Adventures in Southern Seas | Page 7

used for the first time in her presence. Nothing would persuade her
to touch it. She regarded it as something beyond her comprehension, as
a fetish to be worshipped. When we had finished our meal we fell
asleep, worn out by the fatigues of the long journey.
And now began for me a life of dull monotony, with days devoted to
watching the ocean, and sleepless nights of anxiety and despair. I had
built a beacon upon the highest part of the cliff above our cave, to be
fired in case of sighting a ship, and every morning, with the dawn, I
mounted to this look-out to scan the horizon. Here I remained all day,
and when darkness drove me to the shelter of the cave I tried to
persuade myself that each night in this lonesome place would be my
last.
Had it not been for Moira I must have perished from want and neglect,
for I could not bring myself to do anything for my personal comfort lest
it might seem I had abandoned hope of rescue. But Moira was never
idle. She worked for both, and displayed such ingenuity in converting
to our use what Nature provided that we lacked nothing for our support.
To begin with, she made an oven of baked clay, in which to cook our
food. Next she plaited fishing lines from grass-tree fibre, and fashioned
hooks from the bones of slaughtered birds and animals, to catch the fish
which abounded near the rocks. With the aid of my Sailor's knife she
made a bow and arrows to shoot the hopping animals, the flesh of
which when roasted resembled venison, while their fur-coated skins
made us warm sleeping mats. She even succeeded, after much labour,
in constructing a canoe, in which to paddle along the coast, and
sometimes, when it was calm, for some distance out to sea; nor did she
appear to regret the loneliness of our lives. But I could not bring myself
to take part in her work. Hour after hour, in moody silence, I paced the
cliff beside the beacon, scanning the ocean, and speculating upon my
chances of rescue.
If I had not been so absorbed in my selfish thoughts I might possibly
have prevented a catastrophe which afterward caused me much
self-reproach. Moira had more than once told me that food had

mysteriously disappeared from a cave in which she kept a store of meat
for our use, and she showed me where the rocks in front of this cave
had been scraped of seaweed and mussel-shells as though by the
passage of some cumbersome body. But I gave no heed to her anxieties,
and although she urged me to shift our camp I would not leave the
beacon lest a ship might pass during my absence.
Of the dreadful consequences which followed my selfishness it now
only remains for me to tell.
CHAPTER IV
THE SEA SPIDER
I was occupied one midday, as usual, scanning the horizon from the top
of the cliff near the beacon in search of a passing vessel, when I noticed
Moira urging her canoe toward the shore at a rapid pace. In the wake of
the canoe a disturbance of the water betokened the presence of some
denizen of the deep, and Moira's action in making for the rocks at top
speed betrayed her terror of whatever it was that followed her. Hastily
descending the cliff I ran to her assistance, when I saw Moira spring on
to a flat rock upon which she generally landed from her canoe. At the
same moment a snaky tentacle rose out of the sea and caught her, while
other tentacles quickly enveloped her. The monster now dragged its
shiny bulk upon the rock, and except in a nightmare surely no man had
beheld such a creature before. It resembled a monstrous spider, but out
of all proportion to anything in Nature. Its eyes, like white saucers with
jet black centres, stared from its flat head, and the tentacles with which
it seized its prey were provided with suckers to hold what they fastened
upon.
Even in her extremity Moira thought more of my safety than her own.
"Go back!" she cried. "You cannot help me. The sea devil has the
strength of ten men."
Not heeding her warning I continued to advance to her assistance but as
I approached the sea-spider drew back into its native element, and
presently sank with its prey beneath the waves.

In my first feeling of dismay for what had happened, I could not
believe that Moira had been taken from me, and as I remembered my
ingratitude to her and thought of how surly I had become, absorbed in
my own trouble, I threw myself down upon the rocks in