"Why didn't she come out, then, when she saw me? She clapped her hands in front of her face and shrank away. My first impulse was to go in, and then it flashed over me in a minute. Besides, you heard what Hassan Bey said—that the lepers are nearly all Cretans."
"Do you mean to say you're yust going away without going back to comfort her or say a word to her?"
"But since she showed plainly that she wanted to avoid me? I tell you, old man, I'm doing the kindest thing for both of us. It's incurable, you know, and even if it wasn't, my mother and my governor would never consent. I should have had a circus with them, anyway."
Lindbohm walked to the taffrail and looked dreamily away toward Canea. There was an unexpected roar of a great whistle—a boat's whistle is always unexpected—and the anchor chain began to rattle and click.
"It takes a long time to get the anchor up, doesn't it?" asked Curtis.
Lindbohm made no reply, but when the chain finally ceased to rattle, he asked in a low tone, and without looking at his companion:
"So you give her up, eh?"
"Why, of course, old man. Seems to me I've made that plain enough!"
The ringing of a bell seemed to awaken the sleeping ship. She shuddered as the machinery started. There was a patter of hastening feet on the deck and a great churning, as the wheel made its first revolutions in the water. Shore boats were cast off, with much shouting and gesticulating of picturesque Cretans, standing erect in their tiny craft, violently rocked by the agitated sea. As the ship moved majestically away, a few boats clung to her side like whiffets to a stately stag. One by one they dropped off and drifted astern. Lindbohm turned and looked about the deck. Spying his satchel, he picked it up and walked to the ladder, at the foot of which one boat was still tied. Curtis ran to him and seized him by the shoulder.
"Where are you going, old man?"
"To Panayota."
"But this is madness. You can't do anything. I tell you the girl is a leper."
The Swede, muttering "I'll yust take my chances," continued down the steps and took his seat in the boat.
Curtis stood watching him as he was rowed away, hoping against hope that he would turn around and wave his hand or make some sign. But no, he sat up very straight, his arms hanging a little out from his body, the back of his neck looking very broad and red. The straw hat leaped from his head. He caught it in midair, jammed it back and held it in place with one big hand.
And so Peter Lindbohm went back to his love—Peter Lindbohm, true knight and noble gentleman, with the heart of a lion and the soul of a child. As friend he was stanch even to his own seeming undoing, and made no moan; as lover, he was great enough to be faithful unto more than death, and for such there is a full reward. No sacrifice awaited him, but a long lifetime of peaceful joys. If Peter Lindbohm ever goes to war again, it will be in defense of wife and children.
And John Curtis, to whose romantic and brave nature there was attached an automatic brake of New England prudence, sailed away to his own land. And the last sound that he heard from Crete was the voice of the Swede's boatman singing:
From the bones of the Greeks upspringing.Who died that we might be free,And the strength of thy strong youth bringing,—Hail, Liberty, hail to thee!
He stood for a long time leaning over the rail, watching the receding isle.
As the land became more distant, it grew more beautiful. The purple haze of Greece settled upon the mountains. Curtis thought of Panayota as of a lovely Greek whom he had met in his dreams; he sighed and murmured:
I enter thy garden of roses,Beloved and fair Haidee!
A steward touched him on the shoulder and said in German: "Lunch is ready."
Curtis turned briskly around, and followed the man half the length of the deck, struggling to drag a sentence from the unfrequented German corner of his brain. At last it came:
"I am ready, too. This sea air makes one hungry."
He was glad to see there were genuine Frankfurters for lunch. He ordered a bottle of Rhine wine and talked German with the Captain. When he came up on deck to smoke his cigar, the ship was purring through a placid, opalescent sea, and Crete was a faint outline sketched against a gray-blue sky.
THE END.