Part 23 (1/2)

It was a beautiful day, the air crisp with as much winter as the island ever knew, and shot with the beams from a brilliant sun, but Robert was exhausted. He had pa.s.sed through a night of intense emotions, various, every one of them poignant, and he had made physical and mental efforts of his own that fairly consumed the nerves. He felt as if he could lie down and sleep for a year, that it would take at least that long to build up his body and mind as they were yesterday.

He dragged himself through the woods, forced his unwilling muscles to cook a breakfast which he ate. Then he laid himself down on his bed, his nerves now quiet, and fell asleep at once. When he awoke it was night and he lay giving thanks for his great escape until he slept again. When he awoke a second time day had returned, and, rising, he went about his usual tasks with a light heart.

CHAPTER X

THE SLOOP OF WAR

Robert ate a light breakfast and went out to look at his domain, now unsullied. What a fine, trim, clean island it was! And how desirable to be alone on it, when the Gulf and the Caribbean produced only such visitors as those who had come two nights before! He looked toward the little bay, fearing to see the topmast of the schooner showing its tip over the trees, but the sky there, an unbroken blue, was fouled by no such presence. He was rid of the pirates--and forever he hoped.

It seemed to him that he had pa.s.sed through an epic time, one of the great periods of his life. He wondered now how he had been able to carry out such a plan, how he had managed to summon up courage and resources enough, and he felt that the good spirits of earth and air and water must have been on his side. They had fought for him and they had won for him the victory.

He shouldered his rifle and strolled through the woods toward the beach.

He had never noticed before what a fine forest it was. The trees were not as magnificent as those of the northern wilderness, but they had a beauty very peculiarly their own, and they were his. There was not a single other claimant to them anywhere in the world.

It was a n.o.ble beach too, smooth, sloping, piled with white sand, gleaming now in the sun, and the little frothy waves that ran up it and lapped at his feet, like puppies nibbling, were just the friendliest frothy little waves in the world. But there were the remains of the fire left by the ruffians to defile it, and broken bottles and broken food were scattered about. The litter hurt his eyes so much that he gathered up every fragment, one by one, and threw them into the sea. When the last vestige of the foul invasion was cleared away he felt that he had his lonely, clean island back again, and he was happy.

He strolled up and down the glistening beach, feeling a great content.

After a while, he threw off his clothes and swam in the invigorating sea, keeping well inside the white line of the breakers, in those waters into which the sharks did not come. When he had sunned himself again on the sand he went to the creek, took his dinghy from the bushes, where it had been so well hidden, and rowed out to sea, partly to feel the spring of the muscles in his arms, and partly to sit off at a distance and look at his island. Surely if one had to be cast away that was the very island on which he would choose to be cast! Not too big! Not too hot!

And not too cold! Without savage man or savage beasts, but with plenty of wild cattle for the taking, and good fish in the lakes, and in the seas about it. Plenty of stores of all kinds from the slaver's schooner, even books to read. So far from being unfortunate he was one of the lucky. A period of retirement from the companions.h.i.+p of his own kind might be trying on the spirit, but it also meant meditation and mental growth.

His joy over the departure of the pirates was so great and his temperament was such that he felt a mighty revulsion of the spirits. He had a period of extravagant elation. He took off his cap and saluted his island. He made little speeches of glowing compliment to it, he called it the pearl of its kind, the choicest gem of the Gulf or the Caribbean, and, if pirates came again while he was there, he would drive them away once more with the aid of the good spirits.

He rowed back, hid his boat in the old covert among the bushes at the edge of the creek, and, rifle on shoulder, started through the forest toward his peak of observation. On the way, he pa.s.sed the lake and saw the herd of wild cattle grazing there, the old bull at its head. The big fellow, a.s.sured now by use and long immunity, c.o.c.ked his head on one side and regarded him with a friendly eye. But the bull had a terrible surprise. He heard the sharp ping of a rifle and a fearful yell. Then he saw a figure capering in wild gyrations, and thinking that this human being whom he had learned to trust must have gone mad, he forgot to be angry, but was very much frightened. Enemies he could fight, but mad creatures he dreaded, and, bellowing hoa.r.s.ely to his convoy, as a signal, he took flight, all of them following him, their tails streaming straight out behind them, so fast they ran.

