His Unknown Wife, Louis Tracy [best black authors .TXT] 📗

The change, when it came, came swiftly. It was as though the All-Powerful bade the waters cease their snarling and stilled the fury of the reef. During nearly an hour the sea lapped the very thighs of the four castaways, but the roar of battle between rocks and current had died down and it was possible to hear the spoken word.

Sturgess was the first to break the spell cast on the whole party by the seeming imminence of death.

“If ever I set foot in New York again I’ll be good and go to church Sundays,” he said. “This is Sunday, February 6, an’ I guess I’ve been as near Kingdom Come to-day as I’m likely to get on a round trip ticket.”

For a little while no one passed any comment. Sunday! The mere name of the day had a bizarre sound. What had God-given Sunday and its peaceful associations to do with this grim and savage wilderness?

Suddenly Nina Forbes began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. One by one the others joined in. The concluding petition had a peculiar appropriateness. If ever four Christian people might appeal to be delivered from evil, surely these four were in great need of heavenly succor.

“That’s fine!” said Sturgess, almost cheerfully, when a hearty “Amen” had relieved their surcharged feelings. “Me for the pine pew and the right sort of preacher when next I stroll out of West Fifty-seventh Street into Broadway of a Sabbath morning. Anyhow, to-day being Sunday, and the hour rather early, which way do we head for the nearest church when the tide falls, commodore?”

Maseden had already weighed that very question, but the utter collapse of the voyage on which he had founded such high hopes had chastened his pride.

“I think we had better put it to the vote,” he said. “I’ve led you into such a deathtrap already that I don’t feel equal to a decision.”

He had been watching a big rock on the opposite shore. A little while ago it was awash; now it was submerged, yet the water was appreciably lower where they were standing.

The seeming contradiction was puzzling. He had yet to learn that the laws governing water in motion are extraordinarily complex-take to witness the varying levels of the whirlpool in the Niagara River and the almost phenomenal height of the central stream in the Niagara rapids.

“Guess we’re satisfied with your control so far,” said Sturgess. “What are you making a kick about? You prophesied just what would occur, and that’s more than the average wizard can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you tell us we might strike a score of reefs between Providence Beach and Smyth’s Channel, and that we should be lucky if we didn’t have to build ‘steen rafts?”

Maseden smiled. The rock he had marked as an index was reappearing, and the water had sunk another inch below his knees. The tide had unquestionably turned; the water banked up on the opposite shore was also yielding to the new force.

“I never anticipated another complete shipwreck,” he said. “We have lost everything, ropes, skins, food-our chief supporter, the broken foremast-even our flag.”

“But we still have the rifle and cartridges, and we’re plus a fortnight’s experience. If we don’t start life again better fixed than when we climbed to the ledge in the dark from the forecastle of the Southern Cross, call me a Dutchman.”

“I agree with C. K.” Nina chimed in. “Even here there must be some sort of a passage at low water. Which way shall we go-back or forward?”

“We gain nothing by going back,” said Maseden slowly. “For one thing, we are on the wrong side of the channel. For another, I have been taking stock of the peculiar vagaries of the tide during the past fifteen minutes, and I imagine that there is a slight difference in the water level between this point and that which we left this morning. Still water attains a dead level, of course, but strong tides have rules of their own.

“Now, supposing the tide from the Pacific runs into Providence Beach a few minutes earlier than it reaches Nelson Straits, that would account for the terrific rush in which we were caught. For the same cause, the falling tide should be far less strenuous here, but stronger there, and I do really believe that opposite our camp the ebb tide always developed a swifter current than the flood.”

“I’m sure of it,” agreed Sturgess. “They were both pretty hefty, but this morning’s flood didn’t begin to compare with last night’s ebb. You ought to know. You went through it alone on board the raft.”

“Then the answer is, ‘Go forward,’” said Madge.

“I think so. Let us be guided by events. We have the best part of the day before us. Surely we can find some safer lodgment than this before night falls.”

The others knew that Maseden’s voice had lost its confident ring, but the fact that they had so narrowly dodged death barred all other considerations.

In his heart of hearts he was deadly afraid that they might indeed be compelled to return to Hanover Island. The sheer barrenness of the islet on which they were now stranded was its vital defect. Probably they would still find shell-fish, still knock an occasional seal on the head, but wood they must have, both for fire and raft building, and it seemed to him that there were no trees nearer than the slopes facing Providence Beach.

However, having come so far, they might at least have a look at the conditions on the south side, where lay yet another island; and there was also the unalterable fact that if they must escape by using the tides, their first day’s experiences, though resulting in disaster, had brought them many miles in the right direction.

Perhaps they had met and conquered their greatest danger. They had paid a dear price for victory, but that was nothing new in war.

Of course there was a long and wearisome wait before they could do other than sit on the slowly emerging rocks. But it was something gained when they were free to climb out into the open and see the sky over their heads. The silent, nerve-racking menace of the canopied rock was quite as unbearable as the loudmouthed threats of sea and reef.

Madge, slightly less self-contained than her sister, promptly voiced her relief.

“If I live to be older than I want to be I shall never forget one awful crack in the roof just above us,” she said. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. It seemed to be opening and shutting all the time with a horrible slowness.”

“How old do you want to be?” demanded Sturgess, readily seizing the chance to divert her thoughts from a nightmare memory.

“Forty-five,” she answered without any hesitation.

“Gee! That leaves me less than eighteen years to live!”

“I wasn’t thinking of you, C. K.”

“But your limit rouses one’s curiosity. “Why forty-five, any more than fifty or sixty? Granted good health, heaps of people enjoy life at sixty.”

“At forty-five a woman begins to fade and men grow horrid,” she announced calmly, as though stating an incontrovertible thesis.

“Please don’t talk rubbish, either of you,” interrupted Nina sharply. “Alec, can’t we dodge along from rock to rock? It seems to be ever so much more open half a mile ahead.”

“Let’s try,” said Maseden.

He wondered vaguely why Nina broke in on her sister’s quaint theorizing. Any nonsense which took their minds off the troubles of the hour was a good thing in itself.

They scrambled and slithered through the passage, which resembled the moraine of a glacier, save that the rocks were on the same plane, and the central stream was clear and greenish instead of being nearly milk white. Once they were held up fully fifteen minutes because the channel ran close to an overhanging rock which really looked as though it might be brought down by the disturbance of a pebble.

Then Maseden was moved to make investigations, and discovered that the main waterway was extraordinarily deep. In other words, the sea had preferred to scoop out a ditch rather than flow through the ample space bordering Hanover Island. Even at low tide there was deep water here.

“We must go on, one at a time,” he said, and led the way.

He found that Nina Forbes was close behind.

“Remain where you are!” he said gruffly. “I’ll tell you when to