The Argosy/Volume 76/Issue 3/Creation Reef

by John Fleming Wilson

 

Creation Reef

by John Fleming Wilson

I.

THE Alaska salmon season was closed. The last case of bright tins had been stowed into the hold of the big ship Indian Star; the manager of the cannery that stood in the tidewash under the hill locked his office door, tossed the key into the water, and waved his arms toward the ship.

Captain Merkel waved back, a small boat came out for the last party of us, the anchor chanty rose into the colorful air, sails dropped from the yards, and on the strong stream of the ebb tide we swung out of our summer’s harbor and joined the great fall flight of the fishing fleet southward.

“That ends this trip,” said Manager Evans, grimly surveying the crew he had fought with and ruled for five months. “And I’m glad of it!”

“So am I,” said his wife, reddening as she saw her husband’s eyes follow the slim figure of Meta Braun, his stenographer.

“We’ll make the Golden Gate in sixteen days,” the captain interrupted. He hadn’t observed his superior’s daily life for several months without gaining a deep sympathy for Mrs. Evans.

As one man to another, he saw no reason why he should specially blame Evans for liking Meta, whose youth was spiced with quick wit and a sufficient dash of the flirt to make her worth watching.

But he hated to see Mrs. Evans lose her temper. She flushed so slowly and painfully under her tan, and when an outburst did come lost her good looks for a week. And she was exceedingly strong and beautiful.

“Yes,” he went on deliberately, “we’ll fetch down in sixteen days with this nor’wester whooping us along.”

Meta Braun drew in a long, easy breath, glanced upward at the drumming sails, and looked directly at Mrs. Evans.

“Only sixteen days more!” she said with an almost imperceptible drawl that brought the color again into the other woman’s cheeks.

“And then?” demanded Rolf Anerson, the head bookkeeper.

Miss Braun glanced at him and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she replied with childlike wistfulness. “You know I hate to go back into an old office after this being out in the open and seeing the water and the mountains.”

In that moment Mrs. Evans’s deeper instincts told her that Meta Braun was really lovable, that she wanted care and a little mothering. Impulsively she touched the girl on the shoulder.

“We’ll all go back next summer, Meta, together.”

“I don’t know whether I’d care to come back,” was the reply in an indifferent voice. Thus the moment of reconciliation passed.

The Indian Star managed a brilliant run to Dutch Harbor, swept through the Pass into the Pacific, and fled down the slope of the world toward home, now lifting a sister sail on the horizon and calling to her by signals, now seeing far-away lights at evening to mark the position of still some other cannery tender.

“We shall see Mount Tamalpais in eight days,” Merkel triumphed at the dinner-table.

“H-m!” said the chief mate, staring into his plate. His tone was indescribably cynical.

The captain glanced at him sharply, raising his eyebrows in silent interrogation.

Nelson nodded back. “And it’s the change of the moon, too.”

So passed the word that the wind was due to haul against us and make a foul ending to our voyage.

That night a heavy squall from the southwest carried away the foretop-gallantsail and made a hard watch of it for the crew, reenforced as they were by the fishermen and cannery helpers.

In the gray of the forenoon Merkel’s skill and Nelson’s terrific driving energy availed nothing. At noon the Indian Star was riding to the drag of her cable, dismasted, with smashed decks, out of the track of all ships.

Out of the forty persons aboard a dozen had been swept overside, including the captain, who went over with the broken spokes of the wheel still in his faithful grasp.

I myself felt the disaster beyond repair. What hope was there for us in a sinking and helpless vessel, adrift on the loneliest ocean in the world?

There wasn’t even the slim prospect of making land in the small boats; the mate and I figured that we were eight hundred miles from the coast—an impossibility in the storm that threatened to rage for weeks to come.

We debated it up and down during that miserable day until the fall of night made up a doubly dreadful scene.

“Luckily, she rides high and doesn’t take any water over,” Nelson said. “But as she fills up”—he knuckled the table furiously with his brine-drenched hands—“why haven’t we a ship left? God!”

At that moment, as if invoked by the appeal, entered the cook, a Chinese known to us as One Hop. He bore in his slender brown arms a steaming bowl of soup. This he deftly adjusted »n the fiddles and then remarked imperturbably, “Chow!”

Nelson stared at him, and then nodded. The routine of life was resumed. I dragged Evans and Mrs. Evans out of their room, where they were foolishly trying to pack valuables; I found Meta Braun sitting very quietly on her bunk, and brought her, too, out to sit at the reeling table. We ate ravenously, warmed by the hot soup.

