Chapter III
THE BIG WAVE
Instead of staying the few weeks upon which they had planned at Snug Harbor Beach, Judith Graham and her husband’s mother remained on for nearly two months. Neither spoke to the other of the secret hope which chained them to the place, but each morning their eyes swept the beach with eager expectancy and each evening they said, “Perhaps, to-morrow.”
Judith often sat for hours on the low slab of rock where her husband had made the sketch of Gerald. Whenever he saw her thus, Gerald would invariably leave his play for a few minutes and lean against her knee, just as he had leaned against Gilbert’s. Sometimes neither of them spoke and sometimes Judith would ask—without removing her eyes from the distant horizon—“Do you think he’ll come back?” to which Gerald’s unvarying response was, “Sure.”
The moments when she was thus alone with him soon became to Judith the part of the day that counted. It seemed to her that while she sat with one arm round the boy, leaning her tired head against the warmth of his small body, the wounds which life had given her were being silently healed. No matter which way her path might lie, existence was no longer the dreary thing that it had been when she came to Snug Harbor Beach. Was it possible that Love had, indeed, walked over the sea of sorrow, to that desolate waste of waters where her bark drifted, and was saying, even to her, “It is I, be not afraid”?
At the end of the seventh week a northeast storm of unusual violence swept the coast and Judith was compelled to remain indoors for several days. She sat much near the window, sometimes reading, with deep interest, a small, leather-covered book which Mother Graham had recently purchased, and sometimes gazing out at the storm-lashed ocean. She thought how One had risen from sleep and said to such a sea, “Peace, be still.” That the Christ could speak those words to-day with the same authority—was speaking them, now, to her storm-racked consciousness—daily became a more assured and glorious fact.
When she again saw the strip of sandy beach, which had grown so dear because of its association with her own little son and with Gerald, the only trace of the recent storm was a heavy, sullen swell—called by sailors “the old sea”—which lifted and broke upon the shore, rushing in with tremendous force. Although the tide was out, Judith could not on this morning seek her usual seat, so far-reaching were the waves. She stood for some minutes on a path which wound through a maze of sweet fern and berry bushes, watching Gerald who, because of three days’ enforced absence from the sand, was bent on building a wonderful pyramid.
“The tide’s turned,” an old sailor said, in passing, “she’s coming in and she’ll be pretty high.”
Judith, who liked these simple fisherfolk, turned aside to talk with him for a few minutes.
“Such a storm as we have had these last few days is unusual at this time of year, is it not?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled, easily. “When it’s bin thick o’ fog outside, as it has for a week past, it takes a considerable breeze o’ wind to clear it away.”
“And does the ‘breeze o’ wind’ always leave such a swell as that?” Judith asked, as a wave crashed shoreward.
“’Most always, after a no’theaster. There’ll be a heavy undertow to-day. Wouldn’t try any salt-water bathin’, if I was you.”
When Judith faced the sea again, she was surprised to see how the tide appeared to have risen in so short a time, and how much further in the waves were breaking. One came so near to where Gerald, still intent on his pyramid, dug steadily, that she called out to him. Her voice, however, was completely drowned in the roar of the surf. With a slight stirring of alarm she left the path and hurried forward.
She had covered half the distance which separated them when her breath stopped, as though it had been blown back down her throat. To her terrified eyes the ocean seemed suddenly to lift and hurl itself landward. Such waves are not uncommon on the Massachusetts or Maine coasts after a northeast storm, with an incoming tide. Their force can seldom be calculated.
It lifted Gerald as though he had been a chip of wood, carrying him inland for several yards. Then came the relentless clutch of the undertow.
To Judith it was as though the very heart in her body was being battered and bruised as she watched those small hands vainly battling against that seething flood, while the wooden spade he had so recently grasped floated almost to her feet. If the child were caught under into the next wave, it seemed as though all life must be crushed out of him when it crashed upon the shore. For a sickening moment everything turned black before her eyes, but she fought off the faintness, crying aloud,
“Oh, Thou ‘very present help’—now—now—now!”
And then, with a sob of thankfulness, she saw that a man, strong and supple, was beating his way through the water. He reached the boy, grasped him and held him high in his arms. When the wave broke, the man’s head was submerged, but the boy’s was not.
The mighty volume of water lifted Gilbert Graham even as its predecessor had lifted Gerald; but, as the force of the wave spent itself, he realized with a throb of thankfulness that his feet touched bottom, for, as he had once told the boy, he was not an expert swimmer. Then came the rush of the undertow.
It seemed as though his body must yield before it, burdened as he was with the child. As he braced his strong shoulders against the flood his whole being was a cry for strength. All at once, this thing became to him symbolic. It was not alone for the boy’s life that he fought, but for his own manhood. If he could stand firm now without relaxing his grip of the child, he felt that no wave of temptation, no subtle under-current of appeal could ever again sweep him off his feet or loosen his grasp on goodness and truth.
The old sailor, with whom Judith had talked a few minutes before, came stumbling down the beach toward her.
“He can’t make it—he can’t!” he muttered, with shaking lips. “The next wave’ll get ’em both!”
On it came—the proverbial “third wave” which sailors know and dread. Higher than either of its immediate predecessors the swell rose. Judith laid her hands upon her heaving breast.
“‘It shall not overflow thee—it shall not overflow thee!’” she cried.
“She’s prayin’,” the fisherman thought.
She scarcely breathed during the moments which followed. Then a cry of joy escaped her. The wave broke ere it reached Gilbert. The white flood carried him with it as it rushed in and left him on firm foothold. He staggered slightly when he reached the dry sand and the old sailor put out an arm to steady him.
“If that wave hadn’t broke before it reached ’em, ’twould ’a’ bin day-day to ’em both—boy an’ man,” he muttered as he turned away.
Judith drew Gerald’s drenched little body close to the warmth of her own. The child’s eyes were wide open, but the shock seemed to have suspended his faculties.
“Darling, you are all right, aren’t you?” she whispered.
He did not appear to hear, and Gilbert sank on one knee beside him.
“Little chap”—he said, between labored breaths—“you haven’t forgotten about ‘a very present help,’ have you?”
A light swept over the child’s face, as though something within him had waked up.
“I—said it!” he gasped. “When—the big wave—came—I said, ‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick.’ And then—you got me!”
He drew a long, shuddering sigh and looked up at Gilbert while Judith wiped the water from his face.
“It isn’t very nice—when a big wave—sweeps you out—is it?” he asked confidentially.
“No,” Gilbert Graham answered, “it isn’t very nice.”
He looked at his wife—a long look in which a man’s deep repentance was laid at her feet.
“Dear,” he said, “I have much to say to you, if you will let me say it. But we must get the boy home. That water was pretty cold.”
“I will take him,” Judith said.
“And will you wait for me here? I want to speak to you on this strip of beach. But, first, I must see if I cannot get some dry clothing in the village.”
“Mother Graham is here,” she suggested.
“Tell me where and I will go to her,” the man said humbly.
As he turned away, Gerald caught his hand. The natural life and color were returning to his small face.
“When I get—my dry clothes on—will you draw me—some more—with that pencil?” he pleaded.
“I surely will, son!”
Above his head the man and woman looked at each other again and there was a light on their faces like the dawning of a new day. But neither voiced the thought which was in both their minds—“And a little child shall lead them.”