ON THE BREAST OF THE SEA
"Can you keep afloat in this roughness?"
"I think so, now that I have the life preserver. But the rope scared
me for a minute. It got wound about my feet."
"I thought so. But we are drifting away from the boats, and should
swim back as fast as we can. Can you swim?"
"Yes; better when I get rid of this cloak. Which way is the yacht?
I've lost my bearings."
"Behind us over there. Put your hand on my shoulder and I'll take you
along until you get your breath. So!"
The girl obeyed implicitly, "as if she were a good, biddable child,"
thought Jim. There was none of the terrified clutching at a rescuer
which sometimes causes disaster to two instead of one. Miss Redmond
was badly shocked, it may be; but she was far from being in a panic.
"Now for the boat. Can you swim a little faster? They'll surely come
back to pick us up," said Jim, with an assumption of confidence that he
did not feel. They could hear voices from the yacht, and could follow,
partially, what was going on. Miss Redmond cast loose her cloak, put a
hand on Jim's shoulder, and together they swam nearer. "Ahoy!" shouted
Jim. "Give us a hand!" But the boat with the large woman in it had
put about to the other side of the yacht. "Ahoy! This way!" shouted
Jim. "Throw us a rope!" he cried; but if any of the seamen of the
_Jeanne D'Arc_ heard, they paid no heed.
"Come this way," said James to his companion. "We'll catch them on the
other side of the yacht."
"I can't swim much in all these clothes," said Agatha.
"Never mind, then. Hold on to the life preserver and to me, and we'll
make it all right." On the crests of the swelling waves they swam
round the dark bulk of the vessel, and heard plainly the clamor of the
men as they embarked in the small boats. Two of them seemed to be
fastened together, raft-like, on the starboard side of the yacht, and
were quickly filled with men. Prayers and curses were audible, with
the loose, wild inflexion of the man who is in the clutch of an
overmastering fear. As long as there had been work for them to do on
the ship, they had done it, though sullenly; they had even controlled
themselves until the attempt was made to place the two women in safety.
But after that their self-restraint vanished. The orders of the
officers were unheeded; the men leaped and scrambled and slid into the
boats, and in a minute more they had cut loose from the _Jeanne D'Arc_.
James dimly perceived that the boats were moving away from them into
the darkness. Then he called, and called again, redoubling his speed
in swimming; but only the beat of the oars came back to him over the
water. The heart in him stood still with an unacknowledged fear. Was
it possible they were absolutely leaving them behind? Surely there
were other boats. He raised his voice and called again and again. At
last one voice, careless and brutal, called back something in reply.
Jim turned questioning eyes to the girl beside him, whose pale face was
clearly discernible on the dark water.
"He says the boats are all full."
"Then we must hurry and make for the yacht. Where is she?"
The _Jeanne D'Arc_ had slipped away from them into the darkness.
"She was this way, I thought. Yes, I am sure," said Agatha, pointing
into the night. But though they swam that way, they did not come upon
her. They turned a little, and then turned again, and presently they
lost every sense of direction.
In all his life Jim was never again destined to go through so black an
hour as that which followed the abandonment of the _Jeanne D'Arc_. His
courage left him, and his spirit sank to that leaden, choking abyss
where light did not exist. Since the immediate object of saving the
ship, for which he had worked as hard as any other, had been given up,
the next in importance was to save the woman who, for some mysterious
reason, had been aboard. It was beyond his power of imagination to
suppose that any other motive of action could possibly prevail, even
among her enemies. That they should leave her to drown, while they
themselves fled to comparative safety in a boat, was more than he could
believe.
"Surely they do not mean it; they must return, for you, at least."
The girl beside him knew better, but she was conscious of the
paralyzing despair in her companion's heart, and made a show of being
cheerful.
"When they find they are safe they may think of us," she said. "But
the men were already crazed with fear, even before the leak was
discovered. One of their mates on the voyage over was a
fortune-teller, and he prophesied danger to them all on their next
trip. After they had come into port, the fortune-teller himself died.
And who can blame them for their fear? They are all superstitious; and
as no one ever regarded their fears, now they have no regard for
anybody's feelings but their own."
"But we are in the middle of the Atlantic, no one knows where. We may
drift for days--we may starve--the Lord only knows what will happen to
us!"
