OCR Text |
Show i J (DqbEN AMIS WILLIAMS 1 STI K) AMIS WILUSMb I ... , 1 ZX II w. w. u. arvtcr CHAPTER XV Continued 16 George caught her to him, held her close, the thin muscles in his arms tightening in nervous spasms. Then George freed himself and stood erect again and turned to Richard, while he still held Mary's arm like an owner in possession. He spoke haltingly. "I'm sorry, Cap'n Corr," he said. -1 was wrong." He coughed twice. "You must lie down," she said. "I'll tuck you in. You're cold and sick and tired." "Come." He tugged at her. "I'm not tired. I'm strong now, Mary." The cabin was small, with a high bunk against the ship's side, a lockfast lock-fast at one end, drawers beneath the bunk, a seat and a drop-desk where his Bible and his two or three other books lay. George shut the door and turned to her and caught her hands and whispered hoarsely: "You do love me, Mary?" She said mechanically: "Of course 1 UU. He threw up his head, half laughing. laugh-ing. "There's no 'of course' about it!" he cried. "I know you do, now; but I never knew what it meant before, be-fore, Mary. I love you too, today. I always have, without knowing it. I love you, Mary." "I know you do, George dearl I know you do!" ' Then George began to cough again, and had to release her; and she stood, watching him as remotely remote-ly as she watched herself, thinking how little he was, and thin, and weak, and frail. He coughed and coughed, half-litting half-litting on the bunk, clinging to the edge of it behind him with both hands, trying to stand, till he began be-gan to bow forward; and she realized real-ized that he was slipping down, lower low-er and lower. Then suddenly be was a sprawled heap, all legs and thin arms in a coat too big for him on the floor at her feet She was strong enough to lift him, with what help he could give, into the bunk; and to wipe his stained lips gently, and to loose his garments gar-ments and take off his shoes and cover him. She brought blankets from her own bed to warm him; but when she felt his body under the blankets he was cold, cold, cold. Sometime, minutes later or hours later, Peter came down to speak to her. He stood in the doorway, asked warily: "What happened?" "George is sick." "What happened to him?" "Nothing. I think he caucht cold. He started coughing." "Anything upset him?" "No, no. He's just sick, Peter." Peter said, watching her narrowly: narrow-ly: "Dick's gone crazy!" She looked up at him in quick concern. "Crazy as a coot," he said, in a fretful anger. "He came on deck and piled every stitch on her. He just said he was in a hurry to get home." Richard did not come below for dinner or for supper. CHAPTER XVI Mary stayed beside George's bunk all that night. She thought the motion mo-tion of the ship had eased. There was no longer much roll. Once next day Mary went up the companion-way. companion-way. She saw, standing somewhat sheltered by the companion, that the great seas astern were forever about to overtake them. Solid water piled up behind them higher and higher, seemed to hang above them for a while, moving nearer and nearer, near-er, till its crest broke into wind-driven wind-driven foam, and the mass subsided. There were two men at the wheel, fighting it hard. Peter came to Richard's side and shouted something; some-thing; but Richard, staring stonily ahead, did not even nod. Peter turned to the companion, and Mary backed down into the cabin with him following. He said, hoarse with panic: "He's crazy, I tell you." She saw that he was shaking with simple fear; but she was not afraid. No emotion could touch her now. She went in to George, to sit beside be-side him, holding his hand. He would be better when the sun shone again and they were all warm. She thought she had been cold for weeks, could not remember when she had not been still with cold. Time passed. At intervals, Peter or Mat Forbes came below for a brief moment mo-ment of rest in their cabin across from George's. The lamps were lighted day and night, swinging and flaring crazily; but night ran into day without division. She thought of Richard, never leaving the deck, his face set like granite, staring ahead yet seeing nothing, forcing the ship along this road that might have death at the end like a man fleeing blindly from something dreadful. She knew what U was from which he fled. Her thoughts kept him company, hovered hov-ered over him, wished she might comfort him, while the tortured Venturer drove on and on. Disaster struck them in that hour between midnight and dawn when men