By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

Truda's grass petticoats were torn to pieces in an instant. The water, in its awful churning, stripped Beekman to his bare skin. It would have torn his shoes off if he had been wearing them. Nothing that he had ever imagined equalled the force, the pressure, the stripping, ripping suction; the driving, beating, thrusting of the sea, unless it was a full-fledged western tornado. He had met such on the plains. Of course, these comparisons did not occur to him then. All he thought of when they were thrown out of the water and into the spray-laden air, which made seeing difficult, but not impossible, was to breathe, to breathe quickly and deep so as to be prepared for the next buffet of fortune.

As soon as he struck the air he opened his eyes. They were still in the very midst of the deep, cylindrical harbor, its dark walls seen vaguely through the spray uptossed by the broken bore. His brain registered impressions almost faster than the afferent and efferent nerves could carry them. The swiftness with which the two bodies, still clinging together, were whirled about in the maelstrom caused by the introduction of these titanic forces within the narrow confines of this gulf alone kept them from sinking. Beekman could not have made a stroke for any reason. He was incapable even of movement of his own.

In the first place, he was so bruised and beaten and exhausted by the tremendous pressure of the water that every muscle was almost useless. In the second place, he could not let go of the girl, even with one arm. He had held her only by a superhuman effort of will and strength which must have been met and equalled by a similar determination on her part. Even to free one hand, meant parting. It flashed into his mind that death was at hand; that no human beings could live in such a sea; that the next second would find them cast beyond the whirling periphery of the vortex and hurled against the rocks. At least, they could, and would, die together.

Yet, Beekman suddenly became aware that the harbor entrance was wider than before. He noticed, too, that the waters appeared to be receding, although the tumult, for instance, of the rapids of the Niagara River, was as nothing to it. The next instant, as if nature had not yet exhausted her malefic powers, a second earthquake, traveling more slowly than the wave which the first shock engendered, reached the island. By chance--or was it God?--the whirling revolution of the two human beings carried them farthest from the nearer shore when this last appalling cataclysm of nature took place. The solid wall before them seemed to melt away before Beekman's eyes and dissolve into the vague mist and foam. The sight terrified him perhaps more than anything else. It benumbed his very soul. Not only had the foundations of the great deep been broken up, but the immutable hills themselves were shaking like the sea. Was it the end of the world, or only the end of Beekman and Truda?

The quivering transmitted even through the boiling water seemed to still the wave for a moment. As Beekman hung poised, almost as a soul might, 'twixt heaven and earth, the moment the mad action of the water stopped they began to sink. Then he did strike out feebly, but desperately. The girl clung to him, half senseless, a perfectly dead weight in his arms. The great wall of rock before him wavered, bent forward. It seemed to rise in the air. It slipped downward with the sound of a mighty rending. Screams as of an earth in labor pains seemed to fill his ear. He caught a glimpse of a great rift, beyond which he could see, as no mortal had ever seen before from where he floated, the palms of the upland. And then the falling rock smote the water.

Being luckily farthest away, and just opposite the entrance, the great wave which was engendered drove the two far out to sea. He had time to note, as he swept through the now strangely widened entrance, that he could not see a trace of the barrier. The water, which barely reached its highest point at the highest tide, had completely buried it. Outside the narrow, enclosed harbor, while the waves still rolled terribly, the sea was smoother. They did not break. The force of the surge which had hurled them seaward being spent, they began to sink again. The instinct of life was still present, and although every motion was anguish, Beekman thought it safe to free one hand with which he continued to strike out boldly.

His painful swimming was aimless. Indeed, it was only the result of a now unconscious determination to keep afloat as long as strength remained. He must go whither the waves carried him. By this time Truda had fainted dead away. Her grasp on his neck relaxed. She straightened out in the water. He turned her on her back, caught her long hair, which had been blown out like a flag, in his teeth and swam on.

While it would only be for a few moments, still the spirit of the race, the indomitable persistence of humanity--that quality by which at least it has some claim to be considered begot of Divinity--made him swim on, driven by wind and sea and tossed helplessly about. He set his teeth more tightly, shut his eyes, and struck out and out and out. He would not give up his own life. He would not desist from the efforts to preserve, even for a few swiftly passing instants, that life, dearer than his own, which trailed behind him as he swam.

But he reached the end of his strength. Some instinct made him open his eyes and lift his head: the old instinct to die with head up, facing the enemy; not to pass with averted countenance and in shrinking posture. Before him he saw something white. He did not know what it was, but the next moment, in the grinding sway of the sea, it struck him hard on the shoulder. He had strength enough to clutch at it ere he went down. It had struck him on the right arm, and the force of the blow had deprived him of the use of that vital member. Ordinarily, he could have swam with one arm, but not now.

As he clutched the object before him, it occurred to him that this was the end. He wished that he could have had another word with Truda; another kiss; but, to his surprise, he found that he was not sinking. To his brain came the consciousness that he was touching something familiar. He looked again. It was dancing and bobbing in the seas, but he was near enough now to recognize what brief stay Providence had thrown to his hand. It was wood, painted white. He saw the boards lap-streaked together. It presented a strangely familiar look.