to her.

"So do I,--except this wretched arm, which is one hundred and five."

"We'll soon have it back to fourteen. You see, if I can carve out the sides of those three smaller hills, and back our house into each of them, it will make immensely for solidity and warmth. No gale can blow through a sand-hill, though they do waltz about now and again. But these seem fairly well set and fixed. I'll start on it tomorrow. I wish I had a spade and a saw. I can chop out some kind of a spade from a plank, maybe, but, lacking a saw, the house will be a bit rough, I'm afraid."

"That doesn't matter as long as it stands up and keeps us warm."

"Oh, I'll guarantee it will stand up and keep you warm."

"Can you make a chimney?"

"I've been thinking of that. I will run four boards up through a hole in the roof, and we must try to induce the smoke to go up. There is no clay here, you see, nor stone,--nothing but sand."

The site settled, he set to work at once rafting his timber across the lake from the spit, and then hauling it across the sandy plain past the fresh-water pools, and this gave him a full week's hard labour. Some of the lighter planks he let The Girl drag across, since she insisted on having at all events one hand in the work. The heavier ones were as much as he could handle himself. In his rest times, and after supper of a night, he whittled pegs till he had an ample supply, and sharpened his axes with the bit of hone he had found in the carpenter's chest.

With his axe he hacked out a rude spade from a plank, and trimmed the handle and the point with his knife; and then he set to work on his three sandhills, cutting down the side of each where it rounded down into the cup-like hollow, and flinging the sand into the cup itself to make a level floor.

The building of such a house was entirely new to him, but he had brains and he bent them all to every problem that presented itself, and never failed to find the way out. For instance,--the space he wished his house to occupy between the sandhills was quite twelve feet in width, and his planks ran mostly to six or eight feet only. There must therefore be a row of posts in the middle, with one or more beams on top as a ridge-pole, from which he could carry side pieces to the walls six feet away on either side, and he had foreseen some difficulty in fixing these posts absolutely rigid in the yielding sand. If they wobbled or gave in any direction his roof would be in danger.

But before he began carving down his sand-slopes he had settled that point. He selected his uprights, the longest and strongest in his stock, chopped them to size, and to the end of each pegged stout flat cross-pieces, boring the holes with his auger and driving home the pegs with the back of his axe. These he set up in a line in the middle of the hollow, standing upright on their cross-piece feet. Then, as he carved down his slope, every spadeful of sand buried the cross-pieces deeper, till, when he had finished, they were under two feet of well-trampled sand and he looked upon their rigidity as a personal triumph.

That was surely as extraordinary a house as was ever built by a man who knew nothing whatever about building. It took him five full weeks and he enjoyed every minute of it. And so did The Girl, for she sat in the sun, watching all his cheerful activities with envious eyes because she was so unable to share them, discussing points with him as they arose, giving suggestions and advice which he always adopted when they chimed with his own, and approving heartily of all he did.

"I wish I could help,"--how many times she said it, and thought it very many more. "It is disgusting to have to sit and watch while you work like a--like a galley-slave."

"Galley-slaves don't build houses--not such houses as this anyway. There never was such a house before," he laughed. "Besides, you help more than you know by simply sitting there and approving of it. 'They also serve,' you know, 'who only sit and watch.'"

"Who says that?"

"One John Milton,--not quite in those words, but the meaning is the same. As a matter of fact, he had, I believe, just gone blind when he said it and was feeling rather out of it. Your arm will soon be all right again. It's doing famously."

Truly a wonderful house, not so much because of the quaint way in which its difficulties were surmounted or evaded--which alone might have given an ordinary builder nightmares for the rest of his life, but more especially by reason of the rose-golden thoughts which swept at times like flame through hearts and minds of both watcher and builder as they wrought. If all those glowing thoughts could have transmuted themselves into visible adornment of that rough little home no fairy palace could have vied with it.

For ever and again--and mostly ever--in his heart--helping the auger as it bored and the axe as it hammered the pegs well home--was the thought that was radiant enough and mighty enough to transform that desolate bank of sand into a veritable Garden of Eden;--"If no rescue comes, here we shall live--she and I--together,--one in heart and soul and body, and here, maybe, we shall die. But death is a long way off, and Love lives on forever. I would not exchange my Kingdom for all the Kingdoms of the earth."

And perhaps he would permit himself a foretaste from the cup of that intoxicating happiness, in a quick caressing glance at her as she sat in the sand nursing her arm; and at times she caught those stolen glances, for her eyes found great satisfaction in his tireless energy and visible enjoyment in his work.

