As long as men remain to tell the story of the Inland Seas the great
autumn storm of 1900 will not be forgotten. It has been set down as
a matter of history, and a hundred tales could be told of the ships
that went down and the men who died in those days when the Five Lakes
were like five mighty churns, whipping and tossing their waters in
maelstroms of destruction.
It was not cold. A part of the time the sun shone brightly, and back
in the woods from the Superior shore birds sang, and flowers still
bloomed. To Pierre and his people this was of strange and mysterious
portent, for though they had seen many storms at Five Fingers there had
never been one like this, with that terrific roar of enraged waters
against rock walls and birds preening themselves and chirping in the
sunshine of the forest.
On the second day Pierre took Josette and Marie Antoinette down to the
tip of the wooded peninsula that lay between the Second and Middle
Finger that they might see the lake as they had never seen it before.
It was fun for the women. The wind choked them at times, and they had
to scream to be heard, and it whipped their long hair loose until
they were like panting naiads, clinging to Pierre's hands, their eyes
shining and their hearts thrilled with the excitement of the adventure.
Pierre, laughing, told Josette she was as lovely as a girl with her
shining hair all about her in a windblown tangle and her cheeks as pink
and soft as Marie Antoinette's. But he was only half heard, for the
seas were roaring among the rocks below them like the steady thunder of
countless guns.
When they came out of the last rim of sheltering spruce and looked
beyond the black and dripping rampart of rock that held back the raging
waters Josette clung to him in sudden fear, and Marie Antoinette gave a
cry that cut like a knife above the wind.
Pierre's heart went dead and still as he stared gray-faced out to sea.
There was a twist on his lips where laughter suddenly died.
Out from the shore lay an entanglement of reef and rock, jutting up
like great heads of sea-monsters in the quiet and calm of summer, a
resting-place for gulls, and strangely quiet and beautiful at times
when the water rippled between them in wide paths of green silver.
Through this network of waiting traps ran the channel in which the tug
made her way to and from the Middle Finger. But there was no channel
today. It was lost in a fury of thundering flood, lashing itself into
ribbons, and among the rocks, half a mile from where Pierre and his
women stood, a ship was beating herself to pieces.
In his first moment of horror Pierre knew they had come just in time
to see the end. She was a schooner of possibly three hundred tons, and
had plunged broadside upon the long, low reef which Josette herself had
named the Dragon because of the jagged teeth of rock which rose from
it like the spines of a huge fin. Her tall masts were gone. A mass of
wreckage tangled her deck, and Pierre fancied that even above the roar
of the surf he could hear the crash of her rending timbers as she rose
and fell in mighty sledge-hammer blows upon the reef. As he waited,
struck dumb with horror, the vessel was raised half out of the sea,
and when she fell back her stern split asunder and the foaming water
engulfed her until only her bow was held up by the projecting spines of
the Dragon.
Marie Antoinette cried out again, and her face was waxlike in its fear
and horror, for very clearly in that moment they saw a moving figure in
the bow of the ship. In an instant the figure was inundated and gone.
Life leaped back into Pierre.
"If any live they may sweep into this pit of the Middle Finger," he
shouted. "We must help them." Then he turned to Marie Antoinette and
placed his mouth close to her ear. "Go back," he cried. "Go back and
bring help as swiftly as you can!"
Scarcely were the words spoken when Marie Antoinette was gone with the
quickness of a bird, her long hair streaming about her like a veil as
she ran. Pierre looked at Josette. She was not frightened now. Her
face was white and calm and her eyes were pools of steady fire. She was
looking on death. She could almost hear the cries of death. Her glance
met Pierre's, and her lips moved, but he did not hear her words. It was
then, looking again toward what little remained of the schooner, that
they saw something sweeping in toward them among the nearer reefs. It
came swiftly, now almost submerged, then popping up for an instant, and
was swept at last upon a rock where the waters split like a mill race
at the very edge of the smoother sea that ran through the mouth of the
Middle Finger.
"It is a raft," shouted Pierre, "and someone is on it!"
Josette's cry rose shrill and piercing:
"_It is a woman!_"
They could see the figure flung upon the rock, with a hand clutching
at its slippery sides, and Pierre's breath came in a sudden gasp of
despair when he saw it was a woman. Her face was a ghost's face in the
surf mist, and her drenched hair streamed upon the rock as the water
ebbed away. She seemed to see them as they stood at the cliff edge, and
Pierre thought he heard her voice rise faintly above the thunder of the
water, crying out for her life.
