Maid of the Mist Part 25

"I could believe that,--the souls of the dead without a doubt."

"Suppose we turn to something pleasanter," suggested Wulfrey. "Perhaps you will choose out the things you think most suitable from all that the mate brought over from the wrecks?"

"From the wrecks?" ... and she glanced at him doubtfully with a little s.h.i.+ver. "It does not sound too nice."

"We will bring them up. You will see them better here," and they spread the deck with Macro's latest importations.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" murmured she, as she turned them over with curious fingers, and held them up to adjudge their style and make.

"But they are things of the days before the flood! ... They are too amazing! ... They are wonderful beyond words!"

"Could ye no alter them to your needs, mebbe?" suggested Macro hopefully.

"Perhaps--with needle and thread and scissors. But have you these?"

"Mebbe I can find 'em for ye. There's the cargoes of hunderds o' s.h.i.+ps out there. Ye can find a'most anything if ye look long enough. And mebbe there's newer things if I can light on 'em."

"And some shoes and stockings, think you? I would be very glad of them. It feels strange to go with bare feet."

"I'll find 'em if there's any there."

"It is very good of you. I thank you. Could I perhaps come too?"

The idea evidently appealed strongly to him. He looked at her eagerly, and hesitated, but finally said, "It's no easy getting there. There's over six miles' walk through the sand, then near a mile of wading up to your neck in the water, and sometimes a bit of a swim, all according to the tide. Some day, mebbe, I'll mek a bit raft to tek ye across from the point there--just to see what it's like. But ye want these things and I'll get along quicker alone."

"I thank you all the same. It will be for some other time then," and Macro let himself down on to his raft and paddled away to the spit.

She stood watching him till he landed and set off at speed towards the point.

"He is truly good-hearted," she said, as he disappeared. "He is not all English?"

"He is from the islands off the west coast of Scotland, but he confesses to a strain of Spanish blood also."

"And why confesses? It is not, I suppose, his own doing. One confesses to a fault. Is a strain of foreign blood a sin in your eyes then, Monsieur le Docteur?" she asked, with pointed emphasis.

"By no means. I should have said he rejoices in it."

"We English--British, I should say,"--with a fleeting gleam of a smile--"are too apt to look upon all foreigners as of lower breed than ourselves, which is quite a mistake and leads to much misunderstanding.

Every nation has distinctive qualities of its own, is it not so?"

"Undoubtedly. And unless one knows them by personal experience one should not pa.s.s judgment. I must confess to being nothing of a traveller."

"How came you here?" she asked abruptly.

"I was bound for America--or Canada, with the intention of settling out there. It looks now, according to the mate, as though this strip of sand has got to suffice us for the rest of our lives."

"Really?" ... with a startled look. "Is there no getting away then?

Does no one ever come here?"

"None but dead men, if they can help it, apparently. You were an exception to the rule. So were we. We have none of us any right to be here alive."

"If I had some shoes and stockings, and some proper clothes, I believe I could be quite happy here," she said. "That is if one has not also to starve."

"There is no need to starve. The island is over-run with rabbits.

There are fish in the lake here if only we could catch them, and out there among the wreckage are all kinds of things--casks of pork and beef, and coffee, and rum, and flour--enough to last us for hundreds of years."

"It is a most excellent retreat."

"If one were sick of the world. But you surely are too young to have arrived at that stage."

"One may be young and yet be sick of one's world.... Sometime I will tell you.... Now, if you please, I will take a few of these things and you will show me your pool and I will wash them----"

"Oh, I'll do all that for you----"

"Not at all. Besides, with your permission and if you will leave me quite alone, I would like also to wash in fresh water. I too shall never feel quite dry until I have done so."

He a.s.sisted her down to the other raft, through a break they had long since made in the side for that purpose, and paddled ash.o.r.e. There he showed her the pool they had set apart for was.h.i.+ng, and told her he would come back for her at whatever time she chose.

"In two hours, please," and he went off into the sand-hills.

But his mind stubbornly refused to interest itself in rabbits. He dropped down on the sunny side of a hummock and let his thoughts run on this most surprising addition to their company. What could possibly explain her,--young, beautiful, of undoubted birth and breeding, yet ready to renounce the world, of which her twenty years or so had apparently given her a surfeit, and to welcome the chance of a hermit life?

It was a puzzle beyond any man's understanding. All his thinking led him only towards shadowy possibilities. And these the thought of her sweet face and clear frank outlook rejected instantly as libels on her fair fame, which he, with no more knowledge than he now had, yet felt himself prepared to defend with all his might against the whole world.

If that girl was not all that she seemed and that he believed her to be, he would never trust his own judgment again.

All the same, it was very amazing, and she filled his thoughts to such an extent that the rabbits hopped fearlessly about him as he sat thinking of her; and it was long after the two hours before he came to himself, and rewarded their temerity by knocking a couple on the head and striding away back to find her.

She was sitting waiting for him, with a fresh-water brightness in her face, her hair coiled loosely round her head, and her was.h.i.+ng still drying in the sun. She hastily bundled up her things at sight of him and came along to meet him.

"I began to fear you had forgotten me," she said.

"Very much to the contrary. It was our dinner I came near forgetting,"

and he dangled the rabbits before her. "You feel better for the fresh water?"

"Oh, very much better. And now I am hungry. When does your friend come back?"

"Not till evening as a rule. If he can lay hands on what you want he may come sooner to-day."

"And you--do you never go out there with him?"

"Oh, sometimes. But it doesn't attract me as it does him."

"Why then?"

"We are differently made, I suppose;--which is perhaps a good thing.

He delights in finding things out there. I go out only for necessaries."

"What does he find--besides strange old clothes?"

"Oh, heaps of things--treasure. There are the cargoes of very many s.h.i.+ps out there. They have been acc.u.mulating for hundreds of years, I suppose."