Greater Love Hath No Man/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
"MY NAME IS PETERS"
THE old fisherman's barometer—his knee—proved itself. That afternoon it was breezing in fitful, nasty gusts; by evening it was blowing half a gale. That night the sun set on an angry sea, and the Mary K. Jones was making heavy weather of it.
By midnight a merciless North Atlantic hurricane was raging, and the schooner, close-reefed, head into it, pounded and battered, was laying-to, fighting to ride out the storm—and it was an anxious little group in glistening yellow oilskins that gathered by the wheel and in the scanty lee of the "house." What talking they did and it was little, was done in fierce shouts against the roar of the wind that caught up the words and flung them away like flying chaff.
All about it was inky black—save for the great foam-crested billows, churning white, that surged chaotically in mad, wild revel on every hand. A crash of thunder boomed and rolled and reverberated and, muttering ominously, died away in a shuddering, long-drawn-out moan; a great forked tongue of jagged lightning, rending the heavens, illuminated the scene, and for a brief instant made awesome daylight on the clean-swept deck of the heaving, labouring little craft—the dories were gone; loose gear, water cask, everything movable had disappeared.
At the wheel were Jonah Sully and the Frenchman; clustered together by the cabin roof were the negro, the Swede, the Gloucester man and Varge.
"I'se done knowed it. I'se done knowed it," sobbed 'Rastus hysterically. "Just Jonah's luck—I'se done know—"
"Shet up!" screeched the Gloucester man at him; then, in a yell that carried high above the battling elements: "Hold fast! Hold fast! Hyar she comes! Hold—"
Over the bows, far, far up, showed a queer wavering white streak, topping a gigantic, on-rushing wall of utter blackness. A moment it seemed to hang in awful hesitancy—then the tumbling tons of water crashed over the bows, shaking the schooner as a terrier shakes a rat, and, burying the deck, came on roaring, seething, hissing high above the rails, engulfing them.
With all his strength Varge clung to the corner of the "house"—he was torn from his hold in an instant. He felt himself lifted, rolled over and over, then flung against something with a vicious shock—mechanically his hands shot out, gripped again, and, smothered, choked, half-stunned by the blow he hung grimly on.
It was not so bad now—the impact, the dead weight of water with its terrific velocity behind it was gone, but there was the suction of the receding water that still dragged and pulled at him as if to wrench his arms from their sockets. He got his head above the water. A wild, tearing, ripping sound was in his ears—then a crack, short and sharp as the report of an explosion. Above him a great misty white phantom seemed to dance and totter and wave its arms and shriek madly—then it seemed to blow away—while, crunching the forward starboard rail like an eggshell, grinding it to pieces as it fell, the foremast went by the board—and forward was a smother of whipping headsails and wrecked gear.
It had seemed an age since the wave had swept them, but it could not have been much more than a minute, two at the most. Suddenly, he was jerked entirely free of the water as the schooner plunged again head down—and he realised for the first time that he had been swept completely over the stern rail and was still clinging to it, his body hanging down against the vessel's hull.
The plunge that lifted him freed the stern deck temporarily of water. He pulled himself up, clambered over the rail, and his feet, staggering upon the deck, touched something soft and yielding. He stooped and felt it—it was a limp, inert, oilskinned form. He lifted the man in his arms.
A flash of lightning played luridly across the sky. Varge glanced quickly toward the wheel—there was no wheel. Then his eyes, full of startled agony, swept about him—and rested on the face against his shoulder. The Frenchman, the Swede, the negro, the Gloucester man were gone—and only the senseless form of Jonah Sully remained.
An instant Varge stood there motionless—and in that instant, as though Nature herself were stunned and appalled at the ghastly tragedy she had enacted, there came a momentary lull, and the hush was as a solemn benediction for the dead.
But an instant, too, it lasted—and then upon the doomed craft the storm broke again with redoubled fury.
And now, even to Varge's inexperienced eye, it was evident enough that the schooner was lost. With every lift and motion the wreckage forward thrashed and flogged at deck and hull; while, without helm and the headsails gone, she slewed sickeningly around and fell off into the trough of the sea.
