With the Russian's wild death cry still echoing in her senses Emily awoke a half-hour later to a vivid consciousness. She found herself lying in the protecting shade of the boat sail tent which Lavelle had erected for her habitation near the eastern side of the hill on the day after the landing. The scene upon which her eyes had closed flashed again across her vision and she sat up with a shudder.
The movement brought to her senses for the first time a realization of physical pain. Remembering the strength of spirit which had been given to her to stand upon fire she throttled the cry which sprang to her lips. Her suffering became precious to her even as the agony of travail is dear to a woman. Her eyes welled with hot tears.
Putting out a hand blindly she found the little canvas sandals. She picked them up and pressed them to her bosom. The charred heels and soles crumbled away at her touch. She kissed them with the impulse which would carry a warrior's lips to his colors. To her these pieces of canvas were the symbols of a faith which had sustained her in a trial which passed her understanding.
Looking downward at her feet, she found both of them bandaged. She had been dimly conscious of Lavelle doing this service for her. She recognized the bindings as pieces of the hem of her night robe with which she had bound his brow in the boat. A mysterious thrill went through her; her eyes overflowed.
The breeze lifted the edge of the tent and disclosed Lavelle to her view. She caught the canvas and held it back. He was just finishing the restepping of the signal mast. His back was toward her.
Straightening from his task to his full height and with one of his strong bare arms extended to the mast and the other hanging loosely at his side, he looked out over the sea to the southward. His tattered shirt and trousers still wet with sea water clung tightly to his lithe, powerful form. There was a challenge in the set of his head and in the grim line of his jaw. His attitude breathed of a man indomitable—one who, indeed, was master of his fate; the intrepid captain of his soul. His destiny would find him thus.
The woman in the tent watched this man in wondrous awe, nor could she know that his thoughts were alone of her at that moment—of a woman sanctified in his sight not alone by living fire, but also by the passion of a love unutterable. She saw the breeze toss the forelock of his dark brown hair. He started. She dropped the edge of the tent, realizing, without any amazement, that they two were alone in an empty, far-flung waste of the world. She laid her head down on her long coat which he had rolled into a pillow. She dared not speak.
During what seemed an interminable time, the woman in the tent heard Lavelle moving about outside, and, of a sudden, the singleness of his footfall brought Chang surging into her thoughts. A moment later Lavelle stood in the tent entrance, carrying food and drink. She sat up to behold in his face an expression which stabbed her with its pain.
"You are suffering, little woman," he said tenderly.
All she could do was shake her head that she was not. Discovering what it was she was holding tightly to her bosom he turned away. He understood.
Presently he pressed her to eat the meal he had prepared. Although it nearly choked her to swallow she ate and drank because he wished her to do so.
"What of Chang? Has he gone—gone away?" she dared to ask finally.
The man sitting in the tent entrance had his gaze fixed far away upon the relentless ocean's breast. He nodded his head sadly.
"God's benison be with him—the truest, the best friend it has ever been given to any man to know," Lavelle said, facing Emily. After a second's pause he went on in a tense voice:
"This treacherous earth—treacherous with the sea's treachery—opened at our feet down there like the snapping jaws of a monster. Chang went first. I put out a hand to save him. The jaws got me.
"It seemed very hard that the end should come like that—without even a moment to say good-by." Lavelle paused again. "You can have no idea," he resumed, "what a torment of waters is down there—waters filled with reeds and roots which catch at one's limbs and cling to them—like serpents.
"As we came up to—to snatch at the crust of shore—it crumbled at our touch. I could see the hill. You—you had just turned away. As I looked your head passed out of my sight. Then, we saw that—that fiend climb up here. We saw him stop and—and look back. I shouted—that is, I tried to shout, but I had no breath. I never was so weak in all—all my days. But whether he heard me or didn't he must have seen what had happened to us. He would never have dared come near you—if he hadn't.
"The earth broke under our hands again and again. The sea tore at us. There is a tremendous current under this island. I heard you cry for—for us to come to you. Chang heard you. But we were caught—struggling like two foolish animals in a trap. When the signal staff went down——Why, I think—I could not think. We saw you come to the edge of the hill there—heard you cry again, but the sea——"
Lavelle became silent. His eyes sought the great blue deeps below. Emily could not speak. Her soul was crying to comfort this man. The yearning of an unknown motherhood was in her heart.
"Like most sailor men—deep-water men——" he went on, "Chang could not swim. I imagine he must have found a foothold in one of the roots in the water. He caught me—suddenly—lifted me bodily, it seemed, up out of the sea—on to the shore. He was very powerful. I turned to help him. All was quiet up here. He shook his head and—and let go.
"'Go, master. Quick—go! Good-by, flen'. Good-by flor you!'
"A second only he floated. Then the sea sucked him—down. He went with a smile—unafraid. And I came to—to you—on the hill. You don't——"
His voice broke. He leaped to his feet and walked away. It is not a good thing that a man's tears shall be seen by a strange woman.
With the going down of that day's sun a long, heavy swell, accompanied by the lightest of breezes, set in from the southwest. It was an ominous sign to Lavelle, nor could he conceal this thought when he carried Emily's evening meal to her. She asked him to bring his food and eat it in the tent entrance.
The castaways ate their pitiable rations in silence, but before this short time passed the island was moving in concert with the heave of the sea.
A shocking, sense-stunning crash where a part of the western cliff slithered down into the deep sounded the end of the meal. While the roar was dying away the eyes of the man and woman met and held in a glance of understanding.
"This is—is the end?" Emily asked in a low voice.
"I think—it is not very far off, little woman," he answered. He told her this truth because he knew hers was a spirit unafraid. By it she knew that he knew and understood many things which words might not encompass.
"I thank you—so much," was her answer. She spoke with a frank gladness. But the slightest quaver was in her voice.
Lavelle left her to build up the signal fire. He felt certain that it was for the last time. It was to him the funeral pyre of a hope which died by the minute, and he laid on the fuel with unsparing hand. Some night-borne craft might by miracle see its gleam, yet the light of a moon in all the splendor of fullness lessened this remotest of possibilities to the barest minimum.
