by Philip Wylie
If Henry had been the man whose wife had run away--he might have forgiven her.
If Stephen Stone had been the individual whose father deliberately stranded him on an island, he would have eaten out his heart with secret malice and thwarted ambition.
The strength of the two men lay in different sinews of the soul.
It was May and 1921.
Stone sat bitterly in the house. Henry had been gone for three days in the sailboat.
Stone was bitter because he himself had planned that his-son should be independent and go where he pleased when he pleased--and because he found that such journeys occasioned him only worry and lonliness.
He stamped ion the floor with a cane which hung on the arm of a chair. Jack looked from the kitchen.
"Yes, boss?"
"Bring me a glass of that port,"
"Yest boss."
When. Jack came with the glass on the tray, Stone said: "How much have we left?"
"Of this port?"
"Of this port."
"About a barrel."
"Well--next time I ask for port, bring me some of that stuff we made ourselves.
It's not bad."
"No, boss."
"And you get back to your cooking."
McCobb entered from the compound, He was carrying a brace of ducks.
"Nice ones, eh ?" He held them up.
Stone did not look at the ducks. He banged irritably on the floor.
"It’s as quiet around her as the inside of a tomb.”
McCobb nodded, "You'd get over that gout quicker, I think, if you were careful with the wine."
"Hell!" Stone seldom used even that initial word of profanity. "Wine! Who wouldn't drink wine? Why the devil doesn't that young whipper-snapper come back here?"
"He'll be in soon," McCobb said.
He did not mention his own worries--worries he always felt when Henry traveled alone. He passed behind Stone's back and looked at him almost pityingly. Stone was growing old--and he did not know it. Some day--the mirror would tell him irrefutably.
McCobb was growing old, too. He was years older than Stone, but life had not told so heavily upon him. He had an oaken constitution and a valiant heart. He was ready for the years.
A shrill whistle floated up from the bay. Stone jumped onto his feet and scarcely noticed his gout. He hobbled to the door.
"There he is, damn it!"
McCobb was at his side. They waited impatiently while Henry made fast his boat and came up the road.
He swung along with a prodigious stride. He was a full six feet two inches, now.
He weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. His hair was bronze, his eyes turquoise, his skin mahogany. He was a magnificent man. When he laughed his voice poured from deep and resonant lungs.
As he strode through the gate they saw that he had a sack on his shoulders and there was motion inside the sack. He took the front steps at a jump.
"Hello, father. How's the foot?"
"Better, son. Better."
"McCobb! Glad to see you."
He dropped the bag, which squirmed. He took the hands, of the two men.
"We've missed you," McCobb said.
Henry laughed again. "I've been all over. Put in at the bay north of Jack's Lake.
Carried that canoe over to the lake and took myself a paddle."
He walked into the house, the men beside him.
"How was it?" Stephen Stone asked the question.
"Marvelous. Plenty of crocodiles, but they don't bother the boat. Wouldn't like to upset, though." A squeal came from the porch and Henry went out to collect the bag. "I caught a pair of those little peccaries or whatever they are. Hey, Jack!"
The door to the kitchen flew open.
"I was coming, I had the lids off the stove and the potatoes in my lap."
"Here's a pair of pigs. We'll breed them for a steady supply of pork."
"Mmm-mmm," Jack said. He picked up the bag and looked back. "Glad to see you home, Mr. Henry."
"Thanks."
Stephen Stone sipped his wine.
"Well? What else happened?"
"Nothing. I worked on that cabin I'm building at the head of the lake. It's going to be a dandy little spot. Then I'm going to study the geology of the island. I have it all doped out--"
"We had, too, before you were old enough to talk."
"It's volcanic--and the remnant of a continent--isn't it?"
Stone nodded. "There used to be a continent that ran from Africa all the way to India. The lemurs were evolved on it. Madagascar is about the only part of it left."
"That's what I thought. McCobb Mountain is the highest point remaining--and it's part of the rim of a volcano. Jack's Lake is in the crater. And, by the way, there are hot springs up at the head of the lake. They spout out of a row of mud dunes. All colors of mud. Nothing growing. Some are sulphurous and some are salty."
The Scotchman chuckled. "We ought to take your father's gout there and establish a spa."
"The devil with my gout. What else, Henry?"
"Something I want you to see."
The man with the cane laughed. "I knew it! I knew it when you whistled. Well, sir?"
"Ruins."
"Good Lord!"
"Buried in the jungle. I came on them while I was chasing those pigs. Big ruins.
Temples, I should think--all made of stone and covered with carving. A language--it looks a little bit like Sanskrit--,but I'm not sure. They must have been very beautiful, once, but they're old as time, now. And they've been under water."
"What?"
"Fossilized barnacles and things inside the rooms."
"Are there rooms?"
"You bet there are rooms. Scores of rooms. Big rooms. Carved gods and altars and more decoration than you ever dreamed of."
He turned toward McCobb.
"We won’t have to dig our gold out of the rocks, now. There are tons of it there.
And stones. All kinds."
