CORNELL 
 
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Cornell University Library 
 PR 6039.H96D2 
 
 "David & Jonathan, " 
 
 3 1924 013 231 174 
 
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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013231174 
 
David and Jonathan 
 
E. TEMPLE THURSTON'S WORICS 
 
 NOVELS 
 THE APPLE OF EDEN 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF KATHERINE 
 SALLY BISHOP 
 MIRAGE 
 
 THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL NONSENSE 
 THE GREATEST WISH IN THE WORLD 
 THE GARDEN OF RESURRECTION 
 THE ANTAGONISTS 
 RICHARD FURLONG 
 THE ACHIEVEMENT 
 THE PASSIONATE CRIME 
 THE FIVE-BARRED GATE 
 ENCHANTMENT 
 
 SHORT STORIES 
 THIRTEEN I TARES I OVER THE HILL 
 
 BELLES-LETTRES 
 
 THE PATCHWORK PAPERS 
 THE FLOWER OF GLOSTER 
 THE OPEN WINDOW 
 
 PLAYS. 
 DRIVEN I THE COST 
 
 POEMS 
 SUMMER 1917 
 
 Edited BY "Bell-wattle" 
 
 DIGRESSIONS 
 
 Beine Extracts from the Works ol E. Temple 
 
 Thurston 
 
 F'cap. 870. 3u. ed.aiet cloth, liB. net leather. 
 
'David & Jonathan 
 
 By E. Temple Thurston 
 
 
 LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO 
 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
DeOlcation 
 
 L-IEUT. D. M. THOMSON, M.C. 
 My dear David, 
 
 I have no doubt the War has been accountable 
 for many stranger happenings than our friendship, 
 though scarcely anything more sincere, wherefore, it 
 being a sentiment of mine to associate my boolcs 
 with my friendships, I am attaching your name to 
 this story for sundry reasons needing no explanation 
 to you. 
 
 While you were out in' France you associated me 
 with something worth more than a thousand volumes, 
 and which this tale of adventure can never repay. 
 All .1 can hope is that you will take the thought 
 behind it and substitute it for the deed which the 
 printer has set forth. By all of which I mean no 
 other than that I am 
 
 Your sincere friend, 
 
 E. T. T. 
 Adelphi, 1918. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. — I RECEIVE A Reward fob my Pains 
 II. — ^The Blood Ritual of FRiENosmp 
 III. — An Opportunity to see ^ife 
 IV. — ^The Voyage . . ' . 
 V. — ^The Bottle-green Petticoat 
 VI. — Marooned .... 
 VII. — "Swiss Family Robinson" . 
 VIII. — ^The Mala,ga's Boat 
 IX. — ^Burden of the Sea 
 X. — Responsibilities . 
 XI. — Convalescence 
 XII. — Preliminaries 
 XIII. — Femininity .... 
 XIV. — ^The First Board Meeting . 
 XV.— Sex ..... 
 XVI. — An Insight .... 
 XVII. — ^The Venture by Sea . 
 XVIII. — The Venture by Land. 
 XIX.-^The Second Board Meeting. 
 XX. — ^The Beginning of Realization 
 XXI. — Jonathan's Adventure. 
 XXII. — Justification ... 
 XXIII. — TJhe Approach of the Inevitable 
 XXrV.— Man to Man. 
 XXV. — Putting it to the Test 
 XXVI.— The Test Itself . 
 XXVII.- TheJAnswer . 
 XXVni.— 'Home 
 
 PAGE 
 
 7 
 
 14 
 
 26 
 
 32 
 
 42 
 
 53 
 
 62 
 
 69 
 
 74 
 
 81 
 
 86 
 
 92 
 
 97 
 
 107 
 
 118 
 
 139 
 
 147 
 
 151 
 
 162 
 
 173 
 
 181 
 
 190 
 
 199 
 
 218 
 
 228 
 
 242 
 
 250 
 
 264 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 I RECEIVE A REWARD FOR MY PAINS 
 
 LIFE, or Fate, or Destiny — call it any one 
 of the many names that happen to 
 fit your terminology — has a subtle method of 
 concealing its purpose. Speech and the ac- 
 companying veneer of civilization which, age 
 by age, generation by generation, are coated 
 over the real impulsory instincts, have succeeded 
 in varnishing our true selves out of recognition. 
 It is as though we were like one of those so- 
 called old masters — ^to be seen in picture- 
 framers' windows. " Old masters, restored," 
 so you read on the printed card. Beneath that 
 card is a canvas, half of which is covered by 
 an apparently old paintings the head of a woman 
 or man. The other half is that head restored 
 with all the modern paint, all the modem 
 varnish — restored, indeed, in the sense that it 
 is made new, but no more like the original 
 
8 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 painting than a pot of paint is like a work of 
 art. 
 
 In such a manner as this have our own real 
 selves been restored and renovated out of 
 recognition. Civilization, with the brushes of 
 speech in its hand, the colours of varied manners 
 and customs on its palette, has succeeded in 
 concealing our real purposes, our true impulsory 
 instincts, so that we now are scarcely conscious 
 of the primary motives which, at the root of 
 all, actuate us in everything we do. 
 
 Now and again in face of sudden death, so 
 far as we can remember our sensations after- 
 wards, we realize that the intention upper- 
 most in our minds was the need for food, the 
 preservation of our young, the combative 
 instinct, which, as we regard them from a 
 distance, were actually the most important at 
 the moment and indeed . those which pulled 
 us through. But quickly enough we forget 
 that insight into the past; we lose all sense 
 of the value of that vision of our primal motives, 
 and carry on our lives in the same blind fashion, 
 imagining that the appearances of facts, rather 
 than the facts themselves, alone contribute to 
 the shaping of our conduct. 
 
 This story — needing no recommendation of 
 mine to guarantee its truth — ^is of one of those 
 isolated cases in which two men and a woman 
 as well, were brought face to face with the 
 absolute and eternal impulses of life, and framed 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 9 
 
 their conduct, worked out their destiny as 
 inevitably and unconsciously upon the funda- 
 mental laws of existence as though Civilization 
 had but lightly touched them with its brush 
 of speech, as though the pigments of hg,bit 
 and custom had concealed nothing of what they 
 were. 
 
 It was all by chance I came across this 
 story. No man who had experienced it himself 
 could have told it to anyone else or written it 
 for the benefit of his fellow creatures. A man 
 who had been through it, would be too sensitive 
 to see it in print, even under an assumed name, 
 even with every detail so disguised as to make 
 it for ever unrecognizable to any but the parties 
 concerned. , 
 
 My friend David evidently had felt -that 
 about it and yet had been so obsessed with its 
 value as regards human interest, that he had 
 been unable to resist making a document of it 
 up to a certain point of the story and locking 
 it away. 
 
 I am beginning my tale this way because I 
 feel it needs this formal announcement of 
 introduction. The reality of it is in no little 
 degree the measure of its value, and the reality 
 of it, in however slight a degree, is contained 
 in the way in which it came into my hands. 
 
 My friend was sj^ending a winter on the 
 Italian Riviera when a slight attack of pneu,- 
 monia forced upon him the prospect of remaining 
 
10 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 there well on into the spring. His family 
 was with him, and, being tired of hotel life, he 
 looked about, securing at last a charming villa 
 for a few months on the hills just outside 
 Bordighera. 
 
 The place fascinated him. Both he and 
 his wife loved the Italian life, the Italian people, 
 the Italian scenery. He woke up one sipriog 
 morning with the soft winds blowing in the 
 window across the orange trees in his garden, 
 and felt in himself the eager desire to live there 
 for the rest of his life. 
 
 At breakfast he broached the project to 
 his wife and children. There was a general 
 chorus of delight, and no sooner was the meal 
 over than he set about securing a lease for an 
 indefinite period and arranging for the furniture 
 to be turned out with the least possible delay. 
 His own gods — his own sticks, he insisted on 
 having about him. 
 
 Within three days, I had receive4 a letter 
 from him telling me of his arrangements and 
 the decision he had made to sell the lease of 
 his house in Grosvenor Street. 
 
 " You can help me," he said blandly in his 
 letter. " I don't want to come home just for 
 a household removal." 
 
 There followed then, on a separate sheet of 
 paper, a complete list of all the things he 
 wanted to keep and those which he wanted 
 me to arrange to be sold in a Bond Street 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 11 
 
 auction mart. The lease of his house was in 
 the hands of agents. He did not require me 
 to exert myself over that. 
 
 Finally he concluded, as though offering me 
 reward — as indeed it has proved — ^for my 
 trouble : " In the top drawer of that Queen 
 Anne desk in the billiard-room, you will find 
 a bulky package of papers. They are tied 
 up with red tape. This is not indicative of 
 their character. Do what you like with them." 
 
 Such casual inference as this made no arrest 
 upon my mind. It was not until the Queen 
 Anne desk, with other pieces of furniture, was 
 being packed to be sent off to Bordighera 
 that I remembered this sentence in the letter, 
 and before the keys were given up, took the 
 papers away with me. One Sunday afternoon, 
 some weeks later, when the rain was falling 
 in cascades from the overflowing waterspouts, 
 when the river isteamed with the splash of the 
 falling drops and the noise of it on my window- 
 panes drowned even the distant pulse of the 
 trams along the Embankment, I ordered the 
 fire to be lit, filled my pipe and took those 
 papers out of my desk, to where I had consigned 
 them. - 
 
 It required but two moments to realize that 
 
 this was no ordinary statement of facts, but 
 
 a human document, set out, not with the 
 
 experience of the practised story writer, or 
 
 yet with the precision of a diary, yet more 
 
J2 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 intimate, more illuminating than any diary 
 could have been ; more engrossing than any 
 tale, with its introduction, its gradual develop- 
 ment and its climax. 
 
 Yet to have published it in the form in^ which 
 I found it so absorbing, would not only have 
 been impossible by reason of the facts which 
 it disclosed or the identities it made no effort to 
 conceal, but its wider interest would have 
 been lost to the outside reader. He was my 
 friend. I had known him intimately for some 
 years. It was because I knew him so well 
 that the written substance of those papers 
 was to me such an amazing revelation. But 
 for the general reader, who was not acquainted 
 with my friend, I knew if I were to make use 
 of those papers as he had given me permission 
 to, I must adopt some other form of expression. 
 
 I have transcribed it, then, into the form of 
 a tale, with here and there actual quotations 
 from his manuscript, where I have felt that 
 sentences, as he had written them, with the 
 memory of the fact vivid in his mind, were more 
 virile and alive than my pen could ever hope 
 to make them. 
 
 Here, then, is the story, and if it does not 
 give the reader that impulse to reconsider 
 the whole play of motives and emotions through- 
 out his life, I shall be surprised. Some such 
 impulse it gave me, and, indeed, has made me 
 often since go back in my imagination to those 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 13 
 
 days when my friend was faced with the first 
 instincts of Nature. With that story before 
 me, I strive to undeceive myself of those var- 
 nished and highly polished appearances of 
 purpose with which Civilization makes us 
 forget at times the creatures of flesh and blood 
 we are. 
 
 I need scarcely say I have altered all names, 
 or that I have endeavoured in every way to 
 conceal the identity of everyone connected 
 with the story. In a later communication, 
 my friend expressly wished this to be done. 
 In due time it will be seen how natural a wish 
 it was. So it is, I call him David. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BLOOD BITUAL OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 FROM two points of view it is essential 
 ^o be given a glimpse^ however brief, 
 of David Mortlake when he was a boy at school. 
 The first, because it is important to realize 
 his character in the period of its formation, 
 and the second because there he met and made 
 his friendship with John Hawkesley. 
 
 Let me take these points of view, briefly 
 as possible, in their order. David was precocious. 
 There is little doubt about that. His first 
 love affair, when he was nine, was with a girl 
 of twenty-three — ^the essence of womanhood 
 to him. This affection wa,s nourished in silence 
 and only broken when he thought he saw her 
 laugh on an occasion when in her presence 
 he was ordered to bed according to custom 
 at half-past eight. 
 
 He quotes that incident in his papers and 
 writes of it with a twitch of laughter in his 
 pen. " I must have been an abominable 
 youth," he writes. Later love affairs — and 
 
 14 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 15 
 
 there were many between the ages of thirteen 
 and sixteenr— he does not allude to with derision, 
 though apparently does not treat thena as 
 seriously as he might. The seriousness they 
 had for him at the time may possibly be dis- 
 missed ; hut as indications of the precociousness 
 and ardent qualities of his temperament they 
 should be considered within their proper 
 perspective. 
 
 He became engaged to be married when he 
 was sixteen. A Richard Feverel and Lucy 
 love affair it was, only that in his case the 
 Lucy was some three or four years older than 
 himself. I refer to his papers and find that 
 she was five years older — a girl of twenty-one. 
 
 This affair was carried on in secret after he 
 had left school and had gone up to Cambridge. 
 It was only broken by the girl herself when, 
 after two years, she foimd him still faithful. 
 It became necessary then to tell him that with 
 regard to actual marriage, she had never really 
 entertained a serious thought of him at all. 
 ller people hoped and indeed she herself con- 
 templated her marriage with a man older than 
 herself and with more solid prospects than 
 David could offer at the time. • 
 
 " I happened to be going into a tobacconist's 
 shop just after I had received that letter," 
 he has written, " and in a glass mirror I caught 
 sight of my face. It was a pallid grey, and 
 
16 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 my eyes seemed to lie in my head like burning 
 coals in dead ashes. I knew the man she was 
 going to marry. I recognized it was jealousy 
 I felt, and, looking down at the counter of the 
 shop in some shock of realization at what I 
 had seen in that reflection, I found my fiingers 
 had picked up one of those knives they open 
 cigar-boxes with and were gripping it as though 
 a current of electricity held them there." 
 
 This, in all probability, was David's first 
 serious love affair. It would appear to have 
 somewhat broken his health and impaired 
 his nerves, since after that he suffered for 
 some time with insomnia, finally having to be 
 sent abroad to recuperate his strength. It 
 was, however, by no means the first affair in 
 which his heart was engaged. There were 
 many young ladies, of his own age and older, 
 with whom his affections became involved. 
 These attachments, lasting various lengths of 
 time, were mostly expressed by the writing of 
 long letters conveyed by messengers pledged 
 to secrecy. 
 
 He says himself: " I suppose other boys of 
 that age are similarly inclined and drawn 
 towards demonstration of their awakening 
 affections — other boys make little fools of 
 themselves and grow out of folly as they grow 
 out of their knickerbockers. I have alluded 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 17 
 
 to these boyish escapades only because they 
 might be considered to have some bearing upon 
 the events it is my intention to set forth." 
 
 Undoubtedly they have a great bearing as 
 he supposes, and indeed contribute in no small 
 way to the violent contrast of that situation 
 in which surely no two men were ever placed 
 before or since. 
 
 When he says that other boys of that age 
 are similarly inclined as was he, I fancy he 
 suggests a greater proportion than surely can 
 be the case. The affectionate instincts of 
 most boys are slow in development. As a 
 rule they have the greatest contempt for de- 
 monstrativeness and shudder when even their 
 mother kisses them in the presence of their 
 schoolmates. 
 
 I have no doubt David, too, would have 
 avoided any public exhibition of his affections, 
 but that did not deter him from pursuing them 
 in secret. 
 
 " If I thought I loved one girl," he said, 
 " I thought I loved twenty, until after I had 
 gone up to the 'Varsity and was jilted and 
 then really knew what the business was like." 
 
 It is not perhaps so extraordinary that at 
 that age if he liked one he liked twenty girls, 
 the astonishing fact is that, between the ages 
 
18 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 of thirteen and sixteen, twenty girls of all 
 ages should have liked him. 
 
 The girl who jilted him had apparently found 
 no little delight in his love-making. This is 
 the fact that seems to me of real importanfee, 
 which, indeed, should be remembered and 
 taken into consideration when the story in the 
 swiftness and tensity of its motion is like to 
 sweep such memory absolutely from the mind. 
 
 I come now to the second point of view from 
 which it has seemed necessary to me to give 
 this brief sketch of David's youth. It wasi 
 at school and between the ages of thirteen and 
 sixteen that he met John Hawkesley. 
 
 At first they were antagonistic. David, 
 quicker of perception, keener in imagination, 
 intuitive, sometimes almost to a feminine 
 degree, outstripped this quiet, plodding boy, 
 who came by his rewards through sheer hard 
 work, indomitable perseverance and a quality 
 of intellect which, moving slowly and deliber- 
 ately, attains a sure and successful end. 
 
 It was no doubt this quality of success in 
 both their temperaments which clashed in 
 those early days at school. Both, in all proba- 
 bility without reaUzing it, recognized that 
 capacity in each other. Both felt" the spirit 
 of conflict it created between them ; David 
 swiftly in a first glance, John gradually as they 
 came into opposition with each other through 
 the daily round of school life. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 19 
 
 They were in the same f&rm, and there, 
 David's quicker intelligence left John plodding 
 far behind, not stationary, but advancing by 
 inevitable and unvarying stages of progression. 
 He had in those days a supreme contempt for 
 the way in which David did his work.- Trans- 
 lations left to the inspirattion of the monient 
 when the class was sitting and often carried 
 off with brilliant success, were prepared by 
 John with laborious thoroughness! His results 
 were those of unqualified accuracy, but literal 
 to such a degree as never earned for thetti the 
 enthusiasm of the master. Thdy deserved their 
 points and-they got their points, and by reason 
 of those points, John. slowly but steadily rose 
 in the form to the position he deserved^ 
 
 It was more, however, in the playing field 
 that the true essence of conflict between them 
 was pronoimced. Here, for instance, David 
 Was a half-back in the Rugby fifteen, while 
 John was a forward. Just such positions as 
 these they might have been expected to fill. 
 Both were good players, invaluable to the team, 
 yet there was no question as to who, in their 
 separate capacities, won most applause from 
 the school. 
 
 To anyone ignorant of the game of Rugby 
 football this comparison may somewhat miss 
 its point, but I pursue it for a moment, because 
 David, in those papers of his, makes much of 
 it, and to me, at least, it is full of illumination. 
 
 2* 
 
20 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 David was one of those brilliant players who 
 score again and again by daring feats and 
 lightning appreciation of opportunity. John 
 Hawkesley carried the weight of the scrum on 
 his broad shoulders, keeping the pack together 
 when the odds were all against them. 
 
 David's most notable feat appears to have 
 been on the occasion of a great match when 
 five minutes before time the scores were level. 
 The game was pressing in the school twenty- 
 five. The* ball had come out of the scrimmage 
 and was in the hands of the opposing three- 
 quarters. A little careful passing and a try 
 was certain. You may be sure the school, look- 
 ing on, held its breath: It was then David 
 made a fierce feint to tackle the three-quarters. 
 So determined was the feint that the ball was 
 passed to safety. This was exactly what David 
 had anticipated. Every muscle in his body 
 was set for the volte-face as he turned, leapt 
 and caught the ball in mid-air. Then followed 
 the greatest exhibition of an individual rim the 
 school had ever seen. Alone he carried the 
 ball out of his own twenty-five. There was 
 no one to pass to. Alone he carried it the 
 whole length of the field, tricking the full- 
 back as neatly as a full-back has ever been 
 tricked in his life, and planting a try — as 
 they say in football journalese — between the 
 uprights. 
 
 That was David's feat. John's, in its way, 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 21 
 
 was no less characteristic or worthy of applause. 
 A scrimmage had broken away in their 
 opponents' twenty-five. It was no moment to 
 pick up the ball and pass. A loose ball in one's 
 own twenty-five — ^but this story is not for 
 players of Rugby football. The forwards were 
 dribbling it at their feet. At their feet, John 
 threw himself on the ball — one cannot praise 
 him for his duty — while his body became the 
 butt of all their kicks. But that was not all. 
 He held the ball ; he got to his feet ; he started 
 for the goal line, and immediately there were 
 three men like dogs at his heels. One sprang 
 on his shoulders, two took him round the 
 middle, yet all between them could not bring 
 him to the ground. He carried them, all three, 
 fifteen yards on his back and scored a try, 
 with the school lined around the touch liiie 
 shouting themselves hoarse with delight. 
 
 David tells these two stories with uncommon 
 zest. He loved the one evidently no less than 
 the other, and it is not only because he thought 
 they served his purpose that I have troubled 
 the reader with them, but because they are 
 vivid pictures to my mind of that contrast of 
 character which makes for this story the 
 absorbing interest it has. 
 
 There is only need now to speak of that 
 antagonism which existed between them for 
 the first three terms while they were together 
 at that school. It ended in the fourth term, 
 
22 DAVID ANDpONATHAN 
 
 when, on some school-boy pretext, a challenge 
 was given by John and a fight accepted by 
 David in the corner behind the chapel. There 
 were sides for both parties, but no doubt about 
 the issue. 
 
 " If you lifee-to beg my pardon," said John, 
 while they were taking off their coats, " that'll 
 be enough." 
 
 David's taimt to the effect that if John had 
 lost his stomach for a fight it was his own 
 look-out, settled matters as to that, but by 
 no means belied his feelings about the business. 
 
 He says : " I felt as sick as a cat, and couldn't 
 hsve been better pleased if a master had come 
 round the corner of the chapel and stopped it 
 before it began. The fear, however, of showing 
 fear is the most compelling fear of all. I knew 
 John was not afraid of me. It -was really 
 generosity on his part. He was ready to give 
 up his first chance of scoring heavily over me. 
 I. did not regard it in that light then, and 
 utilized the opportunity for a cheap gibe at 
 his: expense. He was not; out of pocket fot 
 long." 
 
 I somewhat like the honesty of that — "he 
 was not out of pocket for long" — and 
 apparently it was no less than the truth. In 
 scarcely more than ten minutes, John 
 Hawkesley had, as David saysy " made a 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 28 
 
 complete mess of him." Half a dozen times 
 from the force of John's powerful blows, he 
 had found himself sprawling on the ground. 
 It was a moment of no little relief to him when 
 a master did make his appearance round the 
 corner of the chapel wall and put a stop to 
 the encounter. 
 
 As they walked away in the crowd of boys, 
 David, with his bleeding nose, his cut Up and 
 two puffy eyes, found himself by the side of 
 John. He firmly believes, he says, that it 
 was what John did at that moment which 
 became the basis of their friendship. 
 
 "He was scarcely hurt at all," says David, 
 " and I was bleeding like a stuck pig. As we 
 were pushed together in the crowd of boys, he 
 just said : ' Want a handkerchief ? ' and 
 gave me his own to use on my bloody face. 
 What that meant as a chance to wipe away 
 the evidence of defeat, I can't exactly explain, 
 but it was the soul of generosity, and I took it." 
 
 This was the beginning of the friendship 
 between David and John Hawkesley. Before 
 two more terms had gone by, they had earned 
 the nickname of David and Jonathan, and, 
 except for the forms which at that time 
 separated them, were never seen apart. 
 
 As introduction to the events that follow, 
 indeed to the whole purpose of this story, 
 
24 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 these few incidents are practically the sum of 
 all that need be said. David left school for 
 the 'Varsity, Jonathan for a college of mining 
 engineers. The stream of life came between 
 their days together, but did not divide their 
 friendship. 
 
 Neither one nor the other was given to 
 correspondence. They met frequently, but 
 generally at each other's clubs ; spent an 
 evening together, mostly filled, with school 
 reminiscences, and then fell apart again. The 
 career which Jonathan had undertaken carried 
 him into far countries, prospecting for his 
 company. The work suited his temperament. 
 He had a strong vein of adventure in him, 
 combined with a proud satisfaction in the 
 loneliness of his own company. For months 
 he would be away in the wildest corners 
 of the earth, then turn up unexpectedly 
 one day in London, dropping in at David's 
 breakfast-hour in the Albany as though he 
 had done little more than cross the street to 
 get there. 
 
 At the respective ages of thirty-five and 
 thirty-six neither of them was married. Both 
 chaffed each other about their possible chances, 
 but whatever chances there were, neither David 
 nor Jonathan availed themselves of them. 
 With Jonathan perhaps it was an inherent 
 and temperamental shyness in the presence of 
 women. It would be idle to say that he did 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 25 
 
 not know or had not experienced their attrac- 
 tions. More it was that he was fearful of the 
 power he knew they would, have, and the 
 influence they would exert upon his life. 
 
 With David, he confesses, it was the bitter- 
 ness of that first love affair which in some 
 sense gave him immunity. It was not so 
 much that he lost his liking for women as that 
 he liked too many. One would have the 
 attraction of the woman who had ^jilted him ; 
 another the attraction of constancy she had 
 never possessed ; another possessed them both, 
 and yet another possessed neither, but had an 
 attraction of her own. He became intimate 
 with them all, but loved none. 
 
 " Men," he writes, on one of those papers 
 he left me in that Queen Anne desk — " men 
 only love one woman, and if they lose her, 
 they go on loving her qualities in other women, 
 never finding them all, for the rest of their 
 lives. I believe," he says, "in the principle 
 of mating. We pick and choose — but some 
 of us are picking all our lives." 
 
CHAPTER lU 
 
 AN OPPOETUNITY TO SEE LIFE 
 
 IT was when David was thirty-seven and 
 Jonathan thirty-eight, there arose that 
 chain of events which, in the phrase with which 
 this story begins, revealed in these two the 
 purpose of Life, Fate, or Destiny, so cunningly 
 concealed in ninety-nine individuals out of a 
 hundred. 
 
 David, well-to-do, with a comfortable little 
 fortune which had been left him by one af. those 
 unexpected turns of generosity in a distant 
 relative, was contemplating a, three months' big 
 game shooting in . Central Africa. Jonathans 
 from the wilds of South America, returned just 
 as David was making a fuss over buying kit, 
 his floor strewn with tropical garments, gun 
 cases standing in corners of the room and books 
 of travel lying open on the table. 
 
 " What the deuce is this ? " asked Jonathan, 
 putting his head round the corner of the door, 
 never announcing his presence, but speaking 
 in that casual tone of voice — in the same way 
 as he had offered the loan of his handkerchief, 
 
 26 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 27 
 
 or as though he had just walked up from those 
 rooms he always kept in day's Inn and called 
 his permanent hutch. So far as being a 
 permanency, he kept them always, but if he 
 occupied them two months out of the year, it 
 was as much as ever he made use of them. 
 
 " What the deuce is this ? " said he, and twice 
 over. To the repetition of that question, 
 David explained, whereupon Jonathan sat down 
 on the nearest chair, looking on in silence at 
 the process of packing with a sympathetic 
 grin of amusement on his face. 
 
 " Going to wear all those things ? " he asked 
 presently. 
 
 David referred to authorities — mostly tailors 
 — ^who had assured him he would require every 
 stitch. 
 
 " Well — put the strongest and the most 
 durable on your back," said Jonathan. 
 
 David inquired why. 
 
 "Niggers," he was told, "have a habit of 
 losing interest in their load, dropping it in 
 unlikely places, and you never see them again. 
 A wise man keeps his best on his back." 
 
 " The man who's arranging the trip will see 
 to that," said David, with all the confidence of 
 one who has paid his money, in advance. " He's 
 told me what to bring, and says I can leave 
 all the porterage question entirely to him." 
 
 Jonathan sat silent for some moments, and 
 then he said : " You're going to a part of the .^ 
 
28 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 world where values as you understand them 
 don't exist. You seem to have forgotten that, 
 or perhaps you never knew it. You're going 
 to a part of the world where money has only 
 face value, and as soon as it's in the next man's 
 pocket its face is out of sight. Where you're 
 going, human nature is human nature. In 
 this environment one's apt to forget what that 
 is. But as far as all this kit's concerned, I'U 
 tell you. If, a man finds the load of it more 
 irksome than he thinks the money's worth 
 he's been paid" to bear it, he'll drop the whole 
 caboose in the night and he'll scoot. There 
 are no symbols where you're going. It's the 
 real thing — ^the real instinct — the real impulse. 
 Money, in Piccadilly, is a symbol, with the law 
 behind it to hold it up on the end of a pro- 
 cessional staff. Out there, it's what you can 
 get for it, and, having got it, it means nothing 
 to anyone but you. That's as immoral as you 
 like, but it's what Adam and Eve felt when 
 they shared the apple off the tree, and if you'd 
 knocked about as I have you'd know there's 
 the old Adam and the old Eve still to be 
 accounted for in every human beast that walks 
 on two legs. We're civilizing — but it's a mis- 
 take to suppose we're civilized. We're growing, 
 but it's a mistake to suppose we're grown up. 
 Behind the mass that follows the symbol in the 
 procession, there's still the individual who only 
 knows the value of things when they're his." 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 29 
 
 When Jonathan talked after a long silence, 
 it was generally a serious effort of speech. 
 His intelligence had not that swiftness of 
 David's. He never arrested attention by what 
 he said. He forced his claim upon it. 
 
 I have transcribed the whole of these reniarks 
 of his not only for the bearing they have upon 
 the story which follows, but because of their 
 value in these times of world upheaval "when 
 man is brought face to face with the elemental 
 conditions of his nature, and politicians, despite 
 themselves, are being made to realize what 
 Jonathan describes as " the individual behind 
 the mass that follows the symbol — the in- 
 dividual who only knows the value of things 
 when they are his." 
 
 I do not want to depart from my story to 
 insist upon this point of view. I will only 
 quote one remark of David's at the very end 
 of his papers. 
 
 " Politicians," he says, " are the mounte- 
 banks, the quacks, the charlatans of modern' 
 civilization. So long as they refuse to rea,lize 
 the actual human being at the heart of the 
 ballot, they will continue to be the false priests 
 of human emotions ; so long as they continue 
 to regard the individual as merely a pawn in 
 the game, they will lose the chivalry of their 
 knights, the sanctity of their bishops and all 
 
30 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 the true sense of kingdoms in their kingis and 
 queens. They will," he ends abruptly, " lose 
 the v^i'y game they are playing for their own 
 paltify 'and contemptible ends." 
 
 I quote that not only because it is in his 
 papers, but because to him it was part of the 
 lesson he learnt under the extraordinary con- 
 ditions that are to be related here. It is merely 
 a side issue of what he realized, yet I could not 
 omit' it as pai:t of the aspect of the whole case. 
 
 The next morning after his return, Jonathan 
 attended a board meeting of his company. 
 There he learned that it was required of him to 
 go to some district north-west of Rhodesia, 
 to prospect in a part of the country where 
 reports informed them there was likelihood 
 of copper in large quantities. 
 
 They gave him a month's holiday, and believed 
 him^ — ^as he was — the most valuable servant in 
 their employment when he said that he wanted 
 no more than a week at home. In an hour 
 he was back at David's chambers in the Albany. 
 * ,*' When are you going ? " he asked. 
 - David gave him the day. 
 
 " Booked your passage ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then I'm with you." 
 
 " You ? " 
 
 "Yes — ^you and I, who've never done more 
 together than walk down Piccadilly and dine 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 81 
 
 at the ' Sayoy ' — who've seen no more together 
 than pretty girls in painted scenes at the 
 theatres. You and I, and we'll lean over the 
 taffrail of the old boat and look at things with 
 no back-cloth to them. Then you can tell me 
 what you're doing with your life, and I'll tell 
 you what I'm doing with mine. There's time 
 to talk on an old boat thumping out her four- 
 teen knots. And I expect we shall find we're 
 both of us missing the whole purpose of it 
 with both hands. The half-backs are passing 
 us the ball all the time, and all the time we're 
 letting it slip through our fingers. Cheer oh ! " 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE VOYAGE 
 
 THEY sailed from Tilbury Docks one 
 Thursday afternoon on ' the Malaga, 
 bound for Forcados. This was as long ago 
 as the year 1910, long before world catastrophes 
 were thought of, and Europe lay to all appear- 
 ances asleep, dreaming gently of a permanent 
 Civilization ; sublimely unconscious of the 
 human passions hidden in the mass of peoples, 
 though still actuating in the private life of each 
 separate individual, still the elemental root of 
 all that force which now is licensed in its feast 
 of blood throughout half the world. 
 
 The man conducting the big. game shoot, in 
 whose hands David had placed himself, was to 
 be met at Lokoja, some four hundred miles up 
 the Niger River, where you take off into the 
 unknown heart of the wild' world. He had 
 gone out some two weeks ahead to make all 
 preparations, so that they would be ready to 
 start on David's arrival. 
 
 '■^ Jonathan described it as a Cook's tour, which 
 
 32 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 33 
 
 might as well have been to catch lizards on the 
 steps of the Roman amphitheatre at Fiesole 
 as hunt lions in Central Africa. 
 
 " The fun of doing things in this world," he 
 said, " lies in doing them for yourself." To 
 which David replied : " The fun of doing things 
 in this world lies in doing, not labouring at 
 them." 
 
 At every tvan in this story, you have the 
 contrast of these men flung vividly before you. 
 I could not help realizing as I read David's 
 papers that here were two prototypes: the old 
 civilization and the new, the one with all the 
 force of physical nature, silent but insistent, 
 in him, the other with all the force of nature's 
 increasing mentality leaping towards the 
 unknown, just as David had leaped into the air 
 to intercept that pass on the football field 
 which the swift action of his mind had super- 
 imposed upon the mind of his opponent. 
 
 Leaning over the taffrail of the old boat as 
 she drove her southern path through waters 
 now blue, now green, now grey of lead with the 
 mists that beat across Biscay, they talked, long 
 whiles together, as they had said they would, 
 of what they were doing with their lives.. 
 
 David spends many pages in his papers on 
 the full report of those conversations. They 
 are all an illuminating part of that human - 
 document, but cannot, in the accumulating 
 interest of the story, be quoted in their entirety. 
 
 3 
 
84 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " The conversation," says David, " one 
 night turned on the question of marriage. , It 
 was a couple of nights before we had reached 
 Teneriffe. The scent of the tropics was getting 
 into the air. We had been out some days. 
 I can't describe that scent of the tropics. Some- 
 where in the inner galleries of your mind, it 
 knocks down the Ten Commandments like a row 
 of ninepins. I suppose Jonathan must have 
 felt romantic, aiid, as far as I am concerned, 
 it was the scent of the air in my blood, like the 
 perfume you catch in the wake of a woman 
 who passes you in the street. Immediately 
 behind her, as she goes by, there is a sort 
 of vacuum created by the motion of her 
 passage. For a moment you notice nothing. 
 Then the atmosphere sweeps in, sweeps in to 
 a trail of faint peirfume that lingers in the air 
 and reaches your nostrils when it is too late to 
 see what she was like. You do not get an 
 impression of that woman in particular; She 
 has gone on too .far ahead for that. But you 
 get aii impression of her whole sex, as of a 
 voice calling from beyond still curtains, a 
 voice it were unwise to listen to, a voice it 
 would be folly to ignore." 
 
 This is David feeling out into those fealms 
 of literature which it never really became his 
 ambition to explore. Had it ever been so, 
 then surely he ?ind not I would have heea. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 85 
 
 what for a better title I must call, the author/ 
 of this book. Literature, indeed, ' he never 
 took to, though he was a great reader of books. 
 Yet seldom to my knowledge have I come 
 across a nature more capable of e3q)ressiHig 
 itself. His music was a joy to listen to, though 
 impossible to capturp on the printed page. 
 He played by ear, and many a half hour have 
 I listened to him improvising gestures, phraSes, 
 impressions; meditations in music. The charm 
 of them was irresistible, yet so long as you 
 iheard him he might never play them again. 
 
 It was the same with his painting. I have 
 pictures of his now on my walls, pictures which 
 in some subtle sense of truth they possess have 
 found a lasting place on my walls and have a 
 meaning there, a meaning, the interest of which 
 is always fresh in my mind. 
 
 I have no hesitation in believing that the 
 unexpected generosity of that distant relation, 
 leaving him his comfortable fortune, deprived 
 the world of a true artist. To me it seems his 
 capacities were limited by the complete absence 
 of desire for publicity, a genuine contempt for 
 fame. His music and his painting both satis- 
 fied him, insomuch as they expressed himself 
 and. pleased his friends. He asked no more, of 
 life or the talents which had been given him. 
 
 ' ' What would happen if I got a name for 
 tliese things ? " he once said to me. " It 
 
 3* 
 
36 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 would become more real than the things them- 
 selves. If I got a success, nothing would 
 content me but that I should heap another on 
 top of it. God would never have made the 
 world if there'd been anyone to praise Him 
 for it. He'd have lived on His reputation for 
 
 the first day." 
 
 « 
 
 Here, anyhow, was David wandering — as 
 amiably as he wandered all through life — ^in 
 the paths of literature. His description of that 
 night on the Malaga, when he and Jonathan 
 leant on the taftrail, dropping the ash from 
 their cigars into the running sea below, i§ worth 
 continuing. 
 
 " A girl had been singing songs downstairs," 
 he goes on. He does not mention whether he 
 had entertained the audience himself, as well 
 he could have done. " She had that quality 
 of voice which disarms criticism — in truth, 
 never asks for it. It was simple, straight- 
 forward, sweet without quality, gentle without 
 technique. The sort of voice a mother sings 
 her kid to sleep with when she thinks they two 
 have got the whole house to themselves. It 
 made me realize how many miles I was from 
 England. It had some sort of effect of the 
 same nature on Jonathan, though I don't 
 suppose for a moment he traced it. All that 
 happened was that after she had sung three 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 37 
 
 songs, an elderly gentleman who was going out 
 to Teneriffe for his health, got up and said : 
 ' I'ni going to tell you a few funny stories 
 that I' don't think you've heard before.' 
 Jonathan looked down at me and said : ' What 
 d'you say to a stroll on deck ? ' 
 
 " On deck we went, hearing the voice of the 
 elderly gentleman as we passed up the companion- 
 way, saying : ' I was once staying with an 
 aunt of mine in Moreton-in-the-Marsh.' Then 
 the rush of that soft air off the sea beat in our 
 faces, the million stars washed out the sight of 
 the cabin lights and the swish of water swallowed 
 up his voice. 
 
 " I suppose we must have walked a mile up 
 and down that deck without saying a word, 
 when Jonathan suddenly stopped under the 
 captain's bridge, and leaning on the taffrail, 
 he said : ' I've been trying ever since we started 
 to put into two or three short sentences — ^like 
 the orders I give to foremen — what I'm doing 
 with my life, and I'm damned if I can do it. 
 The whole thing beats me sometimes. Men 
 have the means pi living, and women have 
 the means of ' life'. - Somehow or other that 
 seems all wrong. It's bad business. It's rotten 
 organization.' 
 
 " I laughed," says David. " It was so plain 
 where all that had come from. A little girl 
 with a gentle voice, singing simple songs to the 
 acQompaniment of an upright Broadwood piano. 
 
38 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 aixd here was a man with a biceps like a lump 
 of iron pyrites talking about women having 
 the means of life, and feeling that they had 
 somehow beaten him in the bargain. > 
 ' "I told him there was an obvious way out 
 of the diflficulty. . ' Rotten as the organiza- 
 tion may be,* I said, ' it's capable of adjustment 
 on good business lines.' 
 
 " ■ What lines ? ' he asked. ' The two 
 capacities are opposed. A woman brings life 
 into the world which she can't support. A 
 man can find the means of living and caimot, 
 in the self-centred order of things, be expected 
 to turn those means to anyone's account but 
 his own. What's the adjustment possible 
 between functions as diametrically opposed 
 as those ? ' 
 
 " ' An amalgamation of the two firms,' said 
 I. ' Matrimony. That's what you and I have 
 failed to do with our lives.' 
 
 " ' What ? ' 
 
 " 'Marry. We're a couple of bachelors.' 
 
