Well, then, I continued, the island was desolate, uninhabited. There were fruits and berries, turtles, young birds in nests. Long times of dry weather under a tropical sun. In this I made a fire day after day by rubbing sticks together till I could kindle the dry leaves. Then came seasons of wet of weeks together. In these I had no fire, and had to subsist on berries and fruits, and the eggs of sea-fowl. I was there, as it seemed, an age. It was three years. I had long given up all hope of seeing Bénévent or men again. My island was about nine leagues round. On the highest hill, by the shore, I raised a mast. In a cleft in it I struck a piece of plank. On the plank I wrote, with white chalk—
“Au Secours! Pierre Crépin!”
This I renewed as the rains washed out my characters. At last help came. Unshaven, ragged, unkempt, I was taken on board an American vessel that had been driven by stress of weather far out of her course. And I am here.
My narrative ended, I was plied with a thousand questions, and it was not until mine host closed his doors for the night, and thrust us good-humouredly into the street, that I was able to bid my friends good-night, and turn my steps toward my mother’s cottage—that cottage where the dear soul awaited me with the anxiety of a mother who has mourned her only son as lost. That cottage where the soft bed of my boyish days, spread for me, with snowy linen, by the kindest of hands, had been ready for me these three hours. But I was not unattended. My friends, some dozen of them, would see me home to my mother’s door—would wring her hand in hearty congratulation at my return.
In the morning you may be sure I had plenty of callers. It was like a levée. They began to come before I was up, but my mother would not suffer that I should be waked. And I, who had not slept in a Christian bed for years, slept like a top, and slept it out.
I was sitting at my breakfast of cutlets, omelette, and white wine, when Cécile knocked at the door of the cottage.
“Enter!” said my mother.
“Ah, Cécile!” I cried; “but not the Cécile I left at Bénévent when I went away.”
For she was altered. She had grown more matronly. The loveliness of her girlhood had gone. It had given place to the more mature beauty of womanhood. What a difference four years makes to a girl!
“Pierre,” she cries, “we are so glad to see you back! You bring us news—the news we all want that I want.”