The Stolen Singer Part 9

The girl beside him knew better, but she was conscious of the paralyzing despair in her companion's heart, and made a show of being cheerful.

"When they find they are safe they may think of us," she said. "But the men were already crazed with fear, even before the leak was discovered. One of their mates on the voyage over was a fortune-teller, and he prophesied danger to them all on their next trip. After they had come into port, the fortune-teller himself died.

And who can blame them for their fear? They are all superst.i.tious; and as no one ever regarded their fears, now they have no regard for anybody's feelings but their own."

"But we are in the middle of the Atlantic, no one knows where. We may drift for days--we may starve--the Lord only knows what will happen to us!"

Agatha, who had been floating, swam a little nearer and laid her hand on Jim's shoulder, until he looked into her face. It was full of strength and brightness.

"'The sea is His also,'" she quoted gently. "Besides, we may get picked up," she went on. "I'm very well off, for my part, as you see.

Can swim or rest floating, thanks to this blessed cork thing, and not at all hurt by the fall from the rope. But I must get rid of my shoes and some of my clothes, if I have to swim."

It is awkward to kick off one's shoes and divest oneself of unnecessary clothing in the water, and Agatha laughed at herself as she did it.

"Not exactly a bathing suit, but this one black skirt will have to do.

The others must go. It was my skirts that caused the mischief with the rope at first. And I was scared!"

"You had a right to be." Jim helped her keep afloat, and presently he saw that, freed from the entanglement of so many clothes, she was as much at home in the water as he. Suddenly she turned to him, caught by some recollection that almost eluded her.

"I don't think we are anywhere near the middle of the Atlantic," she said thoughtfully. James was silent, eating the bitter bread of despair, in spite of the woman's brave wish to comfort him. They were swimming slowly as they talked, still hoping to reach the yacht. They rose on the breast of the waves, paused now and then till a quieter moment came, and always kept near each other in the pale blue darkness.

"Old Sophie said something--that some one had tampered with the wheel, I think. At any rate, she said we'd never get far from sh.o.r.e with this crew."

James considered the case. "But even suppose we are within a mile or two, say, of the sh.o.r.e, could you ever swim two miles in this heavy sea?"

"It is growing calmer every minute. See, I can do very well, even swimming alone. It must be near morning, too, and that's always, a good thing." There was the shadow of a laugh in her voice.

"Morning? That depends," growled Jim. He was being soothed in spite of himself, and in spite of the direfulness of their situation. But bad as the situation was, and would be in any case, he could not deny the proposition that morning and daylight would make it better.

"But aren't you tired already? You must be." James turned closer to her, trying to read her face. "It was a long night of anxiety, even before we left the boat. Weren't you frightened?"

"Yes, of course; but I've been getting used to frights of late, if one _can_ get used to them." Again there was the laugh in her voice, under all its seriousness, even when she added: "I'm not sure that this isn't safer than being on board the _Jeanne D'Arc_, after all!"

It was characteristic of James that he forebore to take advantage of the opening this speech offered. The possible reason of her abduction, her treatment on board the yacht, her relation to Monsieur Chatelard--it was all a mystery, but he could not, at that moment, seek to solve it. Her remark remained unanswered for a little time; at last he said: "Then the _Jeanne D'Arc_ must have been pretty bad."

"It was," she said simply.

Jim wondered whether she knew more about the crime of which she was the victim than he knew, or if she had discovered aught concerning it while she was a prisoner on the yacht. Granting that her person was so valuable that a man of Monsieur Chatelard's caliber would commit a crime to get possession of it, why should he have abandoned her when there was plainly some chance of safety in the boats? He could not conceive of Monsieur Chatelard's risking his neck in an affair of gallantry; cupidity alone would account for his part in the drama.

James went over and over the situation, as far as he understood it, but he did none of his thinking aloud. It flashed on his mind that Miss Redmond must already have separated him, in her thoughts, from the other people on the yacht; though perhaps her trust was instinctive, arising from her own need of help. How could she know that he had risked his neck twice, now, to follow the Vision?

Swimming slowly, with Agatha's hand at times on his shoulder, James turned his mind sharply to a consideration of their present position.

They had been alternately swimming and floating, hoping to come upon the yacht. The darkness of the night was penetrable, so that they could see a fairly large circle of water about them, but there was no shadow of the _Jeanne D'Arc_. Save for the running surge of the waters, all was silence. The pale forerunners of dawn had appeared.