He thrust his hand in his pocket and produced two rubies as large as the ball of his thumb. They had been rolled and polished into perfect spheres.
The stones passed from hand to hand. "Silver and other metals. They did a fine job, those people, whoever they were. And they must have left in a hurry, because their things are all over the place. Sand mixed with them. Shells. But they're there, nevertheless."
McCobb clicked the rubies together in the palm of his hand.
"Funny."
Henry shook his head. "Very funny. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the temporary sinking of their temple under the sea that brought them to an end."
"How long ago did you think--?"
The young man shrugged. "I can't guess. We'll try to figure it out when we go there--but it must be old. Older than Egypt, I should imagine. Older than anything. you've told me about."
"The lemur continent went down," Stone said pensively, "in the ages before man appeared."
"Then he's been on the island recently," Henry smiled. "Say in the last twenty-five thousand years. Or maybe even in the last ten. Which--in a manner of speaking--is only yesterday."
November 3, 1923.
Stephen Stone wrote the date in his diary. He wrote it slowly and carefully and his hand was not quite steady.
Then he continued:
It was twenty-five years ago today that we landed on Stone Island. A quarter of a century. Tonight we are having a banquet to "celebrate," but our celebration is rather a brave defense than a jubilee.
Except for the single ship which foundered off bur shores, not so much as a gull or a drifting branch has come to us from the world beyond. We might as well be upon another planet with the infinite reaches of the ether between ourselves and those regions which once we called our home. The last statement cannot apply to Henry, whose only home has been the island, although I catch him sometimes in poses of rumination that suggest to me he is not altogether without a dim sentiment for the land from which he came and an inarticulate desi
re to be there.
Consciously, however, he seems to prefer the island and has often assured me that he would rather live and die here than to mingle with the society and participate in the enterprises for which I have fitted him to the best of my ability.
It is never my practice, of course, to admit that he will be prisoner here for life and I keep asserting that with the developments in ocean travel which have doubtless been made and the interest in exploration bound to rise, it is sure that a vessel will one day reach this place. My doubt can only be entered here.
Horrible thoughts sometimes assail me. A hundred times I have read the portions of the newspaper which came to us with the ill-fated ship and I have thought about the war in progress then. The fact that no one and nothing passes here makes me wonder if the war did not increase to such proportions that it virtually destroyed civilization.
I imagine sometimes all ships destroyed, all commerce ended, and the people in America reduced to the pioneer state. Or, perhaps, some dreadful weapon has decimated the populations of the world.
A catastrophe which would blot out mankind, even, might take place unbeknownst to us. Thus, in years, I have commenced to understand the fullness of the isolation which I, in a fit of frenzy and despair, contrived.
And because that doom was forged by the weak willfullness of a woman, I have redoubled my tutelage of Henry in the subject. Yearly, the idea of woman grows more detestable to me, and in it I repose all my apologia pro vita mea.
Of manners, people, custom, science and art, we have very little to add to Henry's store. We have given him our all, searching our minds through the long days for any fragment of truth or wisdom that would be of value to him. He is, I think, a man cultured and disciplined far above any I ever met in my life, and although his manner is generally light and affable, it is but the bright garment with which a pleasant disposition conceals a stern mind.
We have managed almost annually to invent a new form of entertainment and new interests for him and ourselves. At first these were uncomplicated and simple tasks. The domestication of the zebu-oxen, the establishment of ample vegetable gardens, the building of our now luxurious flower gardens, horticultural experiments with the local flora, the collection and classification of all living things on the island--even, at the last, to a study of microscopic life.
As time passed, however, these interests became broader. Henry, who has a remarkable physique, passed through a stage of physical exercise and development.
McCobb taught him to box and I to fence when he was a child. He became a proficient swimmer and I daresay his prowess in that direction would astonish any of his "civilized"
contemporaries.
When he was sixteen and until he was twenty-four his studies enveloped him. I believe he has read every one of the books in my library.
In the past two years he has lived away from the compound a good deal of the time, studying the ruins which he discovered, and his archeological conclusions are very fascinating to him. With the help of my library he has more or less identified the people who built the temples as the offshoot of a very early race--possibly of the Atlaneans, but more probably the descendants of the inhabitants of a great continent in the south Pacific which he predicates from a reading of their inscriptions.
He is engaged now in writing a book about the people and I have seen a few chapter which I find remarkable both for their clarity of style--and for the vividness with which he is able to create a background from his reading, a background so lucid that it makes all his deductions most plausible. He informs me that he will seal the book--which contains his full studies of the ancient language--in one of my copper drums so that it will be available long after his living testimony is not.
Jack's hair has suddenly turned white. I find my own is graying. McCobb is not as alert and agile as he used to be. We are growing old.
I wonder who will be first?
Henry sat beside McCobb on the top of the mountain which bore the Scotchman's name. McCobb smoked and Henry ate an apple. They had had apples for twenty years.
The tropical sun beat upon them. It sparkled over the waters of Jack's Lake. It glinted on the tower of a temple far away. Henry had cleared the vegetation around the best preserved portion of the ruins and the result was that a single minaret could be seen from any high spot on the island.
