“Deshay was like a crazy man; he tore up and down the beach and shook his fists and raved until his face was blue. He was an edifying sight, and we white people sat in a little row in our proscenium box and admired the exhibition. You see, he was three-quarters white, and that gave him imagination; but the other quarter, which should have been self-control, was Kanaka, and that knocked up the pawls and let his line run off the reel, so to speak.
“We were really badly off, Doctor; the island was very small and offered no food that we could see. There was a small cluster of dwarfed palms, and they bore a few immature nuts; aside from these trees there was no shelter. We had not even a boat-sail. Fortunately there was water on this island—brackish, but potable.
“Deshay pulled himself together after a while, but he was savage and morose. I managed to get out of him the pleasing news that the next island was over one hundred miles distant, and probably no better than the one which we were on. Fancy our condition, Doctor!—our utter lack of everything but bad feeling. All of us, including the two sailors who had pulled the boat, hated Deshay; Deshay returned the sentiment; the two sailors, with their mates, had from the first been insolent to Claud, of whom they said rough things owing to his subjugation by Deshay; and on this, as well as from personal causes, both Lentz and I had more than once fallen foul of them. Within the last fortnight the tedium of the voyage had begun to tell upon Lentz, and the old fellow had grown peevish and sulky; both of us had incurred Deshay’s dislike by having very little to say to him. Conceive, then, the delights of the first few days of hardship with such a company.
“It was, I believe, the morning of the third day that I was awakened by hearing Deshay cry out: ‘Where’s that cursed dog?’ I rolled over and saw that he held in his hand one of the heavy oak stretchers of the boat and was looking savagely about him. Near by sat Claud, his face in his hands.
“Deshay snarled out: ‘Where’s that dog, you droolin’ baby?’
“Claud mumbled something, without looking up, and then I heard him say: ‘We haven’t come to that—yet,’ and he said it with a groan, and I could see his face working painfully.
‘Deshay walked toward him, talking as he went. He said: ‘You’ll see if we haven’t when I find the cur, you chicken-livered little milksop!’ and at that moment there came from up the beach a musical bay which tolled out like a church-bell and died lingeringly away, to be drowned in the crash of the breakers; again this mournful note welled forth, rising like the voice of a bell-buoy above the roar of the surf, and this time it ended in a series of short, excited barks—such a bark as a hound gives when he has ‘treed.’
“Claud sprang to his feet. ‘He’s found something!’ he cried, and began to run down the beach. Deshay and I followed, and soon we came upon Dixie, who was very carefully uncovering a nest of new-laid turtle’s eggs.
“Deshay was for eating his fill then and there, but this I would not permit, so we gathered them up and carried them back to the others, where we proceeded to divide them.
“‘Give Dixie his share,’ said I to Deshay, who had undertaken the division.