"I accept that reply," said Hazel. "As for me, I have got a smattering of so many subjects, all full of incredible truths, that my faith in the impossibility of anything is gone. Ah! if James Watt was only here instead of John Hazel--James Watt from the Abbey with a head as big as a pumpkin--he would not have gone groping about the island, writing on rocks, and erecting signals. No; he would have had some grand and bold idea worthy of the proposition."
"Well, so I think," said Helen, archly; "that great man with the great head would have begun by making a kite a hundred yards high."
"Would he? Well, he was quite capable of it."
"Yes; and rubbed it with phosphorus, and flown it the first tempest, and made the string fast to--the island itself."
"Well, that is an idea," said Hazel, staring; "rather hyperbolical, I fear. But, after all, it is an idea."
"Or else," continued Helen, "he would weave a thousand yards of some light fabric, and make balloons; then he would stop the pitch-fountain, bore a hole in the rock near it, and so get the gas, fill the balloons, inscribe them with our sad story and our latitude and longitude, and send them flying all over the ocean--there!"
Hazel was amazed.
"I resign my functions to you," said he. "What imagination! What invention!"
"Oh, dear no, said Helen slyly; "acts of memory sometimes pass for invention, you know. Shall I tell you? when first you fell ill you were rather light-headed, and uttered the strangest things. They would have made me laugh heartily, only I couldn't--for crying. And you said that about kites and balloons, every word."
"Did I? then I have most brains when I have least reason, that's all."
"Ay," said Helen, "and other strange things--very strange and bitter things. One I should like to ask you about, what on earth you could mean by it; but perhaps you meant nothing, after all."
"I'll soon tell you," said Hazel; but he took the precaution to add, "provided I know what it means myself."
She looked at him steadily, and was on the point of seeking the explanation so boldly offered; but her own courage failed her. She colored and hesitated.
"I shall wait," said she, "till you are quite, quite well. That will be soon, I hope; only you must be good, and obey my prescriptions. Cultivate patience; it is a wholesome plant; bow the pride of that intellect which you see a fever can lay low in an hour. Aspire no more beyond the powers of man. Here we shall stay unless Providence sends us a ship. I have ceased to repine. And don't you begin. Dismiss that problem altogether; see how hot it has made your poor brow. Be good now, and dismiss it; or else do as I do--fold it up, put it quietly away in a corner of your mind, and, when you least expect, it will pop out solved."
(Oh, comfortable doctrine! But how about Jamie Watt's headaches? And why are the signs of hard thoughts so much stronger in his brow and face than in Shakespeare's? Mercy on us, there is another problem.)
Hazel smiled, well pleased, and leaned back, soothed, silenced, subdued, by her soft voice and the exquisite touch of her velvet hand on his hot brow; for, woman-like, she laid her hand like down on that burning brow to aid her words in soothing it. Nor did it occur to him just then that this admonition, delivered with a kind maternal hand, maternal voice, came from the same young lady who had flown at him like a wild-cat with this very problem in her mouth. She mesmerized him, problem and all; he subsided into a complacent languor, and at last went to sleep, thinking only of her. But the topic had entered his mind too deeply to be finally dismissed. It returned next day, though in a different form. You must know that Hazel, as he lay on his back in the boat, had often, in a half-drowsy way, watched the effect of the sun upon the boat's mast; it now stood, a bare pole, and at certain hours acted like the needle of a dial by casting a shadow on the sands. Above all, he could see pretty well by means of this pole and its shadow when the sun attained its greatest elevation. He now asked Miss Rolleston to assist him in making this observation exactly.
She obeyed his instructions, and the moment the shadow reached its highest angle, and showed the minutest symptom of declension, she said, "Now," and Hazel called out in a loud voice:
"Noon!"
"And forty-nine minutes past eight at Sydney," said Helen, holding out her chronometer; for she had been sharp enough to get it ready of her own accord.
Hazel looked at her and at the watch with amazement and incredulity.
"What?" said he. "Impossible. You can't have kept Sydney time all this while."
"And pray why not?" said Helen. "Have you forgotten that once somebody praised me for keeping Sydney time; it helped you, somehow or other, to know where we were."
"And so it will now," cried Hazel, exultingly. "But no! it is impossible.
We have gone through scenes that-- You can't have wound that watch up without missing a day."
"Indeed but I have," said Helen. "Not wind my watch up! Why, if I was dying I should wind my watch up. See, it requires no key; a touch or two of the fingers and it is done. Oh, I am remarkably constant in all my habits; and this is an old friend I never neglect. Do you remember that terrible night in the boat, when neither of us expected to see the morning--oh, how good and brave you were!--well, I remember winding it up that night. I kissed it, and bade it good-by. But I never dreamed of not winding it up because I was going to be killed. What! am I not to be praised again, as I was on board ship? Stingy! can't afford to praise one twice for the same thing."
"Praised!" cried Hazel excitedly; "worshiped, you mean. Why, we have got the longitude by means of your chronometer. It is wonderful! It is providential! It is the finger of Heaven! Pen and ink, and let me work it out."
In his excitement he got up without assistance, and was soon busy calculating the longitude of Godsend Isle.
