William Brown Meloney

“ Emily Granville knew that it was of her mother and father that the derelict had just spoken. But even in the stress of feeling which possessed her there formed in her mind an high, practical purpose. She knew that if this man could but reach the ears of the world with this tale it meant the vindication of Paul Lavelle. It meant all that was dear to him—his good name, his honor restored. The sailor must not die. He must live. She would fight death for him and in justice she must conquer. If she could do this thing for her love she would have nothing else to ask of life. ”

“ Instinct carried Emily to this breach in the wall of the bark's defense. She got her back to the door, like a woman of the Zuyder Zee warding a broken dyke gate, and she closed it. The strength of the primitive fighting man's woman was hers in the struggle which accomplished this. She cried in anger as she bolted the teakwood slab against the ravaging waters. Yet with this thing done, her first thought was that she must get back to the wheel with a piece of tobacco. Going aft, she did not notice that the derelict's berth was empty, but the man at the wheel knew that the stranger was not there. ”

“ After a long silence she asked:
"Why are you not afraid?"
"I don't know," he answered simply, "unless it is because I can't believe—that a marvelous creation like mankind stops—with what we call death. I can't believe that wondrous beings—like you—and Chang, capable of the sublimest thoughts and impulses—come and go and are no more. Rather I think that what we are facing is 'Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.'"
Nor was Emily conscious of her hand clasping Paul Lavelle's with love's tightness in its pressure. ”

“ With this exclamation of surprise the manager hurried back to his office where Emily Granville was waiting and thinking of the inexpressible sadness she had seen in the face of the stranger who had resigned his stateroom to her. It troubled her. In the instant that she had turned to find his gaze fixed on her she saw a pain in his eyes so poignant that it hurt her. A soul sounding the deeps of anguish seemed to have been crying out just behind them.
Whitridge, going swiftly along The Bund, was torn by the thoughts which the name of Granville had started. ”

“ She heard Paul leave the poop and then a clang from the engine room told her he was there. It sounded like a door closing between them—a door that would never open again—and she went into the lounge to weep bitter tears which would not be stayed.
If she could have seen Paul Lavelle's face when he turned away from her and at the moment when she was giving way to her loneliness she would have understood that he was suffering, too.
After overhauling the fires under the donkey boiler, Paul threw himself at full length across the main hatch. He was mind weary; body weary; at war with himself. ”

“ Under the stiff arms Paul spied the log book which he had missed from the mate's room. He pulled it out and the dead man's head rolled back and compelled his disturber to meet the gaze of his wide-open, staring blue eyes. A pen rolled out from under his right hand and dropped from the desk.
This undoubtedly was the Daphne's skipper. He had been a man of powerful build, standing in life as tall as Lavelle himself. Even in the laxness of death his jaw bespoke indomitable determination. The nose was of a splendid aggressive type. Death had taken him in the beginning of his best years. ”

“ Death seemed already to have masked it. It was the derelict going away.
"Why, that—that's Driscoll—the quartermaster who was with me—stood by me—the night the Yakutat was lost!"
It was thus in the instant that the sea gulped Daniel McGovern that recognition flashed into Paul Lavelle's mind. But as the thought formed he put it away from him. His eyes were tricking him. A man can't stand for six, seven, or eight hours—he had lost count of time—staring at a compass card which whirls and dips like a crazy roulette wheel at Macao and trust his sight. ”

“ Three days of life-renewing, hope-burgeoning weather had followed that silent dawn—days of placid seas and gentle breezes; and nights alight with stars and a growing moon. The island had been motionless. It might have been one of the Blessed Isles in a world where life was everlasting.
Isle of Hope Emily had christened the bit of floating earth, nor could she have told why optimism reigned in her heart and soul. She was unaware that she was reflecting only what the manner of Paul Lavelle gave forth. ”

“ Whatever the battle was to be it was with his own hands that Paul Lavelle must fight it. With this realization a terrific rage filled him. It was fed with each breath that he snatched out of the blackness. The sea was a personal enemy. Thus men who deal with it in long intimacy come to visualize it. The sea was a sneak—a coward; always striking below the belt.
Lavelle had squared the yards before he had gone aft in the evening, leaving the braces slack so as to cast the Daphne on the most advantageous tack at the first coming of a breeze. ”

“ The years had taught Paul Lavelle how to suffer alone. He was suffering now. When he looked up from Elsie's dead face that morning into the gold woman's he thought he saw something in her eyes to make him pause. He had surprised the glance again, he imagined, as he turned round from the burial. He knew life too well not to understand whither a woman's sympathy might carry her.
Emily, looking down at the long, lithe body stretched in the bottom of the boat, kept repeating to herself: "The sea hurts, but it also heals." ”

