Isle o' Dreams Part 2

"Don't be absurd, Dad. We're so glad to meet you again, Mr. Trask.

We were stupid about the train, but----"

"You'll have to excuse me," said her father, "I hear the bath going. Wilkins! Feed us tiffin till we're blue in the face," and he disappeared into the _sala_.

"And there isn't a boat to connect with the Pacific Mail for twenty-six days," said Trask. "I'm on a vacation."

"You know so much about Manila, too," she said. "But we may go on the Thursday boat."

"The Thursday boat?"

"Yes."

"If there's a Thursday boat, I'll wreck it," said Trask, and clapped his hands for the _muchacho_.

CHAPTER II

DINSHAW TELLS OF HIS ISLAND

"Here," said Locke, "comes Rip Van Winkle--without his dog."

"A beggar!" whispered Marjorie, looking past Trask. "Poor old man!"

Trask turned from the table, and saw at the end of the veranda an old man approaching with a package under his arm. He looked like a vagabond, in khaki trousers with the bottoms fringed by tatters through which showed his bare ankles; pitiful old cloth shoes; a patched coat of white drill with frogging across the front such as Chinese mess boys wear; and a battered, rimless straw hat. He drew near the table with weary feet, hesitatingly and dazed, as though he had lost his way, peering about like an owl thrust into the light of mid-day from a darkened belfry.

"Why, it must be Captain Dinshaw!" said Trask.

The old man stopped ten feet from the trio and lifting his head like a hound who has taken scent, gazed at them suspiciously. Then he smiled toothlessly and swung off his bowl of a hat with a grand air.

"Aye, sir," he said, in a weak but shrill voice. "Cap'n Dinshaw, late of the bark, _James B. Wetherall_, lost in a typhoon an' Lord ha' mercy on us!"

"This is a shame!" said Locke, in a cautious whisper to Trask, as he leaned back in his gra.s.s chair to light a cigar. "I hate to see a white man like that in this country."

"He looks hungry," said Marjorie. "Dad, call the boy!"

"It's an interesting case," said Trask. "I want you to hear him.

Wilkins had him up so I could talk to him. He's got an island."

"Would the lady buy a picter?" inquired Dinshaw, with a little bow.

"Hand painted by myself, out of my head, from my own recollections.

A good suvverner." He began to unwrap his flat parcel.

"Come over here and sit down," said Locke, rising, and pus.h.i.+ng forward a chair. "You ought to have something to drink and a bite to eat. Shouldn't be out in sun like this with that sort of headgear."

Dinshaw muttered a thanks, and dropped into the chair, his thin, wrinkled face drawing into a queer smile. He let the package fall across his knees, and his hat dropped from his trembling fingers.

He stroked a tuft of whisker under his chin.

"I don't mind the heat, but the soup's bad," he remarked.

"Here's the boy," said Trask. "Now what's it to be?"

"Eh! Oh, Ah Wing! That boy knows me. A tot of gin with a stinger, and thank you kindly. A master should go with his s.h.i.+p," and he touched his spa.r.s.e white hair which showed his scalp, and nodded his head, staring out over the bay as if in a reverie. The colour was bleached out of his failing eyes and they had a habit of roving about unsteadily, a quality common in old sailors and probably acquired in a lifetime of watching heaving seas.

"Bring some more of the fish, and a big cup of coffee," said Trask, as Ah Wing grinned and turned to go.

"So you sell pictures," encouraged Marjorie. "And paint them yourself!"

"Aye, ma'am. All hands lost but myself--piled up on a reef of this island. A master should go with his s.h.i.+p." He clutched at his parcel and began tearing off the string.

"Picters o' my island. I allus was a painter," he continued, "if I did foller the sea. Why, in my bark, the _Wetherall_ it was, I had fancy picters on the bulkheads an' gold linin' over the white but she got in a twistin' jimmycane, such as we have in these waters.

Thar's my island!"

He held up one canvas, a foot high and two feet wide, tacked over a piece of board. It was a gaudy representation of an island wrought with pathetic lack of skill. There was a conical peak at the left end smeared with a slash of purple, and over it a very red and very round sun. The land sloped away from the peak to the other end of the island, and was lost in a white streak extending seaward, the the bony finger of a skeleton, marking a reef clothed with fuzzy breakers. A rocky ledge ran down to where the reef began and a big gray stone stood up abruptly, giving the island the appearance of a bluff-bowed vessel, and under it, a triangular patch of beach.

Near the rock were four palm trees. One bent over at a sharp angle, as if it had been partly uprooted, and its moppy fronds almost trailed in the still water of a pool formed by a second reef, not so clearly defined, which ran parallel with the land. Except inside this natural basin the whole sh.o.r.e of the island was wreathed by white rollers and behind the sh.o.r.e line was a fringe of vividly green jungle.

"Oh, isn't that splendid!" exclaimed Marjorie.

"It's a work o' art, that's what everybody says," remarked the old man with a show of pride.

"What do you call the island?" asked Locke.

"The name don't matter, sir. 'Dinshaw's Island' they call it hereabouts, in honour o' the fact I was wrecked on it. Blown off my course in a typhoon at night and went smash into this reef ye see here. I was washed out o' the riggin', an' when I come to I was on the beach here, wreckage all round, an' the sun s.h.i.+nin' bright as a whiffet, an' me all beat out an' water-logged. Right there it was,"

and he put his thumb on a spot near the rock.

"Is it a big island?" asked Trask.

"Not in the way ye might think. Big enough as it goes, but it ain't the size what counts," and he broke into a cackling laugh, wagging his head, as if he held the secret of a great joke.

"Where is it?" asked Locke.

"Thar's lots as would like to know, sir," said Dinshaw, gravely.

"But I ain't in the way o' tellin', not until I can see my way clear to go myself."

"It is near the mainland of Luzon?" asked Trask.

Dinshaw turned quickly and peered at him suspiciously, pursing his lips.

"It is," he said, finally.

"I don't see any other land in the picture," ventured Trask, scanning the canvas with more care.

"Ye bet ye don't!" snapped Dinshaw, with sudden asperity. "I left that out so they can't find it. Lots as would like to find Dinshaw's island, young man, but I'm savin' it for myself. Jarrow said he'd take me, but he never did. He wants to go steal it himself. I know. I know. They can't fool me, if I am old."

"Steal your island?" asked Marjorie. "Why, how could anybody steal an island?"

"What's on it?" whispered Dinshaw.