The wind had died away, but the rain continued, torrential in its
downpour, and the mountains grumbled with dying thunder. The town was
blotted out, and fifty feet ahead of the hissing nose of the launch
Alan could see only a gray wall. Water ran in streams from his rubber
slicker, and Olaf’s great beard was dripping like a wet rag. He was
like a huge gargoyle at the wheel, and in the face of impenetrable
gloom he opened speed until the _Norden_ was shooting with the
swiftness of a torpedo through the sea.
In Olaf’s cabin Alan had listened to the folly of expecting to find
Mary Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of
battered reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a
pirate fleet might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his
experience of twenty years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a
body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief that the girl was
at the bottom of the sea. But the impulse to go on grew no less in
Alan. It quickened with the straining eagerness of the _Norden_ as the
slim craft leaped through the water.
Even the drone of thunder and the beat of rain urged him on. To him
there was nothing absurd in the quest he was about to make. It was the
least he could do, and the only honest thing he could do, he kept
telling himself. And there was a chance that he would find her. All
through his life had run that element of chance; usually it was against
odds he had won, and there rode with him in the gray dawn a conviction
he was going to win now—that he would find Mary Standish somewhere in
the sea or along the coast between Eyak River and the first of the
islands against which the shoreward current drifted. And when he found
her—
He had not gone beyond that. But it pressed upon him now, and in
moments it overcame him, and he saw her in a way which he was fighting
to keep out of his mind. Death had given a vivid clearness to his
mental pictures of her. A strip of white beach persisted in his mind,
and waiting for him on this beach was the slim body of the girl, her
pale face turned up to the morning sun, her long hair streaming over
the sand. It was a vision that choked him, and he struggled to keep
away from it. If he found her like that, he knew, at last, what he
would do. It was the final crumbling away of something inside him, the
breaking down of that other Alan Holt whose negative laws and
self-imposed blindness had sent Mary Standish to her death.
Truth seemed to mock at him, flaying him for that invulnerable poise in
which he had taken such an egotistical pride. For she had come to _him_
in her hour of trouble, and there were five hundred others aboard the
_Nome_. She had believed in him, had given him her friendship and her
confidence, and at the last had placed her life in his hands. And when
he had failed her, she had not gone to another. She had kept her word,
proving to him she was not a liar and a fraud, and he knew at last the
courage of womanhood and the truth of her words, “You will
understand—tomorrow.”
He kept the fight within himself. Olaf did not see it as the dawn
lightened swiftly into the beginning of day. There was no change in the
tense lines of his face and the grim resolution in his eyes. And Olaf
did not press his folly upon him, but kept the _Norden_ pointed
seaward, adding still greater speed as the huge shadow of the headland
loomed up in the direction of Hinchinbrook Island. With increasing day
the rain subsided; it fell in a drizzle for a time and then stopped.
Alan threw off his slicker and wiped the water from his eyes and hair.
White mists began to rise, and through them shot faint rose-gleams of
light. Olaf grunted approbation as he wrung water from his beard. The
sun was breaking through over the mountain tops, and straight above, as
the mist dissolved, was radiant blue sky.
The miracle of change came swiftly in the next half-hour. Storm had
washed the air until it was like tonic; a salty perfume rose from the
sea; and Olaf stood up and stretched himself and shook the wet from his
body as he drank the sweetness into his lungs. Shoreward Alan saw the
mountains taking form, and one after another they rose up like living
things, their crests catching the fire of the sun. Dark inundations of
forest took up the shimmering gleam, green slopes rolled out from
behind veils of smoking vapor, and suddenly—in a final triumph of the
sun—the Alaskan coast lay before him in all its glory.
The Swede made a great gesture of exultation with his free arm,
grinning at his companion, pride and the joy of living in his bearded
face. But in Alan’s there was no change. Dully he sensed the wonder of
day and of sunlight breaking over the mighty ranges to the sea, but
something was missing. The soul of it was gone, and the old thrill was
dead. He felt the tragedy of it, and his lips tightened even as he met
the other’s smile, for he no longer made an effort to blind himself to
the truth.
Olaf began to guess deeply at that truth, now that he could see Alan’s
face in the pitiless light of the day, and after a little the thing lay
naked in his mind. The quest was not a matter of duty, nor was it
inspired by the captain of the _Nome_, as Alan had given him reason to
believe. There was more than grimness in the other’s face, and a
strange sort of sickness lay in his eyes. A little later he observed
the straining eagerness with which those eyes scanned the softly
undulating surface of the sea.
At last he said, “If Captain Rifle was right, the girl went overboard
_out there_,” and he pointed.
Alan stood up.
“But she wouldn’t be there now,” Olaf added.