Although Lavelle was gone from the tent but a little while, it seemed an eternal time to the woman, who waited for his return. And when he came her eyes were dry; and she held out a hand for him to help her to her feet.
"I have no pain," she said, answering his protest. "I speak the truth. I wish to be out in the night—with you."
After the first step or two Emily walked freely and, indeed, the pain of her burns had passed away. The while Lavelle knelt to make a seat for her she stood sweeping the heavens with her luminous eyes. Across the northern sky a large star, falling, burst upon her vision.
"See!" she exclaimed, and then, turning toward him, she repeated Calpurnia's words to Cæsar:
"'When beggars die there are no comets seen;The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes!'"
"'When beggars die there are no comets seen;The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes!'"
It was a night made for life and love and the joys of living—not death; a night to set the soul singing in gladness of being. It seemed to have garnered the uttermost spaces of their brightest jewels to bedeck its violet cope and make it the harder for this man and woman to say farewell to mortality.
Save in the intervals when Paul went to replenish the fire he sat at Emily's side, and together they watched and listened to the majestic travailing of the weariless, pitiless deep.
It was not far from midnight when the sea tore away half of the meadow and the palm tree. This bit of earth floated in their sight for but a breath. It was; then it was not. Where it had been was a patch of leaping, roiling waters, white-fanged like wolves at a kill.
Emily put out a hand and took one of Paul's.
"The end—it will come—like that—quickly," she whispered. "I will—will not be afraid—I am sure—if you will let me hold your hand."
Paul Lavelle could make no answer save pressing the gentle hand in both of his. It was sufficient to comfort her. After a long silence she asked:
"Why are you not afraid?"
"I don't know," he answered simply, "unless it is because I can't believe—that a marvelous creation like mankind stops—with what we call death. I can't believe that wondrous beings—like you—and Chang, capable of the sublimest thoughts and impulses—come and go and are no more. Rather I think that what we are facing is 'Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.'"
Nor was Emily conscious of her hand clasping Paul Lavelle's with love's tightness in its pressure.
"My father believed as you," she began, only to stop short as she felt him start. She had ever been on her guard against speaking of her people to this man, for she knew his sensitiveness as to the past. But once had she made reference to the tragedy which embraced her life and his. That was in the boat when she had assailed him to save Rowgowskii from drowning. Now she knew not what else to say.
"Miss Granville," he said presently.
"No, no, please don't!" she protested. "Not that tone; not that distance. Call me friend, comrade—just as you have been doing these past few days. Call me Emily. It would please me; it would sound—like home to—to hear somebody call me by the old name once more."
"Emily," Lavelle went on, "I should like you to know what happened that night on theYakutat—the truth. If you——"
"No," she interrupted him. "If I say to you that—that I do not wish you to tell me, you will not misunderstand?"
"As you wish," he answered, but there was a chill in his voice.
"No, no!" she cried. "You do not have to tell me what happened. Don't you understand? I know. I know you to be brave—and true and upstanding. I know you acted as only one unafraid—fearless as you are, could have acted. And I thank God that he has given it to me to know you and—to understand!"
Her voice broke. Her eyes, swimming with tears, saw him turn toward the fire. A weight seemed lifted from him. She sensed the coming of a great peace to his soul.
A high dawn—one presaging storm—found the castaways standing beside the signal fire which swiftly smoldered into the ashes of hopelessness. The swell had increased during the morning hours. The hill now afforded a footing unsteadier than a laboring ship's deck. The breeze of the night continued light and steady.
With the first glimmer of day Lavelle went searching the sea. His gaze swung the horizon again and again, following the withdrawing mantle of night only to confront the old bitter emptiness of all the days that had gone before.
Lavelle's eyes kept seeking the distance, but Emily's, untrained, sought the sea at hand. So it was that her sight was the first to discover a sail barely two miles away to the south and west.
At the discovery her throat closed. She could not speak. She stood breathless, half in trance. Lavelle, turned to the eastward, felt her clutch his arm. He sent a glance whither she dumbly pointed.
"A sail!" he cried. "Saved! This means life, you brave, brave soul!"
He seized her by the arms and shook her as a boy meeting a boy playmate might have done. Her whole being thrilled at his touch. A glorious light of love came into her countenance, but he saw it not.
As he spoke to her he dropped her arms and his glance sprang away to find the sail again. Fixing it, Lavelle could not control his amazement. Emily saw a great seriousness succeed the expression of delight in his face and manner. A chill touched her new-born hope.
"What do you see, captain? What is it?"
"I don't know what to tell you. I am not sure yet. Still there is something strange——"
"Why, that ship——It is moving sideways!" she cried. "It is not sailing!"
Lavelle, indeed, was puzzled. The strange sail was an iron or steel bark of perhaps twelve hundred tons, hove to on the port tack. Her forecourse and foretopsails were set. The foretopgallantsail hung in its clewlines and buntlines. The maintopgallantsail and topsails were set and laid full aback against the mast. The main course was clewed up. The peak of the spanker had been let go and the gaff was flailing from side to side. She carried two skysails. These and the royals were furled. All of the headsails, with the exception of the foretopmast-staysail, were down and trailing away from the bowsprit and jibboom. None of the other staysails was set. She was laden and laboring hard. It seemed that the swell must roll the sticks out of her.
From the height at which they stood Lavelle and Emily could see her lie down with every heave of the sea and put her lee rail under.
Now, for a second, rolling deeper than she had before, Lavelle, from a new angle, confirmed what he had suspected from the beginning. Her wheel was deserted! Her decks were lifeless! She was in charge of herself!
The bark was rapidly drifting closer. Another fifteen minutes, Lavelle figured, would carry her by the island half a mile to the southward. It was a moment for quick decision. Emily read his purpose to swim to the bark.
"God alone knows, Emily, what mystery confronts us. But our only chance of life lies out there. It may be another trap, comrade, but we must hope. I feel that, for your sake, I must——"
"For our sakes," she interrupted him, but he did not seem to hear her. He was bending over, removing his shoes.
