CHAPTER XXIV

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*"SO FARRE, SO FAST THE EYGRE DRAVE"*

There was nothing they could do to better their condition, but if there had been, it was not in Beekman's mind to attempt it then. Their near touch with death, Truda's sleepless night, the condition of her hands and feet, the nervous reaction in him, warned Beekman that no demands upon her must be made yet. He decided that they should have one day of complete and utter happiness, whatever the future held for them; so he devoted himself to her.

Again and again he bathed her hands. He tore up the tattered remains of his shirt sleeves to make bandages for her feet. He compassed her with such sweet observances as he could achieve under such conditions. He told her how he loved her. He pictured what their life beyond the seas would be when they got away. He told her that they should escape, although he had no idea how. His determination was contagious. She thought nothing could he impossible, ultimately, to this god-like creature who had come from across the seas to enlighten her as to what love really was, and she believed him.

He carried her around the broken point of rock where she had never been; he showed her the wreck of the whaleboat which had brought him there. He made her a bed for the night in the niche of rocks, facing seaward. He covered her over with the mat he had made for himself. He sat down by her side, holding tenderly the bruised palm, which really appeared to be very much better; clean flesh, such as she had, healed quickly. She went to sleep with the trustfulness of a child, yet not with the emotions of one. Indeed, her strange feelings matched his own as he sat there on the sand by the woman who was his, body and soul.

Was he minded to take her? He prayed God, as he watched through the long hours, that whether he were minded or not, he might be given strength to treat this little child of nature as he would have treated the proudest woman of his own world. Let no man think that he had an easy task, or that he passed pleasant hours. When she was sound asleep he laid her hand gently, palm upward, on the sand, and walked away, pacing up and down the strip of beach the long night through.

It was well that he remained awake, for, just before sunrise, when the short dawn had already come, happening to pass the jutting rocks around which he must go to get into the harbor, he saw the outlines of a dark figure in the gloom; seen faintly against the brighter sand, the figure of a crouching man! Something bright and slender quivered in his hand. He was peering forward eagerly. Beekman snatched the boat-hook and the knife from the sand where he had laid them and ran toward the figure. It was Hano. He rose to his feet as the American approached. He lifted his arm. Something flew through the air and cut a gash along the side of Beekman's face and then struck the rock behind him with a metallic clang, later he found it was an old Dutch knife.

The next moment the American closed with him. Hano, mad with passion, struggled desperately, but he was as a child in the hands of the white man. Beekman broke his hold and dragged the man's arms from about him, lifted him in the air, threw him headlong on the beach. He lay sprawled in a heap, motionless, stunned, apparently, his head bleeding where he had struck an outlying stone on the sand. Beekman was sorry that it had happened. He could enter so fully into the feelings of the man that he could not blame him.

He turned back and awakened Truda. He gave her the knife and boat-hook and told her to watch the prostrate man until he went around the rocks and got the ropes with which he had been bound. He did not think that Hano was likely to recover consciousness, but, nevertheless, he had never gone so fast as he did then. Lightly binding the feet and hands of the man so that he could make no further mischief, he set himself to restore him to consciousness, which he presently accomplished.

Hano would say nothing, nor would he answer questions, not even to Truda. He turned his head away, and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. Otherwise, he was as silent as a stoic on the beach before them. After the two made their breakfast on the rapidly diminishing store of food, they brought a share for Hano. Beekman unbound his hands and stood over him while he ate and drank, then he lashed him again and drew him up into the niche where Truda had passed the night. Then he examined the wounded feet and hands of Truda, and found them in much better condition, but he did not allow the girl to walk over the rough and broken rocks. He picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bay, that they might have the benefit of the fresh water of the brook. Then, and not until then, did he take time to look at the sky and observe the weather, which, if he had been a more experienced sailor, he would not have deferred for so long a period.

He was alarmed beyond measure by what he saw. There was no sun visible, yet the sky did not seem heavily overcast. A strange, coppery light seemed to filter through an unusually thin but very absorbing mist that spread over the whole heavens. The sea had been very still throughout the night. Apparently, a calm had extended far and wide over the waters. There was always some slight motion on the shore, and the silken slithering of the waves on the barrier came to him very faintly. The absence of any wind at all had aroused no attention. There was no wind now, yet the surface of the deep was troubled.

After he had washed the girl's feet and hands and had set her down on the sand, his attention was attracted by a sudden resounding crash on that stretch of barrier that he could see through the entrance. It was as if some mighty heave had raised and lowered the surface of the ocean. As he stared seaward, he thought that the mist was thickening on the horizon. It was growing darker there. Indeed, on the line where the sky and sea would have met on the horizon, if he had been able to see, it was suddenly black dark. The sun was more than an hour high, he judged, although he could see nothing but the coppery light through the mist, and the mist was in rapid wraith-like motion far above his head and far beyond the reef. He could see that clearly enough, although even yet no wind came to him.

Presently, there was another of those long, swinging undulations, which broke with tremendous force on the barrier, sending a cloud of water and spray twenty feet into the air. It was uncanny. There was no cause for it. It was as if some subterranean monster had turned over in the depths and upheaved the surface. Truda joined him.

