Bess had followed the trail through the snow clear to the dark edge of the woods when the sound of voices behind her caused her to turn. Neither Doomsdorf nor Knutsen had spoken loudly. Indeed, their tones had been more subdued than usual, as is often the way when men speak in moments of absolute test. Bess had not made out the words: only the deep silence and the movements of the wind from the sea enabled her to hear the voices at all. Thus it was curious that she whirled, face blanching, in knowledge of the impending crisis.
Thereafter the drama on the shore seemed to her as something that could not possibly be true. She saw in the deep silence Doomsdorf overturn and push off the boat, Knutsen’s desperate effort to rescue it, the flash of light from the former’s upraised pistol. And still immersed in that baffling silence, the brave seaman had groped, swayed, then toppled forward into the shallow water.
It was a long time after that the report of the pistol reached her ears, and even this was not enough to waken her to a sense of reality. It sounded dull, far-off, conveying little of the terrible thing it was, inadequate to account for the unutterable disaster that it had occasioned. Afterward the silence closed down again. The waves rolled in through the harbor mouth with never a pause. The dark shadow that lay for an instant on the face of the waters slowly sank beneath. The boat drifted ever farther out to sea.
Except for the fact that Doomsdorf stood alone on the shore, it might have been all the factless incident of a tragic dream. The blond man walked closer to the water, peering; then the pistol gleamed again as he pocketed it. The wind still brushed by, singing sadly as it went; and the sleet swept out of the clouds. And then, knowing her need, she strove to waken the blunted powers of her will.
She must not yield herself to the horror that encroached upon her. Only impotence, only disaster lay that way. She must hold steady, not break into hopeless sobs, not fall kneeling in impotent appeal. Bess Gilbert was of good metal, but this test that had been put upon her seemed to wrench apart the fibers of her inmost being. But she won the fight at last.
Slowly she stiffened, rallying her faculties, fighting off the apathy of terror. Presently her whole consciousness seemed to sharpen. In an instant of clear thought she guessed, broadly, the truth of that tragedy beside the sea; that Knutsen had died in a desperate attempt to break free from an unspeakable trap into which he and his charges had fallen. He had preferred to take the chance of death rather than submit to the fate that Doomsdorf had in store for him.
Just what that fate was and how it concerned herself, Bess dared not guess. She had known a deadly fear of Doomsdorf at the first glance; she had instinctively hated him as she had never hated any living creature before; and now she knew that this was the most desperate moment of her life. He had shown himself capable of any depth of crime; and that meant there must be no limit to her own courage. She too must take any chance of freedom that offered, no matter how desperate; for no evil that could befall her seemed as terrible as his continued power over her.
It meant she must work quick. She must not lose a single chance. The odds were desperately long already: she must not increase them. In an instant more he would be glancing about to see if his crime were observed. If she could conceal the fact that she had witnessed it, he would not be so much on guard in the moment of crisis that was to come. Her body and soul seemed to rally to mighty effort.
She was already at the edge of the timber. Stooping down, she made one leap into its shelter. She was none too soon: already Doomsdorf had looked back to see if the coast were clear.
Everything depended on Ned, henceforth. She couldn’t work alone. With his aid, perhaps, they could destroy this evil power under which they had fallen before it could prepare to meet them. Doomsdorf’s cabin—a long, log structure on the bank of a dark little stream—was only a hundred feet distant in the wood. Now that she was out of sight of the shore, she broke into a frenzied run.