NO MAN'S ISLAND.

by Herbert Strang.

CHAPTER I

NO MAN'S ISLAND

One hot August afternoon, a motor-boat, with a little dinghy in tow, was thrashing its way up a narrow, winding river in Southern Wess.e.x. The stream, swollen by the drainage of overnight rain from the high moors that loomed in the hazy blue distance, was running riotously, casting buffets of spray across the bows of the little craft, and tossing like a cork the dinghy astern. On either side a dense entanglement of shrubs, bushes, and saplings overhung the water's edge, forming a sort of rampart or outwork for the taller trees behind.

The occupants of the boat were three. Amidships, its owner, Phil Warrender, was dividing his attention between the engine and the tiller.

Warrender was tall, lithe, swarthy, with crisp black hair which seemed to lift his cap as an irksome incubus. A little abaft of him sat Jack Armstrong, bent forward over an Ordnance map: he had the lean, tight-skinned features, spare frame, and hard muscles of the athlete, and his hay-coloured hair was cropped as close as a prize-fighter's. In the bows, on the sc.r.a.p of deck, Percy Pratt, facing the others, squatted cross-legged like an Oriental cobbler, and dreamily tw.a.n.ged a banjo. He was shorter and of stouter build than his companions, with a round, chubby face and brown curly hair cl.u.s.tering close to his poll, and caressing the edge of his cap like the tendrils of a creeper. All three boys were in their eighteenth year, and wore the flannels, caps, and blazers of their school Eleven.

"We ought to be nearing this island," remarked Armstrong, looking up from his map. "I say, Pratt, you've been here before: can't you remember something about it?"

Pratt thrummed his strings, smiled sweetly, and sang, in the head notes of a light tenor--

"The roses have made me remember All that I tried to forget; The past with its pain comes back again, Filling my heart with----

Sorry, old man, I've pitched it a bit too high. Lend me your ears while I modulate from G to E flat."

"Keep your Percy's Reliques for serenading the moon. You were here as a kid; aren't we nearly there?"

"'The past with its pain'--fact! It _was_ pain. My old uncle could beat any beak at licking. He made a very pretty criss-cross pattern on me that day--all for pinching a peach! Frightful temper he had. My people said it was due to sunstroke on his travels. Jolly lot of good being a famous traveller, if it makes you a beast. He was more ratty every time he came home. I don't wonder my pater had a royal row with him, and hasn't been near the place since. Rough luck, to have to desert your ancestral dust-heap.

"I try, try to forget you, But I only love you more."

"Isn't that the island? Away there to starboard?" Warrender interposed.

"But I thought you said we might camp there, my Percy?"

"True, sober Philip. We picnicked there in the days of yore."

"Well, we'd have to do a week's clearing before we camped there now.

Look at it!"

Pratt swung lazily round on his elbow, and gazed over the starboard quarter towards the left bank. The river was parted by what was evidently an island. The channel between it and the left bank was very narrow, and almost impa.s.sable by reason of the low, overhanging branches, which formed a tunnel of foliage. Warrender steered across the broader channel towards the right bank, all three scanning the island intently as they coasted along.

"Shows how old Tempus fugit," said Pratt. "In the dim and distant ages when I was a kid that island was a lawn; now it's a wilderness. Think what your beardless cheeks will be like in ten years' time, Armstrong.

See what Nature will do unless you use the razor. The place seems quite changed somehow. But I'd never have believed trees could grow so fast.

As we're not d.i.c.ky birds, we certainly can't pitch our camp there.

Drive on, old shover."

The island was, indeed, to all appearances, more densely wooded than the river banks. By the map scale it was about a third of a mile long, and at its widest part fully half as broad. Nowhere along its whole extent did they see a spot suitable for camping.

They ran past the island. The stream narrowed; the wooded character of the mainland banks was unchanged.

"We might as well be on the Congo," growled Armstrong. "Are you sure your uncle didn't bring back a bit of Africa in his carpet bag, Pratt, and plank it down here?"

"Let the great big world keep turning, Never mind, if I've got you,"

hummed Pratt. "Turn your eyes three points a-starboard, Armstrong, and you'll see, peeping at you through the sylvan groves, the gables of my ancestors' eligible and beautifully situated riverside residence. It's pretty nearly a quarter-mile from the river, but that's a detail."

Warrender slowed down so that they might get a better view of the stately old house of which they caught glimpses through gaps in the woodland.

"You behold that ruined ivy-clad tower about a cable's length away from it," Pratt went on. "Tradition saith that one of my ancestors incarcerated there a foeman unworthy of his steel, and forgot to feed him."

"Well, I want my tea," said Armstrong. "We had next to no lunch, and I can't live on memories."

A sharp crack cut the air.

"Some one's shooting in the woods ahead," said Warrender. "Perhaps we'll catch sight of them, and get a direction."

"Why not make a polite inquiry of that woodland faun or satyr smoking a clay pipe yonder?" suggested Pratt, pointing with his banjo to the left bank.

On a tree-stump near the water's edge sat a thick-set man, square-faced, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, a cloth cap pushed back on his close-cropped bullet head, a red cloth tie knotted about his neck. He wore a rusty, much-rubbed velveteen jacket, corduroy breeches, and a pair of shabby leggings. Warrender slowed down until the boat just held its own against the current, and called--"Hi! can you tell us of a clear s.p.a.ce where we can camp?"

The man looked suspiciously from one to another, chewing the stem of his pipe.

"Can't," said he, surlily.

"Surely there's a stretch of turf somewhere?" Warrender persisted.

"Bain't. Not hereabouts. Woods, from here to village up along."

"Nothing back on the island?"

The man half closed his eyes, and again suspicion lurked in the glance he gave the speaker.

"No. No Man's Island be nought but furze and thicket. Nothing hereabouts. Better go on and doss at the Ferry Inn."

Then, however, he leered, barely recovering his pipe as it slipped from between his discoloured teeth. "Ay, I were forgetting," he said with a chuckle. "There be a patch farther up. Ay, that might suit 'ee. A party camped there last week. Ay, try en."

He chuckled again. Warrender opened the throttle, and when the boat had run a few yards up a guffaw, quickly stifled, sounded astern.

"Pleasant fellow," remarked Armstrong.

"When you are near, the dullest day seems bright; Doubts disappear, my load of care grows light,"

warbled Pratt. "But he didn't say which bank it's on."

"We can't miss it," said Warrender,--"unless he was pulling our leg."

Within three minutes, however, they found that the man had not misled them. There was disclosed, on the right bank, a considerable stretch of smooth green sward, affording ample s.p.a.ce for their bell-tent and the simple impedimenta of their camp. Warrender ran the boat in, and hitched it to a sapling; then the three began to transfer their equipment to the sh.o.r.e. Besides their tent, they had a Primus stove, a kettle, a couple of saucepans, pots, cups and plates of enamel, pewter forks and, stainless knives, cases of provisions, three sleeping-bags, three folding stools, and other oddments.

While Warrender and Armstrong were stretching and pegging out the tent, Pratt started the stove, filled the kettle from the river, and a.s.sembled such utensils as they needed for their tea. These operations were punctuated by renewed sounds of shooting, which were drawing nearer through the woods that skirted the clearing.

"I say, you chaps," cried Pratt, "I wonder if I talked nicely, if I could coax out of them something gamey for supper to-night?"