Maid of the Mist Part 43

So far they had come upon no signs of Macro. From the top of the pile they looked carefully all round, but beyond the usual smashed boxes and cases there was nothing to show that he had ever been there.

"Where on earth can he have got to?" said Wulf.

"Perhaps he's fallen into the sea, or down into some crack," said The Girl, not unhopefully.

"It is always possible. He might not recognise how the fever had pulled him down."

They loaded their raft without any interference from the birds, beyond the blood-curdling clamour of their angry disputations. They were quite ready to go, but still the whereabouts of the mate was a mystery, and Wulf was loth to leave it at that. He might be lying broken in some crack. If he had come to some sudden end it would be best to know it, if that were possible, so that their fears--on their own account as well as his--might be at rest. On the other hand it was quite impossible to rake over the whole pile. That would be a good month's work.

A grim idea shot suddenly into Wulf's mind, as he stood looking keenly round from the highest point he could clamber up to. It came at sight of the birds whirling and clamouring round the end of the pile.

Suppose ... oh,--horrible! ... yet it might very well be.

"What is it?" asked The Girl anxiously, for his lips and face had tightened ominously at his thought.

"Nothing, maybe. I'm going over there to see...."

"Can you see anything of him?"

"No."

He poled the raft along the edge of the pile towards the hovering cloud of birds.

"Now, I'm going to swim along here and climb up. I want to see what they're at. You will be quite safe here."

She glanced at him with a startled look, fathoming his grim thought instantly, and it blanched her face for a moment.

"They may turn on you," she jerked.

"They seem too busy."

He let himself down into the water and swam noiselessly along the side of the pile, and she stood watching anxiously.

When he reached the outskirts of the whirling cloud he found a sodden crack, and drew himself in, and disappeared from her sight. Her heart kicked till it felt like choking her. Her face was strained, her eyes wide and fearful. She felt horribly alone.

Inside his niche, Wulf climbed cautiously, the curdling clamour very close. Now and again a feathery fiend with eyes like gla.s.s and reddened beak swooped past his hiding-place, with a shrill cry of warning to the rest at sight of him, or it might be of invitation.

He got his eyes above the top at last, in spite of pointed attentions from angry outsiders, scanned the spot where the shrieking crew centred most thickly, and dreamed of what he got a glimpse of there for weeks afterwards.

---- The remnants of what had been a man, all pecked and scratched and torn to shreds,--white, clean-picked bones showing through fragments of his clothing, myriads of squawking birds, of all shapes and sizes, cl.u.s.tered on it like bees on a comb, hustling and fighting one another with shrill screams and thras.h.i.+ng wings and red beaks. It was only when, through some unusually bitter struggle, the ma.s.s writhed and rose for a moment, only to settle more closely the next, that he could see.

Not far from the body was a broached keg which the birds had overturned in their strife. It explained everything to him.

He dropped back down his cleft, sick at the sight, grateful for the clean feel of the water. He plunged his head under and spat out the feeling of it all. Then he made his way quietly back to The Girl, and she had no need to ask what he had found. He nodded, and climbed up on to the raft and pushed quickly away.

"You are sure he is dead?" she asked, after a time.

"Horribly dead," and told her no more till later, and then not very much. "It is strange to think of it all," he said, in conclusion. "He always feared the birds. In his delirium it was the birds he was fighting. And the birds got him at last."

The manner of his death shocked and horrified them. But the knowledge that the menace of him had pa.s.sed out of their lives was untellable relief.

BOOK IV

LOVE IN A MIST

XLIV

The effect of the mate's death on The Girl's spirits was visible at once. The cloud had lifted from her face before they got fairly home.

Her eyes shone untroubled, though a look of horror and disgust came into them whenever they rested on the swirling gray cloud behind them.

In her very movements Wulf noticed a new and gracious freedom.

And his judgment did her no injustice in the matter, nor imputed it, in any slightest degree, to mere exultation over a fallen enemy. For he knew to the full in what terror of the dead man she had lived, and how the fear of him, both for herself and himself, had lain like a weight on her soul and darkened all her outlook.

He felt as she did about it. He could not regret the fact of the man's death, but the manner of it gave him poignant distress.

In spite of their hard work they had neither of them much appet.i.te for food that night. They turned in early and slept as they had not slept for long, without fear and without strain. The darkness was no longer pregnant with ungaugeable terrors. The dawn was like the beginning of a new life to them.

Wulf, indeed, saw again that night, and many a night thereafter, the horror of the cl.u.s.tering birds and that over which they bristled and fought. But he woke each time to the immeasurable relief of the man's death. That had been essential to their own safety, but he thanked G.o.d with his whole heart that it had not been by his hand that he had had to die. For that he never could be sufficiently grateful. He had played him fair and more than fair. He was dead, and their consciences and their hearts were alike at rest.

They woke next morning to the close folding of the mist, and he had to set to work at once making good the broken companion-doors to keep it out of the cabin as much as possible.

Being but a poor carpenter, the only way he could do this was by nailing a blanket to the top of the hatch and pegging it down tightly to the top step. But he foresaw that the next gale would blow his stop-gap to pieces and destroy their comfort below. So did the dead man's deeds live after him, and it was not the only one.

They were sitting at their mid-day meal, when the thick silence of the mist outside was rent by a shrill frightened scream right above their heads, and almost simultaneous with it a heavy thump, and then, on the deck above them, blows and screams and the sound of some large body tumbling to and fro.

The Girl sprang up with a white face and scared eyes and a word of dismay. Wulf picked up his axe and burst through his carefully adjusted blanket at the top of the companion. Then she heard the chop-chop of his axe on the deck, and the fall of something into the water, and he came down laughing at the start it had given him also.

"It was the biggest bird I ever saw," he said. "It had banged itself against the mast, I think, and was flopping all over the place. I chopped its head off and pitched it overboard. It must have measured six feet at least from tip to tip of its wings. It gave you a start."

"I was just thinking of that man and how different everything was now he is gone, and then that horrid scream----"

"Yes, it was enough to make anyone jump."

"It seemed to me for a moment that it was his spirit come back to trouble us still, as he had done while he lived."

"It won't come. Unless it's got inside a bird, as he always said. You must try to forget all about him."

"It is not easy. But, whether it is wicked of me or not, I thank G.o.d he is dead."

"And I thank G.o.d that he did not die by my hand. I shall never cease to be thankful for that."

"We shall never be able to build a boat now," she said presently, following out the natural train of her thought.

"I'm afraid not,"--with a doleful shake of the head. "Unless you have had any experience in such things."