Adventure stories; Islands -- Fiction; Love stories; Shipwrecks -- Fiction
"Tell me about it. Where was it? What was it? Tell me everything," she
begged. He took her arm and together they proceeded toward their
wild home.
"After breakfast I'll take you around the bend and prove to you my
valor."
"But I cannot wait and, besides, you have proved your valor. Do tell me
where the blood came from."
"That awful thing plunged from the underbrush upon me so suddenly that I
was almost paralyzed," he said soberly. "I didn't have much time to
think, and I don't know what I should have done if it had not been for
this excellent club, which I had cut for a rather inglorious purpose.
With one of the very best strokes a golfer ever made I cracked
his skull."
"His skull!"
"Likewise his neck. Then I cut his throat."
"Oh, Hugh!" breathlessly.
"And I'm going back after breakfast to carve him up into roasts, steaks
and soups enough to last us for a month."
"Oh, it must have been something gigantic. Was it a rhinoceros?" she
cried ecstatically.
"Rhinoceros soup!" he exclaimed in disgust. She was properly contrite.
"I'll tell you what I killed, if you'll promise to endure the shock--and
not tell any one else." He placed his lips close to her little ear and
whispered in awe-struck tones, "A turtle!"
"A turtle! Why, a baby could kill a turtle. You are no longer a hero.
Enough to last a month! Hugh Ridgeway, are you delirious?" she exclaimed
in fine scorn.
"Wait till you see him. He weighs a ton," he said proudly.
After their breakfast of nuts, fruit and water they started for the
little beach, Lady Tennys vastly excited. Her exclamations on seeing the
sea monster amused Hugh beyond measure.
"I never dreamed a turtle could be so immense," she cried. "This one
must be a thousand years old."
"If he is, we'll have tough steaks," observed he grimly. Later on he
carved several fine steaks from the turtle and cleaned the upper shell
carefully, wisely concluding to retain it for the usefulness it was sure
to afford sooner or later. "There is one thing to be done," said he,
when they sat down to rest. "I must climb up that mountain and plant a
white flag to show that we are here if a ship should pass. I'll do that
as soon as I have rested, provided I can find anything white that is
large enough to be seen from a distance."
She looked far out over the harbor for a minute, a tinge of red running
to her ears.
"A handkerchief would be too small, wouldn't it?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so," he answered glumly.
Soon afterward she left him and went to the cave, bidding him to await
her return. When she came back she carried in her hand a broad piece of
white cloth, which she laid before him on the grass. There was a look of
modest reluctance in her eyes when he glanced quickly up at them. A
cherished underskirt, ripped ruthlessly from waistband to ruffle, making
one broad white flag of the finest texture, was her offering.
"Use that, Hugh." She could not resist smiling as she pointed to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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