ON THE CREST OF THE MAELSTROM
Stern's observation of the rising flood proved correct. By
whatever theory it might or might not be explained, the fact was
positive that now the water there below them was rising fast, and that
inside of half an hour at the outside the torrent would engulf their
ledge.
It seemed as though there must be some vast, rhythmic ebb and flux in
the unsounded abysses that yawned beneath them, some incalculable
regurgitation of the sea, which periodically spewed forth a part, at
least, of the enormous torrent that for hours poured into that titanic
gulf.
And it was upon this flux, stormy and wild and full of seething
whirlpools, that Allan Stern and the girl now built their only
possible hope of salvation and of life.
"Come, we must be at work!" he told her, as together they peered over
the edge and now beheld the weltering flood creeping up, up along the
thunderous plunge of the waterfall till it was within no more than a
hundred feet of their shelter.
As the depth of the fall decreased the spray-drive lessened, and now,
with the full coming of day, some reflection of the golden morning sky
crept through the spray. Yet neither to right nor left could they see
shore or anything save that long, swift, sliding wall of brine,
foam-tossed and terrible.
"To work!" said he again. "If we're going to save ourselves out of
this inferno we've got to make some kind of preparation. We can't just
swim and trust to luck. We shall have to malice float of some sort or
other, I think."
"Yes, but what with?" asked she.
"With what remains of the yawl!"
And even as he spoke he led the way to the crevice where the
splintered boards and the torn sail had been wedged fast.
"A slim hope, I know," he admitted, "but it's all we've got now."
Driven home as the wreckage was by the terrific impact of the blow,
Stern had a man's work cut out for him to get it clear; but his was as
the strength of ten, and before half an hour had passed he had, with
the girl's help, freed all the planks and laid them out along the
rock-shelf, the most sheltered spot of the ledge.
Another hour later the planks had been lashed into a rough sort of
float with what cordage remained and with platted strips of the mat
sail.
"It's not half big enough to hold us up altogether," judged the man,
"but if we merely use it to keep our heads out of water it will serve,
and it's got the merit of being unsinkable, anyhow. God knows how long
we may have to be in the water, little girl. But whatever comes we've
got to face it. There's no other chance at all!"
They waited now calmly, with the resignation of those who have no
alternative to hardship. And steadily the flood mounted up, up, toward
the ledge, and now the seethe was very near. Now already the leaping
froth of the plunge was dashing up against their rock. In a few
moments the shelter would be submerged.
He put his lips close to her ear, for now his voice could not carry.
"Let's jump for it!" he cried. "If we wait till the flood reaches us
here we'll be crushed against the rock. Come on, Beatrice, we've got
to plunge!"
She answered with her eyes; he knew the girl was ready. To him he drew
her and their kiss was one that spoke eternal farewell. But of this
thought no word passed their lips.
"_Come!_" bade the man once more.
How they leaped into that vortex of mad waters, how they vanished in
that thunderous welter, rose, sank, fought, strangled, rose again and
caught the air, and once more were whirled down and buried in that
crushing avalanche; how they clung to the lashed planks and with these
spiraled in mad sarabands among the whirlpools and green eddies; how
they were flung out into smoother water, blinded and deafened, yet
with still the spark of life and consciousness within them, and how
they let the frail raft bear them, fainting and dazed, all their
senses concentrated just on gripping this support--all this they never
could have told.
Stern knew at last, with something of clarity, that he was floating
easily along an oily current which ran, undulating, beneath a
slate-gray mist; he realized that with one hand he was grasping the
planks, with the other arm upbearing the girl.
Pale and with closed eyes, she lay there in the hollow of his arm, her
face free from water, her long hair floating out upon the tide.
He saw her lids twitch and knew she lived. Yet even as he thanked God
and took a firmer hold on her, consciousness lapsed again, and with it
all realization of time or of events.
Yet though the moments--or were they hours?--which followed left no
impress on his brain, some intelligence must have directed Stern. For
when once more he knew, he found the mist and fog all gone; he saw a
golden sun that weltered all across the heaving flood in a brave
splendor; and, off to northward, a wooded line of hills, blue in the
distance, yet beautiful with their promise of salvation.