In his heart he believed she was, straight down—at the bottom. He
turned his boat shoreward. Creeping out from the shadow of the
mountains was the white sand of the beach three or four miles away. A
quarter of an hour later a spiral of smoke detached itself from the
rocks and timber that came down close to the sea.
“That’s McCormick’s,” he said.
Alan made no answer. Through Olaf’s binoculars he picked out the
Scotchman’s cabin. It was Sandy McCormick, Olaf had assured him, who
knew every eddy and drift in fifty miles of coast, and with his eyes
shut could find Mary Standish if she came ashore. And it was Sandy who
came down to greet them when Ericksen dropped his anchor in shallow
water.
They leaped out, thigh-deep, and waded to the beach, and in the door of
the cabin beyond Alan saw a woman looking down at them wonderingly.
Sandy himself was young and ruddy-faced, more like a boy than a man.
They shook hands. Then Alan told of the tragedy aboard the _Nome_ and
what his mission was. He made a great effort to speak calmly, and
believed that he succeeded. Certainly there was no break of emotion in
his cold, even voice, and at the same time no possibility of evading
its deadly earnestness. McCormick, whose means of livelihood were
frequently more unsubstantial than real, listened to the offer of
pecuniary reward for his services with something like shock. Fifty
dollars a day for his time, and an additional five thousand dollars if
he found the girl’s body.
To Alan the sums meant nothing. He was not measuring dollars, and if he
had said ten thousand or twenty thousand, the detail of price would not
have impressed him as important. He possessed as much money as that in
the Nome banks, and a little more, and had the thing been practicable
he would as willingly have offered his reindeer herds could they have
guaranteed him the possession of what he sought. In Olaf’s face
McCormick caught a look which explained the situation a little. Alan
Holt was not mad. He was as any other man might be who had lost the
most precious thing in the world. And unconsciously, as he pledged his
services in acceptance of the offer, he glanced in the direction of the
little woman standing in the doorway of the cabin.
Alan met her. She was a quiet, sweet-looking girl-woman. She smiled
gravely at Olaf, gave her hand to Alan, and her blue eyes dilated when
she heard what had happened aboard the _Nome_. Alan left the three
together and returned to the beach, while between the loading and the
lighting of his pipe the Swede told what he had guessed—that this girl
whose body would never be washed ashore was the beginning and the end
of the world to Alan Holt.
For many miles they searched the beach that day, while Sandy McCormick
skirmished among the islands south and eastward in a light
shore-launch. He was, in a way, a Paul Revere spreading intelligence,
and with Scotch canniness made a good bargain for himself. In a dozen
cabins he left details of the drowning and offered a reward of five
hundred dollars for the finding of the body, so that twenty men and
boys and half as many women were seeking before nightfall.
“And remember,” Sandy told each of them, “the chances are she’ll wash
ashore sometime between tomorrow and three days later, if she comes
ashore at all.”
In the dusk of that first day Alan found himself ten miles up the
coast. He was alone, for Olaf Ericksen had gone in the opposite
direction. It was a different Alan who watched the setting sun dipping
into the western sea, with the golden slopes of the mountains
reflecting its glory behind him. It was as if he had passed through a
great sickness, and up from the earth of his own beloved land had crept
slowly into his body and soul a new understanding of life. There was
despair in his face, but it was a gentler thing now. The harsh lines of
an obstinate will were gone from about his mouth, his eyes no longer
concealed their grief, and there was something in his attitude of a man
chastened by a consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening
twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him
that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew
would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the
night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not give up its dead.
Olaf and Sandy McCormick and Sandy’s wife were in the cabin when he
returned at midnight. He was exhausted. Seven months in the States had
softened him, he explained. He did not inquire how successful the
others had been. He knew. The woman’s eyes told him, the almost
mothering eagerness in them when he came through the door. She had
coffee and food ready for him, and he forced himself to eat. Sandy gave
a report of what he had done, and Olaf smoked his pipe and tried to
speak cheerfully of the splendid weather that was coming tomorrow. Not
one of them spoke of Mary Standish.
Alan felt the strain they were under and knew his presence was the
cause of it, so he lighted his own pipe after eating and talked to
Ellen McCormick about the splendor of the mountains back of Eyak River,
and how fortunate she was to have her home in this little corner of
paradise. He caught a flash of something unspoken in her eyes. It was a
lonely place for a woman, alone, without children, and he spoke about
children to Sandy, smiling. They should have children—a lot of them.
Sandy blushed, and Olaf let out a boom of laughter. But the woman’s
face was unflushed and serious; only her eyes betrayed her, something
wistful and appealing in them as she looked at Sandy.
