Out of the Storm Read online

  If only she could loosen the rope that he had bound around her, but he had drawn the knots tightly, and the water had swollen them. She could not get them loose. They would not move any more than if they were carved of wood. But she must fasten him somehow, as soon as possible. Her arms were so numb and her fingers so weak that any moment a vagrant wave might dash him from her, and she could not bear that so long as there was a spark of hope that he might be alive.

  She tried to think if there was anything she wore that she could use to fasten him, but of the few garments that she had thrown on so hastily, none were suitable for such a use.

  She felt in the pocket of her big steamer cloak that she had snatched as she hurried from the stateroom. Joy! There was her long scarf that she had used to throw around her head while on deck. It was of silk, long and wide and strong, though soft and pliable enough to be folded into the ample pocket of the cloak. Quickly she snatched it out and looped it around his waist, no easy task in her strained position, tying it firmly to the rope that lashed her to the raft.

  Then, leaning over, she slipped her hand over his heart and held her breath. It was beating faintly. She could surely feel the soft thuds, or was that the beating of the waves beneath her?

  She had to lie back again and rest, for the exertion had been very great, and she felt giddy. Her tired eyelids drooped a moment, then she opened her eyes wide and looked about. The big waves towered above her on every side. Did it take as much water as that to make those curving blue ripples that one watched from the boardwalk at a summer resort? How mighty was creation!

  She turned hungrily to the inanimate form by her side. If he would only wake and keep her company in the awful wideness of the sea! She leaned toward him again. If only she could know he was alive! She knew so little about death. What was the test she had heard of once? Oh, a mirror held before the lips! The sea had no mirror. But she bent her face till her cheek was near his nostrils. Was it fancy only, or did she feel a slight breath? Ah, how could she tell when the waves rose and fell with wide tossing and loud roar, now and again washing over their raft and wetting them completely?

  She shivered even with her heavy clothing. The wind seemed to search through her, and her flesh was like ice. What must it be for the man in his thin clothing if he was yet alive?

  With infinite pains she tugged at the cloak until she had drawn one side of it out from under the confining ropes. Then she pulled it over her companion and crept as close to him as she could. It seemed warmer and less frightful so. She had a dazed feeling that her senses were slipping from her. She had never fainted in her life, but she thought it might be so that oblivion came. She sank back exhausted. The next wave that towered and broke and washed over them seemed to wash her life away, and blissful oblivion came upon her.

  When she awoke again, it was night and the stars were shining in a heaven infinitely farther away than the sky she had known all her life. The waves about her seemed to have caught some fallen stars and to be toying with them, tossing them back and forth from one to another as a miser plays with ill-gotten gold. Both the stars and their reflection were cold and indifferent, like haughty things that did not see distress.

  Strange fancies filled her brain at first. The water still on every side was the first fact that crept into her waking consciousness, and next that she was yet alive. Gradually she roused her stiffened body and reached out a hand to touch her companion. He was still there, and the arm next to her seemed warm at least, it was warmer than she felt. A great hope sprang up within her. Perhaps he really lived, for until now it had not crossed her thoughts how terrible it would be to be lashed to a raft on the open sea with a dead man!

  If he lived, what was there that she could do to help him back to consciousness? Nothing, unless she might help to shelter him from the terrible wind that had arisen during the night. She shivered and drew his head into her arms. It seemed as though there was warmth there. She almost thought she felt his lips move as she passed her hand over his face in the starlight. A frenzy of desire to bring him back to life again seized her. She drew him closer and tried like a mother to shelter him close. She even laid her own cold cheek against his and was surprised to find that where his face had been sheltered it was warmer than her own.

  If he lived, how long could he hold out against the blast and the cold and the hunger?

  She looked up to the sky to see if she could judge how far the night was on its way and found to her horror that the stars had been blotted out in that brief few minutes. Some drops fell on her upturned face. A new trouble faced them. A storm was on its way!

  As if he were a child, she drew her silent companion closer into her arms, tenderly drawing the cloak over his arms, sitting up painfully that she might hold him closer. A fierce spirit of protection entered her. This man had given his life to try to save her. What little fragment of that life still remained was hers to protect while he could not protect himself.

  Suddenly, a light flashed out across the water! A long, keen, wide ray that searched and quivered and was gone. It seemed to go over their heads from tip to tip of two waves, and they were hidden in the hollow of its shadow underneath. She crouched and clutched the cloak closer round her charge.

  The light flashed again after what seemed an age of time, and then again; and after a time she began to understand that it must be one of those revolving lighthouses on the coast. She had watched them often from a sheltered pavilion where she had sat with her father when they were off together on a vacation. How strange that now such a light was her only connection with the world! She had never thought when she watched it idly in her pleasure that she would be in need of it afar on the black water. Would any watchers see the little speck that was their raft tossed like an eggshell on the deep and know that two souls, living or dead, were tossing there?

  The waves roared on, and the rain fell faster, and when she looked again, the lighthouse seemed farther away. They had drifted past it, for the light was off to her right now, and it seemed to be much fainter.

  So she sat and nursed her silent charge, and after a while she fell asleep again for a time with her head leaning against his, her sheltering arms still about him.