And she knew as well as if he had told her in words,--nay better, for, without a word, the heart speaks louder than all the words in the world when it shines through honest eyes,--she knew all that possessed him concerning her, and she was not discomforted thereby.

She trusted him completely. She had never felt towards any man as she did to this man. Whatever he willed for her would be right. Her whole heart and soul rejoiced that he should find such hope and joy in her. She was wholly his for the asking, but she knew he would not ask it all until he was satisfied in his own mind that he was right in asking and she in giving.

She felt like a wounded bird, sitting below there, while her mate built their nest up above. But not, she said to herself, like their island birds, for they were harsh and cruel, with cold hard eyes, and ever-craving hunger in place of hearts.

That wonderful house, when at last it was finished, would have given no satisfaction to the soul of any ordinary builder, but to these two it was a monument of hard work and difficulties overcome.

It contained one room twelve feet square in front, with two smaller rooms opening out of it at the back. The roof sloped slightly from ridge-pole to side-walls and was made in four layers--boards side by side below, then thick sheets of crimson velvet, an outer shield of overlapping planks, and a thick coat of sand and growing wire-grass over all. He was hopeful that it would withstand the heaviest gales and rains the winter might bring. The walls were of stout boards backed up against the sandhills, with new sandhills thrown up in the intervening spaces, and inside they were draped with more crimson velvet, of which they had a large supply. The floor was of planks. The door had been a troublesome problem, and, lacking hinges, had to be lifted bodily in and out of its place. The bay-window alongside it was the cabin skylight from the 'Martha' and this, and the square smoke-shaft of four stout boards above the sand hearth, they regarded as crowning achievements.

Emboldened by success, and finding enjoyment in the development of a craft of which he had never suspected himself until now,--experiencing too, to the very fullest, the primal blessing of work, he evolved an arm-chair for The Girl, out of a barrel that had once held salt pork, and when its asperities were softened and hidden under voluminous folds of red velvet she assured him it was the most comfortable chair she had ever sat in.

And, for his part, he knew that no girl ever sat in any chair that ever was made who could compare with her.

Beds too he made with some old sail-cloth fitted to rough frames, and a table, and their furnishing sufficed, though he promised to add to it during the winter.

The Girl's arm was well again, though he still urged caution in the use of it, and kept a watchful eye on it and her; and never had he felt himself so full of the joy and strength of life. When the house was finished, they brought over a supply of stores and lived in it for a time, and turned the waning autumn days to account by long ramblings all over the island, in anticipation of the days when ill weather might coop them strictly within narrower bounds.

There were no discoveries to make in land or sea or sky, scarcely any in themselves. He felt assured in his own mind that she was not unaware of all that he felt for her. The fact, the great undeniable fact, that she did not seem to resent it, was a deep joy to him.

Their good-comradeship had known no cloud. She was as charmingly frank and gracious as ever. She talked away without reserve or constraint of that strange past life of hers, which, in every smallest particular, was so absolutely the opposite of this one. And never once did she display any hankering after Egypt, rather seemed to regard this as the Promised Land, or at all events the doorway to it.

Ever and again the possibilities of rescue or escape came to the front in their discussions, but grew less and less as the weeks went by. He had been seven months on the island, and she four, and save herself, in all that time no other living soul had come to it,--unless, as the mate had so strenuously held, the bodies of those discomforting sea-birds were occupied by the souls of drowned sailor men.

"And you, you know, were a miracle," he would remind her. "The chances against you were about a thousand to one----"

"And you were that one."

"It was not that I was thinking of----"

"I never forget it."

"This place is undoubtedly shunned, as Macro said. It is known as a death-trap. No ship comes here except in pieces. No man comes until he is dead. And so, our prospects of rescue or escape are very small, I fear. For your sake I wish it were otherwise."

"Have I shown signs of discontent, then? I assure you I have never been so ... so content to wait and hope. It is the most delightful holiday from the world I have ever had.... Sometime perhaps we shall look back upon it as the wide dividing line between the old world and the new ... and between the old life and the new."

"A line is black as a rule."

"It may be light," she said, and waved her hand expressively towards the shimmering golden spear which the setting sun sent quivering over the water right up to their feet, as they stood watching it on the beach.

"If we could only walk on it!" she said softly, as the red disc swelled and sank and disappeared amid a glory of tender lucent greens and blues and glowing orange, with a line of crimson fire on the edge of every hovering cloud, and a heavenful of crimson flakes and splashes smouldering slowly into gray above their heads.

"It points the road, but we cannot take it," he said quietly, and they turned and went back to the house.

There were times when she thought he was about to tell her all that was in his heart concerning her. She could see it in his face and eyes and restless manner. And she was ready to respond.

