His Unknown Wife

CHAPTER IX

Of course, he was only choosing the lesser of two evils. If the spar snapped a second time, the last hope of rescue was absolutely destroyed. On the other hand, by reducing the thrust on the retaining spar, the forecastle might slip.

He kicked, and the stay was released! To the best of his belief the wreck did not move.

Fastening the seaward end of the topmast in a rough and ready fashion, in such wise that it was held in position, yet allowed some play if subjected to irresistible weight, he tested it with one hand. It remained taut. Then, murmuring something which had the semblance of a prayer, he committed himself to the crossing.

The wind carried his body out at an astonishing angle, but he held on. Of course, he had not far to travel, because a steamer’s topmast is of no great length, but, if he lives to become a centenarian, Maseden will never forget the extraordinary thrill of thankfulness and jubilation which ran through every fibre when his right foot rested on a projecting knob of rock.

A ghostly light coming from the white maelstrom beneath enabled him to make sure that the crevice in which the spar had stuck extended some distance into the face of the cliff. He scrambled ashore, and found that a narrow ledge ran inward about the height of his breast. It was practicable as far as a hand could reach; so, well knowing how precious was every second, he commenced the return journey.

He simply did not allow himself to think. The slightest hesitation might have been fatal. He could form no sort of estimate of his own nervous strength. He knew that any man’s willpower may carry him to a certain point and then desert him. He realized that he was leaving a sort of safety for a no mean chance of speedy death; but there is safety that is dishonor, and death that is everlastingly honorable.

Without any semblance of hesitation, this gallant young American swung forth to the desolation and chaos he had just quitted.

Nor did his spirit quail when he had deposited a helpless woman on the ledge. But his hands fumbled in untying the rope which had bound her to him, and he became conscious of an affrighting lassitude which brought with it a grimmer menace than the howling furies of the reef.

He tried to persuade himself that the poncho strapped to his back had made the burden of another body almost unbearable. Hurriedly unfastening it, he said to his collapsed companion—or, rather shouted, because the din created by the breakers was almost stupefying:

“Are you able to hold this?”

Probably she replied, but her utterance was swept away by the wind ere the words had crossed her lips. She took the folded cloak in her hands, and the action sufficed.

Then Maseden left her. During this second crossing to the forecastle he knew beyond range of doubt that he had reached the limit of physical endurance. He had eaten nothing during many hours, he had been knocked insensible and had lost a good deal of blood. It was not in human nature that any man, howsoever fit and active he might be, could survive these heavy drains on his energies and yet put forth the sustained effort now called for.

It tasked his grit to the uttermost to go on this time. He knew in his heart that a third double passage was not to be thought of.

So, during the brief respite while a wholly insensible woman was being tied to him, he contrived to shout to the nearest man on the spar:

“I’m all in! You fellows must follow as best you can. It’s not so bad for a man crossing alone. Turn your back to the wind.”

He had adopted that method while carrying the girl already on the rock, and the force of the gale had seemed to exert less drag on his arms.

It needed a real life-and-death struggle to gain the ledge this time. During a minute or longer he could not even endeavor to undo the rope. He merely lurched forward on to the tiny platform and sank in a heap with the inert body of a girl bound to his back. Then he felt dizzily that someone was gaining a foothold on the rock behind. With a mighty effort he bundled his own body and the girl’s out of the way.

He fancied he heard a shout and a scream, but was beyond knowing or caring what had happened. Had he slipped down into the raging vortex beneath and been whirled to almost instant death he would have felt a sense of relief that the long drawn-out and unequal fight was ended.

He revived under the stress of a new horror. He found himself gazing blankly into a dim obscurity in which there was neither broken topmast nor unheaved forecastle. The tons of metal piled on a slippery rock had vanished completely, and the hapless few who had survived the slow agony of those hours of waiting in the chart-room were hurled to death at the very moment when fate tantalized them with the prospect of rescue!

Someone bawled huskily in his ear:

“They’ve gone! My God! What rotten luck! I could almost have touched the man crossing behind me!... Can we get these girls out of this?... Which way did you come?”

It was the young American passenger, Sturgess. He imagined that the man who had brought hope and life to the doomed survivors of the Southern Cross had reached the vessel from the land and could now pilot the three who alone were saved to some place where food and repose would be attainable.

“I’m tied to someone,” Maseden contrived to say. “Try and unfasten the rope, and shove me up on to the ledge.... I’m all in, but I’ll soon be better.... Mind you hold fast yourself!”

Sturgess, though only a degree less exhausted, did as he was asked. Sprawling weakly over the prostrate body of the second of the two girls, Maseden felt in the darkness for the other one.

He discovered that she had collapsed sideways in a faint, but, by some marvel, the folded cloak had not rolled down the side of the precipice. His hands were feeble and numb, but he contrived to unfasten the strap. The bottle of brandy was uninjured, and, so unnerved was he by knowing that the spirit probably meant all the difference between life and death for four people—at any rate till dawn—that he actually dropped it.

Again Providence intervened. It fell on the thick poncho, and did not break.

Filled with savage resolve to conquer this weakness, he grasped the bottle more firmly, drew the cork with his teeth, and, resisting the impulse to swallow the contents in great gulps, sipped some of the liquor slowly.

He did not offer any to the others at that moment. His mind was clearing now, and he saw that the one vital thing needed was that he should recover control of his mental and bodily powers. A few minutes more or less of collapse mattered not so much to his companions as that he should lead or carry them to a less exposed position. Then the brandy would be really effective. At present, to hand it around in the darkness, while wind and spindrift were whipping them with scorpions, was merely courting the disaster which he himself had so narrowly averted.

The other man had gained the ledge. He could not see Maseden, because each inch of space increased an obscurity already akin to that of a tomb, but he leaned forward and caught his arm.

“Say!” he yelled. “Isn’t there some way out? We’ll die quick if we stop here!”

“You must wait a little,” said Maseden. “I, like yourself, was on board the ship. I’m going to stand up now and prospect a bit by feeling my way. Take care that neither of the women falls off. They are women, aren’t they?”

