CHAPTER XVI

Erica ran into Lis at the head of the companionway, just preparing to descend.

“I was looking for you, Ricky,” he said, excitedly. “Uncle Eric’s going ashore, and he told me we could go along if we wanted to. He says this island’s not on any of his charts, and he thinks it must be uninhabited. It seems there’s nothing we can do to get the _Sea Gull_ off her reef till the tide’s high—and then maybe we can’t. Nice prospect, huh?”

“It’s—it’s _gorgeous_!” Erica retorted. “A real desert island—like those in the story books! I don’t care if the ship stays on the reef till next winter. Come on, Lis, let’s hurry so father won’t get away without us.”

They found one of the clipper’s boats already in the water, manned by several sailors. As soon as the two appeared on deck, Captain Eric spied them and beckoned them to him.

“So the early birds think they’ll catch a nice fat worm this morning,” he challenged them gayly. “What do you two youngsters expect to find, I wonder, on this pretty little green island we’ve bumped into in the night?”

Erica made a gesture, arms flung wide, and shining eyes laughing up into his twinkling blue ones. “_Adventure_,” she announced, dramatically.

Lis chuckled with his uncle, but by his eagerness to reach the boat, Erica knew his real thoughts were much the same as her own. A desert island sounded quite as thrilling to Lis as it did to her more impulsive self.

Neither of the children wasted any time in clambering into the boat and taking their places in the stern. The sailors bent to their oars, and the little craft drove across the gently heaving green water toward the near-by land.

The clipper had come to grief on a submerged reef in the very center of a small, partially landlocked bay. This natural harbor was long and narrow, widening at the ocean end, and with jungle-grown hillsides sloping down to the water’s edge on its other three sides. Evidently a strong current set inshore from the open sea beyond, and it was doubtless due to this that the _Sea Gull_ had been able to ride in safely on the breast of the storm, without dashing herself on either of the high headlands at the bay’s mouth.

It was the hill on their right which had cut off the full force of the hurricane after they had entered the harbor. Even the waves in here were merely long, green, undulating swells that rolled gently against the narrow strip of beach and splashed a light pearly spray over the pinkish sand. There was no real surf, and the men had no difficulty in beaching the boat without shipping a drop of water.

Captain Eric stepped ashore, and lifted his daughter from the boat to a dry patch of sand. Lis climbed hurriedly after them, and the three stood there a moment, looking out at the stranded _Sea Gull_, before turning to their proposed exploring of the island. And it was just at this moment, with all the dramatic effect of a scene on the stage, that the jungle bushes at their right parted suddenly and a man stepped into view.

The little group of would-be explorers turned, as one, and stared in startled surprise at the newcomer. He was a white man undeniably by his features, but so sunburnt by a tropical sun, and so browned by sea winds, that he might otherwise have been mistaken for an Indian or native at first glance. His clothes were remarkable, too. Originally they must have been ordinary sea-going clothes, but they had been so patched and overlaid with extraneous substances such as bits of sailcloth, tarpaulin, and other unrecognizable materials that they presented a strange spectacle, to say the least. His feet were bare, and his hair and beard had grown long and matted, and were, in addition, bleached to a dull tow color. Yet, as he approached them, they could see that his eyes were a bright, piercing blue, and to Lis and Erica there was something puzzling and oddly familiar in his face that grew stronger the longer they stared at him.

Then Lis uttered a shout of, “_Captain Joy!_” and flung himself at the man, grasping both calloused, leathery hands in excited recognition.

Captain Eric was not a second behind his nephew. Putting Lis aside gently, he grasped, in his turn, the hands of this astonishing tatterdemalion creature from the jungle, and pumped them up and down in vigorous greeting. “Caleb Joy, as I live!” he fairly roared at the man. “What under the shining sun are you doing here, and in that get-up?”

Erica, too surprised to move or speak, stood at her father’s side, her breath coming faster, and her sea-blue eyes suddenly seeing another picture—a moonlight October night eight months ago, and Tommy, Lis, and herself dancing down Main Street, home in Nantucket, arms linked, whistling a gay tune for sheer, exuberant joy in the crisp night air, the sea smells the wind brought them from the ocean, and the general, thrilling exultation of being young and alive in a beautiful world. She saw them swing out on the wharf, and stop to gaze out at the sharp black and silver of the harbor water, and the masts of a whaler etched starkly against the rising moon. She remembered how they had stood and gazed, filled with the beauty of the scene, inarticulate as young things usually are, but deeply moved inwardly with an emotion they would have been ashamed to avow even to one another.

