The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  Crash! A horrid grating sound, splintering! Then the instantaneous shock, the awful, stunning force of a frightful blow and a shipful of human beings were flung violently in all directions, many never to rise again. The Tempest Queen had struck! The last chance was gone!

  “My God!” groaned the captain. “It’s all over!” Then he roared: “All hands! All hands! Stations! To the boats! Stand back there! Women first!”

  Ridgeway, dimly realizing that the end had come, staggered to his feet and instinctively reached for the body of the woman who lay before him. He did not know that she was conscious, nor did he know whether the ship was afloat or sinking. A gigantic wave swept over her, tons of water pouring in upon them. Blankly he dragged her to the opening which led to the watery deck, clinging to a railing with all his might. He was gasping for breath, his life almost crushed out of his body. It required all his strength to drag the limp form safely away from the passage, through which now poured their crazed companions, rushing headlong into the sea.

  “In the name of God what shall we do?” he heard a hoarse voice shout in his ear. It was Veath, also burdened with the helpless form of a woman.

  “It is death here and death there. I am going to trust to the life preservers,” gasped Ridgeway, as another wave struck. The constant crackling and crashing told him that the Tempest Queen was being ground to pieces on the rock and that she had but a few minutes to live.

  “Wait, Hugh, we may get off in a boat,” cried the other, but he was not heard. Hugh was in the sea!

  Just as Veath began his anguished remonstrance the ship gave a tremendous lurch, an overpowering wave hurled itself upon the frail shell and Hugh Ridgeway’s frenzied grasp on the rail was broken. When he saw that he was going, he threw both arms about the girl he had brought to this awful fate, and, murmuring a prayer, whirled away with the waters over the battered deck-house and into the black depths.

  They shot downward into the sea and then came to the hideous surface, more dead than alive. His one thought was that nobody in the world would ever know what had become of Hugh Ridgeway and Grace Vernon.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE NIGHT AND THE MORNING

  Gasping for breath, blinded, terrified beyond all imagination, crying to God from his heart, Hugh gave up all hope. Fathoms of water beneath them, turbulent and gleeful in the furious dance of destruction; mountains of water above them, roaring, swishing, growling out the horrid symphony of death! High on the crest of the wave they soared, down into the chasm they fell, only to shoot upward again, whirling like feathers in the air.

  Something bumped violently against Ridgeway’s side, and, with the instinct of a drowning man, he grasped for the object as it rushed away. A huge section of the bowsprit was in his grasp and a cry of hope arose in his soul. With this respite came the feeling, strong and enduring, that he was not to die. That ever-existing spirit of confidence, baffled in one moment, flashes back into the hearts of all men when the faintest sign of hope appears, even though death has already begun to close his hand upon them. Nature grasps for the weakest straw and clings to life with an assurance that is sublime. The hope that comes just before the end is the strongest hope of all.

  “For God’s sake, be brave, darling! Cling tight and be careful when you breathe,” he managed to cry in her ear. There was no answer, but he felt that she had heard.

  The night was so black that he could not see the spar to which he clung. At no time could he see more than the fitful gleam of dark water as some mysterious glimmer was produced by the weird machinery of the air. He could hear the roar of the mighty waves, could feel the uplifting power and the dash downward from seemingly improbable heights, but he could not see the cauldron in which they were dancing.

  It was fortunate that he could not, for a single glimpse of that sea in all its fury would have terrified him beyond control. In sheer despair he would have given up the infinitesimal claim he had for salvation and welcomed death from the smothering tons, now so bravely battled against.

  The girl to whom he clung and whose rigid clasp was still about his neck had not spoken, and scarcely breathed since the plunge into the sea. At times he felt utterly alone in the darkness, so death-like was her silence. But for an occasional spasmodic indication of fear as they and their spar shot downward from some unusual elevation, he might have believed that he was drifting with a corpse.

