Frederick Britten Austin

“ Adela, white and silent, her face expressionless as she stared at the threatening sea, sitting against a thwart—himself, when they could abstain no longer for very faintness, doling out the water, the dry biscuit that was their ration. They had been spared the worst of sufferings. The boat had been provisioned upon the davits, contained a keg of water, two canisters of biscuits—of which this upon the beach was the second. ”

“ Here, in this lull of safety, where the boat drove dizzily before the wind with her yellow mast-light like a low star gone mad across the pitch-black sky, he had come to himself again.
He stumbled awkwardly over the thwarts to where the sailor sat, tiller in one hand, mainsheet in the other. At the steersman's feet, in the well of the boat, a woman lay stretched and motion- less. Drahan bent over her. ”

“ Antony Drahan's enemies to call him unscrupulous. He was not. He was fantastic, almost, in his adherence to the square deal. But now Mr. Antony Drahan, grotesque in a single garment of much tattered dress-trousers and tugging at a beard that would have made him almost unrecognizable to friends and enemies alike, was false to his gods. He stood stock still, watching that far-off steamer-smoke grow faint and small upon the horizon.
“I guess Hennessey can wait,” he muttered to himself. ”

“ He cogitated for a moment or two, wishing at the back of his mind that he had some tobacco, chewed a reed of grass to help his thought.
“Look here, Adela,” he said suddenly, “we've got to face things out—as you say, we may never get picked up. We can't go on with that—that little discussion of ours left unfinished between us.”
“No,” she said, staring out to the sea.
“Well, listen to what I've been thinking. All that business—we wont go into the rights and wrongs of it now—is outside this isolated little world into which we've been pitched like Adam and Eve. ”

“ He did not an-swer. Her reference to Hennessey, evocative of one aspect of the ravaging preoccupations he concealed within himself, was a touch on the yet raw wound she had contemptuously inflicted. If he had brooded, he had reason enough. Heaven knew what was happening beyond that narrow sea-horizon which held him prisoner—a life-work, a whole empire of power, crumbling to ruin! She went on:
“You were talking in your sleep last night. I heard you and crawled out of my shelter to see what it was. For a moment, I thought you had met someone else upon the island. ”

“ And then, imperceptibly—he was in his New York office, feverishly, fiercely exultant as he took measure after measure to deal with Hennessey. ... . He was—he was in oblivion; he was crumpled in the mindless, dreamless sleep that is Nature's mercy.
JUST within that rim of shade where the coconut-palms ceased upon the dazzling white beach, a powerfully built man, clad only in the remnants of tattered black sea-stained trousers, sat watching a spitted fish broil over a crackling fire of husks. ”

“ It's born in you; you are bound to organize, to create. Here, what you have done—out of nothing—it is wonderful! We have lived—almost civilized even to the needles you hammered out of the nails of the boat, and the thread you twisted out of fiber. What a terrible brain yours is—always thinking! ”

“ He had seized her wrist, dragged her toward the door, and she had resisted, coldly, stubbornly, head-high, the damned aristocrat still—the implacability of her scornful hatred of him had insulted him in this moment of life or death; her words rang in him still, never to be forgotten: “Not with you!” He had triumphed, by brute force, dragged her out to the deck among the swarm of people, now high-voiced in an unnerving clamor, now hushed in a dreadful silence. ”

“ THEY labored through the afternoon, to and from the palm-grove and a little spur of the shore crowned by a bare outcrop of rock. The pile of dead palm-fronds, splintered wood, mosses and dried grass rose imposingly. ”

“ She sighed.
“Perhaps—if Adela and Antony Drahan weren't always ghosts waiting to jump back into life out there, if,”—her smile came round to him, and his intently peering eyes saw its little twist of pathetic wistfulness—'if Eve lived yet a little longer with her Adam in this place where a million-dollar check isn't any use—who knows? Perhaps!” Her little laugh quivered as she rose abruptly to her feet. “Good night!” ”

“ Yet she was beautiful—beautiful as a nymph emerging from a sacred grove. The adult dignity of civilized attire had fallen from her; she was freshly girlish in this reversion to the primitive. She deposited her load, sat down.
ANTONY DRAHAN divided the fish into two equal portions with a pocket-knife, reached for a jaggedly burst-open canister of ship's biscuits close at hand.
“These biscuits wont last for more than a few days longer. We must try to find some breadfruit. It ought to grow on this island. Looks like a melon. I remember reading about it once. You cook it between hot stones.” ”

“ But we must be always ready.” He turned to her with a smile. “Now, Eve, since you're the squaw, it's your job to see that the cooking-fire never goes out. I used the last spark in my lighter on it yesterday. And whichever one of us sees a sail or a smudge of smoke on the horizon, must run and kindle this with a brand from it, not wasting a moment. ”

“ Adela—she had never looked more beautiful, her fine eyes calm upon him—was going to dance; she had promised the Mainwarings. That was antecedent; he was in the spacious sitting-room of hs suite de luxe, the ship heaving and subsiding so slowly and evenly that its motion was almost imperceptible. Sitting back in his chair, cigar in mouth, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, he had already dictated half a dozen summary decisions.
And then Janson had said, in his quiet, clear voice—curious how he had no premonition that he was unlocking disaster: “There's that matter of Eberstein in Hamburg, sir?” ”

“ It belongs to that other world where I m Antony Drahan of the Transatlantic Trust and you are—”
“Your odalisque.” She spoke still staring out to the sea.
“I don't quite know what that means—but Ill take your word for it. Anyway, this is the proposition I want to make. While we're here, we'll shut down on that little argument, just as it was shut down for us on that ship—forget it. We'll make the best job we can of things, together, until we're picked up. ”