“Old wives’ tales, Flexer,” he said mockingly. “Forget them; and be still, man—be still.”
CHAPTER IX
RUTH LYTTON was sick with unhappiness for the sake of Black Pawl. She was sorry for him because his son was false; she was sorrier for him because Black Pawl was false to himself. He was drinking more and more; there was an ugly note in his voice, and an ugly devil in his eye. If she could have hated him, she would not have been unhappy; but since in spite of herself she had a tender liking for the man, she was miserable.
She found her only release from this unhappiness in the occasional hours she spent with Dan Darrin; yet she did not at first understand the significance of this. Love needs to be recognized. His counterfeit is never modest, never hidden; but love may slumber, and love may hide. Ruth Lytton’s discovery of the fact that she loved Dan Darrin came about quite simply, in this fashion:
It was in the late afternoon; she and Dan were together on the quarter. The wind had fallen at noon; it was so near a flat and dead calm that the schooner’s sails were not drawing. The sun was going down in a blaze of crimson, hot and still. Dan had sent men aloft to tar the rigging here and there; and one of these men was working on the main yard, above the quarter where they stood. Dan and the girl had been talking about the weather. It did not matter what they talked about, what words they spoke. They had come to that point where even silence is a rich communion. Nevertheless, it chanced they were talking about the weather, and specifically, about the approaching sunset.
Then the man on the yard, high above them, had occasion to shift his tar-pot; and in the shifting let it slip and fall. He bellowed down his warning: “’Ware below.” Ruth looked up swiftly and saw the heavy bucket falling.
According to the laws of physics, a falling object drops sixteen feet in one second, sixty-four in two—in a vacuum. The man on the yard was perhaps forty, perhaps fifty feet above the deck. So, even allowing for the resistance of the still, hot air, it was no more than two seconds between the time the bucket started to fall and the time it would reach the deck. Nevertheless that space of time was for Ruth Lytton as long as eternity. She looked up at the man’s cry, and saw the bucket half way down, descending with a ponderous and deadly majesty, slowly, inevitably as doom itself. Dan Darrin had not yet looked up; his nerves and his muscles were slower tuned than hers. He would not have time to look up before the bucket dropped upon his head.
Ruth, in that instant of time, saw the whole tragedy of it. The tar-pot was heavy with tar; it would strike Dan squarely; it would surely crush in his head, destroy him. And her heart went so sick within her that she could not stir. She could not breathe; she could only watch that black bucket like doom descending. Dan Darrin would be killed before her eyes; it were better that she herself should die. Why? Why? She knew the answer—and all within that space of two seconds or less. Why was she sick at heart at his peril? Because she loved him! That was why.
Then the bucket struck a line, and was deflected, and fell upon the deck six feet from Dan; and the world swam before her. She saw Dan look up to the white face of the man on the yard, and bawl: “You swipe! Come down and scrub away that mess. And sharp!” And the man came tumbling placatingly down the stays, and dropped to the deck, and Dan cuffed him to his task. By that time Ruth had her life back again; her cheeks were still white, her lips still and trembling, but—she could live, for Dan was safe.
And she loved him!