 " Jonathan dropped a half-inch of cigar ash 
 into the swirl of water rushing by beneath us. 
 In that^ still night, I believe we both thought 
 we heard the hiss of it." 
 
 I must Ifeave out some of David's narrative 
 here, for, with his disregard for the construction 
 of a story, much that followed in the relation 
 of their conversation that night is superfluous. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 39 
 
 They both talked as, on such rare occasions • 
 as these, when there is no counter-attraction 
 of life, men sometimes do talk of the women 
 who have come and gone in the gamut of their 
 esqierience. 
 
 It is enough to say that Jonathan's was a 
 far more simple statement than that of David. 
 The work upon which he was engaged had 
 saved him on more than one occasion. Just 
 as the situation had been drawing to a crisis, 
 he had received his sailmg orders and set off 
 towards some obscure comer of the world where, 
 for many months, black women were the only 
 creatures of the sex with whom he came in 
 contact. 
 
 David laughs as he reports him saying: 
 
 " The moment the old whistle blew, I used 
 to feel, ' Well— I'm out of that, I'm blowed 
 if I know whether I'm glad or sorry — ^but I'm 
 out of it. By the time I get back, we shall 
 both be wondering what the dickens we saw 
 , in each other,' " 
 
 Jonathan, it is plain enough to be seen, was 
 the restless, the roving and adventurous spirit. 
 
 " You can't," he said concisely — " you can't 
 meet the ordinary risks of life — ^my sort of 
 life — you can't meet 'em face to face when 
 there is anyone's but your own ugly features 
 between them and you. I like my job, better 
 
40 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 than anything else in life. I like the risk of it, 
 the ffeedom of it, the infinite variety of it. 
 If I married, I should have to give up this side 
 of it and take to the wangling of floating 
 companies in London board rooms. Well — • 
 women won't give up exercising their means 
 of life — ^why should I give up my capacities 
 for the means of living, means which I choose 
 to take in my own way ? " 
 
 There is Jonathan's case for the bachelor, 
 whUe David's, if more intricate, is much the 
 same, 
 
 " I had never found the woman," he says 
 with characteristic honesty, " who I thought 
 could bear the sight of me after a few months. 
 The only women who were interested in me 
 were interested because they could not find 
 me out. I always knew the moment when 
 they had. It was a matter of disillusion for 
 both of us; for her because, she thought she 
 had found out all about me, for me because, so 
 long as she tried, I knew she would only find 
 out half. It was not that I wanted to shirk the 
 responsibilities of married life, or the bringing 
 of children into the world. There were times 
 when I longed for them. But over and above 
 all those times hung the inevitable sense of 
 jeopardy in which I was placing not so much 
 myself as someone else. I don't know how 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 41 
 
 many times I have not read that sentence of 
 Stevenson's in ' Virginibus Puerisque ' — a bed- 
 side book of mine — ^the sentence in the |irst 
 essay of that n^me. ' She, whose happiness 
 you most desire,' he writes of marriage, ' you 
 choose to be your victim.* And again, ' God 
 made you, but you marry yourself ; and for 
 all that your wife suffers, no one is responsible 
 but you.' And lastly, ' You may think you 
 had a conscience and believed in God ; but 
 what is a conscience to a wife ? ' '^ 
 
 This, then, is David's case, and, as I have said, 
 there is little to choose between them. 
 
 In such a manner they talked that evening 
 on the deck of the Malaga, leaning over the 
 taffrail beneath the captain's bridge. That 
 conversation probably lasted for an hour or 
 more, and then the soimds of the tinkly notes 
 of the old Broadwood piano crept up the steps 
 of the companion-way, jingling in their ears. 
 Another moment, and the girl's voice began 
 singing : 
 
 " A little winding road 
 Goes over the hill to the plain." 
 
 " Let's come down below," said Jonathan. 
 " It's blowing up for rain." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BOTTLE-GRKEN PETTICOAT 
 
 IT was on the ninth day out, after they 
 had passed Teneriffe, there happened that 
 which, for those whose taste is for adventure, 
 sets this story in the swift motion of events. 
 
 The few hours they spent on shore in that 
 port while the Malaga shipped her coal, 
 though David gives some pages to their account, 
 are not of real value. His descriptions of the 
 dust of coal, the noisy rattle of the steaming 
 winches — " like a factory of lathes \dtb every 
 bolt gone loose," of the shrill screaming and 
 whistling of Spanish dance music from the 
 coaling gang as they worked like slaves under 
 the lash of time, even of the small brown 
 , naked boys, '' shiny like otters," crowding 
 round the ship in their cockle-shell boats, 
 howhng for pennies — all these excursions of 
 David's into the realm of descriptive writing 
 are no more than indicative of the artist he 
 was, of the way in which the making of a pic- 
 ture, even in a medium as foreign to him as 
 words, had its irresistible fascination. 
 ■ 42 
 
DAVID >ND JONATHAN 43 
 
 Of greater interest than this is the account 
 he gives of himself and Jonathan taking the 
 young girl who sang, " The little winding road," 
 to lunch at the Metropole Hotel, having already 
 escorted her round the town to all the lace 
 shops within range. 
 
 " We sat in the Palm Court after lunch," 
 says David, "and most of that time Jonathan 
 scarcely said a word. There was I talking 
 about big game shooting as though I'd been iti 
 the tropics half my life, and he, who had seen 
 the world all sides, sat smoking his cigar and 
 chewing a smile into it whenever I got right out 
 of my depth with the questions she kept 
 pitching at me." 
 
 , Only that paragraph seems to me of interest, 
 for again it is the sideUght of contrast just 
 flung, for the moment on these two. The rest 
 of his narrative, so far I mean as that break of 
 the voyage at Teneriffe is concerned, is corn- 
 posed of a description of the town itself, which, 
 being his first journey out of Europe, seems to 
 have impressed him beyond the necessities of 
 what he had to tell. Making a precis of all he 
 has written here, I could easily sum it all up 
 in three or four words : " Mules, dust, and 
 English beer — according to advertisements." 
 I feel I am" losing no value in the story when I 
 leave it at that. ... ( . 
 
44 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 It was, as I have said, on the ninth day out 
 and three days after they had passed Teneriffe, 
 that David, Jonathan and the young girl were 
 walking up and down the deck after dinner. 
 He does not even mention the girl's name ; 
 therefore I take it she had made no really deep 
 impression on him. 
 
 They were cutting in fairly close to the coast, 
 as the course had turned sou' east by east, 
 and that morning, so they had been informed, 
 had passed Cape Palmas. A purple cloud, 
 settled like a butterfly on the horizon, was all 
 .they had seen of the land. Before sunset it 
 had vanished agaL(i, though they were scarcely 
 more than eight miles out. A wind was getting 
 up and the prospects of a nasty spell of weather 
 were gathering about the sky. " The sun," 
 says David, " had dropped down the heavens, 
 that were a field of primroses." 
 
 It was the girl, apparently, who first noticed 
 the approach of danger. " She stopped as we 
 were walking," he says, " and flung her head 
 up like a young deer at the fringe of the herd, 
 tossing its nose up into the wind. Then she 
 just skid, ' Smoke ! ' " 
 
 David describes with compelling realism the 
 effect upon him of that word, of the scent of 
 biu:ning, which the next moment reached his 
 nostrils too, and of the low, murmuring sound, 
 like many voices, merged in anger very far away, 
 that came to his iears from the bows of the ship. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 45 
 
 " I knew that instant," he says, " that it was 
 my heart which pumped the blood through my 
 arteries to myjveins, which fed my brain and 
 recorded itself in my pulses. For that moment 
 I felt there was nothing of my body but my 
 heart, pounding in mid-air, like the screw of the 
 ship lifted out of the water and whirling in space. 
 Jonathan looked at me, sniffing the air. Then 
 we heard a bell go — a bell that sounded like an 
 alarm clock gone mad and jerking you, with a 
 snatch at your spine, out of the midst of sleep. 
 The next moment a tongue of flame, just like 
 a ghost that had burst its way out of prison, 
 leapt out of the companion-way right up for'ard, 
 and an instant later the deck was black with 
 running men. And all the time, down in the 
 saloon, we could hear them discussing the last 
 hand of bridge, while the next man dealt the 
 cards for a new rubber." 
 
 It was Jonathan who acted first, David's 
 description of him in that hour or so which 
 followed, is filled with an underlying enthusiasm 
 of admiration. Somewhere down in his cabin 
 there was a heavy automatic in one of his Iboxes. 
 Without a moment's hesitation he had vanished 
 down the stairway to the saloon and fetched it 
 out, coming up on deck a moment later with 
 the weapon, cocked, in his hand. 
 
 " For one instant," says David here, " there 
 flashed back through my mind the things 
 
46 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 Jonathan had said in my rooms in the Albany, 
 that day when I was packing. . , ' Where you're 
 going,' he had said, ' there are no symbols. 
 It's the real thing — ^the real instinct — ^the real 
 impulse.' And before the memory of the words 
 had crossed my mind, there was the actual 
 picture .of it dramatized in living fact before 
 my tyes. Half a dozen Dagos, coal-trimmers, 
 who had come up with that crush of men, mostly 
 the crew, from the for'ard part of the i ship, had 
 rushed one of the boats. Frantically, like men 
 tossed in a gale of wind, as their primitive emo- 
 tions swept over them, they were tugging at the 
 davits, climbing into the boat and taking the 
 salvage of their dirty lives into their own hands. 
 "With a voice of thunder and an eye that 
 i^truck sparks like a piece of steel on flint"-:— 
 D^vid was stretching out- for his similes here:— 
 " he told them to clear the boat. He raised his 
 revolver and showed them what he meant, but 
 they thought he was talking the sort of thick 
 air you get out of the engine-room. They went 
 on. They Ibegan lowering the boat. Then 
 Jonathan shot the leader of them. Clean 
 through his head the bullet went. He crumpled 
 Up like a coat falling off a clothes-peg, and the 
 look of surprise that came into the faces of the 
 others would have been laughable at any other 
 time. They nipped out of that boat, back on 
 deck again, just like so many black beetles out 
 of atrap." 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 47 
 
 That fire on board the Malaga is merely an 
 incident in this story, a signpost marking the 
 road by which these two came to that situation 
 wherein lies the purpose of this tale. Under 
 ordinary circumstances I would not attempt to 
 describe it. The incident in itself is isolated, 
 an event to be seized upon by such as have a 
 taste for horrors in public places without know- 
 ing anything of the real tragedy awaiting some 
 person or persons when the news is brought 
 home. Of itself that burning of the Malaga 
 is no more dramatic than the accidental killing 
 of a stranger in the street, when there is blood 
 to be seen and excitement to be felt with no 
 relation to the actual story of which it is a part, 
 and ceasing to be interesting directly the 
 ambulance has come along and carried the 
 bleeding body away. 
 
 A current number of any newspaper of tha,t 
 date will give a full description of the burning 
 of the Malaga in true and impressive journalese, 
 laying characteristic stress upon all those 
 incidents by which the newspaper-reading 
 public are made acquainted from, day to day 
 with the ugliness of life, from suicide, murder 
 Bind sudden death to the unsavoury details of 
 divorce. ' 
 
 I am omitting, therefore, a considerable 
 amount of the detail upon which David has 
 exercised his literary ambitions — ^in whom it 
 was to be excused, seeing how vivid those 
 
48 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 details must have remained in his mind — ^because 
 the mere fact that these two were cast adrift 
 is sufficient for my purpose. It is enough to 
 say here that in two hours the Malaga from stem 
 to stern was a flaming beacon upon the high- 
 way of the ocean and that within that time not 
 a soul was left aboard. 
 
 One point, however, of undeniable interest 
 there was in all David's lengthy description of 
 it, and that, his first reahzation of those primi- 
 tive instincts in the human animal, and how, the 
 lower one went in the scale of civilization, the 
 easier it became to break through the veneer 
 to the elemental passions beneath. 
 
 " I saw people," he says, " taking it well 
 enough for the first hour, but whose power of 
 control broke down at length under the strain 
 of waiting for their release from that relentless 
 furnace. All their civilized instincts went 
 from them, leaking out like water from a cup 
 that is cracked. The expression of lower and 
 more unbridled purposes of life crept gradually 
 into their faces. In the end they became less 
 than human. The ideals of civilization had lost 
 their hold- Primitive instincts took their place. 
 You coiild almost tell from the look in the eyes 
 that moment when the breaking-point had come. 
 It was terribly to watch it, yet surely enough 
 it was plain to be seen." 
 
 Of the few illuminating instances David 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 49 
 
 mentions in support of his observations, I firmly 
 believe it best to give no details. The conten- 
 tion of this tale is fully borne out by the more 
 human situation which was an outcome of that 
 tragic disaster. There is no need to frill it with 
 the ghastly incidents connected with the tragedy 
 of that ill-fated ship. 
 
 The storm which had been closing about them 
 the whole of that day, seemed to have been 
 waiting for such a moment as this. No sooner 
 were the boats launched than with all its fury 
 it burst upon them. 
 
 With considerable reserve, characteristic of 
 that critical judgment he passed upon the value 
 of all his BrCtions, David says little of what he 
 did himself in the stress of those terrible circum- 
 stances. Jonathan's conduct during those two 
 hours, until the boats were all cleared, he 
 describes with the enthusiasm which one man 
 must always feel for the brute strength of one 
 physically superior to himself. Again and again, 
 it appears, he went down into the cabins where 
 the smoke of the burning ship was already 
 suffocating the passengers, and brought back 
 some woman or child unconscious in his arms. 
 
 " His strength," says Davidj " seemed to be 
 the strength of a beast at bay, and he was 
 swearing all'the time." A sentence or two later 
 he adds, " I liked the sound of those oaths from 
 him — ^but they were no use to me." 
 
 4 
 
50 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 That, indeed, knowing David as well as I did, 
 I can well imagine. I can see his Ups grown 
 thin and set in a firm line. Of those two, with 
 his quicker mentality he would have looked the 
 facts more squarely in the face, been more con- 
 scious of danger, have had need for the greater ex- 
 ercise of control, and, had sharp decision of mind 
 been needed at any given moment, would have 
 been the more capable of the two to supply it. 
 
 There is just one incident which he mentions 
 concerning himself, I cannot omit, and from 
 which it may be assumed — ^though that is 
 far from his intention — ^that he himself was 
 by no means idle while Jonathan was displaying 
 that strength of the beast at bay. His own 
 description of it is best. 
 
 " One woman I found," he writes, and cannot 
 thereby help himself in. implying there were 
 others he saved, " who was lying unconscious 
 behind the piano in the saloon. It was pretty 
 obvious what had happened. She had been 
 playing the piano when the first alarm of fire 
 came through to the saloon passengers. The 
 shock of that alarm had bowled her over. She 
 had fainted and then been forgotten in the 
 general rush to the boats. Looking round the 
 saloon, in the state of mind we were all in then, 
 it might easily have been supposed the place 
 was empty. I just happened to catch sight of 
 the edge of her petticoat by the leg of the piano,' ' 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 51 
 
 It was characteristic of David that he should 
 remember the colour of that petticoat and think 
 to describe it as " that sort of bottle-green 
 indicating the taste of a woman who will not put 
 up with the first shade that is handed to her. A 
 lot of good her taste in colours was to her then ! " 
 
 It is obvious from this how much better it is 
 for me to let David tell his story whenever I 
 can. I should never have dreamed of such a 
 description. 
 
 " She was a woman of about twenty-five," 
 he continues. " I had not seen her before ; 
 not even at Teneriffe, so I presume she must 
 have been feeling pretty rotten those first few 
 days out. This was evidently her first appear- 
 ance, and a sorry sort of one to have made. 
 For that appearance, she had evidently con- 
 sidered with no little care — ^I am thinking of 
 the bottle-green petticoat — and there she lay, 
 unconscious on the floor, her hair and her dress 
 all disarranged by the fall, and looking as help- 
 less as any human being I had ever seen in my life. 
 
 " I whipped her up in my arms. There was 
 no time to waste. Even in that uncQnscious 
 condition she was a beautiful creature to look 
 at, and I have no shame in saying it that, as 
 she lay in my arms, the thought flashed across 
 my mind how at any other time my heart would 
 have been beating somewhat the faster were I 
 to find myself in such a predicament. 
 
52 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " I carried her on deck as quickly as I could. 
 She was no light weight and I was staggering 
 when I reached the boats. There Jonathan 
 saw me and gave a hamd. He lifted her like a 
 feather — ^though he had been working hard 
 for more than an hour then — and I could not 
 help noticing how little sensation that helpless 
 body of a woman in his arms brought to him. 
 He just lifted her as though she were a dead- 
 weighted sack of flour and passed her along to 
 one of the sailors in the boats, never noticing 
 her face, only concerned with the salvage of 
 life, just as if it were no more than mere cargo. 
 
 " ' Just drop her down in the bottom of the 
 boat,' he shouted. ' She's unconscious — ^she 
 won't feel anything. Push her along there, 
 more for'ard, and make way for these kids.' 
 
 " I looked over the taffrail," says David, 
 " as the boat was lowered, and there she lay,' 
 with her white face, while some water that had 
 somehow got into the boat swilled backwards 
 and forwards over her bottle-green petticoat. 
 And seeing all that, in some sort of way, too, 
 as though I were sajdng good-bye to her, I 
 remember hearing myself mutter under my 
 breath as I watched the boat settling into the 
 sea : ' Well — ^I've had you in my arms, my dear,' 
 and then I laughed at the folly of the thoughts 
 that caper in your mind when you are standing 
 face to face with death." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 MAROONED 
 
 SWEPT about at the mercy of the storm 
 on the Uttle ship's raft to which they 
 had lashed themselves, those two were facing 
 death all that night, the next day, and again 
 for another night vmtil the dawn broke on the 
 following morniqg. During the whole of that 
 time, with the sea that was running, they saw 
 nothing of the other boats. 
 
 " We knew," David writes, " that there could 
 have been but little hope of their keeping 
 together in that storm. Nearly all of them had 
 been overfull, for somehow or other these big 
 companies never provide adequate boat-room 
 for the full extent of their passenger accommoda- 
 tion, and the Malaga, that trip, had not one 
 empty berth. Jonathan told me we stood a 
 better chance of being picked up than any one 
 of those boats if only the running of the sea 
 kept us somewhere in the route of ships making 
 that passage to Forcados." 
 53 
 
54 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 But such luck as this did not come their way. 
 .Before the dawn broke on that second morning 
 they became conscious of a growing murmur, 
 ever increasing in volume in their ears, until, 
 before the light had come to show them their 
 approaching fate, they knew they had been swept 
 ' for two days towards the shore, arid soon would 
 be in the very teeth of those relentless lines of 
 breakers rolling in, mile upon mile, upon that 
 African coast. 
 
 Jonathan looked at David as the first muted 
 murmur of that thunder reached their ears. 
 
 " Hear that ? " said he. 
 
 David thought it was thunder out of the 
 storm, but Jonathan shook his head. He had 
 heard that sound too often to make any mistake 
 about it. In those two days they must have 
 drifted eight or even ten miles. The coast line 
 as last they had seen it, three days before from 
 the deck of the Malaga, had been a violet fringe 
 to the sea's horizon. Doubtless since then 
 they had made a course nearer shore than that, 
 but it was a danger even Jonathan had not 
 appreciated until he heard the low, ominous note 
 singing of almost certain death when still a hope 
 of being picked up had kept their spirits high. 
 
 " We shall have to cut these lashings," he 
 said. " We can't be shackled to this. We shall 
 have to trust to our belts — because it'll need the 
 strength of something out of hell to get through 
 those breakers." 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 55 
 
 To David such a course sounded like madness. 
 
 " We owed our lives to that little raft," he 
 says. " Not all the belts in the mercantile 
 marine would have kept me up in such a sea 
 for two days. But when the morning broke, 
 without a cloud in the sky, washed a pale blue 
 after that storm, and I saw the sun shining on 
 those fields of foam not more than a mile away, 
 I realized then what Jonathan meant about 
 shackles. We were going to be battered to 
 pieces anyway, and needed all the freedom of ~ 
 body we could get." 
 
 There follows here in his paj)ers a description 
 of their last moments together, when- they 
 talked about their chances and Jonathan gave 
 David the best advice he could. Following 
 that, and after the first wave caught them, I 
 can quite understand he realized nothing but 
 a soaring confusion, losing consciousness at 
 last in those tossing waters that flung them about 
 like matchwood as they were hurled towards 
 the shore. 
 
 He describes his return to consciousness, 
 accompanied by the realization that he was lying 
 on a stretch of sand, warm like bed-linen out 
 of the hot-press, with the heat of that tropical 
 sim ; solid and restful — ^these are his similes — 
 like a good hard mattress after three months 
 of a hammock. They are homely similes, no 
 doubt, but they will convey much to the reader 
 
56 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 who still appreciates the comfort of his own bed. 
 In addition to these facts, he became simul- 
 taneously aware that Jonathan was standing 
 over him, watching his recovery with a broad 
 smile of satisfaction on his face. 
 
 It may fairly easily be supposed that hunger 
 was almost the next, stage of consciousness. 
 Jonathan apparently was prepared for this. 
 He had had his own experiences ; had known 
 his own sensations when first, in possession of 
 all his faculties, he felt the solid ground under 
 his feet. It had been the need of something in 
 the way of food to put in his stomach. What 
 is more, he had found it. 
 
 They had been cast up on a stretch of sand, 
 four, perhaps as much as six, miles in length, a 
 margin of pure gold to a belt of tropical forest. 
 This forest began with swampy land, out of 
 which rose the spear-heads of giant rushes, then 
 growing into the dense vegetation of bamboo 
 and mangrove trees, rising like a dense green wall 
 as though to shut out the mysteries of a whole 
 continent from the eyes of a curious world. 
 The margin of sand might have been a quarter 
 of a mile wide in places. Its depth varied 
 considerably. It was, however, a clear stretch, 
 and in that brilliant atmosphere, about a mile 
 from where Jonathan was washed ashore, he 
 saw pieces of wreckage lying high and dry. 
 
 Nothing was more obvious than what it 
 must be. A ship's boat had shared their fate. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 57 
 
 possibly with as much good fortune as them- 
 selves. There might be some alive. He first 
 attended to David and then went off to see what 
 was to be found. Bodies had been washed up, 
 but not one had a breath of life in it. There 
 were two boats. Both had been broken to 
 matchwood in the grinding rollers of the surf. 
 He came back to where David was lying, bringing 
 two tins of biscuits, some of them untouched 
 by salt water, and there, on the warm sand, in 
 the fresh heat of the sun, he had his first meal 
 for two days, thanking^ — ^whatever powers a 
 man does thank — for his own common sense that 
 he had slipped a flask of brandy into one of his 
 pockets when he had gone below to get his 
 heavy automatic. 
 
 It was to the taste of this blessed liquid that 
 David returned to life, and after a while sat up 
 to eat the portion which Jonathan allowed him. 
 
 " Two tins," he said ; " there may be some 
 more — ^but that's all we know of. So don't 
 imagine you're dining at the ' Ritz,' with the 
 full prospect of supper later at the ' Savoy.' " 
 
 " I wouldn't have minded dining at the 
 ' Ritz,' " says David in his- papers, " but it 
 could not have brought me as great a sense of 
 satisfaction as that feeling of solid ground and 
 the hot sand burning through my drenched 
 clothes and warming the deepest marrow in 
 my bones. To get as great a sense of gratitude 
 
58 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 from dining at the ' Ritz ' one would have had 
 to have been held up for an hour in a fog out- 
 side Clapham Junction. I had been for two 
 days in the grip of the sea. That hot sandy 
 beach seemed the most appropriate satisfaction 
 I could want. After three biscuits and another 
 sip of brandy, I lay back on that — bed of roses — 
 looked up at the blaze of blue and thought 
 of the times I'd cursed in London when there 
 wasn't a taxi on the rank in Piccadilly to take 
 me down to the ' Carlton ' for a meal." 
 
 Of the two days which followed on that 
 beach, when at night they slept under the 
 stars, covered by the one blanket they had 
 found and some of the clothes they had taken 
 from the occupants of the wrecked ship's boats, 
 ■there is not much of interest to be told. Only 
 one alternative lay open to them, to explore 
 that dense forest barrier which lay between 
 them and the mainland. The sandy beach 
 ended, as I have indicated, after about five 
 or six miles. Upon that strip of innocent, 
 golden sand they were as much prisoners as 
 if unscalable walls surrounded them on either 
 side. There was indeed the wall of the wide 
 sea on the one hand and upon the other this 
 treacherous-looking swamp, merging into tropical 
 forest. 
 
 Here, on the first day, they found the apparent 
 aperture of a channel through the rushes, leading 
 
- DAVID AND JONATHAN 59 
 
 into the heart of the upper-growth. With all 
 the spurious energy that comes to a man eager 
 for discovery and with no experience of the 
 dangers or difficulties entailed, David was 
 for starting upon the expedition at once. They 
 had got their raft ashore. If that had borne 
 them on the open sea, he thought it surely 
 capable of tackling a journey in still and almost 
 sluggish water. 
 
 " All right," said Jonathan, " but we'll go 
 to-morrow. If I'd got a mirror, I'd show you 
 the look in your eyes. You want a bit of 
 sleep. We'll stop on the beach to-day and 
 see if anything more gets washed up. To- 
 morrow's time enough to start on that trip." 
 
 So they stayed on the beach another day 
 and night. Some reward for that the sea 
 brought them : an oilskin and two more bodies 
 — men. In the pocket of one was a steel and 
 flint lighter, with the tinder cord, sodden but 
 still capable of being ignited when dry, There 
 was a pipe and some tobacco in a pouch, also 
 a sovereign-case containing six pounds. 
 
 Jonathan took a sovereign out and offered 
 it to David. 
 
 " Give you a quid," he said, " if you find 
 another tin of biscuits." 
 
 David looked at him. 
 
 " I wondered," he says, " if the exertions 
 and dangers of the past three days had for the 
 moment slipped his reason. 
 
60 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " ' I'd find 'em for riothing if I could,' said I. 
 
 " And then he laughed and told me I was 
 coming by my first appreciation of the value 
 of money." 
 
 In the pockets, of the other man's coat they 
 found cigarettes — unsmokable— ^a gold cigar- 
 cutter, a gold toothpick, a gold nail-clipper 
 and a gold knife with steel blades. David 
 held them up on the end of a gold chain and 
 roared with laughter. 
 
 " These are the sort of things we carry about 
 with us thrqugh life — ^the serviceable presents 
 they sell in Bond Street, and when you really 
 come to living, they're not as valuable as a 
 packet of pins. A packet of pins would be 
 worth twice as much to us." 
 
 " There^s the knife," said Jonathan. 
 
 David opened it. It was the only article 
 in the bunch which obviously had never been 
 used. 
 
 " It was that night," writes David, " as we 
 ^ay down on the beach to go to sleep, I 
 first put the question which had been running 
 in my head ever since I had wakened that 
 morning to a full realization it was no dream, 
 that . there we were on that desolate coast 
 and must make the best of it. 
 
 " First of all I asked Jonathan where he 
 thought we were. 
 
 " ' Judging by the coast line,' said he,' ' these 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 61 
 
 swamps "and^forests and the general look of it, 
 somewhere on the Ivory Coast, perhaps two 
 or three hundred miles from Monrovia, the 
 capital of Liberia.' 
 
 " We talked in a desultory fashion then for 
 a few moments about that queer little nigger 
 state, with its GUbert and Sullivan Republic. 
 Jonathan had been there and had much that 
 was amusing to tell me about it. But I wasn't 
 amused just then. I was thinking of the one 
 thing I really wanted to hear from him with 
 the experience he had of travelling in that 
 part of the world. I suppose he knew I was 
 going to ask it, because in some subconscious 
 sort of way I felt he was doing his best to 
 give me no opportunity. However, I got it in at 
 last without seeming as if I minded a twopenny 
 cuss one way or the other. 
 
 '' ' What chance,' said I, ' do you think there 
 is of our getting out of this ? ' 
 
 " ' Being picked up by a boat ? ' said he. 
 , " I grunted an affirmative. 
 
 " ' The , remotest,' he replied. ' They don't 
 come in near the coast for another two or three 
 hundred miles. The Malaga was closer in 
 than most.' 
 
 " ' Then what chance ? ' 
 
 " ' Through that forest ? ' he interrupted. 
 
 " I nodded my head. 
 
 " ' Not the chance of a dog,' said he." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 " SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON " 
 
 HERE I am taking long extracts from 
 David's papers for that voyage of ex- 
 ploration of theirs through the swamp and 
 the heart of the forest ; leaving it entirely to 
 his words to describe what they found there. 
 I have only edited the various passages I have 
 chosen, where it has seemed to me that David 
 lost the thread of narrative in too great an 
 affection for description of their surroundings. 
 
 " The channel opened wide enough at the 
 end of a sort of gully to the sea. The first 
 hundred yards or so were through the swamp 
 and that deep fringe of what I can only describe 
 as .sea-grass, but tall and strong in the stem 
 as the toughest of young bamboo. Progress 
 was slow, however, as we were paddling with 
 the broken blade-end of an oar washed up 
 with one of the ship's boats. The further we 
 went into the maze of that swamp, the darker, 
 the more silent and unhealthy looking it became. 
 
 62 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 63 
 
 The sound of the breaking sea became more 
 and more distant. After a time the rustle of 
 wind in the grass tops above our heads almost 
 shut it out ; another hundred yards and so 
 dense was the vegetation about us that we 
 heard it no more. 
 
 " We talked a good deal at first, but when 
 I found the sound of my voice hitting as it 
 were against that wall before me and coming 
 back into my face with an eerie, whispered 
 echo of what seemed its natural tone, I gave 
 it up and we went on in silence. Occasionally 
 Jonathan would speak, pointing out the filthy 
 track of a crocodile through the swamp ; 
 occasionally the' silence would be broken by 
 the oily noise of a water snake dropping into 
 the water before us and swimming into the 
 dark forest of the green stems across our path. 
 
 " At last, however, the character of it all 
 began to change. We came to bigger stuff 
 and more interesting than that monotonous 
 grass. Jlere even the colour of vegetable life 
 became more varied. We could see above 
 our heads the deeper green of the feathery 
 palm, while here and there, where light crept 
 through the higher branches, there might be 
 caught a splash of crimson, a flame of blue from 
 the flowering orchids finding their way out 
 towards the sun. 
 
 " At last, when we came to the forest kings, 
 the mahogany and other hardwood trees, there 
 
64 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 was still more air to breathe, more light to 
 see by. Here, up in the higher branches, we 
 could see the troupes of monkeys following us 
 from one tree to another, along their natural 
 highway, as easily as motoring on the Great 
 North Road. And not monkeys only on that 
 broad pathway of the forest, but little tree 
 bears, standing on branches ^ and gazing down 
 at us, then hurrying on in our track lest they 
 should lose sight of those two strange animals 
 below, trespassing in their country where never 
 the face of man had been seen before." 
 
 I was interested by the following description 
 which David gives of his impression of that 
 troupe of monkeys and those silently inquisitive 
 bears. 
 
 " They were just like a crowd of street arabs," 
 he says, " but seeming to me to be closer to 
 life and more warranted in their curiosity. I 
 did not resent them. I felt they far more had 
 a right to resent me. And every yard we 
 propelled that old raft further into the forest, 
 it seemed as if we were getting, nearer to the 
 secret of all things, which they knew and were 
 jealously afraid of our discovering. How near 
 we were indeed getting," he adds, " to some 
 new knowledge of life, of the things that are 
 and which no civilization can destroy, perhaps 
 they may have known. Certain it is we had 
 not a thought of it then." 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 65 
 
 There follows after this in his script some 
 needless, though possibly natural, digression 
 about the language of monkeys. I can imder- 
 stand the thoughts of one, seeing these creatures 
 in their Avild state for the first time, setting 
 towards such speculations on the origin of 
 language as seemed vitally interesting to him. 
 It does not concern our story. 
 
 Neither shall I take any notice of his wild 
 tales, derived from the supply of Jonathan's 
 information, about some sort of sea-lion, called 
 the Maniton, which lives in the swampland 
 and feeds in the dark. According tp Jonathan, 
 the female species has a kind of human-shaped 
 head, with the shoulders and breasts of a woman 
 and flappers instead of arms. He told David 
 that it was a fact-^and certainly I do not see 
 him as one given to imaginative stories — ^that 
 no native looks on its face and lives. This, of 
 course, gives David scope for any amount of 
 picturesque theorizing which, interesting though 
 it was, does not, with the exigencies of the 
 story, permit of repetition. 
 
 I just mention it because of the circumstances 
 which occasioned Jonathan's reference to the 
 existence of this strange beast whose name 
 certainly is absolutely unfamiliar to me. The 
 circumstances were these, and I draw from 
 David's script again to describe them. 
 
 " For an hour or more," he writes, " we had 
 
 5 
 
66 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 made our way through the forest, where some- 
 times what looked like the great root of a gigantic 
 tree became a live thing, an eight-foot crocodile, 
 slithering down into the water and lying in 
 the black depths to continue its sleep. Then, 
 almost in a moment, the forest ended. We 
 drifted into an open swamp again, with tall 
 elephant-grass rising high above our heads, but 
 filtering in a greater wealth of light." 
 
 This was the point in his narrative where 
 Jonathan spoke of the haunt of the Maniton, 
 and David went off at a tangent into his di- 
 gression. 
 
 " As suddenly as that swamp began," he 
 goes on, " it suddenly ended. We came out 
 into the bright light of the sun once more, and 
 there was a beautiful sandy beach, about sixty 
 feet wide, beyond which rose a rocky bluff, 
 sheer up from the sand, at least as high as 
 the highest mahogany tree." ^ 
 
 Here Jonathan apparently looked well about 
 him, at the gradual slope on one side of that 
 little bay where banana trees, ground nuts and 
 tomatoes all grew in a lavish profusion, and 
 the evidences of orange trees and wild yams 
 were to be seen everywhere. He went across 
 to the foot of the rocky bluff, and there, finding 
 water dripping from one of the fissures in 
 meagre drops, he put his finger on the place, 
 then laid it on his tongue. 
 
 After that he turned round to David. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 67 
 
 "This place," said he, "is where you and I 
 will have to live for the Lord knows how 
 long." 
 
 " After the toiling through that forest and 
 those two nights on the sea," says David, " I 
 couldn't have asked for a better prospect. 
 Considering such experiences as we had had, 
 the whole atmosphere of the place seemed to 
 suggest a haven of refuge. 
 
 " I suppose I had not taken seriously either 
 his answers to my questions of the night before, 
 or the remark he had just made about the 
 period of time we were likely to be compelled 
 to make this our corner of the world. There 
 was sunlight and warmth ; such sunlight and 
 warmth as, after an English climate, must have 
 demanded the highest spirits. 
 
 " Perhaps it was I could never have believed 
 we were prisoners in that place ; prisoners as 
 surely as though it had been a little island 
 in the midst of unfrequented seas. The imme- 
 diate prospect was sufficient for me. Instead 
 of black corpses, swollen and floating on the 
 face of the waters, we were two hearty men 
 and strong, the sun was shining, and here was 
 a spot, surrounded with all kinds of vegetation, 
 which seemed to be cut out for a dwelling-place. 
 Doubtless, notAvithstanding Jonathan's belief, I 
 may have reckoned escape was to be found that 
 way. But added to it all, after the circumscribed 
 conditions of .^London yife,| there was the 
 
 5* 
 
68 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 exhilarating freedom of adventure about every 
 moment of it. 
 
 " I only know I looked up at Jonathan when, 
 with somewhat of a despondent note in his 
 voice, he had made that announcement, and I 
 replied, ' Well — ^hang it all — ^we've both read 
 " Robinson Crusoe " and " Swiss Family Robin- 
 son " and made pretence of playing at them if 
 I remember my youth as well as I ought. Dash 
 it, last year in London, when that week of fogs 
 was on, I'd have given a thousand quid to 
 be transported to a place like this and told to 
 shift for myself.' 
 
 " Jonathan nodded his head, saying, ' Right 
 you are,' but the tone in his voice implied : 
 ' There's such a thing as transportation for life.' 
 
 "One did not often hear that note in his 
 voice. I know now he was speaking from a 
 wider knowledge of the conditions than my own. 
 But even his knowledge did not embrace that 
 most important condition with which we found 
 our lives were to be so intimately concerned." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE Malaga's boat 
 
 DAVID'S allusion to " Swiss Family Robin- 
 son " was evidently made because that 
 aspect- of it appealed to his lively imagination. 
 He follows in his narrative with page after 
 page descriptive of their preparations in that 
 secluded creek to make a home for themselves 
 — a base, as it were, for operations of discovery 
 of that path to freedom whenever it might 
 present itself. 
 
 Jonathan had said they might take it they 
 would be there for some weeks before any chance 
 of escape offered. The first task, therefore, to 
 which they set themselves was to build some 
 sort of habitation ensuring them shelter and 
 sleep at night, as well as security from stray 
 beasts, such as leopards amongst those rocks, 
 or crocodiles coming up out of the swamp. 
 
 I can well understand it was a lively business, 
 
 this making a home for themselves, rather than 
 
 going to the nearest house-agent to inqvire 
 
 what residential quarters he had vacant on his 
 
 69 
 
70 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 books. Judging by the space he gives to the 
 account of what they did those first three days, 
 David must have given his whole heart to it. 
 The erection of a palisade to keep out the 
 crocodiles front the swamp ; the starting of a 
 bonfire at dusk to drive away mosquitoes and 
 any prowling leopard that might chance to be 
 attracted by the sounds of life in those still 
 places ; the building of a temporary hut with a 
 roofing of broad banana leaves, stitched together 
 with the pins of bamboo spikes, all these per- 
 formances he dilates upon with a wealth of 
 detail which makes him a plagiarist of the very 
 book he mentions. 
 
 It was on the third day, when, so to speak, 
 they had established themselves in their new 
 home and David's hands were too blistered to 
 do any more work, that Jonathan proclaimed the 
 necessity for a course of action ensuring them 
 every opportunity for securing their escape. 
 
 " We shall have to scramble through that 
 forest again, back to the beach," said he. 
 " We shall have to set up a sort of distress signal 
 in the hope of some devil putting up his glasses 
 in this direction from a passing ship. Now we've 
 got a base to work from, that's the first pre- 
 caution." 
 
 They went, as before, on their raft, lifting it 
 out of the water here and there, where the tangle 
 of tree-roots or the undergrowth barred their 
 passage. With no little difficulty, marking 
 
DAVIDJAND JONATHAN 71 
 
 their way as they went, they came after about 
 three hours hard going to the beach, where 
 the breakers were rolling in on to the shore. 
 
 With the fine weather they had had during 
 those last five days, the sea had taken a surface 
 of azure-coloured glass ; the tall grasses were 
 listless in the still air, and the fields of surf were 
 no longer ploughed with foam. Lazily, one after 
 the other, the waves came rolling in, but the 
 sting of the storm had gone out of them. 
 
 " They were inviting now," says David. 
 " Their roar of anger had become a song. I 
 thought of my piano at home and the key I 
 could set their music in." 
 
 " We had brought with us," he continues, 
 " a long bamboo pole. It must have been 
 thirty or forty feet in length. This was to be 
 used as a flag-staff for our signal of distress. 
 A poor makeshift it was, not intended to be 
 permanent, but Jonathan would waste no day, 
 he said,»or leave an effort unmade to attract 
 the attention of any ship, however distant, that 
 might be passing. He was more eager in those 
 first few days to get away than I was, perhaps 
 because he had less hope, or partly on accoxjnt 
 of his knowledge of what life would really mean 
 in such a place. I can scent danger right enough, 
 but that place in those first few days was a 
 Garden of Eden to me after the experiences we 
 had been through. 
 
