It, and Other Stories Part 11

"Never saw you put so much elbow-grease into anything," she said.

"What's the matter with you, anyway?"

"It's a game," I grunted, "and these two fellows will have me beat if I don't look lively."

"Right Bower," she says then, slow and deliberate, "I can see you're upside down about something. Tell Ivy."

"Look," says I--"smoke! I never got it so quick before." I spun the pointed stick between the palms of my hands harder than ever and gloated over the wisp of smoke that came from where it was boring into the flat stick.

"Make a bow," says Ivy. "Loop the bowstring round the hand-piece and you'll get more friction with less work."

"By gorry!" says I; "you're right. I remember a picture in a geography--'Native Drilling a Conch Sh.e.l.l.' Fool that I am to forget!"

"Guess you and I learned out of the same geography," said Ivy.

"Only I didn't learn," said I. "I'm off to cut something tough to make the bow."

"Don't go far," she says.

"Why not?" said I--the sporty way a man does when he pretends that he's going to take a night off with the boys and play poker.

"Because," she says smiling, "I'm afraid the beasts will get me while you're gone."

"Rats!" says I.

"Tigers!" says she. "Oh, Right, you unplumbable old idiot! Do you think you can come into this cave and hide anything from me under that transparent face of yours? The minute you came in and hemmed and hawed, and said as you had nothing to do you guessed you'd have a go with the firesticks--I knew. What scared you?"

I surrendered and told her.

"... And then," she said, "you think maybe they'll hurt--us?"

I nodded.

"Why, it's war," she said. "I've read enough about war to know that there are two safe rules to follow. First, declare war yourself while the other fellow's thinking about it; and then strike him before he's even heard that you have declared it. That sounds mixed, but it's easy enough. We'll declare war on the dangerous beasts while I'm still in the months of hop, skip, and jump."

"A certain woman," said I, "wouldn't let the beasts go down in the old _Boldero_, as would have been beneficial for all parties."

"This is different," she said. "This island's got to be a safe place for a little child to play in or Ivy Bower's got to be told the reason why."

"You're dead right, Ivy dear," I says, "and always was. But how? I'm cursed if I know how to kill a tiger without a rifle.... Let's get fire first and put the citadel in a state of siege. Then we'll try our hand at traps, snares, and pitfalls. I'm strong, but I'm cursed if I want to fall on a tiger with nothing in my hands but a knife or an axe."

"All I care about," said Ivy, "is to get everything settled, so that when the time comes we can be comfortable and plenty domestic."

She sat in the mouth of the cave and looked over the smooth cove to the rolling ocean beyond; and she had the expression of a little girl playing at being married with a little boy friend in the playhouse that her father had just given her for her birthday.

I got a piece of springy wood to make a bow with, and sat by her shaping it with my knife. That night we got fire. Ivy caught some fish in the cove and we cooked them; and--thanks, O Lord!--how good they were! We sat up very late comparing impressions, each saying how each felt when the smoke began to show sparks and when the tinder pieces finally caught, and how each had felt when the broiled smell of the fish had begun to go abroad in the land. We told each other of all the good things we had eaten in our day, but how this surpa.s.sed them all. And later we told each other all our favorite names--boy names in case it should be a boy and girl names in case it shouldn't.

Then, suddenly, something being hunted by something tore by in the dark--not very far off. The sweat came off me in buckets, and I heaped wood on the fire and flung burning brands into the night, this way and that, as far as I could fling them. Ivy said I was like Jupiter trying to hurl thunder-bolts, after the invention of Christianity, and not rightly understanding why they wouldn't explode any more.

VII

The pines of the island were full of pitch and a branch would burn torch-like for a long time. I kept a bundle of such handy, the short ends sharpened so's you could stick 'em round wherever the ground was soft enough and have an effect of altar candles in a draughty church. If there was occasion to leave the cave at night I'd carry one of the torches and feel as safe as if it had been an elephant rifle.

