# Sauce (England)

Extracted from Everybody's magazine, 1922 March, pp. 131–146. Accompanying illustration by Douglas Duer may be omitted.
Sauce
Although Hoyle Doesn't Mention It, There Is a Game That Might Be Called “Humbling the Arrogant.” Have You Ever Felt That You'd Like to Sit In? A Story off the Beaten Track—
By George Allan England
Illustration by Douglas Duer
“I AM very sorry,” said Valeska Lee, “but I cannot marry you.”
“But,” answered Langdon Phillips, “it has been understood for some time that you were going to.”
“I know; but—well——”
“Your father,” Langdon accused, “is back of this. Just because he wouldn't accept that last lot of structural steel—quibbled over perfectly good materials and raised a lot of absurd objections—and because I used a little plain language in telling him what I thought of him——”
“I don't care to discuss it, please,” interrupted Valeska, with a kind of relentless finality.
For a moment Langdon blankly regarded her. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been agreeable to his sight, for Valeska was a thoroughly well-constructed and eupeptic young woman. But now that rebellion gleamed in the sapphires of her eyes and her mouth drew straight with stubbornness, Langdon took no joy of the study. Silence grew heavy between them.
“Very well, then,” returned Langdon. Too wise, he, for discussion. In business, yes; in love, never argue. Love's quiver is filled with arrows, not arguments; and just now Langdon's supply of arrows had run low. “Very well, indeed.”
“And besides,” added Valeska, “no woman can respect a man who fails to overcome difficulties. The way you lost that order from my father proved to me that you were lacking in—well, force of character and——”
“Well, of all the—” Langdon began, but checked himself. After all, one must observe the conventions.
“So you see how it is,” concluded Valeska, looking more comely than ever, what of a rather adorable flush that mounted from perked-up chin to shadowing masses of dark, fine hair.
“Yes; I see how it is,” agreed Langdon. “Quite so. Good-by.”
There was that in the glint of his eye, the flare of his nostril, as he closed the Lee front door just a thought too hard and as he departed for his own bachelor diggings which assured Valeska that all was over between them.
Fate, however, entertained other projects; and it is into these that we must now examine.
Langdon Phillips, craving change of scene, one week later applied for and got the job of going down to Lima to sell structural steel to the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Peru. He wanted a trek of many parasangs to get him gone from memories. At twenty-five, memories are serious things.
“You're a good man for the job, I think,” President Van Ness, of Van Ness Steel, said to him. “I think in time you'll be one of our best go-get-it men. Of course I know you fell down on that Lee matter; but Lee is impossible. He's everything that's captious and overbearing and all that. If you land heavy on this Lima business, you'll more than retrieve yourself. You speak Spanish, don't you?”
“Reasonably well.”
“And you're familiar with Latin-American ways?”
“I've lived two years in Cuba and knocked round the Caribbean a good bit. And I've been in Ecuador.”
“So much the better. Let's see what you can do.”
A FORTNIGHT later, Langdon sailed out of New York barter on the General Ramón, whose first port of call was Havana. About half an hour after Sandy Hook light faded into the shadowy grays of the horizon-line, Langdon ran plump into Severance Lee and his daughter Valeska on the upper starboard deck. Fate sometimes plays little tricks like that.
The Gulf Stream is well known to be warm; but it wasn't warm enough to thaw out the complete chilliness existing between Langdon and the Lees. On the fifth night at sea the bottom dropped out of the barometer, the sky, and—later—the ship. The first two events were due to a hurricane which caused the third event by scraping the General Ramón across a sunken barricade of coral.
In the screeching gale, the pitch-blackness and the deluge that flailed the sea, the steamer went to the bottom. Passengers and crew went to various places, according to their past lives or present skill in the boats.
Valeska, her father and Langdon forgot their strained relationship long enough to bundle into a life-boat together. A quartermaster finished the complement of that boat; but he, incautiously standing up, was washed overboard and seen no more.
The two men rowed at random. Valeska steered and bailed. After a goodish while of baddish experiences, a line, darker than the night, loomed ahead. This dark line revealed itself dimly surmounted by palms, some streaming in the hurricane, others whipped bare.
Surf grew swiftly louder. It took them, shot them ashore—but not on agreeable and romantic sand. No; what they struck and spilled on was a mud-flat, deep, sticky, and very black.
It is not agreeable, as the castaways presently discovered, to wallow through muck at three a.m., with a great wind laying down a barrage of horizontal deluges. Severance Lee predicted quicksands; but there were none. The worst that the trio encountered just then was mud two feet deep.
In something over an hour the wind dropped, though the rain continued. The ex-passengers reached more solid land—land, however, still swampy. Their rating was “All in.” Langdon was a little more all in than the other two, because he had not only dragged himself but had helped the others also. And Severance Lee weighed well over two hundred.
Land, even though not very solid land, was as welcome as pay-day to Langdon. How his companions felt he didn't know and he didn't care. The trio huddled down in the openwork shelter of a mangrove thicket, and Lee swore. He seemed to be in rather a jellified condition of body and mind. Valeska and Langdon said nothing. Langdon didn't comfort her, and she didn't want him to. They weren't thinking much about one another. Probably Langdon still loved her, but now he had no stomach for romance.
He was wondering about where his personal effects and business affairs had gone, and how the blazes he was ever going to “come back;” also thinking how much he wanted a smoke, and debating whether the matches and tobacco in his pocket could ever be dried out and used. She was pondering her wardrobe, now at the bottom of the Spanish Main; also speculating what she was going to do for hairpins, and rubbing her wrist where Langdon had wrenched it when he had dragged her. None of them offered up thanks to heaven, though Lee talked a lot of Scripture.
Thus time passed, as per usual.
Dawn arrived with broad smears of crimson, gold and pearl; with pink flushes and vermilion-splashed turquoise, evanescent and exquisitely glowing over the enchanted sea. The wind had died, the clouds faded. Nothing remained of the storm but a tremendous surf that slithered up mud-flats in a sinister and vindictive manner.
The scene was furbished out with beauty and romance enough, but it worked no alchemy of admiration in the hearts of the castaways.
Daylight found them cramped and cross. They had already voiced everything they could think of about the wreck and its horror. Of course it was a tragedy, but about all they felt was a sort of peevish relief at being alive. Behind them, a fringe of still-standing palms flopped feather-dustery tops in the breeze; in front, the breakers tumbled their boat in the mud.