72 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " Anyhow, we fixed our flag-staff firmly in 
 the sand, with that flutter of white at the head 
 of it— some garmisnt we had taken from one of 
 the bodies that had been washed ashore. Three 
 cheers we|gave, when it was up. Mine, I must 
 confess, were in the nature of a schoolboy's ; 
 Jonathan's more serious, but breaking at the 
 end into a laugh at my enthusiasm for a bit of 
 work done. It had indeed been no easy job, 
 lugging that forty feet of bamboo pole through 
 the maze of those forest trees and giant grasses. 
 
 " When once the cheers were given, nothing 
 would satisfy me but I must swarm up it as far 
 as its thickness would allow> just to see what 
 sort- of an advantage it gave to that bit of white 
 flapping up there. Up I went, half ways, 
 Jonathan standing there below on the sandy 
 beach, laughing at my efforts. I was laughing 
 too ; it was so confoundedly greasy, and only my 
 bare feet could grip it. Then, as I looked out to 
 sea, all the laughter went out of me, as though a 
 sudden gust of wind had blown it off my lips. 
 In a second I had slithered down to the groamd 
 and was gasping to Jonathan what I had 
 seen*' 
 
 " ' There's a boat,' I said, ' there's a boat — 
 a ship's boat — drifting in shore. I — I think I 
 saw people in it. I'll swear I did.' 
 
 "And there, sure enough, from the ground, 
 but almost concealed below the higher line 
 of breakers, was a boat, hfting one instant into 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 78 
 
 sight in a sag of the line of sni-f, then disappearing 
 completely from view. 
 
 " For five minutes Jonathan never said a word, 
 until he had made sure of the sight of it at least 
 half a dozen times ; then he turned and looked 
 at me. 
 
 " ' It's one of the Malaga's boats,' said he ; 
 ' they've kept off shore all these days, hoping, 
 I suppose, to stay in track of steamers. There 
 can't be a soul alive in it, or at any rate with 
 any strength left, because the drift has caught 
 them. They're washing in this way sure 
 enough. If we could save that boat ! ' 
 
 " He said no more, but at once began stripping 
 off all his clothes. It was the boat, only the 
 boat he was thinking of. 
 
 " ' In the name of God ? ' I began. 
 
 " ' I'm going to have a shot arid swim for it,' 
 he said. 
 
 " Well — ^hang it I What could I do but have 
 my shot as well f " 
 
CHAPTER! IX 
 
 BURDEN OF THE SEA 
 
 IT was not to be expected that David should 
 succeed, or even Jonathan either, for 
 that matter. At least, however, he accom- 
 plished more than David's strength allowed for 
 him. He got out far enough to save the boat 
 before it was capsized between the furrows of 
 that field of foam. With almost superhuman 
 effort he fighted^her as she came reeling in 
 towards shore, all broadside on and half awash 
 in the fret of the tumbling water. With the 
 final help of David, her. keel was grounded in the 
 slush of the sand. They could not haul her 
 high and dry. Had she been empty, she was 
 one of the heaviest of the Malaga's boats. But 
 there, flung about in the bottom between the 
 thwarts, all in the helpless attitudes of death, 
 were six bodies — four women and two men of 
 the Malaga's crew. 
 
 " We stood, both of us, staring at them," 
 writes David, now in a serious enough vein, 
 
 74 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 75 
 
 " and there, peeping out from amongst the dis- 
 ordered heap of clothing, I saw the folds of a 
 bottle-green petticoat, sodden, crushed, stained 
 with sea-water, but sufficiently recognizable 
 to jolt a memory Jerking into my mind. 
 
 " One by one, we lifted them out of the boat 
 and laid them on that same warm beach of sand 
 I had been so thankful for only a few days 
 before. There was not much satisfaction those 
 poor devils , could get out of the warmth of it 
 then. 
 
 " It struck me again during this incident, 
 the truth of Jonathan's remarks about the 
 elemental instincts. Callous as it may seem, 
 we were far more concerned with what they 
 had brought with them in the boat which would 
 be of use to us, even down to the contents of 
 their pockets, than at the sight of those six 
 lifeless bodies. That they had struggled for 
 so many days against adversity and failed ; 
 moreover, what all the horrible circumstances 
 of that failure must have been — ^for here there 
 were only six, whereas when she had left the 
 Malaga's side the boat had been full — seemed 
 in no way so full of tragedy as the fact that there 
 was only one half-full box of biscuits left of all 
 their stores. Both men had pipes and some 
 quantity of tobacco left. They could hardly 
 have smoked at all for those ten days or so. 
 One can scarcely wonder at that. Every one of 
 them had died from some form of exhaustion 
 
76 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 and sickness brought on by thirst. All the 
 water-bottles were dry as bones. Many, no 
 doubt, had gone mad, as they do under the strain 
 of acute thirst, and thrown themselves overboard. 
 So at least we accounted for these six bodies 
 remaining out of the boat-load which had set 
 forth from the side of the burning Malaga. 
 
 '- I don't know what Jonathan felt; as we went 
 through the pockets of the clothes on those six 
 bodies, lying there on the sand in silent witness 
 to the merciless laws of Life when it is reduced 
 to its elemental conditions. I know I felt like 
 a scavenger, a ghoul, stealing from the dead. 
 
 " Probably I did not realize those sensations 
 acutely enough to record them untU I came to 
 the woman whom I had carried up myself in 
 my arms from the saloon. As I bent over her, 
 the sense of sacrilege to the dead came suddenly 
 over me when I looked into her face. The next 
 second, with the last half of the breath I was 
 that moment breathing, I had , shouted 
 Jonathan's name. 
 
 " He looked up from where he was kneeling, 
 caught in a sudden tension of interest by the 
 note in my voice. 
 
 '"^She's breathing!' I shouted. 'She's— 
 she's alive, man ! What in the name of God 
 can we do ? ' " 
 
 Though David put the question, it becomes 
 obvious from his narrative as he continues that 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 77 
 
 he was the only one -of those two wlio knew 
 what was best to be done. It was patently 
 enough a case of exhaustion, of fever, brought 
 about by the prolonged need of moisture in the 
 system. 
 
 " I always carried my founta,in-pen and a 
 filler," he says, " and had laughed over the fact 
 with Jonathan only %wo days before, because 
 devil a drop of ink cotdd I ever hope to make or 
 find in that corner of the world. Now that 
 filler was invaluable. Charged with brandy 
 from Jonathan's flask, which we had brought 
 with us, I got some of the liquid well down her 
 throat, past the terribly parched tongue she had. 
 Slightly she shivered, as the warmth of it found 
 its way into her system. But it was a long 
 time before she returned to actual consciousness. 
 
 " In a tentative and clumsy sort of way, old 
 Jonathan helped me while I massaged her hands, 
 arms and feet, inducing the circulation back 
 into her veins, and restoring that, warmth of 
 life which almost had, gone out of her. 
 
 " We used nearly all the brandy. That 
 could not be helped. There was little likeli- 
 hood, except in the event of accident, that we 
 should want it again. Water there was in 
 plenty at the creek, where we had found the 
 source of that leakage through the fissure in the 
 rocks. 
 
 " It must have been half an hour or more 
 
78 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 before she opened her eyes ; another hour at 
 least before she could iftter a word, and that in 
 a rasped, hoarse tone of voice, as though the very 
 chords in her throat were drawn and withered 
 with the drought in her body. • 
 
 " She asked where, she was. I did my best 
 to explain, realizing how foolish any explana- 
 tions must really be to her in that state of her 
 mind. After a bit, I fed her with pieces of 
 biscuit, soaked in brandy and water. Even 
 then it was with the greatest pain and effort 
 she could swallow it. Nevertheless, they gave 
 her strength. There was a moment when she 
 fastened her feverish eyes on me in gratitude. 
 But my heavens ! What a change just those 
 few days had made in her. No one would have 
 believed it possible, seeing her then, for there 
 ever to have been the certain type of beauty 
 which I had seen those few moments as I 
 carried her up the stairs from the saloon, white 
 and unconscious as she was, in my arms. 
 
 " In about two hours' time, she had regained 
 sufficient strength to bear being lifted into the 
 boat. Then, with all our new-found possessions, 
 amongst which the boat, of course, was the most 
 invaluable of all, we set out up that gully from 
 the sea, back by our path through the swamp 
 and the forest to the creek. 
 
 " With such garments as we had collected 
 from the other bodies, we made a bed for her 
 in the bottom of the boat. That bed served 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 79 
 
 its purpose. The whole way back she slept, a 
 normal sleep which spoke volumes for her 
 recuperative powers, while all the time a more 
 healthy tone of colour crept back into the ghostly 
 pallor of her cheeks. 
 
 " We talked about her all the time, where we 
 should put her fqr the night ; how we must set 
 to work at once to increase our accommoda- 
 tion ; how we could provide the best for her 
 comfort ; wondering, too, in a vague way, what 
 sort of a companion she would prove to be. 
 
 " ' She'll just have to do what she's told,' 
 said Jonathan, who was not one in those condi- 
 tions of life to play with the doing of anything. 
 Under his command, I had never done such 
 hard manual work in the whole of my life, 
 neither, for that matter, had I ever enjoyed 
 anything so well. 
 
 " After about four hours, just as it was draw- 
 ing to dusk, we reached home. I seem to 'call 
 it home naturally enough ; yet I suppose to 
 anyone reading these pages it will appear 
 somewhat incongruous that a shakedown of 
 a hut with a flimsy roof of banana leaves could 
 deserve such a name. Yet that is what it meant 
 for many a day to all of us. 
 
 " She slept that night in the hut on the 
 softest bed I could make for her, while we lay 
 down by the bonfire outside. So long as that 
 was burning and our palisade was firm, there 
 was no fear of being disturbed. I gave her some 
 
80 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 more food, soaked in brandy and water as before, 
 about an hour previous to her going to sleep 
 for the night. Then Jonathan and I turned in. 
 We rolled ourselves in the ship's blankets we 
 had found, and lay, staring into our bonfire, 
 talking for another good two hours about the 
 events of that day before we settled ourselves 
 to sleep." 
 
CHAPTER , X 
 
 RESPONSIBILITIES 
 
 " ^ Tl THEN we awoke the next morning," 
 V V David's narrative continues, " it 
 was to a sense of responsibility, not unpleasantly 
 distracting, which had been added to the mere 
 routine of living there in that creek, until such 
 time as a ship, coming near enough to the coast, 
 should see our signal of distress and send a 
 boat to rescue us. 
 
 " According to Jonathan, as I have already 
 shown, this was a possibility as remote as it was 
 bare. Because of those very swamps, that 
 coast was deserted by natives from inland and 
 disregarded by ships at sea. As a habitation, 
 obviously it was impossible. As a speculation 
 for traders — unless, as Jonathan was inclined 
 to think, there might be traces of gold — ^it was 
 worthless. 
 
 " But our chances of escape had increased 
 
 with the possession of the Malaga's boat. So 
 
 at least it seemed to me, until Jonathan informed 
 
 me that launching her in the teeth of those 
 
 8i 6 
 
82 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 lines of waves from the beach was a job that 
 might be' undertaken by a number of men 
 capable of keeping her head to the surf, but as 
 a workable proposition for two ordinary men 
 might be straightway put out of the question." 
 
 David apparently was less depressed than 
 Jonathan by this prospect. The whole aspect 
 of the life was new to him. It was less a prison, 
 and more of an adventurous experiment with 
 Fate. He felt he was learning new things about 
 himself, as it might be with one looking in a 
 mirror for the first time and knowing himself 
 for what he was. The only coimter-attractions 
 which might have induced in him a fretting 
 spirit of discontent were those circumstances 
 of life which he had been accustomed to in 
 London — ^the daily round of an idle man with 
 more than sufficient for his needs, and ease 
 eating out with rust all the ambitions he had 
 ever had. 
 
 He says in various places in that script of his 
 that he had grown sick of his existence in the 
 Albany. This, indeed, had been his reason for 
 undertaking a big game shoot in Central Africa. 
 Yet even that, as Jonathan had remarked, had 
 been in the nature of an organized Cook's tour, 
 everything cut and dried with business-like 
 precision no sooner had he put his money down 
 on the coimter. 
 
 But such an adventure as was this, with all 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 83 
 
 its uncertain issues at stake and now the added 
 interest of a woman dependent upon them, was 
 one which not even the most go-ahead and 
 enterprising firm of travelling agents could 
 ever have provided him with. 
 
 He woke, anyhow, that morning evidently 
 in the top of his spirits. It was not this way 
 with Jonathan. That creek indeed was a 
 prison to him, having none of the alluring 
 element of change with all the travelling he 
 had done in unfrequented corners of the world. 
 What is more, it was far greater a hindrance to 
 his work than any' wife could ever have been. 
 
 He had escaped from matrimony so far, 
 lifting always in spirits as the whistle blew 
 for all ashore, and the Blue Peter was hauled 
 down from the masthead. So far as he could 
 see, there was no escape from this except by 
 the fluke of chance, and now another hindrance 
 had been added to the risks attached to their 
 making a bid for freedom. His first glance 
 that morning had been cast towards the hut 
 where their new companion was lying, when, 
 turning to David, he said : 
 
 " You'd better look after her. You're a 
 better hand at that sort of tricksy business 
 than I am. When she's able to move about, 
 she'll want buttoning up the back or some 
 sort of nonsense like that, and that's no job 
 of mine." 
 
 He had said this in some sort of cynical 
 
 6* 
 
84 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 humour, and then in a more serious tone of 
 voice he added, "We can't be hampered by 
 her, you know. If we have to take a risk to 
 get out of this, she'll have to take it with us, 
 or stay behind." 
 
 ■ , " It was again," writes David,' " another 
 sudden insight into the hidden mysteries of 
 elemental impulse. The moment he had said 
 it, I felt for an instant amazed at his callous 
 ness ; but the next, as his words passed on their 
 vibrations towards other and unawakened cells 
 in my brain, I knew he was quite right." 
 
 Nevertheless, it had come into Jonathan's 
 mind first, and that is a point of interest which 
 David misses in his observation of the incident. 
 They were, these two, as I have said before, 
 pronounced types, the old civilization and the 
 new ; the one with all the force of physical 
 nature, silent but insistent, in him, the other 
 with all the force of nature's increasing men- 
 tality leaping towards the unknown. I have 
 gone back in my script and copied these words 
 exactly as I had written them before. 
 
 It is, therefore, consistent with that descrip- 
 tion of them that Jonathan should first have 
 formed^ in his sense of the situation, this 
 apparently callous point of view. If regarded 
 closely, however, as David admits he regarded 
 it on second thoughts himself, the callousness 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 85 
 
 goes clean out of it. It was reasonable, the 
 logical attitude as seen from the rights of each 
 . man to his existence in a world where the 
 survival of the fittest is at present accepted, as 
 the predominating law. This law it is which 
 our enemies are endeavouring to stamp inefface- 
 ably and for ever upon that parchment whereon 
 are written the higher hopes and nobler ideals 
 of the civilized world. 
 
 It was this decision, in any case, which they 
 mutually adopted that first morning when they 
 awoke to the realization of what this addition to 
 their little community must mean. 
 
 " It all depends," replied David, when he had 
 thought about it for a moment — " it all depends 
 upon what sort of a woman she is." And, 
 staring straight into the ashes of their bumt- 
 out bonfire, he repeated it again, " It all 
 depends upon that." 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 CONVALESCENCE 
 
 IN seven or eight days, Joan — David ■ calls 
 her by no other name — ^was well enough 
 to leave the hut for the first time, and on his 
 arm to walk out into the sunshine. For all 
 that time he, alone, had nursed and tended 
 to her, and, though he says no word of it, I can 
 imagine with what consideration and thought- 
 fulness he must have done it. There was 
 enough of the feminine quality in his tempera- 
 ment, detracting nothing from his masculinity, 
 to enable him to sense acutely the things that 
 mean much to women, without pretending to 
 understand the intrinsic quality of the things 
 themselves. " To make such pretence as this," 
 he says in some other part of his story, " is to 
 destroy all the value of doing the right thing." 
 
 To me, that sounds truer than a truism, and 
 gives me much of the reason for my assumption 
 that during the period when she was dependent 
 upon him for so many things, he raust have been a 
 constant surprise to her in the way he understood, 
 and, in the way of men, which must always be 
 clumsy in a sick-room, attended to her wants. 
 86 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 87 
 
 " I was .a constant source of amusement to 
 her," he says, in the only description he gives 
 of her recovery, " in the way I did things about 
 the hut. It was when once she began to laugh 
 — and that was pretty soon — ^that she began to 
 get better." 
 
 I am quite prepared to beheve that she found 
 him intensely amusing. I can assume also 
 that she had no little wonder beside. And all 
 that she knew of Jonathan for those first few 
 days was a sound of hammering, continuing all 
 day long, redoubled in energy and noise when 
 David was not with her. This was the con- 
 struction of the new hut for the accommodation 
 made necessary by her arrival. 
 
 Gradually David, told her all their schemes, 
 the plans they were making for their comfort 
 and ultimate escape, until, with the returning 
 of her strength, she became as eager as a child 
 to be up and helping them in the work, the 
 benefits of which she was herself to share. 
 
 I have inferred that he pays but little atten- 
 tion to description of her illness and recovery, 
 but I cannot omit a passage in his pages at this 
 point, in which he describes his first impression 
 of her as she began to regain strength and give 
 evidence of her more normal personality. 
 
 " This is how I saw her then," he says, " at 
 that time when she had been about five days 
 at the creek and was beginning to take a more 
 
88 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 lively interest in our conversations. She had 
 a fine sense of pride, shown in many things 
 besides her spirit of independence while she 
 was an invalid. There was, as well, a strong 
 appreciation for the beautiful in her nature. 
 This I gathered simply enough from her taste 
 in literature, painting and the fine arts generally. 
 We disagreed on many things, but her outlook 
 in these cases was due to temperament, and in 
 no case to want of intelligence. 
 
 " She liked the best things in life. Witness 
 her bottle-green petticoat. Yet at the same 
 time there appeared an absolute contradiction 
 to this in her almost childish delight, when once 
 she was getting well, in the primitive conditions 
 with which she found she was surrounded. I 
 hkd expected her to chafe against discomforts 
 at every turn — and Lord knows there were 
 plenty of them. She simply laughed, and with 
 a broad sense of humour you find in few women 
 who regard their first appearance in the morn- 
 ing as a serious event. This certainly she did, 
 as she gave full evidence of in her concern at 
 meeting Jonathan for the first time. 
 
 " She was full of curiosity about him, that man 
 who was only visualized so far to her by a 
 constant sound of hammering. Again and 
 again she asked me why he did not come to 
 see 'her. 
 
 " ' We shall have td meet sooner or later,' she 
 said once with a laugh. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 89 
 
 " And I had to invent all sorts of excuses, the 
 most convincing of which was the true one, 
 that he was not first and foremost a ladies' 
 man, and certainly was not at his best as a 
 conversationalist in their bedrooms. 
 
 " ' I think I shall like him,' was her reply 
 to that, and as far as I could see from their 
 first meeting, she did. We had got on well 
 with the new hut, which was an elaborate affair, 
 combining a sleeping-room for us and a general 
 room to be used by all of us for meals. For her 
 own sleeping accommodation, it was intended 
 she should keep to the hut we had first built, 
 which was to be improved upon at the earliest 
 opportunity. When she asked, with a twinkle 
 in her eye, if we had not arranged for her to 
 have some little private sitting-room to herself, 
 I saw for a moment a look in Jonathan's face as 
 though he felt we were badly in for it. Yet, 
 somehow, instead of thinking he was a fool for 
 that look, so wanting in a sense of humour, I 
 realized he was the best chap in the world. 
 He smiled, but a moment late, when he realized 
 she was only jesting." 
 
 It becomes necessary here for me to sketch, 
 as briefly as possible, the type of woman she 
 was, riot, that is to say, as regards character — 
 David has done that for me — but the class to 
 which she belonged and the circumstances of 
 life in which she had been brought up. During 
 
90 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 those days when she was gradually recovering 
 her strength, she told David without any 
 reserve all there was to .be told about herself. 
 
 Her father was prominently connected with 
 diamond mines near Kiraberley ; a big and 
 evidently a wealthy man in his way. Believing 
 in an English education, he had sent his 
 daughter to England to school at the age of 
 ten, and there, in charge of friends whose 
 leniency had given her every freedom, she had 
 been brought up. Every year her father had 
 come home for a month or so to see her. Her 
 mother was dead. From all these circum- 
 stances, and receiving a generous allowance 
 from her father, she had grown up with an 
 unusual sense of freedom in a girl, and an 
 uncommon spirit of independence as compared 
 with many women one met before the War. 
 
 Asked by David, on one of those occasions 
 when she was speaking of her upbringing, why 
 she had never married, she replied : 
 
 " But why ? Why ask that ? " 
 
 "Well, I take it," said he boldly, "you're 
 half-way between twenty and thirty. Most 
 girls come to matrimony by then with less 
 qualifications for it than you." 
 
 By the use of that phrase, she knew apparently 
 he was avoiding a compliment, and dotlbtjess 
 liked him the better for it. She did not, any- 
 how, press to know what sort of qualifications 
 he implied. A sensible woman realizes the 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 91 
 
 full extent of her attractions, and prefers deeds 
 for compliments rather than words. She did 
 not, however, answer his question, but put 
 another straight to him. 
 
 " Are you married ? " she inquired. 
 
 " Neither of us is," said he. 
 
 " Well, I take it you're between thirty and 
 forty, and with necessary qualifications — ^why 
 haven't you ? " 
 
 * For himself, David replied that there was a 
 little matter of finding the one woman. 
 
 " Do you imply from that," she asked him, 
 " that there's a superfluity of the right men ? " 
 
 This was an example of the conversations 
 they had in the hut while he was attending to 
 her, and invariably by some turn of her wit, 
 or twist of his sense of humour, they all ended 
 in laughter. Hearing it, between the blows of 
 his improvised hammer or the swing of his axe, 
 Jonathan often chafed at the soimd, when the 
 blows with which he followed it were the heavier, 
 though not necessarily the more effective. 
 
 These sketches, I feel inclined to think, 
 sufficiently describe that period of time while 
 she was recovering from the exhaustion of her 
 adventure in the Malaga's boat, and before she 
 took her normal and proper place in that strange 
 minage a trois from which so much is to be 
 leamt of those elemental truths civilization 
 tends to hide from us at every turn. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 PRELIMINARIES 
 
 DAVID had found her, it will be remem- 
 bered, lying by the piano in the saloon, 
 where evidently she had been playing to amuse 
 herself; There could have been no audience 
 or she would not have been misled. It, had 
 been after dinner. She was not in evening 
 dress, but, as David had observed, her costume 
 had been carefully considered for that occasion 
 of her first appearance. 
 
 " The more I saw of her in those first few 
 days at the creek," he writes somewhere, " the 
 more I marvelled at a woman of her in- 
 dependence of character toppling down in a 
 faint at the first alarm of fire. That, however, 
 she explained away by telling me that for the 
 first days of the voyage she had been pretty 
 bad and was still feeling a bit shaky. The fact 
 that she survived the others in the Malaga's 
 boat proves she was constitutionally pretty 
 strong." 
 
 92- 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 93 
 
 It was, anyhow, in that costume m which he 
 had found her that she made her first appear- 
 ance outside the hut. She had called out to 
 David when she was r^ady, a;id, opening the 
 doorj he found her, pale no doubt as when 
 first he had seen her, but reminding him, almost 
 with a shock it would appear, of those momen- 
 tary sensations he had experienced as he carried 
 her up in his arms on deck. She had done her 
 hair carefully, and, from all accoimts, it was 
 hair worth doing. Some powder she must have 
 had in one of those receptacles women carry 
 more zealously than rosary beads — ^but appar- 
 ently no colour for her lips or cheeks. He 
 assumes this by the fact that she had used none, 
 and I have no doubt he is right. 
 
 Jonathan's first impression of her as he saw 
 her crossing the creek on David's- arm must 
 have been based entirely upon his pre-con- 
 ceived attitude of mind. She was a woman, 
 therefore she was a hindrance to their hazardous 
 plans of escape. 
 
 After two days in the sea, and having had no 
 Thames-punting job to get through the forest, 
 they were themselves in no way fashionable in 
 their general appearance. Therefore, to see 
 this woman come out of Bond Street, as indeed 
 — with some adventures not exactly calculated 
 to improve her appearance — she had, was not 
 an event likely to inspire him with confidence. 
 He talked to her for a moment or so ; inquired 
 
94 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 after her health in a formal sort of way j hoped 
 they. would be able to make her comfortable, 
 and then went on with his work. 
 
 " I believe," says David, " that she assimi- 
 lated every thought he had had in his mind. 
 I believe that with this knowledge in her posses- 
 sion from actual observation, she calculated 
 accurately his reasons for not coming to see her 
 once while she was in the hut. I believe she 
 knew everything in both our minds that first 
 morning when she came out from the seclusion 
 of her room and took in the situation from 
 beginning to end. 
 
 " Whether my beliefs are right or not — and 
 she said nothing to me about it — she- appeared 
 the next morning in men's garments, of which", 
 as may be supposed, we had a fair supply from 
 the bodies that had been washed up. 
 
 " I remember I stood looking at her in amaze- 
 ment. Jonathan too. 
 
 " ' In the name of heaven ! ' I began. 
 
 " ' I want to help,' she replied. ' Petticoats 
 are no good for this job. I'm not strong enough 
 to do anything to-day — ^but I thought I'd begin 
 to get accustomed to my uniform.' 
 
 " ' But why that rig-out ? ' I asked. ' What's 
 the matter with your sex ? ' 
 
 " To which she replied, ' I don't mind my 
 sex alive, but if it's got to be dead people's 
 clothes, I'd prefer they were men's.' " 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 95 
 
 David comments upon this point of view, 
 and seems to see more significance in it than 
 is apparent to me. He infers from it a tendency 
 in women to escape whenever possible from 
 their own sex ; that women on the whole do 
 not prefer to be women, whereas men are mostly 
 satisfied as they are. What there may be in 
 this, I do not pretend to follow. To me, it 
 merely shows a sensitiveness which does nothing 
 more than contribute to the general and definite 
 outline of her character. 
 
 Whatever it was, and whether the intention 
 was such as David supposes, the effect upon 
 ■Jonathan was well within those calculations of 
 hers which he indicated. 
 
 For the first time in their short acquaintance, 
 Jonathan laughed without restraint, and joined 
 in the jokes she made about herself. But 
 after a few moments, when he found their talk 
 was interfering with the work he had in hand, 
 he took little more notice of her and went on 
 with his job. 
 
 For a little while she sat in silence and watched 
 them both. 
 
 " And then," according to David's description, 
 for apparently he never lost consciousness of 
 her .presence, " she walked slowly away, finding 
 a place — a flat projection of rock — on the side 
 of the slope leading up into the forest where 
 every day one of us went to fetch the fresh water. 
 
96 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 and there she lay in the sun. ^ithin five 
 minutes, I believe she was asleep. When I 
 went to call her for (her midday meal of yams, 
 tomatoes and bananas, she wakened with a 
 start, and said : 
 
 " ' How long do you think it's likely that I'm 
 going to enjoy life as much as I'm doing now ? ' 
 
 " I felt glad, somehow, she had not said that 
 to Jonathan." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 FEMININITY 
 
 SHE appears to have proved an excellent 
 worker when — as David puts it- — " Ijer 
 mood did not incline her to be too feminine." 
 
 I take this to mean that there were times 
 when she expected more attention and considera- 
 tion to be shown her than was really compatible 
 with the circumstances . of their extraordinary 
 situation. This meaning is indeed made clear 
 in an account which David gives later, marking 
 a stage in th^ development of that strange 
 predicament in which they found themselves. 
 
 He describes at no little length the work she 
 did for 'them at the creek, never once com- 
 plaining of the rough life it undoubtedly must 
 have been. He gives minute details of the 
 construction of the hut, as they finished it. in 
 about three weeks' time, the conditions imder 
 which they got their food, the sort of food it 
 was and the further precautions they took of 
 signalling from the summit of the cliff for passing 
 ships at sea. 
 
 97 7 
 
98 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 All this, though I read evely word of it care- 
 fully and, must admit, with interest, I still 
 consider to be superfluous to the main' issue of 
 the story. That main issue was the expression 
 of the immutable laws in these three, and the 
 gradual reduction of their attitudes of mind 
 to the simplest and most vital questions of 
 existence. 
 
 I shall, therefore leave out all of what I call 
 the Swiss Faraily Robinson part of David's 
 narrative, except where it inextricably concerns 
 that main issue, and so sub-edit him and 
 keep him to the important point of his 
 story. 
 
 Here, then, is the account he gives, by which 
 I read clear enough the meaning of his use of 
 that phrase — ^inclination to femininity : 
 
 She had told us on one occasion that the 
 day following was her birthday .- 
 
 ."How old do you think I shall be?" she 
 asked Jonathan, with a directness that reduced 
 him to confusion. We could see him go red 
 under the tan of his skin, and I must say I felt 
 sorry for him. She never felt a twinge, or, if 
 she "did, concealed it with laughter that rang 
 with real amusement. 
 
 " You can say just what you think," she said ; 
 " there are no other women present." 
 
 Jonathan hazarded twenty-three to be on 
 the safe side, whereupon she turned to me. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 99 
 
 ignoring him in the conversation, because she 
 knew he had funked it. 
 
 In this manner, as I look back on it from a 
 distance of time, the essential nature of her 
 began to rouse the essential nature in us. With- 
 out meaning to, and by no reason of character, 
 but merely because of the inevitability of her 
 sex, she sowed the first and at that time 
 invisible seeds of antagonism. It was not a 
 revival of that same antagonism when we were 
 boys at school. We were then, in those days 
 at the creek, and for many, many years had 
 been, the best of friends in the deepest sense of 
 the word. This antagonism, the seeds of which 
 she planted within the first few weeks of her 
 life with us, was, as I say, no mere recrudescence 
 of an old quarrel. Such a thing would be 
 inconceivable between two grown men who had ' 
 fared together as we had done. 
 
 To begin with, I am certain of this, we were 
 all utterly unconscious of it ; she no less than 
 Jonathan or than I was myself. It may have 
 had the same foundation as that jealousy which 
 had existed between us at school ; but, in the 
 light of all that happened, I am confident- 1 
 am right in placing it deeper than that. It 
 was far cruder, far more elemental; an 
 instinct, such as, in the civilized conditions of 
 life in which our minds had been trained, 
 we had scarcely if ever been truly made 
 aware. And so thick was the veneer of 
 
 7* 
 
100 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 civilizatipn upon us, even in those surround- 
 ings, that long whiles parsed by before ever we 
 became consciously obedient to its impulses. 
 
 As I look back now, however, I see in myself 
 the first answer to that instinct on the very day 
 when she led us by suggestion to suppose she 
 expected some celebration of her birthday. 
 
 It was a few hours after she had informed 
 us of the coming event that I was going through 
 the forest to fetch the day's water from the 
 stream we had discovered on our arrival, the 
 existence of which, indeed, primarily had made 
 the creek habitable. This excursionj some- 
 what of a laborious one, we took in turns ; a 
 regular duty every day — what in Canada they 
 call their " chores." 
 
 On my return, with the bucket, we had found 
 on the Malaga's boat, I heard a sound of whining 
 in the thick undergrowth near the edge of the 
 rough track we had cut to the stream. The 
 sight of a little female tree-bear scurrying away 
 at the sound of my approach was quite suffi- 
 cient to tell me what had happened. One of 
 her young 'uns had fallen from his perch, and 
 not all the King's horses or all the King's men, 
 as expressed in her piteous maternal anxieties, 
 could set the wretched little beast up again. 
 
 I found him • easily enough. He was whining 
 his heart out at this punishment, probably for 
 his own disobedience, but was quite unhurt. 
 A huge patch of tropical moss, as thick as a 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 101 
 
 feather-bed, had broken his fall, and though he 
 looked a bit dazed — he must have fallen only 
 a few momentii before — I could feel no bones 
 were broken. 
 
 How the deuce to get him back again up 
 those colossal trees, if it was a problem to his 
 mother, was certainly a riddle to me. And 
 then, in a flash of inspiration, I thought of 
 Joan, her birthday and the attendant cele- 
 bration, the observance of which she had so 
 cunningly or unconsciously forced upon our 
 consideration. 
 
 Though I did not know then, I do realize now, 
 that the thought of presenting her with this 
 birthday gift of the baby tree-bear brought me 
 a sense of exaltation, because it would show 
 her a greater appreciation from me than she 
 was likely to get from Jonathan, my best friend 
 in the world. 
 
 The only impulse I was aware of at the time, 
 was the thought that she would go into ecstasies 
 over it, if there were such an emotion as the 
 maternal instinct in her at all. And that, I 
 suppose, I took for granted. I had no small 
 degree of sympathy for the poor little beggar 
 myself. 
 
 Having come then to this decision, I picked 
 it up in my arms and carried it back towards 
 the creek. Just before I reached the edge of 
 the forest, I plaited together some strong vine 
 tendrils, made a halter for it, and tethered' it 
 
102 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 up where it would be quite safe till theiiext 
 day. Then, that evening, when nothing was 
 doing, I went back to see how it was and give it 
 some honey, of which there was a plentiful supply 
 if one only had the patience to look for it. 
 
 That Jonathan was no less anxious , to cele- 
 brate this occasion was plain enough to me. 
 He suggested we should have some soft of a 
 feast, and had gone down in the small canoe 
 we had built to the beach, there spending the 
 whole day fishing in the channel that connected 
 our water-way through the swamp with the sea. 
 
 In the evening he had returned well satisfied 
 with the results. There was every prospect of 
 what to us would be a banquet, and the more 
 pleased I saw he was, the less inclined I felt to 
 tell him of the present I had found for her. 
 
 Here was the beginning of secrecy. For he, 
 too, had kept his secret from me. On the way 
 back from the beach, he had picked a collection 
 of the most gloriously coloured orchids, and had 
 hidden them somewhere behind the hut. I 
 saw them, by accident, standing in a wooden 
 bowl, filled with swamp water, keeping fresh 
 for the decoration of our table on the occasion 
 of the feast. 
 
 I must have thought nothing of that secrecy 
 at the time, for there was I with something up 
 my own sleeve as well. I never supposed he 
 was vying with me for a place in her estimation. 
 He knew nothing of the preparation I had made 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 103 
 
 for the event. Indeed, I am confident it was 
 unconscious in both of us. Yet there inevitably 
 it was, and I reaHze well enough now how on 
 the day of her birthday there was germinated 
 in us a seed of jealousy, the growth of which 
 no civilization could ignore, no gloss of speech 
 ' or veneer of habits and customs could disguise. 
 
 Truly unconscious, as I believe, of the pre- 
 parations that were being made for her, she 
 appeared that morning as usual. With some 
 surprise, she accepted our remembrance of it 
 and the congratulations we offered her. Then 
 • she went about her work. I think she was 
 cutting utensils — or shall I call it crockery — ■ 
 for the table, out of a soft white wood which 
 Jonathan had found in the forest. All the 
 morning she stuck to it, as though the day 
 made no difference to her. 
 
 It had made a difference, however, which, in 
 a certain degree, must have been conscious 
 enough. We told her we had prepared a special 
 feast for the occasion. This was our common 
 secret. She laughed at that and called us both 
 sentimentalists. 
 
 " I come to the one corner of the world," 
 said she, " where a woman might be excused 
 for forgetting all about her age, and you both 
 proceed to rub rt in." 
 
 Jonathan straightway reminded her of the 
 fact that only for her telling us, we should 
 have known nothing about it. She smiled at 
 
104 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 him for sajong that. I can't describe the smile. 
 It was not exactly that she felt sorry for him 
 for the obviousness of his remark. Neither can 
 I describe her look at me for my silence. What- 
 ever she meant by that look and that smile, 
 she disappeared into her bedroomi, appearing 
 later at the feast where the orchids were dis- 
 played on our home-made table, dressed as she 
 had been the first day she made her appearance 
 after her recovery. 
 
 We both, looked at her in amazement,, and, I 
 should imagine, with no little admiration too. 
 For the last few weeks we had seen her in nothing 
 but an unbecoming stiit of sailor's trousers, 
 secured with straps over her shoulders, and, in 
 appearance at least, had come to regard her as 
 a creature much like ourselves. Here, however, 
 was a woman, and all the more fascinating by 
 contrast,' just as R^jane was, if you remember it, 
 in La Passeretle, when she first makes her 
 appearance in beautiful clothes in the second 
 act. 
 
 Poor old Jonathan's discomfort can well be 
 imagined. He had come so much to regard her 
 — as they say in familiar parlance " in those 
 trousers " — as one of ourselves, that he was 
 completely bowled over by the dramatic situa- 
 tion' of that change of dress. . He forgot all 
 about his flowers which he had gathered with 
 such trdtible. I was none too comfortable 
 myself. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 105 
 
 It was not that she was so extraordinarily 
 well-dressed, though I remembered then how 
 the first thing she had asked me to do for her 
 was to make a coat-hanger on which she could 
 hang her things, in case, as she said, " a ship 
 does take us off, and I have to behave demurely 
 again." Well-dressed was not the description, 
 notwithstanding the coat-hanger, for her things 
 were badly creased. She pointed out this fact 
 to us straightway. • It w&s, to put it con- 
 cisely, that she was a beautiful . woman, the 
 more beautiful to us perhaps, who for nearly 
 the last two months had seen nothing but an 
 able-seaman whose strength we had tacitly 
 agreed upon must not be over-taxed. 
 
 " Don't look so amazed," she said, as she 
 stood there in the doorway laughing. " It's my 
 birthday — mayn't I dress up ? " ' 
 
 We all sat down and Jonathan and I began 
 paying her attentions, quite unconsciously 
 waiting on her with excess of zeal ; or, if we 
 were aware of it, telling ourselves that it was 
 because it was her birthday. Lord ! How she 
 must have laughed in those inner recesses of 
 her thoughts where a woman keeps everything 
 wholly and securely to herself ! 
 
 It was she, naturally enough, who noticed the 
 orchids, and long before Jonathan realized how 
 their existence had slipped out of his mind. 
 
 " Who got the flowers ? " she asked as she 
 sat down. She looked from one to the other 
 
106 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 of us. There was no need for any reply. 
 Jonathan's face was a study, if not in scarlet, 
 then of that expression which goes with the 
 colour. 
 
 " You got them ! " she exclaimed, and we 
 could see how surprised she was the thought 
 had come from him. So surprised was she, 
 indeed, that she leant forward across the table 
 and just touched his hand in the simplest and 
 most unaffected expression of. gratitude one 
 could have imagined. No one on earth could 
 have accused her of any purpose or impulse but 
 that of gratefulness, but the moment she had 
 done it, no one could have been so blind as not- 
 to observe the effect it had. 
 
 It was as though in that instant she had set 
 her choice on Jonathan. I know he felt that. 
 I know also that at the expression which swept 
 over his face, and the sight of her hand touching 
 his, I felt the blood in me rush like a hot spring, 
 boiling beneath tKe surface of the ground. It 
 was all I could do not to make a fool of myself ; 
 not to get up then and there, saying to myself 
 I would leave them to their love-making in 
 peace, if that was their inclination. 
 
