It came as no shock of surprise to recognize Denvarre’s face and drooping yellow moustache. His eyes were closed; his cheeks fell in limply against his jaws; the breath came in a thin wheezy hiss from between his white lips. He was in the last stages of cold and exhaustion. They tried in vain to force brandy between his set teeth. He had not the muscular power of swallowing left. It did indeed look as if Baines was right.
I won’t stop to tell you the thoughts that seethed and ran riot in my brain as I saw him fighting for his life with the cold that had nigh mastered his pulses. They belong to the category of devilish inspirations that come to a man when some wild battle with nature furnishes forth a throw back to pure animalism; when self is uttermost and honor unborn. They are monstrous phantasms of the brain too dark to materialize into wholesome words, and best forgotten save when the system needs a purge of shame. God forgive me my desires at that single moment—for a space of mere seconds saw me myself again.
Suffice it to say that with every aid we could devise we joined him in his wrestle with the death that was gripping him for the final throw. We fetched spirits, and rasped every part of his body with rough towels soaked in whisky. We smote with our palms upon his rigid limbs, and bent and kneaded his unyielding joints; we thrust heated bricks against his feet and hands; finally, at Janson’s suggestion, we collected handfuls of the sleet that was falling on the decks, and grated them furiously upon his skin. And at last the life began to flicker in him.
A tinge—faint and barely perceptible at first, but growing in strength—began to filter into his cheeks. A sigh burst from his throat and the tense lips parted. We tilted brandy drop by drop into his mouth, and heard his spluttering cough with joy. And then of his own effort he stirred and whispered faintly.
“Gwen?” he queried in a faint, far-away voice, and it was for me to answer him.
“Safe, and on board,” said I cheerily, as my heart sledge-hammered at my ribs, and my hands twitched to grasp his throat and tear the chords of speech away from him eternally. “Quite safe, old man, and coming round nicely.”
He smiled a happy, drowsy smile that stayed and slept upon his face as he wandered back into consciousness. And then I left him to his brother—who was among the rescued—and to Baines, and went stolidly up on deck, the fires of hell burning in my heart, and rage—the insane, unreasoning rage of disappointment—astir in my blood.
“Gwen, Gwen,” I repeated to myself, as I flung myself out into the gale that still slashed cuttingly down the deck. “Gwen she is to him, and, curse him, she’s Gwen no longer to me.”
CHAPTER VIII
BEFORE THE GALE
I stood beneath the bridge holding on to a friendly stanchion, and gazing apathetically before me. I could see Waller’s brawny figure outlined upon the bridge, every movement of his muscles showing up against the moonlit sky. He wrestled strenuously with the bucking wheel as it fought in his grasp, while above him the ragged clouds scudded fiercely, giving him the effect of rushing violently backward into space as they passed swiftly over him. The wind had increased with the rise of the waning moon, and the lull, which mercifully allowed us to rescue the derelict boat, was blotted out in a turmoil of foam and fury. The tumult of the night found an echo in my heart.