They could see, to the north, the tiny dot which was Jack on the harbor, fishing.
McCobb squinted his eyes so that a hundred wrinkles came at their corners. "I asked you up here with me, son, because I wanted to talk with you."
"Yes? What about?"
"About yourself."
"Me?"
The old Scotchman nodded. "About you. Yesterday I thought I'd garther some clams for chowder for dinner, so I went down to the outside beach on the west headland."
Henry flushed, but he said nothing.
"There was somebody sitting there," the Scotchman said, trying with a heavy hand to be impersonal, "who was crying. I could hear him from where I was. He was looking over the sea and sobbing. Then he threw out his arms and reached--as if he was reaching for something out thee toward the west. Then he beat his chest."
Henry threw a stone over the cliff and the sound of its landing came to them before McCobb continued.
"Finally he laughed. It wasn't a nice laugh to hear. He laughed a long time. Then he jumped into the water and swam and swam and swam. Out where there are sharks. Out where there are devilfish. He swam until an old man with failing eyes, maybe, could see him no more. Then it was the old man's turn to sit clown and cry."
Silence.
"I thought you weren't coming back."
"So did I," Henry said.
"But you turned and came in. I saw that, too. So I asked you up here."
Henry looked at the Scot. His face was hard.
"I was bored, McCobb. Couldn't stand it."
"Would it matter so much if the sharks got me?"
"Well--let's see. It would matter to your dad, of course."
"He doesn't deserve--"
"All right. All right. I don't defend him. But--it would matter to Jack. And to me."
"I'm sorry, McCobb."
"Oh--that's nothing. It's all right. But I had in my mind another person. Yourself.
It would matter to you, Henry. A great deal."
"Not as much as you'd think."
"No?"
Henry leaned back on his elbow and squinted at the glittering panorama.
"I'm a loss, McCobb. I'm nothing. I'm like a clock--a marvelous clock--that someone spends a lifetime to make and then puts in a grave. I can only tell time to the worms and the worms can't profit by it. My chimes are for stones. The earth holds in my ticking."
"Is that the truth indeed?" McCobb chuckled. "And suppose somebody digs up the clock. What then? You know, laddie, your father is right. Every year that passes adds to the chance that somebody will come past this place. They'll run out of land to explore some day and then they'll start on the sea and cover: every square mile to be sure they've missed nothing. They'll cover the surface and drag the bottom.
"And they'll find Stone Island. They'll see McCobb Mountain. We'll touch off this pile of brush"--he gestured toward the heap of wood which had been kept in perennial readiness--"and they'll take us back.
Think, Henry. You've never seen even a town--let alone a city. You've never seen a horse. Or a cable car. Or the steam engines that pull the railroads. Or the great bridges on the rivers. Or the steamships. Or a woman."
Henry stirred.
"No. Or a woman."
"Never seen a woman," McCobb whispered.
"I'm not sure that I want to."
The words struck McCobb's heart forcibly. Never seen a woman. He knew what women would say when they saw Henry. And he was searching frantically for a reason to tie the young man to his calm life, to give him strength and hope. He dared to trespass on Stone's unchanging sermon.
"Did it ever occur to you, lad
die, that your father might be mistaken about women?"
"What do you mean?" Henry spoke breathlessly.
McCobb was frightened.
"Nothing much, lad, Nothing much. But it's possible that your father's a bit warped on the subject. Not all women might be bad."
"I don't believe it."
"Think it over. They're the same flesh as yourself. They have the same emotions.
They have different minds, it's true--but there are women who don't cost a man his soul.
Many."
"Is that true, McCobb?"
"'Tis true. But you'll not tell your father I've said it?"
"I won't tell him."
"Thanks, lad."
Henry stood.
"That makes a difference in my life, McCobb. A difference you'll never understand. I've been thinking about women so much that I've been sure they'd ruin me the minute I got back to land--if I ever did. I found that I would pay no attention to father's teachings. I was sure I would be lost--as he had been. I don't know why. He said their spell was destruction--and I've never seen them--but somehow--I could know something about that spell."
"I've no doubt."
"Look."
Henry suddenly reddened. He stuffed his hand into his shirt and from his bosom drew a tiny figure that had hung round his neck on a delicate chain. It was the figure, presumably, of a nude woman.
McCobb looked at it. He did not laugh. He said soberly: "I'll make you one, Henry. I'll make you one like a living woman."
"I didn't do it right," Henry said slowly. "I know. But father tore all the pictures from the books. Even the medical books."
"Let's go back son."
Henry stretched himself.
"I feel--changed, McCobb. Different. Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
For a long time after that Henry did not swim away from shore and he did not weep on the beach. He was gay again and even his father, who was slowly becoming estranged from everyone, noticed the difference. He attributed it to resignation.
Chapter Eight: THE HOPELESSNESS
SPRING and 1929. That spring marked the next to the last change in the tempers of the islanders. The one which followed it was final.