THEY couldn't make out any sign of land except their own, or of the steamer's wreckage or of survivors' boats. There was no smudge of smoke on the horizon; nor was there even so much as a Batabanó sponge-fishing schooner.
“This is a devil of a mess!” gloomed Lee. “How are you going to get us out of it?”
“I'm not,” answered Langdon. His voice disclosed a new quality from any that Valeska or her father had ever heard in it. He got up, yawned and stretched. A sort of ominous tranquillity lay in his eyes.
“Where are we?” demanded the elder man. He was shivering in his muddy white flannels, quivering with nerves and weakness, like coffee jelly served by a waiter with the palsy.
“On a Cuban key, as you perceive. I inventory mud, water, mangroves, palms and palmettos, swamps and”—with a slap—“bugs.”
Lee heaved himself up, his ruddy face a mask of dejection.
“You might at least try to be gentleman enough to tell us where this key is,” put in Valeska, filially at her father's side.
“You flatter me, my dear Miss Lee,” smiled Langdon. He seemed to have sufficient fortitude to bear up under the troubles afflicting Valeska and her father. “Does the mere fact that I've done a bit of traveling in these parts make me a geographical authority?”
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Lee. “You're cool enough about it. You don't think this is a desert island, do you?”
“No. Those sandpipers out on the mud-flats prove that this key supports life. I see some pelicans, too, down by that point to westward. Coconuts are edible. The swamps are likely to contain alligators and other reptiles. Probably we sha'n't starve.”
“Please,” entreated Valeska, “try to find some fresh water—and start a fire, and get us something to eat. We—we've really got to suspend personalities here.”
“By all means,” agreed Langdon, while his look fed on her with only qualified approval. He realized that even a striking blonde of impeccable proportions loses a certain charm when her hair hangs loose and when her water-soaked pongee dress is rough-cast with the mud of a Cuban key.
“Got any matches?” asked Lee. “Mine are ruined.”
“Ditto,” reported Langdon.
“Tobacco?”
“Yes.” He produced a tin box, nearly full. “I think this can be dried in the sun.”
“Tobacco won't do me any good!” exclaimed Valeska, a very mournful light in her eyes. “And I'm so hungry!”
“No doubt,” Langdon commiserated. “You only had four meals yesterday, plus tea and biscuits twice.”
Valeska shot a swift and angry glance at him. Her father said:
“No use in our quarreling here. Let's get busy. We can't stay here, you know.”
“We may have to,” opined Langdon.
“We can't!” the girl affirmed. “With my father subject to rheumatism, this damp place——”
“Sh, Valeska,” commanded Lee. “Don't swear.”
“You two stay here,” suggested Langdon in an untroubled voice. He squinted along the mournful shore. “I'll explore. You'd better stick around, right close to where we are. You don't want to get into those swamps back there. And if you wander east along the mud-flats, you may get into quagmires. We'll rendezvous here. I'll strike out westward and see what's what and then report.”
“Ah, that's more like!” approved Lee. “You're a good fellow, after all. I knew you wouldn't hold a grudge, and——”
Whack!
Lee's sentence ended in a swat and a vivid objurgation. The young man smiled.
“That's only a hayhenny,” he explained. “Hayhennies are little flies. The rising sun is waking 'em up. Their sting isn't dangerous—only painful. Later, they'll swarm in clouds, unless we contrive a smudge.”
“I've been bitten several times already,” said Valeska, frankly scratching. “Please get busy.”
“All right. I'm off. But if you see a jaguar, don't monkey with him. Jaguars are short-tempered. And in case you dig up any scorpions, leave 'em alone—severely alone.”
Illustration: A hail from the approaching small boat nipped further parley. Langdon strode toward the surf, “Isn't he just splendid, father?” Valeska demanded of the dumb-stricken Lee.
“Oh!”—from Valeska.
“Also remember not to use too short a stick if you try to kill any cottonmouth adders. And don't miss your blow. A cottonmouth's bite kills in about seven to ten minutes.”
“You—you don't think—” quavered the girl. Her habitual insousciance had considerably vanished in dismay.
“I'll be back as soon as I get a bath and see what the prospects are,” Langdon promised.
“Bath?” queried Lee, a bit lorn and anxious-eyed.
“And wash my clothes,” the young man added. “This mud on me doesn't make any kind of a hit. By the way, keep out of the sun as much as possible. You might go up under those gum-trees, beyond that green-scummed pool. But look out for ticks on the guinea-grass. They're hard to get off till they've filled themselves with blood. So are the leeches in these pools. And don't poke any floating logs. Logs may be alligators. Well, so long!”
“Here—wait!” entreated Lee. “We'll go along, too.”
“No. I usually bathe in private. Good-by.” Langdon walked away.
“How long before you'll be back?” was Lee's final shout.
Langdon only laughed.
HIS way led along a soggy foreshore, patched with arsenical puddles and mangrove tangles on tarantula-legged roots. Inland, red-barked gums writhed fantastic limbs, coco-palms curved graciously aloft, and royal palms' gray boles soared to their feathery green explosion sixty feet in air.
“Fat chance to cross this island,” said Langdon, “unless you knew the way. If you didn't, you wouldn't get a hundred yards.” With approval, he eyed the palms. “Plenty of nuts and palmiche, wonderfully fattening for hogs. Old Lee will like 'em. Sea-grapes, too.”
He stopped to look at a gnarled sea-grape tree with broad dull-green leaves, red-veined.
“There are black coruas, too,” he added, as a swift flight of birds flickered across the sun. “With all these luxuries and probably ajutias—nearly as good eating as muskrat—and with pelicans' and turtles' eggs and iguanas, we'll live high.”
And Langdon continued his fly-pestered way along the shore.
The ever-rising sun painted a picture of rare wonder on the sea—a picture almost as beautiful as a colored lantern-slide. But Langdon didn't care. He pushed on, minding no thorns that hooked, no branches that caught. A log with bumps on it in a pool emitted a puffing grunt and sank among sword-grasses with a grin of yellow teeth. Langdon picked up a driftwood club and continued westward.
Presently the swamps ended in a stretch of pitted gray coral that lay hot under the sun, its lower reaches bombarded by surf that exploded in glittering brine-dust, its upper edges fading into thickets of saw toothed palmettos nearly impossible to get through. In pot-holes of this coral dwelt tiny shrimps and blister-shaped “sea-beef.”