Then had come that cry for help from the dark waters off the wharf’s end, and Tommy’s reckless dive over the high wooden side, to rescue a drowning sailor. As was to be expected, Tommy had needed help himself, before he was safely ashore again with his unconscious burden, and the man who had come running at Lis’s and her frightened cries was the very man who now stood before them in his tattered garb, and bushy, matted hair and beard—Captain Caleb Joy of the _Narwhal_, who had set sail the following morning on a three-year whaling cruise to the Pacific. Yet now, here—Erica rubbed her eyes dazedly and looked again. Here was that same Captain Joy shaking hands fervently with her father, on this deserted, island beach, and certainly appearing quite as dumfounded as themselves over the unexpected meeting.

She moved nearer and held out her own small hand warmly.

“It took me two or three good long looks to know you,” she admitted, frankly. “But”—she broke off as a new thought struck her with a blaze of illumination. “Why—why, Captain Joy, I believe _you’ve_ been shipwrecked, too!” she gasped.

Captain Joy closed his horny fingers very gently over the slim, eager ones thrust into them, and nodded emphatically.

“So it’s little Ricky Folger!” he said. “Well, well, missy! But you’ve hit it square on the head. Shipwrecked I’ve been here on this blessed island, with eight o’ my crew, these past eight months.” He turned back to Captain Eric and continued his tale, the rest of the group crowding nearer to listen. “We sailed, as Lister here and Ricky will remember, in October of last year, on a whalin’ v’yage that we cal’lated would last for ‘bout a three-year stretch. Well, we run head-on into a storm a hundred or so miles off this place—storms and hurricanes are plenty in these waters, as you found out for yourselves, sir, last night.” He nodded wisely toward the _Sea Gull_ across the little bay, and Captain Eric nodded agreement.

“We had worse luck than what you had, howsomever, Captain,” Caleb Joy resumed his story, his great booming voice all at once a trifle unsteady, as though even after these months the memories it called up were hard to face. “I lost _my_ ship, sir. We drove before the gale all night, and in the morning, just as light came, we discovered fire in the hold. You can guess the rest—she went like a tinder box. We took to the boats, but in that sea, and with the gale still blowin’, it was impossible to keep together. The other two boats I’ve never seen nor heard of from that mornin’ to this. My boat kept afloat, by some miracle, and when the sun come out I managed to lay a rough course, meaning to head for one of the West Indian islands—Cuba, by my reckonin’, was the nearest. O’ course, not havin’ means for takin’ a reg’lar sight, I had no sure way of knowin’ just how far off our course we’d driven. We rowed for two days and a night, and—well, to make a long story short—and it ain’t an easy tale, as you may imagine, to tell, sir—we finally sighted land. It warn’t Cuba, nor none o’ the islands I know by the charts, but it were land, at any rate, and mighty welcome to our eyes. We rowed halfway round her ‘fore we could find this little inlet, or bay as you might call it. We pulled in then, and landed right where you’ve come ashore today. And here we’ve remained ever since. The men are over on the other side o’ the island, where we’ve built ourselves some huts,” he added, explanatorily. “I just happened to walk over this way—I usually take a stroll ‘fore breakfast, like it’s always been my custom when ashore. And maybe I wasn’t struck all of a heap when I saw a clipper layin’ out in the bay, an’ a boat puttin’ into the beach. Naturally, I hurried as fast as I could, and come to meet you—not knowin’ I’d be meetin’ old friends,” he wound up, smiling.

Captain Eric had begun looking very grave as the other neared the end of his narrative, and his expression did not lighten when it was finished.

“I take it the island’s not inhabited,” he remarked. “But you never saw any ships passing in all these months?”

Captain Joy shook his grizzled head. “Never a one,” he said, quietly. “Oh, there’s no doubt but what we’re well off the reg’lar lane of ship’s travel. It’s a mighty little island—no more’n a half-mile across and maybe a mile in length. She’s not on any of the charts, either, I’m pretty sure.”

“No, you’re right about that,” Erica’s father agreed. “I looked this morning, before coming ashore, to make certain. Well-ll——” He frowned out at the _Sea Gull_, and fell silent.

