Maid of the Mist Part 47

He made her comfortable in the corner, got his buckets and a stick, and dropped over the side.

She lay watching him as he waded ash.o.r.e, saw him stop for a moment to examine the raft, and then, with a wave of the hand, he set off for the pools, swinging his buckets jauntily.

Were there many such men in the world, she wondered, and why had she never met any of them before? The men she had met were so very different. They were as a rule so elusive and evasive that you never quite knew what they were driving at ... except that it was certain to be for their own satisfaction and advantage ... and that unless you were always on your guard it was likely to turn out ill for you ... a queer world, and life was a puzzle past comprehending.....

She was glad to be out of it ... even on this sandbank.... Life was sweeter here, and certainly very much simpler.... Well, perhaps a little too severely simple in some respects.... But one could not have everything.... Thank G.o.d, again, that it was this man who was with her and not that other!...

She saw him coming at last with his full buckets, and presently made out a couple of rabbits hanging round his neck.

"The birds are having a great time out yonder," he called to her.

"Lots of new wreckage, I expect, and they've been fasting. I must get across as soon as I can and see if the storm has brought anything for us. One never knows,"--he had come alongside, and lifted the buckets and tossed the rabbits on to the deck. "I'll fasten the raft to the chain there"--and he hauled himself along on it to the bows.

She heard a smothered exclamation, and presently he climbed up and came along the deck with something in his hand.

"What is it?" she asked.

"What do you make of that?" and he handed her the link of the rusty cable which had given way and let them drift ash.o.r.e.

She turned it over in her fingers. Just where it had opened, the metal glinted in the suns.h.i.+ne, and just above that there was a patch that looked like grease. She shook her head.

"Don't you see?--it's been filed enough to weaken it, and there was grease on the file."

"And you think----" with a shocked look.

"Undoubtedly. No one else could have done it. But what his idea was, I can't make out. Just to make trouble, I suppose. Of course if the wind had come the other way, as it has done once or twice, we might have blown right down the lake. It was a mean trick. I wonder when he did it."

"I am more thankful than ever that he's gone."

"So am I.... I've been thinking we'd better move across there as soon as possible."

"Must we? I have grown so fond of this old s.h.i.+p."

"But we can't live on the slope like this. Besides, if a gale did come the opposite way we might have trouble. I'll go over presently and begin cleaning. When I've finished you'll find it much more comfortable than this."

"I shall always like this the best."

"I was thinking as I went over to the pools that it might not be a bad idea to build some kind of a house on sh.o.r.e. I can get timber enough for a hundred. You see, we don't quite know what winter may be like in this place, but it's pretty sure to be a time of storms."

"Can you build a house?"

"One never knows what one can do till one tries. This is a great place for bringing out one's unknown faculties. I've done a good many things I never expected to do, since I came here."

"It might be a good plan. Can't it wait till I can help?"

"We'll see. We must do like the ants and squirrels--work hard while it's fine and get in our supplies for the winter. We are mighty fortunate to have such a store to draw upon."

He spent all the rest of the day slaving like a charwoman on the 'Jane and Mary,' and The Girl lay in her nest watching him, as he went up and down, now flinging rubbish overboard, then hauling up buckets of water, and sluicing and mopping, with every now and again a cheery wave of hand or mop in her direction, and long periods below devoted, she did not doubt, to the doing of more of those things which he had never done, or expected to do, until he came there. And her heart was very warm to him, knowing that it was not for his own comfort but for hers that all these great labours were toward.

She saw him busy on deck, bending and bobbing up and down, and once she caught the gleam of vivid colours, and wondered what he was at. He was a long time below after that, and then he went ash.o.r.e for a load of sand, and when it was getting dark she suddenly caught glimpse of his head in the water as he wound up the day's work with a very necessary swim.

He came across on the raft all aglow, but visibly tired and hungry, and greeted her with a cheery, "I think you'll find it all to your liking.

I've swabbed away every trace of the former tenants and everything is fresh and new."

"I wish I could have helped."

"Oh, but you did, by sitting quietly here and getting better, to say nothing of a wave of the hand now and then."

"That was not doing much when you were working like a----"

"Like a n.i.g.g.e.r. I looked like one too till I'd had that swim. Now I'll get supper ready, and tomorrow we'll flit, and you'll be able to walk about on an even keel without any danger of falling."

He helped her down to the cabin and their very close quarters at the bottom of the slope, and set to work preparing their evening meal. And the more incongruous his occupations and the more menial his tasks, the more The Girl's heart warmed towards him.

XLIX

In the morning, as soon as they had eaten, he got the raft round to the lower side of the s.h.i.+p, ruthlessly hacked out a section of the bulwarks so that she could step down with the smallest possible exertion, and took her across to the new house.

Getting her on board without shock to the broken arm was not so easy.

He moored the raft, stem and stern, and braced it tight so that it could not move. Then he built on it a pyramid of three empty boxes, forming steps up which she could climb high enough to grip his strong hand teaching down through the gap in the side and so be drawn safely up on to the deck, which he had swabbed with sand and water till it was cleaner than it had been for years.

"It is nice to be able to walk on the flat of one's feet again," she said, and he led her down below to a cabin gorgeous as an Eastern room with drapings of amber silk and blue, and every bit of woodwork scoured as clean as elbow-grease could make it.

"It is delightful," she said fervidly. "How you must have slaved at it!"

"And how I enjoyed doing it!"

There was a new sand hearth, nicely banked up between planks pegged upright on the floor, and a pile of wood on it ready for lighting. He lit a match with his flint and steel, and handed it to her as before, so that she might start the first fire in the new home.

"You will take your old room," he said. "Then if we should topple over again you won't be able to fall out of your bunk. Now I'll go back and bring over all our belongings. I made a complete clearance here, except some of the stores which we can use," and before mid-day he had everything transferred and stowed away.

He spent most of the afternoon weaving in and out of their rusty cable lengths of the least-rotten rope he could lay hands on, in order to strengthen it and stop its chafing as much as possible. But below water he could not go beyond a foot or two, and the lower links he had to leave to Providence.

As he worked, The Girl paced the deck, rejoicing in its horizontality, and came each time to lean over the bows and watch him and say a lively word or two. And, if any had been there to see, it would have been difficult to believe that two such cheerful people were, to the very best of their belief, condemned by an inscrutable fate to imprisonment for life on this lonely sandbank,--to a confinement as solitary in some respects, and in the prospect of escape as hopeless, as that of the Bastille itself.

But--they were together; and Adam and Eve, cast out of the Garden, could still make a home in the wilderness and turn the joys that were left them to fullest account.

L

He was up betimes next morning, and had fish for their breakfast before she came out of her room, and, moreover, had made cakes and full provision for all her needs during the day.

"I shall go out there at once," he said. "You will not mind being left? I want to get in everything we shall need for the winter as soon as possible."