Like a petrified sponge, this coral strip extended half a mile. Walking over it was abominably hard, for the spikes stabbed like knives. Langdon rejoiced when he found a splendid curve of beach beyond it.
“This,” judged Langdon, “is a little bit of all right.” And he smiled as he plowed along the beach with breakfast on his mind and hayhennies on his neck. All down the sands lay tossed a litter of storm-flung palm branches, nuts and husks, driftwood, conch-shells and windrows of yellow gulf-weed. Afar, buzzards soared away, stiff-winged against the azure. And an occasional serpentine trail cut the sands.
“Iguana steak,” Langdon remarked, “is excellent when properly grilled over a driftwood fire. We are decidedly getting on.”
After shucking along some minutes through the sand, with the sun now beginning to cook his brains, he heard a trickle of water from a palm thicket on some slightly rising ground. This trickle proceeded from a tiny spring that, after dallying in a couple of clear pools, overflowed onto the beach and was there absorbed.
Langdon didn't seem much surprised at finding the spring. You might almost have thought he knew it was there. He drank in the upper pool and washed himself and his clothes in the lower one. He put his tobacco on a driftwood board in the sun to dry out, which it did very speedily. So did he.
Waiting for this process to end, he inspected his papers, money and watch, all damaged by sea water. The watch had stopped at two-forty-seven, the hour when they had been spilled into the surf. Langdon cranked up the watch, but the motor remained stalled.
“Well, never mind. Time has no value here.”
A few minutes later, clean and rough-dried, he took his stick and once more pushed on along the beach westward. After rounding a point and continuing about a mile, he turned into the palmetto thicket, and in their fastnesses he completely vanished.
Mr. Severance Lee and Miss Valeska Lee, far back to the east, near the mud-flats, were meantime gathering coconuts and trembling for fear of varmints.
“Where the devil has that fellow gone, anyhow?” Lee now and then testily demanded. Had he but known, this story could never have been written.
SOMETHING over two hours and a half later, Langdon reappeared to the distressed Lees. Clean, well fed and smoking his pipe in a genially debonair manner, he sauntered up and paused to observe father and daughter—both of them still hungry, muddy and vexed by flies and fears.
At first they didn't see Langdon. Valeska was kneeling beside a palm log, and if a woman's face is an open book, hers now looked like the Book of Lamentations. She was holding a coconut on the log with her hands, and her father was hammering the coconut with a stick. The nut, seclusively lurking in its thick husk, didn't seem to mind in the least. Two or three broken sticks lay nigh.
“Oh. there you are!” remarked Langdon lightly, and blew smoke that wafted athwart the other man's quivering nostrils. “Busy eh?”
“Why, bless my soul!” ejaculated Lee. His irritation of fear, bug-bites, humidity, beat and hunger blended with unconcealed relief. “My dear fellow. I'm glad to see you back!”
Valeska, however, turned and gazed away over the vacant mud, past the capsized boat and out to the empty sea. Her look was the only chilly thing within hundreds of miles.
“Too bad you haven't got an ax,” commiserated Langdon.
“Where have you been?” demanded the Other, while the clear pink of Valeska's cheek—only partly obscured by mud—flushed angrily. “We thought you were lost.”
“Nothing at all like that, I've just been cleaning up, eating a first-class breakfast and having a good smoke.” His eyes were not without malice.
“Breakfast! Where did you find breakfast?”
“Oh, there's no end of things to eat on this island. And I've found a peach of a spring.”
“Water?” exclaimed Valeska, whose interest in the horizon suddenly departed. Her eyes, bluer than that horizon's self, searched his already sunburned face. “Please show me where. I'm about choked.”
“And fire?” Lee added. “Why, you—you're smoking!”
“How observant you are, Mr, Lee!” His voice was serene.
“Where in hades did you get fire?”
“Not in hades at all. A tropical sun, with a scientific adjustment of watch-crystal and plenty of fine-scraped tinder might work miracles. What are your plans for the day?”
“Well, of all things!” ejaculated the girl on a note of keen indignation. “Aren't you going to help us? You might at least have brought us something to eat. And you might give my father some tobacco. I know by his symptoms he's dying for a smoke.”
“Men have died and the worms have eaten them, but not for—tobacco.” affirmed Langdon. “Any more than for love. Have I refused to——”
“There, there, Val!” put in her father. “No argument.”
“You can come with me any time you like,” offered Langdon.
“We'll go right away,” the girl decided. “There'll be plenty of time after that to get the boat.”
“What boat?”
“Why, our boat, of course,” Lee explained. “We've decided to float it at high tide. I'm dead certain we can locate the oars somewhere out there in the mud.”
“Yes; I'm sure you can,” Langdon agreed, something very like a quiver of enjoyment through the restraint of his tone. He forced his eyes away, lest his fellow sufferers should read anything there. “It'll be a messy job, of course, but a little more mud won't matter. I'll watch you with interest.”
“What, sir?” Lee demanded. “Dash it all, you won't help?”
“No. I'm remaining here, thanks.” He puffed a contented pipe. “I'm not going to take my chances rowing an open boat without knowing where to row to, or how far. And I'm not going to wallow in that muck, either, under a blistering sun.”
“What!” exclaimed Valeska, with a swift blue look of anger.
“Fact,” asseverated Langdon. “I'm going to take a vacation. Need one from trying to sell structural steel to people that don't know enough to buy the best at rock-bottom prices.”
“Well, I'll be damned!” exploded Lee.
“Not just yet, I hope.”
“Brute!” Valeska snapped in.
“Guess I'll be getting along,” judged Langdon. “It's too muddy round here. I prefer my camp in the grove. Call any time you like—and mighty welcome.”
He concluded with a note of real cordiality, turned and walked away. Angry glints sparkled in Valeska's eyes. Old Lee stared, then hoarsely shouted:
“Here, here! Wait!”
“Well?” asked Langdon, turning.
“We're going, too.”
“Oh, fine! Delighted, I'm sure.”
IN SILENCE, and darkly pondering, the soul-harried father and daughter followed Langdon. Vanished now was Severance Lee's cock-sure, domineering way, vanished the immaculateness, the aloofness of Valeska. Mud, heat, flies, hunger and thirst are champion pacifiers, and so, too, are weakness, anxiety and the realization that unknown evils impend.
