* * * * *
Brack’s boat was gone. That was good. But I looked in vain for some
sign of life aboard. Apparently the _Wanderer_ was deserted. I waited
in hope that some one might appear on deck and in response to my hail
send over a boat, but after half an hour I gave this up. I was rested
now from the unaccustomed strain of hill-climbing, and I was
determined to reach the yacht.
The _Wanderer’s_ anchorage was probably two hundred yards from the
shore on which I was lying and I had never been but a poor swimmer.
But from an out-jutting point of the island it was but half that
distance and to the island I turned my attention.
The channel separating the island and the mainland was about fifty
yards wide. I swam it, after having divested myself of shoes and coat,
ran along the island to the point nearest the yacht and plunged in
again. The water of the fiord was like ice, and I had not swum far
before my teeth were chattering. I was tempted to shout and call for
help, but the caution which that day had instilled in me prevented
this and I kept on in silence.
No one saw me as I came climbing up the _Wanderer’s_ starboard
sea-ladder. My flesh, my bones, my marrow, were aching with the
torture of cold. I staggered stiffly across the deck and rounded the
main cabin. There I came upon Freddy Pierce in a deckchair
disconsolately rolling a cigaret.
We did not speak for some time.
At my appearance the paper fluttered from Pierce’s limp hand, the
tobacco dribbled unnoticed from the bag onto the deck and by this I
knew that the sight of me must have appalled him. He stared at me, his
lips opening and closing, and I stared back, uttering no word, as men
do in moments when words are too slow a means of expression. I was
freezing; I was near to collapsing; but at the sight of Pierce’s
appalled countenance my body seemed forgotten.
“Brains!” exploded Freddy at last in agony. “What the ——! Ain’t she
with you?”
“No,” I said, “she is not with me.”
Pierce rose from the deck chair, his boyish, freckled face white and
sickly for the moment.
“Mean to say—” he licked his dry lips—“mean to say you ain’t seen
her?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“He said—Cap’ Brack said—you’d stayed up there with the men, and that
you suggested Miss Baldwin’d like to come up and take a look.”
“‘Brack said?’” My mind refused to comprehend fully the significance
of Pierce’s bare words.
“Eyah. He said that the second time he was down—for lunch. Said you
were up there. And Miss Baldwin got in the boat with ’em and went up
there, thinking to meet you. Brains—Mr. Pitt!” he cried, springing
forward and grasping my arms, “what’s come off? What’s Brack been
pulling? Didn’t you send that word to Miss Baldwin at all?”
“No.”