The Savage Gentleman (3 page)

There came a coughing from the forest, and a dismal wail; McCobb's spine tingled. It grew dark.

Stone was in his quarters. He unlocked an immense book, dipped a pen, and began to write. His brow was lined and his fingers slowly traced long sentences:

November 3rd,
1898.
After leaving Aden, where I made the preparations already detailed
here; I proceeded south and east to the island mentioned in a foregoing portion of the
diary and, after a stormy passage, sighted it early this morning. The harbor I had
previously glimpsed was deep and ended in a fairly precipitous beach upon which I
ran the Falcon under a full head of steam.

He adjusted the oil lamp and continued:

My plan thus culminated, I hastened to explore the immediate shore line, after
finding the spirits of my engineer to be good and the Negro's reaction puzzled but in no
way overwhelmed. It--the shore--rose in a small hill which lent itself admirably tor a
building site, inasmuch as it is protected tram the south and east by a small mountain and
is surrounded by large trees.

We have commenced unloading. The baby appears to be in fine health and sleeps
most of the time under heavy mosquito bars. He has become quite accustomed to goals
milk and is both ruddy and fat. Sometimes I feel that I have done him an injustice, but
when I fasten my mind upon--

Stone halted a full minute before he filled the blank--

Nellie, I know that l am doing all--the only thing--that could be done under the
circumstances. THE CHILD MUST NEVER BE TOLD OUR SHIPWRECK HERE WAS

INTENTIONAL. With expectations of future tranquility, with a zestful interest in the
possibilities of our new home, with faith and hope, we commit ourselves to Providence.

Stone locked away the sententious words. Like almost every man of action, he'

was self-conscious and awkward when he wrote, and he had never furnished any other copy to his newspaper than an occasional heavy editorial. It was policy and growth which had interested him.

But now, he felt that it was essential to keep a certain record.

He went to sleep after a brief walk on deck--a walk which was punctuated by listenings, occasional frowns of perplexity and nods. He slept more steadily and more deeply than he had slept for many months.

A shout woke him.

His feet hit the floor. The baby whimpered in the basket that hung above his bunk.

The shout came again. It was Jack.

Stone was on deck in an instant, the door shut behind him, a revolver in his hand.

"Go on!" Jack yelled into the darkness. "Get out of here. We don' want you. Beat it!"

"What's up, Jack?"

"Ho--Jack!" McCobb's voice cut through the darkness.

They met amidships.

"It was a man," Jack said.

Stone's heart stopped.

"Go on."

"That's all. A man. A big man with blue eyes. Hairy. I was lying in my bed looking at the stars and he came to the door. I grabs a butcher knife which happens to be under my pillow. 'Go 'way!' I says."

"I heard you," Stone muttered absently.

"He went. Plumb off the ship and as quiet as a cat."

"Are you sure it was a man?"

"Yes, boss. Leastwise it might of been a woman."

"Which way did it go?"

"In them woods where you're fixing to have a house."

McCobb and Stone stared into the murk.

"There was something mighty funny about that man," Jack said, almost to himself and in a trembling voice. "Something mighty funny. I seen it at the time, but now I can't recollect what it was."

Stone turned. His tone was hard. "Try to remember."

"I forget."

"Did it carry a spear?"

"No, boss."

"Did it walk on its hands and feet?"

"No, boss. It was a-standin' at the door.

"Did it have a top-knot? Or lips that stuck out? Or a hat on? Or clothes? Or a feather in its hair?"

Jack shook his head. Surprise had routed his memory.

"I can't say what it had, but what it had was mighty funny."

"Something people don't usually have?"

Jack's eyes rolled, whitely in the starlight.

"Something I ain't never seen on no pusson before. But I can't recall. It come quick-like an' it went quicker when it seen that there knife that was lying accidentally under my pillow."

"Never mind the knife. Go back, Jack, and try to sleep. Keep your door shut. If it comes again, shoot. Don't fool around with a knife."

"I ain't much on guns, I--"

"You shoot."

