Title: Friend Island
Author: Stevens, Francis
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Friend Island" ***


                           All-Story Weekly

                          September 7, 1918

       *       *       *       *       *

                            FRIEND ISLAND

                          by Francis Stevens

       *       *       *       *       *



It was upon the waterfront that I first met her, in one of the shabby
little tea shops frequented by able sailoresses of the poorer type.
The uptown, glittering resorts of the Lady Aviators' Union were not
for such as she.

Stern of feature, bronzed by wind and sun, her age could only be
guessed, but I surmised at once that in her I beheld a survivor of the
age of turbines and oil engines--a true sea-woman of that elder time
when woman's superiority to man had not been so long recognized. When,
to emphasize their victory, women in all ranks were sterner than
today's need demands.

The spruce, smiling young maidens--engine-women and stokers of the
great aluminum rollers, but despite their profession, very neat in
gold-braided blue knickers and boleros--these looked askance at the
hard-faced relic of a harsher day, as they passed in and out of the
shop.

I, however, brazenly ignoring similar glances at myself, a mere male
intruding on the haunts of the world's ruling sex, drew a chair up
beside the veteran. I ordered a full pot of tea, two cups and a plate
of macaroons, and put on my most ingratiating air. Possibly my
unconcealed admiration and interest were wiles not exercised in vain.
Or the macaroons and tea, both excellent, may have loosened the old
sea-woman's tongue. At any rate, under cautious questioning, she had
soon launched upon a series of reminiscences well beyond my hopes for
color and variety.

"When I was a lass," quoth the sea-woman, after a time, "there was
none of this high-flying, gilt-edged, leather-stocking luxury about
the sea. We sailed by the power of our oil and gasoline. If they
failed on us, like as not 'twas the rubber ring and the rolling wave
for ours."

She referred to the archaic practice of placing a pneumatic affair
called a life-preserver beneath the arms, in case of that dreaded
disaster, now so unheard of, shipwreck.

"In them days there was still many a man bold enough to join our
crews. And I've knowed cases," she added condescendingly, "where just
by the muscle and brawn of such men some poor sailor lass has reached
shore alive that would have fed the sharks without 'em. Oh, I ain't so
down on men as you might think. It's the spoiling of them that I don't
hold with. There's too much preached nowadays that man is fit for
nothing but to fetch and carry and do nurse-work in big child-homes.
To my mind, a man who hasn't the nerve of a woman ain't fitted to
father children, let alone raise 'em. But that's not here nor there.
My time's past, and I know it, or I wouldn't be setting here gossipin'
to you, my lad, over an empty teapot."

I took the hint, and with our cups replenished, she bit thoughtfully
into her fourteenth macaroon and continued.

"There's one voyage I'm not likely to forget, though I live to be as
old as Cap'n Mary Barnacle, of the _Shouter_. 'Twas aboard the old
_Shouter_ that this here voyage occurred, and it was her last and
likewise Cap'n Mary's. Cap'n Mary, she was then that decrepit, it
seemed a mercy that she should go to her rest, and in good salt water
at that.

"I remember the voyage for Cap'n Mary's sake, but most I remember it
because 'twas then that I come the nighest in my life to committin'
matrimony. For a man, the man had nerve; he was nearer bein'
companionable than any other man I ever seed; and if it hadn't been
for just one little event that showed up the--the _mannishness_ of
him, in a way I couldn't abide, I reckon he'd be keepin' house for me
this minute."

       *       *       *       *       *

"We cleared from Frisco with a cargo of silkateen petticoats for
Brisbane. Cap'n Mary was always strong on petticoats. Leather breeches
or even half-skirts would ha' paid far better, they being more in
demand like, but Cap'n Mary was three-quarters owner, and says she,
land women should buy petticoats, and if they didn't it wouldn't be
the Lord's fault nor hers for not providing 'em.

"We cleared on a fine day, which is an all sign--or was, then when the
weather and the seas o' God still counted in the trafficking of the
humankind. Not two days out we met a whirling, mucking bouncer of a
gale that well nigh threw the old _Shouter_ a full point off her
course in the first wallop. She was a stout craft, though. None of
your featherweight, gas-lightened, paper-thin alloy shells, but
toughened aluminum from stern to stern. Her turbine drove her through
the combers at a forty-five knot clip, which named her a speedy craft
for a freighter in them days.

