"The other feller--he's lost."
"_Lost?_" said Deolda, her breath drawn in sharply. "Lost--how?"
"Washed overboard," said Joe. "See--looka here. When Johnny got ashore
this is what he says." He read aloud from the newspaper he had brought,
a word at a time, like a grammar-school kid:
"With a lame propeller and driven out of her course, the _Anita_ made
Plymouth this morning without her Captain, Mark Hammar. John Deutra, who
brought her in, made the following statement:
"'I was lying in my bunk unable to sleep, for we were being combed by
waves again and again. Suddenly I noticed we were wallowing in the
trough of the sea, and went on deck to see what was wrong. I groped my
way to the wheel. It swung empty. Captain Hammar was gone, washed
overboard in the storm. How I made port myself I don't know--'"
Here his reading was interrupted by an awful noise--Deolda laughing,
Deolda laughing and sobbing, her hands above her head, a wild thing,
terrible.
"Go on," my aunt told the boy. "Go home!" And she and Deolda went into
the house, her laughter filling it with awful sound.
After a time she quieted down. She stood staring out of the window,
hands clenched.
"Well?" she said, defiantly. "Well?" She looked at us, and what was in
her eyes made chills go down me. Triumph was what was in her eyes. Then
suddenly she flung her arms around my aunt and kissed her. "Oh," she
cried, "kiss me, Auntie, kiss me! He's not dead, my Johnny--not dead!"
"Go up to your room, Deolda," said my aunt, "and rest." She patted her
shoulder just as though she were a little girl, for all the thoughts
that were crawling around our hearts.
When later in the day Conboy came, "Where's Deolda?" he asked.
"I'll call her," I said. But Deolda wasn't anywhere; not a sign of her.
She'd vanished. Conboy and Aunt Josephine looked at each other.
"She's gone to him," said Conboy.