"I'll win back to you—I'll come for you if it be in——"
"It will not be in death, but in life."
Startled, eagerly he beheld the love-light in her eyes, only to turn quickly away. His heart throbbed as if it must burst. His tortured soul moaned in its yearning and passion to crush her to his breast. In the face of death he would have claimed her at this sign; gone out with his lips pressed to hers. In the face of life—the promise of living which the bark held forth—he, the pariah, said no to his desire.
His face was masked and cold as he turned toward her again, and the gold woman bent her head for shame. He broke out the boat mast and, carrying it over his shoulder, he held out his hand and led her swiftly down the hill. His hand was very cold. He set her a lookout point at the foot of the hill.
"Wait here," he said in a voice which sounded unlike him. "At no second lose sight of the bark. Be on your guard. If anything should happen to the island cling to this mast. It will keep you up. I'll come for you—I'll pick you up."
His gray eyes were glistening with suppressed emotion.
"And if—if," she said, "this should be good-by—and we should not meet again——"
She drew his head down and kissed him full upon the lips.
Without a word he ran across the meadow to the sea.
Emily watched him as he dropped off the swaying land and struck out powerfully toward the bark now head on to the southern shore. For a moment her heart grew still with misgiving. Then, it thrilled with a joyous impulse. She hurried across the meadow. As she went she removed her long cloak and the golfing jacket. At the shore she stopped and tore the bandages from her feet. Looking seaward she saw where Lavelle swam. Dropping her skirt quickly she stood for a second in the long white night robe in which she had escaped theCambodia. Inhaling a long, deep breath she plunged overboard fearlessly.
Lavelle, looking backward, missed Emily. His spirit slumped. He paused his stroke, fearful for her safety.
The sun at that moment burnished the crest of a wave behind him. A white arm clove its mane of foam and his heart leaped to behold the gold woman following in his wake.
The sight of this woman following after him held Paul Lavelle bound for the moment in the inertia of awe. All sense of their common and great peril left him. Wonder robbed him of the power of thinking just as it had on the island when she had drawn his head to her and pressed her lips upon his. He comprehended the thing by instinct alone.
With the powerful, sweeping overhead stroke of a practiced swimmer Emily overtook him on the crest of a foaming surge. The plaits of her hair had been washed by the sea into a free golden mane. The grace of a Nereid, of the ocean itself, was in her. She might have been borne of the deep. The myth of Thetis must have had such a conception.
As she swung up to him, shoulder to shoulder, Lavelle turned on his side. With a toss of her head she brought it clear of the water. The light of her countenance said to him as plainly as words could have done: "I am here! I am thine!" He caught her and drew her face to his. His lips went to hers and clung in a wild, fleeting second of union. Then, side by side, they struck out to meet their destiny.
Taking the weather berth, Paul set the pace toward the strange vessel. It was already to leeward of the island's median line. The send of the swell, however, more than balanced the craft's swift drift in the swimmers' favor. Yet the half-mile of their turbulent course was a test for the strongest and bravest. The willful, tenacious power of love sustained Emily until they came within hail of their goal. Here flesh and blood struck. Her spirit remained undaunted, but the body refused the spirit's demands upon it.
Sensing that Emily was failing, Lavelle put out a hand and turned her on her back. In that moment he realized, too, that he was near exhaustion. The ridge of a gigantic surge lifted them higher than the rail of the bark. Paul could distinguish every fixture of her deserted decks. The sea dropped away with them. The next instant the vessel's leaden-colored side and half of her copper-painted bottom were reeling over them. They might have been looking up at her from the bottom of the ocean. Her masts appeared to pierce the blue, sun-shot sky.
Although convinced there was no ear aboard the vessel to hear Paul drew on his rapidly waning strength to send a yell down to her. The sails flung back a faint, mocking echo. All the while his eyes were searching for some means of boarding. Being an iron vessel the bark's sides presented no chain plates or channels for a hand hold. Deeply laden though she was the bights in which her braces trailed were far beyond his reach even when she rolled.
The belief that he might be able to climb aboard with the aid of a lee brace had been with him when he took to the water. From the island it had seemed that this gear swept the sea with every surge. Not so much as an eyebolt offered a ray of hope. The boomkins were as possible of touching as the tops. He turned toward the bows. There might be a chance forward, but he felt certain that Emily's strength would never withstand the mauling of the sea that must follow catching hold of the bobstay.
Lost for a moment in the eagerness of his search, the bark had drifted down upon them until a stroke would have brought them together. The sensation of being drawn down made him aware of it. It shocked him into action. Dragging Emily with him, Paul plunged away just in time to escape a terrific suction produced by the vessel's laboring.
Hardly were they clear of this new peril, which he instantly realized must be taken into account, when something wound itself around Paul's legs with a jerk. It clung like the tentacle of a monster. It snatched him toward the vessel. The bark was lifting at the moment. He and Emily were falling away in a valley of beryl. Instinctively he threw himself on his back, kicking as best he could to free his prisoned limbs. A glance, as his feet came clear of the water, transported him from the depths of fear and hopelessness to the heights of hope. He was entangled in a rope's end which was attached to the bark. He caught it just as it was slipping away from him. Overhauling it with one hand he found it to be a gauntline which trailed away from a block at the end of the lee main yardarm. To his sailor mind it told how the vessel's small boats had been hoisted out of her.
It was with misgiving that he drew the line toward him. It came so freely that he was certain that it was but another mockery. At each pull he expected to see its length come darting through the block. Presently it held; it sustained his weight. It was fast aboard the vessel. His heart bounded at the discovery. He passed a bight round Emily's waist and darted from her side forward. Hurling himself into the smothering suction under the bows, he clutched the bobstay as it buried itself. Down he went with it, dragged further and further until it seemed that he must let the sea have him. A monster with an hundred beaks tore at his lungs. Another clawed at his eyes. Still another gnashed at his heart. A bare glimmer of consciousness marked the end of the downward pitch. As the bark rose he continued to climb. At the end of the rise he was clear of the sea and halfway to the cap of the bowsprit. The fangs which reached for him did not get him again.