Agatha, who had been floating, swam a little nearer and laid her hand
on Jim's shoulder, until he looked into her face. It was full of
strength and brightness.
"'The sea is His also,'" she quoted gently. "Besides, we may get
picked up," she went on. "I'm very well off, for my part, as you see.
Can swim or rest floating, thanks to this blessed cork thing, and not
at all hurt by the fall from the rope. But I must get rid of my shoes
and some of my clothes, if I have to swim."
It is awkward to kick off one's shoes and divest oneself of unnecessary
clothing in the water, and Agatha laughed at herself as she did it.
"Not exactly a bathing suit, but this one black skirt will have to do.
The others must go. It was my skirts that caused the mischief with the
rope at first. And I was scared!"
"You had a right to be." Jim helped her keep afloat, and presently he
saw that, freed from the entanglement of so many clothes, she was as
much at home in the water as he. Suddenly she turned to him, caught by
some recollection that almost eluded her.
"I don't think we are anywhere near the middle of the Atlantic," she
said thoughtfully. James was silent, eating the bitter bread of
despair, in spite of the woman's brave wish to comfort him. They were
swimming slowly as they talked, still hoping to reach the yacht. They
rose on the breast of the waves, paused now and then till a quieter
moment came, and always kept near each other in the pale blue darkness.
"Old Sophie said something--that some one had tampered with the wheel,
I think. At any rate, she said we'd never get far from shore with this
crew."
James considered the case. "But even suppose we are within a mile or
two, say, of the shore, could you ever swim two miles in this heavy
sea?"
"It is growing calmer every minute. See, I can do very well, even
swimming alone. It must be near morning, too, and that's always, a
good thing." There was the shadow of a laugh in her voice.
"Morning? That depends," growled Jim. He was being soothed in spite
of himself, and in spite of the direfulness of their situation. But
bad as the situation was, and would be in any case, he could not deny
the proposition that morning and daylight would make it better.
"But aren't you tired already? You must be." James turned closer to
her, trying to read her face. "It was a long night of anxiety, even
before we left the boat. Weren't you frightened?"
"Yes, of course; but I've been getting used to frights of late, if one
_can_ get used to them." Again there was the laugh in her voice, under
all its seriousness, even when she added: "I'm not sure that this isn't
safer than being on board the _Jeanne D'Arc_, after all!"
It was characteristic of James that he forebore to take advantage of
the opening this speech offered. The possible reason of her abduction,
her treatment on board the yacht, her relation to Monsieur
Chatelard--it was all a mystery, but he could not, at that moment, seek
to solve it. Her remark remained unanswered for a little time; at last
he said: "Then the _Jeanne D'Arc_ must have been pretty bad."
"It was," she said simply.
Jim wondered whether she knew more about the crime of which she was the
victim than he knew, or if she had discovered aught concerning it while
she was a prisoner on the yacht. Granting that her person was so
valuable that a man of Monsieur Chatelard's caliber would commit a
crime to get possession of it, why should he have abandoned her when
there was plainly some chance of safety in the boats? He could not
conceive of Monsieur Chatelard's risking his neck in an affair of
gallantry; cupidity alone would account for his part in the drama.
James went over and over the situation, as far as he understood it, but
he did none of his thinking aloud. It flashed on his mind that Miss
Redmond must already have separated him, in her thoughts, from the
other people on the yacht; though perhaps her trust was instinctive,
arising from her own need of help. How could she know that he had
risked his neck twice, now, to follow the Vision?
Swimming slowly, with Agatha's hand at times on his shoulder, James
turned his mind sharply to a consideration of their present position.
They had been alternately swimming and floating, hoping to come upon
the yacht. The darkness of the night was penetrable, so that they
could see a fairly large circle of water about them, but there was no
shadow of the _Jeanne D'Arc_. Save for the running surge of the
waters, all was silence. The pale forerunners of dawn had appeared.
