Orphan Island Read online

  Such was his joviality that Miss Smith guessed that he had yet more rum taken, and shrank away. In such an awful situation, and on Sunday morning too, to besot oneself with alcoholic liquor! What degradation! The sailors, who had not, from all appearances, been offered the opportunity of doing this, were gloomy and sour, and drew away to talk among themselves.

  Presently the children began stirring, and the elder of them were prodigiously pleased and amazed at their strange surroundings, so that Miss Smith and the nurse found it all they could do to keep their charges from scattering into the woods to play.

  “Oh, I fancy it’s safe enough,” said the doctor, engaged in kindling a fire of sticks with his magnifying glass. “Still, ye never know, and they’re tasty biteens for any prowling beast, the poor little devils. Faith, ma’am, if you and I chanced to be cannibals, we would have a famous breakfast, to be sure.”

  He laughed heartily at his own jest, but Miss Smith found it very shocking, and moved yet farther away from him.

  “Cheer up, ma’am,” he encouraged her. “Dum fata sinunt vivite lati. Never be down-hearted at all.”

  4

  The day wore on, and became prodigiously hot. Our castaways were well occupied in exploring their island; they were fortunate enough to find a spring of fresh water not far from them, and all the usualluxuries without which no island is worthy to be so called, such as mangoes, bread-fruit, and so forth. As the sun grew stronger, and as there were no indications of ferocious beasts, Miss Smith, Jean, and the orphans moved into the shade of the wood, Miss Smith closely admonishing the children on no account to stray out of call.

  After the midday meal, the sea being now comparatively smooth, the four sailors and Dr. O’Malley put out in the two boats in order to make a tour round the island.

  “You will be back long before nightfall, I trust,” said Miss Smith.

  “We shall, then,” the doctor assured her.

  But the day wore on, and they were not back before nightfall. Miss Smith grew perturbed. What could have happened? Fear filled the breasts of the two women, who found themselves thus alone, without male protection.

  The night drew on, and sleeping arrangements had to be made. Most of the orphans were laid upon the ground, wrapped in coats; for a few of the youngest Miss Smith made a kind of tent of her crinoline, reluctant as she was to divest herself of this garment, the wearing of which so much enhanced the natural dignity of females.

  In what tremor and agitation that night was spent, may be imagined. Jean, indeed, was fairly calm, relying still on the Book, though, as Miss Smith once told her shortly, as she had no acquaintance with its contents, it gave small reason for comfort. Miss Smith herself, not being a Calvinist but a Protestant Anglican, preferred to petition the Almighty for succour, which Jean, as she pointed out to her, could not with any show of logic do.

  After a while the sleep of exhaustion ended this theological discussion, until Miss Smith was woken by infants clamouring for breakfast.

  Eagerly the two women scanned the beach for the boats, but alas, there was no sign of them. A bright and beautiful day broke, heightened to its noon heat, wore to a drowsy afternoon, and still not a male human creature was within view, beyond the helpless and noisy little orphan boys.

  “Have they deserted us?” cried Miss Smith. “Can even the doctor have such a heart of stone? No, I will not credit it, even of a papistical and drunken atheist. Have they then met with some accident or assault?”

  “I dinna ken, miss,” replied Jean, a very literal woman, who always answered, to the best of her capacity, the rhetorical questions of others. “I think,” she went on, “I will give the younger bairns a wash, which they sorely need.”

  So saying, she set about this task. Miss Smith, too agitated to assist, and unwilling that the children should observe her agitation, moved to a little distance and sat on the shore, gazing out to sea.

  Alas, what a sorry plight was theirs I Two women stranded in the middle of the ocean with forty defenceless children and no male protector. For gentlemen, Miss Smith felt, are a protection in such emergencies. Gentlemen are so practical, so strong, so admirably well-informed. Gentlemen can cut down trees, put up tents, capture birds, beasts, and fishes. Gentlemen are so progressive. Gentlemen know where they are and what to do about it.

  For the first time in her life, Miss Smith would have given a great deal to see a pair of whiskers.

