But first, to find some decent flour, and, as it happened, there seemed fewer barrels about than usual, and most of them had suffered in their rough transit. The search for a good one took time. Such as he found were gaping and he did not trouble to open them. However, he discovered one at last, opened it to make sure of the goodness of its heart and then turned to seek tobacco.

It was then that the fog swept down on him and chained him to three square feet or so of precarious foothold. Trespa.s.s beyond that limit might mean a broken limb or neck, for the surface of the pile was seamed with ragged rifts and chasms, in which the tide whuffled and growled like a wild beast antic.i.p.ating food.

So he rooted away in the chest he had just smashed open, lighted on a supply of tobacco to his great satisfaction, and then sat down where he was, to wait till the fog cleared. But this, he perceived, was not one of their usual clinging fogs which enveloped one like a pall of cotton-wool. It drove on a rising wind and sped past him in dense whirling coils that made his head spin. He thought briefly of mighty spirits of the air trailing ghostly garments in rapid flight. Down below him, in the black rifts and along the sides of the pile, the water was yapping savagely, as if the wild beast would wait no longer.

When the last of the fog tore past him in tattered fragments, he found to his dismay that the sea between him and home was beyond any man's swimming,--every channel raging and foaming, and the banks between boiling furiously in the rising tide and the rush of the south-west wind. The raft he had made had already broken loose and started northwards on its own account. It went to pieces on the nearest bank, as he watched, and swept away in fragments.

There was nothing for it but waiting. So sudden a storm might pa.s.s as quickly as it had come.

For himself he had no great fears. The pile had stood a thousand storms, and worse ones than this. But he was filled with anxiety on Avice's account. She would imagine the worst when he did not come, and her suffering would be great. Thought of her troubled him infinitely more than fear for himself.

He tried hard to make her out on the beach, though how to rea.s.sure her he did not know. But the sky was overcast and the atmosphere murky with sweeping showers, and he could not even see the point.

He was wet through with his swim, and the wind, though not cold in itself, was so strong that it chilled him. He searched about for shelter, and coming on a huge case which presented a solid back to the weather, he stove in the front and found it contained fine lace curtains. He hauled out a sufficiency, which the wind whisked playfully away. Then he crept into their place, grateful for so much, and lay and watched the strange writhings and contortions of the pile under the impact of the gale and the rising tide.

The wind would go down with the tide probably, and then he would make another raft and get home as quickly as he could with his flour. For, great as Avice's anxiety would certainly be, they were still short of flour, and it would be better to take it with him than to have to come back for it. The wreck-pile in a gale was a decidedly unpleasant experience, and its behaviour most extraordinary. He had never imagined a dead conglomeration such as that capable of such antics.

When the tide was at its height the whole ma.s.s writhed and shuddered through all its length and breadth like some great monster in its death agonies. The rifts and chasms gaped and closed like grim black wounds or hungry mouths. Strange and awesome sounds broke out all about, groanings and creakings, ragged rendings and grindings, as the component pieces lifted and settled regardless of their neighbours.

When the tide went down it was more at ease, and the only sounds were the waves snapping at the sides and gurgling and rushing in the depths below.

He did not find it very cold. Sheltered from the wind, the heat of his body in time made a warm nook round him in the heart of the curtains.

But he was never dry. And before it got too dark, when he saw it would be impossible to get away that night, he crept out and crawled precariously to and fro till he lighted on a small cask of rum. He carried it to his shelter, knocking in the head with his axe, and it kept his blood warm through the night. But it was a terribly long night, chiefly because he was thinking all through it of Avice, and her fears for him, and her suffering.

To his bitter disappointment, morning showed no signs of abatement or relief. It brought another wild gray day without a glimmer of hope in the sky.

He had eaten nothing for more than twenty hours and was feeling empty and ravenous. The tide had risen and gone down again in the night.

Before the pile began its writhings and contortions again he must eat.

So he crept out and foraged till he found a barrel of pork, and bashed it open and carried back to his nest a big chunk which he ate raw and washed down with rum.

All that day the gale held. He hardly dared to think of Avice and yet could think of nothing else. At times, under the impulse of his fears for her, he was tempted to leap into the sea and try to battle through to the point. But when he studied the chances of it, common sense prevailed. Adventure into those boiling currents meant death as surely as if he cut his throat on the pile.

