ON THE RIVER.
Still calling out for help, Grey reached the Castle. When he got in
front of the chief gateway he paused a moment, and pressed his hand over
his forehead, trying to collect his thoughts.
The _Rodwell_ had blown up. Yes, that was clear. And all the people who
had not been killed or drowned were now struggling in the water, and his
wife had been aboard.
No good purpose could be served by alarming the people at the Castle.
They could render no assistance, and they had trouble enough there just
now. The best thing to do was to dash across the Island, tell the
ferryman to hasten to the scene of the wreck (he could not have seen the
steamer from the northern shore of the Island), jump into a boat, and
pull rapidly towards the fatal spot.
Grey crossed the Island at the top of his speed; paused a moment to
recover his breath; then shouted to the ferryman the news of the
disaster, and, bidding him row with all his might to the place, jumped
into another boat himself and pulled rapidly down the river.
Under the circumstances nothing could have been better for him than the
exertion necessary for driving the boat forward.
He was a powerful man and a skilful oarsman. He bent forward and flung
himself back with swift and weighty regularity, that made the boat fly.
He deliberately kept his mind free from thought. He concentrated all his
attention upon the physical work. When a young man he had often pulled
in local amateur races, but never before with such strictly undivided
attention.
"Get all way on the boat! Make her go through the water!" were the
thoughts that filled his mind. Gradually as he warmed to his work he
felt his power increase. He felt conscious of great skill and enormous
strength.
As he drove onward muscle after muscle of his body seemed to come into
sympathy with those in his legs and back and arms, to increase his
force. While the muscles came into play their action stole the sluggish
blood from his head, sent up his pulse, cooled his forehead, and cleared
his mind.
"There is no use in thinking now. No use in my thinking until I am there
and know all. _Now_ I have only to make this boat fly."
As he swung himself backward and forward, and plucked the blades through
the hissing water, he felt all things possible to man were possible to
him then.
"I could crush this wherry flat in my arms, or command a burning ship,
or lead a forlorn hope to certain victory at this moment," he thought.
"But I must be careful not to break an oar. To break an oar now would be
fatal. How they bend! They are the twisted ropes of the catapult, and
the wherry is the bolt, and we are going almost as fast as a flying
bolt.
"That's the tail of the Island at last. There is no use in my looking
round; it might disturb me. All I have to think of now is, Eyes in boat,
a clean wake, and give way with a will.
"Half ebb, by the marks. Give her a sheer out into mid-stream, and get
the crawl of the ebb under her. It's only a crawl compared to what
we're doing, although it's a five-knot ebb."
He was out of training, and his mouth became dry, his tongue parched,
and his breathing short; his muscles, under the unaccustomed strain,
tingled and grew heated, and his joints fiery hot. But he felt all the
better pleased for this. He took a fierce delight in squandering the
magnificent resources of his strength.
"My will," he thought, "is stronger than my body and my arms and my
legs, and if they fancy they are to get the better of my will I'll show
them their mistake. On you go! ay, faster." And he tore the blades
hissing from the water, and feathered, and switched the blades into the
water without a sound or a splash.
"Already," he continued, "the Island dead astern. The Black Rock and
the Witches' Tower, my Tower of Silence, in a line, and I out in
mid-stream. This means I am near."
"Where are you going? Eh? Where are you going with that wherry?" Grey
was hailed from ahead.
Backing water with his right hand and pulling with his left he swung the
boat round, bringing her gunwale under.
He had almost run into a four-oared river fishing-boat that had a
variety of floating objects in tow, and a few small things in the boat.
Four or five other boats were pulling slowly hither and thither, with a
man standing up in the bow of each.
When Grey ceased to pull it was growing dusk. For a moment he sat with
his oars peaked, staring around him. Then he tried to speak, but when he
opened his mouth his tongue rattled like a bone against his teeth, and
his throat felt dusty dry. Notwithstanding that the water here was
strong and brackish he leaned out of the boat, and filled his right hand
and drank. Then his tongue became flexible again, and although his voice
was hoarse and ragged, he could speak.
"You were here soon after it happened; how long is it now?"
Notwithstanding the gloom the men in the fishing-boat recognised him,
and their manner turned to civility at once.
"Close upon an hour ago, sir. I did not know your back, Mr. Grey; and
you were running right into us, and with such way on too."
"One, two, three, four, five, six," counts Grey. "Six boats?"
"Yes, sir, six boats. It's the awfullest thing ever happened on the
river in my time; and I'm on the Weeslade, man and boy, upwards of forty
year."
"An hour ago. I did not think it was so long. I came as quickly as I
could."
"I saw you pull a punt-race twenty-five years ago, sir, and you'd have
beaten your pulling in the punt then by your pulling in the wherry this
evening. Ay, sir, you'd have pulled that wherry round the punt."
"How many were saved?"
"About forty."
"Were they landed at one or both sides of the river?"
"They were all landed at Asherton's Quay over there."
"Do you know--did you see any of the saved?"
"Most of them. I helped to bring in some thirteen."
"There is, if it is an hour since she blew up, no chance of any more
being alive in the water, even clinging on to anything."
"No, Mr. Grey."
"Do you know----" His tongue was dry again, and he dipped his hand into
the brackish water and drank out of his palm.
The fisherman shuddered at this. "It's brackish at best," thought the
man; "but after what has happened--ugh! He must be drunk or queer in his
head."