are at low ebb. For it was then a sea overtook the Venturer, solid water like a wall, so high that it becalmed the fore course; and before the topsails could lift her it came aboard over the stern. The mass of it boiled through the after house; the stern was pressed down by the weight, and the ship's way checked. Then, as the itrn rose, the water swirled and eddied aouut the decks like a school of fish meshed in a net trying try-ing this way and that to be free. It tore out bulwarks here and there. It ripped one of the boats from the gripes and left it hanging stern down aguinst the ship's side, battering bat-tering to splinters there. When that sea caught them, Mat Forbes and Gibbons were at the wheel together, but Gibbons was torn away by the solid water and flung forward head overheels. One of his booted feet smashed through a pane in the skylight; and his foot in the hole it had made and held his body hanging head down. Mat Forbes held to the wheel. Richard and Peter were saved by the lifelines life-lines to which they clung; and the watch on deck forward had warning enough to give them time to grab at hand-holds. As the stern lifted, Richard leaped through water that was still knee deep to help Mat with his one good arm. The Venturer had begun iu uiuai.ii io, out me ioreiopmas; staysail helped pay her off; and they held her. The splitting crack when the foretopmast broke a foot above the cap warned Richard what was happening forward. The stick as it fell caught Eddie Few a sidewise crack that stunned him or killed him outright. He slid overboard as the great sea, sullenly relinquishing the attack, drew off from the decks of the Venturer. Gibbons freed himself from the skylight and, heedless of his lacerated lacerat-ed leg, returned to duty at the wheel. Richard kept the wheel with him, and since Peter was useless he 3 "Mary Richard's dead." sent Mat Forbes to clear the wreckage wreck-age forward. Holding a precarious footing against the pressure of the screaming wind, Mat cut away the topgallantmast and let it go overside; over-side; and under his driving, men secured the fragment of the topmast to stop its banging, and caught the tangled web of rigging and controlled con-trolled it with many lashings. The reefed foresail began to draw again, they got other useful rags of canvas on her; and an hour after that great sea, Richard went below to reassure Mary, he had the Venturer in hand. In that hour the gale, having done its worst for their destruction, had somewhat relented. The pressure of the wind began to ease, and before be-fore daylight, though the seas still were mountainous, the immediate danger was over. Later that day they dropped anchor an-chor in a large bay which Peter identified as Hoakes Bay. Here Richard Rich-ard planned to repair the Venturer. Next morning after breakfast was served, Richard was asleep, and Peter Pe-ter did not wake him. "We're better bet-ter off if he stays asleep," he said harshly. "He'll wreck us before he's through. He's crazy!" Weariness was on them all, crushing them; and after they had eaten, and after Mary had warmed George's bed with hot water in the jugs again, they all slept. It was midaftcrnoon before Richard roused, and waked others, and the work of repairing damage began. They lay three days in Hoakes Bay; and most of the time the wind held steady and boisterously strong, and the cold ate into them deaden-ingly. deaden-ingly. But on the second day the sun shone fitfully between spats of rain; and when George saw the sun in his cabin window, he wished to go on deck. Mary and Tommy helped him up the companionway; and on her arm he moved out of the shade of the after house forward into the open waist of the ship. Mary saw one of the ship's boats on its way to the shore; and when Isaiah Joined them, Mary asked where the men were going. "Mate's gone to get some fresh meat," he said, "and to look for a chance to fill our water casks. Island's Is-land's full of wild hogs, thin as a deer, not a mite of fat on 'em anywhere. any-where. You'd think you was eating veal. Real sweet meat" "You've been here before?" His Adam's apple pumped violently. violent-ly. "Well, you might say! I've heard my pa tell about it, too. It used to be there was a lot of ships come here for seals, skins and blubber blub-ber and the like. They don't come so much now. Not seals enough to pay you for the trouble, nor whales (either." He peered off across the water through narrowed eyes. George, looking at the green slopes rising from the water, the brown-flanked