Robert leaped and danced as long as one of them was in sight. When the last streaming tail had disappeared in the bushes he sobered down. He realized that he had given his friend, the bull, a great shock. In a way, he had been guilty of a breach of faith, and he resolved to apologize to him in some fas.h.i.+on the next time they met. Yet he had been so exultant that it was impossible not to show it, and he was only a lad in years.

When he reached the crest of his peak he scanned the sea on all sides.

Eagerly as he had looked before for a sail he now looked to see that there was none. Around and around the circle of the horizon his eyes traveled, and when he a.s.sured himself that no blur broke the bright line of sea and sky his heart swelled with relief.

In a day or so, his mind became calm and his thoughts grew sober. Then he settled down to his studies. The battle of life occupied only a small portion of his time, and he resolved to put the hours to the best use.

He pored much over Shakespeare, the other Elizabethans and the King James Bible, a copy of which was among the books. It was his intention to become a lawyer, an orator, and if possible a statesman. He knew that he had the gift of speech. His mind was full of thoughts and words always crowded to his lips. It was easy enough for him to speak, but he must speak right. The thoughts he wished to utter must be clothed in the right kind of words arranged in the right way, and he resolved that it should be so.

The way in which men thought and the way in which their thoughts were put in the Bible and the great Elizabethans fascinated him. That was the way in which he would try to think, and the way in which he would try to put his thoughts. So he recited the n.o.ble pa.s.sages over and over again, he memorized many of them, and he listened carefully to himself as he spoke them, alike for the sense and the music and power of the words.

It was then perhaps that he formed the great style for which he was so famous in after years. His vocabulary became remarkable for its range, flexibility and power, and he developed the art of selection. His rivals even were used to say of him that he always chose the best word. He learned there on the island that language was not given to man merely that he might make a noise, but that he might use it as a great marksman uses a rifle.

Work and study together filled his days. They kept far from him also any feeling of despair. He had an abiding faith that a s.h.i.+p of the right kind would come in time and take him away. He must not worry about it.

It was his task now to fit himself for the return, to prove to his friends when he saw them once more that all the splendid opportunities offered to him on the island had not been wasted.

Almost unconsciously, he began to reason more deeply, to look further into the causes of things, and his mind turned particularly to the present war. The more he thought about it the greater became his conviction that England and the colonies were bound to win. Courage and numbers, resources and tenacity must prevail even over great initial mistakes. Duquesne and Ticonderoga would be brushed away as mere events that had no control over destiny.

He remembered Bigot's ball in Quebec that Willet and Tayoga and he had attended. It came before him again almost as vivid as reality. He realized now in the light of greater age and experience how it typified decadence. A power that was rotten at the top, where the brain should be, could never defeat one that was full of youthful ardor and strength, sound through and through, awkward and ill directed though that strength might be. The young French leaders and their soldiers were valiant, skillful and enduring--they had proved it again and again on sanguinary fields--but they could not prevail when they had to receive orders from a corrupt and reckless court at Versailles, and, above all when they had to look to that court for help that never came.

His reading of the books in the slaver's chest told him that folly and crime invariably paid the penalty, if not in one way then in another, and he remembered too some of the ancient Greek plays, over which he had toiled under the stern guidance of Master Alexander McLean. Their burden was the certainty of fate. You could never escape, no matter how you writhed, from what you did, and those old writers must have told the truth, else men would not be reading and studying them two thousand years after they were dead. Only truth could last twenty centuries.

Bigot, Cadet, Pean, and the others, stealing from France and Canada and spending the money in debauchery, could not be victorious, despite all the valor of Montcalm and St. Luc and De Levis and their comrades.