The Savage Gentleman (12 page)

Next, he was hugging Henry.

"There it is, lad," he whispered. "There's home.

There they come. See how finely they row? Straight for the sand. Seven of them, Henry! Now--are you having a thrill?"

Henry didn't speak.

"We've got to go down and meet them," McCobb gibbered. His glee was ghastly.

"That's the proper function of a host."

He started to pull Henry toward the steps.

But Henry turned. He pointed toward the kitchen.

"That's right." McCobb had a spasm of shaking and his breath hissed between his teeth. "Jack."

The word was inaudible.

"Call him, son."

"Jack!"

Suddenly Henry's voice was let loose and it echoed across the bay so vehemently that the sailors stopped rowing and turned to look at the shore.

"Yes, Mr. Henry?"

The Negro's words came peacefully through the house. He stood beside them.

"Dreams," he said mysteriously. "Dreams. "

"Come!"

McCobb tottered across the compound.

They reached the sand just as the small boat grounded and the sailors jumped into the shallow water. The run down the road had restored them somewhat.

McCobb went first. He held out his hand to the gaping officer.

"My name's McCobb. David McCobb, This is Mr. Stone and our man Jack. We're glad to see you--"

He got no further. He was seized by a paroxysm of weeping.

The officer and his men stared. They stared at the clothes, at the faces, and at the house. One or two of them whispered in a language that the islanders could not understand.

Henry mastered his wonderment.

"We--we don't know what to say. You see--we've been here for thirty-three years."

Then the officer spoke. He spoke rapidly and they did not understand a syllable.

He turned to his men and lifted his hand. The men cheered and waved their hats.

McCobb had recovered again.

"They're Scandinavians, Henry. They probably don't know a word of English. But it doesn't matter." He beckoned toward them and turned to Jack. "Come on, Jack. We'll take them to the house and get dinner for them. A big dinner."

The officer--a short, blond man--came to life. He stepped forward and embraced the islanders. He pounded their backs. And the men mingled with them.

There was, abruptly, an immense confusion--a confusion which was partly allayed as McCobb began to pull and beckon them toward the house. They went up the road.

As they walked, the officer came beside Henry. He seemed to be asking a question. He repeated it--pointing to the sea and holding up first two fingers and then five and finally ten. Henry was so breathless from this contact with the fourth person he had seen in his life that it was some time before he understood.

Then, nodding, smiling, talking nonsense, he held up all ten fingers three times and three fingers more.

The officer shook his head and shouted to his men that the castaways had been on the island for thirty-three years. Astonishment swept over them.

Then they went through the corral gate. McCobb swept his arm across the compound.

"Our home, gentlemen."

Jack was babbling to one of the sailors who regarded him with a fantastic concentration and nodded every time he spoke. McCobb and Henry took the arms of the officer, as if they feared he would get away.

The new arrivals on Stone Island went over the home and possessions of the trio they had discovered with shouts of amazement.

Everything astounded them--the building itself, the goats and chickens, the kitchen, the gold ornaments, the arms in the living-room closet. They gathered in groups and declaimed to each other all every new discovery.

McCobb at last brought a bottle of whisky.

The mate lifted his drink.

"Skoal!"

McCobb answered, "Skoal!"

Everyone roared with laughter. Seldom on earth has such excitement existed in the hearts of men.

Laughter, tears, handshaking, oration, shouts, whispers--for half an hour everything was madness.

Then the mate made a short speech and pointed toward the sea. They returned to the porch.

Over the tops of the trees on the headland, two masts were visible.

They went back to the shore. But when the sailors pushed off, Henry, McCobb and Jack scrambled into their boat and followed with imploring cries.

The act was so pitiful that it made the trip to the ship relatively silent.

"Look, laddie."

Henry stopped rowing for a moment and followed McCobb's finger.

The ship was small. A freighter. She was low in the water and her sides were rusted. The deck was lined with men and on the bridge the captain leaned out and stared at the second boat with profound astonishment.

