Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [138]
"Tell us where it is," I said, "and we'll go there. You don't need to leave your canoe."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Someone might steal it."
He looked baffled: then urged us forward, between two warehouses and across a street to a two-and-a-half-story wooden house. The door of the house was open and before
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it stood two women and three children, all peering in through the doorway.
Our canoeman touched one of the women on the shoulder. She stifled a cry and whirled to face him.
At the sight of us, she pressed her hand to her lips and shrank back, drawing the children against her skirts. They were pretty little plump things, and I had the thought that has come to me, against my will, a thousand thousand times since then, whenever I see a sturdy child or a woman with a large arm or heavy buttocksthe thought that, if the need arose, that child or that woman would make good eating. No wonder the women were afraid of us!
"What's the matter, ma'am?" the canoeman asked. "I was told by Captain Nason to bring these people here, orders of Captain Furber, and Captain Dean's already been brought here."
"Oh," the woman said, "he frightened us to death, just the look of him. When he stood here and started to speak to us, we screamed and ran out. He went in. I think he's in the kitchen."
"Well, go on in," the canoeman said, "and take these two with you. Treat 'em the same way you'd want Captain Furber to be treated if he'd been cast away on Boon Island for a month."
"Only for twenty-four days," Neal said.
Mrs. Furber looked at Neal: looked away, then studied him carefully. "Only!" she said. "Only twenty-four days! You come in the house, right this minute!"
Captain Dean was in the kitchen, as Mrs. Furber had suspected. On the fire he had found an iron kettle filled with beef stew, and had forked out pieces of beef and turnips
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and potatoes, and had covered the top of the kitchen table with them to let them cool.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said to Mrs. Furber. "When you screamed and ran out, I figured the wise thing to do was to stay here instead of running after you and maybe frightening you and the children even more."
He looked at the children in what he doubtless thought was a genial manner; but I knew too well that he was entertaining the same understandable thought that had passed through my headthat they would be tenderer to eat than Chips Bullock had been.
Mrs. Furber's initial horror was passing. "You can't have all that beef and vegetables you've put out on the table," she said sternly. "And just because you're starved is no reason you shouldn't eat like human beings." She brought a bowl and three plates, forked a moderate amount from the table top to each plate; then put the remainder in the bowl.
"Now," she said, "that's all you can have!"
"Ma'am," Neal said. "I'll ask you to put us in the room where we'll stay. We'd better eat there."
"Well I never!" Mrs. Furber exclaimed.
Neal scratched himself deliberately, first his head: then his arm.
"Well," Mrs. Furber said, "we'll put you in the barn. There's three stalls and a summer oven, and lots of hay and blankets. When you're cleaned up, we'll move you to the house."
There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Furber opened it to admit three menDr. Packer and two barbers.
The doctor took one look at us, then beckoned us to
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pick up our plates and follow him. To Mrs. Furber he said, ''Bring us hot water as often as you can. And get tubs. If you've only got one, borrow two from the neighbors."
I can hear Dr. Packer's voice, after all these years, exclaiming over our sores and over our feet. "It's a miracle," he said over and over. "I've got to send word to Boston! Urine and oakum? Seaweed? God knows! But it's a miracle, all the same!"
Warmth, blankets, soft hay on which to lie, clean bodies, shorn heads, shaved