“Two more beats per minute already!” Marsh answered. “And greater amplitude. Captain Briggs, if nothing happens now, your boy will live!”
The old man tried to speak, but the words died on his white lips. His eyes closed, his head dropped forward as he sat there, and his arms fell limp. In his excess of joy, Captain Alpheus Briggs had fainted.
By early dawn the tempest, blowing itself clean away with all its wrack of cloud and rain, left a pure-washed sky of rose and blue over-arching the wild-tossing sea. The sun burned its way in gold and crimson up into a morning sprayed with spindrift from the surf-charges against the granite coast. All along the north shore that wave army charged; and the bell-buoy, wildly clanging, seemed to revel in furious exultation over the departed storm.
The early rays flashed out billions of jewels from drops of water trembling on the captain’s lawn. Through the eastward-looking portholes of the cabin, long spears of sunlight penetrated, paling the flames on the hearth. Those flames had been fed with wood surpassing strange—with all the captain’s barbarous collection of bows and arrows, blowpipes, spears and clubs, even to the brutal “Penang lawyer” itself.
Before the fire, in a big chair, Ezra slept in absolute exhaustion. Dr. Marsh was gone. By the berth Filhiol was still on guard with Laura and the captain. All three were spent with the terrible vigil, but happiness brooded over them, and none thought of rest or sleep.
In the berth, now with open eyes, lay Hal, his face white as the pillow. With the conquering of the paralysis, some slight power of motion had returned to him; but the extreme exhaustion of that heavy loss of blood still gripped him. His eyes, though, moved from face to face of the three watchers, and his blue lips were smiling.
A different look lay in those eyes than any that had ever been there, even in the boy’s moments of greatest good humor. No longer was there visible that latent expression of arrogance, of power, cruelty and pride that at any moment had been wont to leap like a trapped beast tearing its cage asunder. Hal’s look was now not merely weakness; it took hold on gentleness and on humanity; it was the look of one who, having always gloried in the right of might, had found it swiftly turn to the bursting bubble of illusion.
This Hal now lying bandaged and inert in the old captain’s berth was no longer the Hal of yesterday. That personality had died; another had replaced it. Something had departed from the boy’s face, never to return again. One would almost have said the eyes were those of madness that had become suddenly sane—eyes from which a curse had all at once been lifted, leaving them rational and calm.
Hal’s eyes drifted from the old doctor’s face to the captain’s, rested a moment on Laura, and then wandered to the fireplace. Surprise came, at sight of the bare bricks. The captain understood.
“They’re gone, Hal,” said he. “Burned up—they were all part and parcel of the old life; and now that that’s gone they can’t have any place here. I know you’ll understand.”