If he could only let her know that he was alive.... If he had had his flint and steel he would have tried to set something on fire--even if it were his nest--on the chance of her seeing the smoke and understanding it. He searched eagerly for another tinder-box, but could not light on one.

It was an anxious and gloomy man that crept into the heart of the curtain-case that night; but he slept, in a way and brokenly, in spite of it all, for Nature knows man's limits, and when he goes beyond them she steps in at times and takes command.

LVI

To Avice, also, that first night was one long horror.

She made up the fire and sat waiting for him to come. He would know in what a state of despair she would be and he would certainly come. She was sure he would come--if he could. If he did not it was because he could not. And ... if he could not....

The wind shrilled eerily outside. It sounded cold and heartless ...

pitiless ... like messages from the dead ... warnings of evil. It got on her nerves and set her shivering. She crept to her room at last and dropped hopelessly on to her bed, and lay there sorely stricken.

In the gray of the morning she ate mechanically, and hurried away to the point for sign or sight of him. But it was all she could do to make out the pile itself, like a bristling rampart in the dull dim distance. As to distinguishing anything on it, that was out of the question.

She wandered about there all day long, with her eyes strained on the pile like one bereft, and only crept back when night shut it out and drove her home.

She was satisfied in her own mind now that he was dead. If he had been alive he would certainly have come. Well, she would not be long in following him.... Without him she had no desire to live ... even if she could struggle on alone, which was very doubtful ... better to join him quickly than to drag on miserably all by herself on that lonely bank, and go crazy in the end.

She sobbed herself asleep, her last wish that she might never waken.

She had eaten nothing since the morning, and then only a hasty sc.r.a.p that had no taste in it. The fire had gone out.... It did not matter.

She would go out herself as soon as might be.... A woful end to all their golden hopes and happiness.

Morning found her still lying spent and hopeless on her bed, comatose, neither asleep nor awake, simply careless of life and even of the fact that the wind had fallen at midnight and that the new day had broken soft and clear.

Then, in her dream-weariness, she heard a voice in the outer room--or thought she did--but all her senses were dulled except the sense of loss and heartache. People, she knew, heard voices when they were going to die.

"Avice!"--the voice of G.o.d calling her--the sweet voice of death. She was ready to go.

"Avice! Where are you?"--and a tapping on the wall of her room.

How like Wulfrey's voice! Perhaps he was permitted to be the messenger,--a gracious thought--a joyful thought.

She rose painfully, stiff with weakness and long lying, stumbled to the doorway, stood leaning her hands against the sides, and peered, white-faced and awe-stricken, through the curtains into the room.

Then, with a broken cry, she threw up her hands and fell forward into Wulf's arms.

When she came to herself she was lying on a blanket outside the house and he was bathing her forehead and kissing her. She lay looking up at him in wonder, out of eyes almost lost in the mists and darkness of her suffering. She raised a hand and touched his face.

"Are you real? Are you alive?" she whispered doubtfully.

He proved it with hot kisses. His eyes swam with pity for her sufferings. Her face and eyes told him all the story.

"By G.o.d's mercy we are both alive, dear. It might have been otherwise.... You have suffered sorely."

"I thought you were sent for me ... the angel of Death. And it was so good of them to send you and not a stranger.... But it is better to have you alive," and happy tears welled weakly out of her eyes and rolled down the white cheeks.

"I believe you have eaten nothing since I went. Lie still and I will get you something," and he jumped up and went inside, lighted the fire quickly, and presently was sitting by her side, feeding her with warm rum and water, for she was icy cold, and some bits of the cakes she had made three days before.

"You ought not to have starved yourself like that," he remonstrated.

"I was sure you were dead and I had no wish to live.... You will never go out there again...."

"Not in the break of a storm anyway. We must go to the storehouse sometimes, but we'll make sure of our weather in future."

"I wouldn't have minded if I'd been with you."

"I would. It was ghastly out there in the night," and he told her how he had lived in the big case of curtains, and how the pile heaved and writhed like a wounded sea-serpent under the tide and the gale. And how he had brought back some flour after all, though it had been no easy job as there was no wind to help him.

"It is dear flour," she said. "It nearly cost us our lives. I would sooner live on raw meat another time."

LVII