 Thank Heaven, I did nothing of the kind. 
 She, nevertheless, saw the effect of what she 
 had done, and the next second had taken her 
 hand away with a quick gesture and a nervous 
 laugh. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE FIRST BOARD MEETING 
 
 " T WAITED until the feast was over," David 
 1 goes on, " and then, as casually as I 
 could, said I had got. a present for her. I 
 flattered myself that the tone of my voice was 
 most successful, but have often wondered since 
 whether it really deceived her, 
 
 "She appeared to be deceived.. In any case, 
 her excitement and curiosity were not assumed. 
 She became like a child, wanting to know what 
 it was. Then I brought in my little beast of a 
 bear, tumbling about at the end of his plaited 
 halter, like a collie pup all hair and no shape, 
 with a couple of eyes like the black heads of 
 hat-pins sticking a yard out of his head. 
 
 " She had often seen tree-bears in the forest, 
 and needed no introduction to know what it 
 was. The next instant it was in her arms 
 and, for a couple of healthy men, during those 
 moments while she talked nonsense to it, I 
 suppose we must have looked the biggest fools 
 in creation. 
 
 107 
 
108 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " There was one second, however, when she 
 glanced her gratitude at me over the top of 
 its head. In sole possession of that look, I went 
 out into the creek as satisfied" as if I had shot 
 a brace of lions off my own bat, which is a 
 hopeless confusion of simile but conveys 
 admirably what I felt. 
 
 "For the rest of the day the little beast 
 monopolized the whole of her time, and in all 
 the affection she bestowed upon it, I felt I had 
 some sort of proprietary share. I knew 
 Jonathan had the sense of being right out of 
 it. The possession of the creature had com- 
 pletely laid hold — as I had guessed it would — '- 
 • upon the hidden depths of her imagination. 
 She had forgotten his flowers ; forgotten the 
 awkwardness of that moment when she -had 
 touched his hand. And I have no reason to 
 deny that I was glad. I felt I had won the 
 day which had begun so well in his favour. 
 What is more, I seemed to sense some moments 
 when, as he looked at that animal in her arms, 
 he almost hated me. Strangest .of all, I said ' 
 to myself that he could hate me if he felt so 
 inclined. It mattered less to me than the 
 thought that I had pleased her." 
 
 In this manner, David has described the first 
 palpable change which had come about in their 
 friendship. I can quite understand how after 
 a night's sleep with doubtless not a few hours 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 109 
 
 of thovight over all that had happened that day, 
 they were not a little shocked to discover the 
 change it had wrought in them. I can quite 
 understand, too, how, realizing it, they did all 
 they knew to pull themselves together. , 
 
 Civilization, after all, was not so far behind 
 them in. those first few weeks. To the whole 
 situation they applied those arguments they 
 would have used had they been in less uncon- 
 ventional surroundings, and then the folly of it 
 all became apparent. By the next morning they 
 were both laughing at themselves, when it needed 
 but a word from one or the other for the whole 
 thing to be thrashed out in the broad light of 
 logic and common sense. 
 
 Jonathan was the first to speak this necessary 
 word. He, the most completely of the two, had 
 deceived himself with good sound reasons. 
 
 " Unless we take damned good care of our- 
 selves," he said, " this girl's going to make a 
 hopeless mess of all our plans to get away. We 
 aren't here for the fun of the thing, and, as far 
 as I can help it, we're not going to stay for the 
 fun of it either. It's no good working against 
 each other. We've got to work together." 
 
 For answer, David just took hold of his hand 
 and wrung it. 
 
 " My dear old chap," he said, with the deepest 
 sincerity, " I've been wanting to say something 
 as sensible as that ever since I got up," 
 
 " Well — she's nothing to us," said Jonathan. 
 
110 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " Nothing," said David. 
 
 " We never saw her till three weeks ago." 
 
 " That's all — except that I'd seen her on the 
 boat," David added. 
 
 " For that matter, so had I," said Jonathan. 
 
 " Well — ^yott hadn't noticed her." 
 
 " No — ^but what the devil does that matter ? " 
 
 " It doesn't matter a damn," said David. 
 
 " The whole point is that she's nothing to us," 
 Jonathan continued, " but if we go on fooling 
 over her and fussing about her like we did yester- 
 day, our little limited company of interests is 
 going to go to blazes." We shall all be at logger- 
 heads when we ought to be hanging together. 
 There's only one way to put a stop to it." 
 
 Not seeing it so easy a matter as that, David 
 inquired what it was. 
 
 " Tell her," said Jonathan — " tell her what our 
 interests are- — ^that they're not in seeing who can 
 pay her the most acceptable attentions, but in 
 finding a way out of this beastly place as quickly 
 as we can, and that she must co-operate in every 
 way it's possible for her to do so. It is no good 
 her dancing in in a Bond Street costume when 
 there's work to be done all day and every day. 
 We must make our first shot by launching the 
 boat, and if we get her off we may be some days 
 at sea with the ultimate possibility of returning 
 here after all. What I've been aiming at is to 
 make this place as comfortable a base for opera- 
 tions as possible, and then, when that's done as 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 111 
 
 a safeguard, to leave no stone unturned to 
 get away." 
 
 This was, as David calls it, the rock-bottom 
 of common sense. They were all dependent, 
 the one upon the other. Without each other's 
 help, without each other's co-operation, matters 
 were almost worse than if they were individuals 
 alone on that desolate shore. He made, how- 
 ever, a sensible amendment to Jonathan's 
 suggestions. 
 
 " Tell her," he said—" tell her by all means. 
 Let's have a serious talk with her. But it's 
 not a bit of good putting it down to her dressing 
 up in her Bond Street fallals. Don't let's say 
 an}i;hing about that." 
 
 It was hard to persuade Jonathan on this, 
 especially without giving him very definite 
 reasons. His method of dealing with women 
 in vital issues was much that of the bull in the 
 china shop. 
 
 " Why not tell her exactly what we mean, and 
 have done with it ? " said he 
 
 " Because what we mean," replied David, 
 " is about the weakest part of what we want to 
 say. What we mean is that we're afraid of her 
 sex and what we want to say is that we don't 
 care a tu'penny cuss about it one way or 
 another." 
 
 The honesty of this was too subtle for 
 Jonathan. What he wanted was, without any 
 two ways about it, to blow the ship's- whistle 
 
112 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 for all ashore and haul down the Blue Peter from 
 the masthead. But it was nothing like so 
 simple as thai;. 
 
 " Say it your own way, then," said he. " But 
 let's have her in now and get it over." 
 
 She came at once to David's calling, dressed 
 as she had been for those past few weeks in her 
 seaman's trousers suspended with straps over 
 her shoulders. There was not a suggestion in 
 her appearance that she ever wanted to put on 
 — -what David called — her Bond Street fallals 
 again. 
 
 They both of them felt a little awkward as 
 she entered, when, divining the sense of some- 
 thing in the air, she stood fOr an instant looking 
 from one iio the other. David thrust forward 
 the best seat — an arm-chair scooped out of the 
 trunk of a tree they had felled. Softened with a 
 cushion she had made, and stuffed with the 
 feathers of some birds they had trapped, it was 
 far from uncomfortable. She took it with a 
 questioning look at them, and then, before 
 David could speak, she said : 
 
 " Have I done anything wrong ? " 
 
 Striaightway he laughed, and even Jonathan, 
 set upon the business in hand, allowed his mouth 
 to relax into a smile. 
 
 " Can't we call you in for a talk without your 
 thinking that ? " said David. " We're a limited 
 liability company, not yet floated — ^but we want 
 to float one day, if we get tjie chance." 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 118 
 
 Still she looked from one to the other, knowing 
 they had not called her in to tell her that. 
 
 " Well, what have you got to say ? " she 
 asked, in that guarded and suspicious way 
 women have when you feel they are bristling 
 with receptive points of instinct, ready to take 
 the first impression that comes. 
 
 " Well, only this," replied David, no less on 
 guard himself, " that we want to get out of this 
 place. That sounds like a platitude, but it needs 
 to be said, because it entails certain things we 
 want to talk to you about." 
 
 " Go on," she sai4 quietly. 
 
 " Well, there are two ways of escape," he 
 continued — " at least, two ways that lie in our 
 compass to attempt. The chance of a passing 
 ship w'e've provided for with signals as well as 
 we can. That's in the lap of the Gods." 
 
 " There are so many things in that lap," said 
 she. 
 
 " Exactly. We can't leave it alone to that. 
 And with the other two ways there are risks — 
 pretty considerable ones. What we want to 
 know is, if you're prepared, when you hear what 
 they are, to share them." 
 
 " What are they ? " 
 
 Jonathan interposed here, telling her of the at- 
 tempt they intended to make through the forest. 
 
 " So far as I can calculate," he said, " we're 
 something like fifty or seventy T'miles — ^maybe 
 more — ^from the nearest place of habitation. 
 
 8 
 
114 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 When we get to that it'll be no more than a few 
 huts. However, it would be in touch with the 
 world again. But, even so, that fifty or seventy 
 miles is through tropical forest. You can't 
 guess what that means by just looking a,bout 
 you here, where we've cut a track to get the 
 water every day, and have mapped out a 
 passage back to the beach. It's nothing like 
 that. Over seventy miles of forest and not even 
 knowing his destination, a man has about 
 ten chances in a hundred of coming through. A 
 mile a day is sometimes good going. We can't 
 carry provisions for seventy days. Our food 
 is not in tabloid form. The other chance is the 
 sea ; launching the boat across that surf and 
 getting out to' a passing ship — a matter of 
 twenty or thirty miles, perhaps — limited pro- 
 visions again ; or making down the coast till we 
 come to one of the villages that hang on the edge 
 of the sea. The risk is always the same — 
 starvation. As far as the sea is concerned, I 
 don't think we could launch the boat, so that 
 chance is vague. The greatest chance of all 
 is getting through the forest, and there lies the 
 greatest risk of all. It'll be a cut six of one and 
 a dried half a dozen of the other." 
 
 All this apparently Jonathan must have said 
 in that tone of voice — I think I have alluded to 
 it before= — as though he were giving orders to 
 his foreman. 
 
 " Did you call me in here," she asked proudly. 
 
DAVID. AND JONATHAN 115 
 
 " because you thought I wasn't prepared to share 
 any risks that were going ? " 
 
 There must have been something besides pride 
 in the note of her voice, for David was very quick 
 to answer that. 
 
 " No — no — no," he said hurriedly. " We 
 know you're game enough for anything. It isn't 
 that a bit. It is that we must work together ; 
 help, not hinder each other. We must look upon 
 the whole business, as I said in the beginning, 
 as a limited company. Each one must be the 
 same as the other. In this deserted place, we're 
 right up against it, and the ordinary civilized 
 laws don't exist." 
 
 In a moment of inspiration, he thought of a 
 better way of putting it. 
 
 " It all amounts to this," he said. " We were 
 afraid you hadn't got the hang of the situation, 
 that you wanted to be treated with extra atten- 
 tions because you were a woman — whereas, 
 in this situation we find ourselves flung into, 
 there's no such thing as sex at all. We want 
 to get out, and that's all there is about it." 
 
 He looked at Jonathan and emphatically 
 Jonathan nodded his head. He only wished he 
 could have wrapped it up so nicely, yet said it 
 as plainly himself. 
 
 " David's got it in a nutshell," he said 
 abruptly. " In an affair like this everybody's one 
 of a company and we've got to hang together." 
 
 She listened quite quietly to all this, after 
 
116 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 that first moment of pride when, as David had 
 seen, she was certainly hurt. When Jonathan 
 had finished, she said : 
 
 " Then I mustn't persuade you to give me 
 little presents on my birthday— or pay me 
 attentions of any kind, < because that iaterferes 
 with the work and creates a sense of friction in 
 the company. That's right — ^isn't it ? " 
 
 They looked at her. They looked at eaclj 
 other, but said nothing. 
 
 " That's what you mean — ^isn't it ? " she 
 repeated. " And I'm not to put on my best, 
 because it's my only frock, as in a situation like 
 this there's no such thing as sex. I believe I've 
 got your meaning, haven't I ? " 
 
 " You've got the gist of it," said Jonathan. 
 
 " If you're going to take it," added David, 
 " in the spirit in which it was meant." 
 
 She looked at them, smiled, but said no more. 
 Then, nodding her head, she went straightway 
 out of the hut. They remained for a moment 
 staring at each other when she had gone. David 
 was the first to break the silence. 
 
 " We're a couple of the most consummate 
 fpols^that God ever made," said he. 
 
 In amazement, Jonathan asked why. 
 
 " She understands all right," he said. " She 
 told us she did. Why, she realized we were 
 hinting about her rigging herself up in that 
 dress yesterday. I thought that showed quite 
 a nice sense of understanding." 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 117 
 
 " Oh, yes — she understands," David replied. 
 " There wasn't a word or a look she didn't 
 understand, and a good deal better than we do 
 ourselves. You've travelled all over the world 
 and you talk about elemental laws and symbols 
 and impulsory instincts as though they were 
 things that had to be learnt by experience 
 before a man can set his life by them. That 
 girl's got, more knowledge of them in the tip 
 of her little finger, without going out of a London 
 drawing-room, than you've collected in fifteen 
 years' tramping round the world. We're a 
 couple of consummate fools ever to have said A 
 word, ' ' he repeated. ' ' Of course she guessed about 
 the blooming dress. And, after all this jaw, ishe 
 knows a damned sight more about it than we do." 
 
 When he had said that, he just fetched his 
 bucket and went off across the creek to the 
 forest. It was his turn again to fetch the water, 
 and he went, as he says himself, in the worst 
 mood possible. 
 
 " As I crossed the creeks" he says, " I saw her 
 working hard at her wood-carving. The baby 
 tree-bear was lying asleep on the sand by her 
 side. Apparently she didn't see me, but as I 
 went by at some distance, the little beggar woke 
 up, yawned and stretched himself, whereupon 
 she took him up in her arms and Idssed liim as 
 though he were the only friend she had on earth. 
 I tripped up over a root, watching her, and swore 
 as I've seldom done in my life before." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 SEX 
 
 FOR the whole of the next week she kept 
 her distance. There was nothing small 
 or petty about her attitude. To all appearances, 
 she talked to them the same as usual, but in in- 
 describable ways they were made to feel that 
 they were outside the pale. David seems unable 
 to describe it better than that. 
 
 " It was a sensation," he says, " that we were, 
 of course, inevitable to the situation. We could 
 not be avoided, and she realized it would be 
 foolish on her part to disassociate herself from 
 us in any way. But there would come a look 
 into her eyes often, as though she were miles 
 away from us in her thoughts. She was not 
 married, it is true, and though, as far as I was 
 concerned, she had not told me of any love affair 
 she had left behind in England, she seemed all 
 that time to be thinking of one. There is a 
 look in a woman's eye when she is thinking about 
 a man. It is not necessarily sentimental at all, 
 ii8 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 119 
 
 but is certainly different from any other. That 
 look she often had." 
 
 From all I can read in David's script, Jonathan 
 seems to have been scarcely, if at all, affected by 
 this change of manner. He worked on, twelve 
 and, sometimes fourteen hours a day, slogging 
 at it like a slave, to get the place really comfort- 
 able and safe before he undertook that first 
 attempt at their escape by sea. 
 
 And during this time, day by day, Joan 
 seemed to improve in her appearance. Scrupu- 
 lously she adhered to the garments they had 
 practically prescribed for her, but it seemed to 
 David that she was doing her hair, with greater 
 consideration. There was as well a finer glow 
 of colour in her cheeks and lips. Even her eyes 
 seemed brighter. Again and again he would 
 find himself looking at her and thinkhig of those 
 few moments when he had held her in his arms 
 as he carried her up the saloon companion- 
 way. 
 
 She had never asked and David had preferred 
 not to tell her who had saved her life on the 
 ship. She did not, as a matter of fact, know 
 that anyone had gone to any particular risk or 
 trouble about it. She had found herself in the 
 boat, and her experiences there had been such 
 that she did not care particularly to talk about 
 them. I am not surprised at that. Upon 
 Jonathan, who had saved so many lives that 
 
120 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 night, the fact had made but little impression. 
 He had not thought to inform her of the circum- 
 stances. 
 
 ' An impression, howfever, was apparently 
 made upon Him by the increasing improvement 
 in her appearance. He mentioned it at break- 
 fast one morning. 
 
 "This sort of life's agreeing with you," said 
 he. ""I thought you'd got to be yourself 
 again three or four weeks ago. But you seem 
 to be piling on health every day." 
 
 This was the first time she had looked really 
 and consciously pleased with either of them 
 since that board meeting of the company in 
 the hut. This was her own name for it. Jona- 
 than had called to her one day afterwards, 
 when she had come up, saying — 
 
 " What, another board meeting ? " 
 
 After breakfast on this morning when he 
 had made his remark about her health, she 
 asked Jonathan to come and inspect her wood- 
 carving. She kept it all in her hut and had 
 not previously shown it to either of them imtil 
 it was ready. Jonathan stayed talking with 
 her outside her hut for nearly an hour, while 
 David, the other side of the creek, worked at 
 the finishing of the arm they were building to 
 the Malaga's boat to equip her for the experi- 
 ment of taking the waves for which those native 
 surf-boats are intended. 
 
 Inspecting his work later that morning. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 121 
 
 Jonathan declared it to be a slovenly per- 
 formance, 
 
 " You've got a strand there," said he, " that'll 
 snap with the first wave that puts any pressure 
 on it." 
 
 I can quite appreciate the fact tha,t by this 
 time David was not in the best of tempers. 
 
 " I felt inclined," he says, " to let them dree 
 their weird, only that some instinct of self- 
 justification, pride, anything you like to call 
 it, asserted the belief in my mind that I was, 
 in my own way, as entitled as was Jonathan 
 to witi her approval. 
 
 " That either of us, so quickly, should have 
 thought it necessary to win it, of course, is 
 interesting in itself, though nothing to be so 
 greatly surprised about. She was an attractive 
 woman. The passing thought which had pitched 
 through my mind on the night of the fire is 
 enough to prove that, but it does not wholly, 
 in my conception of it, justify our swiftly 
 developed sense of rivalry. There are plenty 
 of attractive women, in the world. Jonathan 
 had met them ; so had I. For a woman to 
 be attractive does not necessarily mean that 
 one wants to harness one's life to hers for good 
 and all. But such a situation as this did not 
 lead to any conclusion which could be avoided 
 at the eleventh hour by the dropping of the 
 Blue Peter from the masthead, or a discreet 
 avoidance of meetings when there would be 
 
122 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 plenty of other men to take one's place in her 
 thoughts. 
 
 " We were at the top of that hill which is both 
 precipitous and inevitable, yet neither of us 
 seemed to pause for consideration of what it 
 would involve to coast dov^n into the valley 
 from which there would be no more climbing 
 to those heights where we could, as we had so 
 far chosen, breathe the hill winds of freedom. 
 
 "I have come to the conclusion since," he 
 adds at the end of that chapter of his script, 
 " that the instinct of the sexes is still far more 
 elemental in us and more easily roused than 
 any other, and is only distracted by the thousand 
 and various interests with which civilization 
 occupies our minds." 
 
 David concludes what I have called a chapter, 
 but which would better have been named a 
 section of his manuscript with that remark. 
 In reconstructing the whole story, however, I 
 have thought it advisable to add the following 
 description of an incident which bears upon 
 the situation as it had developed up to the 
 time when they made their first bid for freedom. 
 
 About three days before that which was set 
 out for their great adventure, David was 
 returning from the spring where they got 
 their daily supply of water. By some accident 
 he had kicked over the bucket, and felt it in- 
 cumbent upon him for his carelessness, without 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 128 
 
 sajriug anjrthing more about it, to go and re- 
 fill it himself. 
 
 When he was about a himdred yards from 
 the creek, he heard a commotion amongst a 
 troop of monkeys over his head. They were 
 scampering along the branches of the trees, 
 swinging from one limb to another as though 
 the devil and all were at their heels. Creeping 
 forward as softly as he could to find out what 
 it was, he saw Joan half-way up a tree, just off 
 the edge of their water track. Certainly it had 
 been an easy one to climb, but that made him 
 none the less surprised at seeing her there. What 
 was she up to ? He thought for a moment that 
 she was trying to return her baby tree-bear to its 
 natural environment, and an instant of chagrin, 
 almost amoimting to resentment, kept him there 
 a moment, motionless as he watched her. 
 
 It was obvious she had not seen him. With- 
 out knowledge of the accident to the bucket, 
 that was the last place she might have expected 
 to see either of them. The water track served 
 no other purpose for their needs. He made out 
 quickly enough she had not got the tree-bear 
 with her. Her hands were empty. Then what- 
 was it she was after ? 
 
 She had* fovmd a comfortable seat in the 
 fork of the tree, and from there leaned out 
 and was picking a whole cluster of deep scarlet 
 orchids of some climbing variety that were 
 blooming in a lightsome gap of the trees. 
 
124 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 David was just about to hurry forward to 
 her assistance, when he stopped.' She had 
 thrust the blossoms into her pocket, plucked 
 without stem or thought for preservation. It 
 was the petals alone she was collecting. What 
 for ? Out of another pocket,' she fetched a 
 little mirror. Holding it up to her face, as 
 she sat there, she looked at its reflection. There 
 was no mistaking what it was. Then, taking a 
 petal in her fingers, she crushed it and rubbed 
 it first on her lips, then on her cheeks, regarding 
 the operation all the time in her glass, and finally 
 throwing the bruised petal away. That being 
 done, she applied her puff, though Heaven 
 knows what small quantity of powder she 
 must have had left by that time. Finally, 
 with the completion of her purpose, she was 
 just proceeding to descend as David moved 
 forward, and then she caught sight of him, 
 when every movement in her body was arrested. 
 He had seen. He must have seen. She knew 
 it as surely as if he had shouted out his know- 
 ledge and with it all the things she knew must 
 be in his mind about her with the discovery 
 he had made. 
 
 No sub-editing of his script in so subtle and 
 interesting a situation as this can serve my 
 purpose. The wholly unexpurgated account, 
 as he gives it, is a thousand times more valuable 
 in the first person than I could eVer hope to 
 make it. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 125 
 
 "I came forward," he, says, " standing at 
 the bottom of the tree, asking if I could help 
 her down." 
 
 " It won't be such a simple matter as it was 
 getting up," said I. 
 
 She declined any assistance I could give her 
 and began at once to descend, with considerable 
 difficulty, as I had promised her. At last she 
 stood on the ground beside me, brushing her 
 clothes with flickings of her hand, for all the 
 world like a naughty schoolboy caught in 
 the act of robbing a farmer's orchard. The only 
 difference was that I did not feel at all like 
 the farmer wl^ose fruit has been stolen. There 
 was no such thing as righteous indignation in 
 my mind. 
 
 If any word can describe my sensations, that 
 word is — ^fear. I felt suddenly afraid of her ; 
 afraid of her knowledge of the power of her 
 sex and the evident determination in her mind, 
 which this incident proved, to make use of it. 
 
 The attitude I assumed — ^the only one possible 
 — ^was one of superior amusement at my dis- 
 covery. It was far from what, in my deeper 
 consciousness, I really felt. There was, more- 
 over, no possibiUty of pretending I had not 
 seen. Had it existed for a moment in my 
 mind, she, at least, gave me no chance 
 of it. 
 
 Appreciating quickly enough that secrecy 
 and a tacit understanding in silence of |][ic 
 
126 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 matter would merely aggravate its importance 
 in my mind, she seized, by instinct, the only 
 logical consequence of her behaviour. She had 
 it out with me straightway. 
 
 " I suppose," she said, and with a smile 
 superficially full of good humour but which for 
 that very reason seemed the more dangerous 
 to me — " I suppose you think it more or less 
 silly for a woman to think about her appearance 
 in primitive sort of surroundings like this where 
 there are no women to notice how she looks 
 one way or another." 
 
 I felt a twitch of laughter somewhere in my 
 mind at the clever way in which she ignored 
 the subject of sex. I don't think that laughter 
 could have been seen in my eyes, for she went 
 on imperturbably. 
 
 " If you want to cut a woman right off from 
 civilization," she continued, " I expect you'd 
 have to take her mirror away from her. If 
 she has one" — ^she produced her own little 
 pocket affair from some receptacle in her gar- 
 ments — " she's bound to look at it,, and if 
 she looks at it, she's bound to see that her 
 complexion is going to the dogs unless she 
 takes care of it. But then possibly you don't 
 realize what her complexion is to a woman. 
 There was one of those scarlet orchids in that 
 bunch of flowers Jonathan got for my birthday. 
 That's when I first thought of it. I tried it 
 that evening. It squeezes out a lovely, deep 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 127 
 
 red juice. It may be bad for the skin. I 
 don't know. I haven't found any — ^what they 
 call — deleterious effects yet. Oh, my heavens ! 
 Are you going to stand there for ever just 
 looking at me and saying nothing? " 
 
 She found my silence more critical than she 
 could bear. Her effort at passing off the situa- 
 tion was spent in all that flow of talk. She 
 could do no more. Yet there was I, still un- 
 committed by anything I had said, facing her 
 with a persistent silence that must have seemed 
 too callously critical for words. It was far 
 less critical than she supposed. The more I 
 saw her intention to igpore that question of 
 sex, explaining it upon grounds of mere personal 
 vanity, the more fear I felt of what all this 
 would come to in the end. 
 
 " I don't know that there's anything for me 
 to say," I replied at last. " You've explained 
 it. However odd it may have appeared for a 
 moment to see a woman dressed in sailor's 
 trousers sitting half-way up a tree in an African 
 forest and rougeing her lips with the juice of a 
 scarlet orchid, you have taken the oddness 
 out of it by what you've said. I suppose, as 
 you say, the glass explains it. So long as a 
 pretty woman is kept conscious of her com- 
 plexion, I presume it's her natural instinct to 
 look after it." 
 
 I must have convinced her by that because, 
 in a sudden impulse, she took my arm with 
 
128 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 a compaiiionable movement and turned me 
 with her in the direction of the creek. 
 
 " You're an understanding old thing," she 
 said cheerfully, and I shied at the thought 
 that she could call me that when, more than 
 likely, she was thinking how completely deceived 
 I had been. Perhaps she meant it, God 
 knows ! It waSi I must confess, the simple 
 pressure of her hand on my arm that disturbed 
 me most. In that moment I felt the pulse of 
 my heart increase its measure. I did not 
 know where to look — what to say. With all 
 my knowledge that the whole situation was a 
 battle-ground of sex and that she knew only 
 too well the weapons she must use for victory ; 
 with all my knowledge, too, that we must be 
 on our guard, I yet found myself on the verge 
 of capitulating. 
 
 It was at this very moment she stopped as 
 we walked and turned me round so that I must 
 look into her face, asking me if there was too 
 much red on her lips or cheeks. 
 
 I swear to Heaven there is no shame in my 
 mind when I confess that it was with no little 
 difficulty I restrained myself from taking her 
 in my arms, and that, without waiting to know 
 one way or another whether she would have 
 wished it or not. 
 
 " Well ? " she inquired after a moment, and 
 that one word, if it did not dispel the impulse, 
 at least brought it within my control. I steadied 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 129 
 
 my voice and found myself listening to the 
 sound of it as I casually replied that as far as 
 I could see she had not overdone it. 
 
 " I sort of feel you'd know if I had," she 
 said then. " You'd understand things like that, 
 Jonathan wouldn't. Either he'd notice nothing, 
 or he'd be horribly shocked at a woman — 
 especially in this sort of place — ^thinking it 
 necessary to make up at all. But you realize, 
 I'm sure you do, how a woman must miss all 
 the little lotions and things she has at home." 
 
 And with that she took my arm again, ap- 
 parently never realizing how in every word 
 she said she was disclosing the secret of her 
 purpose, until I was forced to a conclusion. 
 I was forced to the conclusion that women 
 do not understand themselves, or they are more 
 cunning than the most feline beast that prowls 
 with silent feet in search of its prey. I prefer 
 to believe and do believe the former. 
 
 They do not understand themselves or the 
 
 motives which actuate their behaviour. It is 
 
 not deceit but sheer ignorance when they 
 
 deny so vehemently the unvarnished instincts 
 
 ' of sex. 
 
 Most vehemently would Joan have denied 
 then the instincts which had prompted her use 
 of the scarlet juice of that flower. In effect, she 
 was denying it all the time, and that without 
 any provocation of accusation. And I cannot 
 believe of her that she was cunning or deceitful 
 
 9 
 
130 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 enough, if the purpose in her had been conscious, 
 to have taken such a course, unprovoked, to 
 blind my eyes. For even supposing it had, 
 would she then have been so clumsy in the 
 methods she adopted — methods that would 
 scarcely have blinded the eyes of a child ? 
 
 Somehow or other it seems to me to be this. 
 Sex is subconscious in its purposes in a woman's 
 mind. , She is not immediately aware of the 
 spur that drives her. Yet the truth which is 
 ineraseably in all of us pricks her conscience. 
 It was so with Joan. The truth had pricked 
 her. And that modesty, which is all a part of 
 her sex's equipment, but which is conscious 
 and uppermost in a woman's mind, had readily 
 answered the challenge. 
 
 It needed no accusing observation of mine 
 for- her to offer all these specious excuses about 
 the urging protest of the looking-glass. In a 
 word, it was not me she was deceiving but 
 herself. To have admitted that she was trying, 
 to snare our passions, would have been to stand 
 ashamed, naked in the light of the. truth. She 
 must defend, she must deceive herself. All 
 women must, or yield that claim to modesty 
 they know to' be the spotless garment which 
 becomes them most of all. 
 
 I am not pretending to say this is the way 
 with all women. Some give up their right to 
 the claim of modesty. Frankly and fearlessly 
 they are out to capture by the sheer power of 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 131 
 
 their attractions. " Chastity," as a friend of 
 mine once said to me — " chastity is a taste. 
 Some people like it." To which one may well 
 add, " Thank God that most women do ! " 
 
 I am sure that she loved nothing better in 
 herself than that pride of modesty, so hotly 
 accused in those moments by the subconscious 
 instincts of her sex. I am certain that, had I 
 given way to the impulse her sex itself had 
 stimulated in me, and taken her, as I had wished, 
 in my arms, none Avould have been fiercer than 
 she in her contempt of my folly. 
 
 But, good Heavens, what a risk she ran and 
 how little did she realize the danger she faced, 
 when she asked me to look at her lips and her 
 cheeks with a calculating and critical eye. Had 
 she really been aware that in her lips I could 
 see nothing, but feel only the burning of my 
 kisses on them, would she have asked me to 
 look ? Most firmly I believe she would not 
 have dared. Yet the subconscious instincts 
 of her sex were aware of it all the time. In those 
 days at the creek, they were guiding, leading 
 her in every moment, while, with a sublime 
 conviction in the existence of her own modesty, 
 she allowed herself to be deceived at every 
 turn. 
 
 So I have supposed and do believe her mental 
 attitude to have been. If I had not discovered 
 her at her tricks with the petals of that scarlet 
 orchid, she would never have thought to defend 
 
 • g* 
 
132 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 herself even to herself. Now, discovery had 
 driven her to self-defence ; yet even then" it 
 was for her own benefit rather than mine. My 
 presence regarding her in that act had given a 
 voice to her subconscious instincts, loud enough 
 to be heard in her conscious mind, and up in 
 arms she came — a Joan of Arc, let me call her — 
 fighting for the troubled honour of her sex. 
 
 In civilized life, doubtless, these actions lose 
 much of the concentration of their purpose. 
 As she had said, with her little lotions and 
 things, they become almost a habit. One 
 becomes so accustomed to the different fashions 
 of dress, the use of cosmetics and of scent, 
 that they pass almost unnoticed, and are the 
 more easily defended were one to put such 
 construction upon their use. 
 
 Yet there they are, with the same underlying 
 motive. And it is for that reason, perhaps, I 
 have thought it interesting to put all this story 
 down upon paper, whereby those who ever see 
 it may realize how the habits and customs of 
 civilization, while they obscure the elemental 
 purpose in us, have by no means succeeded 
 in altering us from the creatures of instinct 
 that we are. 
 
 Before we reached the edge of the forest, she 
 took her hand from my arm and there she 
 stopped again. 
 
 " Will you do me a favour ? " she asked. 
 
 I inquired what it was. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 133 
 
 " Will you promise to say nothing to Jonathan 
 of what you saw this morning ? " 
 
 I knew by the tone of her voice she had 
 said this after . long and uncomfortable hesi- 
 tation. I realized she had prepared the way 
 for it in her comparison between Jonathan's 
 ■powers of understanding and my own. I appre- 
 ciated how finally and utterly she had given 
 herself away by the request she had made. 
 Yet none of these thoughts was the strongest 
 in my mind. I was caught once more in a gust 
 of passion, and this time it was the wildest 
 and the maddest jealousy. 
 
 She cared for Jonathan more than for me. 
 She was more concerned with his good opinion 
 than she was with mine. I could think more 
 or less what I pleased. I knew ; I had seen 
 her, so that was unavoidable. But if she could 
 still appear to Jonathan as she had done hitherto, 
 then I was to be used as an accomplice to this 
 end. 
 
 Again I felt that surge of the hot spring of 
 my blood as I stood there, looking right down 
 into the deep grey of her eyes. She must have 
 known 'then, and more surely than she did at 
 her birthday feast, when she touched Jonathan's 
 hand, that something was all wrong somewhere. 
 
 An expression of fear flickered for a moment 
 in her face as I looked at her. But she was no 
 coward. It soon went. 
 
 " Why' don't you answer ? " she asked pre- 
 
134 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 sently, in a steady tone of voice. *' What's 
 the matter ? " 
 
 " You're fond of Jonathan, are you ? " said 
 I. And the moment I had said it, self-revealing 
 a,s I had known her question to have been, 
 realized my own was a thousand times more so. 
 
 The instant she threw back her head and 
 her voice rang with cheery laughter, I knew 
 what a fool I had been. 
 
 " Fond of Jonathan ! " she exclaimed. " Just 
 because I don't want him to hear something 
 which I know he won't understand ! You 
 must know less about women than I thought, 
 if you imagine I'm fond of a man because I 
 have a little pride in myself about him. You 
 know. You saw. You caught me. I shouldn't 
 have let you see if I'd known. I certainly 
 shouldn't have volunteered to tell you. I 
 suppose men think a woman, in a situation 
 like this, is bound to get fond of one or the 
 other of the two men she finds herself cast adrift 
 with. My goodness ! What concert ! " 
 
 She laughed again, and looked at me humor- 
 ously as I stood there before her, feeling, I will 
 admit it, a most consummate fool. 
 
 I had wilfully given her that opportunity, 
 and for a womanj alone with two men in that 
 predicament, what other course could she have 
 taken ? All her instincts were there, alive and 
 alert, to protect herself. She could have done 
 no otherwise. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 135 
 
 But how I longed to tell her what a liar she 
 was ; to show her that that very deed, in the 
 act of which I had caught her, was the proof 
 positive she wanted to enslave the one or the 
 other of us, and that with the request she had 
 just made what other assumption could I 
 encourage but that Jonathan was the one. 
 
 If Jonathan had seen as much as I, probably 
 he would have said as much as I felt. I am 
 sure I don't know whether he would or not. I 
 am only certain it was impossible for me to 
 say it then myself. She disarmed me with her 
 laughter, the very turn of her head, the merri- 
 ment in her voice. I was not sure of her, and 
 the man who speaks or acts at hazard before 
 he is sure is thirty times a fool. 
 
 " Yoy may call it conceit if you like," said 
 I ; "it has at least the recommendation of not 
 being self-conceit. I asked you if you were 
 fond of another man — not of me." 
 
 She became serious at once and for a moment 
 confused. It was a parry to her thrust which 
 she had not expected. In the tone of my" voice 
 as well, she realized I was feeling deeply and 
 had been hurt by what she had said, for she 
 came forward, and, with a simple, ingenuous 
 movement, laid her hand on my shoulder. 
 
 " I didn't mean to hurt you," she said gently 
 — a gentleness which, instead of calming me, 
 only made my heart beat the faster. " I 
 wasn't really accusing you of conceit. Only 
 
136 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 men in general. That's their common attitude 
 of midd. They think they're irresistible." 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 " You make a big mistake about us when you 
 think' that," said I. " There are conceited 
 men and vain women. Vanity or conceit have 
 little or ' nothing to do with it. All that a 
 normal man thinks is that the laws are irre- 
 sistible, hot himself. It's the common attitude 
 of women to deny that. The Suffragettes most 
 vehemently deny it in their suffrage papers, 
 and there are thousands of timid, well-brought- 
 up women who hug themselves in secret because 
 some of their sex have the courage to say what 
 they all of them drive themselves to believe. 
 That's all it is, and in a civilized world, where 
 there are four-o'clock tea-parties, and if you 
 want "to see a certain lady in whom you are 
 interested, you can call on her every second 
 Thursday, when she will be at home with her 
 mother to all the family acquaintances, that 
 belief is all right. It holds good. It is the only 
 sort of belief you could express in becoming 
 language on a second Thursday in the month. 
 But it isn't the sort of language in a place like 
 this. You ask me not to tell Jonathan that 
 you've been rougeing your lips and putting 
 colour in your cheeks. Well — that's not the 
 sort of favour you'd ask of me on a second 
 Thursday in the month. On the second Thurs- 
 day^in|the^month, if I had the audacity to ask 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 137 
 
 you during a buzz of the conversation if you 
 were fond of my friend, you'd be well within 
 your rights if you snubbed me straight away. 
 That might be conceit on my part, if not for 
 myself, then for the attractions of my sex. But 
 
 here " I looked up at a noise in the upper 
 
 branches of the forest trees, where there were 
 two monkeys fighting for dear life with a whole 
 crowd of others gathered round in! amiable 
 curiosity to watch the outcome. " Look at 
 that," said I. 
 
 She turned and looked, then turned away. 
 
 " I shall never like monkeys," she said. 
 
 " No," said I ; " they're abominably like 
 men." 
 
 Before they separated, David had given her 
 his promise that he would say nothing to 
 Jonathan of the incident that morning. 
 
 " I don't quite see," he had added, " why 
 you should expect I would tell him." 
 
 " Doesn't it generally amuse men to talk 
 about those kind of things ? " 
 
 "I'm afraid you'll have to reconstruct your 
 ideas about men," he replied. " Wouldn't it 
 occur to you that I might like to keep it all 
 to myself — a possession, shall we say, I might 
 like to call my very own, or shared at best 
 between us two ? Couldn't you admit of that 
 point of view in men ? " 
 
 " It sounds more like a woman," said she. 
 
138 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 He laughed at that. It is the cruellest thing 
 a woman thinks she can say of a man. 
 
 " Well — do you despise that ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don't know. There isn't a trace of it in 
 Jonathan, anyhow — is there ? " 
 
 " Not a trape," said he, and she walked away 
 to her hut. It would have been impossible 
 to say in that moment whether she hated him 
 or not. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AN INSIGHT 
 
 I MUST now refer to two events following 
 swiftly in succession, one after the other, 
 in a few days. In detail their interest is mainly 
 in that quality of adventure from which, stand- 
 point, for those whose taste lies in its direction, 
 this story might solely be regarded. As I 
 have said before, it is not from this view I take 
 it. It was not David's, though he gives a wealth 
 of detail to the description of these two events. 
 I shall, however, content myself with a brief 
 statement of what happened, with the sole 
 intention of shoAving how a new aspect was 
 brought to those three living their life in that 
 solitary creek. 
 
