But now Amy Lawrence was beckoning, and he made a rush for the rail, then worked his way aft, hand over hand. Every movable on deck was taking a sudden slant to starboard, and the sea went hissing by almost on level with the deck as next she spoke. “Surely a soldier needs both arms in battle, and you—Oh, certainly, Mr. Shafto, take that chair,” she added. Armstrong glanced up suddenly.
“Oh! that you, Shafto? Yes; take it by all means.”
Anything, thought he, rather than that they should come here. The young Briton stepped easily past between them and the rail—behind there was no room—and, swinging the long, awkwardly modeled fabric to his broad shoulder, started back just as a huge wave heaved suddenly under the counter, heeled the steamer far over to port, threw him off his balance, and, his foot catching at the bottom of her chair, hurled him, load and all, straight at Amy’s reclining form. One instant, and even her uplifted hands could not have saved her face; but in that instant Armstrong had darted in, caught the stumbling Briton on one arm, and the full force of the shooting chair crashing upon the other, already pierced by Filipino lead.
When, a moment later she emerged, safe and unscratched from the confused heap of men and furniture, it was to cut off instantly the stutter and stammer of poor Shafto’s apologies, to bid him go instantly for the ship’s doctor, and, with face the color of death, to turn quickly to Armstrong. The blow had burst open the half-healed wound, and the blood was streaming to the deck.
Both liner and transport turned back without Stanley Armstrong, Doric and Sedgwick sailed unheeded, for the highest surgical authority of the Department of California had remanded him to quarters at the Palace and forbidden his return to duty with an unhealed wound. He was sitting up again, somewhat pallid and not too strong, but with every promise, said the “medico,” of complete recovery within two months. But not a month would Armstrong wait. The Puebla was to start within the week, and he had made up his mind. “Go,” said he, “I must.”
They had been sitting about him, the night this opinion was announced, in the parlor of the suite of rooms the Primes had taken. Billy Gray had gone with his father to the club, Shafto had been hanging about in the agonies of an Englishman’s first love, Gov. disappeared a moment and came back with tickets for the Columbia, bidding Mildred get her hat and gloves at once, and whispering Shafto that he had a seat for him. As the little mantel clock struck eight Amy Lawrence, lifting up her eyes from the book she was trying hard to believe she meant to read, saw that Armstrong was rising from his easy-chair, and, springing to his side, laying her white hand on his arm, she faltered, “Oh, please! You know the stipulation was that you were not to stir.”
But then her heart began to flutter uncontrollably. The blood went surging to her brows, for all of a sudden, as through impulse irresistible, her hand was seized in his—in both of his, in fact—and the deep voice that had pleaded at her behest for the cause of Billy Gray was now, in impetuous flow of words that fell upon her ears like some strain of thrilling music, pleading at last his own. Ever since that day in the radiant sunshine of the Park she had learned to look up to him as a tower of strength, a man of mark among his fellows, a man to be honored and obeyed. Ever since that night at the Palace, when she saw his glowing eyes fixed intently upon her, and knew that he was following her every move, she had begun to realize the depth of his interest in her. Ever since that day when the China slipped from her moorings, with Witchie Garrison singling him out for lavish farewell favors, she had wondered why it so annoyed and stung her. Ever since the day she read the list of killed and wounded in the first fierce battling with the “Insurrectos” she knew it was the sight of his name, not Billy Gray’s, that made her for the moment faint and dizzy, and taught her the need of greater self-control. Ever since that moonlit night upon the Marsden’s lanai, when her heart leaped at the sudden sound of his voice, she had realized what his coming meant to her, and ever since that breezy day upon the broad Pacific, with the sailor’s song of “Land ho!” ringing from the bows, and he, her wounded soldier, had sprung to shield her from the crash of Shafto’s hapless stumble, and the deck was stained with the precious blood from that soldier’s reopened wound, shed for her—for her who so revered him—she had longed to hear him say the words that alone could unlock the gates of maidenly reserve and let her tell him—tell him with glad and grateful heart that the love he bore her was answered by her own. Hovering over him only one minute, her lips half parted, her eyes still veiled, her heart throbbing loud and fast, with sudden movement she threw herself upon her knees at the side of the low chair, and her burning face, ever so lightly, was buried in the dark-blue sleeve above that blessed wound.
THE END.