Nedra Part 24

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 f.a.gging 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s.

An uncanny terror enveloped him. What could the strange thing be that appeared to be rus.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.s was land!

"Oh, G.o.d! 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 gra.s.sy 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, rus.h.i.+ng and booming upon the stretch of sand which reached within fifty feet of his gra.s.sy 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 s.h.i.+rt bosom unb.u.t.toned. 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 mult.i.tude 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 hoa.r.s.e whisper. Lying there impotently, he studied her att.i.tude 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 sh.e.l.l 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 hoa.r.s.ely. "You do not know how I thank G.o.d you are alive."

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'LADY TENNYS, ... YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW I THANK G.o.d YOU ARE ALIVE'"]

"I prayed for hours, it seemed, after we were dashed upon this sh.o.r.e, 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--G.o.d, it is a relief to have you here to share all this with me. G.o.d threw us into the sea and He has saved us. I would to G.o.d 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 G.o.d! Look at that water! Grace, Grace! My darling, how could I have left you alone to die in that h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d I could have gone down with the s.h.i.+p." 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 firmly. "Forget that I spoke so cruelly. I devoutly thank G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e 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.

Lady Tennys, her dark lashes resting tranquilly upon her cheek, was lying easily against the staunch old rock, fast asleep.