The scene on deck was a repetition of the scene on shore, save that the mate who had commanded the small boat went immediately into a tirade of explanation.

Then the captain took their hands and spoke a number of words which were obviously intended as a welcome.

After that McCobb tried to clarify things. Henry intervened with French, which was received with smiles and shakes of the head and then with German--which the captain understood slightly.

That understanding was all that was needed.

Glasses clinked in the captain's cabin and he stumblingly expressed his wish to see the island home for himself.

They arranged, then, to dine there. Jack went ahead with the ship's cook. The others followed.

The afternoon was a fury of industry. Henry and the captain and one of the mates climbed Mount McCobb. The men from the sea stared spellbound at the land.

McCobb packed. The sailors cleared out all the vegetables from the garden and transferred them to the
Cjoda
. They took the chickens and the goats and ten of the zebus.

The rest of the zebus were turned loose.

The abundance of gold in the house astonished the sailors and two or three of them made away with some of McCobb's ornaments. The gems they did not see, and the Scotchman secreted some on his person and the rest in the trunks. The Scotchman also opened one of the last of the copper drums. It contained clothes. He transferred them to a trunk. Also he took many papers and notebooks and maps.

Later in the afternoon the men returned from the mountain. Jack had dinner ready at six. The sailors were fed on the porch and the officers sat with Henry and McCobb in the living-room. Roast meat, baked potatoes, beets, carrots, fruit and wine.

The sailors were sent back with one officer to the ship that night, but the captain and the mate who had first reached shore stayed in the house. By signs, in halting German, and with much excitement, the islanders told the story of their arrival and their long sojourn.

Henry could not think consecutively for more than a few seconds.

"Aren't the men fine looking?" he said to McCobb, and the Scot, who had seen better men, agreed.

"They're going round Good Hope to New York. They'll take us straight home."

McCobb nodded and twisted the stem of his glass in his fingers.

"Was denken sie--"

"Ja. Drei und dreissig Jahren. Mein vater--"

Through the night to dawn. The captain slept.

But Henry did not sleep and McCobb did not sleep and Jack's slumbers were punctuated by strange writhings, and once by laughter.

Henry stood with McCobb on the stern deck of the
Cjoda
. Her engines clanked and foamy water poured away from her rusted hull.

Stone Island moved backward. Soon they were as far from it as Henry had ever sailed.

The trees melted into one green coast. The mountain became sharply delineated against the blue sky. Its edges lost their precision. The green began to grow blue.

"My heart hurts," Henry said slowly.

"Yes, son."

"I can't keep my eyes off the men. It's impossible to believe that there are so many of them."

"I know."

"They all look exactly alike."

"You'll get over that."

"I think I could spend a year on this ship without ever minding it."

"You'll get over that, too."

"We're not going to make any other port. It'll be about seven weeks. Think! Only seven weeks! I wish the captain and I could understand each other better."

"Look at the island, lad. You may never see it again."

' I'll come back."

"I'm wondering."

A long silence.

"Happy, McCobb?"

' I'm the happiest old man on earth."

"You're not old."

McGobb--laughed. ''I've even got no right to be active at my age. But the life was healthy. I feel like a young fellow of fifty-five."

"I feel old."

"Humph. The reason they didn't believe we'd been here so long is because you look So young--in spite of the mustache. I had to show 'em our records. Even then--they didn't quite think it was true. Not until they saw the sills were rotting under the house and until they saw the apple trees. After that--they did believe me."

"I wonder what it will be like?"

"I don't know."

In the tiny wireless room of the
Cjoda
the operator was flashing the news of the finding of three Americans on a hitherto unknown island.

But the news did not travel far. It was printed in a South African paper. The Associated Press missed it.

The tramp freighter would steam unhailed for many weeks.

McCobb sighed. "If your father could have lived--"

"I've thought of that many times--since yesterday."

"The island's almost gone now."

"Yes."

From amidships came the sound of Jack's banjo and an accompaniment of laughter.

