Part 5 (1/2)
”First of all I have to make a fire.”
”Oh!”
”But that is not so very difficult”
”How do you do it?”
”Would you like to know?”
”Very much indeed. I should like to see, if I may.”
The lady reflected a moment. ”I suppose you may, but if you do, you ought to help me, don't you think?” The gentleman much amused and greatly interested.
”Ah but you see, it is you I want to see make it. I am very useless you know at that sort of thing, still, if you will allow me, I will try my best. Am I to come ash.o.r.e?”
”Certainly, if you are to be of any use.”
The lady jumped lightly off the pretty couch of moss and wound her plentiful hair round her head with one turn of her arm. Her dress was creased but well-fitting, her figure not plump enough for beauty but decidedly youthful. She watched her new friend moor his boat and ascend with one or two strides of his long legs up the side of the cliff that was not so steep. He took off his hat.
”I am at your service,” he said with a profound bow. The lady made him another, during which all her long hair fell about her again, at which they both laughed.
”What do we do first?” said he.
”O we find a lot of sticks and pieces of bark, mostly birch bark, and anything else that will burn--you may have to fell a tree while you are about it--and I'll show you how to place them properly between two walls of stones, put a match to them and there is our fire. Will you come with me?”
He a.s.sented of course, and they were soon busy in the interior of the little wood that grew up towards the centre of the island. I must digress here to say that the gentleman's name was Amherst. He was known to the world in latter life as Admiral Amherst, and he was a great friend of mine. When he related this story to me, he was very particular in describing the island as I have done--indeed he carried a little chart about with him of it which he had made from memory, and he told me besides that he never forgot the peculiar beauty of that same little tract of wood. The early hour, the delicious morning air, the great moss-grown and brown decaying tree trunks, the white, clammy, ghostly, flower or fungus of the Indian Pipe at his feet, the ma.s.ses of ferns, the elastic ground he trod upon, and the singular circ.u.mstance that he was alone in this exquisite spot with a woman he had never seen until five minutes previously, all combined to make an ineffaceable impression upon his mind. The lady showed herself proficient in the art of building a fire and attended by Amherst soon had a fine flame rising up from between the fortifications evidently piled by stronger hands than her own.
”What do we do now?” asked Amherst ”I should suggest--a kettle.”
”Of course, that is the next step. If I give it to you, you might run and fill it, eh?'
”Delighted!” and away went Amherst. When he returned the lady was not to be seen. The place was shorn of its beauty, but he waited discreetly and patiently, putting the kettle on to boil in the meanwhile.
”It's very singular,” said he, ”how I come to be here. I wonder who are with her in her party; no one else appears to be up or about. That striped red and white thing is the tent, I see, over there. Ah! That's where she has gone, and now she beckons me! Oh! I'll go, but I don't want to meet the rest of them!”
But when he reached the tent, it was quite empty, save for rugs and wraps, boxes, etc., and the lady was laughingly holding out a loaf of bread in one hand and a paper package in the other.
”You will stay and breakfast with me?”
”What will you give me?” said Amherst, smiling.
”I can only give you eggs, boiled in the kettle, coffee and bread and b.u.t.ter. The fish haven't come in yet.”
”What can be nicer than eggs--especially when boiled in the kettle, that is, if you make the coffee first.”
”Certainly I do.”
”And it is really French coffee?”
”Really. Cafe des Gourmets, you know; we--I always use it--do not like any other.”