Their swim after the boats of the _Jeanne D'Arc_ had warmed their blood, so that for a while they were not conscious of the chill of the water. But as the minutes lengthened, one by one, fatigue and cold numbed their bodies. It was a test of endurance for a strong man; as for the girl, Jim wondered at her strength and courage. She swam superbly, with unhurried, steady strokes. If she grew chatteringly cold, she would start into a vigorous swim, shoulder to shoulder with James. If she lost her breath with the hard exercise, she would take his hand, "so as not to lose you," she would say, and rest on the breast of the waves. The wind dropped and the sea grew quiet, so that they were no more cruelly buffeted, but rocked up and down on its heaving bosom.

Once, while they were "resting" on the water, Agatha broke a long silence with, "I wonder--" but did not at once say what she wondered at. Jim said nothing, but she knew he was waiting and listening.

"Suppose this should be the Great Gateway," she said at last, very slowly, but quite cheerfully and naturally. "I am wondering what there is beyond."

"I've often wondered, too," said Jim.

"I've sometimes thought, and I've said it, too, that I was crazy to die, just to see what happens," Agatha went on, laughing a little at her own memories. "But I find I'm not at all eager for it, now, when it would be so easy to go under and not come up again. Are you?"

"No, I've never felt eager to die; least of all, now."

Agatha was silent a while.

"What do you think death means? Shall we be we to-morrow, say, provided we can't keep afloat?" she asked by and by.

"Why, yes, I think so," said Jim. "I don't know why or how, but I guess we go on somewhere; and I rather think our best moments here--our moments of happiness or heroism, if we ever have any--are going to be the regular thing." Jim laughed a little, partly at his own lame ending, and partly because he felt Agatha's hand closing more tightly over his. He didn't want her to get blue just yet, after her brave fight.

But Agatha wasn't blue. She answered thoughtfully: "That isn't a bad idea," and then cheerfully turned to a consideration of the possibilities of a rescue at dawn.

James had evolved a plan to wait till enough light came to enable them to reach the _Jeanne D'Arc_, if she was still afloat; then to climb aboard and hunt for provisions and life preservers or something to use for a raft. If he could do this, then they would be in a somewhat better plight, at least for a time. He prayed that the _Jeanne D'Arc_ might still be alive.

The two talked little, leaving silences between them full of wonder.

The details of life, the ordinary personalities, were blotted out.

Without explanation or speech of any kind, they understood each other.

They were not, in this hour, members of a complex and artificial society; they were not even man and woman; they were two souls stripped of everything but the need for fort.i.tude and sweetness.

At last came the dawn. Slowly the blue curtain of night lifted, lifted, until it became the blue curtain of sky, endlessly far away and far above. A twinkling star looked down on the cup of ocean, glimmered a moment and was gone. The light strengthened. A pearly, iridescent quiver came upon the waters, repeating itself wave after wave, and heralded the coming of the Lord Sun over the great murmuring sea. As the light grew, they could see a constantly widening circle of ocean, of which they were the center. As they rose and fell with the waves, the horizon fell and rose to their vision, dim and undefined. Hand in hand they floated in vaporous silver.

"The day has come at last, thank G.o.d!" breathed James.

"Yes, thank G.o.d!" answered the girl.

"Are you very cold?"

"The sun will soon warm us."

"Where did you learn to swim?"

"In England, mostly at the Isle of Wight, but I'm not half such a dolphin as you are."

"Oh, well, boys have to swim, you know, and I was a boy once," Jim answered awkwardly. Presently he asked, and his voice was full of awe: "Have you ever seen the dawn--a dawn like this--before?"

"Never one like this," she whispered.

When daylight came, they found they had not traveled far from the scene of the night's disaster; or, if they had, the _Jeanne D'Arc_ had drifted with them. She was still afloat, and just as the sun rose they saw her, apparently not far away, tossing rudderless to the waves.

There was no sign of the s.h.i.+p's boats.

At the renewed miracle of light, and at sight of the yacht, Jimmy's hopes were reborn. His spirit bathed in the wonder of the day and was made strong again. The night with its horrors of struggle and its darkness was past, forgotten in the flush of hope that came with the light.

Together they struck out toward the yacht, fresh with new courage. Now that he could see plainly, Jim swam always a little behind Agatha, keeping a watchful eye. She still took the water gallantly, nose and closed mouth just topping the wave, like a spaniel. An occasional side-stroke would bring her face level to the water, with a backward smile for her companion. He gloried in her spirit, even while he feared for her strength.

It was a longer pull to the yacht than they had counted upon, a heavy tax on their powers of endurance. Jim came up to find Agatha floating on her back and put his hand under her shoulders, steadying her easily.

"Now you can really rest," he said.

"I've looked toward the horizon so long, I thought I'd look up, way up, for a change," she said cheerfully. "That's where the skylarks go, when they want to sing--straight up into heaven!"

"Doesn't it make you want to sing?"