"Farrell sat by the fire, cooking breakfast, the dog watching him. There was no coffin, nor any sign of a grave, and the tide was making. He had made haste to bury Santa during my absence.… He said not a word about it, and I did not question him. But he had played me this trick. Henceforth I felt no further pity."
"You may remember my saying, Roddy, when I first started to tell you about Santa, that it was impossible for me to hate Farrell worse than I did. Well, I thought so at the time. But now on the island I was to find myself mistaken, and this trick of his set me off hating him in a new and quite different way.
"I believe now, looking back, that this was the real beginning of Santa's revenge; or the first evident sign of its working; unless you count the behaviour of the dog—of which I will say more presently. At any rate I had no longer that cool godlike sense of mastery over the man which had sustained me in the boat. It may sound incredible: but whereas, cooped in that narrow shell of boards, I had found his presence gratifying, here on an island of wide prospects, where we could have parcelled out a kingdom apiece and lived by the year without sight of one another, I found it irritating and at times even intolerably so. He had found power, through her dead body, to give me a grievance against him, when I had supposed him too low and myself too high for anything to affect me that he could do.… It is always a mistake, Roddy, to falter once in an experiment. It is disloyalty in a man of science to renounce one at any point. Now, I had renounced, in handing Santa the flask; and again I had faltered, in a moment of generosity when I left him beside her corpse.… And of that act of generosity—and of delicacy, too, by the way—this thief had taken advantage.
"Oh, yes—I know what you will be wanting to say—that the man was her husband, hang it all!… I answer that he had been her husband and my darling's flesh I had resigned to him, as was meet and right.… But if you'll understand—if you've ever read what the Gospel quite truly says about marriage, to take it in—the man had no tyrant's monopoly beyond the grave. She was mine now—his, too, if he would—but mine also by right of my great love for her.
"You see, I am shaking, even as I speak of it. I had this grievance, and it festered and raised the whole temperature of my hate.… And this wasn't the worst, either. The worst was a sense that, lying somewhere with closed eyes under the ebb and flow of the tide, my beloved was working against me, watchfully, by unguessable ways, and weakening me. There was this dog, for example.… Yes, that had been the first token. How had it passed from me—this power over animals that had used to be exerted so easily?"
"But I had not lost my power over Farrell, although there were times when I mistrusted it. His eyes had given me the first warning, when I returned that morning and found myself tricked. They were half-timorous but also half-defiant, and wholly sly. It disconcerted him that I made no comment on his silence and asked no questions.
"On the fifth morning—by which time we had picked up enough strength to attempt a day's exploration of the west side of the island, and within an hour of the time fixed for our start, he found me fitting and nailing a short cross-plank to the boat's mast.
"'Hallo!' said he. 'What job are you spoiling there? I'm the carpenter of this party, or believed I was.'
"'And I'm the captain,' said I; 'and duly appointed—though I have no witness but you to the fact—if you choose to lie about it.… I'm doing a job which you have neglected: fixing a Cross for Santa. It will be a comfort, as we fare inland, to know she has a Christian mark over her grave.… You have the bearings accurate no doubt,' said I, lifting the heavy cross and, as I stooped to shoulder it, picking up the ship's mallet, which lay at my feet. 'Will it be here—or here?' I asked, choosing the spot and prodding the sharpened foot of the cross into the sand.… His face blanched. 'You accursed fool!' said I, 'do you suppose I haven't, these four days, been watching you and the dog?'—and, as I said it, the point of the mast struck upon timber. 'Come and help me to drive it deep,' I commanded. 'If we can work it down within reach of mallet, three taps will drive it so that it will stand firm above such tides as reach this anchorage of hers.'
"He came down the beach heavily and we heaved our strength together, driving the cross down by the coffin's head. 'The mallet is handy by you,' said I. 'Pick it up and use it while I hold steady.'