There were times when it was almost more than he could do to keep it all in. He believed she knew. He hardly doubted her response.

But he said to himself, with set jaw and a firmer grip of his manhood,--"She has known me just four months. She is here helpless in my hands. I may not press her unduly, for she might feel that she could hardly say me nay. Her very helplessness must make me the more careful and considerate."

And more than once, when the desire of his heart was leaping to his lips, he jumped up abruptly and went out into the night and strode away along the beach. And there he would pace to and fro under the quiet stars, with the black waves swirling up the shore in long slow gleams of shimmering silver, till the peace of it all passed into his blood, and presently he would go quietly in again, with face and heart toned down to reasonableness.

And when he went out so, The Girl would smile to herself at times, as one who understood. And again, at times the smile would slowly fade and she would sit thoughtful. But, if she wondered somewhat, and found him beyond her complete understanding, she liked him none the less for his restraint.

She was quite happy in their present fellowship, but she knew it could not continue so, indefinitely. A man always wants more. The woman gives.

She felt towards this man as she had never felt towards any man before. Without a word spoken, she was satisfied as to the integrity of his intentions, as she had never been of any of those who had approached her in that old life, and she had been approached by many. But the coinage of love about the Court had grown as debased as did the paper money of the Republic later on. Whispers of love had become but fair cloaks for foul deeds. This man had whispered nothing, but she understood him and held him in honour.

And she was in no hurry. His love would not burn out, or she was much mistaken in him. The flame repressed burns brightest in the end.

And then ... and then.... Well, she sometimes laid hold of the future by the ears, as it were, and held its changing face while she peered intently into it, and endeavoured to read there all that it might mean for her.

Sooner or later he would open his heart to her--and that would be the first change. Their relationship would of necessity become closer and warmer. She would welcome that. It would bring great happiness to them both.

And then--later on--sometime--when all hope of rescue or escape had left them ... he would ask still more of her.... That was inevitable.... And in her heart, hiding behind a thinning cloud of doubt, which had, when first it came upon her, been tinged with dismay, she knew he would be right, and that in consenting, she would do no wrong, although it must run counter to all her normal views of right and wrong.

She faced it all squarely and honestly,--Courtship properly ends in Marriage. If by this accident of their strange fate the regular marriage rites prescribed by the law of the land could not take place, they would have to content themselves without them. It was inevitable.

Elemental views of right and wrong were indeed tap-rooted in her heart and safe from bruising. But she recognised that circumstances alter cases and that normal views were out of place here.

And as to the law of the land--what country claimed this bank of sand she did not know. It was a No Man's Land, outside the pale of all laws save God's and Nature's.

With no man she had ever met, except this man, could she have imagined herself considering possibilities such as these. But with him she would feel as safe and happy as if all the archbishops and bishops in the land had performed the ceremony. For, after all, it was only man's law and man's ceremony; and God's law and Nature's were mightier than these.

With such thoughts in her--deep thoughts and long--she could wait quietly, and she veiled her feelings for him lest he should deem her of light mind and too easily to be won.

Now and again, induced perhaps by some adverse humour of body or atmosphere, a plaguy little fear would leap at her heart and nibble it with sharp teeth,--could it be that he had ties in the old life of which he had never dared to hint,--some other woman--to whom he was bound by honour or by law?

He had told her much, and yet not very much. Had he told her all? Did men ever tell all? He had told her much, but there was room in what he had not told for anything--for everything.

But surely he had one time said that he had left no ties behind him,--that he was alone.

If there should be anything of the kind it would explain his self-restraint, his quiet service, the looks he could not wholly check, the words he did not speak.

That his heart had gone out to herself she could not mistake. But that was not incompatible with ties elsewhere that might keep them apart.

But fears such as that could not hold her long. They had sprung up, in spite of her, once or twice when he had jumped up and left her alone, and gone out into the night to pace the beach. But when he returned, quieted and all himself again, they disappeared at once, and her heart was at rest. Wrong and this man had nothing in common, she said to herself. She felt as sure of his honour as of her own.

LII

"This weather cannot last much longer," he said, one night as they sat talking after supper; he with his pipe, which she never would permit him to sacrifice on her account, pronouncing the smell of it homely and comfortable, in spite of his apologies for the varied qualities of his tobacco. "We must be somewhere near the end of October."

"It is either the 21st or 22nd or 23rd," she said very definitely.

"You have kept count?"

"Except the time I was on the mast and before I came to life again."

"Two days probably."

"I imagined so. In that case it is the 21st."

"And we must be ready for November and bad weather. Would you sooner stop here or go back to the 'Jane and Mary'?"

