“She won’t swim,” replied Alan. “She didn’t jump in for that. She is gone.”
In a vague and detached sort of way he was surprised at the calmness of his own voice. Captain Rifle saw the veins standing out on his clenched hands and in his forehead. Through many years he had witnessed tragedy of one kind and another. It was not strange to him. But a look of wonderment shot into his eyes at Alan’s words. It took only a few seconds to tell what had happened the preceding night, without going into details. The captain’s hand was on Alan’s arm when he finished, and the flesh under his fingers was rigid and hard as steel.
“We’ll talk with Rossland after the boats return,” he said.
He drew Alan from the room and closed the door.
Not until he had reentered his own cabin did Alan realize he still held the crushed shoe in his hand. He placed it on his bed and dressed. It took him only a few minutes. Then he went aft and found the captain. Half an hour later the first boat returned. Five minutes after that, a second came in. And then a third. Alan stood back, alone, while the passengers crowded the rail. He knew what to expect. And the murmur of it came to him—failure! It was like a sob rising softly out of the throats of many people. He drew away. He did not want to meet their eyes, or talk with them, or hear the things they would be saying. And as he went, a moan came to his lips, a strangled cry filled with an agony which told him he was breaking down. He dreaded that. It was the first law of his kind to stand up under blows, and he fought against the desire to reach out his arms to the sea and entreat Mary Standish to rise up out of it and forgive him.
He drove himself on like a mechanical thing. His white face was a mask through which burned no sign of his grief, and in his eyes was a deadly coldness. Heartless, the woman who had screamed might have said. And she would have been right. His heart was gone.
Two people were at Rossland’s door when he came up. One was Captain Rifle, the other Marston, the ship’s doctor. The captain was knocking when Alan joined them. He tried the door. It was locked.
“I can’t rouse him,” he said. “And I did not see him among the passengers.”
“Nor did I,” said Alan.
Captain Rifle fumbled with his master key.