Half an hour afterward Paul Lavelle found himself lying on a deck with water hissing over him and round him. It gurgled in his ears and foamed across his throat. It was being spat at him out of three or four scuppers and a bulwark port on his right. He was in the waist of a vessel. This was a hatch coaming against which his left side was pressed—the coaming of the vessel's main hatch. He sat up and saw Emily lying across the hatch unconscious. The bight of the gauntline was still around her. As he struggled to arise, only to fall back again, his cheek swept one of her feet which dangled over the edge of the coaming. Yes, he had torn that woman out of the sea's arms. There she was in evidence of that, but where he had found the strength, how he had done it or when he had done it, he had no idea.
The names Emily and Daphne were mixed in his thoughts. It took a severe mental struggle to identify his own name. He repeated it two or three times before he recognized it. Emily was the name of the woman on the hatch. But Daphne? This name puzzled him until his wandering gaze found a row of deck buckets in a rack on the edge of the forward house.Daphnewas painted on each bucket. Then slowly it came to him that he had seen it on the bows of a vessel aboard which he had climbed a long time before.
His senses were bogged in the reaction of the despair of exhaustion—that hopeless dejection which follows a supreme mental or physical exertion and whose poignancy is the greater according to the successful degree of the effort. He slipped back to his full length in the water and lay staring up at the sky.
"Paul! Paul!"
His name called in a plaintive tone over his head was what finally aroused him to a realization of his situation. The voice touched a chord in his being that impelled him to action. It sent a wave of emotion through him. He rose to a sitting posture. Again his cheek brushed the gold woman's feet, and at the touch he bent his head quickly and kissed them. It was not the first time he had done this, but it startled him now, for he sensed that she was conscious of what he did. Yet thus on the island he had kissed her reverently and sacredly when he had bound her burns.
As he struggled to his feet Emily sat up. Her hair fell across her shoulders and bosom and across her limbs in a golden shower.
"Oh, woman of all the world," he murmured, "we still live!"
This woman was his. She had challenged him against the sea—matched him against all its brute force—and he had won her.
For a second only Emily met and held Paul's glance. Then, lowering her head and throwing herself in abandon across the hatch, she burst into tears. So did the reaction of all she had passed through come upon her.
Paul turned away, chastened by those tears. He realized that no word he might utter then would assuage one drop of them. Action called to him, but he seemed to be unable to put a hand on the situation. A long weather roll caught him unawares. It flung him across the deck and he brought up against the fife rail around the mainmast. His limbs quivered under him; his knees knocked together in weakness. Every muscle of him throbbed and twitched from the effects of the battle he had waged with the sea. A momentary dread that he would never recover his strength seized him.
It was in that instant that his gaze snapped a glimpse of the island far up to windward. It appeared very small. He marveled that the bark could have drifted so far. A lee roll cut the bit of land from his view. He started to call Emily, but forbore at the sound of her sobbing. As if fascinated he waited until the bark lifted on the shoulder of the next swell. Like sugar melting in a teacup the island dissolved in his sight. It stirred him mightily. It aroused in him the spirit of combativeness. It made him realize that the sea would stand not on his dalliance. It ordered him to action and to confront the mystery of the ocean's traffic with the abandonedDaphne.
It required but a glance for him to confirm his estimate of the vessel's size which he had formed in his first view of her from the island and while he swam beside her. She was not less than 1,200 tons burden—about 200 feet long and less than forty feet beam—and heavily sparred. Her lower masts and topmasts were of iron or steel. They were pole masts; that is to say, in one continuous piece. The lower and double topsail-yards also were built of iron or steel. Everything bespoke the fact that she had been built for driving.
Calling to Emily that he would be gone but a minute, Paul drew an iron belaying pin from the fife rail and started aft. He armed himself against surprise, although he felt instinctively that he and Emily were alone. Still, all to be seen about decks indicated that the bark had not been long abandoned.
A teakwood door was open and hooked back against the cabin's forward bulkhead. A similar door on the starboard side was shut. Through the open door he entered the after-living quarters. A slamming of doors and the familiar sound of the hard woods in the cabin's trim, working in their joinings, answered the invader's hail flung from the threshold. Once inside, he found himself in a white-painted alleyway at the end of which a banging door gave him a glimpse of the forward cabin or saloon. His nostrils first caught a stench of lamps which had flickered out in oil dregs.
All ships are so ordered in their appointments that a seaman is never at a loss to find his way in any. Lavelle could have gone about theDaphneblindfolded. He did not have to look at the brass plate over the first door off the alleyway on his right to tell it was the room of the chief mate. The door was open, but something behind it kept it from swinging more than a couple of inches as the vessel labored. He gave it a quick shove and stepped inside the room, only to pause with a gasp of horror.
At the invader's feet, bathed in the morning sunlight which poured through two ports, lay the stark body of a young, lithe-limbed son of the sea. Barely more than a boy he had been. There was a gaping bullet wound between his eyes. It was a wound of exit—where the lead which had killed him had sped away from its work. It cried out a story of assassination to Lavelle; it shrieked to him that the young fellow had been shot from behind, possibly as he slept in his berth with his back toward the door. The rolling of the ship had brought the body to the deck where it lay.
The lockers of the room were wrenched open. Everywhere were signs of disorder; the marks of hurrying, marauding hands. Yet the room had been the castle of a man of order and cleanliness. Lavelle looked particularly for the bark's log book which ordinarily should have been on the small desk at the foot of the berth. It was missing.
With a thought of how sweet life must have been to this young fellow and with his wrath hot against his slayers, Lavelle stepped across the alleyway to the second and third mates' room. Its door opened at a touch. Here, strangely, the sour, unmistakable odor of the forecastle met him. Instantly the searcher visualized the coarse type of men who had occupied these quarters—the rule-of-thumb sort, who may spend a lifetime at sea without ever winning to a rank above second mate. Here disorder was not apparent because disorder was a natural thing.