“There’s one thing,” Nelson remarked with a curious inflection of humor, “we can’t starve with all this fish in the hold.”

Evans nodded sourly. His wife said nothing for a moment, but seemed suddenly shocked.

“And—and we’re short of provisions?” she demanded, turning pale. “How—how long will we be, Mr. Nelson?”

The mate—now, of course, in command—fell into profound thought. When he spoke it was gently, almost as though he wished to save himself from the pain of too sudden realization of the truth.

“Not long,” he said. Then he smiled reassuringly, competently, and left for the deck. I followed him, to stand by the stump of the mizzenmast and there cling to the newly stretched lifelines and peer into the darkness.

It seemed as if that darkness moved past us in a terrific and steady stream, as if it flowed from the very heart of night.

The wreck rode to the drag of the cable in uneven swings. Now she took a wave on the starboard bow, now on the left. Once in a. while a sullen crash and sharp quiver of the hulk told of a surge met squarely.

Through the heavy glasses in the ports of the low deck-house came a slight glow, showing that the survivors of the crew still felt confidence in their shelter.

“She’s riding it well!” I cried in Nelson’s ear.

“Not long!” he bellowed back. “Ship’s old—leaking—sea rising.”

And then we were joined by a third figure, Meta Braun. She emerged from the companionway and was outlined dimly against the sheen from the open door.

Nelson—we must have been invisible to her—waved his arm in useless protest against her risking her life on the careening deck. She stepped out and we caught her between us.

To my amazement, she was not trembling. She balanced herself easily on the streaming planks, and her tones were steady when she said: “Will the ship go down to-night?”

Neither of us answered the query. Meta went on presently: “You see, if the ship is going down, I want to be up here.” The feeling was natural; I sympathized. But then she added an amazing reason: “It would be awful while I was drowning to be grabbed by Mrs. Evans.”

“Well,” said Nelson quickly and decidedly, “we’re safe enough for to-night.” He stepped into the darkness and started to claw his way forward to the half-deck.

Meta Braun crept closer to me. I had never paid her much attention, apart from an occasional admiring glance, but in this new relationship I felt that it was too bad that it was only during the windy blackness of what was likely to be my last night in this life that I had realized the desirableness of love and returned affection and a woman by a bright fire.

“I wish,” she said very distinctly, “that you would put your arm around me and hold me very tight—just a moment. You see, I’m so afraid I’m going to be scared!”

I took an extra turn of the lashings about us both, and she snuggled into my wet arms and put her head on my shoulder. So we stood for five minutes, two atoms in a world of murk, swept by the steady and unfailing stream of the wind and dashed upon by stinging spray and shaken terribly by the dying throes of the strong ship. Then she twisted herself from my arms with a whispered “I’m all right now!” and went below.

When Nelson crawled back, a few moments later, I could perceive from his tones that he had discovered some new peril to us. We leaned toward each other around the staff of the broken mast and he put his lips to my ear.

“Something is going to happen! The ship’s not behaving the same—no chance for the boats—breaking up.”

My own senses told me he spoke the truth. The wreck of the Indian Star no longer rode so freely. There was a curious drag now and again, a subsidence of her huge mass without a proper recovery.

Nelson and I stood a little while together, peering into the pitchy darkness and trying to feel what had happened. Then I saw something that made me gasp. A black, mountainous surge that rose right above us suddenly flashed into white, and the roar of its breaking was reenforced by other roars.

The deck under our feet shook as the hulk struck in the surf, and Nelson and I plunged down the companion-steps and into the cabin just as another terrific comber broke and submerged us under untold tons of water.

The old ship rolled far over, and then righted swiftly, only to roll furiously over to port again. Then she was lifted up and let down to strike once more.

It seemed an hour that we stood in the dark and reeking cabin waiting for the end. It came in a wild rush, amid the crashing of heavy timbers, the snapping of teakwood planks and an inrush of foamy water from above.

And the very end was a subsidence of the racket. The motion ceased. Nelson turned up the flickering wick of the bulkhead lantern and we stared at each other—the Evanses, Anerson, Meta Braun, and myself.

While the gale still bellowed overhead and we could hear the swift rush of water past the ship’s side, we all distinctly heard the voice of Nelson saying: “Land! Land! We’re ashore, by all that’s holy—and there’s no land here!”

