THE NIGHT AND THE MORNING
Gasping for breath, blinded, terrified beyond all imagination, crying to
God from his heart, Hugh gave up all hope. Fathoms of water beneath
them, turbulent and gleeful in the furious dance of destruction;
mountains of water above them, roaring, swishing, growling out the
horrid symphony of death! High on the crest of the wave they soared,
down into the chasm they fell, only to shoot upward again, whirling like
feathers in the air.
Something bumped violently against Ridgeway's side, and, with the
instinct of a drowning man, he grasped for the object as it rushed away.
A huge section of the bowsprit was in his grasp and a cry of hope arose
in his soul. With this respite came the feeling, strong and enduring,
that he was not to die. That ever-existing spirit of confidence, baffled
in one moment, flashes back into the hearts of all men when the faintest
sign of hope appears, even though death has already begun to close his
hand upon them. Nature grasps for the weakest straw and clings to life
with an assurance that is sublime. The hope that comes just before the
end is the strongest hope of all.
"For God's sake, be brave, darling! Cling tight and be careful when you
breathe," he managed to cry in her ear. There was no answer, but he felt
that she had heard.
The night was so black that he could not see the spar to which he clung.
At no time could he see more than the fitful gleam of dark water as some
mysterious glimmer was produced by the weird machinery of the air. He
could hear the roar of the mighty waves, could feel the uplifting power
and the dash downward from seemingly improbable heights, but he could
not see the cauldron in which they were dancing.
It was fortunate that he could not, for a single glimpse of that sea in
all its fury would have terrified him beyond control. In sheer despair
he would have given up the infinitesimal claim he had for salvation and
welcomed death from the smothering tons, now so bravely battled against.
The girl to whom he clung and whose rigid clasp was still about his neck
had not spoken, and scarcely breathed since the plunge into the sea. At
times he felt utterly alone in the darkness, so death-like was her
silence. But for an occasional spasmodic indication of fear as they and
their spar shot downward from some unusual elevation, he might have
believed that he was drifting with a corpse.
Rolling, tossing, dragging through the billows, clinging to the friendly
spar, Hugh Ridegway sped onward, his body stiff and sensationless, his
brain fogged and his heart dead with that of the girl to whom he clung
so desperately. At last the monstrous waves began to show their
outlines to his blinding eyes. The blackness of the dome above became
tinged with a discernible shade of ever-increasing brightness. A thrill
shot through his fagging soul as he realized that the long night was
ending and day was dawning. The sun was coming forth to show him
his grave.
Slowly the brightness grew, and with it grew the most dreadful aspect
that ever fell upon the eye of man--the mighty sea in all its fury.
Suddenly, as he poised on the summit of a huge wave, something ahead
struck him as strange. A great mass seemed to rise from the ocean far
away, dim, indistinct, but still plain to the eye. With the next upward
sweep he strained his eyes in the waning darkness and again saw the vast
black, threatening, uneven mass.
An uncanny terror enveloped him. What could the strange thing be that
appeared to be rushing toward him? As far as the eye could see on either
side stretched the misty shape. The sky grew brighter, a faint glow
became apparent ahead, spreading into a splendor whose perfection was
soon streaked with bars of red and yellow, racing higher and higher into
the dome above. His dull brain observed with wonder that the brightness
grew, not out of the sea, but beyond the great object ahead, and he was
more mystified than ever. The tiny, fiery beams seemed to spring from
the dark, ugly, menacing cloud, or whatever it might be. Finally he
realized that it was the sun coming into the heavens from the east,
and--his heart roared within him as he began to grasp the truth--the
great black mass was land!
"Oh, God! It is land--land!" he tried to shriek. "Grace! Grace! Lookup!
See! The land!"
The arms about his neck tightened sharply and a low moan came to his
ears. Slowly and painfully he turned his head to look at the face that
had been so near in all those awful hours of the night, unseen. His
heart seemed to stop beating with that moan, for it bore the
announcement that the dear one was still alive.
It was still too dark to distinguish her features plainly. The face was
wet and slimy with the salt water; her hair was matted over the forehead
and wrapped in ugly strips about the once pretty face, now ghastly with
the signs of suffering, fear and--yes, death, he thought, as he strove
to see one familiar feature.
Into his eyes came a quizzical stare that slowly changed to an intense
look of bewilderment. Gradually they grew wider with horror.
The death-like face was not that of the girl he loved!
While he gazed numbly, almost insanely, upon the closed eyelids, they
slowly opened and a pair of wild, dark eyes gazed despairingly into his,
expressive of timidity more than fear. The trembling lips parted, but
the effort to speak ended in a moan. Again the eyes closed and her arms
slipped from his neck.
Every vestige of strength left him with this startling discovery and,
had his arm been anything but rigid with paralysis, she might have
drifted off with the billows, a fate which her voluntary action invited.
A great wave rushed them violently forward and the next moment Ridgeway,
faint, bewildered, and unable to grasp the full force of the remarkable
ending to that night in the water, found himself, still grasping his
limp burden and the broken spar, washed far upon the sands. A second
wave swept them higher, and he realized, as he lay gasping on the edge
of the waters, that the vast ocean was behind him and the beautiful
woman he had rescued by mistake.