“You will pay for this, you snake!” he yelled, foaming at the mouth and shaking his fist at her. “I will drink your heart's blood! Remember what Joe Fernandez says. I will come back here and get you,--Oh, I will get you,--and when I am through with you your dog of a lover may have what is left. I will cut you to pieces! I swear it--I swear it! Hear my oath! You double-crossed me! You squealed on me! I will come back, and I will drink your heart's blood! I swear it!”
He spat in her direction as he was dragged away with the rest of the gang. Through his glittering, bloodshot eyes he saw the cool, derisive sneer on her red lips. He had failed, however, to note the keen, appraising look with which she searched the faces of his baffled, glowering companions. In that long, tense look she had seen dawning comprehension change to conviction; she had read his doom, so she could, in perfect security, give him that scoffing, heartless smile to take with him on the journey from which he was never to return.
Fifteen men went out to “the Island” that afternoon. From that day, the authorities provided weekly rations for that number of men. To this day they are ignorant of the fact that there are but fourteen mouths to feed.
In the cool of a balmy January evening, following what had been the hottest day the castaways had experienced since coming to Trigger Island, a group of men and women sat upon the Governor's porch. There was no moon, but the sky was speckled with millions of stars.
Olga Obosky, sitting on the squared log that served as a step, leaned back against the awning post, her legs stretched out in luxurious abandon. She was fanning herself, and her breath came rapidly, pantingly. Now and then she patted her moist face with a handkerchief.
“How warm you are, Olga,” said Ruth, who sat beside her. “And you must be dreadfully tired.”
“I am hot, but I am not tired,” replied the other. “I could dance all night, my dear, without tiring. Did you really like the children, Ruth?”
“They were lovely. You have done wonders with them.”
“Regular Isadora Duncan stuff,” sighed Peter Snipe, drawing lazily at his pipe. “Woodland nymphs, phantom pixies floating on the wind, zephyrs in the guise of fairies, dreams come true,--my dear Olga, you are a sorceress. You change clods into moonbeams, you turn human beings into vapours, you cast the mantle of enchantment over the midsummer night, and we see Oberon, Titania and all the rest of them disporting on the breeze. And to think that only this afternoon I saw all of those gawky girls working in the fields, their legs the colour of tan bark, with sandals that looked like canal-boats, skirts made of hemp,--just regular kids. And you transform them tonight into gleaming cloudlets to float upon the ambient atmosphere--”