His Unknown Wife

They were dressing again when a new trouble arose. From out of the void had gathered a flock of vultures. These fierce, evil-looking birds were so daring in their efforts to raid the pile of meat that two actually allowed themselves to be knocked over by the staves the men carried.

Sturgess remained on guard, therefore, while Maseden took the strips and hung them on the lines the girls had already prepared.

Madge volunteered to do the cooking. She had found two flat, thin stones, somewhat resembling hard slate, and she fancied that by placing some steaks between these and covering them with glowing charcoal the trick would be achieved. As a matter of fact, she succeeded wonderfully well. Even Nina, sniffing her portion, vowed that the shooting of a sea-lion had its compensations.

More vultures arrived. The sea-lion’s bones were rapidly picked clean, but one of the men had to keep close watch all day over the curing operations.

An amusing argument arose as to the correct method of drying meat. Maseden held that he distinctly remembered reading that biltong, or South African antelope steak, was prepared by hanging the strips in the sun. The girls were positive that this would cause putrefaction, and that the meat should be placed in the shade.

As Maseden was not quite sure of his facts, he compromised as to a quarter of the supply, with the result that this smaller quantity was rendered uneatable.

The story of Alexander Selkirk has been told so often, and in so many forms, that it will not bear repeating here. During a whole fortnight these four young people devoted their wits and their muscles to the all-important task of feeding themselves and securing some means of escape into the interior. The men soon learned how to circumvent the wily seal, and thus store plenty of meat and skins, which latter, with sinews and a knife, were converted first into garments for the women and, as supplies increased, into a tent.

Maseden noticed that the high-water mark fell daily, so he reasoned that the Southern Cross struck during a high spring tide, and that the neap would occur in fourteen days. He laid his plans on that assumption, which was justified almost to a day.

Another gale blew up, but despite its discomfort it helped them materially, because the men loosened a barrier of logs which had formed high up the wooded cliff, and the rain freshet brought down far more timber than was needed for the biggest raft they could hope to construct.

After some experiments they decided to make it a three-tier one, and flexible in the center. Hence it was fully thirty feet in length, the average length of a thick log being fifteen feet after its roots and thin section had been burnt off. For the same reason the raft was fifteen feet wide. It had a step in the forepart for their old friend, the broken topmast. They dispensed with a rudder, believing they could guide their ark with poles.

Observation showed that the tide flowed swiftly in mid-stream, and their well-matured project was to push out to a prearranged point at high-water, anchor while the tide fell, and travel as far as practicable on the next tide. They tried to avoid all risks that could be foreseen.

The raft was built in the waterway which Madge had termed the “creek” – the gulley cleared for itself by the torrent whose dry bed had offered them a road through the otherwise impenetrable forest. Every test of stability their inventiveness could devise proved that an area of thirty feet by fifteen of logs arranged in three rows would support four or five times the weight they were likely to place on it. By manipulating the poles Maseden and Sturgess found that they could control the movements of even such an unwieldy bulk, while if the wind suited they might rig a sail of skins.

They were able to build quickly and well because of three essentials. The timber was at hand, they had a fire, and in the pieces of rope and strips of iron and wire they had invaluable means of making the structure secure.

At last, on the fifteenth day after the wreck, Maseden poled out the raft during the slack tide at high-water, and fastened it to ropes already fixed and buoyed nearly a quarter of a mile from the shore. He would allow none of the others to accompany him, nor did he carry any of the few stores they possessed. He could not be absolutely certain that the cables would withstand the strain, and if the raft were swept seaward by the falling tide only one life was in jeopardy, while Sturgess might be able to help him from the shore.

His vigil was watched by anxious eyes, especially when he thought fit to ease the stress on the ropes by planting a long pole against a big rock which he knew rested a few feet astern and below the surface. The two hours of half-tide were the worst, but the anchors held. Three hours later the raft was aground and he came ashore.

It was then nearly dark, as their first voyage would naturally be taken in broad daylight. Nothing was said at the time, but he was told afterwards, that for no conceivable guerdon would any of the three again go through the agony of suspense they endured while the raft swung and lurched in the fierce current.

Meat, fresh and dried, a quantity of oysters, the leather trunk, and a charcoal fire cunningly packed in oyster shells kept in position by wire – this cooking brazier being the invention of Nina Forbes – formed the cargo. Most fortunately Maseden carried the poncho and the rifle slung across his back with rope, and the cartridges were in his pockets.

