"I can't find Dering anywhere," he said vexedly. "He is not in his room. Hasn't been to bed, either; though he turned in early saying he was half asleep. I wonder what is up? Can he have heard already, do you think? Scarcely; and he would not have gone without waking me." His surprise seemed to absorb him.
"Then I must tell you, for there is no time to be lost," interrupted Erda, impatiently. Yet, even in her strenuous desire to make him understand quickly, she did not fail to explain, breathlessly, how she came to be dressed as she was. She had been trying on her wedding dress to see if it fitted, and had gone into the garden for--for--flowers, when Am-ma and his raft had come floating down the river.
And was not that all true? she asked herself passionately, as she told the tale. It was all of the truth, anyhow, that he or anyone else was ever to know.
So she had come to warn them, as she was.
A great joy at her courage filled Lance as he listened, for to most men the possibility of a woman acting as a man might act comes as a wonder.
"It was awfully plucky of you," he began; but she cut him short with a question as to what was to be done now.
"Warn Dillon, first of all," he said readily. "We have a wire laid on, you know. I only hope this infernal--I beg your pardon--dust-storm won't interfere with the connection. You had better come over with me to the office; it is just across the yard, and I don't like leaving you alone. Do you mind?"
"I'll come, of course,--but I must make sure of Am-ma waiting first," she added, with a ring in her voice; the ring of a vigorous vitality which finds itself face to face with action. "He said the raft couldn't overtake us for half an hour. But he must not go, anyhow, and he will want to. I had difficulty in getting him to leave it, as it was. But I had to make him. I had to be in time!"
"And you are--loads of time!" he called, as he ran down the river steps before her, to give the order. "It isn't two o'clock yet, and--" he paused abruptly, on seeing, to his surprise, that only Am-ma's strange craft lay sidling against the bottom step, over which little waves were curving hurriedly, to reach up the wall, as if the water-atoms were as restless as those of earth, as eager to seek a new element. For the air was growing darker, thicker every instant with the intruders. He looked round hastily, but there was no sign of the canoe anywhere. Yet he had seen it moored to its ring before dinner!
Vincent must have taken it. Whither? An answer leapt to Lance's mind, and he flushed up, even in the dark, redly. If this was so--what the deuce was to be done?