The Mummy MEGAPACK®. Lafcadio Hearn
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That was all they knew, that, and a hunger that lost itself somewhere in thirst.
The danger of capsizing hourly had grown less, seeming queerly enough to lessen with the weakening of the men’s resistance; or possibly it was the other way round. Late in the afternoon, with the sun beginning to shine palely, they came to the island. The surf crashed upon the rocky line in a steady thunder. Sea-birds swooped and beat above it, their cawing inaudible.
“Guess it’s all up,” the big man at the oars said. “If we go round to make shore on the lee side, the current’ll carry us past like a shot. If we get in the surf, them rocks’ll chop us up—for the gulls.”
They both stared at the spuming shoreline that momentarily became plainer. The oarsman had the better eyes.
“There’s a cove,” he said presently. “Sometimes that means a stretch of sand. If the breakers catch you right, you kin carry through, sometimes. Try it?”
The slim man peered through the lank black hair that fell over his red-lidded eyes, noting his informant as he had the shore.
“I don’t know you yet,” he said. “You a sailor? Got good judgment? Can we do anything else?”
“Name’s Pug Norton, sir—cook on the Bertha, sailed regular before the mast in the old days up here. Ain’t much I don’t know about landin’ a boat. I’d ruther get it over quick, there in the pound, than take days to it. I’ve helped pick up fellows that croaked from the thirst—I swore when my turn came I’d go a quick way. You feel the same?”
Rill nodded his head, and went to baling again, head drooped forward, shoulders bent. The sailor, Pug, gazed more frequently over his shoulder and sent the boat along a bit faster. Perhaps he intended to try the wild ride before dusk put a false light on things. They had no more speech, for they had said quite all that was necessary to say with thickening tongues.
The moment came when the boat was opposite the little cove, and the sailor simply, without hesitation, headed in for the breakers. They were big, as they usually are in Alaska, and always after a storm. Pug had a parting fragment of advice to give:
“If this here boat founders way out, just hang on tight. If she busts on shore, keep away from her. I’ve seen a Malay get his nut cracked between the boat and the sand. An’ I guess you know enough not to fight—if we ain’t carried in, we don’t get it, that’s all.”
Rill dropped the bucket and hung on to the gunwales as the other, choosing his time, strained at the oars. They shot in, lifted by a swell, dropped, were carried again, and again dropped just before the wave foamed and curled. The sailor had timed it well. He had the boat further in by the next break, so that at any rate the tremendous fall of water did not bash them. Instead they met the crazy blanket of foam. Rill perceived vaguely the other flashing the oars frantically, then the boat sank from under him, and he went down, clinging like a barnacle to the gunwale. He remembered coming to the top again, and swirling madly, giddily over and under the boat. Finally he let go. He felt his arm seized, and then his consciousness went.
When it came back he was lying with his face in the sand a foot or so beyond high-water line. He coughed weakly and opened his eyes to see the sailor, Pug, reeling toward him through the dusk, carrying something in his cap. Rill wondered pettishly how the sailor had kept that cap.
“Pool of rain-water back there,” Pug said. “Scummy-like, but good enough to rinse the salt water out of your mouth. Here.”
He lay down on the sand above Rill, and before the latter was through with the water he was sleeping. Rill had time to note the brine still dripping from him into the sand and to observe the same phenomenon occurring in his own case before he too fell back with a relaxing sigh into deep slumber. That was the end of their first day.
The second held other problems, chiefly those of food and water and shelter. They spread their clothes to dry on the sand, and occupied that time in collecting sections of the boat that had come ashore. Tangled and caught with sea-weed they found the long painter-rope. Norton patiently worked it free and coiled it to dry. But most pressing was the question of food. Later they could unravel a bit of the rope and form a fish-line, but the need was immediate. They put on their shoes and scoured among the rocks, catching little crabs and minnows, of which six might make a mouthful. They ate these raw for an hour or so, with the help of Norton’s jack-knife.
“I got a tin of matches in my pants for next time,” the latter explained. “But they eat good this way, huh?”
The sailor was the provident man, forehanded, capable. The thin-faced one with the wide forehead and loose lip would not have seen the practical wisdom of carrying matches in a water-tight receptacle.
In the afternoon they circuited the island and partially explored the interior, which indicates its size. Of man they found no trace, except, on the highest point, charred wood from some signal-fire. They were concerned chiefly at their failure to discover running water, for what pools they found in the rocks were brackish and filled with life, both animal and vegetable.
“If we had a kettle we could cook it”
Pug observed. “But we ain’t.”
The dead tree they had seen the day before was a pine, and they collected the brown needles for a bed. The day passed very quickly with the multitude of tasks. At night they slept close together for the warmth. The sailor got up once to see to the fire, but the other slept through without a wink of the eyelid.
They fashioned a low shelter, roofing it with needles and with green from the profuse underbrush. They made a fireplace that would endure the heavy rains. In all these things the sailor advised and directed, and Rill, unaccustomed to that, had to conceal his irritation. He did as the other advised, however, because invariably that was the best method. He had to admit that to himself, and the sailor took it as a matter of course. The latter would not have comprehended passing a mistake for the sake of the other’s self-satisfaction.
For instance, the cook had made a bird-snare and caught a gull. After their meal from it Rill threw carelessly the bones into the fire and leaned back. Pug swore and forked them out.
“You got to be more careful,” he admonished the other. “Them bones is valuable.”
Rill considered Pug, sucking his loose under lip.
“You got the bulge on me out here,” he answered. “If we were in town I might appear in other light—what an you doing?”
Pug had cleaned the clavicles or furcula, which in a chicken is the wishbone, and was carving it.
“Fish-hook,” he replied, and opened up the other phase. “I knew you was a city guy. I piped you stringing along with the other passengers on the Bertha. You was mostly at the tables in the smoking-room, wasn’t you? But I ain’t placed you—sometimes I think you’re educated, and next minute you’re spielin’ as if you was raised on the water-front.”
Rill did not avail himself of the request for an autobiography. He got to his feet and scanned lazily the empty sea.
“Yep, Pug, I’ve been arbiter elegantia, so to speak, among the esthetes and the patricians, and again I’ve mooched a plate of beans from a Cholo tamale man. While you’re fishing this afternoon, I’ll go over the island again.”
Pug watched him put his hands in his pockets and stroll easily around the curve in the shore.
“He’d bag a gink for a dime, if he thought he could get away with it,” he murmured to himself, and went on with the hook-making.
He was cleaning a meager catch of fish when the one who had gone exploring came back and sat down beside him.
“You got to be expert to bring ’em in with this here hook,” Pug announced, and considered that he had done his duty in the matter of small talk. But the other appeared engrossed.
“You can’t read Egyptian hieroglyphics or Chinese ideographs, can you?” he asked presently.
That was a good Joke. Pug chuckled