"You were so tired," said the girl, laying her other maimed hand on his head.
He could feel her wince as she did so. He had opened a cocoanut the night before. The broken shell lay at hand. He lifted her up, carried her to the bank of the brook, set her poor, torn feet in the cool water, and, with the shell, laved her hands and knees. It was all he could do. He had nothing else. Then he bent and kissed her lips, her hands, her feet. He strained her to his breast.
"You shall not walk a step or carry a thing until those precious hands and feet are well."
"They are well now since you kissed them. See, I feel no pain."
She took him in her arms, in turn. What mattered that the white hands left little blood marks on his shoulder?
"First, you must eat," said the man, "and then you must tell me how you came."
He pressed upon her the cooked food and fruit which she herself had forced the islanders to provide.
"We may not get any more when this is gone," she said.
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," he quoted recklessly; "eat now."
She did not understand, but the command was simple, and she obeyed. Whatever her lover said was right, of course.
"Now, tell me," he said, when they had stayed their hunger, "how did you come here?"
"They put me in the house with the two women to guard me after they had lowered you down here. I was to be married to Hano today. I would have died rather than that. I had told you I would join you here. I persuaded the women. They like you, Beek-man. They don’t like Hano. They let me escape. I went to your house, and brought the bright-tipped staff and the thing that cuts. I crept down the brook where you had come up."
"I struck him with the staff, and--" She shuddered and hid her face in her hands.
"Don’t cry over that," said the man; "in all probability you only stunned him. He will be all right by now."
"I hope so. He had done nothing to me, but if the whole island had stood in my way, I was determined to come to you."
"I climbed over the rock wall. At first I thought I would push it down, but it was too much for me. Besides, the stones might have fallen upon you. I had a rope with a piece of wood at the end. I fastened the wood in the rock and came down. The rope cut my hands."