  The morning was pale and gray in the sky when she awoke again, and there was a sense of warmth in her arms. When she lifted her head and looked at the face of the man, she thought she saw a slight movement of the lips and nostrils as if he breathed, but when she gently stirred him he made no sign, except that his head fell lower down upon her arm and settled softly there as if it were more comfortable.

  She drew the cloak over his shoulder again and looked about her. The sky was heavy with clouds, and rain had settled into a slanting, sullen drizzle. But off on the horizon, when the raft was lifted on the top of a wave, she saw a dark line. Could it be that this was the coast? Could it be they might drift near enough to be seen?

  Anxiously she watched and then turned to her companion. She was sure now that once or twice his lips moved, but no sound was audible above the pounding of the waves.

  As it grew lighter, she could see his face, and something in the expression brought back the capable, responsible, refined look he had given her when first he saw her.

  With widening, anxious eyes she watched the horizon, and now she was very sure that dark line meant the land and they were drifting toward it. And then she sat and prayed, prayed as she had never prayed before, that they might somehow get to land and that her companion might open his eyes and live.

  Out of the infinite it seemed to grow into a gray form of outline, irregular at first with every league of onward drifting, until at last she could see houses, one, two, three, a dozen of them at least, separating themselves one by one from the gloom. There came the tense half hour when the frail raft pounded and pitched and wavered and quivered and then hesitated on the edge of the entrance to a little quiet harbor, a sort of sandbar where two ways, or seven, met and clashed in mighty fury.

  How she prayed now with
wide eyes fixed upon the land, watching every turn of the little craft, holding her breath when at last they took the mighty plunge across and floated to the right instead of to the left, plunging with the surf and beaten and bruised, but all the while going toward the land.

  Could they live through it? Could the man, more dead than alive, weather this last awful tumult of the sea reluctant to surrender its prey? "If God be for us, who can be against us?" she murmured aloud, and prayed the more.

  And so by the hardest and the roughest, with the life and hope almost gone from the woman's soul, and the man still silent in her arms, they floated at last to the edge of the shore and grated harshly upon the sand.

  For the first time, the girl looked about her, shivering at the furtive waves that laid a cunning head of spray upon her shoulder, as if even yet they might snatch her back to the deep. It was evident that the danger was not all over. The tide might yet turn and carry them back across the tumult into the wide sea again. They must get free. While they were still close to land, they must get off that raft upon the shore and get beyond the clutch of the monster of the deep.

  She laid the man gently down upon the raft and set to work upon the knots once more, but her fingers were stiff and sore, and her whole body was an agony of aches and pain. She looked wildly about, her heart still praying, and wondered what to do.

  Then a possibility occurred to her. Would the man have a knife in his pocket? Could she reach far enough to find out?

  She struggled into position again and finally succeeded in getting her hand into his pocket. Yes, there was something there. A round, hard, smooth object. That would be his watch, some little trinkets, some money perhaps--and a long thing, ah, yes, a knife! Her fingertips could barely touch it, but by and by she managed to get it in her hand and draw it forth.

  It was a tedious task to cut that heavy sodden rope, but at last it was accomplished and she unwound the lashing and was free.

  Then, stepping out into the water, with all her might she pushed the raft up to the sand and dragged the man upon the beach. Panting and staggering under the load, she managed at last to get him on the sand where the water could not touch him, and then, almost ready to drop with weariness and faintness, she stood up and looked around her for any possible means of help.

  Chapter 3

  At first sight, the row of houses that were scattered along the beach seemed to be deserted. Was it an abandoned resort to which they had drifted? A strange desolation came upon her. Then she reflected that it could not be worse than the wild sea from which she had just come, and new courage filled her. She took a new survey of the place.

  There was a great hotel of decayed splendor and massive wooden proportions, paintless now and weather-stained, with crazy shutters nailed to the windows by crude cleats; that was at the extreme end. The place looked as if it had not been occupied for a decade. It was like a skeleton staring with its sightless sockets upon the scene where it once lived. The row of cottages, following the line of a rickety boardwalk and a tumbled-down pavilion or two, varied in size and general dilapidation, growing better farther on. She looked carefully at each one in turn but saw no signs of life until she turned and saw in the other direction, not thirty feet away, a single cottage out almost upon the beach, the sand about its feet showing that the waves often approached quite near. One could fancy the spray dashing over the porch at high tide. The girl shuddered as she recalled her intimate association with ocean spray the previous night.

  This cottage alone of all the dozen seemed to be open, the curtains blowing wide in the breeze, and even as she looked, someone came out on the porch, shook a rug, and retreated within.

  With a lingering glance back at her charge, the girl started for the cottage.

  The black woman who opened the door was a neat elderly person in an indigo cotton dress and a white turban. She rolled the whites of her eyes and let her mouth drop open in amazement when she saw the girl standing there in her soaked garments, with drenched hair hanging like a mane of dark ropes down her back.

  "Great day in de mawnin'!" she exclaimed as she held the door wide open and stared. "Whar you done cum from?"

  "From the sea," answered the girl as quietly as if she had said, "From the city."

