Presently, however, despite the mildness of the night and the protection provided by the cliff against the westerly breeze, they found their resting-place too cold for comfort and had to search for better shelter until their clothes were dry. They made their way northward along the beach and were fortunate enough to find not far away a place where the high sandstone was cut by a wooded ravine debouching onto the shore. Here tall wheatlike weeds grew between the scrub pines and bayberries; the castaways curled together like animals in a nest and knew no more till after dawn.
It was the sand fleas that roused them at last: scores of sand fleas hopped and crawled all over them — attracted, luckily, not by hunger but by the warmth of their bodies — and tickled them awake.
Ebenezer jumped up and looked unbelievingly about. "Dear God!" he laughed. "I had forgot!"
Bertrand too stood up, and the sand fleas — not really parasites at all — hopped madly in search of cover.
"And I," he said, hoarse from exposure. "I dreamt I was in London with my Betsy. God pox those vermin for waking me!"
"But we're alive, at that. 'Tis more than anyone expected."
"Thanks to you, sir!" Bertrand fell to his knees before the poet. " 'Tis a Catholic saint that saves the man who ruined him!"
"Make me no saint today," Ebenezer said, "or you'll have me a Jesuit tomorrow." But he was flattered nonetheless. "No doubt I had better drowned when Father hears the news!"
Bertrand clasped his hands together. "Many's the wrong I've done ye, sir, that I'll pay in Hell for, anon — nor shall I want company in the fire. But I vow ye a vow this instant I'm your slave fore'er, to do with as ye will, and should we e'er be rescued off this island I shall give my life to gaining back your loss."
The Laureate, embarrassed by these protestations, replied, "I dare not ask it, lest you pledge my soul!" and proposed an immediate search for food. The day was bright, and warm for mid-September; they were chilled through from exposure, and upon brushing the sand from themselves found their joints stiff and every muscle sore from the past night's labors. But their clothes were dry except for the side on which they'd slept, and a little stamping of feet and swinging of arms was enough to start the warm blood coursing. They were without hats, wigs, or shoes, but otherwise adequately clothed in the sturdy garb of seamen. Food, however, they had to find, though Ebenezer longed to explore the island at once: their stomachs rumbled, and they had not much strength. To cook their meal was no great problem: Bertrand had with him the little tinderbox he carried in his pocket for smoking purposes, and though the tinder itself was damp, the flint and steel were good as new, and the beach afforded driftwood and dry seaweed. Finding something to cook was another matter. The woods no doubt abounded with small game; gulls, kingfishers, rails, and sandpipers soared and flitted along the beach; and there were certainly fish to be caught in the shallows; but they had no implements to hunt with.
Bertrand despaired afresh. " 'Tis a passing cruel prank fate plays us, to trade a quick death for a slow!" And despite his recent gratitude, the surliness with which he rejected various proposals for improvising weapons betrayed a certain resentment toward Ebenezer for having saved him. Indeed, he shortly abandoned as hopeless the search for means and went to gather firewood, declaring his intention to starve at least in relative comfort. Ebenezer, left to his own resources, resolved to walk some distance down the beach, hoping to find inspiration along the way.
It was a long beach. In fact, the island appeared to be ot considerable size, for though the shoreline curved out of sight in both directions, its reappearance farther south suggested a cove or bay, perhaps a succession of them; one could not locate the actual curve of the island's perimeter. Of its body nothing could be seen except the line of stratified cliffs, caved by the sea and weathered to various browns and oranges, and the edge trees of the forest that ran back from the precipice — some with half their roots exposed, some already fallen the sixty or a hundred feet to the beach and polished like pewter by salt air and sand. If one scaled those cliffs, what wonders might one see?
Ebenezer had been at sea nearly half a year in all, yet never had he seen it so calm. There was no ground swell at alclass="underline" only catspaws riffling here and there, and laps of waves not two hands high. As he walked he noticed minnows darting in the shallows and schools of white perch flipping and rippling a few feet out. Crabs, as well, of a sort he had never seen, slid sideways out to safety as he approached; in the water their shells were olive against the yellow sand, but the carapaces he found along the beach were cooked a reddish-orange by the sun.
"Would God I had a net!"
Around a bend just past the place where they had crawled ashore he saw a startling sight — all along the foreshore, below the line of weed and driftwood that marked high tide, were sheets of white paper; others rolled and curled in the rim of the sea. The thought that there might be people on the island made his face burn, not entirely with joy — in fact, it was a curious relief he felt, small but undeniable, when the papers proved to be the tale of Hicktopeake, Laughing King of Accomack; but he could not as yet say plainly what it was that relieved him. He gathered all the pages he could find, though the ink had run so that only an occasional word was legible: they would, when dry, be good for lighting fires.
He started back with them, thinking idly of John Smith's adventures. Did this curious pleasure stem from the fact that he, like Smith, was in terra incognita, or was there more to it? He hoped they would find no Indians, at least, like the fearsome fellows Smith had found spearing fish along the shore. .
" "Sheart!" he cried aloud, and kissed the wondrous Journal.
An hour later their dinner was on the fire: seven respectable perch, half a foot long after cleaning, roasted on a green laurel turnspit, and on a thin piece of shale such as could be picked up anywhere along the cliffs, four crabs, frankly an experiment, fried in their natural juices. The hard-shelled ones could not be speared, but in pursuit of them Bertrand had found these others — similar in appearance but with shells soft as Spanish kid — brooding in clumps of sea-grass near the shore. Nor did they want for water; in a dozen places along the base of the cliff Ebenezer had found natural springs issuing from what looked like layers of hard clay, whence they ran seawards across the beach on the beds of softer clay one encountered every few hundred feet. One had, indeed, to take care in approaching these springs, for the clay beds were slippery and in places treacherously soft, as Ebenezer learned: without warning one could plunge knee-deep into what looked rock-hard on the surface. But the water was clean and sweet from filtering through the stone, and so cold it stung the teeth.
To get full benefit of the sun they did their cooking on the beach. Bertrand, humbled anew by his master's inspiration, attended the meal; Ebenezer made use of a fallen tree nearby for a back rest and was content to chew upon a reed and regard the sputtering crabs.