Few words passed as the trio plowed through the mangroves, crossed the coral and came to the beach. Far ahead, in the heat-shimmer, a waft of curling smoke enheartened the Lees. Their host walked to windward of Severance, letting tobacco aromas blow upon him. Presently the old fellow burst out,
“Stop smoking, for heaven's sake, or give me some!”
“Certainly. Why didn't you ask sooner? Got a pipe? No? Too bad. Well, I've got an extra, if you don't mind.”
Lee put out a hand of eagerness. Langdon fished another pipe from his pocket and passed it over.
“Only hard rubber,” he apologized.
“'S all right. No man should look a gift pipe in the mouthpiece.” He filled from Langdon's box.
“Oh,” explained Langdon, “it isn't a gift pipe at all. The tobacco isn't a gift, either.” He puffed his own pipe to a glow. “Here; I'll scrape a little fire into your pipe—so. All right?”
Lee accepted, and drew his tobacco alive. His mood wasn't for argument just then. But Valeska, her cheeks burning, asked:
“What do you mean, Mr. Phillips? You—you're selling this pipe and tobacco to my father?”
“Certainly,” affirmed Langdon. “I've only got part of a box. It's immensely valuable. Why shouldn't he pay for it?”
“But, bless my soul,” Lee now rallied, “this is a bit irregular, isn't it? Tobacco is usually exchanged gratis between gentlemen.”
“True. But I've gone into trade. If I can't sell steel, maybe I can sell tobacco.”
Valeska's full lip whitened under the pressure of her teeth. Her father's indignant hand slid into his pocket.
“I'll soon settle this” he cried corrosively.
Langdon's hand came up with negation.
“No money!” he exclaimed. “Money's not worth anything here.”
Lee began to bubble, like a geyser getting ready to erupt.
“Father, be calm!” exhorted the girl.
“How the devil am I going to pay you, if——”
“In services. Such as tending the fire, or——”
“Oh, well, that's all right,” Lee assented. “Pardon me, my dear fellow, for misunderstanding you. Why didn't you say so at first? Of course I expect to cooperate.”
“So do I,” said the girl.
“All right; nothing more to be said, is there?” asked Langdon, with a smile that showed good teeth. “Let's forget it.”
In silence they pushed forward again. Sandpipers flitted along the surf. Far aloft, against the storm-washed sky, a frigate-bird hovered to rob some other bird. Morning smiled, and so now did Severance Lee; for—lo!—he had tobacco.
“Right as rain,” he presently affirmed. “Of course we'll help.” He nodded with great willingness.
After a while the castaways reached the palm grove of the pools under the Hooding golden sunshine. Here, on the sand, a cheery fire blazed. A ship's knee, sand-polished, made a fireplace of sorts. Driftwood lay near. The smoke, which harbingered cookery, smelled savory.
“Great!” approved Lee. “Valeska can keep the fire and we'll both get wood.”
“No,” Langdon vetoed. “I'll look out for the fire myself. That's easier than dragging up wood. You two can be the wood-getters.”
“What?”
“How do you like my spring?” asked Langdon, avoiding argument.
“Oh, splendid!” Father and daughter hastened to kneel and to drink. Then they came back to the fire. “Well now,” asked Lee, “got anything to eat?”
“Sorry, but I haven't. I buried all the odds and ends left from my breakfast.”
“What? You didn't save anything for us?” demanded Valeska.
“There wasn't much to save. But this island has resources.”
“Well, all right,” said Lee. “First we'll wash up, and then find some chow, and then put up a signal of distress in a palm.”
“And then float the boat,” added Valeska, not looking at Langdon.
“I—I don't know, my dear,” hesitated Lee. “That'll be an awful job in this heat. Maybe our best scheme will be to stay right here and be rescued.”
“We're liable to stay weeks—months,” Langdon cheerfully assured them.
“You think we're off the steamer-track?”
“Entirely derailed, I should say.”
“And this island is uninhabited?”
“Not now. There are at least three Americans on it.”
“Yes—but others?”
“Well”—Langdon smiled—“you can explore if you want to. Mud-flats to east and west. Behind us, swamps.”
“Humph!” Lee grunted.
“Let's take a walk,” suggested Langdon. “Miss Lee can wash up. We'll go round that point for an hour or two and make ourselves some hats. You can gather driftwood, dig turtles' eggs and maybe catch an iguana. Then, later, you can bathe and do your laundry.”
“Oh, I can, can I?” Lee demanded. “Say, you've got it all doped out for me, haven't you? Entire program—what?”
“Just so. Come; let's be on our way.”
Lee hesitated, standing there in muddy clothes and an evil temper, but he had to yield.
“Kindly observe”—Langdon smiled to Valeska—“that I have two pools. The upper one is my drinking-pool.”
The girl made no answer, but her mouth went very tight. She turned her pretty back on Langdon, who beckoned Lee. Both men moved down to the beach and started along it westward.
Discretion bids us follow them, leaving the girl to her own devices—and the hayhennies.
WHEN the grove of the pools had completely hidden the indignant Valeska, not for her indignation any less pulchritudinous, Lee slacked his pace.
“See here, Langdon,” he sharply began; “don't carry a joke too far!”
“What joke?”
“About making us do all the work.”
“No joke at all. You're going to use my water and my fire, aren't you? They're my capital, and it's only fair that you should pay interest.”
“Well, say! If the fool-killer landed here, you'd have to hunt cover.” Veins began to stick out on Lee's brow. He clenched a bad fist. Langdon answered, unmoved:
“We won't argue it. If you don't like the arrangement, go get a pool of your own and make fire.”
Lee halted, stagnant with ireful amaze. But Langdon kept right on. The other had to follow. Sweaty, mud-caked, rubicund, he panted along. Betimes he swatted the flies. Soon he overtook Langdon.
“Look here—” he began, but Langdon interrupted with:
“We've got to make hats first. We can't risk sunstroke.”
“Hats?”
“It's easy. I'll show you. I used to do it when I lived down this way.”
He turned into the fringe of palms along the beach. Lee followed. Langdon chose a large coconut and sat down in the shade. The other man sat down, too.
Fifteen minutes' time and the deft use of his pocket-knife put Langdon in possession of a candle-extinguisher creation that he pulled down over his head.
“There,” he demanded; “how's that? Pretty nifty, eh?”