“Yes. D’ye think we’d send men ashore first?”

“I was not certain that both girls were still living.”

What a time and place for a discussion on the etiquette of life-saving at sea! It was typical of their race and type.

Placing the bottle in a breast pocket Maseden rose cautiously to his feet. Gripping the rock with his hands, he stepped over the unconscious form of the first girl he brought ashore. Evidently she had collapsed when the forecastle was swept away before her eyes.

The ledge led straight into the crevice he had entered during daylight, and though very uneven, trended generally upward. He had to depend, of course, wholly on the sense of touch, since the darkness here was that of a deep mine.

Some thirty feet inland he was halted abruptly. The ledge seemed to widen out and then end against an overhanging rock. But the place was dry, and the wind hardly penetrated, while the deafening thunder of the reef had died down to a harsh growl. By comparison with the sea face this secluded nook was a niche in Paradise. At any rate, here it was possible to await daylight without necessarily dying from exposure.

He hurried back, having memorized each inequality of floor and wall on the journey of exploration.

“Are you able to carry one of those girls?” he shouted to Sturgess when he was once more in the midst of the external uproar.

“How far?”

“Not more than fifteen short strides. Take her in your left arm, and feel the rock face on the right. Keep close in. I’m not certain about the width of this ledge. It rises a little, but is fairly straight.”

“Go right ahead!”

Soon the two men were in the haven of shelter at the further end. Each was clasping an inanimate woman, but happily, speech no longer demanded a straining of vocal chords.

“Is this the limit of the accommodation?” inquired Sturgess, obeying his guide’s restraining hand.

“Yes.”

“Do we sit right down and hope that the sun will rise sometime?”

“Not yet.... Here! Grope this way. I am giving you a bottle of brandy. Drink some, not much, because we must hoard it. Then we’ll try and get a few drops between these girls’ teeth. After that we must rub their hands and ankles till the friction hurts. It may revive them. I don’t know. It is the only plan I can think of. When they recover, if ever, we’ll seat them side by side with their backs to the rock, you and I will squeeze close, one on each side, and I have a poncho which will cover the lot. By that means we may obtain some degree of warmth in common.”

“Old man, you said a page full!”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Sturgess said gratefully:

“Gee! That’s some tonic! Now, how about those girls?”

“Give me the bottle. This lady was conscious when I brought her ashore. She may recover quickly.”

The almost tangible blackness in which the little group of people was wrapped greatly enhanced the difficulties attending restorative measures. Maseden discovered that the abundant hair of the girl he was hugging so closely to his heart had become loose, and was in a wet tangle about her throat and mouth.

The clinging strands were troublesome, but, by prizing her lips open between a finger and thumb, he contrived to make her swallow a few drops of the brandy. In fact, while he was yet doubting the efficacy of the dose, some slight convulsive movements showed that consciousness was returning.

He laid her carefully down, and told the American to do likewise with the sister. Sturgess seemed to be curiously slow to obey, and Maseden admonished him sharply, thinking the other might be dazed.

“Now, rub hard!” he said. “First her left hand—then her left ankle.”

Both set to work with a will. Maseden could not understand why the unhappy girl should be nearly naked. The stockings had fallen about her shoes. For the rest, her chief garment was an oilskin coat.

He, be it remembered, had been spared the hard usage of the waves, and his clothing was better adapted to existing conditions. He was shocked to find how cold she was, how icy and lifeless her flesh. He urged Sturgess not to spare her.

Their rough and ready massage soon proved effective. The girl gasped something incoherent, and strove to withdraw her limbs from a distinctly strenuous handling.

“She’s nearly all right, now,” announced Maseden briskly. “Sharp’s the word with the other one.”

The second patient offered a longer task. By the time she gave any sign of life her sister was frantically asking what had become of her, and was only quieted by Maseden saying sternly:

“You will help most by not bothering us. We are doing our best for your sister. She is here, and may recover. That is all I can tell you.”

“We? Who are we?” came the broken cry.

“Mr. Sturgess, yourself, your sister and I. My name is Maseden.”

He caught a strangled gasp of astonishment, but Sturgess broke in breathlessly, for the exertion was warming him:

“Great Scott! You’ve got my name pat, Mr. Maseden. D’ye mean—to tell—me—you were—on board—that poor old ship?”

“Rub! And don’t talk!... She moved a little then.”

His judgment was well founded. Within a few minutes he heard the second girl address her sister as Nina.

So this one was Madge, his wife! He had literally brought her back from the very gates of death. He could not even see her. What a curious coincidence that when she saved his life, and he saved hers, she was equally hidden from him; then by a veil, now by the pall of the darkest night he had ever experienced!

The girls began exchanging broken confidences. Madge, who had fainted while being towed across the fearsome chasm between bridge and forecastle, did not know of the loss of the captain and chief and second officers, with a passenger, until told by Nina. She wept bitterly, and Maseden could not help noticing that Sturgess tried to console her in a very lover-like manner.

He actually smiled at the tragic humor of it all, especially when Nina seemed to sense his thought, and valiantly interfered by bidding Madge not to add to their misery by useless grief. He refrained purposely from giving them any more brandy until some time had elapsed. Now that their faculties were restored, he knew, from his own experiences, that their tongues and palates were on fire with the salt-laden atmosphere they had perforce inhaled during so many hours.

But each minute of quiet in this sheltered nook, and in breathable air, would do much to alleviate their suffering, and he trusted to the brandy to put them to sleep.

In effect, that was what actually happened. When each of the four had swallowed a small quantity of the spirit Maseden and Sturgess nestled in beside the two girls and tucked the poncho over knees and feet. The bodies of the men served as excellent shields. In the physical and mental reaction which set in with the consciousness of assured safety—because that was what both girls thought, and neither man cared to weaken their faith—they were sound asleep within half an hour of the time they left the wreck.

Sturgess, too, was worn out, and slept fitfully, but it was long before Maseden’s overtaxed nerves would yield. He could not help speculating as to what wretched hap the coming day might bring. There was a gnawing dread in his mind that they might be lodged in a fissure of an unscalable cliff. If that were so, what a fearsome prospect lay before them! The mere notion was unendurable, and he resolutely refused to dwell on it.

