He knelt down and felt the swollen limb, putting its owner to considerable pain, as Percival judged from the way in which he set his teeth during the operation. Jackson had, however, a tolerable knowledge of a rough sort of surgery, and managed to set the bone and bind up the swollen limb in a manner that showed skill and tenderness as well as knowledge. And then Percival proposed that they should try to find some food, and make the tour of the island before the day grew hotter. The leadership of the party had been tacitly accorded to him from the first; and, after a consultation with the others, Jackson stepped forward to say that they all wished to consider themselves under Mr. Heron's orders, "he having more head than the rest of them, and being a gentleman born, no doubt." At which Heron laughed good-humouredly and accepted the position. "And none of us grudge you being the head," said Jackson, sagely, "except, maybe, one, and he don't count." Heron made no response; but he wondered for a moment whether the one who grudged him his leadership could possibly be Mackay, whose eyes had a quiet attentiveness to all his doings, which looked almost like criticism. But there was no other fault to be found with Mackay's manner, while against Fenwick's dogged air Percival felt some irritation.

The want of food was decidedly the first difficulty. Sea-birds' eggs and young birds, shell-fish and turtle, were all easily to be obtained; but how were they to be cooked? Percival was not without hopes that some tinned provisions might be cast ashore from the wreck; but at present there was nothing of the kind to be seen. A few cocoa-nuts were procurable: and these provided them with meat and drink for the time being. Then came the question of fire. The only possible method of obtaining it was the Indian one of rubbing two sticks diligently together for the space of some two hours; and Thomas Jackson sat down with stoical patience worthy of an Indian himself to fulfil this operation.

Percival, who felt that he could not bear to be doing nothing, started off for a walk round the island, and the rest of the party dozed in the shade until the return of their leader.

When Heron came back he made his report as cheerful as he could, but he could not make it a particularly brilliant one, although he did his best. He was one of those men who grumble at trifles, but are unusually bright and cheerful in the presence of a great emergency. The sneer had left his face, the cynical accent had disappeared from his voice; he employed all his social gifts, which were naturally great, for the entertainment of his comrades. As they ate boiled eggs and fried fish and other morsels which seemed especially dainty when cooked over the fire that Jackson's patient industry had lighted at last, the spirits of the whole party seemed to rise; and Percival's determination to look upon the bright side of things, produced a most enlivening effect. Some of them remembered afterwards, with a sort of puzzled wonder, that they had more than once laughed heartily during their first meal upon the Rocas Reef.

Yet none of them were insensible to the danger through which they had passed, nor the terrible position in which they stood. Uppermost in the minds of each, although none of them liked to put it into words, was the question--How long shall we stay here? Is it likely that any ship will observe our signal of distress and come to our aid? They looked each other furtively in the eyes, and read no comfort in each other's face.

They had landed upon one of two islands, about fifteen acres each in size, which were separated at high water, but communicated with each other when the tide had ebbed. Both islands lay low, and had patches of white sand in the centre; but there was very little vegetation. Even grass seemed as if it would not grow; and the cocoa-nut trees were few and far between.

The signs of previous wrecks struck the men's hearts with a chill. There was a log hut, to which Mackay was moved when evening came on; there were the iron tanks of which Percival had made mention, filled with rain-water; there were some rotten boards, and a small hammer and a broken knife; but there was no fresh-water spring, and there were no provision chests, such as Heron had vainly hoped to find.

The setting up of a distress-signal on the highest point of the island was the next matter to be attended to; and for this purpose nothing could be found more suitable than a very large yellow silk-handkerchief which Percival had found in his pocket. It did not make a very large flag, although it was enormous as a handkerchief; but no other article of clothing could well be spared. Indeed, the spareness of their coverings was a matter of some regret and anxiety on Percival's part. He could not conceive what they were to do if they were on the island for more than a few days; the rough work which would be probably necessary being somewhat destructive of woollen and linen garments. Jackson, with whom he ventured a joke on the subject, did not receive it in very good part. "You needn't talk as if we was to stay here for ever, Mr. Heron, sir," he murmured. "But there's always cocoa-nut fibre, if the worst comes to the worst."