“Not too bad,” admitted Lee, and blotted his brow with a sleeve. “You're quite a Robinson Crusoe, eh? Make me one, will you?”
“You'd learn more about the structural strength of coconut fiber if you made it yourself. Its tensile coefficient is almost that of, say, structural steel. Better make your own hat.”
“All right. Give me your knife.”
“No. But I'll rent it to you.”
“Rent it?” And Lee reddened ominously.
“I'm telling you. I'll rent it for one stick of fire-wood per minute of use. One hour, sixty sticks. Fair, eh?”
Lee made a kind of noise, swallowed hard and reached for the knife.
“All—right,” he agreed. “I'm glad we're on a business footing, anyhow. I'd rather accept a bunch of roses from a leper, sir, than any favors from you!”
Thus Severance Lee began his labors.
LANGDON kept time on him, estimating the minutes while Lee toiled with an obdurate husk, like a modern prodigal son. Half an hour had passed before Lee had fashioned himself something like a hat. Then he snicked the blade shut, flung the knife at its owner's feet, and rammed the hat on his own blistering, fly-ravaged cranium. His blinking eyes looked murder.
“There's your damned knife!” he exclaimed.
“So I see. You owe me about twenty-five sticks of wood—remember.”
“You've got me in a jam now, but I'll have the last laugh on you, Langdon, in spite of hell and high tide!” Lee's vehemence was really excessive for that climate. “When we get back to New York, I'll hound you out of every club you belong to, and blacklist you in every business office where I've got an ounce of weight.”
“That's a serious threat,” admitted Langdon, “when I consider how many ounces you weigh. But you won't weigh so many by the time you get back. And maybe you won't ever get back. Now, don't you think you'd better rent this knife some more and make a hat for your daughter?”
Lee told Langdon where he could go.
“Oh, can I?” asked Langdon, smiling. “How does one get there from here? Nice and chatty, aren't you?”
But already Lee was on foot, plowing through the sand.
“I suppose you know best,” remarked Langdon, as he picked up the knife, “whether or not a young woman with a wealth of hair like your daughter's needs a hat.”
Lee snapped around.
“Don't discuss her!” he commanded.
“Oh, all right.” And Langdon rose. “Now you can find lunch for me.”
“What?”
“For all three of us, rather,” Langdon added contemplatively.
“You—damn you, sir, d'you think I'm going to——”
“Certainly—unless you find water and fire of your own. I'm going to take a good long rest down here on this island. Going to have some of the leisure that makes a man like one of the immortals. And every day I'll plan out your work. So——”
“Why, you—why—” And Lee grew purple.
“Every day there'll be something for you,” Langdon inexorably continued. “I never put off till to-morrow the man I can do to-day. And——”
“Why, sir, if you think I—I'm going to be your slave——”
“Suit yourself,” Langdon smiled indifferently. “Only, remember you already owe me a dozen turtles' eggs for that pipe and tobacco, and thirty sticks of wood for the use of my knife. Also, one iguana for the water you and your daughter have already used.”
Lee could only stare. He turned all colors. His lips quivered, but fumbled in vain for words.
“My rates will be reasonable,” affirmed Langdon, “but will be strictly enforced.”
The other glared at him like a trapped wolf. The implacable exactions of life had him in jaws of steel. Langdon, once anvil for his blows, had now become hammer to smite him. On the principle that the future belongs to him who knows how to wait, Langdon sat down again in the shade and began humming a tune.
“If I don't make you smart for this, young man!” Lee sputtered. “Why, I—I'll——”
“There's no meat on the bone of contention,” said Langdon. “If you don't like my way of doing business, roll your own hoop any way you see fit. But don't bother me!”
The older man advanced with clenched fist. But Langdon held out a stick to him.
“Here; you'll need this.” he suggested, “to dig turtles' eggs and kill iguanas.”
Then Lee burst into a raw jangle of laughter. When a man laughs just that way, his nerves are frayed pretty raw.
“You've got me—for now,” he admitted. “The Chinese say, 'Bow before even a wicked monkey when he's in power.' I'm not a fool. Give me that stick!”
“I'll rent it to you for one egg a day,” smiled Langdon, his sunburned face engagingly unmoved. “Better get busy. The longer you chew the rag the longer it'll be before you chew anything else. The eggs are likely to be anywhere along the upper slopes of the beach. You just have to dig—that's all. And as for iguanas, you merely have to follow these trails in the sand.”
Lee nodded. Even Vesuvius cannot spout lava to the moon.
“Better get busy,” Langdon suggested. “Your daughter will be expecting something to cook, and we've got to keep her smiling. Besides, I want to test her culinary skill.”
“What? She—you—she's got to cook for you?”
“For all hands. I advise you to get a move on.”
Silent, dazed by developments and by the heat—external, internal and infernal—Lee turned his anguished face away.
“Lead on, Macduff!” commanded Langdon.
Broken to harness, Lee plodded along the beach. His muddy white flannels bagged preposterously, like the hide of a sacred Siamese elephant, as he slid and shambled.
But Langdon looked comfortable, well fed and clean. The little air he was humming drifted on the tropic air with a harmony that proclaimed a perfect peace of mind. The words that fitted its notes were:
    I've got my captain working for me now.
TWO hours have sped away.
The cooking sun, now doing what cooking usually does—approaching meal-time—disclosed Valeska very much bathed and laundered, and with her masses of hair twisted up most fetchingly. That hair was held by palm-leaf splinters in lieu of the usual pins. Valeska looked as pretty as it was humanly possible to look under the circumstances, which was very pretty indeed—deliciously fresh and fair. It is a singular anomaly that woman, the fairest creature in the world, is also the unfairest. But this is a mere digression.
Any slight deficiency of color that Valeska's cheek may have suffered through a total loss of her vanity case was vastly more than compensated by the flame that now burned in her face as she stood there in the sunlight-dappled edge of the grove, looking with indignant eyes at:
Item: One young man, clean, calm and unburdened, sauntering along the beach in care-free fashion; and,
Item: One distressed father, grim, grimed, sweating and toilsome, with bulging pockets; his right arm heaped with driftwood sticks, his left hand dragging a four-foot lizard.
This lizard, which Lee was hauling by the tail, had formidable jaws, crooked legs and puffy throat. It was mottled, also decorated with improbable frills, spines and crests.