Erica knew he was wondering whether—in the tragic event that high tide should not float the clipper from her reef, how long they, too, might stay here and search the blue horizon for passing ships, as Captain Joy and his men had done for eight long months.

Probably it was because of her youth and her romantic dreams of sea adventures that the prospect did not seem as appalling to Erica as it did to her elders. She had been born and brought up on one little sea island, and it could not be any great hardship, she reasoned, to spend even quite a long time on another more southern island, learning new ways of living, and the hitherto unknown thrill of exploring new country.

“Your ship’s aground on a reef out there,” Captain Joy was saying to her father, when she listened to their conversation once more. “It’s a narrow shelf of coral that runs parallelin’ this shore o’ the bay. I’ve traced its course. But if the tide rises high enough to float her she’s only got to move a few feet to be in deep water again. O’ course my men and I will do all we can to help. Count on us as if we were part of your crew. And if she didn’t float at high tide this noon,” he added, thoughtfully, “there’s always flood tide at full moon, which will be in about ten days. There’ll be a pretty good chance o’ makin’ it then.”

To all this Captain Eric could only assent, and keep his fears and worries to himself like the good seaman he was. He also accepted Captain Joy’s invitation to return to his camp on the other side of the island and share his breakfast. Erica and Lis, who pleaded anxiously to be allowed to go, too, were finally included in the party, while the sailors were sent back to the ship, to report to the mate, and to Sun Li, the morning’s astonishing discoveries.

The eight men who had been saved from the wreck of the _Narwhal_ were all Nantucketers, most of them personally known to the Folgers, and their wondering delight and amazement when Captain Joy brought his guests through the jungle, by a path cleared from bay to ocean shore, can be more easily imagined than put into words.

These shipwrecked mariners had almost given up hope of ever seeing their own island far to the north again, and here were old neighbors and a ship dropped right into their deserted bay from out of last night’s storm; and even though that ship was temporarily in difficulties, too, hope blazed once more brightly in their hearts. In excited voices, interrupting one another and crowding about Captain Eric and the younger Folgers, they promised their utmost in service and willing hands to do all that was humanly possible toward getting the _Sea Gull_ afloat.

It was certainly a regular Odyssey of adventure that Erica and Lis poured into Sun Li’s interested and attentive ear later in the day, when they had returned to the clipper. Whereupon, roused surprisingly from his former indolent acceptance of his semi-invalid state, Sun Li suddenly demanded to be rowed ashore and carried over the jungle trail in his gorgeous sedan chair to visit the little encampment of the marooned sailors, and see for himself all that the excited boy and girl had so vividly described.

Little Dr. Wu, after one startled glance at his august master’s smiling, newly alert countenance, smiled broadly himself, and hurried off to order the sedan chair to be in readiness as soon as the _Sea Gull’s_ biggest boat could be manned.

“I have not seen His Excellency so like his old, healthful self in months,” he confided, beamingly, to Captain Eric, when proffering his request for the boat. “This sea voyage is surely doing for him all that we hoped—that, and his interest in your honorable daughter, sir. He is centering on her all that affection and pride he would have given his own son. My hopes are high that he will effect an entire recovery in the immediate future.” Bowing ceremoniously, he hurried away as fast as he had come, followed by the coolie bearers and the big, gold-and-crimson-lacquer sedan chair.

Both Lis and Erica accompanied this second expedition ashore, and experienced all the thrills of old explorers conducting a novice, in exhibiting the island and the camp of the _Narwhal’s_ crew to the smiling appreciation of His Excellency Sun Li, Governor of Canton.

The astonishment of the sailors and Captain Joy himself at sight of their splendid procession fed the children’s inward satisfaction to the point where it could no longer be repressed, but simply had to break out in giggles, which in turn brought answering smiles from the older and more staid beholders. Altogether it was a highly satisfying and eventful day, and it is doubtful whether Erica could have slept at all that night, tucked snugly into her berth in the lovely little cabin Sun Li had had fitted up for her, if she hadn’t also been so utterly weary mentally and physically that sleep was upon her before she had had time to marshal her memories of the past hours for reconsideration.

Captain Eric, however, lay awake a longer time than his daughter, occupied with much less pleasant reflections. That noon’s high tide had not floated the _Sea Gull_, so now there was nothing for it but to settle down to a ten days’ wait for the flood tide at full moon. If that failed—— He turned over restlessly in his bunk and refused to allow his thoughts to dwell on that eventuality. There was no use in crossing bridges before one reached them.