We made a kind of a dooryard in front of the cave's mouth, with a stockade that we borrowed from Robinson Crusoe, driving pointed stakes close-serried and hoping they'd take root and sprout; but they didn't.

Between times I made finger-drawings in the sand of plans for tiger traps and pitfalls. I couldn't dig pits, but I knew of two that might have been made to my order, a volcano having taken the contract. They were deep as wells, sheer-sided; anything that fell in would stay in. I made a wattle-work of branches and palm fibre to serve as lids for these nature-made tiger jars. The idea was to toss dead fish out to the middle of the lids for bait; then for one of the big cats to smell the fish, step out to get it, and fall through. Once in, it would be child's work to stone him to death.

Another trap I made was more complicated and was a scheme to drop trees heavy enough to break a camel's back or whatever touched the trigger that kept them from falling. It was the devil's own job to make that trap. First place, I couldn't cut a tree big enough and lift it to a strategic position; so I had to fell trees in such a way that they'd be caught half-way to the ground by other trees. Then I'd have to clear away branches and roots so that when the trees did fall the rest of the way it would be clean, plumb, and sudden. It was a wonderful trap when it was finished and it was the most dangerous work of art I ever saw. If you touched any of a dozen triggers you stood to have a whole grove of trees come banging down on top of you--same as if you went for a walk in the woods and a tornado came along and blew the woods down. If the big cats had known how frightfully dangerous that trap was they'd have jumped overboard and left the island by swimming. I made two other traps something like it--the best contractor in New York wouldn't have undertaken to build one just like it at any price--and then it came around to be the seventh day, so to speak; and, like the six-day bicycle rider, I rested.

"Days," is only a fas.h.i.+on of speaking. I was months getting my five death-traps into working order. I couldn't work steadily because there was heaps of cavework to do besides, fish to be caught, wood to be cut for the fire, and all; and then, dozens of times, I'd suddenly get scared about Ivy and go running back to the cave to see if she was all right. I might have known better; she was always all right and much better plucked than I was.

Well, sir, my traps wouldn't work. The fish rotted on the wattle-lids of the pitfalls, but the beasts wouldn't try for 'em. They were getting ravenous, too--ready to attack big Bahut even; but they wouldn't step out on those wattles and they wouldn't step under my balanced trees.

They'd beat about the neighborhood of the danger and I've found many a padmark within six inches of the edge of things. I even baited with a live kid. It belonged to the Thibet goats and I had a hard time catching it; and after it had bleated all night and done its baby best to be tiger food I turned it loose and it ran off with its mammy. She, poor soul, had gone right into the trap to be with her baby and, owing to the direct intervention of Providence, hadn't sprung the thing.

The next fancy bait I tried was a chetah--dead. I found him just after his accident, not far from the cave. He was still warm; and he was flat--very flat, like a rug made of chetah skin. He had some shreds of elephant-hide tangled in his claws. It looked to me as if he'd gotten desperate with hunger and had pounced on big Bahut--pshaw! the story was in plain print: "Ouch!" says big Bahut. "A flea has bitten me. Here's where I play dead," and--rolls over. Result: one neat and very flat rug made out of chetah.

I showed the rug to Ivy and then carried it off to the woods and spread it in my first and fanciest trap. Then I allowed I'd have a look at the pitfalls, which I hadn't visited for a couple of days--and I was a fool to do it. I'd told Ivy where I was going to spread the chetah and that after that I'd come straight home. Well, the day seemed young and I thought if I hurried I could go home the roundabout way by the pitfalls in such good time that Ivy wouldn't know the difference. Well, sir, I came to the first pitfall--and, lo and behold! something had been and taken the bait and got away with it without so much as putting a foot through the wattling. I'd woven it too strong. So I thought I'd just weaken it up a little--it wouldn't take five minutes. I tried it with my foot--very gingerly. Yes, it was too strong--much too strong. I put more weight into that foot--and bang, smash, crash--b.u.mp! There I was at the bottom of the pit, with half the wattling on top of me.

