The Secret of the Reef Part 19

"I've done so," Jevons told him.

"Then send another man to Westminster, and we'll take the first doctor who gets through or keep them both."

They placed Aynsley in a position in which he could breathe more easily, and Clay gently wrapped him round with wetted rags.

"I don't know if this is the right thing, but it's all I can think of,"

he said. "We want to keep down any internal bleeding."

After this they waited anxiously for the doctor. Jevons presently crept out to restore order and to see that the fire had been extinguished; and Clay was left alone with his boy. There was no sound in the room where he sat, sternly watching over the unconscious form that lay so still on the bed.

After what seemed an interminable time Jevons opened the door softly.

"Has the doctor come?" Clay asked eagerly.

"Not yet. Any change?"

"None," said Clay. "He can't hear-I wish he could. Who were those fellows who came to the rescue?"

"City j.a.ps, so far as I can learn. It seems they're pretty well organized, and suspecting a raid would be made on their partners here their committee sent a body out. I've been round the mill, and it looks as if a thousand dollars would cover-"

"Get out of here!" Clay exclaimed roughly. "I can't talk about the damage now. Watch for those doctors and bring them in right off!"

Jevons was glad to get away, but it was nearly daybreak when he returned with a surgeon from Vancouver. Shortly afterward the Westminster surgeon arrived, and the two doctors turned Clay out of the room. He paced up and down the corridor, tensely anxious. His own weakness, the ugly gash on his face-everything was forgotten except the danger in which his boy lay. After a while his head reeled, and he stopped and leaned on the rude banister, unconscious of the dizziness.

The first streaks of daylight were sifting into the room when Clay was permitted to enter. Aynsley lay in a stupor, but the doctors seemed satisfied.

"We got the bullet," one of them reported; "but there's still some cause for anxiety. However, we'll do our best to pull him through. Now you'd better let me dress your face: it needs attention."

Clay submitted to his treatment and then sat down wearily in a room below to wait for news.

CHAPTER XIV-FIGHTING FOR A LIFE

Aynsley lay in danger for a long time; and Clay never left the mill. At last, however, the boy began to recover slowly, but when he grew well enough to notice things the scream of the saws and the throb of the engines disturbed him. The light wooden building vibrated with the roar of the machinery; and when the machinery stopped the sound of the river gurgling about the log booms broke his sleep. He grumbled continually.

"How long does the doctor mean to keep me here?" he asked his father one day.

"I can't say, but I understand that you can't be moved just yet," Clay answered. "Aren't you comfortable?"

"Can you expect me to be, with the whole place jingling and shaking? If I'm to get better it must be away from the mill."

"I'll see what the doctor thinks; but there's the difficulty that I don't know where to take you. You wouldn't be much quieter in Seattle.

It's curious, now I think of it, that I haven't had a home for a good many years, though I didn't seem to miss it until this thing happened."

Aynsley made a sign of languid agreement. He could not remember his mother, and his father had not kept house within his recollection. For the last few years he had rented luxurious rooms in a big hotel which Aynsley shared with him when not away visiting or on some sporting trip; but Aynsley now shrank from the lack of privacy and the bustle that went on all day and most of the night. There was not a restful nook in the huge, ornate building, which echoed with footsteps and voices, the clang of the street-cars, and the harsh grinding of electric elevators.

"I want to go somewhere where it's quiet," he said.

"Then I guess I'll have to hire a bushman's shack or take you to sea in the yacht. It never struck me before, but quietness is mighty hard to find in this country. We're not a tranquil people."

"I couldn't stand for a voyage," Aynsley grumbled. "She's a wet boat under sail if there's any breeze, and I don't want to crawl about dodging the water. Then the fool man who designed her put the only comfortable rooms where the propeller shakes you to pieces when the engines are going."

On the whole, Clay felt relieved, particularly as Aynsley's hardness to please implied that he was getting better. He had spent some time at the mill and had a number of irons in the fire. It would damage his business if they got overheated or perhaps cooled down before they could be used.

