CHAPTER XXVII
THE ISLAND
A FEW miles in length, fewer in breadth, the island lay in a sub-tropicclime. During its winter all the air was neither cold nor hot, but of ahappy in-between and suave perfection. Its summer brought strong heatand at times wild tempests of rain and wind, thunder and lightning. Forthe most part the land rose but a little way above the sea, a shallowsoil with a coral base. Out of this mould sprang a forest of eternalgreenness. Once there had been a number of villages, each in its smallclearing, but one by one they had been destroyed and the clearings hadgone back to the forest.
This one larger village had outlasted. Dwindling year by year, beforeit, at no great term, death and absorption, when all the island wouldbe desert, it yet showed a number of irregularly placed, circular hutswoven of branch and reed and thatched with palm. To this village Joanand Aderhold were swept together with the escaped slaves, the returnedexiles. Besides the tenanted huts there were others from which thelast of the occupants had died, but which were not yet fallen to theearth and become a part of the forest floor. Joan and Aderhold weregiven one of these abodes standing under tamarind and palm, and herefood was brought them. All the village was in commotion, restless andexcited, for seldom and most seldom in all the years did any one comeback.... When night fell there ensued feasting and revelry, a strangepicture-dance, performed by men and women, long recitatives whereinsome sonorous voice told of this people’s woes, of their palmy days,and how the white men came in the time of their fathers, and they tookthem for gods and they proved themselves not so—not gods but devils!The torrent expression of wrongs flowed on. Sharp cries and wailingscame from the dusky figures seated in an ellipse about the narrator.Eyes looked angrily across to where the white man and woman sat andwatched.
Among the Indians of the sailboat had been an old man with a finer,more intelligent face than was to be found among his fellows. It washe, principally, who had talked with the castaways. Now, on land, heconstituted himself their advocate and protector. He had been, itseemed, the chief man of a vanished village, and this present village,being without a strong man, looked to him with deference. Now he roseand spoke and the threatening looks faded. These Indians were not of afierce and cruel temper—and the two strangers were not Spanish, butcame from a tribe whom the Spanish fought.... Danger to the two fromtheir hosts or captors passed away.
The night went by in noise and feasting. With the dawn the village sankinto sleep. The home-coming ones needed, after long adventure andstrain, rest and repose, while the friends and kindred at home wereused to swift and calm descendings to immobility and profound sleep.Within and without the tent-like huts lay the dusky, well-shaped forms,almost bare, still as death, lying as though they had been shot down byinvisible arrows. The projecting palm thatch, the overhanging, thickfoliage, kept out the fierce sun, made a green and brown gloom.
Joan and Aderhold slept, too. For them the immediate need was healthagain, strength again, energy in which to base the wonderful flower oflife. They lay like children near each other, and slept the livelongday. When, in the last bright light, they waked, there was cassavabread, and tropic fruit and water from a neighbouring spring. They ateand drank and talked a little, about indifferent things—only nothingnow was indifferent, but rich and significant. But it was as thoughthey would hold away from them for a little while their deeper bliss;would not speak of that until they could speak in health, with glowand vigour and beauty and power! About them the village half waked,half slept. They heard women’s and children’s voices, but dreamily. Thewoods, that had been very still during the heat of the day, were nowas murmurous as rapids of a stream. All manner of winged life made acontinuous sound. Joan and Aderhold rested their heads again upon thewoven palm mat and slept the deep night through.