  Rolling, tossing, dragging through the billows, clinging to the friendly spar, Hugh Ridegway sped onward, his body stiff and sensationless, his brain fogged and his heart dead with that of the girl to whom he clung so desperately. At last the monstrous waves began to show their outlines to his blinding eyes. The blackness of the dome above became tinged with a discernible shade of ever-increasing brightness. A thrill shot through his fagging soul as he realized that the long night was ending and day was dawning. The sun was coming forth to show him his grave.

  Slowly the brightness grew, and with it grew the most dreadful aspect that ever fell upon the eye of man—the mighty sea in all its fury. Suddenly, as he poised on the summit of a huge wave, something ahead struck him as strange. A great mass seemed to rise from the ocean far away, dim, indistinct, but still plain to the eye. With the next upward sweep he strained his eyes in the waning darkness and again saw the vast black, threatening, uneven mass.

  An uncanny terror enveloped him. What could the strange thing be that appeared to be rushing toward him? As far as the eye could see on either side stretched the misty shape. The sky grew brighter, a faint glow became apparent ahead, spreading into a splendor whose perfection was soon streaked with bars of red and yellow, racing higher and higher into the dome above. His dull brain observed with wonder that the brightness grew, not out of the sea, but beyond the great object ahead, and he was more mystified than ever. The tiny, fiery beams seemed to spring from the dark, ugly, menacing cloud, or whatever it might be. Finally he realized that it was the sun coming into the heavens from the east, and—his heart roared within him as he began to grasp the truth—the great black mass was land!

  “Oh, God! It is land—land!” he tried to shriek. “Grace! Grace! Lookup! See! The land!”

  The arms about his neck tightened sharply and a low moan came to his ears. Slowly and painfully he turned his head to look at the face that had been so near in all those awful hours of the night, unseen. His heart seemed to stop beating with that moan, for it bore the announcement that the dear one was still alive.

  It was still too dark to distinguish her features plainly. The face was wet and slimy with the salt water; her hair was matted over the forehead and wrapped in ugly strips about the once pretty face, now ghastly with the signs of suffering, fear and—yes, death, he thought, as he strove to see one familiar feature.

  Into his eyes came a quizzical stare that slowly changed to an intense look of bewilderment. Gradually they grew wider with horror.

  The death-like face was not that of the girl he loved!

  While he gazed numbly, almost insanely, upon the closed eyelids, they slowly opened and a pair of wild, dark eyes gazed despairingly into his, expressive of timidity more than fear. The trembling lips parted, but the effort to speak ended in a moan. Again the eyes closed and her arms slipped from his neck.

  Every vestige of strength left him with this startling discovery and, had his arm been anything but rigid with paralysis, she might have drifted off with the billows, a fate which her voluntary action invited.

  A great wave rushed them violently forward and the next moment Ridgeway, faint, bewildered, and unable to grasp the full force of the remarkable ending to that night in the water, found himself, still grasping his limp burden and the broken spar, washed far upon the sands. A second wave swept them higher, and he realized, as he lay gasping on the edge of the waters, that the vast ocean was behind him and the beautiful woman he had rescued by mistake.

  CHAPTER XVII

  WAS THE SEA KIND?

  He lost consciousness in the attempt to drag himself
and his companion farther up the beach. His arms and legs refused to move in response to his efforts, and the last he remembered was that his body was stiff and he was absolutely powerless. When he again opened his eyes he was lying on a grassy sward with spreading green branches above him. For some minutes he lay perfectly still, dimly sensible that he was alive, but utterly unable to fix his whereabouts. Through his brain there still roared the awful waves; in his eyes there still lingered the vision of the sea as it was when dawn first developed the picture.

  Fearing that he could not lift his head, he rose to his trembling elbow. His wide eyes swept the view before him. There was the sea not two hundred yards down the slope, rushing and booming upon the stretch of sand which reached within fifty feet of his grassy bed. Behind him grew a forest of queer, tropical trees, the like of which he never had seen before. His jacket had been rolled up as a pillow for his head; his shoes and stockings were off, his shirt bosom unbuttoned. Two soggy life preservers lay near by.