"We could not be more comfortable than we are here. But I will do whatever you wish."

He glanced at her through the wreathing smoke of fire and pipe, for nothing they could do would make it all go up the chimney.

Would she say as much if he asked her more? he wondered.

Was she ready to be asked? Or was it still too soon?

If he told her all that was in his heart, would he startle her out of this most pleasant companionship?

She sat gazing quietly into the fire of scraps of old ship's timber. Those leaping tongues of blue and green and yellow and crimson flame were a never-failing joy to her. Many a curious thing had she seen in them, and thought many strange thoughts to the tune of their merry dance.

She was winsome beyond words when she sat so, with the lights and shadows playing over her face, and about the misty dark eyes in which her clear soul dwelt and shone without disguisements.

Suppose he said to her--here and now,--"Avice, dearest, do you know what you are to me? I cannot possibly tell you in words, but--do you know?..." And she said "I know,"--and said again, "I will do whatever you wish...."

Ah--God! ... If that could be he would ask no more of life.... One word from her and this bare bank would be swept with golden fires; in the twinkling of an eye it would become a Paradise for him and her to dwell in....

If he sat there looking at her it must out. He could not keep it in. And why should he? Why not tell her, here and now? ...

He got up quietly and strode out into the night. A smile hovered in the corners of her lips, as, without looking, she caught sight of his face. Then she rose also and stole out after him.

She was causing him pain when she wished him only joy. His thought, she knew, was all for her. She would think and act for them both. If he had sat there like a pent-up volcano for another second the hot lava would have come rushing out. She had felt it all in the air. Her heart too was so full of expectant joy that the tension was akin to pain.

It was very dark, with only throbbing stars in a velvet sky and the white gleam of the foam along the beach. She did not know which way he had gone, but he would come back presently, all himself again. She sank down into the side of a hummock and waited.

He came at last, slowly, heavily, with bent head.

He stopped quite close to her, where the way led to the house, and stood looking out over the darkness of the sea. Then he heaved a great sigh and turned to go back to the house.

"God!" she heard him mutter. "If I dared but tell her!"

She rose swiftly out of her form and caught him by the arm, with something between a laugh and a cry, "Tell me, then!"--and the mighty arms of his love were round her, gripping her to him till she was squeezed almost breathless.

"Avice! Avice!--and you knew! Oh, thank God for you!"

"Of course I knew," she gasped. "And I want you as much as you want me."

"Thank God for you, dearest!" he said deeply. "We will thank Him all our lives. He has given us with a full hand.... I have nothing left to ask Him ... except your fullest happiness, now and always."

"And I yours. You are my happiness. You give me Heaven."

"God requite me ten times over if ever you rue this day. I have longed for you till my heart was sick with the pain of longing----"

"Foolish! Why did you not tell me before?"

"I could not. Until I knew.... Placed as we are, you see, it felt like forcing you.... You might not have felt free to say no.... It might have put an end to all our comradeship...."

"You don't know me. I'd have said no quickly enough if I hadn't wanted you. But I do, and you make me very happy."

He led her into the house and held her there at arm's length in the firelight, as though he could hardly believe it all true, and looked deep into the dark eyes and rosy face and kissed it rosier still.

And the blue and yellow and green and crimson flames danced their merriest, as these two sat hand in hand watching them, and talking softly by snatches with long sweet silences in between.

LIII

"I was so afraid there might be some other to whom you were bound," she said, as she lay there in the firelight, with her head against his arm and his right hand smoothing her hair, that wonderful hair which had been to him as the aureole of a saint and was more to him now than all the gold in all the world.

"There is no other, my dear one. Not a soul on earth has any claim on me except that of friendship.... It was inevitable that we should both have that fear. Four months ago we did not know of one another's existence----"

"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "I wonder if we had never met if you would have found someone else----"

"Never anyone to fill my heart as you do. I cannot even imagine it."

"And if I should have found someone else?"

"That is possible, but no one who could feel for you all that I do, or could want you as much as I do. You are to me the one supreme good," and the clasp of his arm told her even more than his words.

"You do not ask me if I had any ties in the old life," she began.

"You would not be lying in my arm like this if there were. I know you too well."

"That is true and I thank you. It is good to be taken on trust. But indeed there were none. The men one met there--faugh!--they were masquers, puppets, dandies;--some had brains, but few had hearts, and they were most dreadful liars. Such talents as they possessed were devoted to finesse and intrigue, and the turning of everything to their own satisfaction and advantage."

"Thank God you are out of it all."

"Yes, I do thank God,--for the shipwreck and everything else, but chiefly that He sent you here to meet me and took that other one away."

