Into the Primitive Part 35

"That's my business," he replied. He thrust his burning-gla.s.s into her hand. "Here; go and build a fire, if you can find any dry stuff."

"You're not going to-- You'll bury him!"

"Yes. Whatever he may have been, he's dead now, poor devil!"

"I can't go," she half whispered, "not until--until I've learned-- Do you--can you tell me just what is paranoia?"

Blake studied a little, and tapped the top of his head.

"Near as I can say, it's softening of the brain.--up there."

"Do you think that--" she hesitated--"that he had it?"

Again Blake paused to consider.

"Well, I'm no alienist. I thought him a softy from the first. But that was all in line with what he was playing on us--British dude.

Fooled me, and I'd been chumming with Jimmy Scarbridge,--and Jimmy was the straight goods, fresh imported--monocle even--when I first ran up against him. No; this--this Hawkins, if that's his name, had brains all right. Still, he may have been cracked. When folks go dotty, they sometimes get extra 'cute. The best I can think of him is that losing his savings may have made him slip a cog, and then the scare over the way we landed here and his spells of fever probably hurried up the softening."

"Then you believe his story?"

"Yes, I do. But if you'll go, please."

"One thing more--I must know now! Do you remember the day when you set up the signal, and you--you quarrelled with him?"

Blake reddened, and dropped his gaze. "Did he go and tell you that? The sneak!"

"If you please, let us say nothing more about him. But would you care to tell me what you meant--what you said then?"

Blake's flush deepened; but he raised his head, and faced her squarely as he answered: "No; I'm not going to repeat any dead man's talk; and as for what I said, this isn't the time or place to say anything in that line--now that we're alone. Understand?"

"I'm afraid I do not, Mr. Blake. Please explain."

"Don't ask me, Miss Jenny. I can't tell you now. You'll have to wait till we get aboard s.h.i.+p. We'll catch a steamer before long. 'T isn't every one of them that goes ash.o.r.e in these blows."

"Why did you build that door? Did you suspect--" She glanced down at the huddled figure between them.

Blake frowned and hesitated; then burst out almost angrily: "Well, you know now he was a sneak; so it's not blabbing to tell that much--I knew he was before; and it's never safe to trust a sneak."

"Thank you!" she said, and she turned away quickly that she might not again look at the prostrate figure.

CHAPTER XXI

WRECKAGE AND SALVAGE

All the wood in the cleft was sodden from the fierce downpour that had accompanied the cyclone; all the cleft bottom other than the bare ledges was a bed of mud; everything without the tree-cave had been either blown away or heaped with broken boughs and mud-spattered rubbish. But the girl had far too much to think about to feel any concern over the mere damage and destruction of things. It was rather a relief to find something that called for work.

Not being able to find dry fuel, she gathered a quant.i.ty of the least sodden of the twigs and branches, and spread them out on a ledge in the clear suns.h.i.+ne. While her firewood was drying, she sc.r.a.ped away the mud and litter heaped upon her rude hearth. She then began a search for lost articles. When she dug out the pottery ware, she found her favorite stew-pot and one of the platters in fragments. The drying-frames for the meat had been blown away, and so had the antelope and hyena skins.

Catching sight of a bit of white down among the bamboos, she went to it, and was not a little surprised to see the tattered remnant of her duck skirt. It had evidently been torn from the signal staff by the first gust of the cyclone, whirled down into the cleft by some flaw or eddy in the wind, and wadded so tightly into the heart of the thick clump of stems that all the fury of the storm had failed to dislodge it. Its recovery seemed to the girl a special providence; for of course they must keep up a signal on the cliff.

Having started her fire and set on a stew, she hunted out her sewing materials from their crevice in the cave, and began mending the slits in the torn flag. While she worked she sat on a shaded ledge, her bare feet toasting in the sun, and her soggy, mud-smeared moccasins drying within reach. When Blake appeared, the moccasins were still where she had first set them; but the little pink feet were safely tucked up beneath the tattered flag. Fortunately, the sight of the white cloth prevented Blake from noticing the moccasins.

"h.e.l.lo!" he exclaimed. "What's that?--the flag? Say, that's luck!

I'll break out a bamboo right off. Old staff's carried clean away."

"Mr. Blake,--just a moment, please. What have you done with--with it?"

Blake jerked his thumb upward.

"You have carried him up on the cliff?"

"Best place I could think of. No animals--and I piled stones over....

But, I say, look here."

He drew out a piece of wadded cloth, marked off into little squares by crossing lines of st.i.tches. One of the squares near the edge had been ripped open. Blake thrust in his finger, and worked out an emerald the size of a large pea.

"O-h-h!" cried Miss Leslie, as he held the glittering gem out to her in his rough palm.

He drew it back, and carefully thrust it again into its pocket.

"That's one," he said. "There's another in every square of this innocent, harmless rag--dozens of them. He must have made a clean sweep of the duke's--or, more like, the d.u.c.h.ess's jewels. Now, if you please, I want you to sew this up tight again, and--"

"I cannot--I cannot touch it!" she cried.

"Say, I didn't mean to-- It was confounded stupid of me," mumbled Blake. "Won't you excuse me?"

"Of course! It was only the--the thought that--"

"No wonder. I always am a fool when it comes to ladies. I'll fix the thing all right."

Catching up the nearest small pot, he crammed the quilted cloth down within it, and filled it to the brim with sticky mud.

"There! Guess n.o.body's going to run off with a jug of mud--and it won't hurt the stones till we get a chance to look up the owner. He won't be hard to find--English duke minus a pint of first-cla.s.s sparklers! Will you mind its setting in the cave after things are fixed up?"

"No; not as it is."

He nodded soberly. "All right, then. Now I'll go for the new flag-staff. You might set out breakfast."

She nodded in turn, and when he came back from the bamboos with the largest of the great canes on his shoulder, his breakfast was waiting for him. She set it before him, and turned to go again to her sewing.

"Hold on," he said. "This won't do. You've got to eat your share."

"I do not--I am not hungry."