Friend Island Read online

Smith.'That's what it said, but the spellin' was simply awful. It all lookedquite new and recent, as if Nelson Smith hadn't more than a few hoursbefore he wrote and nailed it there.

  "Well, after reading that queer warning I begun to shake all over likein a chill. Yes, I shook like I had the ague, though the hot tropicsun was burning down right on me and that alarming board. What hadscared Nelson Smith so much that he had swum to get away? I looked allaround real cautious and careful, but not a single frightening thingcould I behold. And the palms and the green grass and the flowersstill smiled that peaceful and friendly like. 'Just make yourself tohome,' was wrote all over the place in plainer letters than thosesprawly lead pencil ones on the board.

  "Pretty soon, what with the quiet and all, the chill left me. Then Ithought, 'Well, to be sure, this Smith person was just an ordinaryman, I reckon, and likely he got nervous of being so alone. Likely hejust fancied things which was really not. It's a pity he drownedhimself before I come, though likely I'd have found him poor company.By his record I judge him a man of but common education.'

  "So I decided to make the most of my welcome, and that I did for weeksto come. Right near the spring was a cave, dry as a biscuit box, witha nice floor of white sand. Nelson had lived there too, for there wasa litter of stuff--tin cans--empty--scraps of newspapers and the like.I got to calling him Nelson in my mind, and then Nelly, and wonderingif he was dark or fair, and how he come to be cast away there allalone, and what was the strange events that drove him to his end. Icleaned out the cave, though. He had devoured all his tin-cannedprovisions, however he come by them, but this I didn't mind. Thatthere island was a generous body. Green milk-coconuts, sweet berries,turtle eggs and the like was my daily fare.

  "For about three weeks the sun shone every day, the birds sang and themonkeys chattered. We was all one big, happy family, and the more Iexplored that island the better I liked the company I was keeping. Theland was about ten miles from beach to beach, and never a foot of itthat wasn't sweet and clean as a private park.

  "From the top of the hill I could see the ocean, miles and miles ofblue water, with never a sign of a gas liner, or even a littlegovernment running-boat. Them running-boats used to go most everywhereto keep the seaways clean of derelicts and the like. But I knowed thatif this island was no more than a hundred miles off the regularcourses of navigation, it might be many a long day before I'd berescued. The top of the hill, as I found when first I climbed upthere, was a wore-out crater. So I knowed that the island was one ofthem volcanic ones you run across so many of in the seas betweenCapricorn and Cancer.

  "Here and there on the slopes and down through the jungly tree-growth,I would come on great lumps of rock, and these must have came up outof that crater long ago. If there was lava it was so old it had beencovered up entire with green growing stuff. You couldn't have found itwithout a spade, which I didn't have nor want."

  * * * * *

  "Well, at first I was happy as the hours was long. I wandered andclambered and waded and swum, and combed my long hair on the beach,having fortunately not lost my side-combs nor the rest of my goldhairpins. But by-and-by it begun to get just a bit lonesome. Funnything, that's a feeling that, once it starts, it gets worse and worserso quick it's perfectly surprising. And right then was when the daysbegun to get gloomy. We had a long, sickly hot spell, like I neverseen before on an ocean island. There was dull clouds across the sunfrom morn to night. Even the little monkeys and parrakeets, that hadseemed so gay, moped and drowsed like they was sick. All one day Icried, and let the rain soak me through and through--that was thefirst rain we had--and I didn't get thorough dried even during thenight, though I slept in my cave. Next morning I got up mad as thunderat myself and all the world.

  "When I looked out the black clouds was billowing across the sky. Icould hear nothing but great breakers roaring in on the beaches, andthe wild wind raving through the lashing palms.

  "As I stood there a nasty little wet monkey dropped from a branchalmost on my head. I grabbed a pebble and slung it at him realvicious. 'Get away, you dirty little brute!' I shrieks, and with thatthere come a awful blinding flare of light. There was a long,crackling noise like a bunch of Chinese fireworks, and then a sound asif a whole fleet of _Shouters_ had all went up together.

