She tried to embrace me, but I disengaged myself from her. I could not take her to my heart, coming, as she did, a willing spectator from the place of sacrifice.
CHAPTER XIX
I BECOME CHIEF COOK
I now resolved to introduce the cooking of food upon the island. From the fish and clams which the natives offered me in their raw state I turned in disgust, but I reflected that, cooked, they would make excellent eating. I was tired of fruit, and craved a more substantial diet. How long I might be compelled to remain upon this island I knew not. Perhaps I was destined to spend the rest of my life upon it. Why, then, should I be deprived of the luxury of cooking my food, when, with my flint and steel, I possessed the means of making a fire?
When I spoke of my intention to Melannie she failed to grasp my meaning. She had no notion of fire except in connexion with the smoke on the mountain, and when I told her I could make fire like that and convert it to my use, she became incredulous.
"If you can make fire, Peter," she said, "you are greater than all the gods upon the island. Whoever heard of making fire?"
In order to convince her, and to test the effect which my fire might have upon these islanders, I invited her to accompany me to a remote part of the island, seldom visited, where I had already constructed a fire-place and collected a quantity of fuel, of which there was an abundance lying round. She came with me fearlessly, for she trusted me entirely, and her intelligence, which was superior to the islanders', made her less superstitious than the savages over whom she nominally reigned. When she saw the dried wood and leaves I had collected in my fire-place she appeared to think I had become suddenly demented, as sometimes happened to the people on the island, when they were thought to be possessed by evil spirits.
When I took up my flint and steel, however, and began to strike sparks on to the prepared tinder, she drew back alarmed, although her woman's curiosity conquered her desire to run away. But when the sparks lighted the dried leaves, causing the wood to crackle and burn, she would have fled if I had not detained her.
"There is no magic in fire-making, Melannie," I said, trying to allay her fears; "all white men make fires. It is as necessary to them as air and water."
But it was hard to convince the queen of this. She looked at my fire, which now burned brightly, with wonder and alarm. "Of a truth, Peter," she said, "thy magic is beyond me. I know now thou art indeed come from the sun. No man born of men could work such marvel."