  And, even as she succumbed to this longing, a voice hailed her, and, turning about, she saw the ginger whiskers of Dr. O’Malley emerging from the wood.

  “Thank God!” Miss Smith breathed.

  He walked up to her, and seemed in a great state of anger.

  “Those scoundrels,” he exclaimed. “Those dastardly rogues. The third mate, too, who should have known better. Scum! They are gone with the boats. They’ve left us in the lurch, devil take them.”

  “Impossible!” cried Miss Smith, nearly swooning.

  “’Tis so indeed, as I’ll tell you. When we got round to the other side of the island, and had landed and explored it a little, those ruffians informed me of their project. They didn’t like the look of the island, they said; they were afraid of a visit from savages, and, moreover, they were sure no ship would ever come to such a lost spot. Anyhow, they were for leaving the island with the two boats. cargoed with fruit and cocoa-nuts, and setting out to look for some more likely island, or possibly striking some steamer line. We couldn’t do it with all those children, they said; couldn’t get the boats along. So, if you please, we were to leave the women and children here and make away by ourselves, the way we might have a chance of getting somewhere.”

  “My God,” said Miss Smith. “What villainy! And you, doctor—you did not consent to their scheme?”

  “I did not then. I gave Thinkwell a cracked jaw and Martin a black eye. But I couldn’t do much against the lot of them. They pushed off and left me stunned on the beach. When I came to, they were well out to sea, bad luck to the Protestant devils. I couldn’t do anything but camp for the night there and push back through the woods to-day, with the help of my compass. … Lord, but it’s been a dry day! We must see about fermenting some of this fruit-juice, the way we’ll get something fit to drink. They say there’s good stuff in the palm trunks too.”

  “Doctor,” said Miss Smith. “I thank you from my heart for not deserting us. I have sometimes, perhaps, spoken harshly to you in the past—and indeed there are things I could wish otherwise in you, for we are all sinful creatures. But you have played a noble part in this distressing business.”

  “Not a bit, my dear creature, not a bit. To tell ye the truth, I don’t for a moment think those scoundrels will be saved. I fancy we are better off where we are, where there is at least a chance of rescue, and plenty of food in the meantime. I dare say those fellows will be wishing themselves back before long. They may be set on by savages in canoes, or capsized in a squall and eaten up by sharks, or a thousand things. Had I not thought so, I would not have been left behind, for, as they say, ad suum quemque aquum est quastum esse callidum—which means, every man for himself. No, no, I stay here until I am taken away by some safer craft than an open boat’

  5

  Time wore on. In vain the castaways spied every day for a passing vessel: none passed or, if they passed, they stayed not. Weeks grew into months, months into years. Dr. O’Malley succeeded in fermenting the juice of mangoes to his satisfaction, and extracting wine from the palm, and passed much of his time in the happy intoxication thereby induced. “Bibere papaliter,” he would murmur. “Sure, if it is not quite that, it is the best I can do on this forsaken spot.” Miss Smith endeavoured to redeem him; at last, succumbing to propinquity and persuasion, she married him. The doctor’s earlier wife was so many thousand miles away that he did not think it necessary to mention her. He told Miss Smith that he must marry some one, and that he could not wait until the eldest female orphans came to suitable years. Obviously, too, he said, their position
, at present a little compromising, must, in the interests of propriety, be regularised by matrimony. Miss Smith saw that point, but did not think it right to marry a Roman Catholic. The doctor assured her that that was no matter; his Catholicism was merely nominal, and only came on when he had too much mangojuice taken, and anyhow he would promise not to influence in that direction any children they might have. At that Miss Smith blushed very much, and thought it more proper to consent. A lady cannot, she had been well taught by her mother, discuss with a gentleman the children she and he may have, without subsequently marrying him. It simply cannot be done. So Miss Smith consented to become (as she thought) Mrs. O’Malley, and they were married according to the Scottish rite, before two witnesses, the dour and disapproving Jean and the eldest orphan.