 The first event in its order was their attempt 
 to launch the boat and put out to sea, either 
 to get into the track of ships, or to make their 
 way down close to the shore, until they came 
 to some signs of coastal habitation. 
 
 There is one incident, however, before I 
 continue, which I must record from David's 
 139 
 
140 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 manuscript. At first I thought it to be super- 
 fluous, but, on second reading, have decided 
 to include it, because I think it has its definite 
 value in the light of events that are to come. 
 
 The day before starting, Joan had come to 
 Jonathan with her tree-bear in her arms. The 
 little beggar, had become mightily attached to 
 her. It followed her wherever she went — 
 came obediently to her call. She fed it and 
 fed it well. There was no other secret to it 
 than this. Women have discovered that same 
 secret about men, since the days in the Garden 
 of Eden ; for I take it that the symbol of the 
 apple was drawn from the Patriarch's simple 
 knowledge of the world as he saw it then and 
 as it may well be considered to t>e to this day. 
 
 " There was," writes David, " a suspicious 
 glitter in her eyes as she came up to where 
 Jonathan and I were putting the finishing 
 touches to the Malaga's boat. I could see at 
 once the tremendous problem it really was in 
 her mind, for what a woman gives in affection 
 seems to become a part of herself. I could see 
 by the expression in her face that she actually 
 did not know how the parting was to be 
 made. 
 
 To what happened I was a silent witness. 
 There was nothing for me to say. It was 
 tacitly agreed by all of us that Jonathan should 
 have the deciding voice in any question arising 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 141 
 
 for discussion. I did not envy him his authority 
 then. 
 
 She held the little beggar in her two hands, 
 and as Jonathan turned round at her approach, 
 she said : " What am I to do with Sam when 
 we go to-morrow ? " 
 
 Sam looked superlatively indifferent to what 
 the answer might be. He rolled his eyes over 
 the two of us and licked his chops, where there 
 still were lingering traces of honey, with a tongue 
 the colour of a chow's and as rough as a steel file. 
 
 " What do you mean, what are you to do ? " 
 replied Jonathan. There was only one aspect 
 of it to him. For a moment he was puzzled by 
 the reason for her question. They were about 
 to set out on a quest, not unfraught with a 
 certain amount of danger, and she already 
 was an addition to their party he had never 
 calculated on. Where, then, lay any doubt as 
 to what she was to do with a little beast like 
 that, which would only have to be fed from 
 their provisions, would hamper them at every 
 turn, probably have to be chucked overboard 
 in three days, and, above all, was eminently 
 capable of looking after itself in its own natural 
 environment. He frowned as he looked at her, 
 puzzled by what she meant. 
 
 " What did you think you were going to do 
 with him ? " he added. 
 
 She screwed her lips up, rather than let him 
 see the moment's quiver in them. 
 
142 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " I thought I might be able to take him 
 home," said She. 
 
 " Take him home ! " Jonathan echoed. 
 " Hang it, this is his home — isn't it ? D'you 
 imagine he won't fare better here than with you 
 looking after him in an open boat for six days 
 or more ? Good heavens ! he doesn't want 
 your help to get along in life. He's living on 
 the fat of the land now with all the honey you 
 give him, but he'll soon wish he'd never been 
 born when he finds himself out at sea. It's 
 amazing you should consider it for a moment. 
 We've got to think of feeding ourselves — not 
 a menagerie." 
 
 Every word he said was pure and unadul- 
 terated common sense. It was a preposterous 
 question on her part from every point of view 
 but one : from the point of view of our own 
 necessities, a consideration of the little beast 
 itself, but not from the point of view of her 
 own emotions about it. It was just this very 
 point of view which Jonathan overlooked. 
 
 Yet I felt certain she would have been just 
 as amenable to reason had he been able to 
 take that aspect of it into .consideration. 
 
 It was the care and affection she had given 
 it which she was finding difficult to leave behind. 
 Probably it needed a certain amount of looking 
 after still, and, having given so much, she was 
 to be allowed to give, no more. And she wanted 
 to give. Deprived of the power of giving, she 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 143 
 
 was being robbed of the power of self-expression. 
 Reason would easily have overridden all those 
 emotions had it been applied with under- 
 standing. The plain reason and nothing else 
 was all Jonathan had to give her. I saw the 
 quick light in her eye when he said : " We've 
 got to think of feeding ourselves — not a 
 menagerie." 
 
 " I'll be entirely responsible for it," she 
 declared quickly. 
 
 " Oh — ^that's all stuff and nonsense ! " he 
 rfeplied; as equably as he could. ' " You'll find 
 you've got more than enough to do to look 
 after yourself. That little beast'll be best off 
 of the whole lot of us." 
 
 " It can't climb a tree yet," she retorted. 
 
 "No," said he, "but it will. Nature'll 
 teach it that quicker than you can." 
 
 " Yes — and when we've gone, one of those 
 leopards will get it. I saw the mark of one of 
 their paws in the sand outside the palisade — 
 only yesterday." 
 
 " Well — it'll be a quick death," replied 
 Jonathan. " Quicker than ours if we make a 
 mess of things to-morrow." 
 
 And with that he turned away to his work, 
 too impatient . with the whole subject to waste 
 more words upon it. She went back to the hut 
 with Sam in her arms. It was so abominably 
 obvious he was right that she, too, could say 
 no more. It seemed to me, however, by the 
 
144 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 curve of her shoulders as she walkedjaway, 
 that she was sobbing, her heart out, though 
 so long as she had been facing us there was 
 never a tear in her eyes. 
 
 That evening she did not appear at our 
 supper meal. Half-way through, I suggested 
 one of us should call her, intending that one 
 to be myself. 
 
 " Better let her alone," said Jonathan. 
 " It's no good trying to understand women. 
 If she likes to sulk " 
 
 " She's not going to sulk," said I. 
 
 " Well — ^whatever she's doing, let her have it 
 out with herself. We can't do any good. 
 That's just the sort of' thing which makes me 
 thank God I'm not married. Do you remember 
 that night on the Malaga — what I said ? 
 Women have got the means of life— men the 
 means of living. She's treating that little beast 
 as if it were a baby of her own, and then she 
 comes up against us with our means of living, 
 as expressed in our chance of getting away, 
 and the two things won't stick together. In 
 this case it's the woman who has to knuckle 
 under." 
 
 " And that's the exception," said I. 
 
 He said he had his. doubts about that and 
 went on with his meal. As soon as I had 
 finished, I went out to see what had become of 
 her. The door of her hut was locked. I knocked 
 and knocked again. At last she answered. I 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 145 
 
 told her who it was, and a moment later the 
 door slowly opened. She appeared in front of 
 me, her eyes red with weeping. 
 
 "What's happened?" I asked. "Why 
 didn't you come in to supper ? " 
 
 There must have been a tone in my voice 
 touching sympathy with her. Anyhow, for 
 answer, she just opened the door a little wider, 
 and there on the floor, I saw the body of Sam, 
 lying still in all that looseness of death. 
 
 " What have you done ? " I asked. 
 
 " Killed him," she replied. 
 
 I looked at her, I must confess, with wonder. 
 
 " He would have been killed," she said. 
 " He couldn't have escaped from those leopards. 
 They would have mauled and tortured him, 
 just like cats do. I know what brutes they are. 
 And of course Jonathan was right. I knew all 
 the time I couldn't take him — so I — so I^ " 
 
 She broke down, when it seemed the most 
 natural thing in the world for me to put my 
 hands round her shoulders and let her cry her 
 heart out in my arms. But, my heavens ! 
 It was hard to do no more. 
 
 Twice she had been in my arms, and each time 
 I had been powerless to do more than hold her 
 there. The first time — there was no counting 
 that. But now ! I swore then it should come 
 about once more, and that the next time, 
 whether it were opportime or not, I would tell 
 her all she meant to me. 
 
 10 
 
146 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 As she disengaged herself from me, I looked 
 back with a sudden instinct to the other hut, 
 and there was Jonathan in the act of turning 
 back through the door. He had seen us, and he 
 had wished to see no more. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE VENTURE BY SEA 
 
 AT sunrise the next morning, they started 
 in the boat for the beach. With 
 constant fishing expeditions in the canoe they 
 had from time to time miade a fair clearing. 
 On that day the journey only took them three 
 hours. 
 
 All 1;he way doAvn, they discussed their chances 
 of success. One cannot be surprised they 
 should think and talk of nothing else. From 
 what I read in David's manuscript, he was 
 frankly optimistic ; Joan either cared little or 
 too much, for she gave no definite expression of 
 her feelings. Jonathan apparently was the only 
 pessimist of the party. This certainly was not 
 because it was his nature, but undoubtedly 
 because he knew the difficulties standing in 
 their way. 
 
 They had brought provisions for five or six 
 
 days ; water for more. Once launched, of 
 
 course they would stand a good chance. The 
 
 Malaga's boat was |i seaworthy enough. If 
 
 147 10* 
 
148 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 in two days they did not get in sight of a passing 
 ship — ^naturally their greatest hope — ^there would 
 still be time, if there were wind at all, to make a 
 dash down the coast. 
 
 They had chosen' a fine, calm day. The 
 rollers of surf were tumbling in, one after 
 another, gleaming white. Half a mile beyond, 
 the sea was a polished turquoise, still and heavy 
 beneath the burning sun. 
 
 Their hearts must have been beating, all three 
 of them, as, when once the arm they had buUt 
 to take the surf was fitted at right angles to the 
 boat, they started her oft down that channel 
 towards the foam of the coimtless waves. 
 
 Joan showed no trace of fear at the prospect, 
 though there was risk enough. Once in the 
 midst of his labours, David snatched a glance 
 at her. She was watching Jonathan, the sheer 
 brute strength of him and the mighty muscles 
 of his arms as he fought with those ceaseless 
 waves to keep the boat moving with her head 
 out to sea. 
 
 Not more than ten lines of waves they 
 weathered before the end came. The arm they 
 had built to support her on one side and give 
 purchase for keeping her ahead, snapped beneath 
 a wash of water like a slate pencil. In a second 
 she was gone out of control, turned broadside 
 on, and before they knew where they were the 
 waves were over them and the boat had capsized. 
 
 " The luck," says 'David here, " came Jona- 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 149 
 
 than's way. He had been pitched . out closer 
 to her th^n I was, and by the time I had re- 
 covered from the shock of it sufficient to know 
 what I was doing, he had got her in his arms and 
 was keeping her up as we were borne in, boat and 
 all, towards the shore." 
 
 When Jonathan helped her up out of the water 
 on to the beach, she was breathless but none 
 the worse for her ducking. Before she could 
 speak, she began to. laugh ; for which reason 
 I suppose David's suggestion that she was 
 indifferent about their chances was more or less 
 right. 
 
 In that moment, as he heard her, Jonathan 
 forgot his chagrin at their failure, and just wfung 
 her hand, calling her a brick. 
 
 " She looked up at him and smiled," says 
 David, " and I could see she liked that better 
 than if we had been picked up by twenty ships." 
 
 And the result of all this was Jonathan's 
 expressed conviction' that their escape did not 
 lie in the direction of the sea. 
 
 " The boat," he said, " is too heavy for that 
 auxiliary arm — too heavy for those seas. If 
 we made a thousand arms, she'd break every 
 damned one of 'em. I knew that would be it. 
 Two men could never launch her in that. Those 
 native boats they get through that sort of surf 
 with, are light as feathers. There's not an ounce 
 of weight in 'em. And if we made one of those, 
 which 'ud take some months with the tools we 
 
150 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 have, it might possibly get us down the coast. 
 We could never risk it six or eight days out to 
 sea. We'd better chuck up all hope of this." 
 Having said that, he stood despondently looking 
 out to the dim horizon, where the smoke of a 
 passing steamer, hull-down, could be seen on the 
 ocean higfiway. 
 
 " Look at that ! " he exclaimed bitterly. 
 " Five hundred souls aboard, all going to 
 England ; all with their work to do in the world, 
 and probably grousing because she's only making 
 her fourteen knots ! Blast them ! " and he 
 turned away. 
 
 " I glanced at Joan," David writes, " and I'd 
 almost swear I saw a smile, if not in her eyes ' 
 or on her lips, then somewhere in that corner 
 of her heart where a woman keeps things for her 
 own odd conceptions of amusement. As far as 
 I was concerned, I never felt more sorry for a 
 man in all my life." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE VENTURE BY LAND 
 
 I MUST presume, from David's silence about 
 it, that the incident of the tree-bear, if 
 not forgotten, had tacitly been put aside. 
 
 The only thing that occurred of any importance 
 to the story was in the interval of the few days 
 between their adventure by sea and that day 
 when they set off into the heart of the unknown 
 forest. 
 
 Jonathan's manner to David had changed 
 since their failure in the Malaga's boat. Partly 
 this may have been accounted for by the 
 depression which came over him, as expressed 
 in those exclamations of his when he stood on 
 the beach and saw the smoke of that steamer, 
 hull-down and homeward bound, with never 
 the ghost of a chance of their attracting her 
 attention. In a considerable degree, no doubt, 
 it was this. He was, as they say, like a bear 
 with a sore head. But it was not this entirely. 
 
 On the evening before they started on their 
 second and more adventurous journey, when 
 151 
 
152 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 Joan had, retired to her hut, Jonathan turned 
 suddenly on David, as though he could keep, 
 the matter to himself no longer. 
 
 " Are you in love with that girl ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Why ?" said David. 
 
 " Because the evening before we started that 
 day for the beach and made such a howling mess 
 of it, I saw you at the door of her hut. You'd — 
 you'd got her in your arms." 
 
 Once that had been said, neither of them 
 looked at each other again. They spoke in 
 strained and disjointed sentences, Jonathan 
 taking one of the wooden bowls she had made and 
 scraping the surface of it to a better polish ; 
 David cutting his nails with the gold nail- 
 clipper they had found and absorbing himself 
 with interest over the process. • 
 
 " I was quite aware you'd seen us," he said, 
 after a moment's pause. • 
 
 " Well ? " said Jonathan. 
 
 " I can't say that I see any necessity to explain 
 to you why — why — well — what you saw." 
 
 " Was there any necessity other than what I 
 suggested ? " Jonathan inquired. 
 
 " Only that she was crying her eyes out. 
 You'd just told her she would have to leave Sam 
 behind. She knew the leopards 'ud get him. 
 There's no doubt they would, as soon as we'd 
 gone. So she'd killed him." 
 
 " Good "God ! " 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 153 
 
 " Yes — I don't suppose you thought her 
 capable of it." 
 
 David admits, for that matter, he would hot 
 have believed it himself. 
 
 " Anyhow, that's what had happened. I 
 don't know how she managed it. I didn't ask. 
 She must have had the pluck of her emotions 
 about the little beast. And thpn her pluck had 
 given out. She was sobbing like a child in 
 there, with the door locked and Sam lying on 
 the floor at her feet. It didn't seem imnatural 
 to me that she should find herself in my arms, 
 as you saw us. Have you any objections that 
 she did ? " 
 
 David repeats this conversation without 
 comment. But in it, myself, I see a degree of 
 mental superiority to which Jonathan could 
 never have made a claim. He would have sworn 
 a:nd said he did love her, and who knows that 
 might have been the best way out of it ? But 
 with David there was apparently a sense of 
 romance, forbidding any such discussion, or 
 making impossible so bare a statement, amount- 
 ing to little more than a confession of desire. 
 
 " If, as I supposed," he says in another part 
 of his papers, " for it seemed to me by that time 
 any fool might haVe known it, we were both in 
 love with her, then it was as well to keep it to 
 ourselves, imtil the little matter of her own choice 
 had been decided on." 
 
154 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 ■ i 
 So at least the affair stood between them when 
 
 they started out that day to make their second 
 Adventure towards freedom through the un- 
 beaten tracks of tl^e forest. As far as I can 
 gather, the incident of Sam's death was never 
 mentioned between any of them again, or, for 
 that matter, can I see any signs in David's 
 narrative of the suggestion that he felt any 
 further excuse for intimacy because Joan had 
 come to him that moment in her troubles. 
 
 He confines himself here, as I have intimated 
 before, to the minutest detail of that hazardous 
 journey, of which I shall content niyself with a 
 mere precis of what he has written. 
 
 Here, travelling through the forest, the matter 
 of provisioning themselves was of secondary 
 importance, which should not imply that it had 
 not to be carefully considered. They could be 
 fairly certain of all kinds of fruit, but the chance 
 of trapping birds or catching fish had almost 
 entirely to be discounted. In the depths of 
 those forests, scarcely a bird was to be seei^, 
 and so many parrots as there were kept only in 
 the highest branches of the trees. 
 
 With no little difficulty the boat had been 
 set to rights again and brought back to the creek, 
 and there she was left, moored to the palisade. 
 They were to take with them the apology for 
 a canoe in which they did their fishing. It 
 was an odd-looking craft, but with the tools 
 they had in their workshop-— a portion of the 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 155 
 
 residential part of the hut — ^its cpnstruction 
 was really nothing to be ashamed of. Its 
 advantage lay in its lightness and portability. 
 One of them, with difficulty no doubt, could 
 shift it in and out of the water and lift it over 
 obstacles by himself. It was just capable of 
 taking the three of them, and I can well believe 
 there was almost an art in keeping it trim. 
 
 Preparatory to setting out this time, Jonathan 
 suggested a farewell meal at the creek. On 
 the first occasion, he had said nothing about 
 farewells, as though he had known the quest was 
 a hopeless one. This time, however, his spirits 
 were high and it was evident he believed they 
 stood a good chance. 
 
 An hour or so before leaving, Joan took them 
 to her hut and showed them the interior, just 
 completed, which she had not allowed them to 
 see before. The construction had been strength- 
 ened considerably directly after her convales- 
 cence. It was no longer the ramshackle affair 
 they had rigged up when first they arrived ' at 
 the creek, but had a substantial roof and walls, 
 with a mndow facing south. For this she had 
 made a patchwork sort of curtain, out of the 
 various garments at their disposal, stitching 
 the pieces together with a coarse thread David 
 had discovered could be made from the strands 
 of vine tendrils. But it was the walls upon 
 which she had spent all her care for and her 
 delight in colour. They were covered from floor 
 
156 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 to ceiling — not a great amount of space — ^with 
 the feathers of birds which had been trapped 
 from time to time. 
 
 " Such a glory and a confusion of colour," 
 writes David, " cprtainly I have seldom seen. 
 For not only were there parrots and parroquets, 
 the predominating colours of which were yellow 
 and green, but there were the most amazing 
 blues and reds, the richest of warm browns. 
 Strange as it may seem, it gave an air of comfort 
 I can scarcely describe, and that being the case, 
 no one could have called it ugly. Indeed, as a 
 mural decoration in those barbaric surroundings, 
 it would have had a sense of gorgeousness on a 
 grander scale. 
 
 " When we get back to England," said I, " you'd 
 better sell this idea to a Bond Street decorator." 
 
 She laughed and turned to Jonathan, asking 
 him what he thought of it, and wasn't it a shame 
 to be leaving it just when it was finished ? 
 
 " I hope you cleaned those quills well," said 
 he. " It'll stink like anything in a week or 
 two if you haven't." 
 
 They looked all round the room before they 
 went out, at the comfortable couch she had made 
 of her bed; at the clothes-hanger, with the 
 frock on it which she had never worn again 
 since that day. And on the window-sill, in a 
 wooden bowl of her own making, was a bunch 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 157 
 
 of scarlet orchids, standing in water. They 
 caught David's eye when, turning quickly, he 
 found her looking at him. 
 
 " What was there to do then," says he, as he 
 tells that part of the story, " but for the pair of 
 us to burst out laughing, and when Jonathan 
 asked us what the devil we were laughing at, I 
 knew she must have realized then the delight I 
 had in keeping the secret all to myself." 
 
 So they started, saying farewell to their 
 creek, and when David records there was that 
 look in Joan's face as she glanced back at the 
 edge of the forest, that look which is tender 
 more than sentimental and has no relation 
 whatsoever to tears, I fancy, even sitting here 
 in my arm-chair with the trams rumbling along 
 the Embankment, I can appreciate what she 
 must have felt. 
 
 There is no home on earth like the home you 
 have made for yourself out of nothing. Labour 
 is the joy of living — but I am telling David's story 
 and have no right to make comments on my own. 
 
 The course of the river — emptying itself 
 through the creek and by their channel into the 
 sea — served them apparently for two days. In 
 that space of time, Jonathan calculated they 
 had covered twelve to fourteen miles. 
 
 " One thinks of a few thousand of acres of 
 forest here at home," David writes in his 
 description of their surroundings, " but this 
 
158 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 was like a continent, a world of mighty trees 
 and tangled undergi-owth — a never-ending dark- 
 ness and silence, beside which the darkness 
 beneath the trees of an English forest was a 
 lighted chamber and its silence almost a song." 
 
 At the end of two days they had to leave the 
 canoe and take to cutting a way through on 
 land. With every mile, Jonathan's spirits, 
 however, had been rising. Hope was liftmg in 
 him at every turn of the path. 
 
 " If we cain find the food all right," he said 
 over and over again, " we shall get through. 
 It won't be fifty miles before we get out of it. 
 I can tell that by the vegetation. It's changing 
 every mile we go. Once we get out into some 
 sort of open country, we're free as birds." 
 
 David seems unable to explain the effect 
 which this hopefulness of Jonathan's had on 
 them. They, trusted him implicitly. It can 
 be imderstood well enough how they felt, like 
 children in his hands. The passage in which 
 David tries to give account of his sensations is 
 interesting. I am going to quote it word for 
 word. 
 
 " The more he talked like this, the further I 
 began to feel from that period at the creek, 
 the more I began to sense the life in England 
 again, knowing the hopeless mistakes I had made 
 and the follies I had pi;rsued, blind with the 
 thought that because others were pursuing them, 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 159 
 
 I, therefore, was getting the best out of life. But, 
 most of all, the more Jonathan talked like this, 
 the more did my hope rise at the thought that 
 in civilized conditions once more, I should stand 
 a better chance with Joan. At every turn he 
 had the pull of me. At every turn I felt her 
 moving towards him, the strong man of our 
 little conipany, the one who had knowledge, 
 experience, ability, courage too, and all those 
 qualities which must have appealed to a woman 
 situated as she was. Yet, notwithstanding all 
 these advantages, somehow I felt in the egotism 
 of my spirit that I deserved her as much 
 as he did. 
 
 " He had saved her, however, that day in the 
 sea, and, even taking into account his want of 
 understanding of her over the matter of Sam, 
 I knew she had felt the steady strength of his 
 arm as he had helped her to shore ; that she 
 had thrilled to the note in his voice 'when, for 
 her good humour at it all, he had called her 
 a brick, 
 
 " What I knew most of all was that she did not 
 understand me, and in that environment had 
 no need or desire to try and find me out. The 
 man who covld do things in that situation in 
 life was far more the man for her. I knew it 
 as well as I knew my own name ; therefore the 
 thought that we were nearing every hour to 
 the approach of civilization once ' more, filled 
 me,' too, with a terrific zest of hope. What she 
 
160 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 felt hersielf, I cannot pretend to say. She 
 echoed our spirits, that is all I feel justified in 
 recording of her." 
 
 Increasing in the temper of this mood, they 
 went on for some days, till they came to a belt 
 of swamp land with the forest continuing 
 beyond. They were living now on what they 
 could find to eat, and though there was plenty 
 of fruit, it seemed impossible to secure any- 
 thing more substantial. This, however, did 
 not damp their spirits. Jonathan was talking 
 almost in hours now of their release. It proved 
 to promise longer than hours, for without their 
 canoe there was no way through that swamp. 
 For two days they travelled up and down, 
 trying to find an end to it, but apparently it 
 was endless. 
 
 And ■ then the catastrophe they never had 
 dared to speak of overcame them. Joan fell 
 sick with fever. For half a day she tried to 
 struggle on, but was too weak at the end of it 
 to move another step. 
 
 David saw Jonathan go away by himself 
 into the forest, and realized he was cursing all 
 the words he knew in his vocabulary. But 
 obviously it was not because of her they had to 
 give up. Fever was there for all of them if 
 they had stayed another twenty-four hours by 
 that swamp. They could scent it in the air, 
 that damp, rotting smell of decaying vegetation, 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 161 
 
 a wall of death between them and the world 
 beyond. 
 
 They had taken the precaution of carefully 
 marking the way they had come, and by the 
 time Jonathan had returned from the easing of 
 his mood, David had taken her up in his arms 
 and was starting for home, those many days' 
 journey to the creek. To get her back there 
 was the only hope that remained of saving her 
 life as well as safeguarding their own. 
 
 He had not gone a quarter of a mile before 
 he was out of breath. Here Jonathan stopped 
 him. 
 
 " Give her to me," he said sternly, " I'll 
 carry her," and through the ti^ck made easier 
 by their passage, he carried her till the sweat 
 was pouring from his forehead in heavy drops. 
 
 Whereas they had taken something like seven 
 days in cutting their way through the forest, 
 they must have taken more than ten in that 
 same more open track to return to the creek. 
 How near she went to death in that time, 
 David fully describes. But that her life was 
 saved is all that is needed for the purpose of 
 our tale. 
 
 In another fortnight she was well again ; 
 coming out into the sunshine and sitting near 
 them, watching them as they set to the making 
 of a mattress of strong vine tendrils, laced and 
 interlaced, for the greater comfort of her bed.] 
 
 II 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE SECOND BOARD MEETING 
 
 SHE had grown pale again, and for some 
 time was weak as well with the sickness 
 of her fever, ariising out of which David makes 
 humorous reference to an amusing little 
 incident. 
 
 " There was no climbing of trees for her," he 
 writes, " in that delicate condition of con- 
 valescence,' so one morning, coming back from 
 fetching the water, I had a mind of her needs, 
 and picked her a bunch of her scarlet orchids. 
 She was out in the creek, talking to Jonathan 
 as he worked, when I returned. They had not 
 seen me come back, so I just slipped into her 
 hut and put them on the window-sill ih a bowl 
 of water. 
 
 " She was making her appearance at meals 
 then, and when she came back to supper there 
 was just one look in her eyes she gave me, 
 worth much for the suppression of her laughter 
 and still more for the open confession of 
 gratitude. 
 
 162 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 163 
 
 " I would not," he adds on a human note — 
 " I would not have given up that little secret 
 to Jonathan for anything in the world." 
 
 It was some three or four days after this 
 incident, as far as I can gather from David's 
 script, that Jonathan, making use of her simile, 
 called a board meeting. 
 
 He had been intensely serious of mood ever 
 since their return to the creek ; had spoken 
 little of his mind to David, and, indeed, had not 
 been the best of companions. When they came, 
 however, to his appointment in the • living 
 room of the large hut, his spirits apparently 
 had risen somewhat. There was a determined 
 attitude of cheerfulness in the way he spoke. 
 There was a fixed light of good humour in his 
 eye. 
 
 I feel somehow, as I re-read these last few 
 chapters, that I have done scant justice to 
 the indication of Jonathan's character through- 
 out this period of their life at the creek. David, 
 in his script, speaks far more of hini than he 
 does of himself. But David was, after' all, my 
 friend, and, taking the whole matter from 
 David's account of it, perhaps I may have 
 been biased in my interest of the issue. Ii 
 may have sought out, without knowing it, 
 every opportunity of putting him in the light 
 in which I felt he deserved to be. 
 
 I will just, therefore, take one passage from 
 
 II* 
 
164 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 David's record, in which he gives a description 
 of Jonathan after their return from the failure 
 of the forest expedition. • 
 
 " His whole mind," he says, " was wrapped 
 up in the energy of work, of doing things, if 
 only with his hands and certainly with the full 
 activities of his body. ' The fun of doing 
 things,' he had once said to me, if it can be 
 remembered, ' lies in doing them for yourself.' 
 That was characteristic of him. I suppose it 
 was no less characteristic of me when I had 
 added : ' The fun of doing things lies in doing, 
 not labouring at them.' 
 
 " To this he would never have agreed, for, 
 good heavens, I never saw a man labour so 
 hard or .so vigorously as he did those days 
 when he was making the small canoe, or building 
 the big hut.' Even with his fishing expeditions, 
 he made no amusement, but a definite business 
 of them, wasting no time and returning to the 
 creek with his catch as if there were a train due 
 to take them by express to the London market. 
 
 " Under his influence, as I think I have said 
 somewhere else, I had never worked so hard 
 in my life before, or do I wish to deny it, had 
 ever enjoyed anything so much. .1 shall never 
 look back upon those days but with the clearest 
 sense of happiness. 
 
 " But it was not happy for him. Hard labour, 
 the risk and adventure of life, the work of th^ 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 165 
 
 pioneer; these were the only ways in which he 
 could express himself. There, however, in that 
 creek, behind the palisade he had himself 
 erected, he was like a caged lion, padding it 
 with his spirit, up and down, up and down, 
 up and down. 
 
 " Again and again I felt intensely sorry for 
 him, for, as it can easily be understood, I came 
 to kilow him then better than I had ever known 
 him before'. The stress of circumstance does not 
 change a man, it only brings out a clearer 
 expression of the truth that is in him. Jonathan 
 was clearer to me then than ever he had been 
 before. So I Came the more to feel sorry for 
 him, because there was no resource in his mind 
 to which he could turn. He worked until he 
 was physically exhausted and then he went to 
 sleep. ■ I do not mean to suggest by this that 
 there were no ideas in his mind. The ideas 
 he had suggested about the symbols of life, 
 that day when I was packing up in the Albany 
 are sufficient to disprove that. Those ideas 
 were full of truth. But, if I make myself clear, 
 they were the immediate expression in speech 
 of his physical energies. In his way, he was 
 well-educated. Silence cannot be the invariable 
 habit of a man. All I want to convey is the 
 impression that thought, for itself, was not the 
 natural expression of his spirit. He was only 
 happy when he was doing something capable 
 of definite and ultimate results which he him- 
 
166 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 self could appreciate. I can quite believe he 
 was excellent at his Job. I have no hesitation 
 also in thinking that, compared with my own 
 mode of living, his life was worth a thousand 
 of mine'. It seems almost foolish to write that, 
 so obvious must it seem." 
 
 Having quoted this, I feel I can return to the 
 account of that board meeting — with more 
 conviction that I have done justice to those who 
 took part at it ; for without such justice being 
 ^ven, it would have been impossible to appre- 
 ciate the full significance it possessed in the 
 development of our tale. 
 
 Jonathan, as I have already indicated, was 
 in a more cheerful mood, however' forced it 
 may have been. He laughed as he alluded 
 to it as their board meeting. He complained 
 that- there was no shorthand clerk to take 
 notes of the minutes. He took the chair at 
 the head of the table, saying : " Gentlemen — 
 I can only speak what I see " — ^this was his 
 reference to Joan's garments — " I have the 
 honour to call you to this special meeting of 
 the company to discuss certain matters con- 
 nected with the handsome dividends I think 
 you will all agree " 
 
 " Oh — shut up ! " said David, laughing— 
 and then a' very different expression settled on 
 Jonatlian's face. He began to speak seriously 
 and in deep earnestness. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 167 
 
 " All right— that's all rot," said he. " It's no 
 good playing about with it. I don't know 
 whether you two have realized what these two 
 failures of ours have meant. Vaguely, I suppose 
 you have. Vaguely, you've said to yourselves 
 — well — sooner or later we shall have to have 
 another shot, and in the meantime there's this 
 place, free of fever, to live in. That's what I 
 imagine you've thought. I've tried to think it 
 myself, ever since .we came back out of the- 
 forest. But it's no good. I know a damn 
 sight better than that — ^I'm not going to 
 apologize for language. 
 
 " I know what we're up against, and I've 
 called this blessed board meeting to tell you 
 what it is. We've tried the only two means of 
 escape I know of, and now it's up, to a remote 
 chance that we aren't here for the rest of our 
 natural lives." 
 
 He stopped for a moment and looked at them ; 
 first at David, lastly at Joan. And his last 
 was no mere glance. It was a long, long look 
 that would have become embarrassing only 
 that he presently went on. 
 
 " I want to say straight out, and first of all, 
 that I don't think it's anybody's fault. It 
 just happened that Joan was the first to knock 
 under to the fever. We ought really to be 
 grateful to her. She acted as a warning. If 
 we hadn't turned back then, I haven't the 
 slightest doubt we should both h^ve been down 
 
168 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 with it ourselves, and then there'd have been 
 hell to pay. I'm not chucking compliments 
 about, but I should never have thought a woman 
 could be so plucky as she's been." 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " said David. 
 
 " Or that you, David," he continued, " Could 
 have worked like you've done. I never thought 
 you had it in you." 
 
 David says he felt like a school-boy taking a 
 prize from the Lord Mayor and not knowing 
 what the devil to say. 
 
 " That's enough of that, anyhow," Jonathan 
 went on. " Those are the facts. Unless a 
 ship outside sees our signals — ^and you can 
 guess how likely that is — I see small chance,, 
 if any, of our getting away. That chance 
 might come to-morrow, it might come when 
 we're doddering old creatures and some enter- 
 prising company is opening up the coast of 
 Liberia for trading purposes. Pray God I'm 
 under this sand before then. 
 
 " Well, that's what I've called you in here 
 for, because I think it's only fair you should 
 face it and set your minds c5ut to what it really 
 means. It means that we've got no other — 
 what David would call — expression for our lives 
 outside this hundred square yards or so of 
 creek ; that here we are to make of ourselves 
 the best we can and get the best we can out 
 of it. Personally, I must p,dmit my ambitions 
 are not hugely stimulated. That's not to be 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 169 
 
 wondered at. Once this place is as comfortably 
 habitable as we can make it, there's not much 
 left for me to do, and it is with me that I must 
 be doing something. Now, if either of you 
 have got anything to say, let's have it all out 
 while we're here, and then take the gifts the 
 Gods have given us without saying anything 
 more about it. Certainly I don't feel inclined 
 to thank 'em for what they've given me." 
 
 I have given this speech of Jonathan's, woud 
 for word as David recorded it, because I think, 
 under the circumstances, knowing what the 
 man who made it was suffering, arid the despair 
 he felt, it is a fine, manly effort with no non- 
 sense about it one way or another. And now I 
 return to David's account. 
 
 " Having asked us to say something," David 
 writes, " I looked at Joan, giving her pre- 
 ference ; she looked at me, waiting as well. 
 The fact of the matter was, we neither of us 
 wanted to speak at all. I knew what I might 
 have had to say couldn't be said there. Some- 
 how or other, I felt it was exactly the same 
 .with her, only that being one woman and alone 
 with us- two, hers could not have been said 
 anywhere. 
 
 " I ventured to remark that there did not 
 seem to be anything further to add. Joan rose 
 from her chair, saying : ' I've got nothing to 
 say. You know more about it than we do. 
 
170 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 Jonathan. I'm sure I'm quite ready to place 
 myself in your hands with anything you choose 
 to do. You know best. And that's all there 
 is to be said — ^isn't it ? ' 
 
 "So that was the breaking-up of the board 
 meeting. She went back to her hut. It was 
 in the full heat of the day when it was more or 
 less impossible to work. I just got out the 
 canoe and said I was going down to the beach 
 to catch some fish. It was fairly cool down 
 that ch^annel through the forest. There were 
 only patches where the sun penetrated. What 
 is more, I wanted to be alone. 
 
 " It was quite true what Jonathan had said 
 — ^true for me, anyhow. I had only vaguely 
 thought what those* two failures meant. Now 
 I was face to face with the facts, or, rather, the 
 fact, for there was only one to me. If the rest 
 of our life was to be in that creek, then there was 
 no concealing my love, or my passion, for that girl 
 'with the subterfuges which civilization offers in 
 handfuls to those who need to be quit of an awk- 
 ward predicament where a woman is concerned. 
 
 " She, as Jonathan had quoted me, would have 
 been a great purpose in the expression of my 
 life under any circumstances. In that creek, 
 ■ she became the sole purpose. That was all I 
 could have said at our board meeting. No 
 wonder I had refused to speak. 
 
 " To the casual reader, that may sound simple 
 enough, but far from being simple, I saw in it 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 171 
 
 the looming dangers of as pretty a tragedy as 
 our fretted novelists, out for sensation, could 
 possibly hope to find. 
 
 " For in that little limited community there 
 was no possibility of one thinking for himself 
 without inevitably concerning the others. I 
 might want her with all my heart ; she might 
 be wholly necessary to the one single purpose of 
 my life, but that might not be to her desire ; 
 and, for the one remaining purpose of his 
 life, it might tragically fail to coincide with 
 Jonathan's view of it all. 
 
 " I felt sure of one thing. No — ^it is more 
 exact to say I felt sure of two. I felt sure that 
 as yet Jonathan had not realized it as deeply 
 as this or he could not have spoken as candidly 
 as he did to us. It was the loss of the ambition- 
 of his work he was so far despairing of ; the 
 thing most immediate in his mind that he had 
 lost. But that there was at the back of his 
 mind a great admiration for her — as evidenced 
 if only in the compliment he had paid her — 
 and that inevitably this would ripen with the 
 circumstances into a strong passion with him, 
 I knew as well as I knew the common and 
 natural instincts of any man. 
 
 " The second thing . of which I felt sure, was 
 that Joan had not spoken because she, too, had 
 sensed all the difficulties, and possibly the dangers 
 as well, which lay ahead. With her I am more 
 inclined to think it was only the difficulties. 
 
172 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " She liked both of us, but in my heart I felt 
 that she liked Jonathan best. His appeal, 
 especially in a place like that, I felt sure must 
 be greater than my own. And there were other 
 difficulties besides that of choice. There were 
 the difficulties which she only, as a woman, could 
 appreciate. That she had the mother-instinct 
 strong in her, I knew well enough by her emotions 
 over Sam. That she had the mother-courage 
 there was plenty of jft-oof in the way she had 
 killed the wretched little beggar before we left 
 the creek for the first time. 
 
 " A woman who has the courage to kill a 
 living thing with her own hands rather than 
 leave it to its fate, has certainly the courage 
 to bring a liye thing into the world for her 
 nursing. Besides which, if the mother-instinct 
 were there, was not that the highest purpose of 
 the expression of her spirit ? I may be foolish 
 on that subject, but I cannot conceive a woman 
 wishing to express herself more completely than 
 by that. 
 
 " Here, anyhow, was the problem as I saw it, 
 while I "fished idly from the canoe that after- 
 noon, and the more I considered it, the less 
 dispassionate I became ; the more I realized 
 that I could not live there without her ; that I 
 could not live there for one moment if Jonathan 
 possessed her and not I." 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF REALIZATION 
 
 SO the situation had been shaped and moulded 
 in the hand of circumstance after some 
 months of their hfe at the creek. 
 
 Every day after that board meeting, Jonathan 
 went alone down to the beach, ostensibly to fish 
 in the channel, but really, as Joan and David 
 well knew, to look out at those passing steamers 
 which regularly every week went by, dim spirits 
 of his discontent, half-hidden behind the far 
 line of that horizon. 
 
 On these occasions David and Joan saw much 
 of each other, and if it should be wondered why 
 he did not seize one of the many opportunities 
 he must have had to tell her what was in his 
 mind about her, let me give his own explanation. 
 
 " We were sitting out one morning," he says, 
 " on a flat projection of rock in the face of the 
 cliff, where an overhanging tree gave its welcome 
 shade. So delightful a shelter from the sun was 
 it, that from time to time in those few months 
 173 
 
174 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 we had cut out a small stairway of steps in the 
 rock, making it the more accessible. 
 