He turned and ran to a ragged break in the cliff and climbed down
swiftly to the narrow shore line at the edge of the Finger, shouting
for Josette to remain where she was. But Josette was close behind
him when he began tearing off his clothes. She was terribly white.
Blood streaked one of her soft cheeks where she had stumbled against a
sharp-edged rock coming down. But her eyes were filled with a strange
and unchanging fire, and she fell upon her knees among the stones to
unlace one of Pierre's boots while he freed himself of the other. She
looked up at him. A glory of strength shone in her face even as her
heart was breaking in its agony. For she knew that Pierre Gourdon, her
husband, was going into the pit of death; and she tried to smile, and
Pierre kissed her lips swiftly and sprang into the sea.
She stood up straight and watched him as he fought his way through the
shore surf toward the seething maelstrom where the woman lay upon the
rock. Josette could see her clearly. She could see the water and white
spume leaping up about her, reaching for her, thrusting her up and
then dragging her back, and almost she prayed that God would take her
and cover her completely with the sea so that Pierre might turn back.
For a little her courage left her and she called wildly upon Pierre to
return, telling him she was his wife and that the woman on the rock was
nothing to him. And then the woman who was fighting for her life seemed
to look into the eyes of Josette through the distance that separated
them--and Josette held out her arms and cried encouragement to her.
All sound but the roar of water was lost to Pierre. He was swimming
now, and a hundred forces dragged at his body, beating him one way and
then the other, while with all his strength he fought to keep himself
in the right direction. He knew what it meant to be carried beyond the
rock into that deadly place which they called the Pit. There he would
die. He would be pulled down by the undertows, and a little later, when
they were done with him, his body would be thrown up at the foot of the
cliff. The thought did not fill him with fear. It gave him strength to
know Josette was watching him in this struggle against death, and that
she was praying for him--and for the woman on the rock.
Only Josette and the other woman could measure the eternity of time
it took him to win the fight. In the last moment a mighty hand seemed
to gather him in its palm and sweep him up to the rock, and he found
himself clinging to it, facing the woman. She was as white as he had
seen Josette. Her eyes were as dark, and there was something in them
that was more terrible to look at than fear. Pierre was exhausted.
He drew himself up a few inches at a time, trying to smile the
encouragement he could not speak. His eyes reached the level of the
rock, and he looked over and down--and saw then what it was the woman
was holding in the crook of her arm.
It was a little girl, six or seven years old, and forgetting in his
amazement the thundering menace of the sea Pierre thought that in all
his life he had never seen anything so beautiful as this child. She was
not hurt. Her eyes were wide open--great, dark eyes that were velvety
pools of terror--and her face, lovely as an angel's, looked at him
from a mass of jet-black hair that dripped with water and clung about
her neck and shoulders like silken strands of seaweed. It was as if a
vision had crept up from the foaming surf to taunt him, a vision of a
face he had painted in his dreams and had prayed for and hoped for all
through the years of his life, and he dashed the water from his eyes
to see more clearly. Then he reached down and drew the child to him
and held her fragile, slim little body in his arms. The woman's face
changed then. Its fierce resolution died out. She became suddenly limp,
and seeing her weakness Pierre caught hold of her so that the surf
would not beat her from the rock.
"I will get you ashore," he shouted. "You must not give up! You must
hold to the rock!"
He bent his face to the child's.
"And you----"
She lay against his breast. Her eyes were looking up at him steadily,
and words choked in Pierre's throat. Those eyes, it seemed to him, were
too beautiful for a child's eyes. Her lips were still red. But her face
was the color of a white cameo in its frame of wonderful black hair,
and the thought came to him again that it was an angel the storm had
blown in from the sea.
The woman was drawing herself up beside him. Another wave broke against
the rock, smothering them in its surf. Out of it came her voice.
"I am Mona Guyon," she cried, so close that her head touched his
shoulder. "This is my baby. Her father--went down--there--beside the
rock--a few minutes ago. Take her ashore----"
A roaring flood inundated them. When it was gone Pierre drew in a deep
breath.
"You must hold to the rock," he shouted again. "I will come back for
you. It will be easy--easy for all of us to get ashore--if you will
hold to the rock!"
When the roar of the surf died away for a moment he told the child what
to do. She must put her arms round his neck and ride ashore on his
back and draw in deep breaths whenever her face was out of the water.