  At last he caught sight of a woman, alone, forlorn, the picture of despondency. Far down the beach to his right there rose a rugged, stony formation, extending into the sea and rising several hundred feet in the air. At the base of this rocky promontory a multitude of great boulders lay scattered, some quite large and jagged, others insignificant in size.

  Upon one of the smaller stones, well up the slope, sat the figure of the woman he had drugged from the sea and whom he had hated with his last conscious breath. Her head was lying against the sheer wall that ran up alongside, and he could tell that she was staring out toward the sea, which roared against the rocks so close by that the spray must have reached her feet. The distance to this rock was fully three hundred yards. There was a fascination about her loneliness that held him immovable for a long time. Finally he struggled to a sitting posture, faint and dizzy. At the same moment she slowly turned her head and looked in his direction. Half rising, she made a movement as if to come toward him, first peering intently. Then she sank back upon the rock and sent her gaze out to the sea again.

  With all the haste he could command he scrambled eagerly toward the rocks, carrying the crumpled jacket in his hand. Not once did she take her eyes from the breakers. Tired and faint, he at last came to the edge of the rocky pile. Here his strength failed him and he sank trembling with exhaustion upon the first friendly stone, still a hundred feet from where she sat. In his bitter rage against her he strove to shout, but the effort was little more than a hoarse whisper. Lying there impotently, he studied her attitude as the minutes crept by, and there came at last into his heart a touch of pity that swelled with the sight of her.

  Pain-racked but determined, he again started toward the elevation, crawling over and around the boulders that intervened. He was within five feet of her before he spoke, and then not until he had studied her face for some moments, steadying himself against a large rock. She was more beautiful than ever with her black hair awry and matted, brushed away from the pure white face and fastened recklessly with the shell combs she had worn on board the Tempest Queen. Her blue eyes looked mournfully from beneath their long lashes. The slender white hands lay listlessly in the lap of the once white dress, now water-stained, wrinkled and shapeless. In spite of all that dreadful buffeting by the wind and water she was still the beautiful creation of nature he had found so charming in a realm where nature seldom presents herself.

  “Lady Tennys,” he called hoarsely. “You do not know how I thank God you are alive.”

  She turned slowly, as if she had known all along of his tortuous approach. Her voice was low and thrilling.

  “I prayed for hours, it seemed, after we were dashed upon this shore, that you might live and that I might die. The knowledge that you saved me through mistake, that you were battling so long and so bravely all through the night for the one you cherished more than all in the world, made me pray from the first that I could be dead before you discovered the horrid error. You picked me up when the crash came and I was too terrified to even think of crying aloud in protest. Then we were in that awful, awful water. It was not until hours afterward that I felt we might escape find that I should have to face your grief.” He reached up and clasped her hand.

  “Don’t—don’t talk like that now,” he groaned. “I hated you this morning, but—God, it is a relief to have you here to share all this with me. God threw us into the sea and He has saved us. I would to God I could have gone down with—with her, but—but—” and he broke down, his head falling upon his outstretched arms at her feet. A deep sob from Lady Tennys caused him to lift his haggard eyes to hers. “It would have been so much better than to live without her,” he cried.

  “Why did you not let me go when you found who I was?” she cried almost fiercely. “I wanted to drown, I was hungry to go to the bottom, to be washed away to the end of the ocean, anywhere but here with you when you thought you were saving her. You had forgotten that I existed until that awful moment in the breakers. I heard her cry out to you as we went overboard. All through the night I heard that cry of ‘Hugh! Hugh!’ It was worse than the worst of deaths!”