With the second morning the Indian village resumed its normal processof existing. The women practised a kind of embryonic agriculture. Themen hunted not at all, though they trapped birds; but they fished,pushing out into the turquoise sea in canoes hollowed from tree-trunks.The women plaited baskets, and cut and dried gourds large and small.They had cotton, and they knew how to weave it into the scant clothingneeded in such a clime. They scraped the cassava root into meal andmade bread, and gathered and brought in the staple fruits. In thevillage were to be found in some slight number and variety matters notof savage make. During the more than a hundred years since the greatGenoese and his Spanish sailors had come upon this group, such thingshad drifted here, as it were, upon the tide and the winds. Thus therewere to be seen several cutlasses and daggers, together with a rustedAndrea Ferrara, a great iron pot, and smaller utensils, a sea-chest, abroken compass, a Spanish short mantle and hat and feather, some pieceof furnishing from a church, a drinking-cup, a length of iron chain.But nothing had been left, or had been traded for with Indians of othervillages, for a long, long time. The islands were desert and forgotten... except that now of late sea-robbers and pirates were, for thatvery reason, taking as anchorage, refuges, and bases of operation, theintricate channels and well-concealed harbours. But no pirate ship hadfound as yet this inward-lying island. It rested upon the sea as ifforgotten or lost or inaccessible, and its fading people knew at leasta still and not ungentle autumn.
The old Indian came this morning to visit Aderhold and Joan. Others hadbeen before him; they had held, perforce, a kind of levee. The childrenwere not more curious, nor simpler in their expression of curiosity,than were the men and women. They had no language in common with thecastaways but that of gesture, but they made this answer. The torn,sun-faded clothing of the two, the fineness and tint of their hair,the colour of their skin, Joan’s grey eyes, the absurd sound of theirspeech at which the Indians laughed heartily—every physical trait wasof interest. But as with children attention went little further thanthat and was quick to flag. The levee dispersed.
But the old man’s interest went beyond eyes and hair and a fair skin.He could speak in Spanish, too, and Aderhold could answer. He was ascurious as the others, but his curiosity had a wider mental range.The strangers’ country and its nature—their rank there—why theyleft it—had their ship utterly perished in the hurricane—these andother questions he asked, with his fine, old, chieftain, shrewd, notunhumorous face. Aderhold answered with as much frankness as waspossible. The old chief listened, nodded, said briefly that he hadheard men in the great island speak of those other white men, theEnglish, and how they fought like devils. “But devils’ devil not whatI call devil,” said the chief. “Devils’ god what I call devil.”
He wished to know if the English were not coming to fight the Spanish,and his eyes lit up, “Then come rest here. Englishmen wouldn’t stampfoot upon us—eh?” He observed that the hut was old and falling down.“Not good place. Too much tree—too much other houses all around. Ilike place see the water—night and morning. Sit and think, think whereit ends.” He offered to have them a house built. “Do it in one day.When you like it you look, say where.”
Presently he gazed at them thoughtfully, and held up two fingers.“Sister and brother?”
“No, not sister and brother. We are lovers.”
“Ah, ah!” said the old chief. “I thought that, yonder in theboat.—What is her name—and your name?”
“Joan—and Gilbert.”
The old man said them over, twice and thrice, pleased at mastering thestrange sounds. “Joan—Gilbert. Joan—Gilbert.” At last he went away,but that was the beginning of a long and staunch friendship.
The day passed, the night. Another day dawned and ran onward to anafternoon marvellously fair. The season of hurricanes and great heatwas passing; the air was growing temperate, life-giving. This day hadbeen jewel-clear, with a tonic, blowing wind, strong and warm. Thenarrow shore-line of wave-worn rock and coralline sand lay only alittle way from the village. In the latter occurred a continual, sleepyoscillation of its particles, talk and encounter, and privacy had notbeen invented. Joan and Aderhold, fairly as strong now as on that nightwhen with Gerva
ise and Lantern they broke prison, went this afternoondown to the sea.
It stretched before them, the great matrix from which the life of theland had broken, the ancient habitat. They left the village behind;a point of woodland came between them and it. Now there was only theocean, the narrow shore, the lift of palms and many another tropictree, and the arch of the deep blue sky. The tide was coming in. Theysat upon a ledge of coral rock and watched it. The water, beyond thefoam of the breaking rollers, seemed of an intenser hue than the skyitself—and calm, calm—with never a sail, never a sail.
“We may live here and die here—an old man and woman,” said Joan: “dietogether.”
“I am thirty-four years old,” said Aderhold. “I will have to die beforeyou.”
“No. I will die a little sooner than I might.”