“Oh!” formed the limit of Valeska's speech. Then her eyes flamed. They would have shriveled Langdon had that nonchalant young man been shrivelable. He wasn't, though. He only smiled as he followed Lee to the fire. There Lee flopped his burdens into the shaded sand.
“Lunch is here,” announced the young man, his eyes cheery under the fringes of his coconut-husk hat.
“This infernal ruffian,” Lee exploded, “is going to_make slaves of us, and——”
“Father, be calm!” adjured the girl, her bonny face ablaze. She flung at Langdon, “Shame on you, to make an old man——”
“Not so old as you think,” cheerfully affirmed Langdon, refilling his pipe. He lighted it with a bit of burning driftwood. “Not by a long shot!”
Lee flung off his husk hat and smeared his brow with a hand that trembled. Then he staggered toward the pool.
“You contemptible brute!” Valeska hurled at Langdon, who merely continued:
“Your father's pretty spry. Really, he is. He's already—puff, puff—collected enough things for twenty-four hours. Though I guess I'll have him gather a few more nuts.”
“Beast!”
“He's got enough wood here to cook several meals. He's earned four and a half hours' use of my fire. He's got an hour's use of my knife to his credit, and another pipeful of tobacco. One iguana buys a lot, you know. We've got a regular schedule of prices, including water and everything. It's kind of complicated, but we'll soon have it worked out and memorized. Great idea, eh?”
“Do you dare to stand there, Langdon Phillips, and tell me you—you made my father——”
“I didn't make him do a darned thing—really I didn't! He chose to on a business basis—that's all. Business is business.”
“Stop, Valeska!” commanded Lee, returning from the pool. His parched throat could now articulate. “This scoundrel's got us in wrong and he means to roughhouse us to the limit. If I only had a knife and some matches of my own——”
“Yes; but you haven't.” Langdon smiled sweetly. “That's just the point. Everybody'd be a capitalist if they had the capital. Sure thing!”
“See here,” offered Lee; “will you sell me some fire?”
“What for? What's the matter with my fire? Perfectly good fire, isn't it? No, I won't. If I did, you'd set up your own establishment right off. You might find water, and mess along some way. Nothing doing. This fire's my best investment. D'you think I'm going to part with my capital and have to go to work for myself? I should say not!”
The girl choked back a Niagara of denunciations that seethed to plunge over the chasm of her rage. Langdon thought her high color, glinting eyes and widened nostrils made an admirable picture. Regretfully he turned away from her to her father.
“You'd better unload those turtles' eggs from your pockets,” he advised, “before you break 'em.”
Lee knelt. With hands that trembled he laid the blunt eggs in the sand.
“They're not prime quality, and neither is the wood,” judged Langdon, inspecting them. “But as there's no other offering in the market, I've got to take 'em—subject to deductions. This isn't like the steel business, where one can pick and choose. I've got to be satisfied with what I can get. That's where you have the advantage of me. I don't think much of that iguana, either; but it'll have to do.”
“Father,” burst out the girl, “are you going to let this man insult you?”
“What can I do, child?” asked Lee helplessly. “He's going to have his pound of flesh.”
“You could spare several,” affirmed Langdon, “to your great advantage.”
“He's going to carve it out of me with his knife, his fire, his water and his damned tobacco-box!”
“Never!” cried Valeska, flushed with defiance. “We'll starve first!”
“Yes, but—dash it, Val—how about the tobacco? That's where he's got me. Thing is, I can't—that is, I'd hate to have to get along without a smoke now and then. We—that is, I am in this fantastic idiot's power, and——”
“Let me suggest, my dear Miss Lee,” put in Langdon, “that you now stroll along the beach while your father uses my bathing-pool and gets the iguana ready for dinner.”
“What!” ejaculated Lee. “D'you mean to say that I have got to dress that lizard?”
“Certainly—with my knife.”
Lee sat down weakly on a palm log. He looked a black picture of despair.
“Your manners and the wool of a blue dog would make a good pair,” he commented. “Give me a smoke!”
Langdon glanced over his supplies and seemed to be performing a little mental arithmetic.
“There's nothing really coming to you,” he announced, “but I'll advance you credit.”
“I'd like to advance my fist against your jaw! No matter, though; give me a smoke, anyhow.”
Langdon measured out a reasonable pipeful into the other's trembling hand. Lee's eagerness as he lighted up was almost indecent.
OUTRAGED to her deepest soul, with tears ready to swim, with banners of shame flying in her cheeks—shame for her father's degradation and abasement—Valeska walked away. Langdon watched her with an eye that nearly softened. For a moment he appeared weakening, seemed about to start after her. The minute throbbed with possibilities. But almost at once Langdon pulled himself together. He remained adamant.
He watched her till she had passed down to the beach and vanished. Then he turned to his enslaved factotum.
“It's time for you to begin getting that iguana ready,” said he. “I'm devilish hungry. Get busy now!”
SOMETHING almost like peace descended on the little encampment under the palms as dinner drew to its close. The human heart is inescapably blandished by roasted turtles' eggs, grilled iguana steak and sweet coconut milk quaffed through holes drilled with a knife in the shells.
Tobacco added the culminant touch. Even Valeska, not in on the tobacco, began to feel more at peace with all the world—except Langdon Phillips.
Now the girl was sitting on a log near the fire, on which her father, at Langdon's command, had heaped wet gulfweed to smudge the hayhennies away. The men, lulled by heat, by the gossip of the brook, by digestion and nicotine, lay in the warm sand, squinting out at the sailless and rolling immensities of a sea pure turquoise as a porcelain tub full of bluing-water on a Monday mom. They drowsed, and so did noontide.
“Quite like the Garden of Eden, eh?” remarked Langdon lazily. “Palms, beach and sea will feed us. Nothing to do but take the goods the gods provide us. Cinch!”
“I suppose my daughter and I can stand it,” inertly answered Lee, “till I fly a distress-signal from a tree or launch that boat.”
“Still set on that plan, are you?”
“Why, yes. I imagine you'll help, rather than let a young woman wallow in the mud.”
“Certainly I'll help—for a consideration.”
“What?”
“I'll help you,” offered Langdon, “at the rate of, let's see now, three iguanas per hour or five dozen eggs.”
“Father,” exclaimed the girl, twisting her hands together, “we don't need his old help! Mud! What do I care for mud? Before I'll let him humiliate you any more, I'll wallow in mud to my knees.”