Then he mused on the queer chance which, even in this small company, divorced him from his wife. He had rescued Nina first. By the accident of situation he was nearest the rock which closed the ledge, and she next. It was her body, not his wife’s, to which he was close pressed, and in which his more vigorous frame had already induced a certain comfortable warmth.

Her head had fallen on his shoulder. An unconscious movement revealed that some roughness in the rock wall was hurtful, so he put his left arm around her neck and pillowed her gently.

Try as he might, he found himself still brooding on the chances of the coming day. Fortune favoring, they might find a way to the summit of the cliff. Would they be much better off? Water they would surely obtain—but what of food?

Somehow, in such woful plight, a man’s mind turns instinctively to a pipe. He actually had a cherished briar between his teeth and a tobacco pouch in his hand, when his heart sank at the remembrance that he had struck the last match in the only box of matches in his pocket after breakfast that morning. He recollected tossing the empty box into the sea. Subsequently, in lighting a cigar, he had borrowed a match.

Searching his pockets without disturbing the exhausted girl by his side, he made sure of the unhappy truth. He had no match. Even if they reached the interior of the island they could not possibly start a fire.

He knew at once that Sturgess, who had been soaked in salt water for many hours, was in a worse predicament than himself, because his own clothing was dry inside, whereas the other was wet to the skin, and any matches he might have carried must be in a pulp.

Tucked away in a money belt, Maseden carried ten thousand dollars in American bills, yet one small box of matches would be of far greater practical value in that hour than all the money. Slight wonder, then, if his stout heart failed him at last and the darkness closed in on his soul as on his eyes.

The sleeping girl, conscious only of warmth and protection, snuggled her head a little nearer.

“Mother, darling,” she murmured, “we had to do it! We had no choice. It was for your dear sake!”

That was all—some troubled confidence of a dream—but it sufficed to set Maseden musing on the strange vortex into which fate had sucked him from the peace and seclusion of Los Andes ranch.

His mind wandered. He saw again the magnificent groves of mahogany trees and coyal palms, with their golden flowers fully three feet in height, and the chicka sap oozing from the bark. He sauntered through the well-cultivated plantations of bananas, yams, arrow-root, guavas, and all the fruit and cereals which that favored region of Central America produces in such abundance that men grow lazy and are content to plot and thieve rather than toil. He particularly recalled a number of “chocolate” trees, the marvelous growth which yields a more delicately flavored beverage than the cocoa-tree.

The original owner of the ranch prided himself on these trees—botanically, the Herrania purpurea—because they were not indigenous to San Juan, but had been brought from Guatemala. Los Andes ranch was indeed a veritable Garden of Eden.

While roaming through it in spirit Maseden dropped off to sleep.

And that was a kindly act on the part of a Providence which marks even the fall of a sparrow from a house-top. A full day lay before this man and those others committed to his care. Even a couple of hours’ fitful repose served as a splendid restorative. Without some such respite he could never have faced and carried through the almost Sisyphean task which awaited him at daylight.

He awoke with a shiver. He was chilled to the bone. Not knowing what he was doing, he had drawn the poncho closely over Nina Gray, leaving his own limbs almost uncovered. Startled lest the others might be stiff in death, since his clothes were dry, while theirs, such as they possessed, were wet, he touched the girl’s cheek. It was quite warm and soft.

The oilskins she and her sister wore and the huddling together of the four under the heavy poncho had generated a moist heat which probably helped to preserve the two delicate women from some type of deadly pneumonia.

At first it did not strike Maseden as strange that he should be able to see her face. As the initial feeling of panic passed, and he glanced around, he understood what had happened. The sky was clear, and the moon, late risen, was spreading a mild radiance over rocks and sea.

By raising himself a little, so as not to disturb the sleeper still trustfully tucked under his arm, he peered sidewise down on the reef. The tide was high, and great rollers were smashing over the barrier which had broken the Southern Cross.

So far as he could tell, not a vestige of the ship remained. Bridge and chart-house had vanished. He fancied that some part of the framework accounted for a particularly vexed boiling of the surges on a spot where the engines and stoke-hold had lodged. But that was only guesswork.

The morning tide had done its work with thoroughness. The Southern Cross had become a memory.

Then he surveyed the ledge and the cleft. Apparently, at this point, he was some twenty feet above high-water mark. To the left was the sea. To the right, the rock overhung the ledge in such wise that the place was almost a cave. This fact, combined with the elevation of the opposite wall, explained the shelter the castaways had been vouchsafed from the bitter gale now blowing itself out. But it was affrighting to realize that the very physical feature which provided a refuge might also immure them in a living tomb.

He shuddered, and moved involuntarily, and the girl awoke with a start.

She lifted her head, and gazed at him with uncomprehending eyes.

“Where am I?” she said, rather in wonderment than alarm.

“Somewhere on the coast of Chile,” he said.

She extricated a hand from the folds of the poncho and swept the errant hair from her face. Turning partly, she looked at her sister and Sturgess.

“I remember now,” she said slowly. Then she discovered that Maseden’s arm was supporting her shoulders.

“Have you held me like that all night?” she inquired.

“‘All night’ is a figure of speech. It is not yet daybreak. This is moonlight.”

“The moon! Does the moon still shine? But your arm must be weary.”

Maseden was just beginning to realize that he owned a left arm. Circulation was being restored, and he knew it.

“Now that you mention it,” he said quietly, “I believe it is.”

She spoke again, but he was in such agony that he broke out in a perspiration, a most fortunate circumstance, since he was perished with cold. The spasm did not last long, however, and he found his voice again.

“Are you Miss Nina Gray?” he asked, and, in the same breath, was conscious of the absurd formality of the question in the conditions.

She did not answer.

“We may as well become acquainted,” he went on, smiling at the queer turn their first words had taken.

“Now I remember everything,” she said, burying her face in her hands.

“I can’t have you crying,” he muttered with a certain roughness. “Tears won’t help. We’re in a pretty bad fix, and must meet developments calmly.”