  At the mention of Grace’s piteous cry, even though heard in imagination, Hugh sank limply to the rock, his mouth falling open and his eyes bulging forth in agony. Every drop of blood in his veins seemed frozen with the realization that he had deserted her in that hour when she had most needed him, that he had left her to go down to death without being by her side, that she had cried out to him for help,—had reached out to him in agony. Crazed by a sudden impulse, he sprang to his feet and glared out over the tumbling waves,—ever moving mountains that reached as far as the eye could see. She arose also, trembling and alarmed.

  “Where is she? Where is she?” he cried fiercely. “My God! Look at that water! Grace, Grace! My darling, how could I have left you alone to die in that hell of water! Let me come to you now, dearest. I will save you. I will come! Hugh is coming, dearest! Look! She must be out there somewhere. I can reach her if I try. I must go!”

  Insane with despair, he leaped to his feet and would have dashed down the steep into the death-dealing breakers had not his companion, with a sharp cry, clutched his arm. He turned fiercely, ready to strike her in his frenzy. His glaring eyes met hers, sweet, wide, and imploring, and their influence told at once upon him. A rush of quiet almost benumbed him, so immediate was the reaction from violence to submission.

  “You must not do that!” she cried in horror.

  “Let me save her, for God’s sake. I cannot leave her to the sea.”

  “Be calm!” she wailed. “Hours ago I would have leaped into the sea myself, but the thought came to me that she may not be lost after all. There is something for you to live for.”

  “There is nothing. She is lost,” he cried.

  “As I stood here, I wondered if she might not have been saved as miraculously as we. Wonder grew into hope and hope took the shape of possibility. Hugh, she may be alive and as safe as we!”

  His eyes brightened like a flash; his breath came quickly; he tried to speak, but could not for the joy of hope.

  “The hope that she may have been saved and may yet be given back to you kept me from ending the life that did not belong to me, but to her. Hugh Ridgeway, I have spent a thousand years on these rocks, trying to find courage to live. But for me she would be standing here with you. You would have saved her had I not been in the way last night,” she whispered. He could see that she suffered, but he was again blind to everything but his own great despair.

  “Yes,” he cried savagely, “but for you I would have saved her. Oh, I could curse you—curse you!” She shrank back with a low moan, covering her eyes with her hands.

  “Don’t say that!” she murmured piteously. “I would to God I could have gone down with the ship.” His eyes softened and a wave of remorse swept over him.

  “Forgive me,” he groaned, “I am mad or I could not have said that to you. I did not mean it.” He placed his hand on hers, clasping the fingers firm
ly. “Forget that I spoke so cruelly. I devoutly thank God that your life was spared. We both loved the one who was left behind.”

  She glanced down at his face doubtingly, unbelievingly, at first. Then a gleam of joy flooded her tired eyes, illumined her face. Sinking down beside him, she placed her head upon his shoulder and wept softly. He did not move from his position on the rock below. His heart was full of tenderness for the living and grief for the dead. His eyes stared out over the sea wistfully.

  “I cannot look at that water!” he suddenly shrieked, drawing back in abject terror. “It is horrible! Horrible!”

  He left her side and dashed madly away, strength having come with sudden abhorrence. She looked after him in alarm, her eyes wide with the fear that he was bereft of reason. Down the rocks and up the beach he fled, disappearing among the strangely shaped trees and underbrush that marked the outskirts of the jungle. Again she leaned back against the rock and looked at the unfriendly billows beyond, a feeling that she sat deserted forever on that barren shore plunging her soul into the very lowest pits of wretchedness.

  Hours afterward he crept painfully from the cool, lonely jungle into the bright glare of the beach,—calmer, more rational, cursing no more. A shudder swept over him, a chill penetrated to the marrow of his bones as he looked again upon the sea. His eyes sought the rocks upon which he had left her; his heart was full of an eagerness to comfort her and be comforted in return.

  She still sat upon the rock and he hurried toward her. As on his first approach, she did not move. When he drew quite close, he discovered that she was lying limply back against the supporting boulder. The fear that she was dead and that he was left alone almost struck him to the ground. He reached her side, pale and panting, and then breathed a prayer of rejoicing.