Stern understood, then, what must have happened. He saw that the
upfilling of the abyss, whatever might have caused it, had flung them
forth; he perceived that the temporary flood which had taken place
before once more another terrific down-draft should pour into the
gaping chasm, had cast them out, floated by their raft of planks, even
as match-straws might be flung and floated on the outburst of a
geyser.
He understood; he knew that, fortune favoring, life still beckoned
there ahead.
And in his heart resolve leaped up.
"Life! Life!" he cried. "Oh, Beatrice, look! See! There's land ahead,
there--_land!_"
But the girl, still circled by his arm, lay senseless. Allan knew he
could make no progress in that manner. So by dint of great labor, he
managed to draw her somewhat onto the float and there to lash her with
a loose end of cordage in such wise that she could breathe with no
danger of drowning.
Himself he summoned all his forces, and now began to swim through the
smooth tides, which, warm with some grateful heat, vastly unlike the
usual ocean chill, stretched lazily rolling away and away to that far
off shore.
That day was long and bitter, an agony of toil, hope, despair, labor
and struggle, and the girl, reviving, shared it toward the end. Only
their frail raft fenced death away, but so long as the buoyant planks
held together they could not drown.
Thirst and exhaustion tortured them, but there was no hope of appeal
to any help. In this manless world there could be no rescue. Here,
there, a few gulls wheeled and screamed above the flood; and once a
school of porpoises, glistening as they curved their shining backs in
long leaps through the brine, played past. Allan and the girl envied
the creatures, and renewed their fight for life.
The south wind favored, and what seemed a landward current drew them
on. Their own strength, too, in spite of the long fast and the
incredible hardships, held out well. For now that civilization was a
thing of the oblivious past, they shared the vital forces and the very
powers of Mother Nature herself. And, like two favored children of
that all-mother, they slowly made their way to land.
Night found them utterly exhausted and soaked to the marrow, yet
alive, stretched out at full length, inert, upon the warm sands of a
virgin beach. There they lay, supine, above high tide, whither they
had dragged themselves with terrible exertion. And the stars wheeled
overhead; and down upon them the strange-featured moon wondered with
her pallid gleam.
Fireless, foodless and without shelter, unprotected in every way,
possessing nothing now save just their own bodies and the draggled
garments that they wore, they lay and slept. In their supreme
exhaustion they risked attack from wild beasts and from anthropoids.
Sleep to them was now the one vital, inevitable necessity.
Thus the long night hours passed and strength revived in them,
up-welling like fresh tides of life; and once more a new day grayed
the east, then transmuted to bright gold and blazoned its insignia all
up the eastern sky.
Stern woke first, dazed with the long sleep, toward mid-morning. A
little while he lay as though adream, trying to realize what had
happened; but soon remembrance knitted up the fabric of the peril and
the close escape. And, arising stiffly from the sand, he stretched his
splendid muscles, rubbed his eyes, and stared about him.
A burning thirst was tormenting him. His tongue clave to the roof of
his mouth; he found, by trial, that he could scarcely swallow.
"Water!" gasped he, and peered at the deep green woods, which promised
abundant brooks and streams.
But before he started on that quest he looked to see that Beatrice was
safe and sound. The girl still slept. Bending above her he made sure
that she was resting easily and that she had taken no harm. But the
sun, he saw, was shining in her face.
"That won't do at all!" he thought; and now with a double motive he
strode off up the beach, toward the dense forest that grew down to the
line of shifting sands.
Ten minutes and he had discovered a spring that bubbled out beneath a
moss-hung rock, a spring whereof he drank till renewed life ran
through his vigorous body. And after that he sought and found with no
great labor a tree of the same species of breadfruit that grew all
about their bungalow on the Hudson.
Then, bearing branches of fruit, and a huge, fronded tuft of the giant
fern-trees that abounded there, he came back down the beach to the
sleeping girl, who still lay unconscious in her tiger-skin, her heavy
hair spread drying on the sands, her face buried in the warm, soft
hollow of her arm.
