A gladness like the white flare of burning powder swept over him, and
then he became conscious of other, minor sensations--his head ached
intolerably from the fall down the stair, and a grinding pain shot
through his shoulder, lodging in his torn lower arm at the slightest
movement. He slipped the sounding pole into its loops on the cabin and
hastily made his way aft to the relief of Poul Halvard.
The sailor was nowhere visible; but, in an intermittent, reddish light
that faded and swelled as the cabin door swung open and shut, Woolfolk
saw a white figure clinging to the wheel--Millie.
Instantly his hands replaced hers on the spokes and, as if with a
palpable sigh of relief, the _Gar_ steadied to her course. Millie
Stope clung to the deck rail, sobbing with exhaustion.
"He's--he's dead!" she exclaimed, between her racking inspirations.
She pointed to the floor of the cockpit, and there, sliding
grotesquely with the motion of the seaway, was Poul Halvard. An arm
was flung out, as if in ward against the ketch's side, but it
crumpled, the body hit heavily, a hand seemed to clutch at the boards
it had so often and thoroughly swabbed; but without avail. The face
momentarily turned upward; it was haggard beyond expression, and bore
stamped upon it, in lines that resembled those of old age, the
agonized struggle against the inevitable last treachery of life.
"When----" John Woolfolk stopped in sheer, leaden amazement.
"Just when you called 'Three and a quarter.' Before that he had fallen
on his knees. He begged me to help him hold the wheel. He said you'd
be lost if I didn't. He talked all the time about keeping her head up
and up. I helped him. Your voice came back years apart. At the last he
was on the floor, holding the bottom of the wheel. He told me to keep
it steady, dead ahead. His voice grew so weak that I couldn't hear;
and then all at once he slipped away. I--I held on--called to you. But
against the wind----"
He braced his knee against the wheel and, leaning out, found the
jigger sheet and flattened the reefed sail; he turned to where the jib
sheet led after, and then swung the ketch about. The yacht rode
smoothly, slipping forward over the long, even ground swell, and he
turned with immeasurable emotion to the woman beside him.
The light from the cabin flooded out over her face, and he saw that,
miraculously, the fear had gone. Her countenance was drawn with
weariness and the hideous strain of the past minutes, but her gaze
squarely met the night and sea. Her chin was lifted, its graceful line
firm, and her mouth was in repose. She had, as he had recognized she
alone must, conquered the legacy of Lichfield Stope; while he, John
Woolfolk, and Halvard, had put Nicholas out of her life. She was
free.
"If you could go below----" he suggested. "In the morning, with this
wind, we'll be at anchor under a fringe of palms, in water like a blue
silk counterpane."
"I think I could now, with you," she replied. She pressed her lips,
salt and enthralling, against his face, and made her way into the
cabin. He locked the wheel momentarily and, following, wrapped her in
the blankets, on the new sheets prepared for her coming. Then, putting
out the light, he shut the cabin door and returned to the wheel.
The body of Poul Halvard struck his feet and rested there. A good man,
born by the sea, who had known its every expression; with a faithful
and simple heart, as such men occasionally had.
The diminished wind swept in a clear diapason through the pellucid
sky; the resplendent sea reached vast and magnetic to its invisible
horizon. A sudden distaste seized John Woolfolk for the dragging death
ceremonials of land. Halvard had known the shore mostly as a turbulent
and unclean strip that had finally brought about his end.
He leaned forward and found beyond any last doubt that the other was
dead; a black, clotted surface adhered to the wound which his pride,
his invincible determination, had driven him to deny.
In the space beneath the afterdeck Woolfolk found a spare folded
anchor for the tender, a length of rope; and he slowly completed the
preparations for his purpose. He lifted the body to the narrow deck
outside the rail, and, in a long dip, the waves carried it smoothly
and soundlessly away. John Woolfolk said:
"'... Commit his body to the deep, looking for the general resurrection
... through ... Christ.'"
Then, upright and motionless at the wheel, with the wan radiance of
the binnacle lamp floating up over his hollow cheeks and set gaze, he
held the ketch southward through the night.