"But this night, as we tore along through the creaming green billows,
something unknown went 'way wrong down below.

"I was forward under the shelter of her long over-sloop, looking for a
hairpin I'd dropped somewheres about that afternoon. It was a gold
hairpin, and gold still being mighty scarce when I was a girl, a
course I valued it. But suddenly I felt the old _Shouter_ give a jump
under my feet like a plane struck by a shell in full flight. Then she
trembled all over for a full second, frightened like. Then, with the
crash of doomsday ringing in my ears, I felt myself sailing through
the air right into the teeth o' the shrieking gale, as near as I could
judge. Down I come in the hollow of a monstrous big wave, and as my
ears doused under I thought I heard a splash close by. Coming up, sure
enough, there close by me was floating a new, patent, hermetic,
thermo-ice-chest. Being as it was empty, and being as it was shut up
air-tight, that ice-chest made as sweet a life-preserver as a woman
could wish in such an hour. About ten foot by twelve, it floated high
in the raging sea. Out on its top I scrambled, and hanging on by a
handle I looked expectant for some of my poor fellow-women to come
floating by. Which they never did, for the good reason that the
_Shouter_ had blowed up and went below, petticoats, Cap'n Mary and
all."

"What caused the explosion?" I inquired.

"The Lord and Cap'n Mary Barnacle can explain," she answered piously.
"Besides the oil for her turbines, she carried a power of gasoline for
her alternative engines, and likely 'twas the cause of her ending so
sudden like. Anyways, all I ever seen of her again was the empty
ice-chest that Providence had well-nigh hove upon my head. On that I
sat and floated, and floated and sat some more, till by-and-by the
storm sort of blowed itself out, the sun come shining--this was next
morning--and I could dry my hair and look about me. I was a young
lass, then, and not bad to look upon. I didn't want to die, any more
than you that's sitting there this minute. So I up and prays for land.
Sure enough toward evening a speck heaves up low down on the horizon.
At first I took it for a gas liner, but later found it was just a
little island, all alone by itself in the great Pacific Ocean.

"Come, now, here's luck, thinks I, and with that I deserts the
ice-chest, which being empty, and me having no ice to put in it, not
likely to have in them latitudes, is of no further use to me. Striking
out I swum a mile or so and set foot on dry land for the first time in
nigh three days.

"Pretty land it were, too, though bare of human life as an iceberg in
the Arctic.

"I had landed on a shining white beach that run up to a grove of
lovely, waving palm trees. Above them I could see the slopes of a hill
so high and green it reminded me of my own old home, up near
Couquomgomoc Lake in Maine. The whole place just seemed to smile and
smile at me. The palms waved and bowed in the sweet breeze, like they
wanted to say, 'Just set right down and make yourself to home. We've
been waiting a long time for you to come.' I cried, I was that happy
to be made welcome. I was a young lass then, and sensitive-like to how
folks treated me. You're laughing now, but wait and see if or not
there was sense to the way I felt.

"So I up and dries my clothes and my long, soft hair again, which was
well worth drying, for I had far more of it than now. After that I
walked along a piece, until there was a sweet little path meandering
away into the wild woods.

"Here, thinks I, this looks like inhabitants. Be they civil or wild, I
wonder? But after traveling the path a piece, lo and behold it ended
sudden like in a wide circle of green grass, with a little spring of
clear water. And the first thing I noticed was a slab of white board
nailed to a palm tree close to the spring. Right off I took a long
drink, for you better believe I was thirsty, and then I went to look
at this board. It had evidently been tore off the side of a wooden
packing box, and the letters was roughly printed in lead pencil.

"'Heaven help whoever you be,' I read. 'This island ain't just right.
I'm going to swim for it. You better too. Good-by. Nelson Smith.'
That's what it said, but the spellin' was simply awful. It all looked
quite new and recent, as if Nelson Smith hadn't more than a few hours
before he wrote and nailed it there.