"Ah, yes, cocoa-nut fibre," said Percival, turning his eyes to one of the slim, straight stems of the palm trees. "I forgot that. I seem to have walked straight into one of Jules Verne's books. Gad! I wish I could walk out of it again. What a thrilling narrative I'll make of this for the _Mail_ when I get home. If ever I do get home. Bah, it's no use to talk of that."

These reflections were made under his breath, while Jackson walked on to examine a nest of sea-birds' eggs; for Percival was wisely resolved against showing a single sign of undue anxiety or depression of spirits, lest it should re-act on the minds of those who had declared themselves his followers. For the rest of the day the party worked hard at various contrivances for their own welfare and comfort.

Firewood was collected; birds and fish caught for the evening meal. To each member of the party a task was assigned: even Mackay could make himself useful by watching the precious flame which must never be suffered to go out. And thus the day wore on, and night came with its purple stillness and its tropical wealth of stars.

The men sought shelter in the hut: Percival only, by his own choice, remained outside until he thought that they were sleeping. He wanted to be alone. He had banished reflection pretty successfully during the day; but at night he knew that it would get the better of him. And he felt that he must meet and master the thronging doubts and fears and regrets that assailed him. Whatever happened he would not be sorry that he had come. If he never saw Elizabeth's face again, he was sure that her memories of him would be full of tenderness. What more did he want? And yet he wanted more.

He found out what his heart desired before he laid himself down to sleep amongst the men. He would have given a year of his life to know whether Brian Luttrell was alive or dead. And he could not honestly say that he wished Brian Luttrell to be alive.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ON THE ROCAS REEF.

The morning light showed several articles on the shore which had been washed up from the wreck. Some tins of biscuits were likely to be very useful, and a box of carpenter's tools, most of them sadly rusted, was welcomed eagerly; but nothing else was found, and the day might have begun with murmurs of discontent but for a discovery made by Mackay, which restored satisfaction to the men's faces.

Close by his head in the log hut where he had spent the night, he found a sort of cupboard--something like a rabbit-hutch. And this cupboard contained--oh, joyful discovery!--not gold or gems, nor any such useless glittering lumber, but something far more precious to these weary mariners--two bottles of brandy and a chest of tea. Perhaps a former sojourner on the island had placed them in that hiding-place, thinking compassionately of the voyagers who might in some future day find themselves in bitter need upon the Rocas Reef. "Whoever it was as left 'em here," said Pollard, "got off safe again, you may depend on it; and so shall we." Percival said nothing: he had been thinking that perhaps the former owner of this buried treasure had died upon the island. He hoped that they would not find his grave.

He measured out some tea for the morning's meal, but decided that neither tea nor spirits should be used, except on special occasions or in cases of illness. The men accepted his decision as a reasonable one; they were all well-disposed and tractable on the whole. Percival was amazed to find them so easy to manage. But they were more depressed that morning at the thought of their lost comrades, their wrecked ship, and the prospect of passing an indefinite time upon the coral-reef, than they had been on the previous day. It was a relief when they were busy at their respective tasks; and Percival found an odd kind of pleasure in all sorts of hard and unusual work; in breaking up rotten planks, for instance; in extracting old nails painfully and laboriously from them for future use; and in tramping to and fro between the sea-shore and the log hut, carrying the driftwood deposited on the sand to a more convenient resting-place. They had planned to build another hut, as the existing structure was both small and frail; and Percival laboured at his work like a giant. In the hot time of the day, however, he was glad to do as the others did; to throw down his tools, such as they were, and creep into the shadow of the log hut. The heat was very great; and the men were beginning to suffer from the bites of venomous ants which infested the island. In short, as Percival said to himself, the Rocas Reef was about as little like Robinson Crusoe's island as it could possibly be. Life would be greatly ameliorated if goats and parrots could be found amongst the rocks; shell-fish and sea-fowl were a poor exchange for them; and an island that was "desert" in reality as well as in name, was a decidedly prosaic place on which to spend a few days, or weeks, or months. Of course he made none of these remarks in public; he contented himself with humming in an undertone the words of Alexander Selkirk, as interpreted by Cowper:--

"I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute--"

a quotation which brought a meaning smile to Mackay's face, whereupon Percival laughed and checked himself.

"How are you to-day?" he said, addressing the steerage passenger with some show of good-humoured interest. Mackay was lying on the sand, propped up against the wall of the hut, and Percival was breaking his nails over an obstinate screw which was deeply embedded in a thick piece of wood.