“Are we dead?” demanded Meta shrilly.

The cabin door slid back resoundingly and a half-dozen figures threw themselves down among us. It was part of the crew, and they were shouting:

“Land, sir! Go ashore, sir! Get away from this wreck before she breaks up!”

Then Nelson resumed his duties as master of a vessel and, with an alert yet composed step, left the shattered cabin for the deck. The crew clambered after him. I was afraid to investigate, for there was no land in these latitudes.

II.

It was land, as we saw in the first glimmer in the morning. The wreck of the Indian Star had been driven across hundreds of miles to strike on a small, uncharted islet, whose outline was that of a cock’s comb. The miracle of that was lost in our thankfulness that the shore had been sheer enough to allow the heavy hulk to be driven up beyond the heaviest surf.

We clambered over the side and dropped to the shale just so soon as the light was sufficient. Nelson assembled us in the windy dawn and addressed us solemnly.

His remarks were made with the tilted hulk as a background—a grim commentary.

“We’re on an island that no one ever heard about,” he said. “How we got here doesn’t concern us now. But we are. The Indian Star is a total wreck, so entire that we must hasten to secure what provisions may be left. And”—he lowered his tones—“this islet is absolutely barren, so far as I can tell now. So we must get provisions off the ship to last us until we are picked up.”

Our commander stopped a moment here, and then said with unaffected simplicity: “God help us all!”

Examination of the wreck soon showed us that what we would save from the sea must be quickly saved. One Hop’s galley was gone, and with it the gear. The lazaretto was a mass of sand and brine. All told, we couldn’t accumulate more than enough flour and biscuits to last us a month.

Evans surveyed the little heap lying under the rough shelter we had built out of wreckage and smiled at his wife. “Salmon!” he murmured. “Two thousand tons of salmon, and that’s all!”

She nodded, brushing her hair wearily from her eyes. “Yes; and Meta and I walked pretty nearly all the way around the island and, Tom, there isn’t even a spear of grass!”

“Volcanic,” Anerson explained briefly.

Now we all knew the history of the rise and subsidence of volcanic islands in Bering Sea, and Anerson’s commonplace remark brought a pallor to Mrs. Evans’s face that gave me a slight glimpse of all that lay ahead of us of fear and dread and the incredible toil of enduring a vacant horizon.

But no more was said until One Hop had succeeded in preparing us a meal that looked oddly scant and insufficient after the somewhat plentiful fare on the ship. However, everybody showed good temper, and the sailors worked hard and willingly, difficult as it was in the high wind.

By nightfall our shelter was fairly complete and dry; we had picked up plenty of salmon cases spewed out of a great hole in the wreck’s side; Nelson had personally directed the gathering of broken planks for fuel, and my part had been to plan storage places and prepart for the safekeeping of our salvage.

Luckily, we had our clothes and the women the small trinkets, that make existence less wearisome. We also had plenty of bedding, even for the sailors.

That evening, after a hearty meal on salmon, Nelson and I withdrew from the rest to consider our future. It was gloomy enough.

“We’re down the latitudes pretty well,” he told me. “But I’m blessed if I can figure it closely. Look at that current that sets past that little point! It might ha’ fetched us a couple of hundred miles farther south than I reckoned.”

He glanced at the inky sky and shook his head. “And it’s going to blow some more. The wreck’ll be gone in another day, my son.”

“I suppose no ships ever take this slant, either,” I suggested.

Nelson sniffed. “Right you are; they don’t. You can see that this island is as bare as a skull. No bird ever roosted here; there’s only a few mussels on the rocks, and—well, human nature on a bare rock like this isn’t what it is in a city. Evans had trouble enough with the men while we were at the cannery. We’ll have hell here. And the women!”

In the windy dusk we contemplated our irremediable fate.

“One thing,” Nelson resumed presently; “there are a couple of fishing-boats stowed in the forehold, just under the hatch. If we can, we’ll fetch ’em out to-morrow.”

“There isn’t a compass left,” I said bitterly.

“Ah, we have the stars,” he said simply.

So we all lay in the lee of our miserable refuge and slept. In the morning I wakened to find Meta Braun sitting beside me. It was barely light, but the air was almost warm.

“The sun will shine,” she remarked.

“Then we’ll save more stuff,” I assured her.

“Salmon!” she breathed.

“Oh, we can catch fresh fish,” I returned.

