INTO THE SUNLIGHT
On the deck of the white yacht the captain rose to his feet. The battle
fought on that huddle of blankets for the life of the man so hardly
snatched from the sea had been a close one, but it had been won. His
smile of satisfaction overran the group of observant faces at one side,
the bishop watching with strained anxiety, and the girl, who pillowed in
her arms that unconscious head with its drenched, brown curls.
"Don't you be afraid, Miss Fairfax," he said, with bluff heartiness.
"_He'll_ be all right now!"
The assurance came to Barbara's heart with an infinite relief that he
could not guess. At the first sight of the huge bird-like thing slipping
down the sky she had known the man clinging to its framework was Daunt.
The stricken moments while the wreck of the great vanes lay outspread on
the water--the launch of the yacht's boat, and the lifting of the limp
form over its gunwale--the cruelly kind ministrations that had brought
breath back to the inert body--these had seemed to her to consume
dragging hours of agony. A thunder of guns roared across the water, but
she scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on theface to which the tide of
life was returning.
Again the roar, and now the sound pierced the saturating darkness. It
called the numbed senses back to the sphere of feeling--to a
consciousness of an immense weariness and a gentle motion. It seemed to
Daunt as though his head rested on a pillow which rose and fell to an
irregular rhythm. He stirred. His eyes opened.
Memory dawned across them. Haru's story--the windy flight on the
Glider--the sick sense of failure--the plunge down, and down, and the
water leaping toward him! Had he failed? A third time the detonation
rang out. He started, made an effort to rise. His gaze swept the sea.
There, flags flying, bands playing, a line of Dreadnaughts was steaming
down the harbor.
"The battle-ships!" he said, and there was triumph in his eyes.
He turned his head and saw the bishop, the silent crew, the relieved
countenance of the captain. Realization came to him. Soft arms were
about him; the pillow that rose and fell was a woman's heaving breast!
His gaze lifted, and Barbara's eyes flowed into his. He put out a hand
weakly and whispered her name.
She did not speak, but in that look a glory enfolded him. It was not
womanly pity in her face--it was far, far more, something wordless, but
eloquent, veiled, yet passionately tender. He knew suddenly that after
the long night had come the morning, after the pain and the
misunderstanding all would be well.
For an instant he closed his eyes, smiling. The darkness was gone for
ever. His head was on her heart, and it was her dear arms that were
lifting him up, into the sunlight, the sunlight, the sunlight!