“I’m not crying,” she said, dropping her hands, and looking at him as though to offer proof.

“Then you can at least tell me your name, though I’m almost sure that you are Nina. Even here, your sister, who is also my wife, keeps away from me.”

“That is unjust. You saved both of us, but I kept my senses, and she did not. You asked me if I was Nina Gray. I am not. My name is Nina Forbes.”

Maseden was stung into a revolt as fantastic as it was sudden.

“Good Lord!” he cried. “Are you married?”

“Please let me explain. Mr. Gray was not my father, but my stepfather. My mother married again. I—wanted to tell you. But does it really matter? Why are we discussing such trivial things? Are we four the only survivors of the wreck?”

“I suppose so.”

“Mr. Gray died—while we were in the chart-room. He was an invalid—a neurotic. He could not withstand hardship of any sort. But the captain and chief officer were behind me on that mast.... Ah! I had forgotten that. I fainted, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

Madge stirred uneasily. Their voices had aroused her.

“Don’t be unkind to Madge,” said the girl hurriedly. “Neither of us could help what happened in San Juan. We thought we were acting for the best. Our lives are still in jeopardy, I imagine. Won’t you be good and forget that unfortunate marriage?”

“I won’t talk of it, if that is what you mean. But I can hardly regard it as unfortunate. It undoubtedly saved my life.”

Madge awoke with a cry.

“Nina!” she screamed. “Oh, Nina, is that you? Are we really alive?”

CHAPTER X

“Well, you heard more than I did.... Are you the mysterious English-speaking vaquero who lived in the forecastle?” and the questioner bent a puzzled face sideways to try and discern the other man’s features.

“Yes,” said Maseden promptly. “There need be no mystery about it now. I got into trouble in Cartagena, shot the president-elect, and escaped in the disguise of a Spanish cowboy.”

“Gee!” exclaimed Sturgess.

For some reason best known to himself he displayed no further curiosity in the matter, though he might well have wondered how Madge Forbes had come to identify that picturesque-looking person, Ramon Aliones, with the American whose exploits had set all Cartagena agog the day before the Southern Cross sailed.

There was an uncomfortable pause, which Maseden broke by a laugh.

“So you see, Mr. Sturgess, I owed you a good turn, though you never guessed it. By your kindness in letting me carry your bag and share your boat I got away from my pursuers without attracting attention.”

“Gee!” said Sturgess again.

His comment probably denoted bewilderment. It may also have shown that the speaker had just ascertained something which supplied food for thought. In the half light Maseden allowed himself to smile, because the conceit instantly leaped into his mind that his fellow-countryman might have been told of that amazing marriage, and was now engaged in fitting together certain pieces of the puzzle.

If, for instance, Sturgess suspected that Madge Forbes was the lady who figured in that extraordinary episode, he must realize that in paying her such marked attention during the voyage he had placed himself, if not her, in a somewhat equivocal position.

“I had reason to believe that the captain recognized me,” went on Maseden. “Probably that is how Miss Forbes came to hear my name.”

“Miss Forbes!”

There was no mistaking the new note of surprise, even of annoyance, in Sturgess’s voice. He was gathering information at a rapid rate, and evidently found some difficulty in assimilating it.

“Yes,” broke in Nina Forbes. “That is my sister’s name, and my own. Mr. Gray was our stepfather. We passed as his daughters while traveling. The arrangement prevented all sorts of misunderstandings. In any event, it concerned none but ourselves. I only mentioned the fact casually to Mr. Maseden a few minutes ago.”

Some men might have caught a rebuke in the girl’s words. Not so Sturgess.

“I’m tickled to death at hearing it, anyhow,” he said cheerfully. “The one thing I couldn’t understand was how you two girls could be that poor chap’s daughters.... Well, now we’re all properly introduced, let’s talk as though we really knew one another. Has any one the beginning of a notion as to the time.”

Then Maseden remembered that he was wearing a watch which he had wound that morning. He produced it, and was able to discern the hands.

“A quarter past two,” he announced.

A silence fell on them. Somehow the intimate and homely fact that one of the little company possessed a watch which had not stopped served rather to enhance than allay the sense of peril and abandonment which their brief talk had dispelled for the moment. A soldier who took part in that glorious but terrible retreat from Mons confessed afterwards that his spirit quailed once, and that was when he read the route names on a London suburban omnibus lying disabled and abandoned by the roadside.

The Marble Arch, Edgware Road, Maida Vale and Cricklewood—what had these familiar localities to do with the crash of shell-fire and the spattering of bullets on the pavé? Similarly, the forlorn castaways on Hanover Island felt that a watch was an absurdly civilized thing among the loud-voiced savageries of wind and wave.

The moonlight died away, too, with a suddenness that was almost unnerving. True, the moon had only vanished behind a cloud-bank. But her face was veiled effectually, and the growing darkness soon showed that she would not be visible again that night.

They tried to sleep, but the effort failed. Lack of food was a more serious matter now than mere physical exhaustion. All four were young and vigorous enough to withstand fatigue, and to wake up refreshed after the brief repose they had already enjoyed.

But they were stiff and cramped, and their blood was beginning to yield to a deadly chill. Though they huddled together as closely as possible, there was no resisting the steady encroachment of the bitter cold.

At last Maseden counseled that they all stand up, and, despite the urgent need of conserving their energies, obtain some measure of warmth by stretching their limbs and breathing deeply.

He even suggested that they should sing, but the effort to start a popular chorus was such a lamentable failure that they laughed dismally.

Then he tried story telling. He judged, and quite rightly, that the majority of his hearers would be deeply interested in a recital of his own recent adventures.

Greatly daring, he left out no detail, and, in a darkness which was almost tangible because of its density, he was well aware how alert was every ear to catch the true version of an extraordinary marriage.

No one interrupted. They just listened intently. Once, when he asked if he was wearying them by a too exact description of events at the ranch after his escape, Nina Forbes said quietly:

“Please tell us everything, Mr. Maseden. I have never heard anything half so interesting. You have caused me to forget where I am, and I can give you no higher praise.”