“But we’ll never have any bread or any butter or any milk or any eggs!”

“Look here!” I said sternly. “This is better than being in the sea-ooze. Be brave!”

“Can I be brave?” she cried.

Appeared at that instant One Hop, silently holding out to her a toasted biscuit with a freshly opened can of salmon, warmed.

“Littee missee ketchum chow, more better,” he murmured.

So we ate our breakfasts and prepared this time to dig the last treasures out of the wreck. Our whole salvage didn’t amount to much—a very much smashed twelve-foot skiff, a lot of rope and wood, nails and oarlocks, and a few carpenter’s tools, canvas, and, most precious of all, a lamp and a case of heavy oil.

Evans and Mrs. Evans checked it all up. “We can build a boat out of this, and we’ve provisions enough for years, if the salmon will keep, and I think it will, for we canned it our selves, and you all know it was good fish well packed.”

Mrs. Evans held out her small, perfect hands to the little blaze by which we sat that night. “It is cold,” she murmured. “Captain Nelson, will there be a hard winter here?”

“No,” said Nelson; “we’re in the semitropics—no snow at all.”

“That will be better,” Meta put in. “I suppose it’s the gale that makes us so chilly.”

“Yes,” agreed Nelson. “But the storm is over for this time.” He sighed. “But the Indian Star is gone, too.”

A couple of the sailors stepped up from the darkness that rimmed the fire and asked for a word.

Permission given promptly, the man stated that he and his mates felt that there must be no misunderstanding of their position.

“You see,” he explained, “some one has got to travel on and find a ship to take the rest off. We’ve been talkin’ it over, sir, and we can fix up that skiff plenty good enough to fetch somewhere.”

I saw Nelson’s face grow wooden. He merely nodded. I, as well, knew what was coming, and I knew, as well, that the logic that the crew would use was irrefutable.

The speaker’s face hardened also as he proceeded:

“The skiff and—”

“And,” repeated Nelson, “what else?”

It was an extraordinary moment. Destiny was at the door, demanding her rights. The seaman lifted his weather-burnt countenance to the dark firmanent, as if in silent appeal to the justice of fate. Then he said bluntly:

“And the flour and biscuit and such, sir.”

It had been said. We were to be left without either boat or other food than tinned fish on an absolutely sterile islet in a lonely sea. And this was right and proper—the equity of the sea.

The damaged skiff could carry only the eight survivors of the fo’c’s’le hands. It would never carry us of the afterguard, much less the women. And in order that the skiff might stand a chance of arriving somewhere—on which our own safety also depended—its crew must have bread and whatever else we had that could give them strength for their voyage.

There was a profound stillness. Evans opened his mouth several times, but said nothing. Mrs. Evans merely stared at the shadowed figure of the grim sailor, while Meta Braun seemed lost in thought. Nelson finally spoke abruptly, as a commander to his men:

“Take the skiff and the grub. You ought to make the Hawaiians, with any kind of good weather. Tell ’em we’re here. I’ll give you the approximate bearings. Start as soon as the skiff is repaired and the weather fair. Go south.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” came the hoarse growl of the men, and they retired to their own little fire, where One Hop blinked over his little pipe in true Oriental acceptance of fate.

Anerson groaned. We all glanced at him. His somewhat saturnine young face had taken on a deeper hue than usual. Meta peered at him under drawn brows, studying him.

There was no cowardice in his expression; but I thought I read in it a determination that might make him an ugly customer for Nelson to handle if disagreements arose.

III.

So it happened that the Evanses, Anerson, Meta Braun, and myself and Nelson stood on the little easterly promontory of our barren islet the next evening and watched the swirling current bear the skiff with its eight occupants swiftly away to the southward.

There had been only the briefest of farewells, a few curt instructions from Nelson, and then a silent withdrawal of the boat under the stars. At last it vanished, and we walked slowly back to the camp, past the broken hull of the Indian Star, now almost overwhelmed by sand.

Anerson stepped along by himself, moodily kicking at the rough scoria. The Evanses were hand in hand, talking earnestly with Nelson. Meta Braun and I halted just above the wreck.

By the starlight I could see that she was profoundly affected by what we had just passed through, though all day long she had been cheerful, if silent. Now she turned her eyes to mine and said simply:

“There have never been any birds nor any living thing here!”

“Utterly uninhabited and lifeless,” I returned.

“No bird ever dropped a seed from its bill, even a tiny one!”