“No! I will grow younger—”
“We talk nonsense,” said Joan. “We sit here, as young and as old eachas the other! And we shall die together.”
A wave broke at their feet with a hollow sound. It fell on her lastword, and it seemed to repeat it with a sullen depth, _Together_. Itcame to both that they were to have died together, there in England,and that if ever they were retaken, as the great strangeness oflife might permit, then certainly in all probability they would dietogether. That was one way in which the granting of their wish might betaken as assured.... But they saw no sail, and they saw that now thevillage never looked for a sail.... Safety might, indeed, have come todwell with them. The thought of omen faded out.
The wind blew around them warm and strong. It was full tide, and aboutthem foam and pearl, and the voice of mother sea. They sat with claspedhands on their coral ledge. It was coming back to them—it had comeback to them—health and glow and colour and spring. Joan was fairerthan she had been in Heron’s cottage. First youth, youth of the senses,youth controlled and well-guided, but youth, revived like the phœnixin Aderhold the scholar. He had seemed graver and older than he trulywas. In him strength, activity, adventure, interest, will, and daringhad early risen into the realm of the mind. There they had bourgeoned,pressed on, been light of step and high of heart. But the outward manhad not been able to keep pace. Now a deep passion changed that. Helooked as young as Joan; both looked immortal youth. Each put handsupon the other’s shoulders, they drew together, they kissed. The voiceof the ocean, and of the wind and of the forest spoke for them, andtheir own hearts spoke.
The next day, when the old chief visited them, they went back to hisproposal of a new house. The idea found him ready as a child. It wasamong his traits to be easily fired with the joy of building. He wouldspeak to the chief men and the young men, and they would tell the womento do it at once. Where would Joan and Gilbert—he produced the nameswith pride—have it built?
They took him with them and showed him. Just without the village, sonear that they could hear its murmur, yet so far that there was notoppression, in a rich grove, opening to a bit of sandy shore and awide view of the azure sea.... The old chief gazed with appreciation,nodded, “Good! Go talk to chief men now.” So much a man of his wordwas he that the next day saw the women bringing bundles of reeds andpalm leaves for the thatching. Also young trees were cut for the posts.Aderhold and Joan studied the method, saw how they might extend, adda shed-like room or two, make a gallery for working under shade. Theold chief and the others, too, from the great island, had ideas. Thevillage was in a gay, a stimulated mood. It was a gala month—not everyother day, nor any other day, did captive tribesmen come back, orcastaways appear that were not Spanish, human driftwood making humaninterest! They built for the two from far away so large and good ahouse that they themselves marvelled at it. “Houses like that”—a womansaid to Joan—“in houses like that our fathers live, eating bread withthe Great Spirit!” When the house was done, the village feasted, andan Indian, rising, addressed the castaways and said that now they weremembers and an adopted man and woman of the tribe, and that the villageexpected much good from them. “We show you how we do—you show us howyour people do—show us how to kill Spaniards when they come!”
The next day Joan and Aderhold took possession of their house. Whenthe crowd who had accompanied them to it was gone, and when the oldchief was gone, and when there came the evening stir and murmur fromthe village, the two built their fire, and Joan made cakes of cassavabread and Aderhold brought water from a little spring that was theirown. They had gold and russet fruit, and they sat and ate before theirown door and were content. It was a bright and lovely evening, with alight upon the sea and the palm fronds slowly swinging. The voice ofthe village came not harshly, but with a certain mellow humming, andthe voice of the sea upon the reef came not harshly either. When themeal was finished, they covered the embers of their fire so that itshould not go out, then rose from their knees and hand in hand wentthe round of their domain. Here they would make a garden, here theywould bring the water to a trough nearer the hut. Back at the doorwaythey looked within and saw their house fair and clean, yet fragrant ofthe green wood, with store of primitive household matters, with thesleeping-mats spread. They turned and saw the great sea and the skywide and deep. The evening wind, too, had arisen and caressed them,blowing richly and strongly. A tall palm tree rose from clean whitesand. They sat beneath this while the stars came shining forth, andthat of which they spoke was Love.