At last he made an end, dwelling purposely on the light note of his troubles with the Spanish sailor who claimed a vested right in him after the incident of the falling block.

Sturgess put a direct question or two.

“You don’t seem to have any sort of a notion as to who the lady was?” he began.

“I only know that her Christian name was Madeleine,” answered Maseden readily. “She was about to sign the register when the idea of getting out of the Castle dawned on me, and, from that instant, I thought of nothing else. I hadn’t much time, you know. The plan had to be concocted and carried out almost in the same breath. And there was no room for failure. The least slip, either in time or method, and I was a dead man.”

“Madeleine!” mused Sturgess aloud. “She was English, or American, I suppose?”

“American, I imagine. Undoubtedly one or the other.”

“And that fat Steinbaum was the marriage broker! I know Steinbaum—a thug, if ever there was one.... What are you going to do about it, Mr. Maseden?”

“Do about what?”

“Well, if you win clear from this present rather doubtful proposition—and we’re backing you in that for all we’re worth, ain’t we, girls?—you’re tied up to a wife whom you don’t know, and I guess the one place in which you’re likely to find her is off the map for you for keeps.”

“I’m not versed in the law,” laughed Maseden, “but it will be a queer thing if I should be compelled to regard myself as married to a lady whom I have seen, certainly, but do not want.”

“How do you know you don’t want her?”

“I know nothing whatsoever about her.”

“That’s just it. That’s where you may be hipped. She may be a peach, the finest ever. Suppose, for the sake of argument, one of these two, Miss Madge or Miss Nina—”

“The lady’s name happened to be Madeleine,” put in Madge instantly. “If the ceremony was meant to be valid she would undoubtedly sign her right name.”

“Just so. You missed my point.”

Maseden thought it advisable to come to the rescue. He had conveyed to the one vitally interested listener that her secret was safe for the time, and this should suffice.

“I am inclined to think that I shall be proof against my nominal wife’s charms, no matter how great they may be,” he said emphatically. “There is a romantic side to the affair, I admit, but I cannot blind myself to the fact that it possesses a prosaic one as well. Association with a skunk like Steinbaum is hardly the best of credentials, in the first place. Secondly, one asks what motive any woman could have in wishing to marry a man condemned to die. I’m not flattering myself that my personal qualifications carried much weight.

“Admittedly, the lady wanted to wed because I was about to disappear. I give her the credit of believing that she would never have gone through with the farce if she had the least reason to think that I would not be dead within the next half hour. But the fact remains that she was callous and calculating—whether to serve her own ends or some other person’s is immaterial.... No, Mr. Sturgess; when, if ever, I choose a wife, it is long odds against her name being Madeleine.”

Nina Forbes laughed, though her teeth chattered with the cold.

“The calm way in which men speak of ‘choosing’ a wife always amuses me,” she said. “If any man told me he had ‘chosen’ me I should feel inclined to box his ears.”

“It isn’t the best of words,” put in Sturgess promptly, “but it conveys a real compliment. A fellow meets a girl, the girl, and some electrical arrangement jangles at the back of his head. ‘This is it,’ says a voice. ‘Go to it, good and hard,’ and he goes. That’s the only sort of choice he’s given. The girl can always turn him down, you know. Still, she can’t help feeling flattered. She says to herself, ‘That poor fellow, Charles K. Sturgess, is only a mutt, but he did think me the best ever, so he had good taste.’ What do you think, Miss Madge?”

Then he and the others discovered that Madge was crying. The frivolous chatter intended to hide a dread reality had failed in its object. They were shivering with cold again, and ever more conscious of gnawing hunger. The prospect of escape was more than doubtful. Fate seemed to be playing a pitiless game with every soul on board the Southern Cross, having swept some to instant death, while retaining others for destruction by idle whim. The renewed darkness, the continuous uproar of the reef, had broken the girl’s nerve.

Maseden fancied that he had placed too great a strain on her by detailing with such precision the sequence of events during those crowded hours at Cartagena.

“I think,” he said gravely, “that we ought to lie down again, and await patiently the coming of daylight. The sun rises, no matter what else may happen, and dawn cannot be long delayed now.”

They obeyed him. They looked to him for guidance, but they were glad he did not call for any effort. Even the light-hearted, apparently irresponsible Sturgess, who, if he had to die, would depart this life with a jest on his lips, was stilled by the sheer hopelessness of their condition.

After one of those hours which seem to belong to eternity rather than to time, a quality of grayness made itself felt in the overwhelming gloom. Soon the serrated edge of the opposite wall of rock became a fixed and rigid thing against a background of cloud. In this new world of horror and suffering the break of day, to all appearances, came from the west!

This phenomenon was easily explained. Near by, on the east, rose the tremendous peaks of the Andes, so the plain of the sea on the western horizon caught the first shafts of light long before they filtered into the fiords and gorges of the coast-line tucked in at the base of those great hills.

Not that it mattered a jot to those desolate ones where the sun rose that day. They would have given little heed had the earth rolled over on a new axis, and dawn come from the South Pole!

As soon as daylight was sufficiently advanced to render the rock fissures clearly visible, Maseden roused his tiny flock from the stupor of sheer exhaustion. He was a man born to lead, and the necessity to spur on and exhort others proved his own salvation. He was stiff and sore, and his head still ached abominably, but he rose to his feet with an energetic shout that quickened the blood in his hearers’ veins.

“Now, folk,” he said, “the first order of the day is breakfast, and then strike camp!”

Breakfast! They thought he was crazy. But he took the bottle of brandy from a crevice in which he had lodged it securely overnight, and Sturgess uttered a cackling laugh.

“I’m doing pretty well for a life-long teetotaller,” he wheezed. “When a fellow like me falls off the water-wagon, he generally drops with a dull thud, but I must have set up a record. After lunching and dining yesterday on claret, I supped on brandy last night and am about to breakfast on the same.... Girls, help yourself and pass the decanter!”

Maseden held up the bottle to the light. It had never contained more than a pint, and nearly half had gone. A small coin served as a measure to divide the contents into five portions.

