“Tish!” I said in agony. “Tish, where are you?”
“I am here, Lizzie,” I heard the dear familiar tones. And that was all.
In a few moments I was alone on the bosom of the raging deep, and Tish
and Lily May were on their way probably to the Canadian border.
I have no very clear idea of what happened next. As I had no knowledge
of a motor I could but experiment, and finally about two a.m. I did
start the engine. I managed the steering fairly well after a time, and
started back. The fog was quite gone by that time, and it was clear
moonlight. I seemed to be going very fast, but I did not know how to
stop the thing and could but keep on. I have one very clear and tragic
impression, however. In the moonlight I passed the bell buoy where we
had left Aggie--and Aggie was not there!
After that I remember little, except seeing our beach in front of me
with a group of people on it, and steering at it. They have told me
since that I came in on the top of a high roller, and that the Swallow
simply crossed the beach and went up onto the lawn, where it stopped
finally in the pansy bed, but I did not.
And then Christopher was lifting my head from a bottle of Canadian Club
whiskey as I lay on the ground, and saying in a shaken voice, “Where is
she?”
“Gone,” I said sadly. “They are all gone, Christopher. Tish and Aggie
and Lily May. Gone.”
“My God!” he said. “Lily May!”
“Canada,” I said. “Or maybe England; or Spain. I don’t know. But
Aggie----”
“What do you mean?” yelled Christopher. “Canada or England?”
“They’ve been stolen. Abducted. By rum runners, Christopher,” I said.
“But my dear Aggie----”
And at that minute I heard a sneeze from the house.
“Aggie!” I cried. “Aggie!”
Then Hannah and Mr. MacDonald came up. Mr. MacDonald picked up a bottle
and said, “You wouldn’t believe me before. Is this eau de cologne or is
it liquor?”
“Oh, get the h---- out of here,” said Christopher.
They took me into the house, and there was Aggie sitting before the
fire, still shivering, and with a very bad cold. She had her feet in a
mustard foot bath with a blanket over it, for Mr. MacDonald would not
allow her to go upstairs, and she burst into tears the minute she saw
me.
“I’b udder arrest, Lizzie,” she wailed. “I’ve beed soaked through, ad
bit at by sharks, ad fired od, ad lost by teeth. Ad dow I’b arrested.
It’s just too buch.”
She had lost her teeth, poor soul. She had taken them out because they
were chattering so, and they had slipped out of her hand. She might
have recovered them, but just as she was about to do so a huge fish had
snapped at them and got them.
It had indeed been a day of misfortunes, and Aggie’s were not the
least. For Mr. MacDonald and Christopher had heard her sneezing on the
bell buoy, and had fired at her before they knew her.
Then, when they did find her, she was sitting on a case of liquor, and
nothing she could say did any good.
“I told theb it was dried fish,” she said, “but the darded fools
wouldd’t believe be, ad whed they looked, it wasd’t.”