The Ball and the Cross

  XII. THE DESERT ISLAND

  Those who happen to hold the view (and Mr. Evan MacIan, now alive andcomfortable, is among the number) that something supernatural, someeccentric kindness from god or fairy had guided our adventurers throughall their absurd perils, might have found his strongest argument perhapsin their management or mismanagement of Mr. Wilkinson's yacht. Neitherof them had the smallest qualification for managing such a vessel; butMacIan had a practical knowledge of the sea in much smaller and quitedifferent boats, while Turnbull had an abstract knowledge of science andsome of its applications to navigation, which was worse. The presenceof the god or fairy can only be deduced from the fact that they neverdefinitely ran into anything, either a boat, a rock, a quicksand, or aman-of-war. Apart from this negative description, their voyage would bedifficult to describe. It took at least a fortnight, and MacIan, whowas certainly the shrewder sailor of the two, realized that they weresailing west into the Atlantic and were probably by this time past theScilly Isles. How much farther they stood out into the western sea itwas impossible to conjecture. But they felt certain, at least, that theywere far enough into that awful gulf between us and America to makeit unlikely that they would soon see land again. It was therefore withlegitimate excitement that one rainy morning after daybreak theysaw that distinct shape of a solitary island standing up against theencircling strip of silver which ran round the skyline and separatedthe grey and green of the billows from the grey and mauve of the morningclouds.

  "What can it be?" cried MacIan, in a dry-throated excitement. "I didn'tknow there were any Atlantic islands so far beyond the Scillies--GoodLord, it can't be Madeira, yet?"

  "I thought you were fond of legends and lies and fables," said Turnbull,grimly. "Perhaps it's Atlantis."

  "Of course, it might be," answered the other, quite innocently andgravely; "but I never thought the story about Atlantis was very solidlyestablished."

  "Whatever it is, we are running on to it," said Turnbull, equably, "andwe shall be shipwrecked twice, at any rate."

  The naked-looking nose of land projecting from the unknown island was,indeed, growing larger and larger, like the trunk of some terrible andadvancing elephant. There seemed to be nothing in particular, at leaston this side of the island, except shoals of shellfish lying so thick asalmost to make it look like one of those toy grottos that the childrenmake. In one place, however, the coast offered a soft, smooth bay ofsand, and even the rudimentary ingenuity of the two amateur marinersmanaged to run up the little ship with her prow well on shore and herbowsprit pointing upward, as in a sort of idiotic triumph.

  They tumbled on shore and began to unload the vessel, setting thestores out in rows upon the sand with something of the solemnity ofboys playing at pirates. There were Mr. Wilkinson's cigar-boxes and Mr.Wilkinson's dozen of champagne and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned salmon and Mr.Wilkinson's tinned tongue and Mr. Wilkinson's tinned sardines, and everysort of preserved thing that could be seen at the Army and Navy stores.Then MacIan stopped with a jar of pickles in his hand and said abruptly:

  "I don't know why we're doing all this; I suppose we ought really tofall to and get it over."

  Then he added more thoughtfully: "Of course this island seems ratherbare and the survivor----"

  "The question is," said Turnbull, with cheerful speculation, "whetherthe survivor will be in a proper frame of mind for potted prawns."

  MacIan looked down at the rows of tins and bottles, and the cloud ofdoubt still lowered upon his face.

  "You will permit me two liberties, my dear sir," said Turnbull at last:"The first is to break open this box and light one of Mr. Wilkinson'sexcellent cigars, which will, I am sure, assist my meditations; thesecond is to offer a penny for your thoughts; or rather to convulse thealready complex finances of this island by betting a penny that I knowthem."

  "What on earth are you talking about?" asked MacIan, listlessly, in themanner of an inattentive child.

  "I know what you are really thinking, MacIan," repeated Turnbull,laughing. "I know what I am thinking, anyhow. And I rather fancy it'sthe same."

  "What are you thinking?" asked Evan.

  "I am thinking and you are thinking," said Turnbull, "that it is damnedsilly to waste all that champagne."

  Something like the spectre of a smile appeared on the unsmiling visageof the Gael; and he made at least no movement of dissent.

  "We could drink all the wine and smoke all the cigars easily in a week,"said Turnbull; "and that would be to die feasting like heroes."

  "Yes, and there is something else," said MacIan, with slight hesitation."You see, we are on an almost unknown rock, lost in the Atlantic. Thepolice will never catch us; but then neither may the public ever hear ofus; and that was one of the things we wanted." Then, after a pause, hesaid, drawing in the sand with his sword-point: "She may never hear ofit at all."

  "Well?" inquired the other, puffing at his cigar.

  "Well," said MacIan, "we might occupy a day or two in drawing up athorough and complete statement of what we did and why we did it, andall about both our points of view. Then we could leave one copy on theisland whatever happens to us and put another in an empty bottle andsend it out to sea, as they do in the books."