  "When I come to, I found myself 'way in the back of my cave, trying todig further into the rock with my finger nails. Upon taking thought,it come to me that what had occurred was just a lightning-clap, andgoing to look, sure enough there lay a big palm tree right across theglade. It was all busted and split open by the lightning, and thelittle monkey was under it, for I could see his tail and his hind legssticking out.

  "Now, when I set eyes on that poor, crushed little beast I'd been somean to, I was terrible ashamed. I sat down on the smashed tree andconsidered and considered. How thankful I had ought to have been. HereI had a lovely, plenteous island, with food and water to my taste,when it might have been a barren, starvation rock that was my lot. Andso, thinking, a sort of gradual peaceful feeling stole over me. I gotcheerfuller and cheerfuller, till I could have sang and danced forjoy.

  "Pretty soon I realized that the sun was shining bright for the firsttime that week. The wind had stopped hollering, and the waves had diedto just a singing murmur on the beach. It seemed kind o' strange, thissudden peace, like the cheer in my own heart after its rage and storm.I rose up, feeling sort of queer, and went to look if the littlemonkey had came alive again, though that was a fool thing, seeing hewas laying all crushed up and very dead. I buried him under a treeroot, and as I did it a conviction come to me.

  "I didn't hardly question that conviction at all. Somehow, livingthere alone so long, perhaps my natural womanly intuition was strongerthan ever before or since, and so I _knowed_. Then I went and pulledpoor Nelson Smith's board off from the tree and tossed it away for thetide to carry off. That there board was an insult to my island!"

  The sea-woman paused, and her eyes had a far-away look. It seemed asif I and perhaps even the macaroons and tea were quite forgotten.

  "Why did you think that?" I asked, to bring her back. "How could anisland be insulted?"

  She started, passed her hand across her eyes, and hastily pouredanother cup of tea.

  "Because," she said at last, poising a macaroon in mid-air, "becausethat island--that particular island that I had landed on--had a heart!

  "When I was gay, it was bright and cheerful. It was glad when I come,and it treated me right until I got that grouchy it had to mope fromsympathy. It loved me like a friend. When I flung a rock at that poorlittle drenched monkey critter, it backed up my act with an anger likethe wrath o' God, and killed its own child to please me! But it gotright cheery the minute I seen the wrongness of my ways. Nelson Smithhad no business to say, 'This island ain't just right,' for it was arighter place than ever I seen elsewhere. When I cast away that lyingboard, all the birds begun to sing like mad. The green milk-coconutsfell right and left. Only the monkeys seemed kind o' sad like still,and no wonder. You see, their own mother, the island, had rounded onone o' them for my sake!

  "After that I was right careful and considerate. I named the islandAnita, not knowing her right name, or if she had any. Anita was apretty name, and it sounded kind of South Sea like. Anita and me gotalong real well together from that day on. It was some strain to bealways gay and singing around like a dear duck of a canary bird, but Idone my best. Still, for all the love and gratitude I bore Anita, thecompany of an island, however sympathetic, ain't quite enough for ahuman being. I still got lonesome, and there was even days when Icouldn't keep the clouds clear out of the sky, though I will say wehad no more tornadoes.

  "I think the island understood and tried to help me with all thebounty and good cheer the poor thing possessed. None the less my heartgive a wonderful big leap when one day I seen a blot on the horizon.It drawed nearer and nearer, until at last I could make out itsnature."

  "A ship, of course," said I, "and were you rescue
d?"

  "'Tweren't a ship, neither," denied the sea-woman somewhatimpatiently. "Can't you let me spin this yarn without no more remarksand fool questions? This thing what was bearing down so fast with theincoming tide was neither more nor less than another island!

  "You may well look startled. I was startled myself. Much more so thanyou, likely. I didn't know then what you, with your book-learning,very likely know now--that islands sometimes float. Their underpartsbeing a tangled-up mess of roots and old vines that new stuff's growedover, they sometimes break away from the mainland in a brisk gale andgo off for a voyage, calm as a old-fashioned, eight-funnel steamer.This one was uncommon large, being as much as two miles, maybe, fromshore to