The depth of that hole was full twenty-five feet; the sides were as smooth as bottle-gla.s.s; dusk was turning into dark. But these things weren't the worst of it. I'd told Ivy that I'd do one thing--and I'd gone and done another. I'd lied to her and I'd put her in for a time of anxiety, and then fright, that might kill her.

VIII

I wasted what little daylight was left trying to climb out, using nothing but hands and feet. And then I sat down and cursed myself for a triple-plated, copper-riveted, patent-applied-for fool. Nothing would have been easier, given light, than to take the wattling that had fallen into the pit with me to pieces, build a pole--sort of a split-bamboo fis.h.i.+ng-rod on a big scale--s.h.i.+n up and go home. But to turn that trick in the dark wasn't any fun. I did it though--twice. I made the first pole too light and it smashed when I was half-way up. A splinter jabbed into my thigh and drew blood. That complicated matters. The smell of the blood went out of the pit and travelled around the island like a sandwich man saying: "Fine supply of fresh meat about to come out of Right Bower's pet pitfall; second on the left."

When I'd s.h.i.+nned to the top of the second pole I built and crawled over the rim of the pit--there was a tiger sitting, waiting, very patient. I could just make him out in the starlight. He was mighty lean and looked like a hungry gutter-cat on a big scale. Some people are afraid to be alone in the dark. I'm not. Well, I just knelt there--I'd risen to my knees--and stared at him. And then I began to take in a long breath--I swelled and swelled with it. It's a wonder I didn't use up all the air on the island and create a vacuum--in which case the tiger would have blown up. I remember wondering what that big breath was going to do when it came out. I didn't know. I had no plan. I looked at the tiger and he looked at me and whined--like a spoiled spaniel asking for sugar. That was too much. I thought of Ivy, maybe needing me as she'd never needed any one before--and I looked at that stinking cat that meant to keep me from her. I made one jump at him--'stead of him at me--and at the same time I let out the big breath I'd drawn in a screech that very likely was heard in Jericho.

The tiger just vanished like a Ches.h.i.+re cat in a book I read once, and I was running through the night for home and Ivy. But the fire at the cave was dying, and Ivy was gone.

Well, of course she'd have gone to look for me.... It was then that I began to whimper and cry. I lit a pine-torch, flung some wood on the embers, and went out to look for her--whimpering all the time. I'd told her that I was going out to bait a certain trap and would then come straight home. So of course she'd have gone straight to that trap--and it was there I found her.

The torch showed her where she sat, right near the dead chetah, in the very centre of the trap--triggers all about her--to touch one of which spelt death; and all around the trap, in a ring--like an audience at a one-ring circus--were the meat-eaters--the tigers--the lions--the leopards--and, worst of all, the pigs. There she sat and there they sat--and no one moved--except me with the torch.

She lifted her great eyes to me and she smiled. All the beasts looked at me and turned away their eyes from the light and blinked and s.h.i.+fted; and the old he-lion coughed. They wouldn't come near me because of the torch--and they wouldn't go near Ivy because of the trap. They knew it was a trap. They always had known it and so had Ivy. That was why she had gone into it when so many deaths looked at her in so many ways--because she knew that in there she'd be safe. All along she'd known that my old traps and pitfalls wouldn't catch anything; but she'd never said so--and she'd never laughed at them or at me. I could find it in my heart to call her a perfect wife--just by that one fact of tact alone; but there are other facts--other reasons--millions of them.

Suddenly from somewhere near Ivy there came a thin, piping sound.

"It's your little son talking to you," says Ivy, as calm as if she was sitting up in a four-poster.

"My little son!" I says. That was all for a minute. Then I says:

"Are you all right?"

And she says:

"Sure I am--now that I know you are."

I turned my torch fire-end down and it began to blaze and sputter and presently roar. Then I steps over to the lion and he doesn't move; and I points the torch at his dirty face--and lunges.