There was a stateroom abaft the mate's. It was empty. A door immediately opposite had been forced. It was another stateroom filled with stores. It was plain that a quick draft had been made upon these supplies.
Darting into the forward cabin, only the echo of his own hail answered him. A red tablecloth lay on the deck where it had been swept by some person hurrying by or else in a struggle. A white metal castor rolled under the dining table and made a tinkling noise among its broken cruets. The pantry and three more staterooms opened upon this cabin. The staterooms reported only emptiness. They had not been recently occupied. The pantry's cleanliness and order might have been produced by a careful housewife's hands.
The doors leading into the after cabin were open and hooked back. Like the forward compartment, it was done in Indian teak, bird's-eye maple, and mahogany. It was furnished with two comfortable easy chairs, a small center table, and a divan built into the bulkhead against the starboard side. A tiny piano stood between the forward entrances. Through the after end a companionway led up on to the poop.
There were two more staterooms here. They were empty and gave no signs of recent occupancy. They were on the port side. To starboard was the chart room. A litter of books, charts, and chart pipes covered its floor. The chronometer case stood open. A glance told Paul that it had been wound within forty-eight hours. He bent his head and quickly caught a tick of even, smooth escapement.
Hurrying aft from the chart room, the castaway came to what he knew to be the skipper's room. The door to it was shut. Its middle panel was splintered. Something made him turn the knob with gentleness.
Just inside the door to the left a man in pajamas sat at a small writing desk, his head cast upon his arms as if sleep had suddenly overtaken him. His head swayed as Paul looked down at him. It was lending itself to the swing of the vessel, but the motion was so natural that, for the moment, Lavelle was deceived. A strange hope sprang into his heart.
"Wake up, old man! Wake up!" he called. He even shook him by the shoulder, but the man at the desk was sleeping a sleep that knows no mortal awakening.
Under the stiff arms Paul spied the log book which he had missed from the mate's room. He pulled it out and the dead man's head rolled back and compelled his disturber to meet the gaze of his wide-open, staring blue eyes. A pen rolled out from under his right hand and dropped from the desk.
This undoubtedly was theDaphne'sskipper. He had been a man of powerful build, standing in life as tall as Lavelle himself. Even in the laxness of death his jaw bespoke indomitable determination. The nose was of a splendid aggressive type. Death had taken him in the beginning of his best years. He could not have been more than forty years of age.
A crimson splotch just below the chest line told where the man's life blood had gone out. Measuring its location by sight with the height of the door's splintered panel, Lavelle ventured a deduction of how theDaphne'smaster and mate had been assassinated. The master had been asleep or, at any rate, he had retired. His apparel, his disturbed berth told that. He had heard the shot which did for the mate, or, perhaps, he might have gone to the door unsuspectingly to answer a knock or summons. His hand turning the knob had been the signal to the assassin on the other side of the door to send a bullet crashing through it into his midriff.
But how the skipper had come to have the log book in his room it was not possible to surmise unless, after being shot, he had had the strength to make his way to the mate's room and back again. Again he might have taken the keeping of the log into his own charge. Could he and the mate have quarreled? Asking himself this question, the searcher's eyes ran down the pages at which the book had lain open and stopped with a shock at three words:
"The second mate——"
That was the final entry.
It was written in a hand which had begun the formation of the letters in a tight style and ended in the scrawling of a schoolboy, a blot and a splattered dash. Where this dash finished there had death touched the fingers which held the writer's pen.
Whatever had happened aboard theDaphneit was the second mate who was responsible for it. Paul was convinced there was no escape from the indictment in those three words.
It was aP.M.entry under date of March 29. According to Paul Lavelle's account of time it was now March 31. Some time during the night of two days before—on the 29th—mutiny had lifted its red hands on theDaphne.
The log was written up to eight o'clock on the evening of the 29th. It must have been the last thing the fair-haired boy now lying cold forward had done before turning his lamp down for his eternal "watch below."
But as startling as was the tragedy which loomed so boldly out of the three simple words which have been quoted was theDaphne'sposition given as of noon of that day: "Latitude 32:30 north; Longitude 176:28 east."
This instantly destroyed Paul's idea of the island's position. The bark had drifted up on the island out of the southwest. Then, according to the most reasonable assumption, she had been to the southward of it when she was abandoned. That put the island between three and four hundred miles to the northward of where the castaways had believed it to be all the time. Its drift must have been to the north and east instead of the southwest. This explained the absence of the trades; the variable quality of the winds which had prevailed. The island had drifted across the spot, or within a short distance thereto, of where theCambodiahad found her grave.
Paul decided to let the observation which he planned to make at noon settle the puzzle of position. The moment demanded that he should give his thoughts to it and the living, and not to the past and its dead. Still as he laid the log down on the desk again he turned to the page which began it and read, in the style of the ancient sea formula:
"Log of the barkDaphne, 1,252 tons burthen, of Liverpool, England, John McGavock, master, on her voyage from Sydney, N. S. W., toward San Francisco, U. S. A."
And with something of boyish pride the keeper of the log—it was not in the skipper's writing—had posted his name with boldness at the head of the list of the ship's company: "William Elston, chief officer." It was the imagination of youth gilding the rank. It seemed to speak that theDaphnehad given the boy his first berth as mate.
"And they murdered you, William Elston, and you, too, John McGavock," said Paul with a sad bitterness, turning away from the desk.
A frightened cry from Emily, a smothered sob and the patter of her bare feet carried Paul through the open door, but not quickly enough to cut off her view of the still occupant of the skipper's room. She shrank into his arms shuddering, and as he pressed her to him she tried to crush her sobs against his breast.
"Don't be frightened—don't be frightened, dearheart," he crooned to her. His lips found her brow, her eyes, her mouth.
"I—I——Oh, Paul, I thought you had gone—away," she sobbed. "You were—were so long."