They would swim to the shore very quickly, and then he would come back
for mother. He even laughed as he told her how safely and quickly it
could be done. And then he kissed her; there on the rock Pierre Gourdon
kissed the soft little mouth he had prayed for so many years, and bowed
his head a moment, asking God to help him. Then he lay flat on his face
and drew her into just the right place on his back, and when her arms
were round his neck he tied her hands tightly together under his chin
with a strip which he had torn from his shirt. She could not get away
after that. They would go ashore together, one way or the other.
Slowly he lowered himself over the slippery lee of the rock, and
again he smiled at Mona Guyon. The hour of his Calvary had come,
and his heart beat fiercely with the strength of two praying women
as he slipped into the sea with his precious burden. The twisting
undercurrents reached out like the tentacles of an octopus and tried
to drag him into the doom of the Pit. But it was not Pierre Gourdon
alone who was fighting for the right to live. The woman on the rock was
fighting for him, and the woman ashore--standing to her waist in the
boiling surf--no longer had heart or soul or strength of body, for all
had gone to him; and about his neck were the arms of a child that gave
to him the courage, not only of those who loved and prayed, but of the
good God who had called upon him to play his part in this day and hour.
So he fought, and won at last to the place where his beloved Josette
reached out and caught him and helped him to the stony shore, where he
sank down weakly, with the child in his arms and her face looking up
at him from his breast. He had kept her above the water--that had been
the never faltering thought in his mind; and now there seemed to be
something of awe, of reverence, of unspoken worship in those strangely
beautiful eyes of l'Ange, as Pierre called her in his heart, and
suddenly her arms tightened round his neck and with a little cry she
kissed him.
Then she was in Josette's arms, and Pierre rose to his feet.
A sudden dread swept over him as he looked out at the rock again. It
seemed to him the seas were higher, and the woman was not as he had
left her. Her face was down, she was limp, a dark blot without life or
resistance, and he saw a huge wave drive up and move her like a sodden
chip a little nearer to the edge of the Pit. She was not _holding on_,
as he had prayed God she would! A few more waves like that last one, a
taller crest, an angrier thrust from the sea--and she would go.
He turned to Josette. She was on her knees among the sharp stones with
her arms about the child, and both she and little Mona were looking
up at him, waiting, knowing that only Pierre Gourdon was master of
himself and of life and death in this hour. He had never seen such eyes
as theirs--Josette's in their agony of fear for him, little Mona's so
strangely, gloriously beautiful, saying more to him in their childish
terror and entreaty than human lips could have spoken.
"I am going back," he said. "It will be easy this time!"
They heard him above the smashing fury of the Pit, and Pierre, catching
an unknown note in his own voice, knew that he was lying. As he faced
the beat of the sea he made as if he did not hear Josette calling
wildly to him that help would surely come in a few minutes, and he must
wait. A few minutes and it would be over, for he could see that with
each thrust of the frothing surf over the crest of the rock the woman
was a little nearer to death.
It was a harder fight this time. At least it seemed so to Pierre, for
the old strength was no longer in his limbs, and something seemed to
have gone out of his heart. If he could reach the rock, just reach it
and cling to it and hold the woman until Marie Antoinette's message
brought the men! That was all he prayed for now, all he hoped for. It
was inconceivable for his imagination to go beyond those things--the
rock, the woman, a jutting tooth of reef to hang to for their lives. He
could feel death all about him as he fought and swam. It struck at him,
choked him, blinded him, dragged at his breath until it seemed as if he
must give up and go riding with it into the maelstroms of the Pit. It
laughed and jeered at him and roared in his ears, but through it all he
saw the rock, and at last the same strange current caught him with the
force of a gargantuan hand and flung him to it.
He tried to climb up, and slipped back. He tried again and again, and
then began to make it, an inch at a time. Something was singing in his
ears. It was like the droning hum of the saw in the mill. For a moment
he rested. He could not see the top of the rock, but he could see the
shore, and there were many figures on it now--men running down to where
Josette was again standing waist-deep in the water.
With new courage he pulled himself up, and then he gave a cry--a
madman's cry of horror, fear and futile warning. The woman had slipped
to the very edge of the rock--the edge that lipped the fury of the Pit.
She was half over. And she was slipping--_slipping_....