"Well, after reading that queer warning I begun to shake all over like
in a chill. Yes, I shook like I had the ague, though the hot tropic
sun was burning down right on me and that alarming board. What had
scared Nelson Smith so much that he had swum to get away? I looked all
around real cautious and careful, but not a single frightening thing
could I behold. And the palms and the green grass and the flowers
still smiled that peaceful and friendly like. 'Just make yourself to
home,' was wrote all over the place in plainer letters than those
sprawly lead pencil ones on the board.

"Pretty soon, what with the quiet and all, the chill left me. Then I
thought, 'Well, to be sure, this Smith person was just an ordinary
man, I reckon, and likely he got nervous of being so alone. Likely he
just fancied things which was really not. It's a pity he drowned
himself 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 weeks
to come. Right near the spring was a cave, dry as a biscuit box, with
a nice floor of white sand. Nelson had lived there too, for there was
a 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 wondering
if he was dark or fair, and how he come to be cast away there all
alone, and what was the strange events that drove him to his end. I
cleaned out the cave, though. He had devoured all his tin-canned
provisions, however he come by them, but this I didn't mind. That
there 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 the
monkeys chattered. We was all one big, happy family, and the more I
explored that island the better I liked the company I was keeping. The
land was about ten miles from beach to beach, and never a foot of it
that wasn't sweet and clean as a private park.

"From the top of the hill I could see the ocean, miles and miles of
blue water, with never a sign of a gas liner, or even a little
government running-boat. Them running-boats used to go most everywhere
to keep the seaways clean of derelicts and the like. But I knowed that
if this island was no more than a hundred miles off the regular
courses of navigation, it might be many a long day before I'd be
rescued. The top of the hill, as I found when first I climbed up
there, was a wore-out crater. So I knowed that the island was one of
them volcanic ones you run across so many of in the seas between
Capricorn 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 out
of that crater long ago. If there was lava it was so old it had been
covered up entire with green growing stuff. You couldn't have found it
without a spade, which I didn't have nor want."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, at first I was happy as the hours was long. I wandered and
clambered and waded and swum, and combed my long hair on the beach,
having fortunately not lost my side-combs nor the rest of my gold
hairpins. But by-and-by it begun to get just a bit lonesome. Funny
thing, that's a feeling that, once it starts, it gets worse and worser
so quick it's perfectly surprising. And right then was when the days
begun to get gloomy. We had a long, sickly hot spell, like I never
seen before on an ocean island. There was dull clouds across the sun
from morn to night. Even the little monkeys and parrakeets, that had
seemed so gay, moped and drowsed like they was sick. All one day I
cried, and let the rain soak me through and through--that was the
first rain we had--and I didn't get thorough dried even during the
night, though I slept in my cave. Next morning I got up mad as thunder
at myself and all the world.

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

"As I stood there a nasty little wet monkey dropped from a branch
almost on my head. I grabbed a pebble and slung it at him real
vicious. 'Get away, you dirty little brute!' I shrieks, and with that
there come a awful blinding flare of light. There was a long,
crackling noise like a bunch of Chinese fireworks, and then a sound as
if 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 to
dig further into the rock with my finger nails. Upon taking thought,
it come to me that what had occurred was just a lightning-clap, and
going to look, sure enough there lay a big palm tree right across the
glade. It was all busted and split open by the lightning, and the
little monkey was under it, for I could see his tail and his hind legs
sticking out.

"Now, when I set eyes on that poor, crushed little beast I'd been so
mean to, I was terrible ashamed. I sat down on the smashed tree and
considered and considered. How thankful I had ought to have been. Here
I 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. And
so, thinking, a sort of gradual peaceful feeling stole over me. I got
cheerfuller and cheerfuller, till I could have sang and danced for
joy.

"Pretty soon I realized that the sun was shining bright for the first
time that week. The wind had stopped hollering, and the waves had died
to just a singing murmur on the beach. It seemed kind o' strange, this
sudden 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 little
monkey had came alive again, though that was a fool thing, seeing he
was laying all crushed up and very dead. I buried him under a tree
root, and as I did it a conviction come to me.

"I didn't hardly question that conviction at all. Somehow, living
there alone so long, perhaps my natural womanly intuition was stronger
than ever before or since, and so I _knowed_. Then I went and pulled
poor Nelson Smith's board off from the tree and tossed it away for the
tide 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 as
if I and perhaps even the macaroons and tea were quite forgotten.

