“To Galbraith, you say! You want me to go back?”
“Do you ‘want’ to leave him here friendless, sick. Oh, it was well I came! I must have had an inkling; yes, yes, a presentiment.”
“That’s why you came! Why you waited here!”
The sailors might abandon their dangerous task and leave those two there on the beach, for all it seemed to matter to Louis Cheviot, since he had halted on the words: “Galbraith behind these days, too!”
The shouting of the sailors made him turn his eyes. The boat out there, baffled again, was driven back in a third effort to make the final run. Cheviot with his free hand shaped a trumpet, and through it shouted across the surf, “Try up here!”
The men in the boat called out something that was drowned in the clamor of the waves, and Cheviot was running Hildegarde faster than ever down that last stretch of the stony beach. Would he never stop and let her get back her voice? Oh, this carrying a hot ball of lead in your breast, and having to lift it every time you strained for breath.
“Louis, wait! Ky, Ky, come on!” Why was he hurrying her more than ever? Did he imagine— Her power to think seemed to be leaving her. A wavering vision off there in the sunshine of Louis’s late guide hurrying down from the settlement with several other men, two were natives. And the boat, where was the boat? Beaten back again, and that time all but swamped. Yes, now it was gone—down behind the white breakers, or further down among the rocks? The look on Louis’s face—it gave her a new measure of loneliness. It was like the door of one’s own home locked and barred against one. But she couldn’t see well, for the loosened hair, blown into her eyes, was blinding her. Tears, too. On and on over the water-worn stones with that harsh hand grasping her. If her feet slipped they were not suffered to falter, if they stumbled they were harshly steadied. On and on with this constriction at the breast, and at her side this face of granite. A moment’s memory of the arctic current, and the picture that had stood to Galbraith for the type of helpless human striving. Something of the same sense of futility visited her as her feet followed the stronger will. Did nothing matter then, except this on and on? Death up yonder on the tundra. Death down there in the surf. Pain wherever there was life. Pain only to draw the breath. She got hers in great, clutching gasps that stabbed her. Now they were down near the foam-line. They were running in the wet sand. The rage of the surf in her ears, the taste of the brine on her lips. John Galbraith found, and John Galbraith dying. Everything changing, Louis most of all. The fabric of her world dissolving before her dazed eyes to the sound of sea-born thunder.
“You’ve got to make a rush—and not mind a ducking!” It was one of the sailors shouting. The big fellow in the hip-boots had leaped out of the plunging boat into the surf. He was hurled headlong, recovered footing, and, streaming with sea water, buffeted his way out of the foam, while he roared angrily, “Come on, if yer comin’. Cap’n’s orders, bring ye or leave ye.”
“The dog first,” Hildegarde cried out. “No, the lame one.”