The weather held still for a few days, and he spent them in providing for her future comfort in every way he could think of.

He chopped logs enough to last them through the winter, and piled them in stacks about the house. He got over from the ship supplies in abundance. As the result of much labour and many failures he constructed a primitive lamp out of the silver mug from which Macro used to swill his rum. He distorted a beak out of one side of it, and contrived a wick which passed through a hole in a piece of beaten copper, and if the light was not brilliant it was at all events steadier to read by than the dancing flames.

He had lighted quite by accident on Macro's hidden hoard in the hold of the 'Jane and Mary.' He was rooting in a corner there for his knife, which had worked out of its sheath at his back as he hoisted out provisions, and found it sticking point downwards in a plank. As he pulled it out, the plank gave slightly, and lifting it he found, underneath, the useless treasure.

He wanted none of it, was indeed loth to touch it, but, on consideration, took out two more silver mugs for their daily service and half a dozen gold pins and brooches for Avice's use, since she was always needing such things and regretting her lack of them.

The long spell of mild soft weather--which had come at last to have in it a sense of sickness and decay--broke up in the wildest storm they had yet seen.

The birds came whirling in in a shrieking cloud, but the wind out-shrieked them. It shrilled above their heads in a ceaseless strident scream like the yelling of souls in torment. It shook their protecting sandhills and made their house shiver right down to the buried cross-pieces of its pillars. It picked up the smaller hummocks outside and set them waltzing along the shore. It heaped a foot of new sand on their roof and sent a cartload of it down the chimney.

But their position had been well chosen. The more the sand piled on their house and against it, the tighter it became. Then the rain came down in sheets and torrents, but no drop came through, except down the chimney, and that Wulf presently plugged with a blanket and let the smoke find its way out through an inch of opened door, which he had purposely placed to leeward, as all their great storms came from the south and south-west.

But the change of atmosphere was bracing, and with solid sand under their feet, and assured of the safety of their house, they welcomed it and felt the better for it.

After the first day's confinement he must out to see, and she would not stay behind. So they rigged themselves in oldest garments and fewest possible and started out.

They were drenched to the skin in a second and whirled away like leaves the instant they forsook the cover of their hollow.

Avice was being carried bodily towards their nearest shore. He feared she would go headlong into the sea and started wildly after her. He saw her throw herself flat and grip at the sand, but she was broadside on to the merciless wind and it bowled her over and over, and rolled her along like a ball. It carried him along in ten-feet leaps. He flung himself down beside her, put his arm round her, wrenched her head to the gale, and they lay there breathless, she choking hysterically with paroxysms of laughter.

It took them an hour, crawling like moles, to get back to the shelter of the hills. He would have had her go in, but she would not hear of it. They could hear the booming thunder of the great waves on the spit even above the wind, and she must see them.

So they set off once more, flat to the sand, and worked round in time to the breast of the great hill near the fresh-water pools, and lay in it, safe from dislodgment unless the hill went too.

They could only peer through pinched eyes, and then only with their hands over them, into the teeth of that wind, but, even so, the sight was magnificent and appalling. The grim gray sky and the grim gray sea met just beyond the spit, and out of that close sky the huge gray waves burst, high as houses,--whole streets of houses rushing headlong to destruction. They curved gloriously to their fall with a glint of muddy green below and all their crests abristle with white foam-fury. Right out of the sky they came, right up to the sky they seemed to reach, flinging up at it great white spouts of spray like flouting curses, towering high above the land, crashing down upon it with a thunderous roar which thinned the voice of the wind to no more than a shrill piping.

Their own land-locked lake was lashed into fury also. The flying crests of the outer waves came rocketing over in wild white splashes. He was not sure that some of the waves themselves did not cover the spit and come roaring into it. The 'Jane and Mary' danced wildly to her cable. He wondered if it would hold. The 'Martha,' more than ever on her beam-ends, was being pounded like a drum.

"Did you feel that?" he shouted in her ear, and she nodded, with a touch of fear in her wind-blown face. For, under the impact of one vast mountainous avalanche, the very ground on which they lay seemed to shake like a jelly, and the whole island shuddered.

"It cannot wash it all away, can it?" she gasped, when they had wormed their way back to shelter.

"It never has done yet anyway," he said cheerfully, as he squeezed windy tears out of his smarting eyes. "Now, dear, change all your things at once. We are wet through to the bone."

"It was very wonderful. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. But I'm glad we're ashore," and she slipped away into her own room.

That was the first of the winter storms, and there were many like it. But they bore them equably. They were in splendid health, the weather at its worst was never very cold, indeed the gales were more to their taste than the smothering chill of the frequent fogs. They had all they needed,--food and fire, and light and books, a weather-tight house, and one another.