  I have now to record the sad fact that, far from redeeming the doctor from excessive fruit and palm juice, Miss Smith little by little abandoned her principle of abstinence and took to these pleasant and fermented liquors herself, until, alas, she was too frequently to be found in a state of cheerful irresponsibility and garrulity very far from the discretion of her spinster days. I cannot account for this: it may have been the climate, or the influence of her husband, or merely the gradual abandonment of hope of return to the world. Whatever the cause, the result was an increased sympathy between the so-called husband and wife, for, as the doctor remarked, “Ad connectendas amicitias, tenacissimum vinculum est morum similitudo. Which means, my dear, that I like you better tipsy.”

  Meanwhile, the orphans grew up together, under the guidance and tutelage of these three adults, and there were added to them the ten children born to Dr. O’Malley and Miss Smith, who had the Victorian knack of progenitiveness. Some of them were twins.

  In 1870, Dr. O’Malley was devoured, while out swimming, by a shark. This tragic event followed on a very violent quarrel which he had had with Miss Smith, he having been found instructing some of his children in popish rites and doctrines while in liquor.

  “In vino veritas,” he replied to her rebukes. “And, while we’re about it, here’s some more truth for you, me dear.” He proceeded, in a very disagreeable manner, to call her a wanton, revealing to her for the first time that she was his mistress and not his wife, and, in fact, Miss Smith still. Jean, who was present at the scene, and to whom Miss Smith turned for support under the outrage, merely observed that she had “kenned it all the while,” but had thought it better to say nothing, in order that Miss Smith might at least believe herself to be respectably married. “For I kenned weel,” said Jean, “that ye’d do it whether or no, and if ye had done it knowing the truth, ye would have been committing a sin. So I held my whist, as he should have done to the end. Men I”

  That same day, the doctor terminated his career in the sad and violent manner recorded above. Miss Smith, in her newly revealed relationship to him, scarcely liked to mourn him or play the widow. She regarded his removal as a dispensation of Providence, and decided that the respectable course now was to forget him as soon as might be.

  6

  And so the little island nation developed along its own lines, isolated and remote, year after year, decade after decade, century after century (for, as we know, the twentieth century followed the nineteenth). A strange community indeed! All those inter-marrying orphans of many races—what have their descendants become? And what the descendants of the doctor and Miss Smith? What strange strands of mid-Victorian piety and prudery are woven with the primitive instincts of such a race, remote from any contacts with the wider world? What are their religions, what their outlook, what their speech, what culture or learning have they won? Is Miss Smith long since dead, or does she perhaps still reign, nearly a century old, the actual ancestress of many inhabitants, the spiritual head of all? What has Miss Charlotte Smith, the English clergyman’s daughter, now become? What of her pieties and her pruderies is left after nearly seventy years of island life? What traces, ancestral or influential, of the Irish doctor, are to be found among the island people? Are they still a Victorian people, or have they suffered, even as we, the phases of the passing years? Or have they perhaps reverted to mere savagery?

  Chapter II

  AFTER SEVENTY YEARS I

  1

  MR. THINKWELL was a lecturer in sociology in the University of Cambridge, and a very amiable, learned, and gentleman-like man, who lived in Grange Road. In the year 1923 he was fifty-three years of age, a widower with three grown children, Charles, William, and Rosamond. Of these, Charles, who was twenty-five, clever and conceited, had, since the war, been living in London and experimenting in literature. William (twenty-two) had, for the last three years, been at Trinity College, Cambridge, reading for the Natural Sciences Tripos, in which he had, being a youth of some scientific talent, acquitted himself with credit. Rosamond (nineteen) had, since leaving school, lived at home with her father, being neither eager in the pursuit of further learning nor apt at the practice of any profession.

  It happened one morning early in the Long Vacation that Mr. Thinkwell received by post a packet from his aged aunts in Sydney. He had never seen his aunts, for his father, the son of a rough and not very virtuous but wealthy sea captain long settled in Australia, had come to England as a young man, to practise at the English bar, and had married and brought up his children there. The sea captain, Mr. Thinkwell’s grandfather, had died in the eighteen-seventies. As we shall see, though he had behaved ill enough, in fact too ill, he had been conscience-stricken at the last.