"Yes, boss."

Stone and McCobb went toward the bow of the stranded
Falcon.
Stone's silhouette towered over the shadow of his engineer, even as Jack towered above Stone.

"I hadn't given much, thought to savages," Stone admitted.

McCobb's voice reflected his temper. "I hadn't given any."

"Of course, it's possible."

"And then--Jack may have been mistaken."

There was a pause.

Stone ended it. "Anyhow--he saw something."

"No doubt of that."

"Perhaps we better have a watch. You become so accustomed to security on a ship that you forget your vulnerability when you're aground."

"I'll watch first."

"Right."

McCobb lit his pipe. His hands were as steady as rock.

Stone hesitated before he re-entered his cabin.

"By the way--I noticed you smoked and I brought along a big supply of tobacco in airtight tins. Besides that--there's some seed--so you don't need to stint yourself."

"Thanks," McCobb said, in quick and suppressed tone.

The door closed.

"Thanks," the Scot repeated, and sat down with his rifle across his knees. It passed through his mind that there were worse things than being lost at the bottom of the globe with Stephen Stone.

Chapter Three:
THE STOCKADE

THE forest on the plateau had been opened so that a vast square of it was illuminated by the sun. Around the edges of the square was a stockade with two gates.

One gate led toward the brook and one made a passage for the road that ran to the beach a hundred yards away. The top of the stockade was strung with five strands of barbed wire.

Smoke unfolded itself softly from the chimney of the boiler that fed steam to the winch, which puffed and rattled under the manipulations of Stephen Stone. A taut cable was reeled in slowly and it brought over the rough road a sort of sled on which was piled gear· from the hatches of the
Falcon.

When the sled had entered the stockade, Stone shut the gate and began to unload it.

He was naked to the waist. His trousers were stuffed in. leather boots. His shoulders were tanned by the sun. When he lifted, muscles rose and undulated on his body. A more powerful spectacle was presented by Jack, however. Under his brown skin, as he raised stones up on the chimney scaffold, a torrent of oiled strength bulged and slid.

He grinned and sometimes sang as he worked.

The baby sat in its basket in the shade of a small bush.

Around the basket was a screen. A similar protection had been made for the chickens, and the goats sunned themselves beneath a steel unloading net.

There was a rifle within reach of each man. They had revolvers in their belts. A box of ammunition lay open on the cement foundations of the house. It was obvious that they did not trust their new environment--although they had been working in it for four weeks and no untoward incident had occurred.

' I'll take that big flat one," McCobb called from his perch on the chimney.

"This one?" Jack asked.

"The one next to it."

Jack lifted the stone. McCobb scraped up a trowel full of cement and slapped it against the rock. He fidgeted it in place, put on more cement, and turned toward Stone.

"I call get along without Jack, now, for a while."

"Right. We'll drag the sled back and get another load."

The corral gate opened and closed.

McCobb slapped at a purple fly which had landed on his neck. He, alone, wore a shirt. He began to whistle and when the baby made a sound he talked to it.

The steam winch had been invaluable. It acted as elevator, railroad, wagon, plow, stone carrier, and log mover. It pulled whatever was needed into the stockade.

Next, McCobb thought, looking at the walled cellar which rose to sturdy foundations and the two tall chimneys, they would start the saw and cut wood. Two-by-fours for studding. Inch thick boards for walls inside and out. Soon after that they would have a house. A big house, with five rooms and a porch. With a view of the bay. A house that had been painted--he had seen the paint come up on the sled, two barrels of it.

It would be a rather fine place to live.

On the
Falcon
Stone dropped into the hold, rolled a keg to the sling, and gave word to Jack who hoisted it on a block and tackle, swung it outboard, and dropped it to the sled.

Jack sang.

Stone found himself whistling.

When the load was complete, they walked back to the stockade. McCobb came down from the chimney scaffold to let them in. The winch rattled again. Jack lifted stones.