 " Jonathan was away at the beach. We were 
 completely alone ; sitting there looking down 
 over the palisade, across the creek into the forest 
 below. A tremendous specimen of a crocodile 
 was moving about sluggishly in the water 
 beyond the palisade. I knew she was watching 
 him. I was watching him myself. The same 
 train of thought must have been in both our 
 minds at the same time, for presently she said : 
 
 " ' I wonder do these animals in the forest 
 ever feel the sense of their, own utter desolation ? ' 
 
 "'Do you? 'said I. 
 , , " She seemed to wake from her contemplation 
 of that old beast with a start, as though I had 
 stirred her out of sleep from an unpleasant dream 
 into the consciousness of a still more unpleasant 
 reality. 
 
 " ' I suppose I do sometimes,' she replied, 
 and there was almost a tragic note in her voice. 
 ' Splendid and cheerful as you both are, you — 
 you couldn't expect me to feel otherwise^' 
 
 " ' What do you miss most of all ? ' I asked, 
 and I knew when I had said this that before our 
 conversation thatmorning was over the chances 
 were I should have put all my hopes to the test 
 and told her that I loved her. I did not know 
 all the chances when I thought that. 
 
 " ' What do you miss most ? ' I repeated — 
 fully determined now to see it out. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 176 
 
 " She stared for a long while down into the 
 forest before she answered, and then she said : 
 ' I miss the purpose of it all.' 
 
 " ' Of our being cast adrift here ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes — and — and of the whole of life. One 
 would have imagined that in a place like this 
 everjrthing would have been absurdly simple — 
 well, foolishly enough perhaps, it seems to me 
 absurdly the reverse. I can't see the meaning ; 
 I can't see the end of it at all. Are we just 
 going to — ^to die here, and bury each other in 
 the sand of that creek^ — one after the other, 
 till the last one's left alone to just lie down 
 when his turn comes and let the leopards eat him, 
 or the sand blow over him ? Can you under- 
 stand what I mean ? I'm all confused. It's 
 like a riddle, or a maze, with no way out — a 
 senseless business, where you chafe, and chafe 
 against the conditions, but can do nothing to 
 alter them.' 
 
 " She herself was talking in riddles, but simpler 
 ones than those she had actually propounded. 
 Who really could have failed to understand ? 
 Her missing of the purpose of life ; her confusion 
 of thought g,bout what the end of it all was going 
 to be — ^these sentences were only a combination 
 of words concealing the very things I had 
 thought of myself that day in the canoe after 
 our board meeting. 
 
 " She was thinking just as I was. Was she 
 to miss the purpose of hers or every woman's 
 
176 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 life ? And if not, then in which of us two did 
 her fate lie ? There was her confusion of 
 thought. And how indeed was it all going to 
 end ? 
 
 " ' May I say something,' said I presently, 
 ' without incurring anj^hing in the way of 
 critical scorn from you ? ' 
 
 " For a moment she , looked afraid. What 
 woman would not have looked the same? I 
 might have been going to say something which 
 would drive her to some definite action. For, 
 strangely enough, the more simple our environ- 
 ment had become, the more necessity did there 
 appear to be for secretive measures. I know 
 it was as obvious to her as it was to me that 
 we feared to tell each other the truth. Her 
 fear was natural .enough. It was that I was 
 going to break through that safeguarding 
 palisade of secrecy with which we had fenced 
 ourselves in, and that then at once — ^inevitable 
 as it must be in the end — we would be fighting 
 * for our lives. 
 
 " ' I won't say it if you don't want me to,' 
 said I. 
 
 " ' Jonathan would have said it without ask- 
 ing,' she remarked, showing me unintentionally 
 the invariable comparison she was always 
 making between us. 
 
 " ' Jonathan and I are two different types,' 
 said I. 
 
 " ' I' know that,' said she. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 177 
 
 " ' Well—am I to say it or not ? ' 
 
 " ' Say it,' she replied. 
 
 " ' I'm going to say what I said once before — 
 the laws, not us, are irresistible. 0.ver in 
 England, they are written on parchment and 
 are at your service if you are ready to pay a 
 lawyer's fees and the costs of litigation. Here, 
 you're the slave of the law — ^we're all the 
 same — all of us. Force dictates — sheer, brute 
 force in the end. Does that make it any 
 simpler ? ' 
 
 " She looked straight into my eyes after a 
 few moments, and she' replied, quite steadily : 
 ' No — it only makes it worse.' 
 
 " ' Worse, perhaps,' said I, ' but not less 
 simple. You had to kill Sam. That was force 
 — ^brute force, however gentle in the heart of 
 it the motive may have been. Jonathan's was 
 the force that compelled you to use your own. 
 A common law of self-protection, stronger than 
 him, drove Jonathan.' 
 
 " ' I've never hated him for it,' she replied 
 quickly. ' I know he had to do it,' and it was 
 this answer which, rightly or wrongly in that 
 moment, seemed to me to be the answer to it 
 all. My hopes of winning her then, all my 
 intentions of saying what was in my mind, 
 dropped from me on the instant. I could do 
 no more than sit there with my chin on my 
 knees, staring down into the forest, hearing all 
 the time those words revolving in my head : 
 
 12 
 
178 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 ' I've never hated him for it. I know he had 
 to do it.' 
 
 " She must, I suppose intuitively, have 
 known a greater part of that which was in my 
 mind, because after a moment she suddenly 
 put but her hand." It was a frank and generous 
 movement. There was no mistaking its impulse, 
 and I took it in my own. 
 
 " ' We're all the best of friends — ^aren't we ? ' 
 said she openly. ' I know you two are — and — ' 
 then she laughed — ' I promise you I'm not going 
 to be left out in the Cold. Good heavens ! 
 What else could we be in a place like this ? ' 
 
 " And here was the sum of all we said that 
 morning, having spoken in nothing but riddles, 
 yet I believe no two people had ever made their 
 meanings more clear to one another than we. 
 I had told her of the irresistible and inevitable 
 fact that we were both in love with her. For 
 if Jonathan was not aware of it, I knew from a 
 thousand little incidents, besides those I have 
 already mentioned, that he soon would be. 
 
 " And what had her reply amounted to ? 
 That she feared the issue vi^hen I spoke of brute 
 force being the determinating factor. This was 
 natural enough. She saw us two at each other's 
 throats, and rather than that, she would have 
 us all be friends. She was indeed, so far as her 
 nature was concerned, at that same stage 
 through which we had passed soon after her 
 arrival at the creek, when Jonathan and I had 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 179 
 
 discussed the folly of letting her interfere with 
 our plans of escape. Then the inevitable sex 
 instinct in her, finding we had determined to 
 put her in her place — even to the point of 
 insinuating how she was to dress — had deter- 
 mined it should not be ignored. But now, 
 holding no pounsel as we had doiie, except with 
 her own heart, she was all for dictatuig to us 
 the amicable attitude of friendship. 
 
 " I wonder how many women have not passed 
 through those very phases with a man, trying 
 the volte-face and spurred by fear when it was 
 too late ? 
 
 " Somehow or other, judging at least by 
 myself, I knew it to be too late now. Friend- 
 ship would not content me, I had been in love 
 before and had no mistaking of my emotions 
 now. Besides all of which, there was what she 
 called the meaning of life, and in her it was as 
 clear as daylight to me. The world had started 
 somewhere ; if not in the Garden of Eden, then 
 in the waste places into which first man and first 
 woman were driven by the angels of the Lord. 
 
 " And whatever had driven us there, on to 
 that lonely coast, I thought no more of conse- 
 quences than did they. This was my life, and 
 I knew that Jonathan in time would come as 
 well to realize it his. And here was a woman 
 whom, apart from all these exigencies of fate, 
 I loved, no less then than when we were living 
 in the hope of escape. 
 
 13* 
 
180 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " If any man can declare he would have 
 conceived differently from me that ultimate 
 issue, I should only feel assured his imagina- 
 tion was unable to carry him into the real 
 conditions of that situation, or that civilization, 
 as with so many of us, had blinded him to the 
 deeper and compelling purposes of his existence. 
 
 " This, as I say, was the sum of all we said 
 that morning. I took her hand more, I confess, 
 for the pleasure of feeling it touch my own, 
 than for any outward symbol of a pact. I 
 knew there was none. As I held it firmly, I 
 said : ' Friendship is one of the most perfect 
 affections under the sun — but do you think it 
 contains the meaning of life you spoke about 
 just now ? ' 
 
 " She let her hand stay in mine a moment 
 longer then, silently, she took it away, rose to 
 her feet and climbed down the steps to the 
 creek." 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Jonathan's adventure 
 
 TIME is somewhat difficult to estimate 
 from David's manuscript. They had 
 begun by keeping a calendar, a long, fine 
 bamboo cane with notches for every day, which, 
 when the hut was erected, they transferred to 
 one of the supports, making, as Joan suggested, 
 a sort of ornamental carving which iri a few years 
 — she had said this in jest, before their failures 
 at escape — would become one of the features 
 of the place. 
 
 At least on three occasions they were not 
 quite sure whether the notch had been made. 
 Finally, those seventeen days or so in the forest, 
 when they had kept no count of time, deprived 
 it of all accuracy it might have had. None of 
 them were in certain agreement as to the length 
 of time they had been away. 
 
 I assume it, then, to have been about a week 
 
 ■ after this conversation between Joan and David 
 
 that there befell an incident which, as I see it 
 
 from my distance, brought about the swift 
 
 hasteniilg of events. 
 
 i8i 
 
182 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 Jonathan had been down, as had almost 
 become his habit, to the creek. David and 
 Joan were awaiting his return, seated as before 
 on that ledge of rock, but talking of subjects 
 less intimate than upon that former occasion. 
 Indeed, I rather gather that after their previous 
 conversation they tacitly avoided any reference 
 to it. She must have known by then that David 
 was in love with her, yet so long as his declara- 
 tion had not been made, felt herself safe while 
 matters remained as they were. It proves to 
 me how skilful her treatment of those two men 
 must have been that she kept her hands upon 
 the reins of circumstance so long. Powerful, 
 in. that feminine sense, those hands must have 
 been. This was ju^t the type of woman I can 
 imagine David giving his heart to. There was 
 mind as well, and of fine quality, to go with it. 
 She was no creature to be won for the asking. 
 To have flung the importunate passion, of desire 
 at her feet would have been to lose all chance of 
 winning her. 
 
 Doubtless, David knew this well enough. 
 Never had he been slow to sense a woman's 
 mind. So it seems to me he kept silence all 
 that while, knowing that any declaration of 
 love, in such circumstances as those, must have 
 savoured of passionate importunity. The" de- 
 claration that was wanted must be in deeds> 
 not in words. 
 
 But of Joan herself, throughout the whole of 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 183 
 
 this period, when the fate of all of them was, 
 swingihg in the scales, it is hard to make any 
 certain analysis. There is little doubt she knew 
 everything — everything passing in David's mind, 
 everjrthing likely at any moment to become 
 urgent in Jonathan's, Yet how far that know- 
 ledge was conscious, I for one, and a mere 
 outsider at that, 'should not attempt to 
 say. 
 
 So far as I feel justified in hazarding a guess, 
 it would be that, at that time, swayed between 
 the attractions of one and the qualities of the 
 other, she was too much in two minds to be in 
 love with either. Her evident interest in David's 
 powers of understanding, her obvious admira- 
 tion of Jonathan's abilities in those surroundings, 
 seem to have been suificient to put any woman 
 in such a quandary of mind as would totally 
 incapacitate her for any certainty of subtle 
 emotions. 
 
 Love, when it really does come to a woman, is 
 no uncertain thing. She accepts wholly, abso- 
 lutely, questioning nothing, or would it be better 
 said, accepting all ? To such a state of mind, 
 it would appear to me well-nigh impossible for 
 a woman to arrive in those extraordinary con- 
 ditions. She cotild not choose ; for to choose 
 one was utterly to eliminate the other. In 
 calling for friendship, she knew she was asking 
 for a negative condition, merely as a safeguard 
 to herself; a postponing influence, giving her 
 
184 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 time to think, to understand it all. How she 
 must have coveted every hour she won! 
 
 As David had conceived, so doubtless she 
 knew as well. It was deeds that would win 
 her, not words. More and more as the time 
 went by and the precedents of civilization were 
 gradually broken down between them, she must 
 have been convinced of the truth of what he 
 told her. Brute force would be the deciding 
 factor. She must have recognized the fact 
 that in the end she had no choice. Automati- 
 cally, she would choose in answer to that — in 
 favpur of it, if it swept her with it — against it, if, 
 in the expression it took, it repulsed. But 
 whichever way it was, some force would be the 
 master of her, if not the force of Jonathan's 
 arms, which had carried her so tirelessly through 
 the forest and bornei her so safely out of the 
 turmoil of that sea, then it would be the force 
 of David's mind, which, at every juncture, had 
 engaged hers and kept a sure ascendancy she 
 surely would have been unable to deny. 
 
 I have tried to put her problem clearly, 
 because, as with the character of Jonathan, so 
 I felt with her, that I was rather leaving that 
 aspect of it alone. This, then, I have ventured 
 far more with my own initiative,, for David, 
 though he may have understood her consider- 
 ably better than I, maintains a by no means 
 surprising reticence. One does not' care to 
 dissect the things one really loves. At least, I 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 185 
 
 appreciate his silence about her in that 
 light. 
 
 It was therefore, as I have said, about a week 
 after their intimate conversation that they 
 were waiting for Jonathan's return from the 
 beach. Their talk for an hour and more had 
 been of books, of pictures, of music, of the many 
 tasles they shared sufficiently in common as 
 to be interested in each other's disagreements. 
 
 They had begun by discussing what interests 
 could be added to their life at the creek to bring 
 it greater variety. David had already, with no 
 little ingenuity, carved out a set of chessmen of 
 simple design and made a board with squares 
 of different coloured woods. He and Jonathan 
 had played often together at first, but latterly 
 the board had been idle. 
 
 "If I could get some different pigments out 
 of those orchids," said David, " I could make 
 some futurist decorations for the interior of 
 the hut." 
 
 He had said it quite thoughtlessly, but 
 when he turned to look at her, her eyes were 
 alive with laughter. He had for the moment 
 forgotten their secret, and swore to her most 
 earnestly that it had utterly gone out of his 
 mind. 
 
 " Has it seemed to you as natural as all that, 
 then ? " she asked. 
 
 He admitted it had. " And why not ? " he 
 added. " The laws are the laws. It's only when 
 
186 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 some damned ignorant person sees them un- 
 disguised, in operation, that he thinks what 
 preposterous and improper things they are." 
 
 She nodded her head interestedly. " Do you 
 know, I like the way you look at things," she 
 siaid.. " You don't haggle with life. So many 
 people do that, and it always seems to me such 
 a contemptible waste of time. Things that are 
 — are. There's no changing them till the next 
 time." 
 
 " Let's collaborate and write a book of philo- 
 sophy while we're here," said he. " I've got a 
 fountain-pen." 
 
 Her mind was a good mate for his. For all 
 her subterfuges in that situation, she saw things 
 clear behind the follies of convention. He knew 
 well enough she enjoyed those talks of theirs, 
 if only by the way he enjoyed them himself. 
 
 And then, when after a while they had 
 discussed music and painting and she had heard, 
 perhaps more intimately than ever before, the 
 real and genuine emotions he had about them, 
 she suddenly dropped her voice to a tone of 
 great gentleness, saying : " You poor old thing 
 — what a prison it must be to you here." 
 
 " Not so much as it is to Jonathan," he replied. 
 " His world must be in the reach of his arm — 
 he must feel things with his hands, touch them 
 and break them or make them. There's nothiifg 
 left to make here with your hands. A bed to 
 sleep on and a roof over your hjead — what's 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 187 
 
 that ? Only the beginning of Hfe. He wants 
 more than that to do." 
 
 " The moment I had said that," says David, 
 with real honesty, " I wished I had left it 
 unsaid. It was the case for Jonathan with her. 
 Had she been the impersonation of a British 
 jury and I a barrister appealing to their sense 
 of pity, I could not have said more for his case 
 than that." 
 
 It was soon after this, either because she was 
 hungry and he was bringing the meal, or because 
 of what David had said, her thoughts began 
 to turn more persistently upon Jonathan. 
 Gradually David was finding that he could not 
 be eliminated from the conversation. Back she 
 came to him again and again, till at last, as the 
 sun was dropping in its swift descent below the 
 topmost line of the trees, she proposed they 
 should go down and look for him. 
 
 Down the steps to the creek they went, and 
 to the verge of the forest, the sensation over- 
 talking them at every step that something had 
 happened to keep him so late. When suddenly 
 and unexpectedly she raised her voice, calling 
 his name loudly three separate times, David 
 declared that he felt, not only a thrill of fear at 
 what might have happened, but, far deeper than 
 that, a hot sense of jealousy she could be so 
 concerned. 
 
 At the sound of his voice in reply, shouting : 
 " Hallo ! Hallo ! " he went so far as to laugh at 
 
188 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 the perturbation of her mind. And when she 
 heard his laugh, she as quickly answered it as 
 though it were an accusation. 
 
 " I didn't know," she said, " whether anything 
 had happened to him or not." 
 
 They were so close in touch in their minds as 
 that. 
 
 And then Jonathan appeared out of the thick 
 growth of elephant-grass, walking unsteadily, 
 as though he soon must fall, either from some 
 weakness that had overcome him, or the weight 
 of the thing he carried on his shoulder. 
 
 They stood a moment, arrested by surprise 
 at the unsteadiness of his steps. The first thing 
 they realized was that it was the body of a 
 leopard, a huge specimen, slung over his back. 
 As he came nearer, they saw his face was bleeding 
 and those thick, tanned arms of his torn with 
 great bleeding gashes from which the blood was 
 dripping in a stream and falling in big drops 
 from his finger-tips. 
 
 In an instant, Joan had hurried through the 
 gate in the palisade, and was at his side, freeing 
 the load from his shoulders. The next, and 
 David had joined her. Together, they helped 
 him into the hut. He was weak from loss of 
 blood. All the clothes on his body were 
 drenched with it. He laughed at their efforts 
 to help him, and then, strong man though he 
 was, he dropped off into unconsciousness. 
 
 When he came to in about five or ten minutes, 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 189 
 
 they heard from him what had happened, 
 though it was patent enough. He had come 
 across a leopard on his way back. Three 
 cartridges he had left in his heavy automatic, 
 which he had always saved for such a moment 
 as that, and, seeing the excellent mark she made, 
 knowing, too, that leopard's flesh was good 
 eating, he had used one of them, without a 
 thought of consequences. The bullet had gone 
 home, but leopards are tough beasts. He had 
 had to fight out the end of it with his naked 
 hands. The advantages had been on his side. 
 She was dying all the time, but it hiad been from 
 all accounts a fierce struggle. 
 
 " We've got a bit of meat, though," said 
 he, with a grin. 
 
 David adds bitterly to this : " The way he 
 said that, with the blood still rolling down his 
 cheeks and his arms all ribbands of flesh, was 
 worth more than all the finest thoughts the best 
 of philosophers could put into a dozen trenchant 
 sentences. With a quick little laugh, Joan 
 answered to it, a short laugh, half of amusement, 
 half sympathy, needing no words at all." 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 JUSTIFICATION 
 
 JOAN nursed him and attended to his 
 bandages for ten days, and there is 
 no reason to suggest but that this was 
 a job well to her liking. She ruled him like a 
 child, except over one matter. He insisted on 
 skinning his beast the next morning* This was 
 no job of which David was capable. He offered, 
 but there was a skin to be saved, and Jonathan, 
 being the only one to do it, would take no 
 orders from her. 
 
 " You'd like the skin — wouldn't you ? " said 
 he, and when she could not deny it, added, 
 " then don't let's have any more nurse's talk." 
 
 Beyond this matter, however, he was as 
 obedient as a child, putting' up with pleasure 
 with all the pain she gave him by her unskilled 
 bandaging. It was due greatly to her care, 
 nevertheless, that he recovered as quickly as 
 he did. But whether he knew that or not, 
 makes little difference. The matter of chief 
 importance was that he could no longer go 
 ■ 190 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 191 
 
 down with his moods of chafing impotence to 
 the beach. Whether he liked it or not, he had 
 to content himself with her company. 
 
 During all those ten days, during which he 
 never saw her alone and only shared her com- 
 pany at meal times, David was left to fret his 
 soul out with the best grace he could. What 
 is more, the finding of the supply of food 
 devolved entirely on him, when, though he 
 may have succeeded well enough, there was a 
 noticeable difference in his catering to that of 
 Jonathan's. One evening he returned from 
 the beach without any fish at all. They had 
 to content themselves solely with fruit. His 
 traps were not so successfully set as when 
 Jonathan was responsible for them. 
 
 " All those ten days," he says, " I felt as 
 though I were passing through a qualifying 
 examination and failing miserably at every 
 turn. And there that leopard skin used to hang, 
 drying in the sun, a constant witness of 
 Jonathan's strength to set against my own 
 incompetence." 
 
 It seems to have been in those ten days, 
 left so much to himself, robbed of her company 
 and feeling by instinct how every moment she 
 was endearmg herself to Jonathan, that David 
 came by the first real impulse of hatred for his 
 friend. Yet it cannot be described so much as 
 
192 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 hatred of him, as hatred of those qualities which 
 he knew must be stppealing, the mote by their 
 present quiescence in Jonathan, to Joan. 
 
 It would be false psychology to deny that by 
 now his passions as well as his sentiments were 
 deeply roused. And the more he was left to 
 himself, the more fierce the hold they took 
 upon him. 
 
 It was, as it had ever been between those two, 
 that David moved more impulsively and swiftly 
 to the situations of his mind While Jonathan 
 was only slowly realizing through his senses, 
 David had leaped to the conclusion in his 
 thoughts. Long before, as indeed he had said 
 to Joan herself, he had realized this bitter 
 antagonism would be the outcome of it all, 
 and, well though he knew it, found himself 
 unable in those days alone to allay its progress. 
 
 It was inevitable. He felt it a law stronger 
 than himself. Fight as he might against it, 
 there always came some moment at night, 
 when, lying awake, listening to Jonathan's 
 peaceful breathing, it returned as master of all 
 his thoughts. 
 
 What had they said to each other that, day, 
 he wondered. How had their friendship pro- 
 gressed ? Whenever he saw her examining that 
 leopard skin with pleasure at the thought of 
 her ultimate possession of it, he cursed the 
 luck that had brought it within range of 
 Jonathan's weapon. . What is more, he felt 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 193 
 
 every day that Jonathan was growing to under- 
 stand and to like her better. Weak though he 
 was from loss of blood, and more than ever a 
 prisoner in that bed to which she kept him, his 
 moodiness steadily disappeared. 
 
 The first night as he lay there, smarting with 
 his wounds, he sjvore again and again at the 
 chance that had brought him to this state of 
 imprisonment. That discontent gradually de- 
 creased, until after five days of it, he was 
 more of a cheerful companion than he had 
 been for many weeks. The more, however, he 
 expressed this cheerfulness, the more David's 
 spirits fell ; the more the canker of hatred 
 and jealousy spread in his heart. There was 
 no outlet for it. It had to rankle where it was, 
 bringing with it too a hatred of himself making 
 life almost unbearable. 
 
 " Had it continued for another day beyond 
 those ten," he writes, " I must have spoken 
 out my mind to her ; must have forced her 
 into that invidious position of choosing between 
 us two, when she had shown me so plainly by 
 her proffer of friendship that she would do 
 anything to avoid it. The issue lay between 
 myself and Jonathan. I still believed that. 
 Her choice^ in the matter made very little 
 difference to us. She was the justification of 
 our lives there on that God-forsaken coast, 
 and for that justification I know that I was 
 
 13 
 
194 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 quite ready to take whatever risks there might 
 be. 
 
 "If what I thought was happening in 
 Jonathan's mind in those ten days had taken 
 place, then I knew that neither of us could rest 
 content with her choosing. Besides, could she 
 choose ? Was there such a gulf fixed between 
 us two as all that ? We both must have our 
 claims in her mind. It was no conceit in my 
 estimation to think that my chances, or rather 
 niy rights, were as good as his. I would have 
 said that with any man ; though I doubt if a 
 better could have been found than him whom 
 I hated then with all my heart. 
 
 " For at the back of my mind was the know- 
 ledge, always repressed in my thoughts, that in 
 that place he was better mate for her than I. 
 In those conditions of life, well though we might 
 have been able to face contingencies together, 
 he was the better equipped, the fittest of us two 
 to carry out the elemental preservation of 
 his kind. 
 
 " Whenever I looked at it in this light, I 
 despaired most of all ; for there was reason, 
 good enough for any man who prided himself 
 on that quality, to stand aside. Yet the pre- 
 servation of my kind had as much right upon 
 insistence as had his. It was as dear, if not 
 dearer to me in definite and conscious sen- 
 sation than his could be to him. And then, 
 coming to that moment of my reason, another 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 195 
 
 thought woiild fling itself uninvited into my 
 mind. In those environments, was mine the 
 kind that would survive in obedience to the 
 common and primal laws with which it was 
 surrounded ? 
 
 " So I argued it back and forth, as though it 
 were a mere dispassionate problem in Eugenics. 
 But there was the crux of it all. It was not 
 dispassionate. Try as I would, I could not 
 make it so. If ever a problem was quivering 
 with .the existence of passion, this was one. 
 How could I yield claim for myself ? I lived. 
 In my body was the breath, in my mind the 
 same spark of life as Jonathan's. 
 
 "And then suddenly — it was on that tenth 
 day— -:it all became clear. I had the right of 
 ^my own entity. I had the justification to 
 daim her if I could. This was the test of life 
 —not to give in, but to struggle ; not to sur- 
 render, but to fight. It was due to fnyself to 
 prove what strength I had. It was due to 
 Jonathan to test and prove his own. > 
 
 . " IIow else could it be proved which was the 
 filter mate for her, unless, indeed, we put it 
 to the test ? How else, unless proved in such 
 a, fashion, could she, in her deepest heart, realize 
 she had gained the better man ? It was due, 
 then, to myself. It was due to Jonathan, and 
 Qiost of all, seeing that I loved her> I knew it 
 was due to her. 
 
 .-"The night on which I had come to these 
 
 13* 
 
196 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 final decisions, I went to my bed in a more 
 cheerful frame of mind, hating Jonathan less, 
 if hating him at all. Against all his good humour, 
 I matched my own, feeling somehow that the 
 fight between us was not with fists alone. 
 
 " He realized quickly enough the return of 
 my spirits. He must have felt them battling 
 up against his own, for he half sat up in his 
 bed and watched me in surprise as I flung my 
 clothes off, whistling as I did so. 
 
 " ' You seem in a mighty good temper,' said 
 he, and I almost laughed as I heard the note of 
 suspicion in his voice. 
 
 " ' Oh — ^well enough,' I replied. ' As good 
 as your own.' 
 
 " ' Anything happened to buck you up ? ' 
 
 " I knew well what he meant. I knew only 
 too well then that the spark of jealousy at last 
 was lit in him ; was lit and that he was aware 
 of the flame of it too. There was even an 
 ugly look in his eyes as I turned round laughing 
 to answer his question. For that one second I 
 felt sorry for him. I knew the tortures of mind 
 he was just entering upon, tortures that would 
 last as mine had lasted, till, in the knowledge 
 that he could bear them no longer, our moment 
 of the test would be reached. 
 
 " I am not going to deny that that moment of 
 pity was short-lived, one of the ephemera of 
 our better thoughts that hover for an instant 
 on the surface of our minds and then are gone. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 191 
 
 The next second, I was playing with his jealousy, 
 talking in riddles that had no foundation, but 
 too deep for him to reason out. For then, 
 in his hatred, my own was back again, and I 
 drove my wits against his to spur him on. 
 He was as well that night as he had ever been, 
 and I think I would not have been sorry to 
 have had our battle then with no more delay to 
 it than the mere ceremony of selecting a con- 
 venient place where she should he^r nothing 
 of what was going on. 
 
 " That, however, was not to be. After a 
 while Jonathan relapsed under my humour 
 into a sulky silence. He did not know what 
 had happened. I had not done so much in- 
 justice to Joan as to suggest that anything had 
 happened at all. It was only that the more I 
 saw the effect of my high spirits on him and the 
 more I knew the thoughts that were set racing 
 in his mind, the more I kept them up, until, ^ 
 at last, beaten in that encounter, he withdrew, 
 without even knowing of the contest in which 
 he had been engaged. 
 
 " But all was certain now to me, and I lay 
 awake long hours through that night, while 
 he was sleeping soundly, wondering how I 
 should fare when the issue came about. On 
 the face of it, I knew I had little more chance 
 than a dog. On the face of it, as he had beaten 
 me at school, so he would beat me here, and 
 with less mercy than in that school-boy quarrel. 
 
198 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " Still, I had my wits, and, as I thought of 
 Joan, I felt in myself a strength which only the 
 elemental force of my purpose could have given 
 me. My heart, it seemed then, was as strong 
 as ten men, as strong as a hundred of those I 
 knew in the old life who had thought themselves 
 in love. 
 
 " I was in truth in love, and before my Tieart 
 had ceased to beat that message to my brain, 
 it appeared to me, while I lay awake, as if some 
 greater strength than the mere power of 
 Jonathan's blows would be needed to defeat 
 my will. 
 
 " There was the faint tinge 'of dawn in the 
 sky before I fell asleep. Against it I saw the 
 feathered edges of the palm trees pricking into 
 the light ; I heard the faint, muffled cry of a 
 bitd, and I just muttered her name to myself 
 as I closed my eyes." 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE APPROACH OF THE INEVITABLE 
 
 FROM that day of Jonathan's recovery 
 from his wounds, the strain upon them 
 appears to have increased with a steady and 
 inevitable precision. Once having confessed to 
 himself his belief in the ultimate issue, David's 
 thoughts seem to h^ve permeated all their 
 minds. He and Jonathan were watching each 
 other now, quick-eyed to notice the develop- 
 ment of each other's relations with Joan, yet, 
 doubtless, striving in their several ways to 
 avoid or postpone the unavoidable. 
 
 Little wonder is it that David describes 
 those days at the creek as unbearable. He 
 writes of them as if, full of psychological interest 
 though they must have been, he could not 
 allude to them but with reserve. Neither one 
 nor the other dared pay any noticeable attention 
 to her, not from fear, but knowledge of how it 
 would hasten the climax and bring about that 
 issue they both would have shirked if they 
 could, yet^knew must be. 
 199 
 
200 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 To anyone surrounded with all the distractions 
 of civilization, it cannot but be hard to realize 
 the atmosphere which must have closed about 
 them during that time. Thunder in the air, 
 it was, and all the heavy presage of the 
 inevitable storm. They tried to occupy them- 
 selves with things to do about the creek, but 
 neither would leave the other alone, or give 
 each other opportunity of seeing Joan by 
 herself. 
 
 This may sound childish and ridiculous. 
 There is little doubt it was ; yet all of it was 
 done in such spirit of cunning, amounting 
 sometimes to deceit in both of them, , that, as 
 David says in his script.: " I look back upon it 
 now in the full perspective of time and marvel 
 to think men could so descend in their natures 
 to such pettiness and contemptibility of thought, 
 word and deed." 
 
 It was obvious that such a state of affairs 
 could not last for long. That it lasted as long 
 as it did, seems only explicable to me in the 
 fact that they were both endeavouring to ward 
 it off for her sake. Had it been any other 
 issue than this, without question the matter 
 would have been settled by word or blow long 
 before. But there, in those surroundings, not 
 an action of theirs could for any length of time 
 escape her notice. There was no hiding from 
 her the issue when it came to be decided. There 
 was no concealing from her the purpose that 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 201 
 
 had brought it about, or how, whether she willed 
 it or not, she was herself directly responsible. 
 
 This, I can conceive, as some substantial 
 ground for the impossible situation in which 
 they found themselves, and, for all I know, 
 that condition of affairs might have maintained 
 for some time had not Joan herself unwittingly 
 put an end to it. 
 
 With what David had said about brute force 
 running constantly, as no doubt it did, in her 
 mind, she was an apprehensive spectator of 
 this palpable change in their manner to each 
 other. Here were two friends, the best in the 
 world, playing at some game which at least, 
 if she did not understand, must have thrilled 
 some function of her consciousness with a sense 
 of fear. She found herself dreading the night 
 when they were alone together, relieved in the 
 morning when they both appeared at breakfast 
 and nothing apparently had happened. 
 
 But as with them, so also with her, the strain 
 of the situation came at last to be unbearable. 
 I take it that still, even in that eleventh hour, 
 she did not know the absolute dictation of her 
 heart. Jonathan, certainly, as David had 
 known, had endeared himself to her during 
 those days of his helplessness, no less than by 
 the circumstances which had placed her at his 
 service. 
 
 Yet there cannot but have been times, during 
 those ten days and after, when her pity went 
 
202 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 out to David, weighed down with his conviction 
 that he was unequally handicapped in his 
 chances against such a man as Jonathan. 
 
 That both loved and wanted her then, she 
 was well aware. David gives proof of this in 
 his description of the way she strove to ignore 
 their present moods and suggest they were, so 
 far as she could see, the same friends as ever. 
 
 All these efforts of hers, however, apparently 
 failed, for there came a day when she felt she 
 must speak her thoughts to one of them, and 
 it appears to me inevitable she should have 
 chosen David for her confidant. Whatever 
 there was to be understood, she turned 
 involuntarily to him. 
 
 It was one morning after their breakfast meal 
 that she taunted Jonathan with laziness. 
 
 " Ever since you got well," said she, with a 
 laugh, ".you've been as idle as you can be." 
 
 Perhaps the truth of that touched him. 
 Idleness brought no pleasure to his day. Perhaps 
 he felt he was earning her contempt as well as 
 his own. When a man sets out to please a 
 woman, it. is more the best in himself he does 
 than the things he might realize would please 
 her most. For those last few days, set in his 
 watch upon David, he knew he had done far 
 from the best in himself, and suddenly believing 
 he was thus losing her respect, was eager to 
 perform anjrthing she asked of him. 
 
 But when she told him they had had no fish 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 203 
 
 those seven days and more, because he had 
 never been down to the beach, his face fell so 
 obviously that in any other situation the fall of 
 it would have been humorous. 
 
 " David might as well go," said he. " I've 
 caught most of the fish we've ever eaten here." 
 
 She had the wit to laugh at him as though he 
 were a child. 
 
 " ThElt's just why you ought to go," said 
 she. " Don't you remember one of the days 
 \i^hen ybu were laid up, David came back with- 
 out catching anything'. And can't I say I 
 should like some ? " 
 
 He laughed with her, feeling that as far as 
 David was concerned the issue of that was to 
 him. He could not, however, understand why 
 David laughed as well against himself. For 
 David's laughter was because he knew she had 
 won her point. He knew well enough she 
 sought some reason to see him alone, and, good 
 or ill, whatever it might bring, the thought of 
 speaking to her, as they had so often talked by 
 the hour together without fear of interruption, 
 was a thing he had desired again and again. 
 
 At David's laughter, Jonathan lost his sense 
 of victory in suspicion. Still he went, shoulder- 
 ing his tackle in none the best of spirits, and 
 saying he thought some measure of the division 
 of labour ou^ht to be arrived at. 
 
 " If David's not a skilled labourer," said he, 
 " we shan't be able to give him a vote at the 
 
204 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 board of directors," and he went oft laughing 
 at his thrust, which had its subtlety of point, 
 piercing through the chinks of David's armour 
 and making the blood sting, hot in his face. 
 
 That, as he knew well enough, was the crux 
 of it all. Because of that, when it came to the 
 test between them, he felt in his despondent 
 moments that of a certainty he would fail. 
 
 But once Jonathan had gone, there they were 
 alone in the creek. Feeling in those moments 
 that the world belonged to them two, his spirits 
 rose no sooner had the sound of Jonathan's 
 paddle died away in the distance. 
 
 For a while, curbing his eagerness with all 
 the power of will he possessed, he stood gazing 
 down into the forest as though following thg 
 uncertain course of the canoe with his eyes, 
 when in reality he was seeing nothing, but 
 listening with every sense in his body to those 
 sounds of her footsteps when she would approach 
 him. 
 
 She came at last, slowly, expecting him every 
 minute to turn. But he never moved a muscle 
 of his body until she was there beside him. Had 
 he turned, and turned eagerly, as perhaps she 
 counted he would, some degree of the issue 
 would have gone in Jonathan's favour then. 
 Jonathan had gone at her behest. Not too 
 graciously it may have been, but he had gone. 
 And then, with the opportunity that was left 
 him, David^knew'had he shown herThis eager- 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 205 
 
 ness to make swift use of it, he would have 
 dropped in the estimation of her mind. 
 
 With the slowness of her approach, it was 
 almost as though she were putting him to the 
 test. In some subtle way he felt the presence 
 of her will there in close conflict with his own. 
 He wanted to turn, to even take her in his arms, 
 as many a man less ser^sitive of her thoughts 
 might have imagined she had sought out that 
 opportunity for ; but he knew himself and her 
 too well. 
 
 " The man," he has said somewhere else in 
 his script, " who acts before he is sure is thirty 
 times a fool." 
 
 In another place — ^indeed when describing 
 this very moment — ^he writes : " The man who 
 can wait when -the instant comes for waiting, 
 knows as much about the heart of a- woman as 
 it is good or possible for him to know." 
 
 So he never turned. Until her hand was laid 
 on his elbow, he continued to stare absorbedly 
 into the tangle of the forest trees, while all that 
 time a haze was hanging before his eyes; in 
 which he could see nothing but her. 
 
 " A penny," she said, and when he asked her 
 what he could buy with it, she forced a laugh 
 to go with his words. 
 
 It was his intention, he says, to let her know 
 nothing of his expectation that she had some- 
 thing to tell him. Whether he thinks it deceived 
 her or not, he does not say, but try as he would. 
 
206 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 he could ^ot conceal his pleasure when she 
 suggested they should clinib those steps to the 
 ledge of rock and sit there and talk. 
 
 For a long time after they had settled them- 
 selves there, neither of them spoke. Both 
 stared down into the forest. Both were as 
 silent as though never a thought existed between 
 them. To that purpose of waiting, he kept till 
 the last, though his tongue was eager with words 
 to say, and his heart was beating at the close 
 presence of her sitting beside him in that silent 
 place. 
 
 " Never," he says, " have I had to exert 
 more control upon my impulses than in those 
 few moments before she spoke. I hope to 
 God I shall never have to exert as much 
 again." 
 
 For at last she did break the silence. Never 
 looking at him, but keeping her eyes fixed before 
 her, she asked him straightly whether anything 
 had happened between himself and Jonath'aii. 
 
 " What makes you think that ? " he inquired 
 guardedly. 
 
 " Well — your manner to each other has 
 changed so much in the last few days. Hearing 
 you talk, seeing you in each other's company, 
 no one would ever suppose you had been friends, 
 certainly not the very close friends I know you 
 really are." 
 
 " What do you imagine could have happened 
 in a deserted placcv like this ? " he asked her. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 207 
 
 determined it should be she of them two who 
 first should speak the meaning of their minds. 
 
 " I have tried so hard to think," she re- 
 plied. 
 
 " Well— with what result ? " 
 
 " Sometimes I've thought you have both 
 been fretting so terribly at being kept herej 
 prisoners on this coast, that you've lost the 
 sense of friendship, lost the sense of everything 
 in the bitterness of the shackles you find all 
 tied about, you." 
 