“No.”

She cast her gaze down on the grit at her feet. “And nothing has ever been born here!” she breathed.

“God-forsaken!”

“No,” she corrected me gently. “God hasn’t come yet. We’re just in one of God’s new empty houses. Not even a seed has grown!”

“It’s the old question of the owl and the egg,” I said, trying to jest. “The seed or the plant—which is first?”

“Only one seed, and we could have a new creation, couldn’t we?” she responded in a lighter tone. “Maybe we could find a seed.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to hunt for one,” I couldn’t help saying.

By the camp-fire, now replenished by the assiduous Chinaman, we found the rest of the party busy opening some salmon. Evans was testing it carefully.

“Best ever,” he announced. Ruthie, you and Meta will have to get up a salmon cook-book.”

“Every recipe would read the same, seeing we’ve neither flour nor eggs nor cracker-crumbs nor milk, Tom.”

But her tone was cheerful, and we made a fair meal, One Hop apparently satisfied with the menu he offered us. But after we had eaten and drunk our fill of the slightly sulfury water supplied by the springs on the islet, despondency descended again.

The following two days we devoted to a minute examination of our new home. We allowed not a crevice in the rocks to go without careful scrutiny. Nelson even waded along in the water and dived along the rocks.

The universal finding was—nothing alive. Even the mussels below high-water mark proved to be dying, and the most assiduous fishing disclosed nothing.

“Natural,” said Nelson. “This bit of land hasn’t been long up from the sea-bottom, and even the fish would give it a wide berth.”

“If we could build a boat out of this stuff we have here,” Anerson suggested hopefully, “we might fish offshore and have a better chance at something. Any fish for a change.”

“What I’d like to find is a pound of sugar,” remarked Mrs. Evans, spreading her little hands out in dismay.

Meta smiled faintly. “I’d rather have a dozen lemons, seeing it’s to go on salmon. Next time I’m wrecked I’m going to have all the seeds with me.”

Nelson stopped short as he passed and looked down at her. “Seeds? Seeds? There ought to be seeds somewhere around. Why not look for ’em?”

“Just one seed!” she said eagerly. “Just one might do!”

I shall never forget the next three weeks. Imagine us all waking before the dawn to search for seeds.

We examined the beach, in hopes that some stray grains might have floated in from the wreck. We ransacked all our clothes, knelt under the hot sun at midday peering into the cracks in the wreckage.

It is incredible how engrossed we became in this exploration; how the yearning for just one germ of life grew in our hearts, how it seemed as if our very passionate seeking must succeed.

At the end of the three weeks Anerson’s savage temper broke completely. He tossed his salmon away and sulked, bursting almost immediately into a frightful paroxysm that compelled Nelson and myself to exert every ounce of our tact. When the scene was over he retired bitterly to the promontory and was seen no more that night.

For there was no seed on the island.

Meta sat beside me and cried softly.

“An empty place!” she mourned hysterically. “Nothing will ever be born here or grow or live!”

And as she wept scalding tears One Hop stepped silently into the circle and held out, as he stooped before her, a single grain of corn.

Mrs. Evans’s shrill laughter rang horribly out into the night, and her shriek sounded to the very stars:

“My God! My God! One seed! One seed!”

She collapsed into Evans’s arms, her pallid face to the inexorable heavens.

But Meta Braun cuddled the irregular grain in her soft palm, and there was a light in her eyes such as I had never seen except in a mother’s gaze. I could barely catch her whisper: “It will live!”

One Hop laid his yellow, wrinkled finger-tip gently on the grain of corn.

“Bimeby bread, littee missee.”

“Yes, yes!” she assented eagerly. “Where you ketchum, Hop?”

“Pocket ol’ clo’, missee. Bimeby bread.”

Nelson bent his brows and shook his head. “I know how you’ feel about it, Miss Braun. But it’s only one seed.”

She folded the grain in her handkerchief and said quietly: “It must grow.” And it did, and its growing brought God into an empty house.

IV.

The next morning when Rolf Anerson came back to the camp and was told of the discovery of the single grain of corn, he smiled sardonically and devoted himself in silence to his salmon.

But Meta Braun, after a long conversation with One Hop, departed to a little nook under the low crest of the islet. I found her busily rubbing into fine dust the scant soil she had dug up with a knife. She had a little round plot about three feet in diameter.

“I hope it will grow,” I said awkwardly.