They slept on board. Soon after daybreak the raft was afloat, but was not allowed to move until there was a fair depth of water, owing to the very great probability of the whole structure being dashed to pieces against some awkwardly placed boulder. At last, however, Maseden thought the channel was practicable, and the ropes were cast loose, being sacrificed, of course, but that could not be helped.

They were off! The first of the sixty miles was already slipping away. They were so excited, so bent on the adventure ahead, that none of them thought of looking back until Providence Beach, which was the name they gave their refuge, was nearly out of sight.

Suddenly Madge Forbes remembered, and turned her eyes in that direction. She waved a hand and cried:

“Good-by, trees and rocks! You were kind to me and to all of us! I have not had two such happy weeks since I came to South America!”

Maseden heard, but paid no particular heed. For one thing, he had decided now not to re-open the question of the extraordinary relations between his wife and himself until, if ever, they reached civilization again. For another, he was busily conning the channel and noting the behavior of their clumsy but quite buoyant craft.

He estimated the pace of the current at fully six miles an hour. The raft was traveling about half that rate, which was quite fast enough for his liking, so, although there was a strong breeze from the west, he did not hoist the “sail.” He stood on the port side and Sturgess on the starboard. The two girls were seated on a pile of fir branches behind the mast, which was stayed by ropes in such wise that all four had something to cling to if the raft struck a sunken rock and lurched suddenly.

The project was to drift as far inland as the day’s tide would take them, pole ashore at the nearest suitable place, and repeat the overnight anchoring until they reached smooth water, when they might perhaps make longer voyages. If they ran six miles that day they would have done admirably. Providing Maseden’s calculations as to their precise locality were reasonably accurate, the next day would bring them into a much wider arm of the sea.

Here the conditions might vary, but they would adapt themselves to circumstances, always bearing in mind the exceeding wisdom of the Italian proverb: Che va piano va sano– “He goes safely who goes cautiously.”

But there are other proverbs which are equally applicable to human affairs, and especially to the hazards awaiting rafts floating on unknown waters. For an hour they ran on gaily, with little or no trouble, because the men could see broken water a long way ahead and promptly piloted their argosy towards the open channel.

Then came the unexpected, or, to be exact, the crisis arose which Maseden had foreseen many days earlier, but forgotten as the raft grew strong and seaworthy under their hands.

About four miles from Providence Beach the gap between the two small islands which shut off Hanover Island from its southerly neighbor came into full view. Maseden anticipated a little difficulty at this point, but he was quite unprepared for that which really took place.

He had every reason to believe that the main stream would flow straight ahead until the second island was passed; he meant to land on Hanover Island again, just short of the easterly end of Island Number Two. Therefore he was annoyed, but not alarmed at first, at finding that the current carried the raft into the straits between the islets.

The others, of course, noticed the change of direction, and being well aware of his hopes and plans, asked him in chorus if this deviation mattered.

“I don’t see that it does,” he said. “In any case, we must follow the tide, and if this is the short cut so much the better.”

He told them that which he actually believed. Still, at the back of his head lay an uneasiness hard to account for. The raft was traveling south now, not east, having swept round the bend in magnificent style. The precipitous heights were closing in, but the channel was fully a quarter of a mile in width. He would vastly have preferred skirting the wooded slopes of Hanover Island, because these smaller islets were absolutely barren in this hitherto invisible section, but, having no choice in the matter, silenced his doubts by recalling his first and quite correct theory that the real deep-water passage lay beyond, the Southern Cross having in fact struck several miles north of Nelson Straits.

Owing to the steady narrowing of the waterway the rate at which they traveled was increasing momentarily, though progress was delightfully smooth and easy. The simile did not occur to any of the four until complete disaster had befallen them, but the silent, resistless onrush of the current was ominously suggestive of the course of some great river during the last few miles before it hurls itself over a cataract.

Hanover Island soon vanished from sight altogether, and the towering cliffs on either hand seemed to merge into an unbroken barrier ahead. But the tidal race hurried on, so there must be an outlet, and this presented itself, after a sharp turn to eastward again, when they had covered a couple of miles on the new course.