  "A good idea," said Turnbull, "and now let us finish unpacking."

  As MacIan, a tall, almost ghostly figure, paced along the edge of sandthat ran round the islet, the purple but cloudy poetry which was hisnative element was piled up at its thickest upon his soul. The uniqueisland and the endless sea emphasized the thing solely as an epic. Therewere no ladies or policemen here to give him a hint either of its farceor its tragedy.

  "Perhaps when the morning stars were made," he said to himself, "Godbuilt this island up from the bottom of the world to be a tower and atheatre for the fight between yea and nay."

  Then he wandered up to the highest level of the rock, where there was aroof or plateau of level stone. Half an hour afterwards, Turnbull foundhim clearing away the loose sand from this table-land and making itsmooth and even.

  "We will fight up here, Turnbull," said MacIan, "when the time comes.And till the time comes this place shall be sacred."

  "I thought of having lunch up here," said Turnbull, who had a bottle ofchampagne in his hand.

  "No, no--not up here," said MacIan, and came down from the height quitehastily. Before he descended, however, he fixed the two swords upright,one at each end of the platform, as if they were human sentinels toguard it under the stars.

  Then they came down and lunched plentifully in a nest of loose rocks. Inthe same place that night they supped more plentifully still. The smokeof Mr. Wilkinson's cigars went up ceaseless and strong smelling, like apagan sacrifice; the golden glories of Mr. Wilkinson's champagne roseto their heads and poured out of them in fancies and philosophies. Andoccasionally they would look up at the starlight and the rock and seethe space guarded by the two cross-hilted swords, which looked like twoblack crosses at either end of a grave.

  In this primitive and Homeric truce the week passed by; it consistedalmost entirely of eating, drinking, smoking, talking, and occasionallysinging. They wrote their records and cast loose their bottle. Theynever ascended to the ominous plateau; they had never stood there savefor that single embarrassed minute when they had had no time to takestock of the seascape or the shape of the land. They did not evenexplore the island; for MacIan was partly concerned in prayer andTurnbull entirely concerned with tobacco; and both these forms ofinspiration can be enjoyed by the secluded and even the sedentary. Itwas on a golden afternoon, the sun sinking over the sea, rayed like thevery head of Apollo, when Turnbull tossed off the last half-pint fromthe emptied Wilkinsonian bottle, hurled the bottle into the sea withobjectless energy, and went up to where his sword stood waiting for himon the hill. MacIan was already standing heavily by his with bent headand eyes reading the ground. He had not even troubled to throw a glanceround the island or the horizon. But Turnbull being of a more activeand birdlike type of mind did throw a gl
ance round the scene. Theconsequence of which was that he nearly fell off the rock.

  On three sides of this shelly and sandy islet the sea stretched blue andinfinite without a speck of land or sail; the same as Turnbull had firstseen it, except that the tide being out it showed a few yards more ofslanting sand under the roots of the rocks. But on the fourth side theisland exhibited a more extraordinary feature. In fact, it exhibitedthe extraordinary feature of not being an island at all. A long, curvingneck of sand, as smooth and wet as the neck of the sea serpent, ranout into the sea and joined their rock to a line of low, billowing, andglistening sand-hills, which the sinking sea had just bared to the sun.Whether they were firm sand or quicksand it was difficult to guess; butthere was at least no doubt that they lay on the edge of some largerland; for colourless hills appeared faintly behind them and no sea couldbe seen beyond.

  "Sakes alive!" cried Turnbull, with rolling eyes; "this ain't an islandin the Atlantic. We've butted the bally continent of America."

  MacIan turned his head, and his face, already pale, grew a shade paler.He was by this time walking in a world of omens and hieroglyphics, andhe could not read anything but what was baffling or menacing in thisbrown gigantic arm of the earth stretched out into the sea to seize him.

  "MacIan," said Turnbull, in his temperate way, "whatever our eternalinterrupted tete-a-tetes have taught us or not taught us, at least weneed not fear the charge of fear. If it is essential to your emotions,I will cheerfully finish the fight here and now; but I must confess thatif you kill me here I shall die with my curiosity highly excited andunsatisfied upon a minor point of geography."

  "I do not want to stop now," said the other, in his elephantinesimplicity, "but we must stop for a moment, because it is asign--perhaps it is a miracle. We must see what is at the end of theroad of sand; it may be a bridge built across the gulf by God."

  "So long as you gratify my query," said Turnbull, laughing and lettingback his blade into the sheath, "I do not care for what reason youchoose to stop."