He scrambled toward her, flinging himself down the treacherous dip to
catch at her long hair. He caught a strand of it, but it pulled away
from him--and he thrust himself another foot and buried his fingers in
the wet mass of it. In that moment the sea took her. It dragged her
down, and Pierre, holding fast to her hair, went with her into the
black death of the Pit; and as he went his wide eyes saw once more the
blue of the sky and the tops of his beloved forests, and out of his
soul came a soundless cry, the faith and gratitude of a man who was not
afraid to die, "After all--God has been a long time good to me--Pierre
Gourdon!"
Even then, in that roaring baptism of death, his mind was on the woman.
It would not do to let her body beat itself among the rocks alone, and
in some way--as they were twisted and torn by the rending currents--he
got his arms about her. He made no effort to fight, except to hold
her. To fight against the forces which had him in their power was
impossible. He was like a chip in a boiling pot, twisted and turned,
now thrust downward and then up, but never far enough to snatch a
breath of air. He felt the blows of the rocks. Then he began going
down, until it seemed in the last moment that he was falling swiftly
through illimitable space. Consciousness of the woman's presence was
gone, but he still held her in his arms.
Only the strong hands of Joe Gourdon and Simon McQuarrie held Josette
from joining her husband in the heart of the Pit. She struggled against
them, crying out her right to go to him, until they brought her to
the narrow rim of beach under the cliff and her eyes fell on little
Mona. The wind had blown the child's wet hair back from her face, and a
bitter cry came to Josette's lips and resentment burned in her for an
instant like a fire. Pierre was gone because of _her_, because of this
beautiful, star-eyed child and the woman! They had taken him from her.
And here was the child, living, staring at her with those eyes which
had made Pierre call her _l'Ange_--staring at her--while Pierre--and
the other woman--dead and beaten among the rocks.... And then....
"_My mother!_"
It was the child's voice, two words crying out to her, faint and
yearning and filled with agony above the lash of the sea, and with an
answering cry Josette fell down sobbing upon her knees and opened her
arms and held the little stranger tightly against her breast. For a
space after that she was blind to what happened about her. Dominique
stood between her and the sea, even as he saw the grim joke which the
fiends of the Pit were playing upon them this day. For these fiends
were seldom known to give up their playthings, whether logs or sticks
or living things. Once he had known them to keep the body of a dog for
days, and at another time a strong-limbed buck had died there, and it
was a week before they had tired of him and had thrown him ashore. But
this day there was a change. Joe Gourdon and Jeremie Poulin and Poleon
Dufresne had leaped waist-deep into the surf and were bringing out the
bodies of Pierre and the woman!
It was Marie Antoinette who knelt beside them first, and unclasped
Pierre's arms from about the woman. And then Josette saw them. She
staggered to her feet and ran past Dominique, and the first she looked
upon was the white, dead face of the mother. Very tenderly then she
took Pierre's head in her arms, and bent her own over it until both
their faces were shrouded in her long hair.
"He isn't dead," she whispered. No one heard her, for she was saying it
only to herself, and then to Pierre. "He isn't dead. He isn't dead."
She repeated the words, swaying her body gently with Pierre, and the
others drew back, and Marie Antoinette hid little Mona's face against
her while Simon McQuarrie and Telesphore Clamart bore the dead woman
between them round the end of the cliff. And Josette kept repeating,
"He isn't dead, he isn't dead," and she kissed Pierre's lips, and
pressed her cheek against his cheek, and the women and men of Five
Fingers stood back and waited, none daring to be first to break in upon
these sacred moments which belonged to Josette and her dead.
At last Marie Antoinette came up softly and knelt beside Josette and
put a loving hand about her shoulder. Josette's eyes turned to look at
her and they were soft and glowing and so strange they frightened Marie
Antoinette. "He isn't dead," she was still saying, and she bowed her
face down again to Pierre's.
Choking the sob in her throat, Marie Antoinette put her hand to
Josette's face--and a great shock ran through her. She had touched
Pierre's cheek. She felt with her other hand, and drew back Josette's
hair, her heart suddenly throbbing like an Indian drum. Then she saw it
was not the madness of grief that kept Josette repeating those words,
but the intuition of a soul which had felt the nearness of its mate,
for Pierre's eyes slowly opened and the first vision which came to him
out of a roaring sea of dreams was the face of his wife.
From the group of tensely waiting people Mona had come, sobbing in
a strange, quiet way for her mother, and as Marie Antoinette drew a
little back Josette caught the child close to her, along with Pierre,
and as Pierre reached his arms up weakly to them both the thought came
to him again, "_God has been a long time good to me--Pierre Gourdon!_"