Paul had not been away from the deck more than five minutes, but the time had seemed to her thrice and thrice again as long.
Brokenly she told him how, as she had entered the door through which she had seen him disappear, her eyes had found the figure of the mate stretched in his room.
"Then—there is another—one—in there!" she went on. "Oh, Paul, never leave me again! Will you, dear! Will you? Not until death comes to take us both?"
Her teeth were chattering from cold and nervous exhaustion.
"No, dear; not until death," he answered her pleading, but the kiss which he pressed on her mouth spoke in greater reassurance to her heart than his words. "Much has happened here—much that I don't understand; much that we may never understand. But just now we must think of ourselves. We must think of living; of fighting on. You're going to fight on with me, aren't you? You're going to be brave and never lose hope? You don't know how brave you've been. You have been the inspiration of the battle all along. Look up at me."
His powerful arms held her away as he spoke and she glanced up at him timidly.
"It is not hard to be brave with you," she said, and he drew her to him so fiercely that she could not help crying out.
He released her in alarm. His arms dropped to his sides.
"I'm a brute; I've hurt you, dear."
"No, no," she protested with a smile of love, but her eyes sought a red mark on her round, gleaming shoulder, and for the first time each of them became conscious of the meagerness of her attire.
"Did I bruise you that way?"
"No, no, Paul. It happened when you were dragging me over the side. The rope did it."
As she spoke she drew the yoke of her long white gown higher on her shoulders. Her cheeks mantled red with shame and he turned away from her. Yet in the next instant her cheeks crimsoned a deeper hue in shame of that shame, for it came to her as a truth that in the sight of this man there could be no abasement.
Paul reëntered the skipper's room, remembering that he had seen an ulster and a mackintosh hanging in a corner to the right of the desk. He swept them on to his arm in his bewilderment. It was one thing to outfit a man; another to garb a woman. His eye caught a pair of socks hanging over the edge of a half-open drawer under McGavock's berth. He snatched these. He added a pair of straw sandals, whose toes protruded from under the settee across the rear bulkhead, to his collection and also a blanket—a fine white California blanket which lay in a roll at the foot of the berth. It was the best he could think of doing at the moment.
Emily was shivering on the divan when he returned to her.
"Lie down there, dear," he said, "and I'll tuck you in and bring you some coffee—something warm, anyway—and some food."
"No, no, no," she said, starting up. "Don't leave me here—alone. Not now. I know the dead can't hurt one, but—I must go with you. When all's said and done, Paul—I'm only—only a woman——"
She took the ulster from him and slipped it on. It was large enough to have wrapped her round twice. She plunged her feet into the warm woollen socks and gave a little sigh of pleasure.
"I—I feel better already."
"Now put these on."
Paul handed her the sandals, and as she took them she studied them for a second, only to glance up at him with a startled expression.
"These are a woman's, Paul," she whispered. "And that——"
She indicated the mackintosh, and he held it out before him.
"This is a woman's, too," he said in the same breath with her.
"A woman? A woman?" he repeated, and he wondered if here was the key of the mystery of theDaphne.
Together the castaways went forward to the galley, passing out of the cabin through the starboard alleyway so that Emily might not see again what was in the mate's room. As Paul stepped out on deck he mentally marked the time by the sun's ascension. It was not later than 8:30 o'clock.
Signs of hurried departure met the eye on every hand in the galley. Chief among them was a batch of bread which had been put to rising beside the range. But Paul did not pause to make any examination until he had rattled up a fire. He had picked up a box of matches in McGavock's room. There was a bin of kindling and plenty of coal in the scuttles, and it took only a few minutes to get a meal together. It was the warmest and best breakfast they had enjoyed since they had been cast away, albeit the mainstay was a porridge of canned corn which Paul had hit upon as the most promising thing in a quick search of the stores aft. For the rest there was hard tack and marmalade and coffee. This coffee, a strong brew, was really the crown of the breakfast. Its very odor was life-giving; strength-restoring.
Over the breakfast Paul related with all the gentleness at his command the facts which had been revealed by his search through the cabins. There was little to add to what Emily had seen herself.
"We are alone, Emily," he said, "except for those who will never wake again."
Fearful that similar heart-harrowing sights might be held by the forward part of the vessel as those which the sore-beset girl had discovered aft he induced her to remain in the warmth of the galley while he pressed his search in the forecastle.
"Don't—please don't stay long," she pleaded. "I feel—that—that I will never be able to bear it—to have you go out of my sight again." A shudder shook her. "When I saw you—a little while ago——Oh, the ship fell on you! The bows came down and—buried you in the water——"
"There, there, dear. Let us never think of it again. I have only a glimmer of an idea—of what happened. I don't know what happened; in fact, I don't want to know. All I do know and all I care about is—that somehow I had the sand—the brute strength to save you. Just you of all the world!"
He seized her passionately as he spoke and kissed her. The pressure of her firm, lithe body against his sent his blood clamoring. The natural perfume of her hair made his brain hammer drunkenly. Still above the tumult which beset his senses rang a mocking laugh—a devil's laugh. As he caught it a chill went over him. He put Emily away from him as fiercely as he had taken her and, crying, without a word, she sank on the bench in front of the fire and hid her face in her hands. As he turned away his brow was clouded with anger; his eyes filled with bitterness.
A second Lavelle stood motionless, his trembling breath an unuttered curse of himself. Then he turned to the door at his side and banged it open. It was the entrance to the cook's cubby-hole of a room. A piece of matting and a wooden pillow in the bunk told that its late occupant had been either a Chinese or Japanese. There was an odor, too, that bespoke the recent presence of an opium smoker. He had departed in a hurry.
There was another door leading aft from the galley. This was the entrance to the carpenter shop and donkey engine room. A cubby-hole with a bunk in it to port had been the carpenter's abode. Lavelle noted with satisfaction the equipment of glistening, well-kept tools on the engine room bulkheads.