“Each of us drinks a peseta-worth,” he said. “There must be neither half measures nor extra ones. The last peseta-worth remains in the bottle. Is that agreed?”

“I want very little, please,” said Nina Forbes. “Just enough to moisten my lips and tongue—”

“You’re going to do as you’re bid,” was the gruff answer. “I advise you to sip your portion, by all means, but you must take it. As a penalty for disobedience, you’ll start.”

She made no further protest, but swallowed her dose meekly. Sister Madge followed. Sturgess was minded to argue, but met Maseden’s dour glance, and took his share. The first mouthful of the spirit acted on him like an elixir of life. He drank down to the allotted mark, and handed the bottle to Maseden.

“Now, girls,” he chortled, “this is the guy who really needs watching. If he doesn’t play fair let’s heave him into the sea.”

So three pairs of eyes saw to it that their rescuer had his full allowance. Then the bottle was put away, and the castaways took stock of their surroundings.

At first sight the position was grotesquely disheartening. Beneath, to the left, was the sea. Behind them rose an overhanging wall of rock, which swung round to the right and cut off the ledge. The cleft itself was some twelve feet wide, and the opposite wall rose fully ten feet. In a word, no chamois or mountain goat could have made the transit.

They all surveyed the situation from every point of view afforded by the fifteen feet of ledge. There was no reason to express opinions. Escape, in any direction, looked frankly impossible.

Then Maseden examined the cleft beneath.

“We cannot go up,” he said quietly. “In that case, as we certainly don’t mean to stay here, I’m going down.”

It was feasible, with care, to climb down to sea level, but the huge rollers breaking over the reef sent a heavy backwash against the cliff. The swirl of water rose and fell three feet at a time, with enough force to throw the strongest man off his balance.

“Do you mean that you intend jumping into the sea, Mr. Maseden?” said Madge Forbes.

She was quite calm now. She put that vital question as coolly as though it implied nothing more than a swimmer’s pastime. Their eyes clashed, and, for the first time, the man saw that Madge possessed no small share of Nina’s self-control. Her earlier collapse was of the body, not of the soul.

“It doesn’t mean that I shall willingly commit suicide,” he answered. “If it comes to that, I suggest that we all go together. I’m merely taking a prospecting trip. There’s no way out above. I must see what offers below.”

Without another word he sat on the lip of the rock on which they stood, and lowered himself to a tiny ledge which gave foothold. They watched him making his way down. It was no easy climb, but he did not hurry. Twice he advanced, and climbed a little higher to a point whence descent was more practicable. At last he vanished.

Sturgess, craning his neck over the seaward side of their narrow perch, could not see him, while the growl of the reef shut out all minor sounds.

Maseden was not long absent, but the three people whom he had left confessed afterwards that of all the nerve-racking experiences they had undergone since the ship struck, that silent waiting was the worst.

At last he reappeared. Nina, farthest up the cleft, was the first to see him, and she cried shrilly:

“Oh, thank God! He’s got a rope!”

A rope! Of what avail was a rope? Yet three hearts thrilled with great expectation. Why should Maseden bring a rope? It meant something, some plan, some definite means towards the one great object. They had an abounding faith in him.

The rope was slung around his shoulders in a noose, and he seemed to be tugging at some heavy weight which yielded but slowly to the strain. When he was still below the level of the ledge he undid the noose and passed it to Sturgess.

“Hold tight!” he shouted. “I’ve picked up the broken foremast. I’m going down to clear it off the rocks. When I yell, haul away steadily.”

They asked no questions. Maseden simply must be right. They listened eagerly for the signal, and put all their strength to the task when it came.

Soon the truck of the foremast appeared. Then the full length of the spar could be seen, with Maseden guiding it. He had tied the rope at a point about one-third of the length from the truck. When it was poised so that lifting alone was required he shouted to them to stop, and rejoined them, breathless, but bright-eyed.

“There’s no means of escape by the sea,” he explained, “so we must try the cliff. This is our bridge. I think it will span the gully. Anyhow, it is worth trying.”

Then they understood, and measuring glances were cast from spar to opposing crest. It would be a close thing, but, as Maseden said, it was certainly worth trying.

In a minute, or less, the broken mast was standing up-ended on the ledge. Then, with its base jammed into a crevice, it was lowered by the rope across the chasm. It just touched the top of the rock wall.

They actually cheered, but the women’s hearts missed a couple of beats when Maseden began to climb again. He worked his way upward without haste, found a toe-grip on the rock, raised himself carefully, and again disappeared from sight.

This time he was not so long away. He looked down on them with a confident smile.

“There’s a chance,” he said. “A ghost of a chance. Now I’m coming back!”

CHAPTER XI

“Wait a second, commodore!” he cried. “You’ve got your job cut out, and I’ll obey orders and keep a close tongue, you bet; but when it comes to collecting rope lengths, that is my particular stunt, as I sell hemp, among other things. You just rest up a while.”

Maseden nodded, and made way for a willing deputy. It was only fit and proper that he, too, should conserve his energies.

“’Round the corner to the left,” he said, “you’ll find a sloping rock. Some wreckage is lodged in an eddy alongside it. Secure the cordage, and any other odds and ends you think useful. Shin up here with a few rope lengths at once. I want them straight away. Have you a strong knife?”

Yes, Sturgess luckily did possess a serviceable knife. By the time he had handed over a number of rope strands Maseden, helped by the girls, had hauled back the mast, to which he began attaching short loops, or stirrups, about two feet apart. He did not expect that either Madge Forbes or her sister would be able to climb the mast, and it was almost a sheer impossibility that he and Sturgess should carry them time and again. So the mast, after serving twice as a bridge, was now to become a ladder.

Sturgess returned with a curiously mixed spoil—a good deal of rope, a sou’wester, a long, thin line—probably the whip used to establish the connection between bridge and forecastle while parts of the Southern Cross still held together—and the ship’s flag, the ensign which was flying at the poop when the ship struck.

Water was dripping off him. Evidently he had either been caught by a sea or had slipped off a rock.

“Accident?” inquired Maseden.

“Not quite. I had to risk something to get these,” and he produced from his pockets a dozen large oysters.

