“You can have my notebook if you like,” said Tick sullenly. “It’s solid leather, that cover. Pull that gadget down and those rings open and the pages come out.”
“Please, if you will allow me, I will keep my knife,” said Tack.
“You may keep your knife,” said Lalouette. “But remember that we may all need it, your knife.”
“Naturally, Mademoiselle Lalouette.”
“Who does she think—” began Tick.
“Shush!” said Gargantua.
“No offense, Lalouette?” said Tick.
“Go now, please. Go!”
They went. Tick found a spring of fresh water. Tack reported the presence of wild pigs. Gargantua returned with an armful of wreckage; wood spiked with rusty nails; a massive thing like a broken mast in which was embedded an enormous iron pin.
“Light the fire,” said Lalouette. “You, Gargantua, make a spear of that long piece of iron. Make it sharp with stones. Then tie it tight to a stick. So you can kill pigs. You and you, Tick and Tack, go up to the rocks. I have seen birds coming down. Where there are birds there are eggs. You are light, you are dancers. Find eggs. Better still, find birds. When they sit on their eggs they are reluctant to go far away from their nests. Approach calmly and quietly, lie still, and then take them quickly. Do you understand?”
“Beautifully,” said Tack.
Tick said nothing.
“Better get that fire going first of all,” said Gargantua.
Lalouette said, “True. Boats must pass and they will see the smoke. Good, light the fire.”
“If I could find another bit of iron, or something heavy,” said Gargantua, “I could do better than this spiky sort of thing, Miss. I dare say I could bang it out to a bit of a blade once I got the fire going good and hot.”
“How?” said Lalouette.
“I was ’prentice to a blacksmith, ’m,” said Gargantua. “My dad was a smith, before the motorcars came in.”
“What? You have skill then, in those great hands of yours?”
“Yes’m. Not much. A bit, but not much.”
“Then make your ‘bit of a blade,’ Gargantua.”
“Thank you, ’m.”
“Can you make me a comb?”
“Why, I daresay yes. Yes, I should say I could make you a bit of a comb, ’m. But nothing fancy,” said Gargantua, shutting one eye and calculating. “Something out of a little bit of wood, like.”
“Do so, then.”
“Yes’m. If Mr. Tack doesn’t mind me using his knife.”
“Could you also build a house, Gargantua?”
“No ’m, not a house; but I daresay I might put you up a bit of a shed, like. Better be near the drinking water, though. And I shouldn’t be surprised if there was all sorts of bits of string along the beach. Where there’s sea there’s fish. And don’t you worry—I’ll bring you home a nice pig, only let me get that fire going nice and bright. And as for fish,” said Gargantua, plucking a nail out of a plank and making a hook of it between a finger and thumb—“sharpen that up and there you are.”
“Clever!” said Tick, with malice.
“But he always was clever,” said Tack tonelessly, but with a bitter little smile. “We already know.”
Gargantua blinked, while Lalouette said, “Be quiet, please, both of you.”
Then Gargantua nodded and growled, “That’s right. You be quiet.”
Tick and Tack exchanged glances and said nothing until Lalouette cried, “Come! To work!”—when Tick muttered, “Who the hell do they think they are, giving orders?”
“Come on now, you two!” shouted Gargantua.
I believe it was then that the two midgets Tick and Tack began to plot and conspire against Gargantua the Horror, and I am convinced that they too in their dwarfish way were in love with Lalouette.
They followed Lalouette’s instructions, and struck sparks out of Gargantua’s lighter to kindle powdery flakes of dry driftwood whittled with Tack’s big-bladed knife. Tick blew the smolder into flame and the men fed the fire until it blazed red-hot, so that Gargantua, having found a thick slab and a pear-shaped lump of hard rock for his anvil and hammer, beat his iron spike into a good spearhead which he lashed to a long, strong pole. Then they had a crude but effective pike, with which Gargantua killed wild pigs.
Porcosito is not called Pig Island without reason. It used to be overrun with swine, bred from a pedigree boar and some sows that Sir John Page sent to Mexico in 1893, in the Ponce de Leon, which was wrecked in a squall. Only the pigs swam ashore from that shipwreck. Porcosito seems to be an unlucky island.
Gargantua hunted ruthlessly. The pigs were apathetic. The boars charged—to meet the spear. The four freaks ate well. Tick and Tack fished and caught birds, gathered eggs and crabs. Lalouette directed everything and at night, by the fire, told them stories and sang to them, recited all the poetry she could remember, and dug out of her memory all she had ever read of philosophy.
I believe that they were happy then; but it makes an odd picture: the truncated beauty, the stunted dancers and the ugliest man on earth, grouped about a flickering fire while the songs of Schubert echo from the rocks and the sea says hush . . . hush . . . on the beach. I can see the sharp, keen faces of the midgets; and the craggy forehead of the giant wrinkled in anguish as he tries to understand the inner significance of great thoughts expressed in noble words. She told them stories, too, of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome—of Regulus, who went back to Carthage to die; of the glorious dead at Thermopylae, and of the wise and cunning Ulysses, the subtlest of the Greeks, who strove with gods and came home triumphant at last. She told them of the triumph of Ulysses over Circe, the sorceress who turned men into beasts; and how he escaped with his crew from the cave of the one-eyed giant Cyclops. He was colossal; the men were small. Ulysses drilled his sailors to move like one man and, with a sharpened stick, blinded the giant and escaped.
She let them comb her hair. The French dwarf Tack was skillful at this, and amusing in conversational accompaniment to the crackling of the hair and the fire. Tick hated his partner for this. Yet the gigantic hands of Gargantua were lighter on her head than the hands of Tick or Tack—almost certainly because the little men wanted to prove that they were strong, and the giant wanted to demonstrate that he was gentle.
It was Gargantua who combed Lalouette’s beautiful bright hair, evening after evening, while Tick and Tack sat exchanging looks. No words; only looks.
Sometimes the little men went hunting with Gargantua. Alone, neither Tick nor Tack could handle the heavy spear. But it must be remembered that they were a dancing team, trained to move together in perfect accord. So, while Tick directed the forepart of the shaft, Tack worked close behind him, and they put their combined, perfectly synchronized strength and agility into a dangerous leap-and-lunge. Once they killed a fat boar. This must have made them confident of their power to kill.
This is not all guesswork. I have ground for my assumption, in what Lalouette wrote in Tick’s loose-leaf notebook, holding the gold pencil in her teeth and guiding it with her lips, before she bit the paper into a ball and pushed it with her tongue into her grouch bag.
It takes courage and determination to kill a wild boar with a spear. A boar is fearless, powerful, unbelievably ferocious, and armored with hard hide and thick muscle. He is wickedly obstinate—a slashing fury, a ripping terror—two sickles on a battering-ram, animated by a will to kill, uninhibited by fear of death.
Having killed a boar, Tick and Tack, in their pride, resolved to kill Gargantua.
Lalouette says that she, unwittingly, gave them the idea, when she told them the story of Ulysses and Cyclops.