Hurrying forward, Paul entered the forecastle. It was an exceptionally large one for a vessel of theDaphne'ssize. Echo answered his hail. Mattresses—the straw pallets which sailors call "donkeys' breakfasts"—clothes' bags, ditty bags, oilskins, sea boots, sou'westers, an assortment of greasy pots, pannikins, and spoons, and two filthy kids littered the black deck. Half a dozen chests gaped open, their contents falling over their sides. The hands that had gone through them had sought only the bottoms where money, trinkets, and supposed valuables had been hidden by their owners. So had he found the chests in the rooms of the second and third mates, the carpenter, and the cook. In their extremity they had all acted alike—thought only of useless baubles and left useful, necessary things behind.
A sailor before the mast, used and inured to hardship, living by the hour hand in hand with death, trained in the expectancy of sudden danger, ever aware of the constant attendance of peril, might be expected to act with more intelligence in an emergency which may cost him his life than the humdrum-going citizen ashore. Left to himself, he will go out of a ship in mid-ocean with a few shillings he has stored in the bottom of his bag or chest, a model upon which he has been spending most of his watches below, a derby hat or flash necktie for which he paid four times too much at his last port. Rarely has he a thought of necessary things—the countless useful articles of clothing such as Paul Lavelle saw on every hand—overcoats, jackets, underclothing—which a day or an hour in an open boat can make worth a king's ransom.
The forecastle had been emptied in a hurry, but it told no other tale than that. There is no lair of mankind, no habitation of man's devisement more cheerless than a ship's forecastle. There is no sight more depressing, more dismal than one deserted.
Paul, with a shudder, crossed from the starboard side, through which he had entered, to port. The breath of fresh air which he caught as he threw back the door and stepped out on deck was like a draught of wine. His spirits lifted as it dissipated the sea-sour stench which his nostrils were carrying. He turned forward immediately to at last come upon an explanation of the exodus from theDaphne.
The fore hatch was open. The covers were strewn about the deck. Up out of the glistening cargo of coals came an odor of fire. There was no smoke, but fire had been or was down there.
He recognized the dangerous quality of the coals at once. It was fear of it that had emptied the crew overside in panic. His mind, in the stress which had been upon it while he was aft, had not grasped the probable character of the cargo when he read in the log book with what theDaphnewas laden.
Dropping down through the hatchway his bare feet felt no heat. None of the signs of "trouble" which he knew so well was present. He had fought cargoes like this one.
All was cool below; not the faintest indication of gas. But still there was an odor of fire. He crawled out into the wings, and as he did so his eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness. Thus by sight he located the source of the baffling fire smell. It was under the deck just forward of the hatch—a heap of ashes burned from all sorts of old junk. Mattresses had made part of the fire.
Not two feet away from where the fire had burned most briskly lay a five-gallon tin of kerosene on its side. The arsonist who had carried it there either had lost his nerve at the end and been afraid to open its cock, or else he had depended upon it to explode.
Still this fire which had been set with the intention of destroying theDaphnehad made much smoke and burned out impotently. The deck above it was only slightly charred.
Paul raked through the ashes feverishly. The coal underneath was as cool to the touch as it was elsewhere. Not more than a handful of it was blistered.
When he drew himself up on deck again he hauled a couple of buckets of water from over the side and threw it on the spot where the fire had burned as a matter of extraordinary precaution. Nor did he forget to bring the kerosene out of the hold.
Emily met him with a smile of gladness, which immediately turned into a laugh of humor as Paul stepped into the galley again.
"Where have you been—what have you been doing?" she asked.
"Why—what is the matter?"
"You should see yourself in a glass. You're as black as a moor."
He paused a second to survey himself. He indeed was a sorry sight. The thin tattered shirt and the trousers which he had slashed off at the knees when he struck out from the island still clung to him damply. His limbs were black with coal dust.
"I can imagine the color of my face," said he, and he rubbed the stubble of beard on his cheeks. "But never mind my appearance—only pour me a cup of that strong coffee."
While he drank the black brew he summed up for Emily their exact situation:
"We're all alone, partner—just us. A fire panic emptied the vessel—a fire which the murderers of the skipper and chief mate believed would destroy the ship and the evidence of their crimes. The ship's laden with Australian coals—a treacherous cargo. Knowing its dangerous character, it is easy for me to understand what the first flash of smoke meant to the minds of the sort of gang for'ard. They believed the cargo was afire. With those in authority plying them with fear and not a voice to steady them, they must have gone over the side like rats. The more haste that marked their going the better were the plans of the ringleaders suited. I cannot help believing that what happened aft was known to only a few—the second mate and perhaps the third. Yet how was it explained to those outside of the secret of the assassinations—the absence of the skipper and chief mate? The ringleaders could have reported them as dead without explaining what had killed them. They could have reported them to have killed each other. They could have reported them as having fallen overboard. They could have told the others even that the men had been murdered, without giving any proof against themselves. But I must have done with this conjecturing. It is idle."
Paul put down his empty cup with impatience.
"But where could they have gone?" Emily asked.
"Chi risponde presto, sa poco.That is as the Italians have it: Who answers suddenly knows little. The fact that they took provisions and the three boats which the empty chocks show to have been in the bark seems convincing that they did not flee to another ship. Perhaps they believed they were near some land."
"Maybe another island—a trap like ours? I looked for our island—out there——It is gone."
Paul nodded.
"But these things—these sandals. There was a woman——"
"I am thinking of a woman's presence in the mystery. The French say there is always a woman."
He spoke with an attempt at lightness which he was far from feeling. A wince of unpleasantness indicated his true thoughts.
"Do you agree with the French adage?" Emily asked. An enigmatical smile played across her face as she put the question.
"There is always one woman—one woman out of all the world," he answered. His tone thrilled her. He studied her for a second mysteriously. "You are very wonderful to me," he added, but his voice was so low that it seemed that the thought back of it forced itself to unconscious utterance. She met his gaze frankly; the unconcealed light of love was in her eyes.
Paul turned away from her abruptly and a chill came into her heart. She saw the old expression of pain in his face—the expression she had beheld there the day she had seen him first in the steamship agency in Yokohama. It always came so unexpectedly.