No party of gourmets ever sat down to a feast with greater zest than those four hungry people. Probably, in view of the labors and hardships they were yet fated to undergo, the oysters saved their lives. There is no knowing. Human endurance can be stretched to surprising limits, but, seeing that they were destined to taste no other food during twelve long hours of arduous exertion, the value of Sturgess’s find can hardly be overrated.

The oysters were of a really excellent species, though under the circumstances they were sure to be palatable, no matter what their actual qualities.

“I suppose I need hardly ask if there are any more to be had?” inquired Maseden, when the meal was dispatched.

“No, sir,” grinned Sturgess.

He left it at that, but the others realized that he had probably risked his life more than once in the effort to secure even that modest supply.

The meal, slight though it was, not only gave them a new strength—it brought hope. If only they could win a way to the interior, and reach the land-locked waters of the bay which opened up behind the frowning barrier they must yet scale, in all likelihood they would at least obtain a plentiful store of shell-fish.

Nina Forbes uttered a quaint little laugh as she threw the last empty shell on to the rocks beneath.

“Now,” she said, “I am quite ready for the soup and a joint.”

“Oh, don’t be horrid!” cried Madge. “You’ve gone and made me feel ravenous again.”

“He, or she, who would eat must first labor,” said Maseden. “Thanks to friend Sturgess, we’ve enjoyed a first-rate snack. I’ve never sampled manna, but I’ll back the proteids in three fat oysters against those in a pound of manna any day. Now, let’s get to business. If I’m not mistaken we’re going to tackle a stiff proposition.”

He knotted some stout cord around his own waist and that of each of the others, and slung the longest available coil over his shoulders. Then the mast was fixed in its place across the ravine, and he climbed to the opposite crest by straddling the pole, putting his feet in the loops, and pulling himself up by both hands.

Throwing back the rope, he told Sturgess to see that it was fastened securely to one of the girls on the belt already in position. He purposely refrained from specifying which one. By chance, Madge Forbes stood nearest, and it was she who came.

The crossing was awkward rather than dangerous, and rendered far more difficult by the fact that the unwilling acrobat was compelled to expose her naked limbs. But after the first shock common sense came to her aid, and she straightway abandoned any useless effort to observe the conventions.

Still, she blushed furiously, and was trembling when Maseden caught her hands and helped her to land.

“Thank Heaven we’ve kept our boots,” he said, unfastening the rope. “Just look at the ground we have to cover, and think what it would mean if our feet were bare.”

The comment was merely one of those matter-of-fact bits of philosophy which are most effective in the major crises of life. It was so true that a display of leg or ankle mattered little afterwards. Nevertheless, a similar ordeal caused Nina to blush, too, but she laughed when Madge cried ruefully:

“What in the world has happened to my ankles? They are scrubbed and bruised dreadfully.”

“That was last night’s treatment, my dear,” said her sister. “I escaped more lightly than you.”

“But what do you mean? I felt some soreness, but imagined I knocked myself in coming from the wreck.”

“You were in a dead faint, so Mr. Maseden and Mr. Sturgess massaged you unmercifully.”

Madge surveyed damages again.

“I must have been very bad if I stood that,” she said.

“You’ll be worse before we see the other side of this cliff,” murmured Nina, casting a critical eye over the precipitous ground in front.

It is not to be wondered at if the girls’ hearts quailed at the sight. They were standing on a sloping terrace, of no great depth, which ended abruptly at the foot of a towering cliff. A little to the right ran the line of the cleft, but so forbidding was its appearance, and so apparently unscalable its broken ledges, that the same thought occurred to each—what if they had but left a narrow, sheltered prison for a wider and more exposed one?

Maseden, however, allowed no time for reflection. He and Sturgess had already dragged the foremast after them, and were shouldering it in the direction of the first hump of rock which seemed to offer a way into the cleft. Any other route was absolutely impossible.

After one last glance at the reef which had slain a gallant ship and so many lives, they quitted the ledge which had proved their salvation. It was then five o’clock in the morning. At four o’clock that afternoon they flung themselves, utterly spent, on a carpet of thick moss which coated the landward slope of the most westerly point of Hanover Island.

Their hands and knees were torn and bleeding, their fingernails broken, their bones aching and their eyes bloodshot. But they had triumphed, though many a time it had seemed that if Providence meant to be kind, an avalanche of loose stones or a slip on treacherous shale would have hurled them to speedy death on the rocks beneath.

On five separate occasions they had found themselves strung out on a narrow ledge which merged to nothingness in the sheer wall of a precipice. Five times had they to go back and essay a different path, often beginning again fifty or even a hundred feet below the point they had reached. They were obliged to drag or carry the heavy topmast every inch of the way, because, without its aid, either as a bridge or a ladder, they could never have surmounted a tithe of the obstacles encountered.

In those eleven awful hours they had climbed not two, but five hundred feet, a distance which, on the level, a good runner would traverse in about twenty seconds, whereas it took them an average of a minute to climb one foot.

The marvel was that the women could have done it at all, even with the help which both men gave unstintedly. During the last weary hours no one uttered an unnecessary word. Each of the four was determined to go on, not for his or her own sake, but for the sake of the others. They were roped together. If one fell, it meant disaster to all. So, with splendid grit, each resolved not to fall so long as hand would hold or foot lodge on the tiniest projection.

But, with final success, came utter collapse. Even Maseden, far stronger physically than Sturgess, fell like a log. True, he had borne far more than his share of the day’s toil. No matter what his inmost thoughts, he had never, to outward seeming, lost heart. It was he who always found the new line, he who earliest decided to turn back and try again.

It was he, too, who called now for renewed exertion after some minutes of complete and blissful repose.

“Sorry to disturb your siesta,” he cried, with a woful assumption of cheery confidence, “but we must reach the shore, if possible, before night falls. Oysters and Chablis await us there. En avant, messieurs et ’dames!”

Nina Forbes sat up and brushed the hair from her eyes.

“I don’t think I can walk another yard. Won’t you leave me here?” she demanded.

“No.”

“Are we to carry that mast with us?”

