Part 36 (1/2)

”That's no matter. Here!”

He forced upon her a bowl of hot broth, and she drank it because she could not resist his rough kindness.

”Good! Now a piece of meat,” he said.

”Please, Mr. Blake!” she protested.

”Yes, you must!”

She took a bite, and sought to eat; but there was such a lump in her throat that she could not swallow. The tears gushed into her eyes, and she began to weep.

Blake's close-set lips relaxed, and he nodded.

”That's it; let it run out. You're overwrought. There's nothing like a good cry to ease off a woman's nerves--and I guess ladies aren't much different from women when it comes to such things.”

”But I--I want to get the flag mended!” she sobbed.

”All right, all right; plenty of time!” he soothed. ”I'm going to see how things look down the cleft.”

He bolted the last of his meat, and at once left her alone to cry herself back to calmness over the st.i.tching of the signal.

His first concern was for the barricade. As he had feared, he found that it had been blown to pieces. The greater part of the thorn branches which he had gathered with so much labor were scattered to the four corners of the earth. He stood staring at the wreckage in glum silence; but he did not swear, as he would have done the week before. Presently his face cleared, and he began to whistle in a plaintive minor key. He was thinking of how she had looked when she darted out of the tree at his call--of her concern for him. When he was so angered at Winthrope, she had called him Tom!

After a time he started on, picking his way over the remnant of the barricade, without a falter in his whistling. The deluge of rain had poured down the cleft in a torrent, tearing away the root-matted soil and laying bare the ledges in the channel of the spring rill. But aside from an occasional boggy hole, the water had drained away.

At the foot, about the swollen pool, was a wide stretch of rubbish and mud. He worked his way around the edge, and came out on the plain, where the sandy soil was all the firmer for its drenching. He swung away at a lively clip. The air was fresh and pure after the storm, and a slight breeze tempered the sun-rays.

He kept on along the cliff until he turned the point. It was not altogether advisable to bathe at this time of day; but he had been caught out by the cyclone in a corner of the swamp, across the river, where the soil was of clay. Only his anxiety for Miss Leslie had enabled him to fight his way out of the all but impa.s.sable mora.s.s which the storm deluge had made of the half-dry swamp. At dawn he had reached the river, and swam across, reckless of the crocodiles. The turbid water of the stream had rid him of only part of his acc.u.mulated slime and ooze. So now he washed out his tattered garments as well as he could without soap, and while they were drying on the sun-scorched rocks, swam about in the clear, tonic sea-water, quite as reckless of the sharks as he had been of the ugly crocodiles in the river.

For all this, he was back at the baobab before Miss Leslie had st.i.tched up the last slit in the torn flag.

She looked up at him, with a brave attempt at a smile.

”I am afraid I'm not much of a needle-woman,” she sighed. ”Look at those st.i.tches!”

”Don't fret. They'll hold all right, and that's what we want,” he rea.s.sured her. ”Give it me, now. I've got to get it up, and hurry back for a nap. No sleep last night--I was out beyond the river, in the swamp--and to-night I'll have to go on watch. The barricade is down.”

”Oh, that is too bad! Couldn't I take a turn on watch?”

Blake shook his head. ”No; I'll sleep to-day, and work rebuilding the barricade to-night. Toward morning I might build up the fire, and take a nap.”

He caught up the flag and its new staff, and swung away through the cleft.

He returned much sooner than Miss Leslie expected, and at once began to throw up a small lean-to of bamboos over a ledge at the cliff foot, behind the baobab. The girl thought he was making himself a hut, in place of the canopy under which he had slept before the storm, which, like Winthrope's, had been carried away. But when he stopped work, he laconically informed her that all she had to do to complete her new house was to dry some leaves.

”But I thought it was for yourself!” she protested. ”I will sleep inside the tree.”

”Doc Blake says no!” he rejoined--”not till it's dried out.”