Looking out of the galley door to windward, Paul saw a clear sky. The breeze from the southwest held steady at about six or seven knots. All overhead signs promised fine weather, but the swell was ominous. Still all the indications were that it was the aftermath of a storm which had passed far to the westward.
"You're the chief mate of theDaphnenow," he said, facing her again, "and it's your watch below. You slept but little last night, you know."
"Last night," she said, repeating the words with a shiver. "Nor did you sleep."
"I will sleep when you have had yours."
"But I want to be with you—to help—all I can."
She felt that even sleep must not be permitted to take him from her sight.
"You will help best by obeying orders, little woman. The first rule of the sea is obedience. Come."
Paul started aft and Emily followed him in silence. She who had never known mastership in her life went whither this man led and with no thought of doing otherwise. He handed her up on the poop over the weather gangway.
It was an exceptionally long quarter deck for a vessel of theDaphne'ssize. Abaft the mizzenmast and the saloon skylights stood a small teakwood deck house comfortably furnished as a sort of lounge. It was lighted by four large ports. Through the center of this house the after companionway led below. On each fore and aft side was a leather cushioned bench or divan, both long and wide enough to afford good berths on which to steal a sleep and at the same time remain within quick access of the deck. Against the forward bulkhead was a collapsible chart table. The deck entrance opened on the steering compass and the wheel. Running forward on each side of the vessel from the break of the poop to the forward house were two pipe-railed bridges. Similar bridges connected the forward house with the forecastle head. One might cover the length of the ship from the mizzenmast to the eyes of her without putting a foot on the main deck. Halfway between the mizzen and mainmasts the bridges were connected by a platform on which stood the standard compass.
It was in the companionway deck house or lounge, as the castaways came to call it, that Paul spread a berth for Emily with some blankets which he took from one of the staterooms. Although she protested that she would find it easy to remain awake if she could drink as much coffee as he had—that she really wasn't sleepy—her head had hardly touched its clean white pillow when her eyelids closed fast in a deep slumber. Sheer will power had been keeping her up.
There was grim work ahead of Paul Lavelle and he hurried to do it. It must be finished when Emily awoke. Before entering the cabin, however, he went forward and put a fire under the donkey boiler. Here was an auxiliary crew—this engine—a good thirty horsepower at least. Hope mounted in his breast as he examined it and found it in first-class condition. For that matter, everything about theDaphnewas strong and good. She had been "kept up" is the way Lavelle would have described her to another seaman.
A plan of action which he had been formulating he now confirmed. He would let theDaphnelie along hove to as she was until he could fix her position and then, from that point attempt to work her, with Emily's aid and the engine's, into a frequented track of vessels. Having made such a track, he would hold on there the while he did his best to make the nearest land. If what the bark's log said were true it would not be long, the gods of the winds being kind, before they were in the track in which theCambodiahad been lost.
Thoroughly this man realized the seriousness of the situation which confronted him. Before him was a task to give any man pause—a twelve-hundred-ton bark at the mercy of the sea to be handled by himself, a woman, and a donkey engine. There was no alternative to the plan his mind had outlined. While he tested it from every angle, instinct led him to many necessary small tasks. He sounded the ship's well. There was no telling how much water might have entered her through the open fore hatch. The rod came back as dry as a bleached bone. It had not even rained since she had been abandoned. This suggested examining her fresh-water supply. He sounded these tanks. They held a supply for fifty days even if the bark had been manned by her full complement. Besides, the donkey engine had a condenser attachment for its own purposes and also for ship use in the event of a shortage.
Paul Lavelle had never been aboard a handier vessel than theDaphne. John McGavock and her young chief mate must have been very proud of her. She was molded on clipper lines. In her heyday undoubtedly, judging from the size of her mizzenmast, she had been rigged as a ship. That day had been when the taunt, white-winged tea clippers were the mail carriers and passenger greyhounds of the seas; and the men who mastered them veritable nabobs of the deep. The lounge on theDaphne'spoop, the rich India teak and mahogany and bird's-eye maple of her commodious saloons, the many staterooms, the appointments of her large galley bespoke her as having been not among the least of these fliers. Certainly she must have been a flash packet in the days of her youth when she could have mustered twenty-five men in a watch to fist a topsail. Paul knew that vessels like this had carried tremendous crews—sometimes fifty, sixty, and seventy-five, idlers and all—in the days of their pride when an hour cut from a passage meant gold for owners and masters. His mother's father had been master and afterward owner of such ships as theDaphne. But he had sailed them under a different flag than hers—a flag which had driven him, the grandson, away from it and to be a marked wanderer.
This unpleasant personal thought turned Lavelle aft. He entered the cabin through the door on the starboard side. Here he found three more staterooms, which opened off an alleyway similar to the one on the opposite side. These rooms had been long given up to storage purposes. One was filled with barrels of flour and biscuits; the others held cordage and bolts of untouched canvas. He carried away a bolt of the newest, whitest duck and a coil of marlin.
No tenderer hands could have given theDaphne'smaster and mate to the sea; no voice could have bespoken their souls a kinder journey than the stranger who shrouded and weighted them. He sent them away with a prayer and a heartfelt farewell that a friend who had known them and loved them a lifetime might have breathed.
Paul was near breaking down when it came to the parting with William Elston. Among the papers scattered around the lad he found the first page of a letter which the boy had started to his mother on the day after theDaphnehad put out from Sydney. That was the day after Christmas.
"I'll be home in England—merry England—with you next Christmas, mother mine——"
That was as much as he could read. He put the crumpled sheet in the dead boy's hands where he had already folded a photograph which had hung over the berth. It was a picture of a simple vine-covered cottage such as are to be met in the byways of villages and towns throughout England. Clusters of roses peeped and seemed to nod over a hawthorn hedge in the foreground. A collie stood at the gate, head lifted, ears cocked, and muzzle searching the distance as at a master's coming. On the back of the photograph was written in the hand which had kept the log: "My Sussex Home.