“Why not? We may need it.”

Her eyes followed Maseden’s down the slope. Compared with the sullen, frowning realm of rock they had quitted, this eastern side of the island resembled a Paradise. The moss on which they were resting was thick and wiry. A hundred feet beneath were fir-trees, sparse and stunted at first, but soon growing luxuriantly, yet promising, to Maseden’s weighing eye, a barrier nearly as formidable as the fearsome wall of rock they had just surmounted.

He knew that which was happily hidden from the others. In this wild land, seldom, if ever, trodden by the foot of man, the forests throve on the bones of their own dead progenitors. Aged trees fell and rotted where they lay, and the roots of newcomers found substance among the heaped-up logs. Gales and landslides helped to swell the mad jumble of decaying trunks, which formed an impassable layer hardly ever less than fifteen feet in depth and often going beyond thirty feet.

Of the two, Maseden believed he would sooner tackle another wall of rock rather than essay to cross that belt of fantastic growths.

But, down there was water—perhaps food—certainly shelter. He guessed that at an altitude where hardy Alpine mosses alone flourished the cold would be intense at night. Already there was a shrewd nip in the breeze. They must not dawdle another instant.

He made up his mind to head for a gap in the trees which seemed to mark a recent land-slip, and trust to fortune that the gradient might not be too steep. Better any open risk than the fall of perhaps the whole party into a pit of dead wood choked with fœtid and noisome fungus growths. Once caught in such a trap, they might never emerge.

And now they met with their greatest among many pieces of luck that day. The opening Maseden had noticed was not the track of an avalanche, but a rough water-course, through which the torrential rain-storms of the coast tumbled headlong to the sea.

Notwithstanding the long-continued gale, the descent was so steep that only a vestige of a stream trickled down the main gully. Here and there lay a pool. Though the water was brackish, it was strongly pigmented with iron, and the roots of vigorous young trees seemed to find sustenance in it.

At any rate, they must drink or die, so they drank, though Maseden warned them to be moderate. They laved their wounds, which were intensely sore at first, owing to the encrustation of salt on their skins. But here, again, nature’s surgery, if painful, was effective. Salt is a rough and ready antiseptic. None of them owned any real medical knowledge. In their hard case ignorance was surely bliss, because they must have had the narrowest of escapes from tetanus.

The descent, though trying, was not specially perilous. Three times did the mast bring them down small cataracts, and many times across extraordinarily ingenious log barriers, set up against the stress of falling water by nature’s own engineering methods.

Once, indeed, a heavy boulder, poised in unexpected balance, toppled over just as they had reached the base of a waterfall. It would have crushed Nina Forbes to a pulp had not Maseden seen the stone move. As it was, he snatched her aside, and a ton of rock crashed harmlessly on to the very spot where she had been standing the fifth part of a second earlier.

Such an incident, happening in civilized surroundings, would have been regarded as phenomenal, something akin to an escape from a train wreck. Here it passed as a mere item in the day’s trials. It did not even shake the girl’s nerve.

“I suppose I ought to say ‘thank you,’ but I’m not quite sure you have done me a service,” she murmured wearily.

Hitherto both she and her sister had been so brave, so uncomplaining, that Maseden took warning from the words. The two girls were at the extreme limit of their powers of endurance, mentally and physically. It was five o’clock in the evening. After a day and a night of passive misery they had been subjected to every sort of muscular strain during nearly twelve hours, and might collapse at any moment now.

“Courage!” he said, with a gentleness curiously in contrast with the rather gruff and hectoring manner he had adopted all day. “You haven’t noticed how near the sea is. We shall be on shore in a few minutes.”

The girl’s lips parted in a wan smile.

“You are wonderful,” was all she said, but the pathos underlying the tribute wrung his heart.

Somehow, anyhow, they slithered and dropped down the remaining steps of their Calvary. During the last few feet they were able to leave behind the friendly topmast, but the shadows were falling when they stood, forlornly triumphant, on the flat rocks which served as the beach of the estuary.

The two girls sank at once to a moss-covered boulder. They looked so deathly white beneath the tan of exposure and the crust of dirt and blood not altogether removed when they bathed their faces in the pool, that Maseden unstrapped the poncho which he carried slung to his shoulders and produced from its folds that thrice-precious bottle of brandy.

The patients weakly resisted his demand that they should share nearly the whole of the mouthful of spirit which remained; but he was firm, and they drank. Sturgess, who staggered and nearly fell when he tried to move after the brief halt, was given a few drops; Maseden himself had what was left. Then he filled the bottle with water, and each took a long drink.

There is this supreme virtue in water, that, while slaking thirst, it stays the worst pangs of hunger, and Maseden had enough strength in reserve to hurry off in search of oysters, or any sort of shell-fish, before daylight failed wholly. He was fortunate in finding a well-stocked bed almost at once.

He alone knew what agony he endured when his bruised and torn fingers were plunged into ice-cold salt water. But he persevered, and gathered such a quantity that in ten minutes he and his companions were enjoying a really satisfying meal.

While they ate, they examined their surroundings. It was half tide. A bleak, rocky foreshore provided at least an ideal breeding-ground for oysters. Behind them rose the solemn bank of pine-trees through which they had come. On the right, only half a mile away, stood the great shoulder of rock which shut out the Pacific on that northern side of the estuary. In front, two miles or more distant, lay a jumble of forests and wild hills, and a similar vista spread far to the left, because the estuary widened to a span of several miles.

It was, indeed, a wild, desolate, awe-inspiring land, a territory abandoned of mankind! In such regions old-time sailors found fearsome monsters, amphibious reptiles larger than ships, and gnomes of demoniac aspect.

Such visions were easy to conjure up. Nina Forbes saw one now in the dusk.

“Oh, what is that?” she cried, in genuine alarm, gazing seaward with terror-laden eyes.

It took some time to unmask the strange denizen of the deep which she had discovered. Three seals, lying in a row on a flat rock, looked remarkably like the accepted pictures of a sea-serpent, but the illusion was destroyed when one of the creatures dived, followed, in turn, by each of the others, in one, two, three order.