“ Her sensitive nostrils quivered at the sunlight's touch. Her blue-shirted bosom, heaving ever so slightly from the exertion of climbing the companionway, moved the loose plaits of her hair hanging over her shoulders like ropes of molten gold. Hardship had drawn her features only slightly. Youth's capacity of quick recovery was hers. Physically she was little changed, but there was a subtle difference in her. Her whole being now seemed to breathe: "I have no doubt of life."
"I've changed and slept," she said as Paul's glance swept her. "I feel as if there had never been a storm." ”

“ Under the drive of the trades, sailing before the wind, the boat, with driving, should make between one hundred and one hundred and twenty miles a day; and twelve days of such sailing meant land underfoot and—life! His heart throbbed at the thought. It meant life for her—his gold woman—and suddenly he realized that all his thoughts were of Emily Granville.
With a skillful sweep of the oar he brought the boat round and put her before the wind. By the flash of the electric torch he laid the course southwest. ”

“ Perhaps it was this suggestion of the soldier that made the Sikhs turn and look back at him as they passed out on The Bund. Yet it was not as a soldier that the port of Yokohama knew him, but by the name of Whitridge and as the captain of the sorriest-looking piece of sea grist that had ever made Tokyo Bay. A brute of a Chinese tramp she was, and men who knew deep waters were still marveling how he had brought her through the vitals of a typhoon—the worst in their memory—which had swept the coast in a fury of destruction. ”

“ There lay "The Shadow" of the lost Cambodia with the bullet wound in his brow reopened where the sea had mauled him.
"Thank God," Emily murmured, seeing Lavelle stir.
She crawled on her knees to his side and felt the pulse of the hand which Chang drew out of the canvas. Its faintness killed the gladness which had come so swiftly into her heart.
"He—he—is dying, Chang!" she cried.
"No can be; no can be," answered the Chinaman with fiery emphasis. "Him more stlong. Go-an get better more klick. No can kill master so leasy." ”

“ The movement brought to her senses for the first time a realization of physical pain. Remembering the strength of spirit which had been given to her to stand upon fire she throttled the cry which sprang to her lips. Her suffering became precious to her even as the agony of travail is dear to a woman. Her eyes welled with hot tears.
Putting out a hand blindly she found the little canvas sandals. She picked them up and pressed them to her bosom. The charred heels and soles crumbled away at her touch. She kissed them with the impulse which would carry a warrior's lips to his colors. ”

“ No one becomes insane quickly any more than one becomes a thief quickly. A long process of decay must precede.
As Emily's body readjusted itself to the cockleshell's wild movements her senses began to recover their power of apprehension. She realized that she was clutching a hand—a hand she remembered snatching out of the night as the vortex of the sinking Cambodia seemed about to suck the boat down to the deeps. Through the eternity of blackness which had passed its touch had been her link to sentient life. ”

“ To drive the heavy boat through that surf and back to sea was a task which seemed to him to be beyond the force at his command. Nor could that crew get it across the island to make a launching from the lee side.
Despair enters the breasts of strong men only to refuel their fires of determination. So it was with Paul Lavelle. Emily saw the gloom pass from his face. A conquering light of resolution succeeded it. His jaw set again in its familiar line of purpose. Thus she had beheld him on the deck of the doomed Cambodia. ”

“ I will stay here!" Rowgowskii cried back.
The coolies, chattering to each other, settled again on their haunches from which they had half started. They were taking their cue from the black-bearded white man beside them. They would not trust themselves to the earth below which trembled and swallowed things like the sea.
"Bring 'em down, Chang!" snapped Lavelle.
The giant sprang up the hill at the order, hurling at the coolies a curse which consigned forty generations of their ancestors to an additional century of grilling in the fires of eternity. It started them, but Rowgowskii did not move. ”

“ Such an expression as Lavelle had so often seen in the faces of play-weary children was in hers.
"Wonder woman," he murmured. "Wonder woman."
Slipping out from under the sail, not daring to breathe, Lavelle gently drew the canvas back over the sleeper's shoulders and stole toward the Chinaman. A slight giddiness assailed him for a moment and with it there came a reminder of the old pain which he had felt upon awakening first in the boat.
"Master, master," called the giant worshipfully, springing toward him. ”

“ He passed a bight round Emily's waist and darted from her side forward. Hurling himself into the smothering suction under the bows, he clutched the bobstay as it buried itself. Down he went with it, dragged further and further until it seemed that he must let the sea have him. A monster with an hundred beaks tore at his lungs. Another clawed at his eyes. Still another gnashed at his heart. A bare glimmer of consciousness marked the end of the downward pitch. As the bark rose he continued to climb. At the end of the rise he was clear of the sea and halfway to the cap of the bowsprit. ”

“ Similar baskets hung in the skylight of each saloon and from the ceiling in the skipper's room. These meant a woman's watchfulness and tender care. Men who live and die by the sea know no green-growing things; no flowers. The sea gives no flowers to its children; no sweet odors for memory. It has gardens, but they are scentless and one may enter them only when life is done. So perhaps it is just as well that its flora is without fragrance.
At one moment Paul was convinced that a woman had been in the Daphne but recently: the next he doubted it. ”