“Oh, Hop and I’ll make it grow,” she returned, smiling.

“But it will be years before we have anything worth while, even if it does come up and have ears on it. And what of the sunshine? And the soil mayn’t be all right, either.”

At this moment arrived the Chinese, carrying a pail of water and a piece of canvas. Together they prepared the bed for the solitary grain, and then Meta planted it delicately.

“Bimeby bread,” said Hop briefly. And as if this were the sacrament of germination we departed.

Thereafter the cook slept and ate by this precious grain. I don’t know what all he and Meta talked of nor how they forced pidgin English into the channels of their ideas.

But one morning I found them both kneeling over a small spear of green. When the announcement was made in the camp we made a pilgrimage to the spot.

Mrs. Evans, who had refused food, except the oil from the salmon, for two days, became hysterical. Evans himself stolidly supported her on his shoulder, and later he and Anerson carried her back to the shelter. She had fainted.

Ten days later I was amazed to see six shoots in the damp ground. Meta was busy earthing them up.

“Where did they come from?” I demanded.

She slipped over into a sitting posture and smiled down at them. “That’s Hop’s and my secret. But when they are bigger I’ll show you all about it.”

When half a hundred shoots were growing blithely under the warm sun, the camp suddenly awoke. I believe that had it not been for the interest we all took in this bringing of life to the sterile islet none of us would have survived that month.

But now Hop and Meta took us partly into their confidence and showed us, too, how to earth up the slender shoots so that they sent out little rootlets, which, when carefully separated from the parent stock, became stalks themselves. In another month each of us had a garden of his own, and it was only Anerson whose crop didn’t prosper.

At last Hop and Meta refused to give him any more. We all saw that scene when he was rebuffed. It was in the early dawn. The stalks were now almost two feet high, thriving richly in the carefully worked soil. And there were over three hundred stalks now.

Mrs. Evans had been helping Meta after tending to her own. Evans and Nelson were at their own patches, working with rude wooden plows. Anerson, whose patch had not increased strode up, made his usual remark about “poor place,” and demanded an extra dozen for his share.

Meta looked up, and I saw wide-eyed astonishment on her face. Then a cloud came over her bright and searching gaze. She shook her head, bending lovingly over the fresh hills.

“No,” she said definitely.

I wondered at the strange look that Anerson had. He asked again insistently.

“No,” she repeated.

You must understand that we were nearly crazed from our diet. I thought that Meta had finally succumbed to the dragging evil temper of the whole camp.

I saw Anerson’s malignant and malicious expression change to one of rage. But he restrained himself and went away, muttering. Meta gazed after him with puzzled eyes.

“I wonder why his won’t grow?” I demanded.

She crept over to me and looked me squarely in the face. “If you will put your arm around me and hold me tight while I cry!” she whispered.

For the second time in my life I took her into my arms. She sobbed on. my shoulder. I could hear her pitiful murmur: “My poor little seed! My poor little seed!”

But she did not tell me what had made her refuse Anerson further shoots.

What intensified the mystery—for you understand that in a community like ours all is mysterious that is not known to all—One Hop also showed a very apparent dislike of Anerson. and would hardly serve him with his portion of salmon.

“Blamed funny thing all around,” Nelson growled. “Well, three months of this would tangle anybody’s mind and temper.”

“I wonder—” I began.

Nelson turned savagely on me. “Stop wondering about that,” he growled.

I had touched on the one forbidden topic—had the men in the skiff arrived at last and reported us or had their frail craft tossed them into the devouring sea?

A thousand times that question had been on the tip of our tongues. By common consent we had never uttered it.

Now that we really had fields of corn, with ears coming to maturity and a prospect of starchy food once more, Meta relaxed her efforts and allowed me more of her company.

But for all the hours I spent with her and all the speech we had, I discerned that she preserved inviolate the mystery of her thoughts. She brooded constantly, but happily. Her face daily grew more tender, until I could scarcely bear the sight of her thinness.

For we had all got such a loathing for salmon that we ate only enough to keep us alive, or to satisfy an unnatural craving. Yet there was one gratification I had—she was barely civil to Anerson, who now openly and violently made love to her.

It seemed as though she saw some secret in his dark soul, discovered some dreadful cancer in his heart. Several times I saw her flinch when his hand accidentally touched hers over our rude table.