"Well," he suggested, "perhaps...o...b..rne would take us in."

Aynsley's eyes brightened. Osborne's house was the nearest approach to a home he had ever known. It was seldom packed with noisy guests like other houses he visited, and one was not always expected to take part in some strenuous amus.e.m.e.nt. The place was quiet and beautiful and all its appointments were in artistic taste. He thought of it with longing as a haven of rest where he could gather strength from the pine-scented breezes and bask in Ruth's kindly sympathy.

"That would be just the thing! I feel that I could get better there.

Will you write to him?"

"First mail," Clay promised with a twinkle; "but I'm not sure that Ruth's at home. Anyway, I've a number of letters to write now."

"I expect I've been pretty selfish in claiming all your time; but, if Osborne will have me, it will give you a chance of going up to town and looking after things."

"That's so," Clay replied. "As a matter of fact, some of them need it."

The doctor rather dubiously consented to his patient's being moved, and Clay neglected no precaution that might soften the journey. As he feared that the jolting of the railroad cars might prove injurious, a special room was booked on a big Sound steamer, and it was only Aynsley's uncompromising refusal to enter it that prevented his bringing out an ambulance-van to convey him to the wharf. He reached the vessel safely in an automobile, and as she steamed up the Sound he insisted on throwing off his wraps and trying to walk about. The attempt fatigued him, and he leaned on the rail at the top of a stairway from a lower deck when the steamer approached a pine-shrouded island.

A tide-race swirled past the point, flas.h.i.+ng in the suns.h.i.+ne a luminous white and green, and Aynsley took his hand from the rail and stood unsupported watching the sh.o.r.e glide by. As he was facing, he could not see an ugly half-tide rock that rose out of the surging flood not far ahead, and he was taken off his guard when the helm was pulled hard over. The fast vessel listed with a sudden slant as she swung across the stream, and Aynsley, losing his balance, fell down a few stairs and struck a stanchion with his side. He clung to it, gasping and white in face, and when Clay ran down to him there was blood on his lips.

"I'm afraid the confounded thing has broken out again," he said.

They carried him into the saloon, and Clay summoned the captain, who came docilely at his bidding. It appeared that there was no doctor among the pa.s.sengers, and the boat was billed to call at several places before she reached Seattle. None of these stops could be cut out, and the captain suggested that it would be better to land the injured man as intended, and send for a.s.sistance by fast automobile. Aynsley nodded feebly when he heard this.

"Put me ash.o.r.e," he murmured. "I'll be all right there."

An hour later the call of the whistle rang among the pines that rolled down to the beach, and as the side-wheels beat more slowly a launch came off across the clear, green water. Aynsley, choking back a cough, feebly raised himself.

"If Ruth's on board that boat, she mustn't be scared," he said. "I'm going down as if there was nothing wrong."

"You're going down in the arms of the two biggest seamen I can get,"

Clay replied. "If that doesn't please you, we'll lower you in a slung chair."

Aynsley submitted when he found that he could not get up; and Ruth, sitting with her father in the stern of the launch, started as she saw him carried down the gangway. His face was gray and haggard when they laid him on a cus.h.i.+oned locker, and the girl was moved to pity. But the shock resolved some doubts that had long troubled her. She was startled and sorry for Aynsley, but that was all; she did not feel the fear and the suspense which she thought might have been expected.

Ansley saw her grave face, and looked up with a faint smile.

"I feel horribly ashamed," he said. "If I'd known I'd make a fool of myself-"

"Hus.h.!.+" Ruth laid her hand on him with a gentle, restraining touch as she saw the effort it cost him to speak. "You must be quiet. We are going to make you better."

"Yes," he said disjointedly. "I've been longing-knew I'd get all right here-but I didn't expect-to turn up like this-"

A choking cough kept him still, and he hurriedly wiped his lips with a reddened handkerchief.