“We’re building a new cabin,” he said, “and there’s two rooms in it
specially for kids.”
There was pride in his voice as he made pretense to light a pipe that
was already lighted, and pride in the look he gave his young wife. A
moment later Ellen McCormick deftly covered with her apron something
which lay on a little table near the door through which Alan had to
pass to enter his sleeping-room. Olaf’s eyes twinkled. But Alan did not
see. Only he knew there should be children here, where there was surely
love. It did not occur to him as being strange that he, Alan Holt,
should think of such a matter at all.
The next morning the search was resumed. Sandy drew a crude map of
certain hidden places up the east coast where drifts and cross-currents
tossed the flotsam of the sea, and Alan set out for these shores with
Olaf at the wheel of the _Norden_. It was sunset when they returned,
and in the calm of a wonderful evening, with the comforting peace of
the mountains smiling down at them, Olaf believed the time had come to
speak what was in his mind. He spoke first of the weird tricks of the
Alaskan waters, and of strange forces deep down under the surface which
he had never had explained to him, and of how he had lost a cask once
upon a time, and a week later had run upon it well upon its way to
Japan. He emphasized the hide-and-seek playfulness of the undertows and
the treachery of them.
Then he came bluntly to the point of the matter. It would be better if
Mary Standish never did come ashore. It would be days—probably weeks—if
it ever happened at all, and there would be nothing about her for Alan
to recognize. Better a peaceful resting-place at the bottom of the sea.
That was what he called it—“a peaceful resting-place”—and in his
earnestness to soothe another’s grief he blundered still more deeply
into the horror of it all, describing certain details of what flesh and
bone could and could not stand, until Alan felt like clubbing him
beyond the power of speech. He was glad when he saw the McCormick
cabin.
Sandy was waiting for them when they waded ashore. Something unusual
was in his face, Alan thought, and for a moment his heart waited in
suspense. But the Scotchman shook his head negatively and went close to
Olaf Ericksen. Alan did not see the look that passed between them. He
went to the cabin, and Ellen McCormick put a hand on his arm when he
entered. It was an unusual thing for her to do. And there was a glow in
her eyes which had not been there last night, and a flush in her
cheeks, and a new, strange note in her voice when she spoke to him. It
was almost exultation, something she was trying to keep back.
“You—you didn’t find her?” she asked.
“No.” His voice was tired and a little old. “Do you think I shall ever
find her?”
“Not as you have expected,” she answered quietly. “She will never come
like that.” She seemed to be making an effort. “You—you would give a
great deal to have her back, Mr. Holt?”
Her question was childish in its absurdity, and she was like a child
looking at him as she did in this moment. He forced a smile to his lips
and nodded.
“Of course. Everything I possess.”
“You—you—loved her—”
Her voice trembled. It was odd she should ask these questions. But the
probing did not sting him; it was not a woman’s curiosity that inspired
them, and the comforting softness in her voice did him good. He had not
realized before how much he wanted to answer that question, not only
for himself, but for someone else—aloud.
“Yes, I did.”
The confession almost startled him. It seemed an amazing confidence to
be making under any circumstances, and especially upon such brief
acquaintance. But he said no more, though in Ellen McCormick’s face and
eyes was a tremulous expectancy. He stepped into the little room which
had been his sleeping place, and returned with his dunnage-sack. Out of
this he took the bag in which were Mary Standish’s belongings, and gave
it to Sandy’s wife. It was a matter of business now, and he tried to
speak in a businesslike way.
“Her things are inside. I got them in her cabin. If you find her, after
I am gone, you will need them. You understand, of course. And if you
don’t find her, keep them for me. I shall return some day.” It seemed
hard for him to give his simple instructions. He went on: “I don’t
think I shall stay any longer, but I will leave a certified check at
Cordova, and it will be turned over to your husband when she is found.
And if you do find her, you will look after her yourself, won’t you,
Mrs. McCormick?”
Ellen McCormick choked a little as she answered him, promising to do
what he asked. He would always remember her as a sympathetic little
thing, and half an hour later, after he had explained everything to
Sandy, he wished her happiness when he took her hand in saying good-by.
Her hand was trembling. He wondered at it and said something to Sandy
about the priceless value of a happiness such as his, as they went down
to the beach.
The velvety darkness of the sky was athrob with the heart-beat of
stars, when the _Norden’s_ shimmering trail led once more out to sea.
Alan looked up at them, and his mind groped strangely in the infinity
that lay above him. He had never measured it before. Life had been too
full. But now it seemed so vast, and his range in the tundras so far
away, that a great loneliness seized upon him as he turned his eyes to
look back at the dimly white shore-line dissolving swiftly in the gloom
that lay beneath the mountains.