They were only given the briefest warning of the peril into which they were being carried. The stream flung itself against a great mass of rock, which had been undermined until the upper edge of the precipice hung out fifty feet or more over the rushing waters beneath. A most uncanny maelstrom was thus created.

No sooner had the two men seen the danger than they labored with might and main to slew the raft away to the opposite shore.

They succeeded in avoiding the first jumble of black rocks which lay at the base of the cliff, but the whole character of the stream changed instantly. It became a furious turmoil of broken water. The raft was hurled hither and thither as though by some titanic force, and a few yards farther on was dashed against a second and even more terrifying reef.

The violence of the impact smashed the whole structure to pieces. Had not the logs been arranged in tiers crosswise they must have split up instantly, but the method in which they were put together held them for one precious moment while the men each clutched one of the girls and leaped for the nearest rock.

By rare good luck they kept their feet, and reached a great flat mass which, judged by appearances, had only recently fallen.

Further advance or retreat was alike impossible. On three sides roared the cheated torrent; behind and above, canopy-wise, towered the cliff. If the evidence of ominous fissures and lateral cracks were to be read aright, there was no telling the moment when they might be buried under another avalanche of thousands of tons of stone.

Every tide deepened the sap. They were imprisoned in one of nature’s own quarries, where work was relentless and unceasing.

Once again idle chance had decided that Maseden should save Nina and Sturgess Madge. Not that it mattered a jot. If ever four people were in hapless case, it was they. For a time even to Maseden, who had never lost faith in his star, it seemed that the best fortune that could now befall would be for the trembling rock overhead to crash down on them.

The din was terrific, and the water level was rising so rapidly that five minutes after they had gained their present position the boulders to which they had sprung from the sundering platform of logs were a foot deep in the swirling current. Each of the girls, wholly unconscious of her attitude, clung despairingly to the man at her side and watched the climbing surge with somber eyes.

They were too stunned to yield to fear, and the life of the past fortnight had so steeled their nerves and strengthened their bodies that fainting was no longer the readiest means of obtaining a merciful respite from present horrors. Rather did a bitter rage possess them, for it was a harsh and monstrous decree of fate which had not only robbed them of a hard-won means of escape, but immersed them in a veritable condemned cell.

Maseden, like the others, was watching the encroaching water-line in a benumbed way when he became aware that Nina was speaking. He looked into her drawn face and tried to smile, though a sort of mist clouded his eyes.

“What is it, girlie?” he said, putting his mouth close to her ear and addressing her as though she were a timid child.

“Is this the end?” she cried, imitating him.

“Not yet, anyhow,” and he gave her a reassuring hug.

“Tell me – if you think – we have only a few more minutes,” she said.

He read nothing into the request save a natural desire that she should be prepared for the worst and try to cross the Great Divide with a prayer on her lips. The pitiful words helped to dispel the cloud which had befogged his wits, and he began to weigh the pros and cons of the forlornest of forlorn hopes.

The water was lapping their feet. The rock arched outward over their heads. Between the spot where they stood and the actual wall of rock there was already a flowing stream.

He looked at his watch. The hour was seven o’clock, and he estimated the time of high-water at about half-past seven. Then, as when he was lying along the foremast of the Southern Cross amid the thunders of the reef, a tiny seed of hope sprang into life in his brain. If they could outlast the tide there was still a chance!

The very fact that this chaos of fallen cliff created a fearsome rapid in the tide-way showed that the passage must be fairly open during low water. If promptness in decision could enable a man to conquer a difficulty, Maseden was certainly not lacking in that attitude.

“Come!” he said. “Not for the first time, we must put our backs to the wall. We may find a good grip for our feet before the water mounts too high. The four of us must lace arms and cling together. I believe the tide will not rise above our knees. At any rate, we cannot be swept away easily. It is worth trying.”

She nodded. Turning to her sister, she explained Maseden’s scheme. Soon they were braced against the rock and facing valiantly their new ordeal.

In the Middle Ages, when a lust for inflicting torture infected some men like a cancerous growth, a favorite method of at once punishing and destroying an unfortunate enemy was to chain him in a dungeon to which a tidal river had access, and leave him there until the slow-rising flood drowned him.

They were in some such plight, self-chained to a rock, though not knowing when a sudden swirl of water might sweep them to speedy death.