He called to Jonah Sully, shouting in the man's ear—there was no answer. Then quickly he laid the skipper down in the shelter of the "house," passed the end of a piece of tackle that was trailing from the cabin roof beneath the other's armpits, and made it fast. There was a sheath-knife in Jonah's belt—Varge snatched it and clawed his way forward.
The Mary K. Jones, broadside on, the mainsail drawing, was listing at an angle that threatened every instant to roll her bottom side up. A crest broke, curled, bubbled, foamed, rose to Varge's waist when he was half-way across the deck—and shot him back. His feet brought up against the lee rail and, flung flat on his face, the water surged over him. He got to his knees, and this time crawled across the deck, reached the main-sheet and began to hack at it with his knife.
The schooner rose from the trough, up, up, toward another crest—up, up, almost to the top—then it broke with a roar. The deck canted under him at right angles, but this time, though his feet were taken from under him, he had the main-sheet to cling to and he had made good his hold. He rose, the water streaming from him, and hacked and cut at the tough hemp again.
Suddenly it parted with a report like a pistol shot, and like a monster flail the boom swung far out over the lee rail and brought up with a terrific thud against the stays—but instantly the schooner seemed to feel the relief—she rode more buoyantly, on a more even keel, and the next crest passed beneath her.
Encouraged by this, Varge began to edge his way forward toward the wreckage of the foremast—making quick dashes as the schooner topped a wave and began to slide down into the black, yawning valley; crouching and bracing himself as she mounted upward, nearing the next on-coming crest.
He reached the forecastle and once more began to ply his knife. The foremast, like a broken limb sagging from a tree, stretched outboard over the schooner's side, but the end, held by a tangle of sail and rigging, pounding and thrashing, was making havoc of rail and deck.
In the utter darkness Varge worked on by the sense of touch, cutting, hewing, hacking—at times thrown upon his face to gasp and choke as a swirl of water passed over him; at times working with more speed and success as the lightning glare lit up the heavens, the wild, turbulent waste of sea and his immediate surroundings.
It went at last, the mast, carrying with it a section of the rail—smashed once, twice, once more against the schooner's hull with crunching, wicked blows—then swept away on the top of a wave and cleared the stern. Varge gathered up some pieces of rope and made his way aft again to the lee of the "house." Jonah Sully still lay there, but now he moved feebly and moaned as Varge bent over him. Varge lifted the skipper into a sitting posture, passed the lashings more securely around the other's body, fastened them about himself as well, and sat down upon the deck, his back to the house."
He bent his head suddenly close to the other's mouth—the skipper, partially conscious, was talking to himself.
"'Long 'baout dark," mumbled Jonah Sully, "I reckon it'd been better if I'd thought to run for the lee o'—" his voice trailed off.
Varge straightened up, and a smile, grim, without mirth, was on his lips as he stared out before him into the white-flecked darkness—"Jonah" Sully!
An hour passed and another—and found them both in the same position, Jonah Sully in Varge's arms. What man could do, Varge had done; the slight knowledge of seamanship that he possessed he had utilised to the utmost—there remained nothing but to await—the end.
Hope he had long since given up, in the sense that he was prepared, calmly and fearlessly, to meet the death that seemed inevitable. Little by little, he had realised that the lift of the schooner had grown more sluggish, until now the deck was almost constantly awash and only the little rise by the cabin roof saved them from the worst of it. Either the wrecked foremast had done its work before he had been able to get rid of it, or the strain and fearful buffeting had opened the schooner's seams—the Mary K. Jones was filling slowly, but none the less certainly. It was but a matter of hours at best, perhaps but a matter of minutes before she must go down.
Well, better that than a life dragged out in drear hopelessness behind steel bars and clanging doors and grey, mocking walls—far better to die like this than face that living death again, if only—if only she knew!
Out through the darkness the tumbling walls of water seemed to vanish before his straining eyes, and there was cool green sward and she was walking toward him. How plainly he saw her!—the sun glinting upon the golden hair, the glorious head so fearlessly thrown back, the joy of living in the peerless face, the pure white throat, the neat trim figure in the dark-blue print dress with its collar and cuffs of spotless white. She seemed to smile at him with her eyes, her lips. Involuntarily, he stretched out his arms.