If they lacked much of what their former life had taught them to consider necessary, they had more than all that former life had given them, and they were happy.

LIV

Between the storms and fog-spells, they tramped to and fro discovering the changes wrought in their island, and many a strange thing their wanderings showed them.

One great gale which lasted a full week strewed the south-west Point with wreckage as thickly almost as the great pile beyond. Their hearts ached at thought of the still greater loss it represented, of which the proofs were never lacking. The chaotic bristle was studded with the bodies of the drowned, and the sight sent them home sorrowfully, yet marvelling the more at their own deliverance, and still more grateful for it.

"We are miracles, without a doubt," said Wulf gravely, as they went back home. "No one else gets here alive, you see.... I was the first miracle. Macro was the second," and he told her what she had not known before, how he had contrived to save the mate, and of his regret that it had not been old Jock Steele the carpenter, who would have been a blessing to them instead of a curse. "And you are the third and best miracle of all," he said, clasping her arm more tightly under his own. "God! what a difference it has made!" he said fervently. "Alone here one might go mad. In time one most certainly would. See how good a work you are accomplishing by simply remaining alive. Instead of being a melancholy madman you make me the happiest man on earth. Oh, the God-given wonder of a woman! Truly you are the greatest miracle of all, and He has been good to me."

"And to me. If you had not been here I should have been dead and we would never have met. Perhaps He sent us to one another."

"I'm sure He did, and all our lives we'll thank Him for it," and so the sight of the dead but put a keener edge on their gratitude for life and their joy in one another.

The next big storm washed the point clean again. All had gone, wreckage, bodies, everything, and the great pile beyond bristled higher than ever.

"Do you notice anything strange?" he asked her, as they stood looking out at it.

"There seems more of it."

"And not a bird to be seen. They've all gone for the winter, I expect. We shall not see them again till next year."

"I am glad. They are evil things. Our Paradise is sweeter without them," and he kissed her for the word.

The weird forces of the gales, however, afforded them many surprises.

Tramping round the further end of their lake one day, they saw changes in the great stretch of sand that ran out of sight towards the eastern point. What had been a level plain was scored and furrowed as by a mighty ploughshare. It was like a rough sea whose tumbling waves had in an instant been turned into sand--league-long grooves with high-piled ridges between, and in the hollows the watery sun glinted briefly here and there on shining white objects sticking out of the sand.

"Bones!" said Wulf in surprise, as they stood looking into the first hollow, and he jumped down and picked up a human skull.

"Horrid!" said Avice. "And there's another, and another over there. It's a regular grave-yard."

"A battle-field, I should say," as he examined them one after another. "This is very curious. This fellow was killed by a bullet through the head. Here's the hole. And this one's skull was split with an axe or a sword. This one also. I wonder what it all means...."

"Pirates and murderers. That's what they look like."

"I shouldn't wonder.... Here's an ancient cutlass."

"And what's this?"--rooting at something with her foot.... "An old pistol! ... and the hilt of another sword! ... I wonder if they were the men who lived on our ships."

"Maybe. But I think these things are older than the ships.... Why--the place is thick with them," as they wandered on. "There must be scores of them, and more still underneath the ridges, no doubt.... There was no lack of life here at one time evidently----"

"And death!"

"Yes, and death without a doubt. A good thing for us, perhaps, that customers such as these don't frequent it now."

"I'm glad we live at the other end. You haven't found any bones there, have you?"

"Not a bone! They're not very cheerful company. Let us hope the next gale will cover them up again."

Further on, in another trench, they found one side of a boat, mouldered almost into the similitude of the sand in which it had been embedded for very many years. And, further along still, Wulf thought he could make out the stark ribs of ships like those on the outer banks at their own end of the island. But they were very far away and held out no inducement to closer investigation, and Avice had had enough of such things for the time being.

There were spells of bad weather, when, for days at a time, they scarcely ventured out except to get in wood or fetch water from the pools, which always meant a thorough soaking.

But they were completely happy in one another's company, and ever more grateful for the Providence that had cast their lot together.

The days slipped by without one weary hour. Shrewder and subtler proving of hearts and temperaments could hardly be conceived. But they stood the test perfectly, never thought of it as such, found in their present estate nothing but cause for joy and deepest thankfulness.

The depth and warmth of his love for her expressed itself in most devoted service and tenderest care, and hers for him in so frank and implicit a confidence that he felt it an uplifting honour to be so favoured. Indeed the man who could have betrayed so great a trust must have been lowest of the low and basest of his kind.