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

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

"Because," she said at last, poising a macaroon in mid-air, "because
that 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 from
sympathy. It loved me like a friend. When I flung a rock at that poor
little drenched monkey critter, it backed up my act with an anger like
the wrath o' God, and killed its own child to please me! But it got
right cheery the minute I seen the wrongness of my ways. Nelson Smith
had no business to say, 'This island ain't just right,' for it was a
righter place than ever I seen elsewhere. When I cast away that lying
board, all the birds begun to sing like mad. The green milk-coconuts
fell right and left. Only the monkeys seemed kind o' sad like still,
and no wonder. You see, their own mother, the island, had rounded on
one o' them for my sake!

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

"I think the island understood and tried to help me with all the
bounty and good cheer the poor thing possessed. None the less my heart
give 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 its
nature."

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

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

"You may well look startled. I was startled myself. Much more so than
you, likely. I didn't know then what you, with your book-learning,
very likely know now--that islands sometimes float. Their underparts
being a tangled-up mess of roots and old vines that new stuff's growed
over, they sometimes break away from the mainland in a brisk gale and
go off for a voyage, calm as a old-fashioned, eight-funnel steamer.
This one was uncommon large, being as much as two miles, maybe, from
shore to shore. It had its palm trees and its live things, just like
my own Anita, and I've sometimes wondered if this drifting piece
hadn't really been a part of my island once--just its daughter like,
as you might say.

"Be that, however, as it might be, no sooner did the floating piece
get within hailing distance than I hears a human holler and there was
a man dancing up and down on the shore like he was plumb crazy. Next
minute he had plunged into the narrow strip of water between us and in
a few minutes had swum to where I stood.

"Yes, of course it was none other than Nelson Smith!

"I knowed that the minute I set eyes on him. He had the very look of
not having no better sense than the man what wrote that board and then
nearly committed suicide trying to get away from the best island in
all the oceans. Glad enough he was to get back, though, for the
coconuts was running very short on the floater what had rescued him,
and the turtle eggs wasn't worth mentioning. Being short of grub is
the surest way I know to cure a man's fear of the unknown."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, to make a long story short, Nelson Smith told me he was a
aeronauter. In them days to be an aeronauter was not the same as to be
an aviatress is now. There was dangers in the air, and dangers in the
sea, and he had met with both. His gas tank had leaked and he had
dropped into the water close by Anita. A case or two of provisions was
all he could save from the total wreck.

"Now, as you might guess, I was crazy enough to find out what had
scared this Nelson Smith into trying to swim the Pacific. He told me a
story that seemed to fit pretty well with mine, only when it come to
the scary part he shut up like a clam, that aggravating way some men
have. I give it up at last for just man-foolishness, and we begun to
scheme to get away.

"Anita moped some while we talked it over. I realized how she must be
feeling, so I explained to her that it was right needful for us to get
with our kind again. If we stayed with her we should probably quarrel
like cats, and maybe even kill each other out of pure human
cussedness. She cheered up considerable after that, and even, I
thought, got a little anxious to have us leave. At any rate, when we
begun to provision up the little floater, which we had anchored to
the big island by a cable of twisted bark, the green nuts fell all
over the ground, and Nelson found more turtle nests in a day than I
had in weeks.

"During them days I really got fond of Nelson Smith. He was a
companionable body, and brave, or he wouldn't have been a professional
aeronauter, a job that was rightly thought tough enough for a woman,
let alone a man. Though he was not so well educated as me, at least he
was quiet and modest about what he did know, not like some men,
boasting most where there is least to brag of.

"Indeed, I misdoubt if Nelson and me would not have quit the sea and
the air together and set up housekeeping in some quiet little town up
in New England, maybe, after we had got away, if it had not been for
what happened when we went. I never, let me say, was so deceived in
any man before nor since. The thing taught me a lesson and I never was
fooled again.

"We was all ready to go, and then one morning, like a parting gift
from Anita, come a soft and favoring wind. Nelson and I run down the
beach together, for we didn't want our floater to blow off and leave
us. As we was running, our arms full of coconuts, Nelson Smith,
stubbed his bare toe on a sharp rock, and down he went. I hadn't
noticed, and was going on.

