Adventure, February 1917 — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Nobody’s Island Now, I: like the look of it. I can under- stand. Oh, yes, I’ve got a pretty good no- tion how things came about.” “How?” said Harold. He seemed to . have shaken off his sulks; the hint of money and money values had evidently cheered him up. “Well, my notion is that he just sighted the place and went ashore to look at it, or maybe to pick up a few whale’s teeth— they’d be worth carrying away; in the Cen- tral Pacific, they’re the grandest trade there is. And there happened to be a lot of the ambergrease, and he found it, and’s been gathering it here and there ever since. Well, son, here we are on Tom Tiddler’s ground, picking up gold and silver. At least, we'll have a try to.’” He ran the boat into a narrow inlet. ‘““Ahal”’ he remarked gaily. ‘‘See where somebody’s piled the whale bones up to hide the boat as she lays? Now that may be useful to us, whom it wasn’t ever meant to be useful to. Cast thy bread upon the waters—no,* that wasn’t exactly what I meant either.” He jumped over the bow, followed by Harold. They stood on the sand and looked about them. Blue sky shone between the arching ribs of the mighty skeletons. The breeze went winnowing through them. Small crabs walked among the bones, with a ticking sound. It was neither sea nor land, this salty cay; neither life nor death. In spite of the vivid sun and dancing waves, there was something infinitely depressing about the spot. Harold, his lips closed, stood on the sand, looking about him and humming a queer, windy melody, meant apparently to express his thoughts. _“What’s that?” said the captain, speak- ing loudly to drive away the ill-omened in- fluence that seemed to hang about the place. ‘Something of my own. ‘Tennyson’s ‘Sailor Boy.’ I don’t think it’s been set.” “What, that thing: “The sands and yeasty surges mix In caves about the dreary bay And on thy ribs the limpet sticks, And in thy heart the scrawl shall play.” “Yes, that’s how it runs. A good set of words for music, isn’t it?” “No. Don’t think it is. Well, you can do as you like, I’m going to have a dashed clotted loosely together. Oi good hunt after the ambergrease. It won’t be light forever.” . “T’ll come,” said Harold, ceasing his dreary melody, and picking up a bit of driftwood. ‘You get a bit too, dad. We'll want to scrabble about. Dad, I say, I mean to keep all I find.” “Oh, yes,” said Page indulgently, can keep it.” “Perhaps we sha’n’t find any,” he thought, “and if we do, why, I can always see he doesn’t get too much. I.don’t grudge the lad a bit of plunder for music and lollies and so on.” They hunted like terriers, with their heads down and their backs grilling in the sun. They scraped with their bits of drift- wood and rolled over great wing-like flip- per-bones, and masses of vertebra, big as tea-tables, and ribs like ivory beams. At first, and for a long time, they found nothing; they had inadvertently taken a tract already well searched by Slade. But at last they came upon a patch as yet un- touched, and then things became exciting. Page uncovered a nugget of ambergris as big as his fist, and a handful of small bits and pouncing like a hawk, and sweating fearfully with fat, heat, and excitement, se- cured half a dozen bits from the size of a marble to that of a good-sized pear. — They hunted on; the sun went down the | sky; the gulls began to whistle among the windy arcades of the looming skeletons; the sea, as the light slanted more and more on its surface, grew deeper and colder blue. Harold had undoubtedly the better luck. “YOR, Harold, darting ~ The cushion-case that he had brought from the boat was crammed almost to the mouth, — though Page’s pockets were hardly full. Harold chuckled and hunted on. He seem- ed to have forgotten that such things as weariness, as rest, as night, existed on the earth. “Here, Hal, my boy, ve had enough, and it’s near sundown,” called the captain across a narrow spit of sand. think we’re going to pick our way through those reefs in the dark? place to go and get capsized or split up in; it ought to be fairly popping with—good God!” “What?” asked Harold, straightening himself up. But there was no need to ask. Only too <SEGon This isn’t the “Come on — and get back to the boat, we can come any — day, now we know the place. How do you Eomic 0)(0\(6)