"I can't help wondering sometimes whether we would have felt like this to one another if we had met in an ordinary way, outside there," she said musingly, one night, as she lay in the hollow of his arm, watching the coloured flames.

"Yes," he said emphatically. "For you laid hold of my heart as soon as I set eyes on you. It got tangled first in the meshes of your hair, and in your long eyelashes, and the thing I wanted most was to see what your eyes were like. They were wells of mystery."

"And--they were right?" she laughed softly.

"They were exactly right and just what I had hoped. Large and dark and eloquent and tender and true and----"

"Dear! dear! If I had known such an inquisition was going I should have been afraid to open them."

"Ah, you didn't know me, you see."

"I didn't know you, but I knew I was all right as soon as I saw you. I knew I could trust you.... How strange and wonderful it all was!"

LV

One strange and terrible experience they had when the winter was almost over, and it came within measurable distance of making an end of them both.

Depending on their reserve stock of flour on board the 'Jane and Mary,' they had used freely what they had on shore. When he opened the other he found to his dismay that it must have been more damaged at first than he imagined. It was nearly all mouldy and smelt badly. He had run short of tobacco also, and so decided to go over to the pile for supplies on the first possible day.

The worst of the storms seemed over. They had occasional brisk gleaming days in between times, and on one such, after seeing that Avice had all she would need in his absence, they set off along the northern shore.

She wanted to go out with him, but he dissuaded her from that. The crossing would be very different from what it was in the summer and he would not have her exposed to it. Besides, he intended to make only a short job of it, just get what he wanted, and be back almost before she knew he had gone. She was so loth to be parted from him, however, even for that short time, that she insisted on walking with him to the point and said she would sit there and wait till she saw him on his way back.

So she sat down in the sand and drew her blanket cloak about her, and watched him wade and swim and at last scramble up on to the pile. He waved his hand to her and then set to work constructing a raft as usual.

She saw him climbing to and fro among the wreckage, smashing away at casks and cases, and then, to her dismay, he and the pile and the gaunt wrecks beyond disappeared completely, wiped out by a bank of mist that had come sweeping in from the sea. The sun still shone up above, but intermittently. Dark clouds came rushing up out of the south and presently it too was hidden. The wind blew gustily and increased in violence every minute.

She wished he had not gone. She could do no good by stopping there, but she did not care to go home. Behind her, on the southern shore, the waves were beginning to break with the short harsh sounds that portended storm.

Perhaps he would leave his work and swim across. He would know she was waiting for him. She must wait till he came. She drew her blanket over her head and sat there, huddled up with her back to the wind, and hoped and prayed. For, if this sudden storm should work up into a gale and last, she would be full of fears for his safety.

Suppose he should be drowned! What that awful pile would be like in bad weather she dared not think.

She prayed wildly for his life,--"Oh God, spare him to me! He is all I have! Spare him! Have pity on us both! Spare him! Spare him!"--over and over again the same ultimate cry, for her mind was closed to every other thought but this, that the man she loved more than anything on earth was out there in peril of his life.

She stayed there, drenched by the rain and flailed by the wind, till it began to grow dark, and then she crept wearily home like a broken bird.

Grim fear gripped her heart like an icy hand, but she would not despair entirely. He was so strong and capable. He might have tried and found it impossible to get back. He might come in at any minute.

If he were here the first thing he would have told her was to change into dry clothes. She changed, and made up the fire and put on the kettle. He would be cold and hungry when he came. She must be ready for him.

Out there on the wreckage, Wulf had been so hard at work that he noticed no sign of change in the weather, till the clammy mist swept over him and blotted out everything but the box he was delving into.

The winter storms had wrought great changes in the pile. It seemed thicker and higher and more chaotic than ever, bristling with new stuff which he would have liked to investigate, in case it should contain anything that would add to Avice's comfort.

But first, to find some decent flour, and, as it happened, there seemed fewer barrels about than usual, and most of them had suffered in their rough transit. The search for a good one took time. Such as he found were gaping and he did not trouble to open them. However, he discovered one at last, opened it to make sure of the goodness of its heart and then turned to seek tobacco.

It was then that the fog swept down on him and chained him to three square feet or so of precarious foothold. Trespass beyond that limit might mean a broken limb or neck, for the surface of the pile was seamed with ragged rifts and chasms, in which the tide whuffled and growled like a wild beast anticipating food.

So he rooted away in the chest he had just smashed open, lighted on a supply of tobacco to his great satisfaction, and then sat down where he was, to wait till the fog cleared. But this, he perceived, was not one of their usual clinging fogs which enveloped one like a pall of cotton-wool. It drove on a rising wind and sped past him in dense whirling coils that made his head spin. He thought briefly of mighty spirits of the air trailing ghostly garments in rapid flight. Down below him, in the black rifts and along the sides of the pile, the water was yapping savagely, as if the wild beast would wait no longer.