  They clambered down the rocky peninsula and trudged along the sandyisthmus with the plodding resolution of men who seemed almost to havemade up their minds to be wanderers on the face of the earth. DespiteTurnbull's air of scientific eagerness, he was really the less impatientof the two; and the Highlander went on well ahead of him with passionatestrides. By the time they had walked for about half an hour in theups and downs of those dreary sands, the distance between the two hadlengthened and MacIan was only a tall figure silhouetted for an instantupon the crest of some sand-dune and then disappearing behind it. Thisrather increased the Robinson Crusoe feeling in Mr. Turnbull, and helooked about almost disconsolately for some sign of life. What sort oflife he expected it to be if it appeared, he did not very clearly know.He has since confessed that he thinks that in his subconsciousness heexpected an alligator.

  The first sign of life that he did see, however, was something moreextraordinary than the largest alligator. It was nothing less than thenotorious Mr. Evan MacIan coming bounding back across the sand-heapsbreathless, without his cap and keeping the sword in his hand only by ahabit now quite hardened.

  "Take care, Turnbull," he cried out from a good distance as he ran,"I've seen a native."

  "A native?" repeated his companion, whose scenery had of late beenchiefly of shellfish, "what the deuce! Do you mean an oyster?"

  "No," said MacIan, stopping and breathing hard, "I mean a savage. Ablack man."

  "Why, where did you see him?" asked the staring editor.

  "Over there--behind that hill," said the gasping MacIan. "He put up hisblack head and grinned at me."

  Turnbull thrust his hands through his red hair like one who gives up theworld as a bad riddle. "Lord love a duck," said he, "can it be Jamaica?"

  Then glancing at his companion with a small frown, as of one slightlysuspicious, he said: "I say, don't think me rude--but you're a visionarykind of fellow--and then we drank a great deal. Do you mind waiting herewhile I go and see for myself?"

  "Shout if you get into trouble," said the Celt, with composure; "youwill find it as I say."

  Turnbull ran off ahead with a rapidity now far greater than his rival's,and soon vanished over the disputed sand-hill. Then five minutes passed,and then seven minutes; and MacIan bit his lip and swung his sword, andthe other did not reappear. Finally, with a Gaelic oath, Evan startedforward to the rescue, and almost at the same moment the small figure ofthe missing man appeared on the ridge against the sky.

  Even at that distance, however, there was something odd about hisattitude; so odd that MacIan continued to make his way in thatdirection. It looked as if he were wounded; or, still more, as if hewere ill. He wavered as he came down the slope and seemed flinginghimself into peculiar postures. But it was only when he came withinthree feet of MacIan's face, that that observer of mankind fullyrealized that Mr. James Turnbull was roaring with laughter.

  "You are quit right," sobbed that wholly demoralized journalist. "He'sblack, oh, there's no doubt the black's all right--as far as it goes."And he went off again into convulsions of his humorous ailment.

  "What ever is the matter with you?" asked MacIan, with stern impatience."Did you see the nigger----"

  "I saw the nigger," gasped Turnbull. "I saw the splendid barbarianChief. I saw the Emperor of Ethiopia--oh, I saw him all right. Thenigger's hands and face are a lovely colour--and the nigger----" And hewas overtaken once more.

  "Well, well, well," said Evan, stamping each monosyllable on the sand,"what about the nigger?"

  "Well, the truth is," said Turnbull, suddenly and startlingly, becomingquite grave and precise, "the truth is, the nigger is a Margate nigger,and we are now on the edge of the Isle of Thanet, a few miles fromMargate."

  Then he had a momentary return of his hysteria and said: "I say,old boy, I should like to see a chart of our fortnight's cruise inWilkinson's yacht."

  MacIan had no smile in answer, but his eager lips opened as if parchedfor the truth. "You mean to say," he began----

  "Yes, I mean to say," said Turnbull, "and I mean to say somethingfunnier still. I have learnt everything I wanted to know from thepartially black musician over there, who has taken a run in hiswar-paint to meet a friend in a quiet pub along the coast--the noblesavage has told me all about it. The bottle containing our declaration,doctrines, and dying sentiments was washed up on Margate beach yesterdayin the presence of one alderman, two bathing-machine men, threepolicemen, seven doctors, and a hundred and thirteen London clerks on aholiday, to all of whom, whether directly or indirectly, our compositiongave enormous literary pleasure. Buck up, old man, this story of ours isa switchback. I have begun to understand the pulse and the time of it;now we are up in a cathedral and then we are down in a theatre, wherethey only play farces. Come, I am quite reconciled--let us enjoy thefarce."

  But MacIan said nothing, and an instant afterwards Turnbull himselfcalled out in an entirely changed voice: "Oh, this is damnable! This isnot to be borne!"

  MacIan followed his eye along the sand-hills. He saw what looked likethe momentary and waving figure of the nigger minstrel, and then he sawa heavy running policeman take the turn of the sand-hill with the smoothsolemnity of a railway train.