CHAPTER III
A Wreck—and Mirandola
Dennis, as he made his breakfast, pondered deeply on the situation, taking the monkey in to his confidence. "Could we change parts, Sir Monkey—if I were you, and you were Dennis Hazelrig, what would you do? This is your island: we will call it yours; I am your guest. You seem to be a solitary creature like myself: are you miserable, I wonder? Does your loneliness trouble you? There is food for us both: it is so warm that for the present, at least, I need no more clothes than you; neither of us will starve. How old are you? You look wise enough to be very old. Am I to remain on this island until I have a beard as long and white as Sir Parson's at home? Oh, you cannot understand what I say, for all your wise look: you cannot know what a wretched mortal I am. What can I do?"
The monkey only blinked at him, and plucked a dark plum-like fruit from the bough and munched it.
For a time Dennis sat listless, feeling too wretched even to move from the spot. Then he got up and made his way back to the cliff. He stood on the summit, scanning the whole circumference of the shining sea. Not a sail was in sight. He scarcely knew whether he was disappointed or not. Supposing a vessel hove into view, he durst not try to attract the attention of some one on board. If it were English it would be welcome as a spar to a drowning man. If it were Spanish, he might as well jump into the maw of some sea monster. Yet how could he discover its nationality without at the same time betraying his presence? Several times during that third day he climbed to the same spot, and looked out with the same eagerness; not one glimpse did he catch of a white wing upon the water; and he always turned away with the same uncertainty.
He spent hours in roaming, as aimlessly as before, along the beach and through the woodland. Coming in the course of the day to the cliff near which he had been cast ashore, he remembered that hitherto he had not made a complete circuit of the island; the beach northward appeared to be barred by huge masses of rock. In his present mood he had no curiosity to see what lay beyond; he supposed indeed that, if he did care to clamber toilsomely over the barrier, he would simply arrive at a point of the beach which he had already reached from the other side.
But later in the day, when the tedium of inaction had become unbearable, he started to explore the lower course of the streamlet on whose bank he had slept. He found that the channel gradually widened, the banks growing higher as he neared the sea. By and by he came upon a wide pool on whose rim a mass of seaweed lay rotting in the sun, and stooping out of sheer curiosity he dipped his finger and, tasting, discovered that the water was salt, as he had supposed. Clearly at high tide the sea came thus far up the gully. The entrance was as yet hidden from him by the jutting shoulder of the cliff, but he could hear now the light rumble of surf upon the beach, and he went on, feeling some curiosity to learn whereabouts on the shore he would arrive.
He had taken but a few more steps when, rounding the projecting cliff, he came upon a scene which petrified him with astonishment. Docked in the sand, lying over on her side, was the battered hulk of a two-masted vessel. Her stern was somewhat towards him, and he read, painted there, the word Maid; but so familiar was he with her lines that he needed not the rest of the name; this was in very truth the wreck of the Maid Marian. Of her two masts only the stumps remained: her deck, inclined towards him, was littered with a medley of rigging; her rudder was gone, part of her bulwarks torn away.
There was an uncanny look about the hapless vessel as she lay there on the sandy beach, at the head of a small bay bounded by the cliffs on either side. Dennis felt just such a thrill as he might have felt had he come suddenly upon the body of a friend. The solitude, the silence, intensified by the rustling wash of the surf, the background of boundless sky and ocean, combined to affect him with a sense of desolation. He felt a shrinking reluctance to approach, and when he had conquered this and stood beneath the vessel's quarter, it was some time before he summoned up the resolution to climb on board. Then he mounted slowly, hesitatingly, by the aid of a loose shroud, holding his breath as if fearful of disturbing a sleeper.