When the last of the fog tore past him in tattered fragments, he found to his dismay that the sea between him and home was beyond any man's swimming,--every channel raging and foaming, and the banks between boiling furiously in the rising tide and the rush of the south-west wind. The raft he had made had already broken loose and started northwards on its own account. It went to pieces on the nearest bank, as he watched, and swept away in fragments.

There was nothing for it but waiting. So sudden a storm might pass as quickly as it had come.

For himself he had no great fears. The pile had stood a thousand storms, and worse ones than this. But he was filled with anxiety on Avice's account. She would imagine the worst when he did not come, and her suffering would be great. Thought of her troubled him infinitely more than fear for himself.

He tried hard to make her out on the beach, though how to reassure her he did not know. But the sky was overcast and the atmosphere murky with sweeping showers, and he could not even see the point.

He was wet through with his swim, and the wind, though not cold in itself, was so strong that it chilled him. He searched about for shelter, and coming on a huge case which presented a solid back to the weather, he stove in the front and found it contained fine lace curtains. He hauled out a sufficiency, which the wind whisked playfully away. Then he crept into their place, grateful for so much, and lay and watched the strange writhings and contortions of the pile under the impact of the gale and the rising tide.

The wind would go down with the tide probably, and then he would make another raft and get home as quickly as he could with his flour. For, great as Avice's anxiety would certainly be, they were still short of flour, and it would be better to take it with him than to have to come back for it. The wreck-pile in a gale was a decidedly unpleasant experience, and its behaviour most extraordinary. He had never imagined a dead conglomeration such as that capable of such antics. When the tide was at its height the whole mass writhed and shuddered through all its length and breadth like some great monster in its death agonies. The rifts and chasms gaped and closed like grim black wounds or hungry mouths. Strange and awesome sounds broke out all about, groanings and creakings, ragged rendings and grindings, as the component pieces lifted and settled regardless of their neighbours. When the tide went down it was more at ease, and the only sounds were the waves snapping at the sides and gurgling and rushing in the depths below.

He did not find it very cold. Sheltered from the wind, the heat of his body in time made a warm nook round him in the heart of the curtains. But he was never dry. And before it got too dark, when he saw it would be impossible to get away that night, he crept out and crawled precariously to and fro till he lighted on a small cask of rum. He carried it to his shelter, knocking in the head with his axe, and it kept his blood warm through the night. But it was a terribly long night, chiefly because he was thinking all through it of Avice, and her fears for him, and her suffering.

To his bitter disappointment, morning showed no signs of abatement or relief. It brought another wild gray day without a glimmer of hope in the sky.

He had eaten nothing for more than twenty hours and was feeling empty and ravenous. The tide had risen and gone down again in the night. Before the pile began its writhings and contortions again he must eat. So he crept out and foraged till he found a barrel of pork, and bashed it open and carried back to his nest a big chunk which he ate raw and washed down with rum.

All that day the gale held. He hardly dared to think of Avice and yet could think of nothing else. At times, under the impulse of his fears for her, he was tempted to leap into the sea and try to battle through to the point. But when he studied the chances of it, common sense prevailed. Adventure into those boiling currents meant death as surely as if he cut his throat on the pile.

If he could only let her know that he was alive.... If he had had his flint and steel he would have tried to set something on fire--even if it were his nest--on the chance of her seeing the smoke and understanding it. He searched eagerly for another tinder-box, but could not light on one.

It was an anxious and gloomy man that crept into the heart of the curtain-case that night; but he slept, in a way and brokenly, in spite of it all, for Nature knows man's limits, and when he goes beyond them she steps in at times and takes command.

LVI

To Avice, also, that first night was one long horror.

She made up the fire and sat waiting for him to come. He would know in what a state of despair she would be and he would certainly come. She was sure he would come--if he could. If he did not it was because he could not. And ... if he could not....

The wind shrilled eerily outside. It sounded cold and heartless ... pitiless ... like messages from the dead ... warnings of evil. It got on her nerves and set her shivering. She crept to her room at last and dropped hopelessly on to her bed, and lay there sorely stricken.

In the gray of the morning she ate mechanically, and hurried away to the point for sign or sight of him. But it was all she could do to make out the pile itself, like a bristling rampart in the dull dim distance. As to distinguishing anything on it, that was out of the question.

She wandered about there all day long, with her eyes strained on the pile like one bereft, and only crept back when night shut it out and drove her home.