The scene was not much different from any construction--save for the richness of the foliage in the background, the firearms, and the rough logs and poles which made the scaffold on which McCobb worked.

Late in the afternoon Stone went out alone. A small boat was moored beside tae
Falcon.
There was a larger craft, equipped with sails, still on the davits, but that was reserved for a later day.

Stone pushed off the small boat and rowed some distance out on the bay. His eyes constantly searched the shore line as he moved through the water. He saw nothing.

After he had satisfied himself that he was far enough off shore he took a jointed rod from beneath his seat, set it up, strung it with a line, affixed a reel and baited with an artificial lure. He propped the pole in the stern, let out line, and began to troll slowly.

He had rowed perhaps a dozen strokes when the pole bent, the line cut water and the reel screamed.

He grabbed his tackle. Stone had caught salmon in New Brunswick and tarpon in the Gulf. What he had now was in no way inferior to those fish.

It made a long, determined rush. He slowed it with his thumb and the boat began to move in answer to the pull. The fish gave up, after a fairly long run and broke water three times. It was large and slender, silver-backed with rose splotches. He could see it plainly the third time and while he was still wondering about its identity it went under the boat.

He whipped his pole around the stern. His only thought was to save his tackle. He realized that he should have brought stronger weapons to the conquest of the unfished bay. For five minutes he resisted an attempt of the fish to get into the open sea. Then came the surrender. It was compromised when he reached down to pull it from the water by a last rush, but in another minute he had it aboard.

He rowed back, still watching the shore. He tied the skiff. He walked with the fish and his rifle to the stockade. He had been gone just twenty minutes. McCobb shouted from the chimney. "Luck already?"

Stone felt a stirring of pride that supplemented the elation he had known while the conflict was in progress.

"Something for supper." He slammed the gate.

McCobb whistled. "Something indeed."

Jack took the fish. He grinned. "That'll taste mighty good."

The Scotchman counted out loud. "Let's see. There were the ducks. And those grouse--or whatever they were. And the oysters. The clams and the turtle. That fish makes the sixth natural contribution to our larder--in the way of meat. If you include the fruit--"

Stone nodded. "Not so bad, eh? And when we get a garden going. Peas and beans and carrots and beets and potatoes and almost anything else you can name.

He turned to Jack.

"You go down and fix the fish. I think if you stuff a midsection with bread and onions and roast it--"

"Yes, boss. Got to milk first."

They watched him enter the goat pen. Jack's relations with the three dams and the two rams were the relations of a man to his equals. He had names for all five. Miss Susie.

Linda. Clara. Little Joe and Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes had once butted him rather forcefully, and the talk he gave to the goat, the anxiety and grief he expressed, had kept Stone and McCobb in silent mirth for a whole evening.

Milk rang on the side of his shining pail.

McCobb and Stone continued with their work. When Jack had gone they chuckled.

"Must be wonderful to be black," McCobb said.

Stone arranged tarpaulins on his stores. "Must be."

"Never disconcerted. Never so frightened you can't laugh a minute later. Faithful.

It's amazing."

They looked at each other. It passed through their minds simultaneously that they were forming an intense friendship. There was no need to talk about it--no need to talk about anything except the casual points of conversation, which made hard work, day after day, into a sort of pleasure.

In another four weeks the sawmill was voicing its nasal menace to the forest.

Planks emerged from the spinning disk like cake slices. Log after log of hardwood gave itself up. The two-by-fours were already in place, forming the skeleton of the house, with holes where the doors and windows were to be and a geometrical slant of roof. Window glass and ready-made frames had been brought from the
Falcon.

The baby sat in his basket in the shade. The goats were about their continual experiments with the local vegetation and grass. The chickens laid regularly.

In January, McCobb began to lay flooring. In February, he finished the outside sheathing. In March, they had lined the inside with vertical boards. The boards on the exterior ran horizontally and overlapped, like clapboards. The work once again became diversified.

Jack thatched with palm leaves over the wooden roof.

Stone fitted the bunks from the
Falcon
into the three bedrooms.