“But my shoes and stockings,� she said facing me bravely, although the color came and went at the untoward situation for a modest maiden.
“I can manage the shoes,� said I, “but the stockings—� I paused. “When we have made the dress,� I continued “you won’t need that red skirt and you can make shift to slit it into lengths and wrap them about your legs. They will protect you better than what you have lost.�
Fortunately I brought along with me a sailor’s needle and palm with stout thread aplenty still safe with other contents of the lockers. It was intensely hot in the sun and it did not take the canvas spread out upon the sand long to dry. Picking it up we moved inward across the narrow strip of beach to the cool shadow of the cliff. There was much to be done, but clothes and footgear for her had to be attended to first of all. And as we had seen no one, we went about making them with energy and a good heart.
Here my little mistress could help. I am as good a tailor, I dare say, as any man that sails the seas, but feminine rigging had never been my experience or endeavor. Between us, with the aid of my sheath knife, which I ever kept sharp, we managed to cut out a plain loose dress like a tunic. Fortunately, she being but a small woman and understanding how to use all the goods to the best advantage without wasting any, we were able to get out a suitable garment which fell below her knees halfway to the ground.
While she was busy cutting it I had taken off my vest or jerkin of stout leather, and with her remaining shoe as a model for shape and size, I contrived the sort of a foot covering that the savages of North America call a moccasin. It was shapely enough too, and I made the soles of several thicknesses of leather, and protected the heel and toe by additional strips. So I managed to knock together a very serviceable pair of loose shoes. By the time I had finished them my lady had got her pieces laid out, and the sewing of them devolved upon me, for she could by no means with her small hands manage the rough cloth and large needle. I worked hard and before noon I had the garment fit for her to wear.
My mistress then retired behind the protecting rock and donned the tunic. She had taken my sheath knife with her and had made herself some kind of a girdle which she had cut from her now useless skirt. She had put on the shoes, and with further strips from the cloth had replaced the stocking that she had lost, and the other one also. She must have seen the admiration in my eyes as she came rather timidly forward to my gaze. I suppose she had some doubts as to her appearance, but my tailoring and cobbling became her vastly, I avowed. The canvas was new and white, the scarlet about her waist, even the brown leather of my moccasins with the red above, added a charming touch.
From a woman of the world and society she became in one hour, it would seem, a creature of simplicity, like the ancient Romans of whom I had read. She still possesses that garment and those shoes, and sometimes in the privacy of her chamber she dons them for me. The sight brings back old days and brave days of hard fighting and true comradeship and great adventure on that far-off island set in that tropic sea under those blue skies. And I love her better than when in the diamonds and powder and silk and brilliant array with which nowadays beauty obscures itself under the demand of fashion.
CHAPTER XI
HOW WE EXPLORE THE WONDROUS SHORE
“THANKS to you, Master Hampdon,� she began, reassured by my glance, “I am now clothed and shod comfortably and in my right mind.�
“You are always in that, Mistress,� said I quickly.