He thrust the stalk of the fern-tree branch far down into the sand,
bending it so that the thick leaves shaded her. He ate plentifully of
the fruit and left much for her. Then he knelt and kissed her forehead
lightly, and with a smile upon his lips set off along the beach.
A rocky point that rose boldly against the morning, a quarter-mile to
southward, was his objective.
"Whatever's to be seen round here can be seen from there," said he.
"I've got _my_ job cut out for me, all right--here we are, stranded,
without a thing to serve us, no tools, weapons or implements or
supplies of any kind--nothing but our bare hands to work with, and
hundreds of miles between us and the place we call home. No boat, no
conveyance at all. Unknown country, full of God knows what perils!"
Thinking, he strode along the fine, smooth, even sands, where never
yet a human foot had trodden. For the first time he seemed to realize
just what this world now meant--a world devoid of others of his kind.
While the girl and he had been among the ruins of Manhattan, or even
on the Hudson, they had felt some contact with the past; but here,
Stern's eye looked out over a world as virgin as on the primal morn.
And a vast loneliness assailed him, a yearning almost insupportable.
that made him clench his fists and raise them to the impassive, empty
sky that mocked him with its deep and azure calm.
But from the rocky point, when he had scaled its height, he saw far
off to westward a rising column of vapor which for a while diverted
his thoughts. He recognized the column, even though he could not hear
the distant roaring of the cataract he knew lay under it. And,
standing erect and tall on the topmost pinnacle, eyes shaded under his
level hand, he studied the strange sight.
"Yes, the flood's rushing in again, down that vast chasm," he
exclaimed. "The chasm that nearly proved a grave to us! And every day
the same thing happens--but how and why? By Jove, here's a problem
worthy a bigger brain than mine!
"Well, I can't solve it now. And there's enough to do, without
bothering about the maelstrom--except to avoid it!"
He swept the sea with his gaze. Far off to southward lay a dim, dark
line, which at one time must have been Long Island; but it was
irregular now and faint, and showed that the island had been
practically submerged or swept away by the vast geodetic changes of
the age since the catastrophe.
A broken shore-line, heavily wooded, stretched to east and west. Stern
sought in vain for any landmark which might give him position on a
shore once so familiar to him. Whether he now stood near the former
site of New Haven, whether he was in the vicinity of the one-time
mouth of the Connecticut River, or whether the shore where he now
stood had once been Rhode Island, there was no means of telling. Even
the far line of land on the horizon could not guide him.
"If that _is_ some remnant of Long Island," he mused, "it would
indicate that we're no further east than the Connecticut; but there's
no way to be sure. Other islands may have been heaved up from the
ocean floor. There's nothing definite or certain about anything now,
except that we're both alive, without a thing to help us but our wits
and that I'm starving for something more substantial than that
breadfruit!"
Wherewith he went back to Beatrice.
He found her, awake at last, sitting on the beach under the shadow of
the fern-tree branch, shaking out her hair and braiding it in two
thick plaits. He brought her water in a cup deftly fashioned from a
huge leaf; and when she had drunk and eaten some of the fruit they sat
and talked a while in the grateful warmth of the sun.
She seemed depressed and disheartened, at last, as they discussed what
had happened and spoke of the future.
"This last misfortune, Allan," said she, "is too much. There's nothing
now except life--"
"Which is everything!" he interrupted, laughing. "If we can weather a
time like that, nothing in store for us can have any terrors!" His own
spirits rose fast while he cheered the girl.
He drew his arm about her as they sat together on the beach.
"Just be patient, that's all," bade he. "Just give me a day or so to
find out our location, and I'll get things going again, never fear. A
week from now we may be sailing into Boston Harbor--who knows?"
And, shipwrecked and destitute though they were, alone in the vast
emptiness of that deserted world, yet with his optimism and his faith
he coaxed her back to cheerfulness and smiles again.
"The whole earth is ours, and the fulness thereof!" he cried, and
flung his arms defiantly outward. "This is no time for hesitance or
fear. Victory lies all before us yet. To work! To work!"