VI
You'd think anxiety about Ivy'd have been the hardest thing to bear in the life we were living; and so it would have been if she'd showed any anxiety about herself. Not she. You might have thought she was looking forward to a Christmas-box from home. If she was ever scared it was when I wasn't looking. No—it was the beasts that made us anxious.
At first we'd go for long walks and make explorations up and down the island. The beasts hid from us according to the wild nature that's in them. You could only tell from fresh tracks in damp places that they hadn't utterly disappeared. Now and then we saw deer and antelopes far off; and at night, of course, there was always something doing in the way of a chorus. Beasts that gave our end of the island the go-by daytimes paid us visits nights and sat under the windows, you may say, and sang their songs.
It seemed natural after a time to be cooped up in a big green prison with a lot of loose wild things that could bite and tear you to pieces if they thought of it. We were hard to scare. What scared me first was this: When we got to the island it was alive with goats. Well, these just casually disappeared. Then, one morning, bright and early, I came on the big python in the act of swallowing a baby antelope. It gave me a horrid start and set me thinking. How long could the island support a menagerie? What would the meat-eaters do when they'd killed off all the easy meat—finished up the deer and antelopes and all? Would they fight it out among themselves—big tiger eat little tiger—until only the fittest one survived? And what would that fittest one do if he got good and hungry and began to think that I'd make a square meal for him—or Ivy?
I reached two conclusions—and the cave about the same time. First, I wouldn't tell Ivy I was scared. Second, I'd make fire by friction or otherwise—or bust. Once I got fire, I'd never let it go out. I set to work with the firesticks right off, and Ivy came and stood by and looked on.
"Never saw you put so much elbow-grease into anything," she said. "What's the matter with you, anyway?"
"It's a game," I grunted, "and these two fellows will have me beat if I don't look lively."
"Right Bower," she says then, slow and deliberate, "I can see you're upside down about something. Tell Ivy."
"Look," says I—"smoke! I never got it so quick before." I spun the pointed stick between the palms of my hands harder than ever and gloated over the wisp of smoke that came from where it was boring into the flat stick.
"Make a bow," says Ivy. "Loop the bowstring round the hand-piece and you'll get more friction with less work."
"By gorry!" says I; "you're right. I remember a picture in a geography—'Native Drilling a Conch Shell.' Fool that I am to forget!"
"Guess you and I learned out of the same geography," said Ivy.
"Only I didn't learn," said I. "I'm off to cut something tough to make the bow."
"Don't go far," she says.
"Why not?" said I—the sporty way a man does when he pretends that he's going to take a night off with the boys and play poker.
"Because," she says smiling, "I'm afraid the beasts will get me while you're gone."
"Rats!" says I.
"Tigers!" says she. "Oh, Right, you unplumbable old idiot! Do you think you can come into this cave and hide anything from me under that transparent face of yours? The minute you came in and hemmed and hawed, and said as you had nothing to do you guessed you'd have a go with the firesticks—I knew. What scared you?"
I surrendered and told her.
"... And then," she said, "you think maybe they'll hurt—us?"
I nodded.
"Why, it's war," she said. "I've read enough about war to know that there are two safe rules to follow. First, declare war yourself while the other fellow's thinking about it; and then strike him before he's even heard that you have declared it. That sounds mixed, but it's easy enough. We'll declare war on the dangerous beasts while I'm still in the months of hop, skip, and jump."
"A certain woman," said I, "wouldn't let the beasts go down in the old Boldero, as would have been beneficial for all parties."
"This is different," she said. "This island's got to be a safe place for a little child to play in or Ivy Bower's got to be told the reason why."
"You're dead right, Ivy dear," I says, "and always was. But how? I'm cursed if I know how to kill a tiger without a rifle.... Let's get fire first and put the citadel in a state of siege. Then we'll try our hand at traps, snares, and pitfalls. I'm strong, but I'm cursed if I want to fall on a tiger with nothing in my hands but a knife or an axe."
"All I care about," said Ivy, "is to get everything settled, so that when the time comes we can be comfortable and plenty domestic."
She sat in the mouth of the cave and looked over the smooth cove to the rolling ocean beyond; and she had the expression of a little girl playing at being married with a little boy friend in the playhouse that her father had just given her for her birthday.
I got a piece of springy wood to make a bow with, and sat by her shaping it with my knife. That night we got fire. Ivy caught some fish in the cove and we cooked them; and—thanks, O Lord!—how good they were! We sat up very late comparing impressions, each saying how each felt when the smoke began to show sparks and when the tinder pieces finally caught, and how each had felt when the broiled smell of the fish had begun to go abroad in the land. We told each other of all the good things we had eaten in our day, but how this surpassed them all. And later we told each other all our favorite names—boy names in case it should be a boy and girl names in case it shouldn't.
Then, suddenly, something being hunted by something tore by in the dark—not very far off. The sweat came off me in buckets, and I heaped wood on the fire and flung burning brands into the night, this way and that, as far as I could fling them. Ivy said I was like Jupiter trying to hurl thunder-bolts, after the invention of Christianity, and not rightly understanding why they wouldn't explode any more.