"But sudden the ground begun to shake under my feet, and the air was
full of a queer, grinding, groaning sound, like the very earth was in
pain.

"I turned around sharp. There sat Nelson, holding his bleeding toe in
both fists and giving vent to such awful words as no decent sea-going
lady would ever speak nor hear to!

"'Stop it, stop it!' I shrieked at him, but 'twas too late.

"Island or no island, Anita was a lady, too! She had a gentle heart,
but she knowed how to behave when she was insulted.

"With one terrible, great roar a spout of smoke and flame belched up
out o' the heart of Anita's crater hill a full mile into the air!

"I guess Nelson stopped swearing. He couldn't have heard himself,
anyways. Anita was talking now with tongues of flame and such roars as
would have bespoke the raging protest of a continent.

"I grabbed that fool man by the hand and run him down to the water. We
had to swim good and hard to catch up with our only hope, the floater.
No bark rope could hold her against the stiff breeze that was now
blowing, and she had broke her cable. By the time we scrambled aboard
great rocks was falling right and left. We couldn't see each other for
a while for the clouds of fine gray ash.

"It seemed like Anita was that mad she was flinging stones after us,
and truly I believe that such was her intention. I didn't blame her,
neither!

"Lucky for us the wind was strong and we was soon out of range.

"'So!' says I to Nelson, after I'd got most of the ashes out of my
mouth, and shook my hair clear of cinders. 'So, that was the reason
you up and left sudden when you was there before! You aggravated that
island till the poor thing druv you out!'

"'Well,' says he, and not so meek as I'd have admired to see him, 'how
could I know the darn island was a lady?'

"'Actions speak louder than words,' says I. 'You should have knowed it
by her ladylike behavior!'

"'Is volcanoes and slingin' hot rocks ladylike?' he says. 'Is snakes
ladylike? T'other time I cut my thumb on a tin can, I cussed a little
bit. Say--just a li'l' bit! An' what comes at me out o' all the caves,
and out o' every crack in the rocks, and out o' the very spring o'
water where I'd been drinkin'? Why snakes! _Snakes_, if you please,
big, little, green, red and sky-blue-scarlet! What'd I do? Jumped in
the water, of course. Why wouldn't I? I'd ruther swim and drown than
be stung or swallowed to death. But how was I t' know the snakes come
outta the rocks because I cussed?'

"'You, couldn't,' I agrees, sarcastic. 'Some folks never knows a lady
till she up and whangs 'em over the head with a brick. A real, gentle,
kind-like warning, them snakes were, which you would not heed! Take
shame to yourself, Nelly,' says I, right stern, 'that a decent little
island like Anita can't associate with you peaceable, but you must
hurt her sacredest feelings with language no lady would stand by to
hear!'

"I never did see Anita again. She may have blew herself right out of
the ocean in her just wrath at the vulgar, disgustin' language of
Nelson Smith. I don't know. We was took off the floater at last, and I
lost track of Nelson just as quick as I could when we was landed at
Frisco.

"He had taught me a lesson. A man is just full of mannishness, and the
best of 'em ain't good enough for a lady to sacrifice her
sensibilities to put up with.

"Nelson Smith, he seemed to feel real bad when he learned I was not
for him, and then he apologized. But apologies weren't no use to me. I
could never abide him, after the way he went and talked right in the
presence of me and my poor, sweet lady friend, Anita!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Now I am well versed in the lore of the sea in all ages. Through mists
of time I have enviously eyed wild voyagings of sea rovers who roved
and spun their yarns before the stronger sex came into its own, and
ousted man from his heroic pedestal. I have followed--across the
printed page--the wanderings of Odysseus. Before Gulliver I have
burned the incense of tranced attention; and with reverent awe
considered the history of one Munchausen, a baron. But alas, these
were only men!

In what field is not woman our subtle superior?

Meekly I bowed my head, and when my eyes dared lift again, the ancient
mariness had departed, leaving me to sorrow for my surpassed and
outdone idols. Also with a bill for macaroons and tea of such
incredible proportions that in comparison therewith I found it easy to
believe her story!

       *       *       *       *       *





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