“Oh, I shall lose them! I shall lose them!” moaned poor Judith, sitting up in bed and wringing her hands in the keenness of her distress. “How could I have let myself fall asleep! How could I have slept all this time like a log!”
It was very dark, so it must be midnight or later. There was no light anywhere, on land or sea, or in Judith’s troubled soul. To her remorseful mind all her terrible labor and strain of body had been in vain; she had gone to sleep and spoiled everything, everything!
Judith had never been so utterly tired out as when she went to sleep; she had never been so tired as she was now. She felt lame in every joint and muscle of her body. But her conscience stood up before her in the dark and arraigned her with pitiless, scathing scorn.
“Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? See what you’ve done! All those beautiful fish lost, when you might have saved them—just by staying awake and attending to them. A little thing like that! And you worked so hard to get them—I was proud of you for that. Ah-h, but I’m ashamed of you now!”
“Don’t! don’t—you hurt!” sighed Judith, “I’ll get up now, this minute, and go down there. Don’t you see me getting up? I’ve got one shoe on now.”
Judith was not experienced in the dressing of many fish at a time and the packing of them in barrels for market. At sixteen, how can one be—and one a girl? But she knew in a rather indefinite way the importance of having it done promptly. She remembered father’s and the boys’ last school of fish—how she had hurried down to the shore and watched the dory come creeping heavily in, how the boys had cheered, as they came, how father had let her help at the dressing, and mother had brought down hot coffee for them all and then “fallen to,” herself and worked like a man. How they all had worked to get the barrels packed full of the shining layers in time for the steamer next morning!
All this Judith remembered as she crept silently away through the darkness and turned toward the salty spray that the wind tossed in her face. That had been a phenomenally large school of mackerel—eighteen barrels for market in the distant city. Judith was not quite sure, but she thought the check that came back to father had been for a hundred and fifty dollars. Mackerel had been in great demand then. A hundred and fifty dollars! Judith stopped short and caught her breath.
“But my school was just a little one,” she thought, “and maybe people aren’t very mackerel hungry now.” Still, a hundred dollars—or even fifty—fifty dollars would go so far toward that doctor across the sea! Supposing she had lost fifty dollars! She hurried on through the black night, not knowing what she should do when she got to her destination, but eager to do something. The lantern she carried cast a small glimmer into the great dark.
Judith was not afraid—how long had it been since she was afraid of the dark? But a distant thrill shot through her when she saw another faint glimmer ahead of her. Then it seemed to divide into two glimmers—they blinked at her like evil eyes. They were straight ahead; she was going toward them! She must go toward them if she went to the old dory drawn up on the beach.
“And I’m goin!” Judy said defiantly. “Blink away, you old bad-y two-eyes! Wait till I get there and fix you!” It helped to laugh a little and nod defiance at the blinking eyes.