 " And at other times ? " he prompted her. 
 
 " Yes — ^then at other times " And here, 
 
 stammering a word or two, almost incoherently, 
 at last she broke down. Her lips were quivering 
 as she turned to him pathetically, reduced at 
 length to the utmost simplicity of her mind. 
 
 " You know what I'm thinking, David. I 
 know you know. And I want you to say it's 
 been no fault of mine. I — I haven't meant it 
 to be. I — I couldn't help it." With an 
 absurdly simple and almost childish gurgling 
 in her throat, she said then : "I haven't used 
 those — ^those petals at all for quite a long, long 
 time." 
 
 He covered his face fiercely with his hands. 
 
 " My God ! " he exclaimed wildly. " For 
 Heaven's sake don't talk like that ! Don't say 
 ridiculous things like that — ^that sort of regard 
 of it would bowl me right out. Let's be hard 
 and matter-of-fact if we're going to \)e any- 
 
208 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 thing at all. ^That's the only way I could 
 stand it." 
 
 So it was again they sat for another while 
 in silence, David with his knuckles against his 
 teeth, listening to the sound of her quick, 
 indrawn breaths and not daring to look at her 
 while she struggled with her tears ; scarcely 
 daring to move lest even in the relaxation of 
 his tension, emotions should get the better of 
 him and leap beyond his control. 
 
 There was apparently in his conception of it 
 all, an odd sense of honour attached. Weeping 
 as «he was, and in that stress of mind when 
 she might have found some sense of comfort 
 in his arms, he yet could not bring himself to 
 touch even her hand, because he felt it due to 
 Jonathan, until by the test it was proved which 
 of them had the right. At that junctiire, surely 
 enough, she belonged to neither. Yet each had 
 his claim and nothing within the power of his 
 control would have tempted David to violate 
 the unwritten law by which those claims were 
 definitely established in his mind. 
 
 He waited, therefore, until she spoke again, 
 trusting no sound of words on his own lips, 
 listening with fear to the sound of his own 
 breathing. 
 
 Presently she was quieter, when he knew she 
 had got her tears in check. Then she said : 
 
 " What are you both going to do ? " 
 
 It was pathetic almost to realize how she 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 209 
 
 knew by now the matter was not in her hands, 
 but theirs. So indeed had she been somehow 
 brought to the elemental attitude'^of mind, that 
 passive acqjiiescence to the right of some might 
 greater than her own. To her then it seemed 
 she could only sit by to watch and wait, and 
 the whole essence of it was expressed in that 
 simple question : " What are you both going 
 to do ? " 
 
 Simple as it was, however, it was too direct 
 to be straightly answered. David paused before 
 he replied, and then he said : 
 
 " What is there to do ? What can we do ? 
 I suppose — he hasn't told me so — ^that Jonathan's 
 hit as hard as I am. I might answer that 
 question by asking what you're going to do. 
 But I expect you know well enough by this 
 time that whatever you said wouldn't make 
 much difference to the one who was cut out 
 — there's no chance for him to fling out into 
 life and go to the devil if his inclinations took 
 him that way. There's not even the devil to 
 go to here. We're up against life without any 
 of the alluring alternatives of good or evjj. 
 The good is for the man who can get it — ^the 
 evil, what's left for the other man to take. 
 That's the gist of it all. Besides, even if we 
 could, do you think we'd put you in the invidious 
 position of damning one or the other ? If the 
 hope I've got in my heart is a true one, you're 
 not really in loye with either of us." 
 
 14 
 
210 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 " How did you know that ? " she muttered, 
 as though he had stolen something from her 
 she scarcely knew she possessed. 
 
 " I didn't know it," he admitted candidly. 
 " That's what I've hoped ; what, despite all 
 those moments when you've shown preference 
 for Jonathan, I've forced myself to believe. 
 What is more, I hoped for your sake as well 
 as ours, that you won't know till such a moment 
 as when there is no question of choice." 
 
 So swiftly did she seize upon this that he 
 realized, but when it was too late, how he had 
 committed himself, 
 
 " What do you mean by that ? " she asked, 
 and said it again before she had given him time 
 to reply. " What do you mean by that ? " 
 
 " No particular meaning one way or another," 
 he replied evasively, But she would not let it 
 go at that, pressing him with nervous deter- 
 mination for an answer. 
 
 " I had no meaning," he said at last, in a 
 tone of voice strained with the persistence of 
 her questioning. 
 
 And then it was her mind leapt with its 
 intuition to the truth. 
 
 " You're going to . fight," she said hoarsely. 
 " What you said that day in the forest — ^brute 
 force — ^that was the deciding factor. You're 
 going to fight. Gh, my God ! This is horrible. 
 It's — ^it's so degrading. This is making life 
 hideous, and it can't be as hideous as all that 1 " 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 211 
 
 " There isn't anything hideous about it," 
 David replied quietly. " In the back of our 
 hearts, I believe we're both longing for the 
 moment to come, to get at it and settle it once 
 and for all. We fought when we, were kids 
 at school. Why shouldn't we fight now ? " 
 
 " Yes— you were boys then. You're men 
 now. Oh ! — I think it's horrible ! Why can't 
 we all be friends, as we were at first." 
 
 At that moment, David felt he could take 
 her hand. He laid his own upon it and pressed 
 his fingers firmly round her own. 
 
 " You know that's impossible," said he. 
 " Don't you remember ? The meaning of life ? 
 There's only meaning in friendship when you've 
 known what love is. For God's sake, don't 
 let's talk about it. It's talking about it makes 
 it horrible. There are thousands of other 
 things we can speak about, my dear, besides 
 that. These are the first moments I've had 
 alone with you for days. Don't spoil them 
 for me. You don't know what they're 
 worth." 
 
 " Well then, if you care for me as much a« 
 all that," she cried, " that you covet even a 
 moment alone with me, promise me — promise 
 me you won't fight." 
 
 She was clinging to him then, both hands on 
 his shoulders and her head bent in weeping 
 on her breast. 
 
 Faihng in being able to make that promise, 
 
 14* 
 
212 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 he evaded the difSculty of denying her any- 
 thing by asking her why she should want to 
 extract it from him. 
 
 " Don't you realize," he said, taking her 
 hands from his shoulders and forcing her to 
 look at him that she might get the full meaning 
 of what he said — " Don't you realize that it 
 will make it easier for you in the long run ? 
 You can't get merely friendship from either of 
 us. You've got to put that out of yoiu- head. 
 You can't shield yourself behind all the social 
 palisades civilization erects for such a purpose 
 at home. You're at the mercy of life, and so 
 are we. It'll be much easier for you when 
 it's all over. You're not in love with either of 
 us ; but " he paused. 
 
 " But what ? " said she. 
 
 " Are you going to hate me for saying this ? " 
 
 " I'm not in the mood to hate anybody or 
 anything. I feel numbed. Say it — say it. 
 What is it ? " 
 
 " Well — ^you are in love," said he. 
 
 She stared at him, almost frightened at his 
 perception. " What do you mean ? " she 
 muttered. 
 
 " You are in love," he repeated. " It's in the 
 air, and the air's full of it. Do you imagine 
 people's thoughts and passions and emotions, 
 as concentrated and uninterrupted as ours, 
 don't carry contagion with them. Ideas can 
 rise to the temperature of fever, and when 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 218 
 
 they're strong enough, and free enough, without 
 all the counter-irritants of little social habits 
 and customs, do you imagine there is any mind 
 can stand against them without falling a victim ? 
 Did your constitution stand up against the 
 fever in that atmosphere all about the swamp ? 
 Can your mind stand up against this ? War is 
 a fever, the fever of a predominating idea. 
 It's an epidemic, and whole nations get swept by 
 its contagion. And this — ^this is more virulent 
 and stronger even than war. If England were 
 at war, wouldn't you wish us, both strong 
 men, to go out and fight for our country ? Why 
 then should you so hate the idea of our fighting 
 for something which, in a situation such as 
 this, is dearer even than his country is to a 
 man ? " 
 
 " I hate war and I hate this," she replied 
 fiercely. " Every woman hates war. Every 
 woman would hate this, who was not infatuated 
 with her own conceit." 
 
 " But until civilization, like the Gospel, has 
 been preached to all the world, you must have 
 war — ^the war of aggression from those who are 
 not civilized and the war of defence from those 
 who are. Whole nations can be infatuated 
 with their own conceit and they won't hate war." 
 
 "But surely to God!" she cried, " we are 
 civilized ; you and Jonathan and I. We — ^we 
 don't want to settle this by brutal methods 
 like that ! " 
 
214 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 f^l" You admit it needs settlement," he said 
 quickly; "you admit that and so you admit 
 the truth of what I said. You are in love, and 
 only some form of settlement will show you 
 the right of one of us to claim you. He's the 
 one you'll love, the one who's master — master 
 of you as well as master of the situation as it 
 stands." 
 
 " Yes — ^but how — how will you fight — ^Just 
 — ^just with your fists — ^like — ^like they do in 
 the prize fights ? " 
 
 He could not help laughing at her feminine 
 anxieties, and with them all, the still more 
 feminine curiosity that lay beneath. But she 
 caught no infection from his laughter, and 
 when he suggested they should not discuss that 
 aspect of it, with a fierce retaliation, she declared 
 they must, 
 
 " I will know — I must know ! " she exclaimed 
 passionately. " What are you going to do ? 
 Isn't that the very first question I asked you 
 — what are you going to do ? " 
 
 He sat silent, refusing to answer her, and 
 then, with a sudden impulse of fear, she seized 
 his hand. 
 
 " He'll kill you, David," she whispered, and 
 then he realized how well she must have learnt 
 in those ten days of his sickness the depth of 
 Jonathan's passion for her. But more than 
 this he realized, which, in that moment, came 
 as a sickness of fear into his mind. She counted 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 215 
 
 upon the certainty of Jonathan's success. If 
 for an instant it could have entered her thoughts, 
 she made nothing of that strength of will, pur- 
 pose and passion which David had reckoned in 
 his favour. She knew Jonathan would kill 
 him in his passion to win her. She thought 
 he had not the faintest chance. And that 
 stung him. He dropped her hand from his. 
 
 " Have you any reason to ' be as certain as 
 all that ? " said he. 
 
 She looked at him, and in her eyes was not 
 merely a fullness of pity, but that expression, 
 though she never took them from his own, as 
 if she were looking him up and down, conveying 
 the comparison between the slightness of his 
 figure and that strength of the brute in eVery 
 sinew of Jonathan's body. But he would not 
 take that look as an answer. Undeterred by it, 
 he asked his question again. 
 
 " Do you mean to say you don't realize it ? " 
 she replied softly, as though he were a child 
 and she were teaching him a lesson it was ex-' 
 pedient he should know. " t)ayid — ^that leopard 
 the other day. He killed it with his hands — 
 with his hands — ^that thing which had no thought 
 but to kill him, and with weapons in its talons 
 and strength in its body that you — ^David — 
 can't you see? He killed it. He's as strong 
 as a lion, that man. Haven't you seen the 
 muscles in his arms as he works. And — and 
 there's nothing he can't do with his hands. I 
 
216 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 sometimes think it's wonderful, all the things 
 he can do and the pains and the care he takes 
 over them. One of these days he'll build a 
 surf-boat that'll be able to take us out into the 
 track of steamers. It seems utterly impossible 
 to us after that day we tried. But I believe 
 he'll do it. Over and over again he talked about 
 it when he was ill. Said it might take him 
 two or three years, but he'd do it in the end. 
 I don't believe there's anything he couldn't do. 
 And what chance have you got against a man 
 like that. Oh — can't you see ? — you haven't got 
 a chance. For God's sake, don't fight, David. 
 Think, if he killed you what we should feel, 
 here alone ; what he'd feel most of all, because 
 he'd killed , the best friend he had in the 
 world." 
 
 He did think, indeed had long ago thought, 
 all of these things. He knew the odds were 
 against him. But it was not the thought upper- 
 most in his mind just then. Undeniably, un- 
 mistakably, she had shown him the trend of 
 her judgment, however much it might yet be 
 hidden in uncertainty from herself. Jonathan 
 was her man of those two in the desolateness of 
 that life of theirs. Jonathan was the man, the 
 whole tendency of circumstances was leading or 
 forcing her to choose. If Jonathan indeed killed 
 him, then instinctively he knew that pity for 
 him, the weaker of those two, would make a 
 canker in her life and Jonathan's as well. Yet 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 217 
 
 still it was Jonathan her instinct, if not her 
 heart, was set upon. 
 
 Suddenly he left her sitting there and stood 
 to his feet with a thought that was a reckless 
 hope on the instant in his mind. If he were 
 victorious in that fight of theirs, then there could 
 be no pity in her mind for Jonathan, He whom 
 she had supposed the weaker of body would 
 have triumphed over the stronger. If that could 
 be the issue, willingly enough then, and with 
 no more than a passing regret, would she not 
 be at his feet ? 
 
 It was a hope that lasted only a moment, but 
 long enough to give him further impetus to 
 his purpose. No doubt she was right, and in all 
 she had said she had shown him plainly enough 
 the track in which her thoughts must run, 
 but there was that vague and slender chance for 
 any man to cling to. With all the fierce bitter- 
 ness which the revelation of her mind had 
 brought thim, he fastened his hope upon it. 
 
 " Let's get back to the beach," said he. " It's 
 not a bit of good sitting on here aftid talking. 
 Supposing he did kill that leopard the other 
 day, the instincts of life it fought with are 
 governed to a certain extent by fear. There's 
 not a question of fear in this. I'm not afraid 
 of losing you. I haven't got you yet. But, 
 my God, I'm going to have a damned good try." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 MAN TO MAN 
 
 I HAVE said that Joan unwittingly put an 
 end to the condition of affairs as it had 
 then developed since Jonathan's illness towards 
 its crisis. She put an end to it by no other 
 means than this contrivance of hers to discuss 
 the whole matter in confidence with David. 
 
 The satisfaction of his parting thrust at 
 David's incompetency, it can be well believed, 
 did not last Jonathan for long. The further 
 he got away from the creek, the more he fell 
 to wondering what they were doing ; what 
 advantage David was taking of his opportunities ; 
 to what extent she was being swayed by those 
 attractions of David's mind which Jonathan 
 knew must be greater than his own. 
 
 In that uninterrupted company of his own 
 thoughts, I can conceive jealousy growing at 
 a rapid pace. He wasted no time with his 
 fishing tackle on that beach. As soon as he 
 had caugl^t sufficient for the meal she had 
 asked for, he returned, increasing the speed of 
 218 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 219 
 
 his journey withTthe spur of suspicion the 
 nearer he came^to^ome. 
 
 With the first sight he had of the creek, his 
 eyes were swift to seek them out. At that 
 moment, far from expecting him back so soon, 
 they were standing by the Malaga's boat. She 
 had followed . David down the steps into the 
 creek, and, using other methods than pleading, 
 was still trying to win from him the promise 
 she needed. Her hand was on his shoulder. 
 She was looking up earnestly into his face. 
 This was what Jonathan saw. Small wonder 
 was it that there sped across his mind the memory 
 of that day when, after the death of Sam, he 
 had seen her in David's arms. 
 
 What control he must have used to force 
 the casual note into his voice as he shouted 
 out, " Hallo — there ! Here's your supper for 
 you ! " can easily be imagined. What he felt 
 when he saw their surprise and observed her 
 hand being swiftly withdrawn from David's 
 shoulder, needs little imagination either. 
 
 His eyes were flaming as they came towards 
 him, and Joan must have known in that moment 
 there was little hope but in the issue as David 
 had drawn it for her. She could hear every 
 effort of restraint in his voice. There was no 
 mistaking, even for the meanest intelligence, 
 that glitter of emotion in his eyes. 
 
 That night at supper she kept up with amazing 
 courage this farce of behaving as though 
 
220 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 not a thought of tragedy were hanging over 
 them. 
 
 For the amusement and distraction of their 
 minds, she persuaded them to play a game of 
 chess. It was some weeks since they had 
 played, and, as though in some sense in both 
 their minds it was like a consulting of the oracle, 
 they consented to her persuasions. In David's 
 mind at least was the sure imderstanding of 
 why she stayed with them for so Ipng an hour 
 after her usual time. 
 
 In Jonathan there could have been no such 
 comprehension' as this, yet he consented to play 
 willingly enough, feeling perhaps, as I have 
 suggested, that this was the battle in miniature, 
 the foreshadowing' of their fate, yet having no 
 superstition about it, whichever way the issue 
 might turn out. 
 
 It was a long game. With all the concentra- 
 tion he possessed, Jonathan gave his mind to 
 it, but he was no match for David's intuitive 
 impulses and clearer vision of thought. Again 
 and again he violently attacked, and after each 
 onslaught with the most powerful pieces, found 
 he had lost, if not in men then in position. 
 Gradually and inevitably David wore him down 
 to sure defeat. Jonathan at last was left with 
 his king, knight and three pawns ; David with 
 king, castle, bishop and a single pawn. 
 
 For one moment, with the exchange of pieces 
 forced by David which had brought this situa- 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 221 
 
 tion about, they looked up from the board 
 into each other's eyes, and there was no mis- 
 taking the quiet expression of triumph in David's 
 face. 
 
 " Like to chuck it up now ? " said he, using, 
 all unconsciously, the very words Jonathan had 
 used to him those days long ago at school as 
 they went out to their fighting ground behind 
 the chapel wall. 
 
 " Chuck it up ! " Jonathan exclaimed. " Good 
 God ! What for ? I've got three paAvns ! " 
 
 " Right oh," said David amiably. " Your 
 move." 
 
 But from that moment, as even Joan could 
 see who knew no more of the game than from 
 watching them play it, it was a hopeless and 
 one-sided business. Step by step, move by 
 move, David pressed his opponent into dis- 
 advantage. One by one his pawns were taken, 
 yet, even when he was left with his knight alone, 
 he almost foolishly and certainly with obstinacy 
 held on. To any chess-player, the game was 
 over. He played on indeed in the hope that 
 Joan would go to bed arid not be present to 
 witness his defeat. 
 
 Once he looked up, asking her if it was not 
 past her time for clearing off, and almost thought 
 she must be sitting there to watch for the moment 
 of his discomfitm-e. He did not know she 
 had deeper purpose for her delay than 
 that. 
 
222 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 At last David made a queen of his pawn, and 
 in three moves the game was ended. 
 
 " Thanks," said Jonathan, and said no more. 
 
 It was beyond the power of her invention to 
 find excuse for staying after that, and slowly 
 Joan rose to her feet. They returned her good- 
 night, but at the door, as she went out, she 
 looked back, saying, " God bless you," with 
 the odd suspicion of a catch in her voice which 
 neither of them could have failed to notice. 
 It was as though she needed in her thoughts 
 to leave that sentiment behind her in her place, 
 standing between them throughout the night 
 until she could keep her watch upon them once 
 more in the morning. 
 
 For a while after she had gone, Jonathan sat 
 there doing nothing, while David in silence put 
 away the chessmen. Having done this, he was 
 just about to go into their bedroom when 
 Jonathan spoke. 
 
 " Do you remember a question I put to you 
 some time ago?", he asked. 
 
 For a moment David warded off the inevitable. 
 
 " What question ? " he asked. 
 
 With a faint sense of irritation, Jonathan 
 reminded him and David admitted a clear 
 memory of it. 
 
 " Well — I want to ask it again. Are you 
 in love with her now ? " 
 . " I didn't deny it then," said David quietly. 
 
 " And you admit it now ? " 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 228 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Well — so am I," said Jonathan. 
 
 " I'm quite aware of that," said David. 
 
 " Yes, you always fancied you knew what 
 was passing in people's minds," Jonathan ex- 
 claimed sarcastically. 
 
 David returned from the bedroom door and 
 sat down at the table. 
 
 " Look here, Jonathan," he begian slowly, 
 " that's the second time to-day you've hit at 
 me with words." 
 
 " What was the first ? " 
 
 " When you said that damned bitter thing 
 about my being merely an unskilled labourer 
 with no right to a voice in what it amused you 
 to call our board of directors. That was the 
 first time. That hurt more than this, and 
 before we go an inch further in the whole of 
 this business I'm going to remind you that 
 we've been the best of friends and that words 
 won't settle the matter one way or another. 
 What's more, you know they won't, even better 
 than I. And it seems to me that words like 
 that are dirty things between us two, so let's 
 keep 'em out. If anything makes it worth 
 while to keep it clean, she does." 
 
 " Well — ^you're so blastedly superior with 
 
 your subtleties and your understanding," said 
 
 Jonathan hotly. " It's as much as I can do 
 
 to put' up with it." 
 
 , " I have to put up with your superiority of 
 
224 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 ability," David answered him. " You may not 
 fling it in my face, but I fling nothing in yours. 
 It's how we see each other, and isn't that, or 
 what we actually are, the crux of the whole 
 thing ? " 
 
 Jonathan went to the door and flung it open, 
 as though the atmosphere in that room were 
 suffocating him. 
 
 " I'm in no fit state of mind to argue about 
 it," he said presently, looking roimd. " You're 
 always ready for an argument. I suppose you 
 think you could argue me out of my state of 
 mind ; just as I expect you fancied winning 
 at that game of chess was a symbol of your 
 rights. But, if you remember, I told you once 
 when you were starting out on this trip that 
 there were no symbols where you were going. 
 Gosh ! I little knew how true that was going 
 to be. That game of chess was no symbol " 
 
 " I never thought it was," interposed David. 
 
 " And no more," continued Jonathan, with- 
 out listening to his interruption — " And no more 
 will argument settle the business for us now. 
 You can't talk round a thing like this. Talk ! 
 Good God ! Talk and tears ! That's a woman's 
 job." 
 
 David rose quickly to his feet. The whole 
 issue hung upon a thread just then, and had not 
 Joan's blessing, with that quaint catch in her 
 voice, sounded in his mind, recalling all her 
 pleading^for that promise he had never given, 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 225 
 
 he must have brought it to its crisis then. Even 
 Jonathan turned to the look in his eyes, ready 
 for the blow, then laughed when he heard it 
 was still to be words. 
 
 " I've said all that a little while ago," said 
 David, with an effort, " I've said that words 
 won't settle it. Your repetitions only add more 
 words. I'm merely supposing that we're not 
 just animals with nothing more than appetites 
 to gratify. We're sufficiently civilized to ob- 
 serve a few formalities. You asked me a question 
 in the first instance. I presume you expected 
 it to be answered with words. If I'd spat in 
 your face, I suppose you'd have considered I'd 
 lost some sense of the fitness of things. By 
 what you say, you wouldn't ; birt I'm not 
 taking much notice of that." 
 
 Jonathan dropped his hand from the door 
 and strode with three steps to David's 
 side. 
 
 " Look here, you're not going to talk to me 
 like that," he shouted, " with your damned 
 superior intelligence ! " 
 
 David's eyes met his with a straightness no 
 man could have utterly ignored. 
 
 " You'll listen to every word I have to say," 
 he said clearly, " because you know well enough 
 I'm not going to deny you your chance with 
 your fists. I shan't cheat you of that, and 
 you won't be such a cad as to cheat me." 
 One long moment they stayed as they looked 
 
 15 
 
226 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 into each other's eyes, and then Jonathan sat 
 down. 
 
 " What have you got to say ? " he asked. 
 
 David closed the door and came back to the 
 table. 
 
 " I had my opportunity to-day," he began. 
 " All the time you've been away, we've been 
 talking. I'm not going to tell you what we 
 said. That's my affair. I can claim that much. 
 But what I want you to recognize is this. It's 
 a danmable position for her. You can't think 
 she likes it. You can guess well enough she 
 knows the pass we've got to. There's scarcely 
 a woman is a fool in these matters." 
 
 " What a hell of a lot you know about 
 women ! " exclaimed Jonathan ironically, and 
 David laughed., 
 
 " Not so much as you do about fish," said he. 
 " Come on^ — don't let's get childish over it. 
 That's the case. That's what I want to say. 
 She hates the position she's in. I can tell 
 you that much. Well — I've had my chance 
 with her and I can't alter it. Before we come 
 to this " — ^he shrugged his shoulders with a 
 smile — " settlement of it, you take your chance. 
 I'll go down to the beach to-morrow and leave 
 you two alone. There were no restrictions 
 upon me when you went this morning. I don't 
 propose any restrictions upon you. You're free 
 to act as you think best, and if that doesn't 
 settle it, then anywhere or any time you like. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 227 
 
 I don't care. The sooner the better. I can't 
 stand this odour of hatred between us any 
 more than you can. Now, you needn't worry 
 yourself any more about my damned superiority. 
 That's all the talk you'll get from me." 
 
 Jonathan looked at him across the table, and 
 I can almost believe he felt an admiration for 
 David then, for he rose to his feet saying, " All 
 right — ^that seems fair," and held out his hand. 
 
 For an instant David looked at it, then back 
 into Jonathan's eyes. 
 
 " I don't want your hand," said he. " You've 
 got your chance, and it can't take much to 
 make you believe I don't love you for it. Let's 
 get to bed." 
 
 15* 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 PUTTING IT TO THE TEST 
 
 JOAN was up and out early the next morn- 
 ing. When David heard her calling 
 outside their window, he knew well what 
 apprehension was in her mind. 
 
 "Getting up now," he called back, conscious 
 that it was his voice she wanted to hear, and 
 that only because she feared for his safety. 
 Still, there was his voice, and he gave it her, 
 smiling to himself as he heard her set about 
 the preparation for the breakfast with the 
 humming of a song of gratitude in her throat. 
 
 That must indeed have been an anxious 
 night for her. She looked, when they came 
 in to breakfast, as though she had never closed 
 her eyes for one minute of it. But with the 
 reaction from her fears, once she had looked 
 from one to the other, her spirits were high. 
 She talked incessantly and laughed as she had 
 done in the best of the times since they had 
 all been together. 
 
 David, perhaps, was the least cheerful of the 
 three of them. Before Jonathan were the 
 hopes and prospect of that day with her alone. 
 
 228 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 229 
 
 Her spirits, as has been said, were reactionary. 
 But as for David, his own words best describe 
 the mood which hung about him. 
 
 " I was leaving them alone all that day," 
 he says, " and poor though my chances may 
 have been in a fight with Jonathan, I was in 
 that frame of mind to believe they were poorer 
 still with her. She was in love with neither 
 of us. I had told her that the day before. But 
 she was in love with love. Yet I knew well 
 enough that if it were possible for either one 
 or the other of us to shape ourselves into the 
 expression of her emotions, it would be Jonathan. 
 She believed Jonathan would kill me, and that 
 because, in her deepest conviction, she knew 
 he could. Her dread of it was only by reason 
 of her feminine hatred of the brutality of force. 
 In a word then, though she might not know it 
 in the surface consciousness of her mind, I 
 was convinced that it was Jonathan she loved. 
 The enthusiasm of her admiration for his powers 
 of contributing to the necessities of our life 
 there, no less than the protecting value of his 
 strength as evidenced by his victory over the 
 leopard, these were the proofs she gave me. 
 It seemed I could not in reason ask for any 
 more. And to all the contemplative functions 
 of my mind — as merciless as any cross-examining 
 barrister in a court of law — I was to be left 
 alone for the rest of that day." 
 
280 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 No words of mine could better describe this 
 mood in which David found himself that morn- 
 ing. If further conviction of his belief had 
 been necessary, he heard it in the unregretful 
 way in which she accepted his announcement 
 that he was going down to the beach. 
 
 " I believe my little sermon on idleness has 
 done some good," she said, with a laugh. It 
 did not enter his thoughts she might be glad of 
 every moment when those two were apart. 
 
 So he went, without a word of good-bye to 
 either of them, taking the fishing-tackle to make 
 excusable his reason for going and never once 
 looking back to see them standing there on 
 the other side of the palisade. 
 
 He took his time in going. All the jealousy 
 he had suffered, he says, seemed to have been 
 blunted of its edge then. The choice was not 
 with her. He still believed she would not 
 choose. But her convictions were his convictions. 
 In those hours when he was working the canoe 
 down the creek, he believed but little in his 
 chance. Already she loved the man she knew 
 must win, but could not bring her mind to realize 
 it, until the test had proved it to the hilt. It 
 was the test that mattered, as he had always 
 known it did, and in those hours, going down 
 to the beach, he had somehow lost faith in his 
 fate. It was Joan who had robbed him of it. 
 He could not argue then that expediency was 
 the dictator of her heart. By all the laws of 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 281 
 
 average and comparison, he knew as well as 
 she that Jonathan was the master of that 
 situation. In the depression which had fallen 
 upon him, he could see little beside. 
 
 He conveys a depth of despondency in his 
 description of that lonely journey down to the 
 beach which, natural though it may have 
 been, scarcely does him justice. 
 
 " For all I might have argued with her," 
 he says, " that inferred declaration of her choice 
 did make a difference to me. It took the heart 
 out of me, I had no more fear about my meeting 
 with Jonathan. But I had less hope, because it 
 seemed I had less rigHt ; less right of challenge 
 because of my little hope of success. As I 
 look back on it now, it seems the more amazing 
 how completely obsessed I had become by the 
 virtue of physical force in that contingency." 
 
 " So I was weighed down in spirit," he con- 
 tinues, " until, as I drove the canoe out of those 
 tall sea-grasses that separated the forest from 
 the beach and came into the open channel, my 
 eyes were fixed with the sight of something 
 which for the moment washed every other 
 thought out of my mind. About a couple of 
 miles out there lay a British gunboat, flying that 
 flag it seemed I had not seen for a whole 
 lifetime. 
 
 " How can I describe my first sensations ? 
 For even the necessity of signalling to her had 
 
232 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 no cause to occupy my thoughts. I could see 
 a boat putting off from her side, the glitter of 
 the line of oars in the sunshine as they dipped 
 in and out of the water, the white figures of 
 British blue-jackets bending to them as they 
 rowed. There was nothing to do then but wait 
 for them, and words almost fail me to describe 
 what I felt. 
 
 " The thought I imagine which seized upon 
 me first of all, seeing how near it was to my 
 mind, was that this was the solution to all 
 our difficulties. Swift upon that came the 
 return of those sensations I had had when we 
 had made our attempt at escape through the 
 forest anu Jonathan talked in hours of the 
 moment of our release. Then I had felt that my 
 chance, in the normal surroundings of civilization, 
 would be triumphantly established. So I felt 
 then, seeing that gunboat lying out there; 
 watching those oars glittering and vanishing, 
 glittering and vanishing in the stmshine. Fate, 
 luck, whatever it was, had turned the balance 
 of events richly in my favour. For Jonathan, 
 once he was released, would inevitably return 
 to his roving habits once more. The oppor- 
 tunities would all be mine, and the prospect of 
 wooing her, as I knew I could, was one whicji 
 thrilled me in the joy of its promise. 
 
 " I see no reason to deny that these were my 
 first sensations. The Lord knows they were 
 human enough. But then, there fell upon my 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 233 
 
 mind the pledge I had given to Jonathan that 
 he should have his chance of the day alone with 
 her. In addition to that there was his still greater 
 chance in the test which, only a few moments 
 before, had seemed the inevitable outcome of the 
 whole affair. And here, a stroke of luck had 
 robbed him of it. In civilized environments again, 
 it was ridiculous to suppose it could be settled 
 that way. In civilized environments, the choice 
 again would be with her. The whole rights 
 of custom gave it to her, and in what light would 
 she regard Jonathan then ? How would his 
 qualities, so much in evidence in that creek, 
 show to advantage in a London drawing-room ? 
 Last of all, if I had only the evening before to 
 convince me, I knew that Jonathan was hit just 
 as hard as I, and, but for this trick of fortune 
 turning up on the board of chance, would have 
 won her. Irrevocably she would have been his. 
 
 " So came that second phase of my sensations, 
 as the little boat came dancing over the blue 
 waters towards the edge of the surf. The tide 
 was low. With all those sailors manning her, 
 I knew she could be beached somehow or other, 
 and that she could be launched again, no matter 
 what sort of a drenching we got from the breaking 
 waves. 
 
 " These second thoughts were the hardest of 
 all to argue with. Certainly the fortune was 
 not of my seeking, glad though I may have been 
 it had come our way. But, had it been in my 
 
234 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 power, -would I have chosen it ? That was a 
 tricksy question. I tried to put it to myself 
 as straight as I could. Would I have taken the 
 chance of solving our problem, the odds of which 
 were accumulated heavily against nae, by such 
 easy means as these ? Without any false senti- 
 ment about it, would I have slipped out of the 
 prospect of that fight had it been in the power of 
 my willto avoid it ? I had to admit this much : 
 I had to admit that I should have despised 
 myself for ever if I had. 
 
 " Yet how could this be helped ? It was not 
 of my seeking. The turn of the dice had come 
 my way. Obviously it would be insane to refuse 
 that opportunity of escape, I must break into 
 the promise I had given Jonathan that he should 
 be alone with her all that day. I must snatch 
 from him his overwhelming chances to beat me 
 in a fair fight. I had accepted that fight. In 
 refusing to shake hands with him the night 
 before, I had proudly accepted it, asking for 
 nothing but hatred and enmity between us both. 
 
 " Now the ship's boat had reached the surf 
 and they were gallantly struggling with the wash 
 of the tumbling waves. I stood there watching 
 her. They had seen me now. But none of my 
 thoughts were with their efforts. I knew they 
 would come in safe enough. I knew they would 
 get back again to the ship. All those moments, 
 as they came sweeping in towards the shore, I 
 was wrestling with a new thought which, like a 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 285 
 
 bolt out of that blue above me, had pierced 
 into my mind. 
 
 " Supposing I went alone, leaving them to the 
 unhampered decision of Fate ? It was an honest 
 way out of it. In some respects it was better 
 for Jonathan, since he would not have been 
 responsible for my elimination from the tangle 
 of it all. Then indeed, and doubtless in a 
 mighty short time, she would know if she really 
 loved him. In just as short a time, giving advice 
 at the first port we stopped at, I could have 
 chartered a boat to go and take them off. 
 
 " Whatever the result, would not that be a 
 clean decision of the issue as Fate had begun it, 
 as Fate would have determined it too, without 
 the intervention of this stroke of luck ? The 
 more I thought about it, the more I came to the 
 honest belief it was so. In the environment in 
 which that problem had been set, there, by every 
 right of the law of sequence, it should be solved. 
 It was with the deepest reluctance I came to that 
 decision, yet there appeared to me no other 
 alternative. It was not as if I were deserting 
 them; indeed, it was merely as though, in an 
 effort to secure their release, I was setting out, 
 only for a week or so, indeed for less, and that 
 with the certain prospect of success. 
 
 " By the time the boat had come near enougli 
 for me to wade in and give a hand, my mind 
 was made up to it. Without the sense that one 
 has acted honestly in the light of one's own 
 
236 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 principles^ the greatest passion has a taste about 
 it that can be evil in the mind. I was giving 
 Jonathan his chance, as I made no doubt he 
 would have given me mine if he had found me 
 at a disadvantage in our fight. And God knows, 
 I should have been at many before we reached 
 the inevitable end. 
 
 " If any man, ever reading this, can say my 
 decision was not fair, it must be an assumption 
 based upon the logical sequences of his mind to 
 which by temperament mine could not subscribe. 
 
 " As the boat came in and I felt the touch of 
 her, felt also the grip of the officer's hand in 
 mine, I reckoned the decision I had brought 
 myself to was not wholly without its compen- 
 sations. 
 
 " ' My God ! You've had a thick time of it,' 
 he said. ' How long have you been here ? ' 
 
 " I shook my head. I did not know, and 
 besides that, I felt too excited, emotional too, 
 perhaps, to be able to speak. 
 
 " ' What ship was it ? ' 
 
 " ' The Malaga,' I managed to stammer out. 
 
 " ' Lord ! That's what we thought. Getting 
 on eight months.' 
 
 " ' Eight months ! ' I muttered. I could not 
 be sure in my mind whether it seemed short or 
 a lifetime. 
 
 " ' Do you mean to say you've been here all 
 alone — no others ? ' 
 
 " I shook my head — I could not trust my voice. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 237 
 
 " ' Where have you lived ? ' 
 
 " ' Up there in the forest.' 
 
 " ' Made that canoe yourself ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes." 
 
 " I felt justified in that lie. 
 
 Have you got any things you want to 
 bring ? ' 
 
 " I laughed quickly — asking him what sort 
 of things he imagined I could have collected 
 in that deserted spot. 
 
 " ' Well, this'll make a fine tale when you get 
 home,' said he ; ' you'll be the modem Robinson 
 Crusoe.' 
 
 " He little thought what sort of a tale it was, 
 and how, not more than a few miles away, it 
 was going on, in the most crucial moments of 
 its development, even as we stood there. 
 
 " He explained how they had been cruising in 
 near shore on the look-out for water, and, 
 having got it, about six miles further down the 
 coast, were sheering out to sea again when they 
 saw the signal on the top of the cliff. In all 
 that conversation, I felt it a terrific strain to 
 keep to the singular of the personal pronoun, 
 saying ' I,' not ' we ' — ' mine,' not ' oiu-s,' 
 and the fact that Jonathan had been responsible 
 for most of the conveniences of our life there 
 made it all the harder. 
 
 " I took refuge in saying as little as I could, 
 and doubtless my silence seemed natural enough 
 to him. According to the tale I had pitched, I 
 
288 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 had not had a soul to talk to for nearly eight 
 months. 
 
 " I was given a change of clothing as soon as 
 we got aboard. I was provided with the means 
 to shave my beard and feel myself again. I 
 think that sensation was the strangest and most 
 gratifying of all. And the first meal they gave 
 me of English food, cooked in the English way — 
 my heavens ! That was good. The officers 
 sat and watched me wolf it down, while I kept 
 telling them they did not know what a damned 
 fine life they had of it. 
 
 " The officer in command sent for me as soon 
 as I had got through these preliminaries. It 
 was a British gunboat, and there was a certain 
 amount of formality about all these proceedings 
 which only made me laugh inside myself. It 
 was coming back to civilization with such a rush, 
 like blood flowing back to its unaccustomed 
 channels, that it almost hurt, it seemed so foolish 
 just then. 
 
 " Once we were alone together, that sort of 
 nonsense all disappeared, especially under the 
 influence of the fact of our discovering that we 
 had mutual friends at home, and he had often 
 heard about me. Then we both remarked how 
 small a place the world was, and with a je^k I 
 realized how easy it was to drift back into the 
 commonplace and conventional remarks that 
 go to make civilized conversation. 
 
 " I sat|and|talked with him for an hour or 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 239 
 
 more, when at one point of the conversation, 
 which had become as natural as that between old 
 friends, he said : ' How did you manage for 
 water ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh — ^we found that easily enough,' said I, 
 and then I saw my pitfall, but only when I had 
 fallen in. 
 
 " ' We ? ' said he. ' I thought you were 
 alone ? ' 
 
 " There was one second when I asked myself 
 was it too late to excuse it ? The next, I knew 
 by his eye it was. Having arrived at that deci- 
 sion, I told him the truth, and, thank God, when 
 I had finished, explaining to him my motives, 
 he got up from the table in his saloon, and he 
 stalked to the porthole, standing a full moment 
 and looking out ; then turning round to me 
 and sajdng : 
 
 " ' Well^I call that dalnned quixotic ! The 
 luck had come your way without asking for it. 
 Why the devil didn't you take it ? ' 
 
 " I drew a deep breath of relief. I asked for 
 no better justification than that. He drove the 
 fear of God into me, however, when he continued 
 saying that by rights he supposed he ought to 
 go back straight away. 
 
