There was no answer—no sound but the shriek of wind, the groaning of the house timbers in travail with the storm. He pushed the door shut behind him, and something like a sob came from Jean's lips—and then he shouted once more.
Still there was no answer.
He felt his way to the kitchen, and across the kitchen to the shelf by the rear wall, found a candle, and lighted it. He held the flame above his head, sweeping the light about him, and, discovering nothing, ran back into the front room—and, with a low cry, stood still. On the floor the great lamp lay broken, the chimney shattered into splinters. He stared at it in a frightened, almost superstitious way. The great lamp broken! Did it mean that—no, no, it could not mean that! It was the wind that had blown it there in bursting in the door. See, there was no disorder anywhere! He ran into Gaston's room. Nothing! Nothing anywhere to indicate that anything had happened—and yet, apparently, the house was empty—and that was enough! Out? They had gone out somewhere, even in the storm, on some homely errand, to pay a visit perhaps? Impossible! With the lamp for the first time in fourteen years unlighted, and broken now upon the floor? It was impossible! While Gaston Bernier lived the light would burn!
He climbed the stairs and stood on the threshold of the little attic room, the flickering candle playing timorously with the darker shadows where the roof in its sharp angle spread into an inverted V. It was the first time he had ever looked into that room. It was Marie-Louise's room. It was all white, scrupulously white, from the bare floor to the patched quilt on the little bed. There was a freshness, a sweetness about it that seemed to personify Marie-Louise, to fill the room with her—and it swept him now with a sudden numbing agony, and his face, wet with the rain that dripped from the hair straggling over his forehead, showed grey and set as it glistened curiously in the yellow, sputtering candle light.
And then, half mad with anxiety, the sure, intuitive knowledge of disaster upon him, he rushed downstairs again; and, hurriedly exchanging his candle for a lantern, went out into the night.
A search around the house revealed no more than within. He ran then down the path to the beach, to where, well up under the protection of the low bluff and away from the reach of the highest tide, old Gaston stored his boats and fishing gear. And there, as Jean flashed his lantern around him, a low, strained cry, for the second time, came from his lips. Three boats old Gaston owned—who should know better than he, Jean Laparde, who fished with the other season after season!—but of the three boats only two were there upon the beach.
As a man wounded then and dazed with his hurt, Jean stood there. They had gone—out into that—Marie-Louise and old Gaston—and they had not come back. It was not true—it was beyond belief! No; it was not true—something only had happened to the boat—no man in Bernay-sur-Mer would have been so mad as to have ventured out!
Far to the south the heavens opened in a burst of flame, and, travelling far and fast, a zigzag tongue of lightning, like the venomous thrust of a serpent's fang, leaped across the skies. It lighted up the beach, and, further out over the waters, a quarter of a mile away, played upon the smother of spray that like a shroud flung itself over the Perigeau Reef—and the cry that came from Jean Laparde was wild, hoarse-throated now. What was that he had seen!
It was dark again out there. He swung his lantern, signalling frantically—then, holding it high and rigid, waited for the next flash.
It came.