Their swim after the boats of the _Jeanne D'Arc_ had warmed their
blood, so that for a while they were not conscious of the chill of the
water. But as the minutes lengthened, one by one, fatigue and cold
numbed their bodies. It was a test of endurance for a strong man; as
for the girl, Jim wondered at her strength and courage. She swam
superbly, with unhurried, steady strokes. If she grew chatteringly
cold, she would start into a vigorous swim, shoulder to shoulder with
James. If she lost her breath with the hard exercise, she would take
his hand, "so as not to lose you," she would say, and rest on the
breast of the waves. The wind dropped and the sea grew quiet, so that
they were no more cruelly buffeted, but rocked up and down on its
heaving bosom.
Once, while they were "resting" on the water, Agatha broke a long
silence with, "I wonder--" but did not at once say what she wondered
at. Jim said nothing, but she knew he was waiting and listening.
"Suppose this should be the Great Gateway," she said at last, very
slowly, but quite cheerfully and naturally. "I am wondering what there
is beyond."
"I've often wondered, too," said Jim.
"I've sometimes thought, and I've said it, too, that I was crazy to
die, just to see what happens," Agatha went on, laughing a little at
her own memories. "But I find I'm not at all eager for it, now, when
it would be so easy to go under and not come up again. Are you?"
"No, I've never felt eager to die; least of all, now."
Agatha was silent a while.
"What do you think death means? Shall we be we to-morrow, say,
provided we can't keep afloat?" she asked by and by.
"Why, yes, I think so," said Jim. "I don't know why or how, but I
guess we go on somewhere; and I rather think our best moments here--our
moments of happiness or heroism, if we ever have any--are going to be
the regular thing." Jim laughed a little, partly at his own lame
ending, and partly because he felt Agatha's hand closing more tightly
over his. He didn't want her to get blue just yet, after her brave
fight.
But Agatha wasn't blue. She answered thoughtfully: "That isn't a bad
idea," and then cheerfully turned to a consideration of the
possibilities of a rescue at dawn.
James had evolved a plan to wait till enough light came to enable them
to reach the _Jeanne D'Arc_, if she was still afloat; then to climb
aboard and hunt for provisions and life preservers or something to use
for a raft. If he could do this, then they would be in a somewhat
better plight, at least for a time. He prayed that the _Jeanne D'Arc_
might still be alive.
The two talked little, leaving silences between them full of wonder.
The details of life, the ordinary personalities, were blotted out.
Without explanation or speech of any kind, they understood each other.
They were not, in this hour, members of a complex and artificial
society; they were not even man and woman; they were two souls stripped
of everything but the need for fortitude and sweetness.
At last came the dawn. Slowly the blue curtain of night lifted,
lifted, until it became the blue curtain of sky, endlessly far away and
far above. A twinkling star looked down on the cup of ocean, glimmered
a moment and was gone. The light strengthened. A pearly, iridescent
quiver came upon the waters, repeating itself wave after wave, and
heralded the coming of the Lord Sun over the great murmuring sea. As
the light grew, they could see a constantly widening circle of ocean,
of which they were the center. As they rose and fell with the waves,
the horizon fell and rose to their vision, dim and undefined. Hand in
hand they floated in vaporous silver.
"The day has come at last, thank God!" breathed James.
"Yes, thank God!" answered the girl.
"Are you very cold?"
"The sun will soon warm us."
"Where did you learn to swim?"
"In England, mostly at the Isle of Wight, but I'm not half such a
dolphin as you are."
"Oh, well, boys have to swim, you know, and I was a boy once," Jim
answered awkwardly. Presently he asked, and his voice was full of awe:
"Have you ever seen the dawn--a dawn like this--before?"
"Never one like this," she whispered.
When daylight came, they found they had not traveled far from the scene
of the night's disaster; or, if they had, the _Jeanne D'Arc_ had
drifted with them. She was still afloat, and just as the sun rose they
saw her, apparently not far away, tossing rudderless to the waves.
There was no sign of the ship's boats.
At the renewed miracle of light, and at sight of the yacht, Jimmy's
hopes were reborn. His spirit bathed in the wonder of the day and was
made strong again. The night with its horrors of struggle and its
darkness was past, forgotten in the flush of hope that came with the
light.
Together they struck out toward the yacht, fresh with new courage. Now
that he could see plainly, Jim swam always a little behind Agatha,
keeping a watchful eye. She still took the water gallantly, nose and
closed mouth just topping the wave, like a spaniel. An occasional
side-stroke would bring her face level to the water, with a backward
smile for her companion. He gloried in her spirit, even while he
feared for her strength.