 " ' For the Lord's sake don't do that ! ' I 
 begged him. ' I can charter some sort of a craft 
 at Teneriffe and you've got the exact latitude 
 and longitude. They can't fail to be found.' 
 
 " ' Oh, they'll be found right enough,' he 
 
240 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 replied ; ' there's no fear of that.' And then, 
 reluctantly, he consented to go ahead. They 
 expected to reach Teneriffe the next morning, 
 so the concession he made was not such a 
 great one after all. I think, in fact, it was just 
 official pride in his power to interfere with my 
 plans which made him suggest it." 
 
 " During those three days, I composed a letter 
 to Joan, intending it to be delivered to her by the 
 rescue party in whatever ship I could arrange 
 to go. 
 
 " This is the letter. I have no compunction 
 in transcribing it here. She might, if she wished, 
 have shown it to the whole world : 
 
 " ' My dear,' I wrote, 
 
 " ' I am sure you have wondered much 
 and thought often, perhaps, that I shirked at the 
 last moment that issue which was to have decided 
 so much in my life, if not, perhaps, in yours. 
 You will realize by now that I have not just merely 
 slipped out of it, but have intended rather to leave 
 it all to the unaltered conditions of that same Fate 
 which brought us all together, and threatened so 
 nearly to divide us in the end. 
 
 " ' Z had had all and more than all my chances 
 with you. I am given to talking my mind. 
 Jonathan is not. And I had had many oppor- 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 241 
 
 tunities, yet had not won you. In these few days, 
 therefore, while you have been alone with him, 
 and he has, no doubt, said what is in his heart, 
 you will have been free to learn much of what I 
 have strongly suspected was in your heart all the 
 time, though you could not know it, 
 
 " ' Do you remember saying God's blessing to 
 us that night before I went away ? Well — here I 
 repeat it to you, knowing that unless you want me 
 you will not send for me or write to me again. 
 
 " ' David: " 
 
 i6 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 THE TEST ITSELF 
 
 THIS brings me to the end of David's manu- 
 script. So much he must have written 
 immediately on his return to England, while 
 the whole affair was fresh and vivid in his 
 memory. There is certainly no smell of the 
 lamp about it. He wrote just as he felt, and 
 probably completed the whole account in less 
 than a month. Reading it through as care- 
 fully as I have done, it gives me that impression ; 
 as if he needed to occupy his mind, though not 
 to distract it, from the sense of loss which he 
 conveys in that last letter to Joan. 
 
 It becomes, accordingly, no easy a task for 
 me to complete the story, drawing certainly upon 
 my imagination in no little degree, but with that 
 margin of knowledge which I possess from things 
 I have heard, little remarks of David's and 
 actual inquiries I have made since I deter- 
 mined to give the tale in this form to the public. 
 
 The accuracy of my account of what happened 
 in the creek after David's departure, natiurally 
 I cannot vouch for ; though I profess no slight 
 pretension to its authenticity by reason of 
 circumstances which will be divulged later. 
 242 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 243 
 
 Jonathan, it seems, made no bones about 
 admitting the fact that it was by David's sugges- 
 tion they were left alone that day. It probably 
 helped him in breaking down that reserve he 
 felt in speaking to her on any other than the most 
 ordinary topics. 
 
 In a stilted but honest and genuine fashion, 
 he told her that he loved her, to which Joan 
 listened, never answering by so much as a touch 
 of the hand, and employing far more restraint 
 than ever she had shown with David. 
 
 He seems to have taken that silence in the 
 light of submission. Somewhere in the early 
 part of his script David says : " Jonathan 
 believed all women to be intensely clever u^itjl 
 the moment of surrender, and that then they 
 became creatures of devouring emotion, exter- 
 nally passive, but inwardly making such demands 
 upon a man as, unless his passion for them 
 absorbed all his interests in life, made a slave 
 of him before he knew where he was." 
 
 This, without doubt, is a clue to all his actions 
 from that moment when he found himself alone 
 with her at the cfieek, and after David's dis- 
 appearance. This silence and restraint he must 
 have taken as the expression of that passivity 
 in a woman which, according to his view of the 
 sex, was indicative of her surrender. Some 
 such mental process it certainly was, for, 
 quickened with the passion he felt himself, he 
 acted, and before he was sure. Suddenly he put 
 
 i6* 
 
244 DAVID AND^JONATHAN 
 
 his arms about her, and in the contact of her 
 body with his own, was, for the moment, lost 
 to everjiihing but the whirlwind of his emotions. 
 
 Easily it can be imagined she was startled, 
 numbed even, in her surprise. More easily still 
 can it be realized, she was powerless to move in 
 those arms of his. And there for a moment she 
 lay, while he spent his kisses on her face and neck. 
 
 It must be remembered David had put no 
 restraint upon him. He had told him of no one 
 word they had said while they were alone 
 together the day before. 
 
 " You are free to act as you think best, and, 
 if that doesn't settle it, then anywhere or any 
 time you like. I don't care." 
 
 And this had been the best, indeed, the only 
 way of acting, as Jonathan had conceived it. 
 A moment later, he set her free and, breathless, 
 she pushed the hair from off her forehead, 
 staring in front of her, saying no word at all, 
 much as they say an animal stares into the 
 hypnotic eyes of the boa-constrictor when she 
 has chosen her prey. 
 
 It was circumstance, however, she was gazing 
 at, not at Jonathan. Not one word of reproof 
 did she utter, but slowly, after a moment, she 
 rose to her feet. 
 
 All the time he had watched her, groping 
 with his mind to reach hers. Now, in this 
 silence, he found himself hopelessly in the 
 ■confusion of an utter darkness. 
 
DAVID AND JONAtHAN 245 
 
 He did not know whether he had offended her 
 or not. On that impulse of doubt, he over- 
 whelmed her with his apologies. 
 
 " You're not hurt^ — ^you're not offended, are 
 you ? " he cried. " I love you. I told you that. 
 Can I help what I feel ? Good God ! I'm sorry 
 if I've offended you. I wouldn't do that for 
 the world. I thought from the way you listened, 
 saying nothing — ^that you understood, would 
 know I must be longing — ^tp have you in my arms. 
 Joan — are you offended ? " 
 
 She turned and faced him, pleading there 
 like a child in his remorse for what he had done, 
 when it must have been inevitable in her mind to 
 make comparison between him and David then. 
 All of a sudden, he was as Samson shorn of his 
 locks. So it seemed to her, with full intent, 
 must Delilah have stolen the secret of that man 
 of strength. In that moment, she knew she could 
 tell him to do for her whatever she wished and he 
 would straightway have done it. 
 
 But more profoundly than this, it was never 
 him she looked at. Even when he began to 
 realize the possibility that he had mistaken her 
 from the beginning, asking her whether it were 
 David she cared for most, and she answered : 
 " Don't you realize I have no choice ? " it was 
 circumstance she was answering, not him. 
 
 " David's been telling you that sort of non- 
 sense as well, has he ? " he replied. " He said 
 that to me last night — ^that you had no choice — 
 
246 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 but it's ,all rot. However, he likes to think he 
 understands women, and if you wish to agree 
 with it, I can't help that. But it's futile to me. 
 You've only to lift your little finger and I'd " 
 
 She stopped him quickly. 
 
 " You'd give me David ? " said she. 
 
 At the mere solmd of David's name on her lips, 
 all expression of apology vanished from his face. 
 
 " No," said he. " Do you imagine I would ? 
 Do you think I could go on calmly here, you two 
 living together and I labouring, slave to both of 
 you and your happiness ? Is that the way out 
 of it which David suggested ? If it is, it's not 
 surprising that he failed." 
 
 " David didn't suggest anything of the kind," 
 she replied. " He knew you would neither of 
 you consent to that. There was only one 
 alternative that he could see." 
 
 " What was that ? " 
 
 "That you must fight." 
 
 Jonathan nodded his head. Obviously over 
 that matter there was nothing to be said. It 
 was all to do. 
 
 '^ Would you suppose from that, then," she 
 suggested, " that it leaves me with much 
 choice ? " 
 
 His silence was his answer. 
 
 " So David was right, after all ? " she 
 persisted. 
 
 He waited a moment, smarting under a sense 
 of impot^ce. 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 247 
 
 " Oh, I suppose David's always right," he 
 said at length. " At every turn I come up 
 against that superior intelligence of his — but I 
 doubt whether the circumstances call for it here." 
 
 My imagination may be all at fault, but it 
 seems to me then she must have felt 
 the existence of that superior intelligence 
 dominating the situation, even with David 
 miles away. We are now looking at this story 
 unbiased by David's point of view of it, and 
 in all the facts of information I have collected 
 I find how true the judgment must have been 
 that she was in love with neither of them. 
 From the moment, however, when Jonathan 
 gave way to the imptdse of his emotion that 
 must have made a turning-point in her mind, 
 however it may have been hidden from her 
 consciousness by the omnipresent facts of 
 circumstance. 
 
 She began at this juncture to examine 
 Jonathan as to his point of view upon his friend- 
 ship with David; what they had felt for each 
 \ other before ever that voyage on the Malaga 
 had been undertaken ; how their friendship 
 had withstood the test of close companionship 
 before she had arrived on the Malaga's boat. 
 
 " And how soon," she asked him, " did you 
 begin to know that something was coming 
 between that friendship which had lasted all 
 those years ? " 
 
 " Oh — I don't know," said he. " I suppose 
 
248 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 David recognized it first. There's no need my 
 saying he's more impulsive than I am." 
 
 " I think we could argue about that," she 
 rephed. " He's longer-sighted— that's what it 
 seems to me. I don't think you can deny that 
 you're impulsive." 
 
 After what had just happened, he could say 
 nothing to that. Still he tried to defend his point. 
 
 " You can call it long-sightedness in him if 
 you like," he replied, " but he couldn't have 
 seen so far as this when he was carrying you up 
 the saloon companion-way of the Malaga, and 
 admits — as he did to me when you were lying 
 on the beach unconscious — ^that he felt a sort 
 of emotion about you then." 
 
 "On the Malaga?" she demanded. "On 
 the Malaga — when did he do that ? " 
 
 He told her then, what he imagined David 
 must have told her long before. 
 
 " Fancy his never telling me," she murmured 
 when he had finished, and leaving Jonathan 
 lavishing to heaven he had never mentioned it. 
 For now it seemed to him he was coming to 
 learn, as David thought he himself had learnt, 
 the direction of her choice. 
 
 So, as an outsider, it appears to me they 
 were both bound to believe in each other's 
 chances with her, while, swayed first from one 
 and then from the other, always in reverse to 
 the one she was with, I conceive she would 
 have remained in doubt. Each in his absence 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 249 
 
 seemed to dominate the situation in her mind. 
 When David was not thjpre, she Mt his thoughts 
 permeating everything that happened ; when 
 Jonathan was not there, she was conscious of 
 his physical abilities and strength asserting 
 their predominance over the situation. 
 
 It may be thought she was an opportunist. 
 It must be wondered what woman is not. 
 Does not the whole of her training and ex- 
 perience induce her to this ? Until Civilization 
 has won for her the independence she desires, 
 will she not remain so ? An opportunist 
 handicapped by emotion. 
 
 The test was needed, as David had said, to 
 prove to her which was master of their destinies, 
 and automatically, without any of the fears 
 she had entertained, that test was applied. 
 When after waiting overlong for David's return 
 to the creek, they both made their way down 
 to the beach, found the canoe and found it 
 empty, there was only one conclusion remain- 
 ing for them to draw. David had acknowledged 
 his defeat in the trial of strength. He had ful- 
 filled her wishes. There would be no conflict be- 
 tween them. He had decided the issue himself. 
 
 The tide had come in, washing out all signs 
 of the footprints they had left upon the sand. 
 There was the empty canoe. She needed no 
 further proof of the course he had taken — and 
 then, as I see it, she must have known — but 
 not actually till then. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE ANSWER ' 
 
 MANY women run in the opportunist's 
 race, and, with all the handicap of 
 their emotions, they find a place. Some, by 
 reason of that handicap, are left behind. 
 
 For, the next few days at the creek both 
 Joan and Jonathan were too oppressed with 
 the loss of David to speak at all of those cir- 
 cumstances which, so far as they knew, had 
 brought that loss about. Jonathan pursued 
 his duties, Joan hers, with a cloud upon their 
 spirits, the meaning of which in her he could 
 have been under no misapprehension. 
 
 In all honesty, he must have admitted him- 
 self, he felt the absence/ of his friend. To 
 whatever straits of circumstance they may 
 have been driven that night before his 
 disappearance, there still had been the sure 
 foundation of their friendship. Nothing could 
 have altered that ; nor could anything detract 
 from that spirit Qf what in moments ef anger 
 250 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 251 
 
 he had chosen to call David's damned superior 
 intelligence. 
 
 Both of them missed it, as one would miss a 
 season were it stolen from the fullness of the 
 year. A thousand times over, Jonathan thanked 
 his God that he had not been the instrument 
 of that rift of absence in their little community. 
 Had David heard thoSe thanksgivings, not- 
 withstanding all the misapprehensions on 
 which they were based, he would have known 
 he had done right. 
 
 The test of it all had been made and, without 
 any of the remorse he would inevitably have 
 felt, Jonathan must sometimes have been of 
 the mind that David, in losing, had won. Yet, 
 as the days went by and David's absence became 
 an accepted fact with which they must make 
 the best of life as it was, the ultimate resolution 
 of fate appeared no less than inevitable to both 
 of them. And then, a bolt out of the blue as it 
 had been with David, there came their release. 
 
 With a leaping of their hearts, one morning 
 as they sat at breakfast, they heard the shouting 
 of voices, English voices, in the forest. As if 
 a meteor out of heaven had fallen between them, 
 they jumped to their feet. They were saved. 
 
 The first complete realization of their escape 
 which came to Joan was David's letter, handed 
 to her, as he had desired, no sooner thhi the 
 explanation of that relief party was given. 
 She k^t it, imopeHed in her hand, all the 
 
252 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 while until she was on board, and then, in the 
 silence and seclusion of her own cabin, she 
 opened it and read its contents. 
 
 That evening, walking up and down the 
 deck, she talked it all out with Jonathan. 
 There must have been — even at this distance 
 I can conceive it — some complete upheaval in 
 her mind at the realization that David had not 
 made way for Jonathan, but had himself 
 escaped. She could not blame him. But the 
 remorse she had felt about his death was no 
 longer there. A great gap had suddenly been 
 rent in her mind while as yet there was nothing 
 to fill it. She had conceived the whole Romance, 
 as she had thought it was, and now, all in a 
 swift moment, it had become as it seemed to 
 her a different matter altogether. 
 
 " Well, we're all free now," said she, medi- 
 tatively, as she leant on the taffrail. " And 
 what's going to happen now, I wonder? " 
 
 She had told him the substance of David's 
 letter. There was no call upon her to tell him 
 the last words with which it ended. In reply 
 to that half-inferred question of hers, Jonathan 
 said nothing. He was thinking eagerly of the 
 new life in front of him, when she wrenched him 
 from his thoughts. 
 
 " Do you still feel the same about nae now, 
 Jonathan ? " she asked. 
 
 The pause before he answered was as slight 
 as to the bricklayer must be the thickness of a 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 253 
 
 hair ; but to'the architect, working his drawings 
 to a scale, the sixteenth of an inch made all the 
 difference in the world. In such a situation, 
 she was that architect, dealing with inflexions 
 and expressions on the minutest scale. 
 
 When he answered quickly and emphatically 
 that he had not changed one whit, it was that 
 pause she heard more deeply than the genuine 
 admission in his voice. She changed the 
 subject, and half an hour later went below to 
 her cabin. 
 
 At Teneriffe, she secured a berth on a steamer 
 going South. 
 
 '.' I am going to finish my voyage," she said 
 to Jonathan. " My father will think I've 
 gone down with the Malaga. I've cabled him 
 I'm coming by the next boat." 
 
 She held out her hand, and once more in his 
 life he watched the Blue Peter fluttering down 
 from the masthead. 
 
 It was no formal parting. How could it have 
 been? Ostensibly and justifiably she was re- 
 turning to her father at the first opportunity. 
 They did not say : " Then this is the end." Bat 
 the ships of their destinies were leaving their 
 moorings and both of them knew they were 
 bound for different harbours. 
 
CHAPTERiXXVIII 
 
 HOME 
 
 ABOUT five months later, in the late 
 spring, when the two friends had long 
 since met, finding, as it seemed to them then, 
 tha,t such friendship as theirs was after all 
 greater than the love of women ; when Jonathan 
 had gone abroad again for his mining company, 
 and David was drifting back once more into 
 London life, there arrived a letter at the Albany, 
 brought to David with his morning tea. 
 
 The reader must suppose it was from Joan. 
 But the handwriting was wholly unfamiliar to 
 David. He tore it open casually. Her name 
 at the foot of the page drew his eyes to it at 
 once. 
 
 " My father" he read, " has retired from his 
 Jrusiness in South Africa and returned to England. 
 We have bought a hov^e here in the heart of the 
 real country. All this has happened in five 
 months, and if nothing prevents you, we should 
 like to see you here for a few days. I shall ^uite 
 254 
 
DAVID AND JONATHAN 255 
 
 understand if you find it impossible to get away, 
 and, supposing that may be very likely, 1 take this 
 opportunity of thanking you for all your kindness 
 and understanding." 
 
 David leapt out of bed. In half an hour he 
 was eating breakfast. In another hour he was 
 in the train with a telegram preceding him. 
 That afternoon he found himself passing down 
 a long drive cut through a wood, grass banks 
 on either side freckled with cowslips, and a 
 cuckoo calling its first April note through the 
 green tracery of the trees. 
 
 They had tea on the lawn. The first day 
 hot enough in the year. To all her father's 
 inquiries and her joggings of his memory, they 
 went through most of that story again. Then, 
 when they were left alone, after the meal was 
 over, she took David through the garden. 
 
 " To show you," said she, " what I call a 
 home — an English home." 
 
 It was all cut out, a clearing in the heart of 
 the wood, with grass-green alleys leading, 
 through the high beech trees just broken in leaf, 
 to kitchen gardens, tennis lawns and rose and 
 herbaceous borders. 
 
 They talked of commonplaces : of what 
 each one of them had done during those five 
 months ; of how Jonathan had set off on his 
 travels again and what part of the world he was 
 then faring in. 
 
256 DAVID AND JONATHAN 
 
 It seemed almost as though, in those sur- 
 roundings and with those days in the creek so 
 far behind them, they were merely strangers, 
 met formally for the first time. 
 
 This, however, was not David's way of 
 thought when his mind was not in doubt. 
 In one of those alleys hidden from the house, 
 he stopped her as they walked. 
 
 " This is not us," he said. " I always say 
 the man who acts before he's sure, is thirty 
 times a fool. And the man who dallies when 
 his heart is certain — how many times a fool do 
 you imagine he must be ? " 
 
 She tried to laugh as though she did not 
 follow the line of his thought. She tried to ask 
 him what he meant by suddenly saying that. 
 
 " I suppose you' ve, waited these five months," 
 he replied, " to see how far circumstances would 
 alter cases. Well, mine was a bad case. It 
 doesn't alter those." 
 
 Slowly upon that, he took her face in his 
 hands, and he added : " Thousands of times 
 I've kissed you in my mind. And what a 
 p oor thing imagination is." 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed ai The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey. 
 
Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. 
 
 ■re pleaieil to announce Novels (or the Autumn of 1918 by the Miowia^ 
 LEADING AUTHORa particulars of wUch will be found in the i 
 
 MARIE CORBLLI 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 E. P. BENSON 
 CYNTHIA STOCKLEY 
 H. de VBRE STACPOOLE 
 HAROLD BEQBIE 
 MR5. B. M. CROKER 
 BARONESS VON HUTTEN 
 SIR GILBERT PARKER 
 DOROTA FLATAU 
 
 E. TEMPLE THURSTON 
 BEATRICE HARRADEN 
 QABRIELLE VALLINQS 
 MAXWELL GRAY 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 EDGAR JEPSON 
 PEGGY WEBUNG 
 BURTON E. STEVENSON 
 HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS 
 DOUGLAS SLADEN 
 G. B. BURGIN. 
 CECILIA HILL 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE POINTING 
 
 MAN" 
 
 CURTIS YORKB 
 
 F. BANCROFT 
 MRS. CHASTEL de BOINVILLE 
 
New Novels, Autumn 1918. 
 Where Your Tireastrre Is 
 
 By BEATRICE HARRADEN 
 
 A long novel by the favourite authoress of " Ships: that Pass 
 In the Night," which requires no recommendation. 'It is full of 
 the charm and tenderness peculiar to Beatrice Harraden, and the 
 background of the war to a touching loverStory provides an 
 atmosphere of patfhos and deep, feeling. 
 
 The Black Opal 
 
 By MAXWELL GRAY 
 
 Anyone who has read "The Silence of Dean Maitland," as 
 well as all those who have not, will be delighted with this new 
 story by Maxwell Gray. 
 
 In Our Street By peggy webling 
 
 Under this unassujning title the authoress bides a love-story 
 In which the occult plays' a prominent part, and whiqh is' original 
 both as regards plot and treatment. A book that is bound to 
 have a large sale, in view of thebupiing interest aroused by the 
 war in the question of communication with the un,seen world. , 
 
 JE^air Inez By douglas sladen 
 
 An enchanting novel of Australian life forms the background 
 fl:o the central figure of the heroine, Inez Gordon. A story that, 
 will grip the reader and enchant all those who know and love 
 Australia and the Australians. A boojc that will cement the 
 feelings of close friendship the war has roused between the 
 Commonwealth and the Mother Country. 
 
 L 2002 By EDGAR JEPSON 
 
 A story of 'love and mystery that is thrilling from beginnij^ 
 to end, ind will be a godsend to those who desire to seek foiff^ 
 fulness from reality i« the exciting realities of -ficUon. * ' 
 
New Novels, Autumn 1918. 
 The Young Diana 
 
 By MARIE CORELLI 
 
 The Ipng and engrossing story, told by Marie Gorelli In her 
 ■ usual original way. Decidedly one' of her most fascinating books. 
 An immense First Edition has been printed. 
 
 David and Jonathan 
 
 By E, TEMPLE THURSTON 
 
 Undoubtedly one of Temple Thurston's strongest books. A 
 problem novel , on the theme: "Passing the love of women," 
 which carries the reader in the company of two men and one 
 woman into remote haunts and back to civilisation, where at last 
 the question is definitely solvfed. 
 
 Up and Down By e. f. benson 
 
 This is a book written in Mr. Benson's most reflective mood 
 Fact and fiction are skilfully interwoven around the central lives 
 of two men and their friendship. From the romantic haunts of 
 an Italian island, we see as in a kaleidoscope events of the great 
 war. ' A touching story of friendship and patriotism. 
 
 The Man Who Lost Himself 
 
 By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 j; , A mbst delightful novel — on entirely new lines — by, this 
 ['Veil-known writer. Brim full of action, humour and pathos, and 
 :t;lever characterisation. A relief to the war-weary. 
 
 Yellow English By dorota flatau 
 
 This is one of the most remarkable novels of the year — a first 
 
 book on the topic of the moment.: the hidden German hand in 
 
 : England. The importance and success of the book may be 
 
 gauged by the fact that four large editions were called for withipi 
 
 ' a fprtnight of publication. A book that will stir every man ' 
 
 Land' woman of British birth to the core, and do its share in 
 
 British Empire-building. 
 
New Novels, Autumn 1918. 
 Blue Aloes By cynthia stockley 
 
 By the well-known authoress of "Poppy" (22nd edition), 
 "The Claw," etp., this book is one more eloquent proof of her 
 Intimate knowledge of South Africa It carries in its pages the 
 subtle charm and tragedy of the veldt. 
 
 Bridget ;>;; By .b. m. croker 
 
 Mrs. Croker's studies of Irish life and character are no le>s 
 brilliant than her Anglo-Indiain stories. Possessing a genius, for 
 story-telling, she has a gift of humour seen at its best in the Irish 
 novels, of which the<present is one. 
 
 Tumult By GABRIELLE VALLINGS 
 
 (Grand-daughter oj- Charles Kingsley) Authoress of " Bindweed." 
 
 As the title denotes, a novel full of excitement and action. ' 
 The scene is laid in Paris, and the story tells of the experiences of 
 an Australian girl and her lovers. 
 
 Joyce By CURTIS YORKE 
 
 A charming novel in Curtis Yorke's best style — true to life, 
 as. all her men and women are. The hero and heroine find 
 happiness after estrangement and disappointment. 
 
 Wings Triumphant 
 
 By CECILIA HILL 
 
 This is a most remarkable novel, original in everyway. The 
 plot is conceived, developed and brought to a conclusion in a 
 highly ingenious fashion,' and all the characters in the book live 
 
 The Man from Trinidad 
 
 By, the Author of "The Pointing Man" 
 
 This is essentially, a man's book, though written-by a woman, 
 shewing an extraordinary power of dqiicting the life of seaiuinf 
 men suid their experience; and haunts m the East and at home. 
 
New Novels, Autumn 1918. 
 The Roll Call Arnold bennett 
 
 Author of " Clayhanget." 
 
 A new long novel, interwoven with love themes and rivid 
 pictures of life in London and Paris. Mr. Bemnett tells the 
 romance of George Connor in his well-known masterly way. 
 
 Under Blue Skies 
 
 By H. de VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 "Under Blue Skies," like "In Blue Waters" and "The 
 Blue Lagoon," is a big sunlit book, a tonic book, full of the 
 freshness of the sea. , 
 
 The Sleeping Partner 
 
 , By M. p. WILLCOCKS 
 
 ' ^ .' 
 Both In scene and atinosphere, an entirely new departure of 
 
 Miss Willcock's. A story with a most original plot, told in such 
 
 a delightful manner that the readers' interest is held and kept in 
 
 suspense until the very jend — a pyschological surprise. 
 
 The Silver Bridge 
 
 By HELEN PROTHERO LEWIS 
 
 A charming story written with a practised hand by the author 
 of "Love and the Whirlwind," "Hooks of Steel," etc. A love 
 Story full of romance and "mystery," 
 
 An Armed Protest By f. Bancroft 
 
 A 'story that will appeal to all who realise the problens 
 '^trimony presents to every thoughtful, right-thinking man and 
 <i(roraan. A woman's protest against the two-st»idard view, with 
 as ending that is true to life. 
 
New Novels f Autumn 1918. 
 An English Family 
 
 , By HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 "The Memoirs of Hugh Frotfeihghim of Longworthy," a 
 novel characteristiq of all 'that is best in ]^nglish fiction, as fallof 
 lacidentl reflection and romance as the history of ""The 
 Ntwcomes." 
 
 O'Reilly of the Glen 
 
 By MPS. CHASTEL de BOINVIULE 
 
 A thrilling story ofi Ireland in the throes of sedition and 
 rebellion. A thoroughly up-to-date novel, written with power: 
 and an intimate knowledge )of I;elafid. The moving story of a 
 girl's struggle between love and pati;iotism. 
 
 Wild Youth By SIR GILBERT PARKER 
 
 A -hovel of prairie life, portraying characters and incidents of 
 the Canadian West. This novel, together with "Jordan is a Hard 
 Road," represents the author in his ftipst fertile, spirited and 
 orijtinal mood. There is humour, individuality and charm in 
 every paragraph, and both stories are founded upon actual fact. 
 
 The Throw Back By g. b. burgin 
 
 This is a delightfully-told romance, of which the scene |s laid', 
 In Tarkey. f he story centres around Lancelot Graves,, whom'J 
 disappointment in love causes to become a follower of the Piop)i^k> 
 A tale full of excitement and originality. I 
 
 Recent Successful 6/ -^ net Novels. 
 A King in Babylon 
 
 By BURTON E. STEVENSON 
 Author of ",The Little Comrade." 
 
 Miss Pirn's Camouflage sy lady Stanley 
 Tlie Jiyndwood Aflair By una l. silberrad 
 ITlie Bag of Saffron .baroness von hutten 
 
 iAathor of " Shactow.*' 
 
IMPORTANT FORTHCOMINQ BOOKS 
 
 The Brood of 
 False Lorraine" 
 
 The History of the House of Guise 
 
 " Tkcn ro4e Ike Brood of false Lorniac, tlic «ne> of o«r land." 
 
 With numerous Illustrations 
 
 By H. NOEL WILLIAMS 
 
 Author of I 
 
 " Five Fair Silters," " Unruly Daughters," " Rival Sultanas,'" etc, ete. 
 
 /« twt vols, demy Svo, cloth gilt, 345. net.\ 
 
 In this volume Mr. Noel Williams relates the early history of the 
 famous House of Guise, the most interesting and eventful of any faimily 
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 romantic adventures of all kinds, and written as it is with that lightnea 
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 Eighty-Six Years' Memories 
 
 By HENRIETTA WARD 
 
 I6s. net 
 
 ' Profusely illustrated witli original drawings^ by Morlattd, 
 Cruickslianlc, James. Warfi, R.A., etc., etc. A bqck of extra- 
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 generations of famotis painters. A grand niece of James Ward, 
 R.A., married to George Refael Ward, mother of Sir Leslie Ward, 
 "Spy" of Vanity Fair, she knew intimately Queen Victoria, , 
 Napolean III., .the Dake of Wellington, Duke of, Cambridge^ , 
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 letters from famous men and women. 
 
IMPORTANT PORTHCOAilNQ BOOKS 
 
 The Reminiscences of 
 Ambassador Morgenthau 
 
 By HENRY MORGENTHAU 
 
 /m onelhandsome volume, with numerous illustrations, 
 lbs. netl 
 
 An epodh-making book, with many illustrations, outstrippliig~~ 
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 accounts of great events and great personalities — of intimate 
 details in the diplomatic, and^olitipal world, known only to the 
 few. A, book no Library can afford to be without. 
 
 The Life of Sir Herbert Tree 
 
 By MAX BEERBOHM 
 
 Sfn one nandsome volume, with illustrations, 
 7s. 6^. net 
 
 The authorised biography. >A beautiful book, written and 
 Illustrated with original drawings by his brother, Max Beerbohm, 
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 many well-known people. With contributions by Lady Tree, 
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 well as all members of the theatrical profession. 
 
IMPORTANT FORTHCOMINQ BOOKS 
 Memories of an Etonian 
 
 By GEORGE GREVILLE 
 
 Author of 
 
 " Society Recollections i° Paris and Vienna," and " More 
 Society Recollections." 
 
 ' In demy Svo, cloth gilt, 10s, 6d. net 
 
 With numerous Illustrations 
 
 In thii fascinating book the author has chiefly, related 
 tkii recoUectiona of Eton fifty years agO:— the Eton of Dt. 
 Hombjr, and has added yet another volume to the chronicles 
 of the ^reat school. 
 
 It is not easy to describe the varied contents of this book | 
 it suffices, however, to say that it contains much besides 
 these early reminiscences. Mr. Greville supplies the reader, 
 from his apparently inexhaustible memories, with abundant 
 anecdotes and society sketches during the latter half of 
 Queen Victoria's reign. 
 
 Private Peat By harold r. peat 
 
 7m erown 8vo, 6s. net , 
 
 A book that has caused a stir in America as the "best seller." 
 A Canadian's thrilling experiences in the great War.' We follow 
 him from his home across the water to the battlefields in France, 
 anil back home again, and incidentally learn the touching story of 
 his love and union with " Mrs. Peat." 
 
 The Escape of a " Princess Pat" 
 
 By GEORGE EUSTACE PEARSON 
 In orown Svo, 68. net 
 
 A book that tells the truth, and nothing but the truth, in a 
 
 manner more thrilling than fiction could do. Even the most 
 
 unemotional among us will be stirred to the depths by these 
 
 1 experiences and the escape of a " Princess Pat " from the horrors 
 
 of a Hun Prison Camp. , 
 
 9 
 
IMPORTANT FORTHCOMING BOOKS 
 God aind Tommy Atkins 
 
 By DR. ALEXANDER IRVINE 
 
 Author of " My Lady of the Chimney Corner," etc. 
 
 . ,i>^ ' 3s, 6d. net 
 
 These reflections on the natufe and religious needs of Tommy 
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 England that was, and is, and is\o be. " 
 
 In the Morning of Time 
 
 py CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 
 
 \ . Author of " Red Fox," etc. 
 
 WU)t tight fine ittnstrffitons. In crown 800, riotlJ, 6s. net. 
 
 ■ I 
 
 1 The stories of this aiithor dealing with the adventures ci 
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 work, Mr. Roberts gives us a story of a mali in primeval times,'' 
 and he introduces descriptions of the strange scenery and mon- 
 strous fauna of the time, This story bids fair to be on? of the 
 most successful of Mr. Roberts' worts of fiction. The interest 
 of the voluni'e is enhanced by the addition of the striking 
 Illustrations, which excite the imagination. 
 
 I 
 
 40tA year of Issuo. 
 
 The Year's Art. 1919 
 
 I Compiled by A. C. R. CARTER 
 
 A concise epitome of all matters relating to the Arts of 
 Painting, Sculpture, Engraving, and Architecture, and to Schools 
 of Design which have occurred during the year 191S, together 
 with infonnatioa resp'ie;cting the events of 1919. 
 
 Crcvm ive, ehth, 7/6 net,. 
 
 Over 600 pages, with illastrations. 
 
IMPORTANT FORTHCOMING BOOKS 
 
 Westminster Cathedral 
 and its Architept 
 
 By W. DE L'HOPITAL 
 
 With numerous illustrations from Mr. Bentley's 
 
 drawings, including coloured plates, plltns and 
 
 reproductions from photographs. 
 
 In two votumes. Crown 4-to, ehlh gilt and gitt top, 
 42a, net. , 
 
 The History of Westminster Cathedral, and of its 
 architect, the late John Francis Bentley, will undoubtedly 
 form one of the principal pulplishing features of the 
 autumn season. Westminster Cathedral ha!s been 
 acknowledged to be among the most important buildings 
 of modem times, and as the chief Cathedral of the 
 Roman Catholic Church in the British Empire it has a 
 further importance of the first mark. Bentley's own 
 life, and the story how the great Byzantine Cathedral 
 grew into being, from Cardinal Manning's first proposals, 
 and how it fell to his successor, Cardinal VaUghan, to 
 initiate and carry out the work, has been told by the 
 architect's daughter, Mrs. de I'HopiJial, vyho has made full 
 use of her father's papers. An important feature of the 
 book is the illustrations, which comprise some full-page 
 plktes in colour from Mr. Bentley's water-colour draw- 
 ings, numerous illustrations inline and from photographs; 
 besides many plans. 
 
Recent Successful Books 
 My American Visit 
 
 By The Right Hon. SIR FREDERICK SMITH, 
 Bart., K.C., M.P. 
 In 8do, doth, 68. net 
 
 In this b6ok Sir Frederick Smith, His Majesty's, Attorney- 
 General, describes his recent visit to the United States and 
 Canada, where he delivered a large number of lectures, and 
 addressed some 140,000 peopl^e. He met all the leading people ; 
 and has given his impression, not only of individuals but of the 
 masses, whose enthusiasm was unbounded. Hjs welcome an4 
 reception by the President, and in Official, Political, Military, 
 Naval and Social circles has helped him to write what constitutes 
 the most intimate and up-to-date account of America and Canada 
 In the war. 
 
 Jape^nese Memories 
 
 By ETHEL HOWARD 
 
 In demy 809, cloth gilt, 128, 6d. net. With numerous tllusfratiom 
 
 Miss Howard, who was entrusted with the supervision of 
 Prince Shimadzu and his four little brothers, writes with sympatiiy 
 and unbounded enthusiasm of the country and its people ; and. 
 tells us many strange matters which are hidden from -the average 
 inquirer. 
 
 The Coming Economic Crisis 
 
 By H. J. JENNINGS 
 
 In orown 8vo, oloth, Ss. net, 
 
 A timely volume, describing the present economic sltuatioa. 
 Without being unduly pessimistic, the author stresses the point 
 that a very critical time is ahead of us, requiring immediate and 
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 widely circulated and read by all. 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 1/9 m NOVELS 
 
 New Volumes and New Editions for 1918 
 
 Each volume bound, and with a most attraative piatorial xera^er 
 
 THE NBCROU&NCERS 
 LORD OF THE VORLD 
 THE KINO'S iCHIEVEHENT 
 BY WHAT AUTHORITY? 
 THE QUEEN'S TRAGEDY 
 THE MIRROR OF SHALOTT 
 RICHARD RAYNAL, SOLITARY 
 THE LIOHT INVISIBLE 
 THE SENTIMENTALISTS 
 AN AYERAOE MAN 
 
 A WINNOVINO 
 
 THE CONVENTIONALISTS 
 
 THE DAVN OF ALL 
 
 ODDSFISH I 
 
 NONE OTHER QODS 
 
 LONELINESS 
 
 INITIATION 
 
 COME RACKl COMB ROPE i 
 
 THE COWARD 
 
 THE LORDSHIP OF LOYB 
 
 THE OREEN PATCH 
 
 MARIA 
 
 HAOPIE 
 
 SHARROW 
 
 THE DESERT DREAMERS 
 
 THE WILL OF ALLAH 
 
 SWEET LIFE 
 
 AFTSRWARSS 
 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hngh BeuBon 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
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 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hngh Benson 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 Baroness iron Hutten 
 Baroness Ton Hutten 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 
 «3 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 1/9 N«t NOVBLS^co«. 
 
 FLPVER OF ORABS 
 
 THE WAX IH&0S 
 
 THE H&EING OF A SOUL 
 
 SANDS OF QOLD 
 
 THE SXRAIOHT RACE 
 
 THE LURE 6f THE DESERT 
 
 MAROUERITE'S WONDERFUL TEAR 
 
 TWO IN A TENT— AND JANE 
 
 HILARY ON HER OWN 
 
 PATRICIA PLAYS A PART 
 
 CANDYTUFT— I MEAN VERONICA 
 
 THE THIRD HISS WENDERBt 
 
 AN UNDRESSED HEROINE 
 
 THE VACILLATIONS CF HAZEL 
 
 CORPORAL JACQUES OF THE FOREIGN 
 
 LEGION 
 THE REi:F OF STARS 
 IN BLUE WATERS 
 fHE PEARL FISHERS 
 THE BLUE HORIZON 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE SEA 
 CONFESSIONS OF A LADIES' 
 THE UNDER SECRETARY 
 THE GAMBLERS 
 A WELSH SINGER 
 TORN SAILS 
 BY BERWEN BANKS 
 MEADOWSWEET 
 THE LEGION OF HONOUR 
 THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL 
 A BRIDE OF THE PLAINS 
 
 'Jf 
 
 Kathlyn Rhodei 
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 Mabel Baraei-Omndy 
 Mahel Bames-Gvimdy 
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 Mabel BaFnei-Grandy , 
 Mabel Barnes-Grnndy 
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 H. de Vere Stacpoole 
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 Allen Raino 
 Allen Raine 
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 Baronegg Orczy 
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 14 
 
HUTCHINSON'S 1/9^ Net NOVELS— co«. 
 
 [petticoat 607ERNHENT 
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 THE LAD WITH WINQS 
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 HEAVE 
 
 THE STRATINGS OF SANDT 
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 BUNN 
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 MRS. THOMPSON 
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 THE MYSTERIES OF MARSEILLES 
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 THALASSA 
 THE MAN WHO WON 
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 THE WEB OF THE SPIDER 
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 Baroness Orezy 
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 15 
 
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 CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE 
 
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