<h2 id="id00464" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER 10</h2>
<p id="id00465" style="margin-top: 2em">They started working eagerly to revive her. While McTee bathed her face
and throat with handfuls of the sea water, Harrigan worked to liberate
her from the twine. It was not easy. The twine was wet, and the knot
held fast. Finally he gnawed it in two with his teeth. McTee, at the
same time, elicited a faint moan. Her wrist was bruised and swollen
rather than dangerously cut. Harrigan stuffed the twine into his hip
pocket; then the two Adams carried their Eve to the shade of a tree and
watched the color come back to her face by slow degrees.</p>
<p id="id00466">The wind now increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the
wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing
through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain
was coming, and against that tropical squall shelter was necessary.</p>
<p id="id00467">The two men ran down the beach and returned dragging the ponderous
section of the wheelhouse. They leaned the frame against two trunks at
the same instant that the first big drops of rain rattled against it.
Overhead they were quite securely protected by the dense and
interweaving foliage of the two trees, but still the wind whistled in
at either side and over and under the frame of boards. Of one accord
they dropped beside their patient.</p>
<p id="id00468">She was trembling violently; they heard the light, continuous
chattering of her teeth. After her many hours under the merciless sun,
this sudden change of temperature might bring on the fever against
which they could not fight. They stripped off their shirts and wound
them carefully around her shivering body. McTee lifted her in his arms
and sat down with his back to the wind. Harrigan took a place beside
him, and they caught her close. They seemed to be striving by the force
of their will to drive the heat from their own blood into her trembling
body. But still she moaned in her delirium, and the shivering would not
stop.</p>
<p id="id00469">Then the great idea came to Harrigan. He rose without a word and ran
out into the rain to a fallen tree which must have been blown down
years before, for now the trunk and the splintered stump were rotten to
the core. He had noticed it that day. There was only a rim of firm wood
left of the wreck. The stump gave readily enough under his pull. He
ripped away long strips of the casing, bark and wood, and carried it
back to the shelter. He made a second trip to secure a great armful of
the powder-dry time-rotted core of the stump.</p>
<p id="id00470">His third expedition carried him a little farther afield to a small
sapling which he could barely make out through the night. He bent down
the top of the little tree and snapped off about five feet of its
length. This in turn he brought to the shelter. He stopped short here,
frozen with amazement. The girl was raving in her delirium, and to
soothe her, McTee was singing to her horrible sailor chanteys, pieced
out with improvised and foolish words.</p>
<p id="id00471">Harrigan listened only while his astonishment kept him helpless; then
he took up his work. He first stripped away the twigs from his sapling
top. Then he tied the twine firmly at either end of the stick, leaving
the string loose. Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he had
brought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard wood
several inches in length. By rubbing this against the fragment of the
wheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a rough
point.</p>
<p id="id00472">He took the largest slab of the rim wood from the stump and knelt upon
it to hold it firm. On this wood he rested his peg, which was wrapped
in several folds of the twine and pressed down by the second fragment
of wood. When he moved the long stick back and forth, the peg revolved
at a tremendous rate of speed, its partially sharpened end digging into
the wood on which it rested. It is a method of starting a fire which
was once familiarly used by Indians.</p>
<p id="id00473">For half an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor.
Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg
slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a
short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed
of its rotation—a small sound of protest drowned by the bellowing of
the storm and the ringing songs of McTee. Now the smoke rose again and
this time the peg kept firm. The smoke grew pungent; there was a spark,
then a glow, and it spread and widened among the powdery, rotten wood
which Harrigan had heaped around his rotating peg.</p>
<p id="id00474">He tossed the peg and bow aside and blew softly and steadily on the
glowing point. It spread still more and now a small tongue of flame
rose and flickered. Instantly Harrigan laid small bits of wood
criss-cross on the pile of tinder. The flame licked at them
tentatively, recoiled, rose again and caught hold. The fire was well
started.</p>
<p id="id00475">With gusts of wind fanning it roughly, the flame rose fast. Harrigan
made other journeys to the rotten stump and wrenched away great chunks
of bark and wood. He came back and piled them on the fire. It towered
high, the upper tongues twisting among the branches of the tree. They
laid Kate Malone between the windbreak and the fire. In a short time
her trembling ceased; she turned her face to the blaze and slept.</p>
<p id="id00476">They watched her with jealous care all night. In lieu of a pillow they
heaped some of the wood dust from the stump beneath her head. When
their large hands hovered over her to straighten the clothes which the
wind fluttered, she seemed marvelously delicate and fragile. It was
astonishing that so fragile a creature should have lived through the
buffeting of the sea.</p>
<p id="id00477">Toward morning the storm fell at a breath and the rain died away. They
agreed that it might be safe to leave her alone while they ventured out
to look for food, and at the first hint of light they started out, one
to the north, and one to the south. Harrigan started at an easy run. He
felt a joyous exultation like that of a boy eager for play. He tried to
find shellfish first, but without success. His search carried him far
down the beach to a group of big rocks rolling out to sea. On the
leeward side of these rocks, in little hollows of the stone, he found a
quantity of the eggs of some seafowl. They were quite large, the shells
a dirty, faint blue and apparently very thick. He collected all he
could carry and started back.</p>
<p id="id00478">As he approached the shelter, he heard voices and stopped short with a
sudden pang; McTee had returned first and awakened the girl. Harrigan
sighed. He knew now how he had wanted to watch her eyes open for the
first time, the cool sea-green eyes lighted by bewilderment, surprise,
and joy. All that delight had been McTee's. It was that dark, handsome
face she had seen leaning over her when she awoke. He was firmly
implanted in her mind by this time as her savior. She opened her eyes,
hungered, and she had seen McTee bringing food. Harrigan drew a long
breath and went on slowly with lowered head.</p>
<p id="id00479">They sat cross-legged, facing each other. The captain was showing Kate
his prizes, which seemed to consist of a quantity of shellfish. She
clapped her hands at something McTee said, and her laughter,
wonderfully clear, reminded Harrigan of the chiming of faraway church
bells. Blind anger suddenly possessed him as he stood by the fire
glowering down at them.</p>
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