"Better, thanks." The voice was curiously hoarse and gruff.

"Jackson isn't a bad surgeon, I fancy."

"Not at all."

"Lucky for you that he was saved."

"I owe my life twice to him and once to you."

"I hope you think it's something to be grateful for," said Percival, carelessly. "You've had some escapes to tell your friends about when you get home."

Mackay turned aside his head. "I have no friends to tell," he said, shortly.

"Ah! more's the pity. Well, no doubt you will make some in Pernambuco--when you get there."

"Do you think we ever shall get there?"

Percival shot a rather displeased glance at him. "Don't go talking like that before the men," he said.

"I am not talking before the men," rejoined the steerage passenger, with a smile: "I am talking to you, Mr. Heron. And I repeat my question--Do you think we shall ever get to Pernambuco?"

"Yes," said Percival, stoutly. "A ship will see our signal and call for us."

"It's a very small flag," said Mackay, in a significant tone.

"Good Heavens!" burst out Percival, with the first departure from his good-humoured tone that Mackay had heard from him: "why do you take the trouble to put that side of the question to me? Don't you think I see it for myself? There is a chance, if it is only a small one; and I'm not going to give up hope--yet."

Then he walked away, as if he refused to discuss the subject any longer.

Mackay looked at the sea and sighed; he was sorry that he had provoked Mr. Heron's wrath by his question. But he found afterwards that it contributed to form a kind of silent understanding between him and Percival. It was a sort of relief to both of them, occasionally to exchange short, sharp sentences of doubt or discouragement, which neither of them breathed in the ear of the others. Percival divined quickly enough, that the steerage passenger was not a man of Thomas Jackson's class. As the hoarseness left his voice, and the disfiguring redness disappeared from his face, Percival distinguished signs of refinement and culture which he wondered at himself for not perceiving earlier. But there was nothing remarkable in his having made a mistake about Mackay's station in life. The man had come on board the _Arizona_ in a state of wretched suffering: his face had been scorched, his hair and beard singed, his clothes, as well as his person, blackened by dust and smoke. Then his clothes were those of a working-man, and his speech had been rendered harsh to the ear from the hoarseness of his voice. But he gradually regained his strength as he lay in the fresh air and the sunshine, and returning health gave back to him the quiet energy and cheerfulness to which Jackson had borne testimony. He was a great favourite with the men, who, in their rough way, made a sort of pet of him, and brought him offerings of the daintiest food that they could find. And his hands were not idle. He wove baskets and plaited hats of cocoa-nut fibre with his long white fingers, which were very unlike those of the working-man that he professed to be. Percival Heron was often struck by the appearance of that hand. It was one of unusual beauty--the sort of hand that Titian or Vandyke loved to draw: long, finely-shaped, full of quiet power, and fuller, perhaps, of a subtle sort of refinement, which seems to express itself in the form of tapering fingers with filbert nails and a well-turned wrist. It was not the hand of a working-man, not even of a skilled artizan, whose hand is often delicately sensitive: it was a gentleman's hand, and as such it piqued Percival's curiosity. But Mackay was of a reserved disposition, and did not offer any information about himself.

One day when rain was falling in sheets and torrents, as it did sometimes upon the Rocas Reef, Percival turned into the log hut for shelter. Mackay was there, too; his leg had been so painful that he had not left the rude bed, which his comrades had made for him, even to be carried out into the fresh air and sunshine, for two or three days.

Percival noticed the look of pain in the languid eyes, and had, for a moment, a fancy that he had seen this man before. But the burns on his face, the handkerchief tied round his head to conceal a wound on the temple, and the tangled brown beard and moustache, made it difficult to seize hold of a possible likeness.

Percival threw himself on the ground with a half-sigh, and crossed his arms behind his head.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Mackay.

Percival noticed that he never addressed him as "Sir" or "Mr. Heron,"

unless the other men were present.

"Jackson's ill," said Percival, curtly.

Mackay started and turned on his elbow.

"Ill?"

"Fever, I'm afraid. Not bad; just a touch of it. He's in the other hut."

"I'm sorry for that," said Mackay, lying down again.

"So am I. He is the steadiest man among them. How the rain pours!

Pollard is sitting with him."