Grey drew in both oars before completing the question, "Do you
know--Mrs. Grey--my wife?"
"Yes, sir, I know her well. I often sold her salmon, and saw her with
you on the _Rodwell_. I humbly hope, sir, she wasn't aboard this
evening?"
"You did not see her among the saved?"
"Mr. Grey, I may be mistaken----"
"Answer me, man, or----" He suddenly sprang up in the boat, and,
whirling an oar in his hands, threatened the fisherman in the other
boat. "Answer, man, or I'll brain you, d'ye hear? And if you tell me a
lie I'll come back and brain you when I find it out. Is my wife saved?"
"I did not see her," answered the man, shoving off the wherry.
But Grey hooked the fishing-boat to the wherry with his foot, and,
brandishing the oar aloft, whirled it over the head of the cowering man,
and shouted out in a voice that crossed the waters and crept up the
hushed shores: "Damn you, man, don't you see I mean to brain you if you
won't speak?"
"She was not saved. No one on the after-deck or in the saloon was saved.
It was the boilers blew up, and all aft were killed or drowned."
Grey unhooked his foot from the fishing-boat, and with his foot pushed
off from her. Then throwing down the oar in the boat, he folded his arms
tightly across his chest, and, still standing, drifted down the river,
his large figure standing out in black against the fading purple of the
west, his face turned towards the blackening east.
"Only that he lost his reason with his wife," said the fisherman, "I'd
take the law of him."
"Ay," answered another man in the boat, "it's an excuse for a man to do
any wild thing to lose his wife like this."
They had drifted a bit, and were now pulling back towards the spot where
they had first hailed Grey.
"He's standing up still in that wherry. With a big man like him standing
up in a cockleshell of a craft like that, the swell of a steamboat
wouldn't think much of twisting her from under his feet," said the first
speaker.
"And maybe he wouldn't much mind if it did, poor gentleman," in kindly
tone, said the man whom Grey had threatened.
The wherry drifted on, but for a time Grey never altered his position.
He was without his coat, without his hat; his white sleeves were rolled
up above the elbows, and his powerful arms tightened across his wide
chest. Gradually the boat, as it drifted, swung round, and brought his
face to the fading east.
There was not a ripple on the river, not a murmur in the trees; a faint
thin rustle of the water where it touched the shore was the only sound.
Night was coming, with its healing dew and spacious silence for
universal sleep.
Upright he stood still. The boat began to swing round once more. He did
not move. Again his face was towards the darkening east.
At length the wherry gave a sudden lurch; it had encountered something,
and had almost capsized.
He instinctively brought the boat on an even keel by throwing the weight
of his whole body on the rising side. In a few moments the boat was
still as of old. With a sudden shake and shudder he came back to a
consciousness of where he was.
"That is the red No. 4 Buoy I ran foul of; it nearly capsized me," he
thought.
Then shading his eyes with his open right hand, he stared back into the
eastern gloom long and fixedly.
"My wife and the _Rodwell_ are both gone," he whispered. "Bee and my
five thousand. My wife and my five thousand pounds are gone. She brought
me about five thousand when she came to me, long ago. It was to have
gone to her children, if she had any, and away from me if she had none.
Now she is gone, and that five thousand and another five: and I am
saved! Saved!
"Saved!"
He sat down in the boat, and, keeping his legs wide apart, rested his
elbows on his knees and his head on his hands. His shirt-collar was
open, and yet he felt his throat tighten, and put his hand to it. When
he found it free he muttered:
"It is only the hangman untying the knot; for in spirit I was a
murderer. And yet I remember the day I saw her first. I can tell you all
about the day I told her I loved her. I could show you the way she
looked; pretty, and with her head this way. Then I knew she was mine.
She was small, Bee was small; and I lifted her up and kissed her--not
often, but once; once, and I felt weak for joy at that kiss; and
something happened in my head or heart, and I saw all my life before
me, and felt her always on my arm. And after that I was calm. It seemed
we had known one another always, and had been married years.
"And I remember the first thing I said after that was not anything wild
or romantic; it was:
"'In the back of the Bank-house there is a bay-window like this, but
there are creepers on it.' And she asked me what kind the creepers were;
and I laughed and said I did not know. 'But,' I said, a kind of foolish
pun, 'my Bee shall come and tell me, won't she?' And Bee said, 'Maybe
so.'
"And I remember when I bought the engaged ring, and how she kissed me
then the first time of her own accord.
"And I remember how when we were married first she clung to me, and
seemed to grudge her eyes for anything but me. And I remember how I
used to walk around her and about her through the streets, if anything
seemed to threaten her with disturbance--a dog, or a draught, or a cab,
or a----"
"He suddenly threw up his face to the deep purple sky, and cried out, in
a hoarse whisper:
"And to-night, by God, I am not man enough to weep that she is dead! I
am not man enough to wish her back again!"
He looked around the water, as though he expected to see some form of
temporal or eternal vengeance approaching him.
As his eyes fell upon the water, something came very slowly floating
towards him. Something which was almost wholly submerged, and, owing to
that fact, drifted more quickly than the boat. As the thing drew nearer
it gradually settled down in the water, and, before he could touch it,
sank.
"It looked like a cloak," he whispered. "What have I been doing here? I
must get ashore, and see if the----" He could not bring himself to say
"body," and without thought sat down, and began rowing rapidly towards
Asherton's Quay.