McCobb located Henry. Henry hung over the rail of the bridge and watched the men work. He never tired of watching them. His interest was like that of an entomologist who has found a new species.

McCobb was excited.

"Henry! There's an instrument on this ship that sends messages through the air!"

"No! Where to?"

"God knows where. Everywhere. They can send a message ashore."

"Good Lord!"

"Those wires up there are part of it. The fellow who sits in that little house yonder does it with a key like a telegraph key."

They stared in stunned silence.

"We can let them know in New York--"

Henry nodded. "Sure. If such a thing is possible. A few days before we get in--no use bothering anybody now. Nobody to bother anyway--except my father's lawyers--or their firm."

"That's right. Then--maybe--they'll send someone to meet us. We may need somebody. There will probably be a lot of newfangled things we won't understand. Like this thing that telegraphs through the air. Come on and look at it."

The grinning operator allowed them to listen to a flow of dots and dashes through his head phones. They modestly planned to announce their rescue and arrival when they were a few days offshore. They hoped that someone would meet them. They had a poor notion of the drama their arrival would cause.

Chapter Ten
: THE SAVAGE

OLD Elihu Whitney--he was over eighty--sat in the library of his penthouse. The full beard that had replaced his muttonchop whiskers was now white, His body had shrunk, so that his clothes hung a little loosely upon him, but he would not send new measurements to his tailor. His face was patrician and as bold as it had always been.

He was somewhat restive--he had been incessantly restive since his formal retirement from business--but the only signs of it were the impatience and fidgetiness with which he unfolded his newspaper and spread a napkin on his lap.

It was his custom to breakfast in the library, sitting in front of the French windows which overlooked first a balcony and then a panorama of the summits of Manhattan.

The windows were open--for it was early June.

While he fiddled with his food and scanned the paper through his spectacles, his granddaughter momentarily appeared at the door.

"Going out," she said.

He turned and smiled. His reward was a flash--a glitter-bright eyes, bright hair, bright smile, bright clothes.

"Did you get up this early or have you been up?"

She laughed in the hall.

He heard the elevator hum and the shunt and slam of the door. He sighed. There was a reference to him in the paper. Dean of the New York bar, it said.

Elihu Whitney grunted with a disapproval that was not real.

The telephone rang.

He beat his butler to it by a yard and scowled at the man ferociously.

"Elihu Whitney speaking!"

His voice still had the power to boom.

"Yes," he said. He passed his hand over his beard. "Eh? Radio message?

Castaways? What's that?"

A new note came in his voice.

"Listen, Sid. Be sure that's the name. Be certain it was Henry Stone, son of Stephen. Because if it is--"

He hung up.

He stood in the center of the room and swore. He swore like a soldier, with glee and gusto and variety. His old hands were doubled into gnarled fists. His eyes were full of fire.

"What a thing! What a thing! Thank God I lived. It can't be! It would be! I wonder--no. Yes. It would happen that way. Stephen would--"

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"Oh--Stokes--get the hell out of here."

"Yes, sir."

"No--don't. Don't go. Wait. Good God, what a blow this will be to the directorate.

What a shock to Voorhees. I wonder if he'll be competent? If Stephen trained him?

Mavbe--"

"You feel all right, sir?" Whitney stiffened and realized that his incoherence must have sounded strange.

"I never felt better in my life, Stokes. Never. I feel like a spring lamb. And I'm going to do a little bit of work, Stokes. I think 1 am. I wouldn't be surprised if it was my masterpiece."

"Yes, Sir."

Whitney paced the floor.

"Get Sid back on the wire."

He took the instrument.

"Sid? Your father. You're sure?"

"We radioed for confirmation. The ship's a tramp. Out of Batavia coming to New York. First trip here. Swenson Line docks. Captain vouched for everything and the Swenson people say he's thoroughly reliable. The message was from the men. Just a formal notification and a request to be met. The signature was David McCobb--name of the engineer he took in Liverpool in eighteen-ninety-seven--and Henry Stone."