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.