Part 49 (1/2)

”Well, I am helpless. I cannot even squeeze you. By the way, Iris, during the next few days say nothing about our mine.”

”Oh, why not?”

”Just a personal whim. It will please me.”

”If it pleases you, Robert, I am satisfied.”

He pressed her arm by way of answer. They were too near to the waiting trio for other comment.

”Captain Fitzroy,” cried Iris, ”let me introduce Mr. Anstruther to you.

Lord Ventnor, you have met Mr. Anstruther before.”

The sailor shook hands. Lord Ventnor smiled affably.

”Your enforced residence on the island seems to have agreed with you,”

he said.

”Admirably. Life here had its drawbacks, but we fought our enemies in the open. Didn't we, Iris?”

”Yes, dear. The poor Dyaks were not sufficiently modernized to attack us with false testimony.”

His lords.h.i.+p's sallow face wrinkled somewhat. So Iris knew of the court-martial, nor was she afraid to proclaim to all the world that this man was her lover. As for Captain Fitzroy, his bushy eyebrows disappeared into his peaked cap when he heard the manner of their speech.

Nevertheless Ventnor smiled again.

”Even the Dyaks respected Miss Deane,” he said.

But Anstruther, sorry for the manifest uneasiness of the s.h.i.+powner, repressed the retort on his lips, and forthwith suggested that they should walk to the north beach in the first instance, that being the scene of the wreck.

During the next hour he became auditor rather than narrator. It was Iris who told of his wild fight against wind and waves, Iris who showed them where he fought with the devil-fish, Iris who expatiated on the long days of ceaseless toil, his dauntless courage in the face of every difficulty, the way in which he rescued her from the clutch of the savages, the skill of his preparations against the antic.i.p.ated attack, and the last great achievement of all, when, time after time, he foiled the Dyaks' best-laid plans, and flung them off, crippled and disheartened, during the many phases of the thirty hours' battle.

She had an attentive audience. Most of the _Orient's_ officers quietly came up and followed the girl's glowing recital with breathless interest. Robert vainly endeavored more than once to laugh away her thrilling eulogy. But she would have none of it. Her heart was in her words. He deserved this tribute of praise, unstinted, unmeasured, abundant in its simple truth, yet sounding like a legend spun by some romantic poet, were not the grim evidences of its accuracy visible on every hand.

She was so volubly clear, so precise in fact, so subtle in her clever delineations of humorous or tragic events, that her father was astounded, and even Anstruther silently admitted that a man might live until he equaled the years of a Biblical patriarch without discovering all the resources of a woman.

There were tears in her eyes when she ended; but they were tears of thankful happiness, and Lord Ventnor, a silent listener who missed neither word nor look, felt a deeper chill in his cold heart as he realized that this woman's love could never be his. The knowledge excited his pa.s.sion the more. His hatred of Anstruther now became a mania, an insensate resolve to mortally stab this meddler who always stood in his path.

Robert hoped that his present ordeal was over. It had only begun. He was called on to answer questions without number. Why had the tunnel been made? What was the mystery of the Valley of Death? How did he manage to guess the dimensions of the sun-dial? How came he to acquire such an amazing stock of out-of-the-way knowledge of the edible properties of roots and trees? How? Why? Where? When? They never would be satisfied, for not even the British navypoking its nose into the recesses of the world--often comes across such an amazing story as the adventures of this couple on Rainbow Island.

He readily explained the creation of quarry and cave by telling them of the vein of antimony embedded in the rock near the fault. Antimony is one of the substances that covers a mult.i.tude of doubts. No one, not excepting the doctors who use it, knows much about it, and in Chinese medicine it might be a chief factor of exceeding nastiness.

Inside the cavern, the existence of the partially completed shaft to the ledge accounted for recent disturbances on the face of the rock, and new-comers could not, of course, distinguish the bones of poor ”J.S.” as being the remains of a European.

Anstruther was satisfied that none of them hazarded the remotest guess as to the value of the gaunt rock they were staring at, and chance helped him to baffle further inquiry.

A trumpeter on board the _Orient_ was blowing his lungs out to summon them to luncheon, when Captain Fitzroy put a final query.

”I can quite understand,” he said to Robert, ”that you have an affection for this weird place.”

”I should think so indeed,” muttered the stout mids.h.i.+pman, glancing at Iris.