“It's deeper than that in spots,” judged Langdon.
“Well, that's our business. We'll launch our boat without any of your help, thank you!”
“Your boat?” the young man smiled, pipe in hand. “How very interesting!”
“What's that you say?” Lee demanded.
“There are three of us,” Langdon maintained. “One-third of that boat belongs to me.
“Well, by—hm—that is—why, that's preposterous!”
“Not at all. It's just a matter of fact.”
“Shylock!” Valeska flung at him.
“I may decide to use my one-third of that boat for fire-wood,” continued Langdon, unmoved, “or build a bungalow out of it or something. Take your two-thirds and welcome, but respect property rights and the law.”
The elder man choked out,
“How—how much will you sell your share of the boat for?”
“How much will you sell me your steel business for?”
Lee emitted a red remark and struggled up like an indignant behemoth out of the sand. He tramped down to the beach, stripped off his silken shirt and surveyed the palm trees.
“Mr. Phillips,” ventured the girl, afraid, “please show a little humanity. Please help my father now.”
“Certainly, my dear Miss Lee. Help him, how?”
“Climb a tree for him. If he tries it, he'll fall and maybe kill himself.” She got up, stood before him. entreated. He, too, rose. His eyes slid over her face, then lowered, lest she read his thoughts.
“I don't think he'll kill himself,” said Langdon. “He can't climb six feet.”
Valeska flounced out of the grove.
“Give me that shirt, father! I'll climb it—the tree, I mean!”
But she didn't. Young women of gentle breeding cannot climb palm trees. It isn't done. Valeska and her father compromised by driving a ten-foot branch of a gum-tree into the sand, with the shirt tied to the upper end.
“Low visibility,” commented Langdon, strolling down to inspect this signal. “A keen eye at a telescope might possibly see this half a mile off shore.
Neither father nor daughter vouchsafed any answer. They anodyned their misery with the reflection that, at all events, they had a signal flying. Back in the grove they kept severely on the other side of the fire from Langdon, once in a while putting on another stick or a little more weed. About three o'clock, Lee's hop yen for tobacco broke down his pride, and he had to ask for another smoke.
Langdon, however, had tightened credits, and now insisted on a strictly C.O.D. business. So Lee had to go egging again.
Valeska helped dig. Langdon didn't seem to mind. He continued to chew the lotus-cud of an unshakable content. But after the Lees had earned a pipeful of tobacco, he remarked casually,
“If you're going to build your hut, it's about time you were beginning.”
“Hut?” demanded Lee, who itched with hayhenny bites as well as for battle.
“Sure thing! Though, of course, if you prefer to sleep in the open——”
“What we prefer is our own business, sir!”
“Oh, all right. But with tarantulas and bats and bugs and snakes and everything floating round at night, I'm going to knock together a little shack of palm branches.”
Langdon got up, tipped a log over on to the fire and wandered away to the beach. In about three hours, with daylight fading into a welter of chromatics, he returned. In the grove he saw a rough shelter had been thrown together.
“It'll do,” he commented. “Not very good work, but since it isn't for my use, I should worry. Now you can get supper.”
Without any argument, though ruefully enough, Valeska and her father obeyed. The menu rioted through eggs and nuts, sea-grapes and water. After this Lucullian orgy, the men smoked, and Lee used up all his remaining egg-credits.
Night drew down, as lovely as those pictures pointed on glass and sold in the basements of department stores for $1.79 (with frame). A majestically cosmic loneliness closed its hand about the shipwrecked trio. The fire burned low, grew filmed with ash, under which coals glowed like angers unavenged. Langdon directed his peon to drag up a timber from near the surf, and supervised arranging it so that the fire should last all night. One is careful of one's capital. At last he remarked:
“Well, I'll toddle along now. We've got a hard day ahead of us to-morrow. That is, you have, Mr. Lee. I'm going to have you try and bag a 'gator. Good night, both.”
Valeska didn't even know he existed. But her father hesitated,
“See here, now! If you—that is, the wild beasts and things, you know——”
“Well?”
“I mean, if you wouldn't mind—you understand—camping in the immediate vicinity——”
“No. The conventions demand my absence.”
Langdon picked up a fiery stick that glowed and trailed sparks as he departed. Its wavering light made shadows prance grotesquely. It diminished as Langdon turned up the beach; it flickered eerily between the peristyled pillars of the grove.
“Wait!” Lee hailed. “I don't ask it for my own sake, but for my——”
“Father!” protested the girl. “Before I'd ask that brute to protect me. I'd let all the alligators and tarantulas and bugs in the world eat me!”
“Impossible, my child,” said Lee. “They aren't all here.”
Langdon, meantime, faded away. Night received him.
Four times between then and morning a figure dim in the moonlight returned noiselessly along the beach; for where the heart inclines the feet lead. That figure looked, listened, to make sure all was well in the little grove where the camp-fire flickered blue and green with driftwood hues.
Of this, however, Severance Lee and his daughter Valeska knew nothing.
Meanwhile, other things were happening.
OF THESE, one was that Mr. Lee woke with twinges of rheumatism, which bade him be gone from there, to get off that key and stay off. Another was that an early-morning walk revealed to the girl the horrific fact that the boat had vanished. It had probably sunk in the mud or had floated away.
When Langdon returned to the grove, looking ill-slept but cheerful, Lee greeted him with some medium-bad language and Valeska with a cold white silence. But Langdon only smiled.
“Boat? What d'you care? You'd given up thinking of using it, anyhow. Even if you two could get away in a small boat, you'd be wrecked or starved. This is a good, safe island. There's wood enough to keep you busy for weeks and weeks. Food is plentiful, even though not much varied. Why worry?”
Langdon didn't—that day or the next. Nor yet again three days more on top of those. On the contrary, he dwelt contentedly in his Castle of Indolence, doing rather less than nothing, except rent out his fire, his pools, his knife and—till it ended—his tobacco.
Lee's temper, had it struck in, would have poisoned him to death. But Langdon kept the steel man sweating it out. The day that Lee brought in a corua and two ajutias he probably lost five pounds—which considerably improved his figure. His beard got salt-and-peppery and his hands deep-grimed; but his rheumatism faded. Most of it had only been bad circulation, anyhow, and grouch and nerves.