"I never saw anything like that before, and I have seen the sea ever since I was a child," she said. "The waves broke on the rocks, but not like this. It is so still. Oh, look."

Another of the great undulations struck the reef, and a gust of wind from nowhere, apparently, and gone almost as quickly as it had come, carried the spray across the lagoon and into the still harbor. They saw it patter upon the smooth surface. They marked the wide circles spread, interlace, break. It was a warning to the man, at least.

"Some terrible storm is brewing," he said. "If it equals the promise of these waves, it will flood this gulf. We must seek shelter."

Now he had marked before--indeed, in his first exploration he had essayed to get to the top by it--a broad shelf of rock fifty or more feet above the level of the sea. It was inconceivable that any tide or storm could ever reach that shelf.

"We must go there and wait," he said.

The ascent was not particularly difficult for a man alone, but burdened as he was with the girl, it was almost impossible. He carried her up in his arms as far as he could that way and then set her down.

"You can leave me here," she urged.

"Nonsense; I'll have to take you the rest of the way on my back."

So, in the old-fashioned way by which children were carried pick-a-back, her arms and legs tight around him to leave his hands free to help him climb, he scrambled up to the shelf with his burden. It took some time to get her there, and the labor was tremendous. Although there was a strange chill in the air, sweat bedewed his brow.

"It was wonderful," said the girl. "I didn't know you were so strong. No man on the island could have done that."

"Well, we shall be safe here," said Beekman. "Look yonder."

They were directly opposite the entrance. As he pointed seaward the black clouds on the horizon were torn by flashes of lightning. There was a deep sigh of wind in the air, and the next moment, with a terrific roar, the strange and terrible storm broke. Truda shrank closer to the man. She was still sufficiently a child of nature to be awed by this display of its terrible force.

"It's worse than I thought it would be," said Beekman.

They were still more or less sheltered from the wind, and conversation was not yet difficult.

"I must go down again."

"Why?"

"I forgot Hano."

"He tried to kill you."

"Yes; but he is lying there, bound hand and foot. He would have no chance at all if the water came flooding in."

"Is that the white man's way?" asked the girl.

"It is the way of the white man's God."

"Has He told you to do this?"

"I think so."

"Go, then."

He kissed her and climbed down the declivity until he reached the sand. It was already covered. The tide was at full flood and the wind was now driving into the gulf with increasing force. The barrier was a mass of white mist and spray shining eerie and ghost-like against the black horizon, torn with lightning, fast merging into the copper-misted sky above.

He must hurry. He scrambled over the rocky promontory with reckless haste. Hano was lying where he had left him. The waves were sliding over the little mound of sand into the hollow. His face was grey with terror. As Beekman bent over him with the sheath-knife, he shrieked, but what he feared did not occur. His lashings were cut. Beekman dragged him to his feet. He pointed to the sea and upward to the rocks. He took him by the hand and started to lead him, but Hano broke away and ran in the other direction. There were ledges of rock there, and, dumbly and dimly alive to the danger, he chose to go that way. Beekman followed, but he could not prevail upon the islander to go with him.

His own position was becoming precarious. The wind was beating upon him with amazing power. The waves were sweeping over the barrier as if it were not there. He must think of Truda. She would be mad with anxiety. He even feared she might attempt to descend if he did not return. He waved his hand at Hano, whom he saw climbing up the rocks, and turned back to the harbor. As he had suspected, Truda had started to come down. She stopped when he appeared, and waited until he joined her. He brought up what he could carry in his hands of the provisions which he had stored in the rock.

"I was coming for you. Where is Hano?" asked the girl as he drew himself up by her side.

"He climbed the cliff and went the other way. I tried to bring him here, for this is the better place."

"He is in the hands of his god," said the girl.

"As we are in the hands of ours," answered Beekman.

He turned toward her, and for a moment his back was to the sea.

"Look," she cried, peering over his shoulder.

He turned his head. What had happened before was child's play to what met them now.

"My God!" cried Beekman, staring into the white mist, appalled by what he saw.

A wall of water thirty feet high, although, to the man, it looked to be a hundred, was rolling in from seaward with the speed of an express train. Its top was curling, the spray whipping from it, but it was yet an unbroken mass. The thoughts of men take strange turns in such emergencies. It reminded him, for a second, of the pictures in his mother's Bible of the passage of the Red Sea, the waters a curling wall, concave over the heads of the pursuing Egyptians, about to break.

"What is it?" screamed the girl.

"A tidal wave."

The words meant nothing to her, but the voice of the man told her that there was death in the moving water.

"Whatever happens, don't let go of me," he shouted.

He stooped and kicked off his heavy shoes, clasped an arm around the girl's waist. Her arms met around his neck. He was staring seaward, ready for a plunge. Woman-like, she kissed him, and then the wave struck the island--wall of water meeting wall of rock. For a second, Beekman thought he could feel the massive cliff on which he stood quivering. The next moment the great bore tore its way into the harbor. It leaped and surged through the narrow entrance in a madly foaming, green avalanche. Constricted by the walls, it rose and rose. He had one glimpse of the mighty wave towering above his head where he stood fifty feet above the sea level, and the next moment it broke, and, with a crash like a thousand thunderbolts, fell upon them.

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