"Well, anyway," Ralph Addington went on, "it's barbarous living like
this. And we want to be prepared for anything." His gaze left Frank
Merrill's face and traveled with a growing significance to each of the
other three. "Anything," he repeated with emphasis. "We've got enough
truck here to make a young Buckingham Palace. And we'll go mad sitting
round waiting for those air-queens to pay us a visit. How about it?"
"It's an excellent idea," Frank Merrill said heartily. "I have been on
the point of proposing it many times myself."
However, they seemed unable to pull themselves together; they did
nothing that day. But the next morning, urged back to work by the
harrying monotony of waiting, they began to clear a space among the
trees close to the beach. Two of them had a little practical building
knowledge: Ralph Addington who had roughed it in many strange countries;
Billy Fairfax who, in the San Francisco earthquake, had on a wager built
himself a house. They worked with all their initial energy. They worked
with the impetus that comes from capable supervision. And they worked as
if under the impulse of some unformulated motive. As usual, Honey Smith
bubbled with spirits. Billy Fairfax and Pete Murphy hardly spoke, so
close was their concentration. Ralph Addington worked longer and harder
than anybody, and even Honey was not more gay; he whistled and sang
constantly. Frank Merrill showed no real interest in these proceedings.
He did his fair share of the work, but obviously without a driving
motive. He had reverted utterly to type. He spent his leisure writing a
monograph. When inspiration ran low, he occupied himself doctoring
books. Eternally, he hunted for the flat stones between which he pressed
their swollen bulks back to shape. Eternally he puttered about, mending
and patching them. He used to sit for hours at a desk which he had
rescued from the ship's furniture. The others never became accustomed to
the comic incongruity of this picture - especially when, later, he
virtually boxed himself in with a trio of book-cases.
"Wouldn't you think he was sitting in an office?" Ralph Addington said.
"Curious about Merrill," Honey Smith answered, indulging in one of his
sudden, off-hand characterizations, bull's-eye shots every one of them.
"He's a good man, ruined by culturine. He's the bucko-mate type
translated into the language of the academic world. Three centuries ago
he'd have been a Drake or a Frobisher. And to-day, even, if he'd
followed the lead of his real ability, he'd have made a great financier,
a captain of industry or a party boss. But, you see, he was brought up
to think that book-education was the whole cheese. The only ambition he
knows is to make good in the university world. How I hated that college
atmosphere and its insistence on culture! That was what riled me most
about it. As a general thing, I detest a professor. Can't help liking
old Frank, though."