West Wind Drift

by George Barr McCutcheon

The ring of the ax resounded in the forest; the clangour of hammer and nail, the rasp of the saw, the clatter of timber went on from dawn to dusk,—for there was no eight-hour law in this smiling land, nor was there any other union save that of staunch endeavour, no other Brotherhood except that of Man. There was never a question of wage, never a dispute as to hours, never a thought of strike. Every labourer was worthy of his hire,—and his hire was food!

The Doraine was gradually being dismantled. She was being stripped of every bit of material that could be used in constructing and furnishing the huts. The new camp lay not more than a mile and a half from the basin. A road had been cleared through the wood from the small, hastily constructed dock and runway on the eastern side of the basin to the open territory beyond.

Material, supplies, equipment were carried through the densely shaded avenue, and later on, after the warehouses and granaries had been built, the leafy lane witnessed the transportation of ton upon ton of stores, patiently borne in hundredweight lots, in bushel bags, in clumsy parcels, by men whose work seemed endless; wheat, barley, oats, sugar, coffee and other commodities entrusted to the steamship company for delivery in the United States. Tobacco, canned and refrigerated meats, olives, flour, figs and dates in large quantities were included in the vast cargo, to say nothing of the enormous supply of canned fruits and vegetables. Washed wool, tanned leather, homespun cotton and woollen cloth, silks, hides, furs, rugs, laces, linseed oil, blankets,—all these came ashore in course of time, but of the sinister treasure that had inspired the destruction of the ship, i.e., the manganese, the rubber, the nitrates, the copper bars, and the stacks of high explosives, not a pound was moved. All this was left for another and more leisurely day.

In the end, the once luxurious liner was to be reduced to “skin and bones,” to employ a trite but eminently appropriate phrase. Ultimately she became a black, unlovely skeleton, bereft of every vestige of her former opulence. Her decks were torn up and the timbers hauled away to make floors in the huts; the doors, mirrors, stairways, windows, rails, carpets, pipes, bathtubs, toilets, lamps, every foot of woodwork from stem to stern, berths, washbasins, kitchen ranges, boilers,—in fact, everything that man could make use of was taken from the ship, leaving nothing of her but a hollow, echoing shell through which the wind howled or moaned a ghostly requiem.

Much of this material was carefully stacked or stored away against the day when it could be utilized in the construction of a small but sturdy ship, in which a chosen company of sailors were to fare out to sea once more in search of the world they had lost.

Tireless and indomitable engineers later on succeeded in transferring portions of the damaged machinery, including dynamos, to the camp, where in course of time their skill and ingenuity bade fair to triumph over seemingly insurmountable difficulties in the matter of restoration.

Fully six weeks elapsed, however, before the women were allowed to leave the ship for their new homes on the land, and even then they came but a few at a time and only as huts were ready and fully equipped to receive them. Each hut contained a combination kitchen and living-room, with a single bedchamber. A substantial fireplace, built of stone and mortar, with a tall chimney at the back, was a feature in every house. The cracks between the logs, and all chinks, were sealed with thick layers of mortar; the ceilings, made of stout saplings, were treated in a similar manner, while the roof, resting on a sturdy ridge-pole, and securely anchored, was of three layers of poles, interstices mortared and the whole covered with a vast quantity of seaweed, moss and reeds held in place by several well-fastened sections of iron railing from the decks of the Doraine.

While the huts were uniform in size, shape and construction, there was nothing to prevent the occupant from subsequently enlarging and improving his house. For the present, however, the interests of all were best served by speed and compactness.

The superintendent of construction was Algernon Adonis Percival. As a matter of fact, the end of the first week found him occupying the position of General Manager for the whole enterprise, an unsolicited honour but one which he was resolved that no one, great or small, should deride. He had one stormy “run-in,” as he described it, with Mr. Landover and his group of satellites. This occurred about the middle of their first week on the island when practically every able-bodied man from the Doraine was at work cutting a way through the forest or in constructing the dock at the water's edge. As the incident is entitled to a very definite place in this narrative, a more or less extended account of it may be given here and now, even at the risk of being classed as a digression, or a step backward in the sequence of the history.

Mr. Landover, Mr. Block, Mr. Nicklestick and two or three other men were grouped on the after-deck early one morning decrying the brainless scheme to build a camp out there in the open. Their audience included several women, among them Mrs. Spofford, Ruth Clinton, Madame Careni-Amori, Madame Obosky, Mrs. Block and a couple of loquacious Rio Janeiro ladies.