For a moment Marie stood gazing at her handiwork. Then a great sob shook her frame, and she bent down and pressed her lips to the purpling wound.
“Forgive, forgive!” she cried. “If it had been life alone—— Oh, love, forgive, forgive!”
The next moment she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IT is one thing to embark on adventure and another thing to carry it through. Though the first step costs more than any other one step, it does not cost more than the aggregate of the rest, and certainly does not cost more than the period of suspense that inevitably comes in any prolonged enterprise. All of which serves as an introduction to the statement that though Florence began well, she soon sickened of her venture.
The conditions were against her. She had always been used to a good share of the world’s comforts. Even in New York, hanging on the ragged edge of the bottomless pit, she had never been penniless, and had never held back from anything she wanted through fear of becoming penniless. Like a cat, she loved warmth and the cream of life.
When she placed the red light in her port on the Sea Spume and dropped over the side into the arms in which Wilkins willingly received her, she contemplated nothing more unpleasant than a sail by night over the dancing waves to a safe port. The danger that menaced her not being visible, she disregarded it; or felt it only as giving a zest to a romantic flight.
But things did not turn out as she had anticipated. They seldom do. Scarcely had the sloop gained the open sea when it became apparent that it was too heavily laden. The wind was only ordinarily fresh, and the waves were not at all dangerous to an ordinary craft; yet they broke continually over the rail. Soon it was evident that to attempt to run across the open channel to the Swedish coast would be suicidal, and to run for Copenhagen even more so. Much against his will, Wilkins was forced to keep south around the lee of the islands, and finally to run for a Russian port. Even on this tack, the trip was very dangerous, and for more than three hours Florence, who had never before done any work harder than carrying a spear in the front rank of the chorus, had to toil strenuously helping to pump out the water that poured in unceasingly.
When a girl is cold and wet and exhausted beyond expression for several hours, during all of which Death sits grinning over her shoulder, it is not exactly surprising if she wonders whether the game is worth the candle.
Nor were matters greatly improved when at last the sloop won to the port of Helsingfors and dropped anchor along with other fishing-smacks in the bay, where her passengers hoped to lie unnoticed while Bill Wilkins, who alone spoke Russian, ran up to St. Petersburg to try to find a steamer whose captain would consent, for a sufficiently large remuneration, to clear for a foreign port and then run out of his course close to Helsingfors, to take the gold on board. Such a captain once found, and signals arranged, Bill would return to Helsingfors to join the others and help take the schooner out to meet the vessel.