“‘Only child ... return her ... precautions ... do not want my whereabouts ... so no message ... forgiveness’” puzzled out the keeper. From hand to hand the letter went to confirm these conjectural readings. The keeper scratched his head. His forehead showed little vertical lines. His blue eyes were thoughtful, and the wrinkles that converged at their corners, the result of much sea gazing, showed up like little furrows of light and shadow under the rays of the big oil lamp hanging overhead. The sense of so much as he had read was clear enough, but the story was woefully incomplete. What were a few words in a couple of sentences of a long letter? Four large sheets had been covered by that shaky and rather small handwriting; and for the fourteen words he could make out there were at least four hundred lost.
Footfalls sounded on the boardwalk outside the door, not the steady tramp of Tom Lupton returning from the easterly stretch of the beach but lighter steps of someone running. The door opened quickly and Mrs. Biggles appeared among them, white and breathless.
“Cap’n,” she panted. “There’s a stranger on the beach. My Henry hasn’t got back yet—he maybe’ll be staying over to Bellogue till morning. I heard a noise at a window and there was a man’s face. He disappeared quick. I was so frightened I couldn’t run and I couldn’t stay; so finally I run over here. ’Twasn’t any face I ever saw before. It’s—it’s a sailor like the one Henry took off. And—oh, have mercy on us!—they’re all drowned!”
IV
Cap’n Smiley, young Joe Sayre, and Jim Mapes went back with Mrs. Biggles. It was a clear night with many stars but the moon had not yet risen. The fresh, damp southeast wind was playing great chords upon the organ of the surf. Eight minutes’ tramping over the dunes brought the four persons to the Biggles house—a fisherman’s shack of two rooms, but tight and dry. The lamp’s glow came through window panes. After circling the house Cap’n Smiley moved to one of the windows. He came back immediately and said to the others with a low chuckle:
“Whoever he is, he’s hungry. Mrs. Biggles, he’s eating your provender!”
All fear left the bayman’s wife. With an exclamation she advanced before the others could restrain her. They followed her through the door in time to hear her exclaim:
“You good-for-nothing, what are you doing eating my Henry’s cold samp porridge!”
The man choked on a mouthful. Swiftly he rose and tried to slip by her. She gave him a heavy box on the head and the men at the door caught and held him.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” asked Cap’n Smiley, sharply, though amazed mirth at the transformation of Mrs. Biggles caused his eyes to twinkle. The sailor stood quietly enough. His English was poor. He was, he said, one of the crew of the wrecked ship. He had been washed ashore unconscious on the night of the disaster but had recovered his senses before dawn, creeping into the sandhills. There he had hidden in bushes and slept. He had slept all day and at night he had prowled about. Breaking into one of the few summer cottages on the beach he had found a little food and on that he had subsisted. He hadn’t approached the Coast Guard Station nor made himself known to any one because of a fight in San Francisco in which he had killed a man. A boarding-house keeper had sheltered him and put him on the Mermaid, but the captain knew who he was and he had expected to be arrested when the ship made New York. The wreck had seemed to offer him a miraculous chance of escape, and he had somehow escaped with his life. Was he to survive in the face of such odds only to lose his life ashore? But now, half-starved and plainly feverish, he could struggle no longer; he would confess and take his chances. His eye remained with a fixed fascination on the food that lay on the table. He wriggled feebly in Cap’n Smiley’s hard grasp to reach it; then sank down limply with delirious mutterings.