It was a longer pull to the yacht than they had counted upon, a heavy
tax on their powers of endurance. Jim came up to find Agatha floating
on her back and put his hand under her shoulders, steadying her easily.
"Now you can really rest," he said.
"I've looked toward the horizon so long, I thought I'd look up, way up,
for a change," she said cheerfully. "That's where the skylarks go,
when they want to sing--straight up into heaven!"
"Doesn't it make you want to sing?"
She showed no surprise at the question.
"Yes, it does, almost. But just as I thought of the skylarks, I
remembered something else; something that kept haunting me in the
darkness all night--
"'Master in song, good-by, good-by,
Down to the dim sea-line--'
I thought something or somebody was surely lost down in 'the dim
sea-line' last night."
"Who can tell? But I had a better thought than yours: Ulysses, like
us, swimming over the 'wine-dark sea'! Do you remember it? 'Then two
days and two nights on the resistless waves he drifted; many a time his
heart faced death.'"
"That's not a bit better thought than mine; but I like it. And I know
what follows, too. 'But when the fair-haired dawn brought the third
day, then the wind ceased; there came a breathless calm; and close at
hand he spied the coast, as he cast a keen glance forward, upborne on a
great wave.' That's it, isn't it?"
"I don't know, but I hope it is. 'The wine-dark sea' and the
'rosy-fingered dawn' are all I remember; though I'm glad you know what
comes next. It's a good omen. But look at the yacht; she's acting
strange!"
As the girl turned to her stroke, their attention was caught and held
by the convulsions of the _Jeanne D'Arc_. There was a grim fascination
in the sight.
It was obvious that she was sinking. While they had been resting, her
hull had sunk toward the water-line, her graceful bulk and delicate
masts showing strange against ocean and sky. Now she suddenly tipped
down at her stern; her bow was thrown up out of the water for an
instant, only to be drawn down again, slowly but irresistibly, as if
she were pulled by a giant's unseen hand. With a sudden last lurch she
disappeared entirely, and only widening circles fleetingly marked the
place of her going.
The two in the water watched with fascinated eyes, filled with awe.
When it was all over Agatha turned to her companion with a long-drawn
breath. Jim looked as one looks whose last hope has failed.
"I could never have let you go aboard, anyway!" He loved her anew for
that speech, but knew not how to meet her eyes.
"Well, Ulysses lost his raft, too!" he managed to say.
"He saw the sunrise, too, just as we have seen it; and he saw a distant
island, 'that seemed a shield laid on the misty sea.' Let's look hard
now, each time the wave lifts us. Perhaps we also shall see an island."
"We must swim harder; you are chilled through."
"Oh, no," she laughed. "I shivered at the thought of what a fright I
must look. I always did hate to get my hair wet."
"You look all right to me."
They were able to laugh, and so kept up heart. They tried to calculate
the direction the yacht had taken when she left port, and where the
land might lie; and when they had argued about it, they set out to swim
a certain way. In their hearts each felt that any calculation was
futile, but they pretended to be in earnest. They could not see far,
but they created for themselves a goal and worked toward it, which is
of itself a happiness.
So they watched and waited, ages long. Hope came to them again
presently. James, treading water, thrust up his head and scented the
air.
"I smell the salt marsh, which means land!" He sniffed again. "Yes,
decidedly!"
A moment later it was there, before their vision--that "shield laid on
the misty sea" which was the land. Only it was not like a shield, but
a rocky spit of coast land, with fir trees farther back. James made
for the nearest point, though his heart shrank to see how far away it
was. Fatigue and anxiety were taking their toll of his vigor. Neither
one had breath to spare even for exultation that the land was in sight.
Little by little Agatha grew more quiet, though not less brave. It
took all her strength to fight the water--that mighty element which
indifferently supports or engulfs the human atom. If she feared, she
made no sign. Bravely she kept her heart, and carefully she saved her
strength, swimming slowly, resting often, and wasting no breath in talk.
But more and more frequently her eyes rested wistfully on James, mutely
asking him for help. He watched her minute by minute, often begging
her to let him help her.
"Oh, no, not yet; I can go on nicely, if I just rest a little.
There--thank you."