"Janet! Janet!" he cried.
His arms dropped—he bowed his head.
His lips moved again: "Oh, the might have been!"—it was the yearning of his soul wrung from him in words.
After a moment he raised his head. This love had come to him and it was a wondrous thing, a holy thing—and it was deathless, basic. His now, it must dominate him, sway him, be the motive power, the impelling force of his every act, his every thought; to live on through the years without her would be to live through bitter years, each succeeding one harder to bear than the one before it—and his she could never be. Perhaps this was the better way—God's way. But if she only knew! She would think of him sometimes—he knew that. He would have liked to have her think of him as an honest man, an innocent man, to whom her sympathy and kindness had been a boon immeasurable—that her thoughts, from the knowledge of happiness brought to another, might bring her a measure of gladness too. She had believed him innocent, she had said—but if she only knew! If he might only have had the right to have told her that with his own lips!
Beside him, Jonah Sully seemed to have sunk into a stupor. Still more sluggishly the schooner rose to meet the onslaught of the waves, rolling heavily, inertly. A great length of time passed that was counted by neither hours nor minutes nor seconds.
Chilled, numbed, Varge roused himself and listened. Over the howling of the wind, the surge of waters, the thud and pound and hiss as wave-tops licked greedily at the deck, came a new sound—a long, continuous, sullen, mighty, deep-toned roar—the beat of surf.
He struggled to his feet. A leaden grey was showing in the east and before him loomed out of the darkness a darker fringe—the shore. And as he looked, suddenly, from this fringe there seemed to stream heavenward with incredible swiftness a tiny streak of light. A cry, hoarse-flung, came from his lips, as a dozen little balls burst into coloured fire. A rocket! The schooner had been seen from the shore—by the coast-guard, probably.
And now a white, strangely troubled patch of water seemed to rise up just before him—then a shock hurled him to his knees. The schooner rose, hung hesitant an instant, then dropped again with a grinding, crashing blow that shook her in every timber—she was fast on a reef—and the shore was a quarter of a mile away.
High over her now broke the seas, like ravening wolves sure at last of their prey—the lashings around him, supporting Jonah Sully in his arms, Varge's eyes fixed shoreward through the smother of spume and the sheets of flying spray. How long would the schooner hold together?
Slowly it grew lighter, slowly the eastern grey spread and crept higher. Still Varge's eyes held shoreward. A dark speck showed on the foaming crest of a wave—and disappeared. It showed again—nearer—nearer.
A hoarse cheer went up from a dozen throats. Grotesque figures in oilskins with cork belts tied around their bodies were bobbing up and down, now above, now below him, as the lifeboat rose and fell.
He swung Jonah Sully out to them, poised himself on the rail—and at their shout, dropped into the boat.
"Any more?"—they had passed him along to the stern-sheets, and it was a bearded, grizzled form at the tiller that howled the question in his ear.
Varge shook his head. "There are no more," he said.
Once more only during the passage shorewards did the lifeboat's captain speak to him.
"What's her name, an' your names?" he asked. "How many of the crew gone?"
"Mary K. Jones of Gloucester," Varge answered him. "This is Captain Sully. My name is Peters. Four of the crew were washed overboard a little after midnight."
They lifted Jonah Sully and carried him up the beach. A throng of men and women crowded about the crew, the boat and Varge—the men cheering, the women anxious-faced.
Quietly, Varge drew a little to one side, watching them place the lifeboat on its truck. Some one spoke to him, a woman's voice—and mad, wild fire leaped through his veins.
"I am sure you should not stand here," she said. "You need dry things at once and something hot—to—to—"
They were staring into each other's faces—to hers rushed a crimson flood—to his there came the whiteness of death.
Neither spoke. Then Varge looked away.
"I have told them my name was Peters," he said simply—and waited.
Her hand touched his arm. The blue eyes looked full into his.
"Your name is Peters," said Janet Rand.
A hearty smack fell across his back.
"Come along with us, matey," cried the captain of the crew, "an' we'll have you tucked up in a jiffy snug as a bug in a rug."