For three days they rested here before trying to explore the neighboring country. On the fourth, Bradley stated that he was going to scale the bluffs and learn what lay beyond. He told the girl that she should remain in hiding; but she refused to be left, saying that whatever fate was to be his, she intended to share it, so that he was at last forced to permit her to come with him. Through woods at the summit of the bluff they made their way toward the north and had gone but a short distance when the wood ended and before them they saw the waters of the inland sea and dimly in the distance the coveted shore.
The beach lay some two hundred yards from the foot of the hill on which they stood, nor was there a tree nor any other form of shelter between them and the water as far up and down the coast as they could see. Among other plans Bradley had thought of constructing a covered raft upon which they might drift to the mainland; but as such a contrivance would necessarily be of considerable weight, it must be built in the water of the sea, since they could not hope to move it even a short distance overland.
"If this wood was only at the edge of the water," he sighed.
"But it is not," the girl reminded him, and then: "Let us make the best of it. We have escaped from death for a time at least.
We have food and good water and peace and each other. What more could we have upon the mainland?"
"But I thought you wanted to get back to your own country!" he exclaimed.
She cast her eyes upon the ground and half turned away. "I do," she said, "yet I am happy here. I could be little happier there."
Bradley stood in silent thought. "`We have food and good water and peace and each other!'" he repeated to himself. He turned then and looked at the girl, and it was as though in the days that they had been together this was the first time that he had really seen her. The circumstances that had thrown them together, the dangers through which they had passed, all the weird and horrible surroundings that had formed the background of his knowledge of her had had their effect--she had been but the companion of an adventure; her self-reliance, her endurance, her loyalty, had been only what one man might expect of another, and he saw that he had unconsciously assumed an attitude toward her that he might have assumed toward a man. Yet there had been a difference--he recalled now the strange sensation of elation that had thrilled him upon the occasions when the girl had pressed his hand in hers, and the depression that had followed her announcement of her love for An-Tak.
He took a step toward her. A fierce yearning to seize her and crush her in his arms, swept over him, and then there flashed upon the screen of recollection the picture of a stately hall set amidst broad gardens and ancient trees and of a proud old man with beetling brows--an old man who held his head very high--and Bradley shook his head and turned away again.
They went back then to their little acre, and the days came and went, and the man fashioned spear and bow and arrows and hunted with them that they might have meat, and he made hooks of fishbone and caught fishes with wondrous flies of his own invention; and the girl gathered fruits and cooked the flesh and the fish and made beds of branches and soft grasses.
She cured the hides of the animals he killed and made them soft by much pounding. She made sandals for herself and for the man and fashioned a hide after the manner of those worn by the warriors of her tribe and made the man wear it, for his own garments were in rags.
She was always the same--sweet and kind and helpful--but always there was about her manner and her expression just a trace of wistfulness, and often she sat and looked at the man when he did not know it, her brows puckered in thought as though she were trying to fathom and to understand him.
In the face of the cliff, Bradley scooped a cave from the rotted granite of which the hill was composed, ****** a shelter for them against the rains. He brought wood for their cook-fire which they used only in the middle of the day--a time when there was little likelihood of Wieroos being in the air so far from their city--and then he learned to bank it with earth in such a way that the embers held until the following noon without giving off smoke.
Always he was planning on reaching the mainland, and never a day passed that he did not go to the top of the hill and look out across the sea toward the dark, distant line that meant for him comparative ******* and possibly reunion with his comrades.
The girl always went with him, standing at his side and watching the stern expression on his face with just a tinge of sadness on her own.
"You are not happy," she said once.
"I should be over there with my men," he replied. "I do not know what may have happened to them."
"I want you to be happy," she said quite simply; "but I should be very lonely if you went away and left me here."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "I would not do that, little girl," he said gently. "If you cannot go with me, I shall not go.
If either of us must go alone, it will be you."
Her face lighted to a wondrous smile. "Then we shall not be separated," she said, "for I shall never leave you as long as we both live."
He looked down into her face for a moment and then: "Who was An-Tak? " he asked.
"My brother," she replied. "Why?"
And then, even less than before, could he tell her. It was then that he did something he had never done before--he put his arms about her and stooping, kissed her forehead. "Until you find An-Tak, he said, "I will be your brother."
She drew away. "I already have a brother," she said, "and I do not want another."