The result was, of course, that he turned his hatred on myself. I could not allow personal feeling to interfere with my duty to save outward unity and peace, so I refrained as much as possible from being in his company and took no notice of his sneers and innuendos. But the breaking point was nearing, and Nelson and I secretly scanned the empty sea around us with burning eyes.

We had kept careful count of the days of the week and of the dates. Time had elapsed sufficient for the skiff to have arrived at Honolulu and for a rescue steamer to come for us. But Nelson refused to discuss the matter. So at last I took it up with Meta one blowy morning while she tended the corn.

She dropped her rough hoe and looked at me long and intently when I had briefly stated the fact that every day made hope of rescue fainter.

“Yes,” she admitted. “That is true. And Mrs. Evans will not live long.”

She wrinkled her brows a little, glanced at the fat stalks amid which she stood, and then came to a sudden decision. She picked up her knife and told me to hold out my hands. Into them she piled ear after ear of milky corn. Then she smiled faintly.

“My little seed!”

One Hop received this accession to the larder with the first expression of triumph I had ever seen on his brown visage, and within the hour we were ravenously devouring the corn and chewing even on the silk and the stalks.

But I noticed that Meta ate dreamily, nibbling daintily at the little grains and wrapped in meditation.

“There’s enough to keep us off that salmon a while, anyway,” said Nelson.

“And the sugar means my wife’s life,” Evans whispered to me.

So that day passed, a celebration. In the evening, under the rising moon, Meta walked with me on the other side of the island.

She was very thin and pale, and for the first time I noticed how feeble her step was. My heart swelled within my breast. Then all my blood grew hot with desire to take this slender form into my arms forever and always see that gentle and tender smile and have the love of those eyes so full of mystery.

As simply as a child, she turned to me swiftly, with her eyes alight.

“Take me in your arms and hold me while I cry,” she whispered.

“For sorrow?”

I felt her quiver and a hot tear scalded my cheek.

“No,” she whispered. “For joy! My little seed! My little motherless grain of corn! And I saved it and it grew.”

Mothered it? Mothered it? I touched her gently on her loose hair. And in that thrill I seemed for an instant to catch a glimpse of her pure and womanly heart, of all her dreams, of her lovely meditations.

“There is something else you’ve made grow, too,” I found myself saying hoarsely. “Will you take it and mother it, Meta darling?”

She twisted herself out of my arms and stared at me, wonder on her face. Then the color flooded to her brow and she held out her own arms, gloriously calling to her mate.

As we came back to the camp across the little cornfield we met Anerson. He stopped in front of us, and I saw the dark menace of his contorted visage.

“Now for the settlement, Meta Braun,” he said hoarsely. “And with you later, my fine fellow,” he added, scowling at me.

Meta brushed me with her fingers, and I obeyed and stood still.

“Why have you avoided me?” he demanded of her, his veins swelling.

She faced him gallantly in the moonlight, her hair blowing about her throat.

“Because you didn’t protect that poor little seed of corn. You pulled up the little sprouts and ate them. Hop saw you. You killed little living things! You killed growing things. I hate you!”

For a moment I was tempted to spring at his throat. But the expression of her face held him entranced. The look of ugly rage and imperious temper faded into a peculiar, curious respect.

He gazed at the stalks about him, waving in the night wind. He bowed his head. The great mystery of growing life seemed to lighten his dark spirit in that moment, the tremendous secret of how empty lands are filled with life.

We left him standing among the corn.

Nelson was still up and busy with One Hop by the light of the fire. As we came into the lit circle he stared up with a peculiar and triumphant expression on his bronzed and bearded face. He pointed to his feet. A freshly caught fish glistened there.

“An albacore!” he said huskily. “That means the fish are coming and the island is permanent.”

“All same come from Ja-pan,” said Hop, shaking a wise head. “Bimeby maybeso birds fly.”

Meta looked up at the Evanses hurrying up to view the miracle. I felt the quiver in her low tones as she said: “God’s filling his empty house!”

Mrs. Evans glanced quickly at her and a sudden blazing tenderness came into her weary eyes. “And you, too! You dear child!”

She held out her arms, and Meta swept into them, sobbing, “Yes, yes!”

 

When they were gone, crying over each other womanlike and softly, Nelson stood up and looked at me.

“Holding master’s papers, I am competent to perform marriages, my son. Shake hands!”

But One Hop, the Chinese cook, bent smiling over his work, silent inscrutable; and up the hill Anerson stood amid the great stalks, alone in the garden he had no share in.