The colossal scheme of the scene left me awed. The sense of the primitive which dominated it all held me spellbound. We had left the world with which I was familiar. This was the sensation that crept over me. We were in a new world—no, an old one, so old that modernity had nothing in common with it. Skin-clad, white-skinned vikings, might have stepped out on those moss-clad rocks and have fitted perfectly into the picture. But not the Wanderer, not its personnel—save Brack. Yes, Brack and that valley belonged together.
I shuddered and turned toward the yacht.
Brack’s boat was gone. That was good. But I looked in vain for some sign of life aboard. Apparently the Wanderer was deserted. I waited in hope that some one might appear on deck and in response to my hail send over a boat, but after half an hour I gave this up. I was rested now from the unaccustomed strain of hill-climbing, and I was determined to reach the yacht.
The Wanderer’s anchorage was probably two hundred yards from the shore on which I was lying and I had never been but a poor swimmer. But from an out-jutting point of the island it was but half that distance and to the island I turned my attention.
The channel separating the island and the mainland was about fifty yards wide. I swam it, after having divested myself of shoes and coat, ran along the island to the point nearest the yacht and plunged in again. The water of the fiord was like ice, and I had not swum far before my teeth were chattering. I was tempted to shout and call for help, but the caution which that day had instilled in me prevented this and I kept on in silence.
No one saw me as I came climbing up the Wanderer’s starboard sea-ladder. My flesh, my bones, my marrow, were aching with the torture of cold. I staggered stiffly across the deck and rounded the main cabin. There I came upon Freddy Pierce in a deckchair disconsolately rolling a cigaret.
We did not speak for some time.
At my appearance the paper fluttered from Pierce’s limp hand, the tobacco dribbled unnoticed from the bag onto the deck and by this I knew that the sight of me must have appalled him. He stared at me, his lips opening and closing, and I stared back, uttering no word, as men do in moments when words are too slow a means of expression. I was freezing; I was near to collapsing; but at the sight of Pierce’s appalled countenance my body seemed forgotten.
“Brains!” exploded Freddy at last in agony. “What the ——! Ain’t she with you?”
“No,” I said, “she is not with me.”