Hawtrey's Deputy

by Harold Bindloss

Slowly, with infinite toil, they crossed the weary leagues, lying at night with a single skin between them and the soil, for they travelled light; and Wyllard was limping painfully with his boots worn off his feet, when at length one morning they came into sight of a low promontory which rose against a stretch of grey, lifeless sea. His heart throbbed fast as he realised that behind it lay the inlet into which Dampier had arranged to bring the Selache. He glanced at Lewson, who said nothing, and they plodded forward faster than before.

The misty sun was high in the heavens when at length they reached the foot of the steep rise, and Wyllard gasped heavily as they crept up the ascent. He was making a severe muscular effort; but it was the nervous tension that troubled him most, for he knew that he would look down upon the inlet from the summit. He blamed himself bitterly for not sending on a messenger to Dampier when he fell in with Overweg, which, in his eagerness to follow up the clue the latter had given him, he had at first omitted to do. There had certainly been difficulties in the way, for the increase in the scientist's party had made additional packers necessary, and Wyllard felt that he could not reasonably compel him to leave the camp comforts he had evidently been accustomed to behind. In spite of that, he had been at fault in not disregarding every objection, and he realised it now.

Somehow he kept pace with Lewson, but he closed one hand tight as he neared the top. When he reached it he stopped suddenly, and his face set hard as he looked down, standing very still. Beneath him lay a strip of dim, green water, with a fringe of soft, white surf at the foot of the promontory, while beyond the latter there stretched away an empty expanse of slowly heaving sea. There was nothing else, however; no schooner in the inlet, no boat upon the beach.

In another moment or two they went down the slope savagely at a stumbling run, and then stopped, gasping by the water's edge, and looked at one another. There were marks in the sand which showed them where a boat had been drawn up not very long ago. The Selache had evidently been there, and had sailed away again.

Then Wyllard sat down limply upon the shingle, for all the strength seemed to suddenly melt out of him, and it was several minutes before he looked up. Lewson was still standing, a shapeless, barbaric figure in his garments of skins, with a dark lined face that had scarcely changed, gazing out to sea. The hide moccasins he wore had chafed through, and Wyllard noticed that the blood was trickling from one of his feet.

"Well?" he said, harshly.

Wyllard laid a stern restraint upon himself. Their case looked desperate, but it must, at least, be grappled with.

"We must go back and meet the rest," he said. "That first—what is to come afterwards I don't quite know." Then a faint gleam of resolution crept into his eyes. "The schooner the Russians seized lies in an inlet down the coast."

Lewson made a sign of comprehension. "There are four of us. There will be birds by and bye. I can trap things."

Then he flung himself down near his comrade, and for an hour neither of them said anything. Wyllard, at least, was worn-out physically, and limp from the last few hours' mental strain, while Lewson very seldom said more than was absolutely necessary. Then they made a very frugal meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that dreary afternoon during which he lay upon the shingle watching the slow pulsations of the dim, lifeless sea.