mountains to the east, said: "It's all forest, isn't it?" Isaiah shook his head. "That's tussock grass you're looking at It grows ten-twelve feet tall, and from here it looks like trees for a fact but it ain't There ain't no trees to mention, just vines and bushes. Corkran stopped for a moment and spoke to George. "Reverence, you'll be needing sun on you, and warm days again to set you right." "I'll be fine, yes," George assented. as-sented. "Caught a little cold, that's all; started me coughing again." Mary, watching Corkran, saw the solicitude in his eyes. Then he turned to her, cheerful, smiling boldly. "Himself here, you and the sun are the medicine he needs," he said. "He has you, anyway." She felt as she often did with Corkran something unspoken pass between him and her; she thought incredulously that somehow he had guessed her secret and Richard's which George must never know. "He'll always have me," she said simply. "All of me. All my life." Her eyes met Corkran'! fairly. "Aye." he said. "You're fine." Mat Forbes summoned him. George looked after the sailor as he moved away. "You know, Mary, Corkran likes me." "1 know." "I think he'i the first man who ever liked me." Her hand lay in his arm. "I value his liking me; and yet by all the testa I know, he's a graceless, sinful man." He smiled at himself, at his own inconsistency. in-consistency. At dinner next day Richard said they would be ready to depart by evening if the wind served. "We might have to wait" he admitted. "It'll need to come some easterly to help us out of the Bay." He was sending both the remaining boats ashore to fill the casks from a pond the men had found not far from the beach; and he and Peter would take one of the guns from the cabin to try for geese as an addition to their stores. When a little later the boats were gone, the Venturer was almost deserted. de-serted. Mary became conscious as the afternoon drew on of a change in Vi . ; ,1 : i t i i . , , ,.u tu UJC VViUU, OI1U UUl UlIUUfeH MIC small square window above the bunk and saw that the ship had swung so that the southern shores of the bay instead of the northern were now on that starboard side. Richard had said an easterly wind would favor their departure from Hoakes Bay, and she thought with a lift of spirits that they would depart de-part tonight as soon as the boats returned. When after a while she heard the first boat bump the ship's side, something in her quickened. She would be glad to be away, glad to come north out of this rotting cold and be warm again. She heard feet on deck, and listened lis-tened for Richard's voice. She heard Peter giving orders; then the creak of the windlass as the first cask of water was swung aboard. Someone came down the companion compan-ion into the after cabin, and she thought it was Richard, and wondered won-dered whether he would come to the door here to speak to them. Richard was coming into the main cabin now, passing the head of the table. She heard his steps, and looked through the door and saw not Richard but Peter. Peter went into the cabin which he and Mat Forbes shared; and after a minute or two he came out with his arms full of his belongings and carried them through the door into the common room aft Into Richard's cabin! She stared after him and her heart began to pound. She rose, and George waked and asked quickly: "What is it, Mary? Don t leave me. She nodded in submission, yet she stood in the door, waiting for Peter to appear again. Why was he in Richard's cabin? She could hear the sounds of his movement there. She began to tremble, not now with cold. She wished to call to Peter, and her lips were dry and her throat ached. Then he appeared. He did not speak. She forced herself to do so. She asked: "Peter where'! Richard?" He shook his head, not in negation, but in a sort of submission. He said: "Mary Richard'! dead." Mary for a moment could not move. She heard herself whispering monotonously: "No. No. No." She knew she was shaking her head in a gesture of denial, a refusal to believe. be-lieve. Richard could not be dead. He had been so alive. So much in him had spoken deeply and clearly to so much in her, even when no words passed between them, nor even any glances. She braced her hands against the sides of the door, looking at Peter. She stood there, shaking her head like one whose mind Is adrift whispering, muttering: mutter-ing: "No, Peter. No, he isn't He can't be." But Peter told her soberly: "He is, Mary." Mary insisted, stupidly reiteiant: "Peter, he'i alive." (TO DE COSTISVED) |