Then, seeing how utterly he had betrayed himself by this last speech, he got up and walked slowly away down toward the shore, his one object being apparently to hide his stricken face from them.
The boy was about to hurry after him, but Sally put her hand upon his arm.
“Let him alone,” she said; “the German is gone and we can’t do anything now. No, Billy, don’t go after him.”
Billy hesitated, feeling, in spite of himself, that his anger was beginning to change to sympathy. He would still have followed, had not Sally’s hand restrained him and Sally’s voice become insistent.
“I know him better than you do,” she maintained, “and I won’t believe any harm of Johann. No, let him go.”
Billy walked slowly back through the woods, across the causeway and up past the meadow to Captain Saulsby’s little house. The opening poppies were blowing in the morning wind, matching with their pink and scarlet the colors spreading across the sky. The fresh breeze felt pleasant on Billy’s face, and made him breathe more quickly. He was weary beyond words, dead tired to the utmost limit; but he felt that for two nights and a day he had been living indeed. The very last vessels of the big battle fleet were still trailing away across the horizon, and he stopped to watch until the final line of smoke had disappeared.
He turned and went slowly up to the cottage. The old captain had revived enough to insist that he should be carried nowhere else, and had had the force to get his own way. A doctor had already been summoned and a nurse installed, so that he would have no lack of proper care. The doctor had finished his inspection, and was just coming out as Billy reached the doorstep.
“He certainly has had enough to kill any three ordinary men of his age,” Billy heard him say, “but an old sailor like that is made of iron and rubber and rhinoceros hide. I think we will pull him through.”
Billy walked on, down the path, out between the willows and along the road toward the hotel. He heard a deep whistle as he turned the corner by the wharf, and saw a steamer landing at the pier. It was the night boat from Boston, bringing Aunt Mattie home. As he drew near a little group of people disembarked and his aunt came toward him looking very pale and bedraggled.
“It was good of you to get up so early, and come down to meet me, Billy,” she said faintly. “We had such a rough passage, and the stewardess was so inattentive. It has really been a terrible night!”