  "Land sake! Never did see folks go in bavin' in gyarments like dem. What you all want?"

  "I've not been in bathing. It was an accident on the steamer. We've been shipwrecked. We've been out all night and just drifted in here. There's a man down on the beach that I'm afraid is dying. I want somebody that knows to come down and help me get him somewhere, and somebody else to go for a doctor, quick."

  A pair of querulous eyes appeared behind the black woman's shoulder.

  "What's the matter, Corinne? I thought everybody was gone but us," said a shaky old tone.

  "So dey is, Mis' Battin, so dey is. Dis yer gal say she done cum up fum de sea. She say dey got naxydunt and done ben shipwreck."

  Corinne's hands were on her ample hips, her elbows bristling excitedly. Corinne had not had anything so interesting happen since the bowling alley of the old hotel burned down. She was disposed to make the most of it.

  "Won't you please send somebody down to help me right away?" said Gail, raising her voice clearly so the woman behind her could hear. "I think that man may be alive yet, if there is somebody who knows what to do. Come quick, or he might die."

  "What is it? What is it she says, Corinne?" said the old lady, hobbling nearer on crutches. "Is she a beggar? We can't be bothered with beggars here. How in the world did she ever get here through the storm? You told me the grocery boy had to come in a boat from the mainland, and you said even the telephone wires were down."

  "Yes, ma'am, I done say so," announced Corinne, settling back on her hips and extending her lower lip argumentatively as she bobbed her head emphatically. "I done told you dem telefome wihes was down, an' I done tell you dat grocery boy hed to sail ober in a boat fum mainland. I ain't tell no lie. I done tell de trufe."

  In despair, Gail flew up the steps and went to the old woman's side, speaking close to her ear, clearly and distinctly: "I've been shipwrecked, and there's a man dying down on the beach. Please give me some help, quick!"

  The old woman drew back startled and looked at the girl with little, piercing eyes as if to make sure she was not insane.

  "Shipwrecked! Dying!" she exclaimed, and then her hands shook and her querulous tone returned.

  "Well, we're all alone here. I don't know what we can do. The people have all gone home. The last one left yesterday when the storm began. My son won't be back for two weeks, and the man that was staying with us to look after things got a telegram, and he had to go home. We can't do anything," she whimpered unhappily, anxiously. "I don't know what we can do. You'll have to go somewhere else."

  "But you said there wasn't anybody else here, and we can't go anywhere else. We haven't any way to go, and there isn't any time. That man has got to be taken care of immediately, or there is not a chance for him to live."

  "Well, what do you want me to do?" The old lady was almost crying. She was very excitable.

  "Haven't you any blankets?" asked Gail. "Give me a couple of blankets quick, and some stimulant of some kind, and a hot-water bag full of hot water. Quick! If that man dies, it will be your fault. I've kept him alive all night. I'm sure we can save him. I think he's alive!" She caught her breath in a sob. "Won't you please come down and see if you can tell? I don't know much about sickness. You surely will know whether he is living. And please get me some blankets quick!"

  "Get her some blankets, Corinne! In the downstairs bedroom there's a pile. Child, I couldn't go down there. I haven't been down those steps without help for years. You mustn't ask it. I'm an invalid myself. I--I have to be taken care of myself. I--I--I don't ever go out, only to go home in the fall."

  The old lady's voice was still complaining as if somehow the appearance of these shipwrecked folks was personal injury to herself.

  "
Great day in de mawnin'!" exclaimed Corinne again, hustling off through the open door. "Blankets! What do she want ob blankets?" But she brought them, and in despair Gail seized them and started down the steps.

  "Get me some stimulant or some milk or something quick, and something hot! We've both frozen!" she called as she ran. "Get something, and come quick!"

  She had almost reached the man on the beach when she stumbled in the long grass on the dunes and fell, bruising her hands on the sandburs and almost knocking out of her the little breath she had. She lay for a second, gasping with fatigue, and prayed aloud as if God were standing close beside her: "O God, please send someone quick to help! I can't hold out much longer." Then she struggled to her feet and got to her knees beside the man.

  The two women stood spellbound in the doorway, watching her as if it were some kind of a show they were attending, gesticulating, exclaiming; but when she fell and rose again to kneel beside that still, dark something on the beach, the senses seemed suddenly to come back to both of them, and they grew excited and alert.

  "I b'leeve dat is a man, shor' nuf!" said Corinne, lifting up both hands in horror. "It shor' is a man! My soul, it's a ma--an! Mis' Battin, what I do? W--w--what you done want I should do?"

  The old lady's eyes were fixed on the kneeling girl on the sand, but her mind was keen enough now.

  "Go get my aromatic ammonia, Corinne, first. It's on my little sewing stand by the window over there. Yes, that's it. Now, you go stir up the fire and put on some kettles of water to heat, and you fill the hot-water bag and put on a saucepan of milk to heat. There isn't anything like hot milk to bring folks around."

  Corinne hustled heavily off, and the old lady, with a wild look around as if she thought the powers of the earth and sky might somehow object, hobbled close to the steps and began a slow descent. She could go down steps when she had a mind to, and this was one of the times she had decided to go.