Valeska? Oh, yes; she seemed to be limbering up a good deal. Exercise didn't appear to be doing her any irreparable injury. And wind and sun, painting out her rather hothouse complexion, substituted colors which—once her nose should have quite done peeling—would vastly improve her. That open-throated effect is always becoming, with the tanned collar-bones to match the brown arms.
Valeska and her father, however, warmed up to Langdon about as much as a couple of Bolsheviks would warm up to a soap salesman. They favored him with looks that would have made a more impression able young man shrink.
But Langdon wasn't the shrinking kind.
IT WAS on the seventh afternoon, when daddy'd gone a-hunting, that Valeska's dam broke, in the grove.
“Mr. Phillips,” she began, with hands clenched, “I have something very important to say to you.”
“Delighted, I'm sure.”
“Sit down on that log and listen to me.”
He sat down. She sat down.
“Well?” he asked. He looked at her, in the golden-checkered play of sun and shade, and very lovely, most desirable she was.
“I—oh—I'd die of mortification if father could hear me. Are you quite sure he's out of the way?”
“Positive. And incidentally, Miss Lee, I'm surprised at his having left us together. He usually makes you go with him.”
“I made him leave me on purpose. That story about my ankle being turned was just a—story. I fibbed, so that I could stay behind and talk with you.”
“Well?” He held his voice steady. He was thinking, “Lord, but isn't she a particular peach, though, when she blushes like that?”
Silence.
“Well?” he repeated.
“Mr. Phillips—Langdon—this can't go on.”
“Why not?”
“It's got to end, even if I—” She plucked at her skirt with a distraught hand. Langdon smiled, but played the master card of saying nothing. “Even if I have to—to——”
More silence.
“Listen, Langdon. Oh, how can I say it?”
“I don't know. I'm sure, till I know what it is.”
“My father—if he was yours, too—then you couldn't—you wouldn't, would you?”
“Wouldn't what?”
“Abuse him so?”
“Probably not,” the young man admitted. “But how can your father be mine?”
“Stupid!”
“Is it possible,” he queried, his eyes glinting, “that you are seeking to immolate yourself on the altars of filial devotion?”
“Oh, Langdon, can't you—won't you see?”
Langdon, thrilled with a vast exultation that stirred his soul ecstatically, like a sudden fanfare of trumpets, none the less held himself in leash.
“See what?” he demanded. When Langdon started to do anything, he always made a good, thorough-paced job of it.
Valeska clasped agitated hands. A sudden shiver of nerves, too long tensed, set her atremble.
“You—you're so different from anybody else,” she hesitated. “And in such a different way. I mean, Langdon—you're a positive scream! Can you ever, ever forgive me? I've been such a pill!”
His hand enfolded hers comfortingly; stilled its trembling. Her eyes deepened through a veil of tears and smiles. Masterfully Langdon drew her to him.
“Sure this isn't just for your father's sake?” He turned her face up to his and with possessive eyes studied its glad, distressed beauty.
“Oh, Langdon, can't you understand?”
NOW, when Severance Lee rounded the point some time later—panting, purple-faced and laden with lizards, nuts and eggs—he discovered an amazing spectacle.
“Well, I will be damned!” he prophesied.
The fact of the matter was, on the contrary, that he seemed about to be saved. But one can hardly blame Lee for an immense astonishment on beholding his silk-shirt signal now far aloft on a palm; Valeska standing on the beach, holding hands with Langdon; a little schooner in the offing, and a small boat lifting over the surf, rowed by two café-au-lait persons.
Lee dropped his burdens and broke into a noisy run.
“Look! Look a' there!” he vociferated. “We're saved!”
“Father, be calm,” chided Valeska.
“Congratulate us,” smiled Langdon.
“What? gulped Lee, as he came to a stand near them.
“Oh, we're engaged, all right,” laughed the girl.
“Have been for nearly an hour,” Langdon added.
“And about half an hour after it happened, Langdon put that signal up there in that palm, and pretty soon that schooner came along, and——”
A hail from the approaching small boat nipped further parley. Langdon strode toward the surf.
“Isn't he just splendid, father?” Valeska demanded of the dumb-stricken Lee. Langdon's tousled hair, nascent beard, tanned face and bare legs made him rather a complete ruffian to look at, but if Valeska thought him just splendid, that was her own affair.
Langdon, meantime, was splashing out into the surf. A good way off shore, the small boat had grounded on the gently sloping sand. Both rowers clambered out.
“Snappy work!” Langdon said in a low tone to the lighter-hued of the pair. “You didn't waste much time, Chad old top, after I hoisted that shirt. You were right on the job.”
“How d'you like my make-up?” asked Spenser Chadbourne, Langdon's one-time Princeton Kappa Gamma Phi brother, whose coconut plantation lay on the other side of the island, not above a mile from this beach.
“Fine! But remember you don't speak English. If they ever got wise to my having visited this island last year and knowing it like a book, or my getting matches and grub from you——”
“Leave it to me,” promised Chadbourne. “I guess after the way I grabbed that boat off the mud-flat, and kept watch for your signal. I'm not going to spill any careless frijoles. Go on, now; get your victims!”
“Victims, nothing! It's done 'em both no end of good. I didn't tell 'em any lies. I just told 'em to look out for things, and they inferred that the things existed themselves. I'm not responsible for their auto-suggestions.”
“Oh, you're a positive angel, you are! Go get 'em, anyhow.”
Langdon returned up the beach.
“They're nut-freighters, bound for Independencia,” he announced. “They'll take us right along.”
“Hoo-ray!” exulted Lee. “Have they got any tobacco?”
“Ever know Cubans to be without the makin's?” Langdon answered with another question, but in rather a stifled voice, by reason of Valeska's arms about his neck, her kiss and her “Oh, how wonderful you are!”
Langdon broke away. He retrieved Lee's shirt from the palm. Lee struggled into it.
“Bless my soul!” he ejaculated. “You're there, Langdon! When we get back to civilization, will you—would you mind—that is, how about resuming business relations with me?”
“Oh, hang business!” laughed the girl. “Imagine talking business to a darling, great, big, funny, true-blue, resourceful caveman sweetheart!” And she kissed him again.
Then, as Langdon swung her up in his arms, and as he boldly bore her down to the boat through tumbling surf, she kissed him fervently once more.
“My man!” she whispered, as her plump and sunburned arms clung gladly round his neck. “My darling—and my brute!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1936, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 87 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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