Part 46 (2/2)
”By the way,” he said, ”will you tell me your name?”
”Playdon--Lieutenant Philip H. Playdon.”
”Do you know to what nation this island belongs?”
”It is no-man's land, I think. It is marked 'uninhabited' on the chart.”
”Then,” said Anstruther, ”I call upon you, Lieutenant Playdon, and all others here present, to witness that I, Robert Anstruther, late of the Indian Army, acting on behalf of myself and Miss Iris Deane, declare that we have taken possession of this island in the name of His Britannic Majesty the King of England, that we are the joint occupiers and owners thereof, and claim all property rights vested therein.”
These formal phrases, coming at such a moment, amazed his hearers. Iris alone had an inkling of the underlying motive.
”I don't suppose any one will dispute your t.i.tle,” said the naval officer gravely. He unquestionably imagined that suffering and exposure had slightly disturbed the other man's senses, yet he had seldom seen any person who looked to be in more complete possession of his faculties.
”Thank you,” replied Robert with equal composure, though he felt inclined to laugh at Playdon's mystification. ”I only wished to secure a sufficient number of witnesses for a verbal declaration. When I have a few minutes to spare I will affix a legal notice on the wall in front of our cave.”
Playdon bowed silently. There was something in the speaker's manner that puzzled him. He detailed a small guard to accompany Robert and Iris, who now walked towards the beach, and asked Mir Jan to pilot him as suggested by Anstruther.
The boat was yet many yards from sh.o.r.e when Iris ran forward and stretched out her arms to the man who was staring at her with wistful despair.
”Father! Father!” she cried. ”Don't you know me?”
Sir Arthur Deane was looking at the two strange figures on the sands, and each moment his heart sank lower. This island held his final hope.
During many weary weeks, since the day when a kindly Admiral placed the cruiser _Orient_ at his disposal, he had scoured the China Sea, the coasts of Borneo and Java, for some tidings of the ill-fated _Sirdar_.
He met naught save blank nothingness, the silence of the great ocean mausoleum. Not a boat, a spar, a lifebuoy, was cast up by the waves to yield faintest trace of the lost steamer. Every naval man knew what had happened. The vessel had met with some mishap to her machinery, struck a derelict, or turned turtle, during that memorable typhoon of March 17 and 18. She had gone down with all hands. Her fate was a foregone conclusion. No s.h.i.+p's boat could live in that sea, even if the crew were able to launch one. It was another of ocean's tragedies, with the fifth act left to the imagination.
To examine every sand patch and tree-covered shoal in the China Sea was an impossible task. All the _Orient_ could do was to visit the princ.i.p.al islands and inst.i.tute inquiries among the fishermen and small traders. At last, the previous night, a Malay, tempted by hope of reward, boarded the vessel when lying at anchor off the large island away to the south, and told the captain a wondrous tale of a devil-haunted place inhabited by two white spirits, a male and a female, whither a local pirate named Taung S'Ali had gone by chance with his men and suffered great loss. But Taung S'Ali was bewitched by the female spirit, and had returned there, with a great force, swearing to capture her or perish. The spirits, the Malay said, had dwelt upon the island for many years. His father and grandfather knew the place and feared it. Taung S'Ali would never be seen again.
This queer yarn was the first indication they received of the whereabouts of any persons who might possibly be s.h.i.+pwrecked Europeans, though not survivors from the _Sirdar_. Anyhow, the tiny dot lay in the vessel's northward track, so a course was set to arrive off the island soon after dawn.
Events on sh.o.r.e, as seen by the officer on watch, told their own tale.
Wherever Dyaks are fighting there is mischief on foot, so the _Orient_ took a hand in the proceedings.
But Sir Arthur Deane, after an agonized scrutiny of the weird-looking persons escorted by the sailors to the water's edge, sadly acknowledged that neither of these could be the daughter whom he sought. He bowed his head in humble resignation, and he thought he was the victim of a cruel hallucination when Iris's tremulous accents reached his ears--
”Father, father! Don't you know me?”
He stood up, amazed and trembling.
”Yes, father dear. It is I, your own little girl given back to you. Oh dear! Oh dear! I cannot see you for my tears.”
They had some difficulty to keep him in the boat, and the man pulling stroke smashed a stout oar with the next wrench.
And so they met at last, and the sailors left them alone, to crowd round Anstruther and ply him with a hundred questions. Although he fell in with their humor, and gradually pieced together the stirring story which was supplemented each instant by the arrival of disconsolate Dyaks and the comments of the men who returned from cave and beach, his soul was filled with the sight of Iris and her father, and the happy, inconsequent demands with which each sought to ascertain and relieve the extent of the other's anxiety.
Then Iris called to him--
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