  The letter which Mr. Thinkwell took out of the bulky envelope was written in the slender, flowing, sloping hand often used by old ladies, and more surely still by such old ladies as are rather genteel than actually gentle, for, though Mr. Thinkwell’s father had been a highly educated man, the family whom he had left in Australia had remained the family of a well-off merchant captain who had started as a common sailor. Mr. Thinkwell’s aunts were well considered in Sydney, but did not consort with the local aristocracy, such as it was.

  “Dear Nephew”—(ran the letter)—“Your Aunt Martha and myself have recently moved house, in the course of which we had a great clean up and a grand rummage among your Grandfather’s old things, turning up a great number of curious old sea Treasures, and among them we came on the Enclosed, which your Aunt Martha and I well remember your Grandfather giving to your Grandmother and ourselves in his last illness, in 1875, and bidding us make it public after his death, but of course your Grandmother thought nothing more about it, nor did we, but put it away with the rest of his things as a Memento, along with his telescope, sharks’ teeth, etc., etc. But your Aunt and I remember his saying before he died that it was sadly on his conscience that he and some fellow sailors had long ago deserted a Party on some remote Island, making off with the boats and leaving them to fend for themselves, and that, though he had not liked to make the tale public while he lived, for fear he should be ill thought of for the part he (being then a mate though only a third) and his companions had played, he desired us to make amends after his death by giving the Information contained in these Papers (which he had prepared some years ago in a previous attack of illness which he recovered from, however, so put Papers away) to some one who would organise an expedition to this Island and discover whether any of the unfortunate Party still survived. I recollect my Mother promising to do this, to soothe him, but of course we never thought of it again, and the papers have lain in the old sea-chest all this time, until we came on them in clearing up. It scarcely seems worth while to trouble about such old tales, and the Party are surely by now all deceased, even if they survived at all, but we thought you might like to see the Papers, so am enclosing them. Do not trouble to return.

  “I suppose you are not thinking of ever paying a visit to Australia. Should be very pleased to see you if ever you came across. Hoping that yourself and family are all well, I remain

  “Your affecate aunt,

  “Sarah Thinkwell.”

  Having perused this letter, and feeling mild
ly interested in its contents, Mr. Thinkwell proceeded to extract from the envelope the other documents it contained, which were very yellow and ancient, and consisted of a roughly-drawn ocean chart, marked with latitude and longitude, and dotted with islands, one of which was marked with a cross, and a sheet of paper written over in a vile and common scrawl which Mr. Thinkwell recognised from some old letters of his father’s, as that of his grandfather, Captain William Thinkwell. The inscription was brief. It ran: “Pacific Ocean (Oceania), lat. about 23, long. 115, fertile coral island, uninhabited by Natives, consisting of two parts, joined by issmus and surrounded by lagoon. On it were cast up, from S. S. “Providence,” wrecked by Act of God, May, 1855, on the passage to San Francisco, a Party. Viz.: Miss Smith, Dr. O’Malley, a nurse Jean, and a great number of Orfen Children, about 40. Might be there yet, as Island seemed well provided, but more likely dead. Obliged by circs, and no blame to any one, to leave them there, and have not yet been able to send Rescue Party, but hope this may be done after my decease, as should not care to go to next World without mentioning this, and can’t say when my time will come, having fits as I do.

  “(Signed) William Thinkwell.

  “November, 10th 1867.”

  “Island should be known by its shape, viz., two parts joined by neck, wooded hills, coral reef round lagoon.”

  “H’m,” said Mr. Thinkwell, “a bland ruffian indeed.” He thoughtfully laid down the papers, removed his glasses, and took a drink of the coffee which Rosamond had just passed him. “This is really a little interesting.”

  “Yes,” said Rosamond, who was an absent girl, and often appeared to be thinking about something other than what was being mentioned.