Once she looked at him with such pain in her eyes that he silently took
her hands, placed them on his shoulder and carried her along with his
stronger stroke. She was reassured by his strength, and presently she
slipped away from him, smiling confidently again as she swam alongside.
"I'm all right now; but I suddenly thought, what if anything should
happen to you, and I be left alone! Or what if I should get panicky
and clutch you and drag you down, the way people do sometimes!"
"But I shan't leave you alone, and you're not going to do that!"
Agatha smiled, but could only say, "I hope not!"
She forged ahead a little, and presently had another moment of fright
on looking round and finding that Jim had disappeared. He had suddenly
dived, without giving her warning. He came up a second later, puffing
and spitting the bitter brine; but his face was radiant.
"Rocks and seaweed!" he cried. "The land is near. Come; I can swim
and take you, too, easily. And now I know certainly just which way to
go. Come, come!"
Agatha heard it all, but this time she was unable to utter a word. Jim
saw her stiff lips move in an effort to smile or speak, but he heard no
voice.
"Keep up, keep up, dear girl!" he cried. "We'll soon be there. Try,
_try_ to keep up! Don't lose for a moment the thought that you are
near land, that you are almost there. We _are_ safe, you _can_ go
on--only a few moments more!"
Poor Agatha strove as Jim bade her, gallantly, hearing his voice as
through a thickening wall; but she had already done her best, and more.
She struggled for a few half-conscious moments; then suddenly her arms
grew limp, her eyes closed, and her weight came upon Jim as that of a
dead person. Then he set his teeth and nerved himself to make the
effort of his life.
It is no easy thing to strain forward, swimming the high seas, bearing
above the surface a load which on land would make a strong man stagger.
One must watch one's burden, to guard against mishap; one must save
breath and muscle, and keep an eye for direction, all in a struggle
against a hostile element.
The goal still seemed incredibly far, farther than his strength could
go. Yet he swam on, fighting against the heartbreaking thought that
his companion had perhaps gone "down to the dim sea-line" in very
truth. She had been so brave, so strong. She had buoyed up his
courage when it had been fainting; she had fought splendidly against
the last terrible inertia of exhaustion.
"Courage!" he told himself. "We must make the land!" But it took a
stupendous effort. His strokes became unequal, some of them feeble and
ineffective; his muscles ached with the strain; now and then a strange
whirring and dizziness in his head caused him to wonder dimly whether
he were above or below water. He could no longer swim with closed
lips, but constantly threw his head back with the gasp that marks the
spent runner.
Holding Agatha Redmond in front of him, with her head well above the
water and her body partly supported by the life preserver, he swam
sometimes with one hand, sometimes only with his legs. He dared not
stop now, lest he be too late in reaching land or wholly unable to
regather his force. The dizziness increased, and a sharp pain in his
eyeballs recurred again and again. He could no longer see the land; it
seemed to him that it was blood, not brine, that spurted from nose and
mouth; but still he swam on, holding the woman safe. He made a
gigantic effort to shout, though he could scarcely hear his own voice.
Then he fixed his mind solely on his swimming, counting one stroke
after another, like a man who is coaxing sleep.
How long he swam thus, he did not know; but after many strokes he was
conscious of a sense of happiness that, after all, it wasn't necessary
to reach land or to struggle any more. Rest and respite from
excruciating effort were to be had for the taking--why had he withstood
them so long? The sea rocked him, the surge filled his ears, his limbs
relaxed their tension. Then it was that a strong hand grasped him, and
a second later the same hand dealt him a violent blow on the face.
He had to begin the intolerable exertion of swimming again, but he no
longer had a burden to hold safe; there was no burden in sight.
Half-consciously he felt the earth once more beneath his feet, but he
could not stand. He fell face forward into the water again at his
first attempt; and again the strong hand pulled him up and half-carried
him over some slimy rocks. It was an endless journey before the strong
hand would let him sit or lie down, but at last he was allowed to drop.
He vaguely felt the warmth of the sun drying his skin while the sea
hummed in his ears; he felt distinctly the sharp pain between his eyes,
and a parching thirst. He groped around in a delirious search for
water, which he did not find; he pressed his head and limbs against the
earth in an exquisite relief from pain; and at last his bruised feet,
his aching bones and head constrained him to a lethargy that ended in
sleep.